She Chose Me

by Tracey Emerson

  ‘I was curious about what had happened to you, that’s all,’ I say. ‘When I read about you and Stella and your kids it hurt. All those old feelings came back to me.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s true.’ I glance away. ‘Things aren’t great for me at the moment. My mum’s in a home with dementia and I… I have a lot on my plate. Everything just got to me, I guess.’

  I wait for him to commiserate, to tell me he understands.

  ‘Did you come to find me because you had something to confess?’ he asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you took care of it?’

  It. The fault line shifts and strains. A sharp bolt of pain in my guts.

  ‘Yes,’ I say.

  ‘You didn’t change your mind?’

  ‘No.’ I fold my arms across my chest. ‘I don’t want to talk about the past.’

  He gives me a long, steady look. ‘I’ve got my family to think about. I can’t have a kid turning up out of the blue.’

  ‘Don’t worry, your perfect life won’t be disturbed.’ I hope he might contradict me and admit his life is far from perfect, but he doesn’t.

  He edges closer. ‘So you had the abortion?’ he says.

  I am in a green hospital gown on a narrow hospital bed. Is it time? My hands grip the side of the bed. Is it time?

  ‘Grace.’ He grabs my shoulders. ‘Did you go through with it?’

  I consider saying no, just to see the look on his face.

  ‘Did you go through with it?’ he repeats, and I know he will not leave until I answer his question.

  ‘Yes, Dan,’ I say, ‘I went through with it.’

  34

  Friday, 8 September 1995

  Royal Edinburgh Hospital

  Simon is trying to prise me open. In a nice way. Today, he asked if I’d ever had hallucinations before. If I’d ever seen stuff and heard stuff like I did during my episode.

  I wanted to appear cooperative without giving too much away, so I told him about the nightmares that had started seven months ago. He asked what had happened around that time, and I told him I’d fallen out with my mother. He wanted to know why, but I claimed it was nothing important. Usual mother–daughter stuff.

  ‘What else was going on in your life?’ he asked, and I said I didn’t really remember.

  I do remember though. I remember it snowed the week of my appointment. A thick white blanket settled over West Yorkshire, disrupting trains and buses and closing off roads. Mum would have declared the bad weather a sign. The Almighty trying to make me change my mind. I was terrified of not being able to reach the hospital. After everything I’d gone through—two doctor’s consultations, the scan, and the brutal arguments with Mum—the thought of missing my slot had me in a panic.

  I remember leaving the house at 6 a.m. and discovering that the bus from Leeds City Centre to the Infirmary was running on schedule. A good omen, I thought. I arrived at the hospital in the dark, sidling up to reception with my appointment letter and whispering my request for directions to the ward.

  By 7 a.m., I was sitting up in a narrow hospital bed wearing a green gown, my hair tucked beneath a matching cap. I counted about twenty other women on the ward, all of us avoiding eye contact. An Indian woman, whose swollen belly placed her much further on than the rest of us, wouldn’t stop crying. No wonder; she kept caressing her bump. I gripped the side of the bed so I didn’t make the same mistake.

  Two hours later, nothing had happened. I called over a nurse, a young woman with a kind face and spiky blonde hair, and asked her if it was time. She told me to be patient. Not long now.

  One woman a few beds down had her boyfriend with her. He sat in a chair next to the bed and held her hand. I recalled standing in the doorway of our bedroom, watching Dan pack.

  ‘You’re not going to keep it, are you?’ he said, as he rammed his trainers into his rucksack.

  I said no, an instinctive answer to a question I hadn’t had time to consider. The right answer, confirmed by the relief surging through me. Now I wished I’d said yes. Just to see the look on Dan’s face.

  He said I’d made the right decision. Said he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with the kid anyway.

  And I was glad no child of mine would have him as a father.

  The long blast of a horn sounded outside the house. I rushed over to the bedroom window and saw Stella’s white VW beetle parked outside, engine running.

  Dan hoisted his rucksack onto his back and said he’d make sure I was out when he came back for the rest of his stuff.

  By 9.30 a.m., the women either side of me had been wheeled away. I badgered the nurse again, told her I needed to get it over with. She promised I’d be next and sure enough, ten minutes later, two men in blue scrubs appeared and pushed my bed out of the ward. As they steered me down a corridor, my hands sought out my stomach and covered it with tender strokes.

  In a small, white room, I met the anaesthetist, another man in blue scrubs. He tried to relax me with cheery, weather-based banter as he administered the injection. He told me to count backwards, ten to one. I started counting, convinced the drugs wouldn’t have any effect. I think I got to six.

  When I came round, my forehead was buzzing. I propped myself up on one elbow and immediately threw up. The nurse with the blonde hair appeared and held a bowl under my chin, lifting back a stray hair so it wouldn’t dangle in the regurgitated fluid.

  I told her I didn’t remember anything and burst into tears. I’m not sure what made me cry. Sadness? Relief? Fear? The fact I couldn’t recall anything about the operation scared me. Something important had taken place, and I’d surrendered all control of it. Or perhaps I chose to focus on this loss of memory rather than my other loss. ‘I don’t remember anything,’ I repeated.

  The nurse said that was for the best and rubbed my back. She said the worst was over and I believed her.

  35

  Wednesday, 9 December 2015

  Yes, I called her. I was angry. She lied to me. I’d left Starbucks thrilled about us growing closer, and all the time she was itching to escape and spread her legs for John Palethorpe. I only meant to phone once but couldn’t resist the sound of her voice. When she started ignoring the calls, I decided to leave a message and tell her everything. Almost did it too, but I realised that particular conversation could only take place in person.

  By the time today’s shift at Birch Grove rolled round, I was still furious. Good old Emma morphed into grumpy old Emma. She even snapped at Surinder while they were hanging twists of tinsel in the corridors.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Surinder said, as she balanced on the stepladder, ‘I am so excited about Christmas.’ She banged on and on about the traditional turkey dinner Arun would cook for them and about the presents she’d already bought for her boys.

  ‘Shut up, Surinder,’ I said, ‘you’re not even a Christian.’

  She called me a racist and stomped off in a huff. I had to leave four cigarettes tied with tinsel in her coat pocket before she forgave me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I love Christmas too, but it always makes me think about my mum. I’m not racialist, honest.’

  ‘I know, babes.’ She opened her arms wide. ‘Come on, hug it out.’

  After lunch, Kegs asked if I’d stay on until seven to cover for someone. I said yes, not like I had anything else on. Ryan had replied right away to my text on Saturday—Miss you too, you mad cow. Hearts and smiley faces. Sadly, the subsequent events had put me off seeing him, and I’d yet to return any of his calls.

  My grandmother did little to improve my mood. She made no comment when I said I’d forgiven her for any part she may have played in my mother’s crime. To be fair, the chest infection had wiped her out. The antibiotics had seen the danger off, but now she refused to eat properly. A nibble of toast, a spoonful of yoghurt.

  ‘You need to get your strength up,’ I said to her. She asked for her daughter so I left her to it. Didn’t need any mo
re of her mad whisperings about my mother. To be honest, I thought about walking out of the care home and never going back. Of giving up on my mother completely. Fortunately for her, I persuaded myself to hang on a bit longer. Maybe her meeting with John was just a one-off? Only time would tell.

  My tea round took me into Mr Reeves’s old room, the one next to my grandmother’s. After his death, a man called Len Daley had moved in. A cantankerous seventy-six-year-old with a tenuous grip on reality, Len had been giving Mrs Palethorpe serious competition for the title of Most Difficult Resident. The smell of cigarette smoke hit me as soon as I walked in.

  ‘Oh, Len, not again,’ I said. He grinned at me from his armchair, a white-haired ghoul with long, yellow fingernails. A quick search of the room uncovered two spent cigarette butts in a breakfast bowl beneath his bed. In accordance with procedure, I fetched Vera who gave him a major bollocking about health and safety.

  ‘If you want a cigarette, just ask and someone will take you down to the smoking room,’ she said.

  ‘This is my house,’ said Len, ‘and I’ll smoke where I bloody well want, you fat cow.’

  ‘You’re not allowed to smoke in your room,’ Vera said, ignoring his insult. ‘You’re an accident waiting to happen, Len Daley.’

  ‘Do you think it’s his grandson bringing him the fags again?’ I asked her.

  She nodded. ‘I reckon he’s tapping the old man for money in exchange for a few smokes.’ She revealed she’d grown up in the next street to the Daleys. ‘They were always trouble,’ she said. ‘My sister went out with one of them years ago. Teenage sweethearts.’

  That’s when the idea about John came to me. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

  ‘You all right?’ Vera asked. ‘You look bushed. Go and take your break.’

  I dashed to the kitchen, made myself an Emma-style tea—milky with two sugars—and took it into the back yard. I lit a fag between sips and examined my new theory. What if John had grown up in Brentham too? What if he and my mother knew each other years ago? They could have been teenage sweethearts. Maybe they’d stayed together all through university, or perhaps, after graduating, my mother had returned to her home town for a holiday and had a fling with him for old times’ sake.

  What if John was my father?

  I’d thought about my father over the years, but he’d never mattered to me like my mother had. I’d wondered if he knew about me and if he’d wanted me or not. Was he in on it or did she get rid of me without him knowing? Such thoughts always led me to the same conclusion—I was my mother’s responsibility. She grew me and pushed me out into the world, and she chose not to keep me. Only she was to blame.

  ***

  Still, I wanted to know. Who wouldn’t? I hurried inside and headed for my grandmother’s room. She was asleep, wheezing as her chest rose and fell. I borrowed the pink nail varnish from her bedside drawer and made my way upstairs.

  Mrs Palethorpe sat alone in a brown armchair by the window, staring out over the garden. Her smart outfit of a cream blouse with a beige skirt and cardigan suggested she might be having a good day.

  ‘Hiya, darlin,’ I said. She swivelled her head and glowered at me. ‘Just popped in to see how you are.’

  I examined the photograph hanging on the wall beside the bed. Mr and Mrs Palethorpe and their kids—two girls with toothy smiles and springy dark curls. ‘Your grandchildren are well cute,’ I said. An affair with a married man; what was my mother thinking? Hardly a good example to be setting me. I lifted the photo off the wall and scrutinised the girls’ faces. No resemblance between them and I.

  ‘Are you from Brentham, Mrs Palethorpe?’ I asked, replacing the picture. ‘Is this where you raised your family?’

  She said nothing, and the pictures on her sideboard gave little away. Her wedding photo could have been taken outside any church, and the pictures of her son were recent ones. Under her agitated gaze, I rummaged through the drawer of the bedside cabinet. Among the tubes of hand cream and packets of barley sugar, I found an address book with a red leather cover.

  ‘Mine.’ Mrs Palethorpe’s expression was a shifting blend of recognition and panic.

  ‘You’re hardly using it.’ I found John’s address and typed it into my phone, along with his home and mobile numbers.

  ‘Hello, John,’ said Mrs Palethorpe.

  ‘He’s not here.’ I dropped the address book back into the drawer. The door to the room swung open.

  ‘Hello, Mum.’

  There he was. Standing in the doorway in a navy blue suit with a red tie. Mrs Palethorpe smiled, and I marvelled at her maternal instinct. She’d sensed her son approaching. Felt him before she could see him. Why couldn’t my mother be like that with me?

  ‘Hi, Emma,’ he said, as he entered the room. I didn’t realise he knew my name. Some relatives didn’t bother to remember. He bent down and kissed his mother’s cheek. Her arms circled his neck and held him there until he eased himself free.

  ‘How’s she doing today?’ he asked me.

  ‘Good,’ I said, although I had no idea really. ‘Settled.’

  ‘Hope I’m not interrupting. I like to look in if I finish work early.’

  ‘Nah, it’s fine.’ I hold up the nail varnish. ‘I thought your mum might like a manicure.’

  ‘She used to like getting her nails done.’ He stroked her arm. ‘Didn’t you?’

  Mrs Palethorpe pointed at me. ‘Ugly little bitch,’ she said.

  I gasped.

  ‘Emma is a very lovely young girl,’ John said, ‘and she’s doing her best to look after you.’

  I liked the way he defended me. Protecting me like a father would.

  Mrs Palethorpe cackled and looked out of the window. ‘I’m so sorry,’ John said.

  ‘All part of the job,’ I replied with a smile. He sat on the edge of the bed, looking exhausted. No wonder, carrying on with my mother like that at the weekend. My cheeks flamed up at the thought of him on his knees, face buried between my mother’s legs. One of many images I couldn’t wipe from my mind. The photographs I took didn’t help. I shouldn’t have looked at them afterwards.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be giving her a manicure today,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Up close, I could detect kindness in his cool grey eyes. Despite his dodgy morals, he clearly cared for his mother. I could have a worse man for a father. ‘I try to get the women chatting about the past when I do their nails,’ I said. ‘It’s good for them.’

  ‘Reminiscence therapy,’ John said.

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ My blood thundered in my ears. ‘Before you came in your mum was saying she’s from Brentham.’

  John frowned. ‘She’s from Folkestone.’

  ‘Oh. You didn’t grow up here then?’

  John shook his head. ‘My wife’s from Brentham. I moved here when we got married and brought Mum to live here about eight years ago.’

  ‘Bless her heart,’ I said, ‘she’s well confused.’

  ***

  Deflated, I made my excuses and left. It didn’t take long for anger and jealousy to swamp my disappointment. Taking refuge in the empty laundry room, I sat on the floor with my back against the warm side of one of the tumble dryers. I scrolled through the pictures of John and my mother on my phone. Silly to be so envious. I’d lived right inside her once, curled up cosy to the sound of her heartbeat, consuming her from the inside. He could never get as close to her as that.

  In one of the pictures, John stood with his eyes closed, my mother on her knees in front of him. Thank God he wasn’t my father. I thought about deleting the photos but decided not to edit my mother’s life to suit myself. To truly know her, I’d have to accept her less agreeable parts. Including the fact John might not be her only lover. I flicked through to a picture taken a couple of days later—Grace and some blond man arguing outside her block. The row sounded ugly, and at the end my mother broke down sobbing. I got a good shot of the man as he walked away. He had incredible cheekbones and dis
tinctive green eyes. I thought about following him to find out more but couldn’t leave my mother in that state, no matter how much she’d upset me.

  My phone chimed, signalling the arrival of a new e-mail to Emma’s Yahoo account. My insides melted, and I nearly dropped my phone in excitement. My mother’s short but beautiful message had me in tears.

  Hi Emma, hope you’re well. I wondered if you’re still interested in helping me clear out some of Mum’s stuff? I really need to get the kitchen done. If you’re free Sunday morning, that would be great. Best wishes, Grace.

  The e-mail was a sign, telling me not to give up hope. I’d read tons of stories online about adopted children meeting their birth mothers, so I’d always known our reunion would have its challenges. I would give my mother the benefit of the doubt this time and trust that eventually she’d do the right thing as far as these men were concerned. She and I were about to get much closer, and once she had me she wouldn’t need anyone else.

  36

  Sunday, 13 December 2015

  I reach Mum’s house just before ten and let myself into the cold hallway. After turning up the thermostat by the front door, I hang my damp trench coat on the coat stand, next to the beige rain mac my mother will never wear again.

  In the kitchen, I open the fridge and place a newly purchased carton of milk next to the unopened Sauvignon Blanc. Recalling John’s inventive use of the bottle fills me with an uncomfortable blend of desire and guilt.

  We left the kitchen in a mess, but there’s no point clearing up before the morning’s work begins. Instead I sit at the table, one eye on the clock above the cooker and wait for Emma. I imagine the families in the houses either side of me having Sunday breakfast together. Noisy tables of people arguing and loving one another. What happens in Dan’s house on a Sunday? Does he read the paper while Stella jots down lines of poetic genius in a journal? Are they out walking on the beach with their children? Stopping off for coffee and croissants at that seafront café?

  I don’t like him knowing where I live. What if he comes back? I tell myself he has no reason to. He didn’t send me the cards or the mug and nothing else has arrived over the past week. No more calls to my mobile. It has all been in my head, and I mustn’t dwell on the past or I’ll make myself ill again.