Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

  Sadly for everyone though, Julie only got to enjoy the feeling for another few months. She was twenty-two weeks gone when she woke in the middle of the night in a pool of blood and by the time she got to hospital it was too late. The baby was dead.

  ‘You’re young,’ I told her when I visited her a few days after it had happened, ‘you can try again.’ She looked at me as if she couldn’t believe what I was saying.

  ‘But it won’t be this baby will it, Mum?’ she said. ‘This baby is dead.’

  ‘Why, Mum? Why?’ she asked over and over again and I didn’t know what to say to her.

  ‘It just happens sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘It didn’t happen to Helen,’ she had tears pouring down her face, ‘and it didn’t happen to Susan.’

  God help me, but I did wonder why it couldn’t have happened to Susan.

  ‘Your turn will come,’ I told her and I hoped that I was right.

  If anything, losing the baby brought Julie and Christopher closer together. I mean, it had always been obvious that Christopher adored her but after the baby he was just so careful with her. He cared for her, not in a sickly, over the top sort of way but – I don’t know how I’d put it really – it was just obvious that she was the most special person in the world to him. I hoped she realised just how lucky she was.

  But while they were more in love than ever, the same couldn’t be said for Helen and Robert. Like I’ve said, we didn’t see as much of them as we did Julie and Chris but when we did, it was clear that something was going wrong between them. Helen didn’t say anything, not at first anyway but I’m her mother and I could see her pain. At first I just thought that they’d had a row. I mean, even the happiest of couples have rows, but when things were still the same when they came around the week before my birthday I asked her if she was all right.

  ‘Just got a headache,’ she said, but she was as bad as Julie at lying so I knew that her head was fine. I don’t think Robert spoke to her once while they were there. He talked about football with Mick and he played with James a bit but he totally ignored his wife. James was getting on for three by then and so far there’d been no sign of any more babies. From the look of things, there wouldn’t be any more any time soon.

  ‘Was Robert all right?’ I asked Mick after they’d gone home.

  ‘Yeah, he was fine. Not very happy with United’s result yesterday but who was?’

  What was it about men and football?

  ‘Did you talk about anything else?’

  ‘No.’

  Maybe I was imagining it. Maybe Helen had just had a headache but I didn’t think so.

  A couple of months later, Robert was back at his mother’s and Helen was crying her heart out on the telephone. Turned out that Robert had met someone through work and he’d been seeing her on a regular basis since before Christmas. Helen had had her suspicions for a while but hadn’t said anything. I suppose she hadn’t wanted to believe it was true. Who would? No woman wants to think that they aren’t enough for their husband. But they were rowing about something one day and in her temper she’d asked him about it. He’d denied it at first – well, he would wouldn’t he – but eventually he’d admitted it. I don’t know if she threw him out or if he left of his own accord but either way he was back at his mother’s.

  ‘Don’t worry love,’ I told her. ‘He’ll be back before you know it.’ I don’t think she believed me and, to be honest, I don’t know if I believed myself. There’d always been something about Robert that I wasn’t sure about. He looked down his nose at all of us, including Helen, sometimes. That used to annoy the life out of me but I hadn’t said anything because he was her choice. I don’t suppose you should blame him for it; it was the way he’d been brought up. They’d always thought that they were better than anyone else because they lived on the better end of the estate and Robert’s dad wore a suit to work. He only sold insurance for God’s sake.

  As the weeks passed there was no sign of him coming home. I rang Helen every day and her dad went to her house regularly just to check on her and James. The baby was too young to know what was going on but Helen was a mess.

  I didn’t normally go round to Helen’s or Julie’s without being invited because I’d never wanted to be accused of being an interfering mother-in-law, but now Robert wasn’t there that didn’t apply any more. And thank God I did go. Helen looked terrible. I know she wasn’t wearing any make-up but my God she was pale, and you could have carried potatoes in the bags under her eyes. My heart was breaking at the sight of her and I think if I could have got my hands on Robert I would have wrung his neck for what he was doing to my daughter.

  I held her as she cried, something I hadn’t done since she was a very little girl. Helen rarely let her emotions show so the fact that she was allowing me to cradle her while she sobbed told me just how low she was.

  ‘Why, Mum?’ she asked and there was no answer to that one either.

  By the time I went home she was calm again. She said that she didn’t think she had any more tears to cry but I thought she probably wrong about that. I made her something to eat before I left because by the look of her she hadn’t seen food for a while. She’d never had much weight about her but by then she was stick thin. I told her that she had to keep her strength up for James’ sake if not for her own and she promised that she would eat the food I’d made later. She said that she might even open a bottle of wine but I didn’t think that was a good idea. Before I left I gave her a big hug; it just felt like the right thing to do.

  Later, as I sat on my own, I thought about what had happened that afternoon. Mick had gone out for a drink and I sat in the armchair trying to watch something on the television but I couldn’t get into it because I couldn’t stop thinking about Helen and what had happened between us. I’ve probably already said that I’ve never been a touchy-feely sort of person but that afternoon when Helen needed me to be one I had been. I’d held her and comforted her and been there for her.

  Perhaps if I’d been able to do the same for Susan, she wouldn’t have disappeared. I knew that I hadn’t been the mother she’d wanted me to be, but I’d done what I thought was best for her. I had been a good mother to her; I’d given her the best advice I could. I hadn’t been able to see any way she could possibly have had the baby and raised it on her own without ruining her life and I would never in a million years have told her that she should marry Tim Preston. Susan would never have been happy with him and she would have been miserable all her life rather than admit she’d made a mistake. Why would I want that for her?

  Oh my God I had made such a mess of things.

  I was still sitting in the chair when Mick came in. I hadn’t heard him come through the back door and I hadn’t seen him come through the living room door, but suddenly he was just there.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘It’s not Helen is it? He hasn’t come round and done anything to her has he?’

  ‘No, it’s not Helen.’

  ‘What is it then?’

  ‘I’ve just been thinking.’ There was something that I needed to get off my chest. ‘Sit down a minute, Mick,’ I said. He sat on the end of the sofa about two feet away from me. It was now or never. ‘I’ve been thinking about Susan.’ I took a few seconds to work out what it was that I wanted to say. ‘I did what I did because I thought it was the best for her. For her,’ I emphasised that bit, ‘do you understand that? I know you all think that I did it because I was worried about what the neighbours would think and maybe I was in part – I mean, I’ll admit that I didn’t want the shame of it – but I suggested adoption because I didn’t want her throwing her life away. And she would have been throwing her life away; you know that, Mick, especially if she’d tied herself to that bloody Preston lad. I mean that little lad that Mary Dobson’s daughter’s had is his, not that he’s having anything to do with either of them. He’s moved on to his next victim now.’

  ‘But was adoption the only way, Jean?’ For a second it looke
d like he was going to move his hand towards me but he didn’t.

  ‘I thought it was and I thought her going to Scarborough was the best way to go about it. That way nobody round here would have known about it. You know how they would have talked and she would have hated that.’ I don’t know if he realised that he was nodding his head just ever so slightly. ‘I thought that she could have the baby adopted and then come back and pick up her life again.’

  ‘As if nothing had happened?’ He stopped nodding and looked at me. ‘Did you not know her at all?’ He wasn’t being cruel, he was just pointing out a truth that I had only just realised.

  ‘Not as well as I thought.’ And then I finally plucked up the courage to ask a question that had been on my mind for a long time. ‘Did you really see her the night she ran away?’ I looked at him and defied him to lie to me. He didn’t answer me straight away.

  ‘No,’ he said eventually but I didn’t know if he was telling me the truth.

  ‘We’ve got a granddaughter Mick, a granddaughter that we’ve never seen and it’s all my fault.’

  He didn’t disagree with me.

  ‘A granddaughter that we might never see. And all those things that I was worried about for Susan – you know, her being stuck on her own with a baby, her not having the life I wanted for her – well, she’s got that life now.’ I whispered the next words, ‘Except now she’s doing it completely alone.’ I hadn’t been sure that I would say this next bit but, that night, words were just falling out of my mouth. ‘I was wondering … do you think we should try looking for her?’

  ‘Where would we start?’ he asked.

  He had a point. Susan had been gone for the best part of a year and we’d only had the letter she’d sent the night she went and one phone call from her and God knows where she’d been ringing from. This was long before the days of caller recognition so unless you were the police you had no way of telling where someone was ringing from. I thought of suggesting that we go to the police but like I’ve just said, she’d been gone for almost a year, she was nearly nineteen years old and she had said in a letter that she didn’t want to be found. They wouldn’t do anything. It would be down to us. Mick was right though, where would we start?

  ‘She’ll be back one day,’ he said and I looked at him.

  ‘Do you really think so?’ I wanted to believe him because I wanted to get the chance to tell her that I was sorry: sorry that I’d let her down, sorry for not being there for her when she needed me.

  Mick nodded his head. ‘Family is important to Susan, and no matter what, we are still family. I’d bet my life that she’ll be back one day.’

  I hoped that he was right and that I would live long enough to see that day.

  ***

  To get to the day that I hoped I would see there were a lot of other, ordinary days that we had to get through.

  Helen eventually pulled herself together a bit, though she could still be fragile, especially if it was after a day that Robert had been to see James. She never admitted it but I know her and she was hoping that one day when he turned up to see his son he’d arrive with a suitcase in his hand and say that he was coming home. But that never happened and she was left disappointed.

  I saw Robert’s mother in the supermarket one day a year or two later and it must have been at about three because it was just starting to go dark. She was in the queue at the till and didn’t know that I was behind her. I daresay if she had known I was there she wouldn’t have been talking about Robert and Becky this and Robert and Becky that. I ignored it for a minute or two but when I heard her telling the assistant ‘Robert and Becky are coming to us for Christmas,’ I just flipped.

  I laughed out loud and the three people between me and her all turned round and looked at me. So did she.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to her but making sure that everyone heard me, ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you about Robert and his slapper coming to you for Christmas. Do you think he might have a minute to at least give his wife a ring and wish his little boy merry Christmas?’ I glared at her. ‘Because he couldn’t find the time last year.’

  I could have kicked myself for making a show like that but my blood was boiling and I hadn’t been able to help myself. I’d managed to shut her up though so maybe it was worth it.

  By the following Christmas Robert had started divorce proceedings. Apparently Becky was having a baby and they wanted to get married. I was so disappointed when I heard about it, though I should have seen it coming. I’d had such high hopes for her when they got married. All right I know I couldn’t stand his mother but it had been a good marriage for her; she had moved up in the world. Now she was going to be a divorcee. I hate that word.

  By that time, though, the fight had gone out of Helen and she didn’t contest it. She said that she just wanted to get it over with. Though she’d never told me herself I knew that Julie had done some babysitting for her while she went out so I wondered if she had met someone herself. If she had, nothing came of it. It was like I’d tried to tell Susan: it was hard for a man to take on another man’s child.

  That was until she met Richard six months after her divorce was finalised. He was a bit older than her and, like her, was divorced and had a couple of kids of his own but he was a nice enough bloke and he treated her well. More importantly though, he loved James and James loved him. The poor little fella was a bit confused, what with having two sets of parents, but we all just made him feel that he was loved and he seemed happy enough.

  The day after Helen told us that Richard had asked her to marry him, Julie and Christopher came round with some news of their own. She was pregnant again.

  Later, as we lay in bed, Mick and me talked about what was happening, Helen was settled again and Julie was hopefully going to make us grandparents again. After we’d talked for a few minutes, we lay side by side thinking our own thoughts. I knew what mine were and when Mick said, ‘She’ll be starting school soon, won’t she,’ I didn’t need to ask who he was talking about. We’d been thinking similar things.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. Mary would have been about four and a half then.

  SUSAN

  When I dressed Mary in her school uniform on her first day at school it took everything I had not to take it off her again and keep her at home with me. How could she be old enough for school? She wasn’t even five yet. In my heart, though, I knew she was ready. She was growing up fast.

  Mary was a chatty kid and never more so that on that day. She had so many questions. Would she like school? Would she like her teacher? What would she learn? She asked all these and a hundred others. She’d woken up way before normal and had wanted to get dressed in her uniform almost as soon as she was up. She was so excited and, despite everything, so was I.

  She was still chatting away as I washed her face and helped her to brush her teeth, and she was still at it as she wriggled into the uniform that I had taken such care to iron the night before. Then, there was just time for the finishing touches. I gently pulled the brush through her long, blonde hair over and over until it was as smooth as silk and was so glossy that it almost shone. I got quite emotional doing it, even though I’d brushed her hair thousands of times before. How different her hair was to mine at her age. I was on auto-pilot as I brushed and my mind started to wander until a four-year-old saying, ‘Plait, Mummy, plait,’ brought me back to the here and now. I looked at her in the mirror and saw that she was looking at me.

  I loved the times that I brushed Mary’s hair, it was so intimate and I always felt so close to her. In response to her impatience I separated her hair into three strands and set about forming the hairstyle that my daughter preferred. I’d bought some satin ribbon in the same shade of green as her school cardigan and I secured the plait in place with an elastic band before covering it with the ribbon tied in a bow. She looked perfect.

  She was ready for her first day at school.

  I had a lot of time to think that day. It was the first time since the day th
at I’d left home that I’d had the whole day just to myself and I wasn’t sure what to do. I set about making a chocolate cake when I got home from the school and as that was baking I cleaned the living room and made the beds. I thought about scrubbing the kitchen floor and maybe the bathroom too but if I did those now, what would I have to occupy myself with the next day? So, after the cake was cooled and iced and the living room was sparkling, I had nothing else to do but sit in a chair and watch the clock hands move round until it was time to collect Mary.

  Back then there wasn’t a lot in the way of daytime television so I picked up my book and tried to read but I couldn’t concentrate and after a while I stopped trying. In the end there was nothing else to do but give in to the thoughts that my mind was trying to have.

  My mind went to where it had wanted to go that morning when I was brushing Mary’s hair, back to my first day at school. Had my mum felt the way I had? Somehow I had my doubts, but who knew? Had she felt the sense of loss that I was feeling now? My daughter’s baby days were behind her and, while I was excited that she was starting a new adventure, I couldn’t help grieving for the babyhood that she was leaving behind.

  Look, I know I’m not making any sense, but anyone who has had a child that they have had to send off to school will know how I am feeling. I hadn’t been the only one at the school gates that morning with a tear in their eye. Had mum had a tear in her eye on my first day at school?

  Had Mum ever had a tear in her eye for me?

  I was, and am, immensely proud of my daughter. It wasn’t an easy life and I won’t pretend it was. We didn’t have a lot of money for treats, or even the necessities sometimes, but we managed and we did it together, just the two of us. But that morning I’d noticed that not many of the new starters were there with just one parent: most had two and some even had grandparents as well. The first day of school was a family occasion but I was all the family Mary had ever known. Her only other real points of reference were Mandy and Jade who were a family just like us. I don’t think she knew at that point what an aunt or an uncle was – they weren’t words she had ever had to use – but how long would it be before children that she met at school mentioned aunts, uncles and all the rest? She’d already asked a couple of questions about daddies when the kids at nursery had made Father’s Day cards. She wanted to know who she was supposed to give her card to. Where was her daddy? Did she even have one? I’ve always tried to be honest with Mary and told her that yes she did have a daddy but he was a long way away and we couldn’t send him the card right then. Children have a way of taking in the information they want and dismissing the rest so I was relieved when she said that she would keep the card until she could send it to him. She probably did keep the card, for a while at least, but I doubt she still has it now.