It was the physical changes which surprised Grace most often, that Frances had grey hairs among the blonde; that Gillian had fine lines around her dark eyes. But they were still young enough to be capable and powerful in ways the old can no longer achieve. I’ll never run again, Grace thought, or dive into a swimming pool or get up from sleep feeling rested and fresh. When had these things stopped? She could not say.
Only Susan was not here to remind her that she too was older, with an independent life. She had no picture of a plumper middle aged Susan to counteract the fierce and terrible memories of the last quarrel, the beautiful face twisted with resentment, the young girl leaving with her baby in her arms. Perhaps I am unfair to her, Grace conceded and she allowed, for a moment only, a stab of fear and love to pierce the protective layer she kept between herself and her lost middle daughter. I may never see Susan again.
Angry with herself for going down this hopeless path, she turned with an effort onto her other side and gazed at the slow inching of the clock hands. No sense in brooding like this, it never did any good. She wrenched her mind back to the present, to the day ahead. Then she remembered the feeling she had wakened with – that something had happened. She was uneasy all over again. She would call Frances first thing, before breakfast.
7
The baby opened and closed her pink buttonhole mouth with tiny sucking noises, as if she were tasting something. Her dark eyes seemed to be gazing beyond them all to some far distance only she could see. ‘Hello,’ said Jack, ‘ground to mission control?’ and waved at her, but she scarcely blinked.
‘She’s not focusing yet,’ Kate informed him.
‘Hey,’ said Andrew, ‘look at her hands!’ The fingers uncurled a little, as if to allow them to marvel at her perfect pinkpearl nails, the damp creases of her finger joints and palm, the skin reddened there, but creamy on the backs of her hands, her arms. Holding her close, Kate touched the fontanelle with one gentle finger. ‘You have to be careful,’ she told them, ‘this bit’s still soft, it hasn’t all joined up yet, she’s too new.’
‘You mean you got one that’s not properly finished off?’ Jack asked, sitting down on a chair by the bed and beginning to eat Kate’s grapes, which Frances had brought in along with the make-up and night clothes.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Kate said. ‘They’re all like this.’
‘Cute,’ Jack murmured, putting one of his fingers next to the baby’s hand. The tiny fingers opened and curled, holding him. ‘Hey, she likes me!’
‘It’s a reflex,’ said Kate, who had been reading Frances’s books after all.
‘Na, she likes me best already. Favourite uncle,’ Jack teased.
‘Let me see then,’ Andrew said, nudging his brother. ‘What’s her name? You got a name yet? What about – ’ He cast around and came up with the name of a singer he liked but Kate didn’t.
Kate made a face. ‘As if.’
‘Is there anything else you need?’ Frances had been packing the locker.
‘Maybe some magazines. No, don’t bother. I can’t concentrate on reading, I keep falling asleep. There’s not much point reading that sort of thing when you’ve got a huge stomach and a baby and you’re probably never going out with anybody again.’
Frances laughed. ‘You will, life’s not over yet.’
‘Better not be.’ Kate held out the baby. ‘You want to hold her?’
‘I might drop her,’ Jack said. ‘Crash, right on her head. End of baby.’
‘Let Andrew sit on the chair,’ Frances said. ‘Then he can take her.’ For a moment, Jack looked mutinous, but he got up. It was rare for him to feel wrong-footed. Andrew, red with embarrassment (what if he really dropped her?), gingerly cradled the infant, who began to cry.
‘Can’t stand your ugly face,’ Jack crowed.
Andrew ignored him and gently bumped the baby up and down. ‘Ssh, ssh.’
The thin wail rose and swelled. Frances had forgotten how it tugs at you, that cry, impossible to ignore. She took the baby from Andrew and putting her on her shoulder, walked up and down. Surprised, the baby hiccuped and stopped crying. Kate watched, half jealous, half relieved.
‘Do you want to try feeding her?’ Frances asked. Kate went red.
‘Not now.’
‘Off you go for a wee while, you two – have a coke or something in the café downstairs. I’ll be down in twenty minutes.’
‘We only just got here,’ Andrew protested.
‘Yes, but Kate wants to feed her, so – ’
‘Oh. Right.’ They were off, with a hasty wave to Kate. ‘See you.’
Kate, watching them, felt she had grown older than both. They could never catch up. ‘Did you phone Michelle? When are they coming in?’
‘I said to leave it till tomorrow. After that you’ll be home anyway. They can all come at once then and you can send all the texts you like.’ Kate began to protest, but the baby was fretting again.
‘Better give her a feed,’ Frances said. ‘She’s quite wakeful.’ At the first piercing cry Kate said, ‘All right.’
Frances had bought her a nightdress which fastened at the front. She helped Kate settle the baby at her breast.
‘Ouch – it’s a weird feeling.’
‘I know.’
‘I don’t have to do it for long, though, do I? We could get bottles when I’m out of hospital.’
‘Breast feeding’s much better – ’ Frances stopped. Leave it, she thought, keep that one for another day. Kate would think she was interfering, but how could she help it? Whatever happened, the baby had to come first.
There was no conversation while Kate was nursing. The baby seemed to give up very quickly as if she wasn’t getting any milk, and cried, so that Kate was fussed and said it hurt. The rest of the visit was taken up with this. In the end, Frances was glad to hand over to the auxiliary nurse who had been there when Kate was in labour. She got the baby attached at last, and Kate calmed down.
‘I’d forgotten how difficult it seems at first,’ Frances admitted. ‘Never mind, it does get easier.’ Kate did not look convinced.
When the baby was back in her cot Kate followed Frances down to the area where she could switch on her mobile and starting calling and texting her friends. Frances gave her a quick hug, feeling dismissed.
By the time she and the boys reached home, Alec had been waiting in the lane half an hour, sitting in his car listening to music and smoking. The smoke curled through the open window.
‘You should just have come up to the hospital,’ Frances told him. ‘I did leave a note pinned to the door.’
‘I haven’t been here long,’ he said, getting out and grinding his cigarette into the earth. He looked at her properly, and his face changed. ‘Your hair!’
Frances put a hand to the back of her head where the heavy knot had once lain. ‘It’s much easier to keep.’
They went on standing there after the boys had gone indoors.
‘It suits you,’ he said. ‘You look great.’
She thought he looked terrible. He must be drinking again. She recognised the pallor, the tremor in his hand as he took the mug of tea she made him. The boys had disappeared, leaving them together in the living-room. He looked round, chose a chair and seemed to fold into it, worn out.
‘How’s Kate?’ he asked.
‘Doing very well. She’s even feeding the baby herself, though I don’t know for how long. I keep forgetting how young she is.’ She watched him sip his tea. ‘Are you all right? You look exhausted.’
‘Long drive, that’s all.’
‘No word from Susan?’
‘What? No, nothing.’
‘It seems all wrong. She doesn’t even know Kate was pregnant, let alone – ’
Alec put the mug carefully down on the floor beside his arm chair. ‘How would you feel if she was here, if she walked in right now?’
‘I don’t know any more. There’s something about newborn babies that pierces you, and this one seems so sp
ecial. In other circumstances, if Susan had been around, she might not even have existed.’
‘You don’t want to lose her. Either of them.’ He stated it flatly, looking for his cigarettes then giving up, remembering no-one smoked in this house.
‘Kate and the baby? I suppose I don’t, after all this time.’
‘I thought so.’
Frances went on hastily, not sure what he thought of this. ‘It’s up to Kate. It’s her future.’
‘I’ve put the house on the market,’ he said. ‘In fact I thought I’d sold, but it fell through at the last minute.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I want to be able to go on seeing Kate, and helping her. I don’t want to be five hours away by car, I don’t want to come up and sleep in your boxroom by your good grace, every now and again.’
‘Don’t tell Kate about the house – not just now. She thinks – ’
‘I know what she thinks. I won’t mention it yet but the house is in my name, it’s my decision. You needn’t worry, I’ve no ulterior motive.’
‘I never thought you had,’ she said, flushing, annoyed.
‘It’s just because of Kate and the baby.’
‘I know that.’
‘We could be friendly. At least.’
She could not say no to that. I should be angry with him, she thought: he’s deceiving Kate. He looked frail and thin huddled in the chair, his face hollowed with fatigue and something she might have called grief, if he still loved Susan.
‘Kate said you and Susan had a row the night before she left.’
He became even paler, if that were possible. ‘Oh God.’
‘What was it about?’ She held up a hand. ‘Sorry, I know it’s none of my business, and you can say that if you like, but Kate was very upset telling me about it.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That you’d been arguing, then it got worse – she said it had happened several times before.’
Alec would not meet her eyes, but he nodded. ‘It had. Every time she went off it was triggered by a row.’
‘She said something about Susan going to a friend’s and I got the impression it was the same person each time, but Kate was cagy and the baby was coming, so I couldn’t ask her more.’
‘The baby?’
‘This all came out while we were waiting in hospital. How you pass the time, I suppose,’ she said, with an attempt at humour. Something in Alec’s expression dismayed her. She really didn’t want to know more, but before she could forestall him he began talking, his voice low, the Scots accent, long made neutral by living in other places, audible again.
‘Not always the same friend. Maybe I didn’t even know about all of them, but she went as far as leaving me three times, always to be with other men.’
‘Oh – ’ Frances began, but he spoke over her.
‘The first guy was married. He went back to his wife, I guess, though Susan’s version was that she had made a mistake so she wanted to come back and sort things out with me. Until this time, that’s what always happened.’
‘Were you so unhappy toghether? That she kept falling in love with other people?’
‘Falling in love?’ he mocked. ‘She was bored. Marriage bored her, I bored her. Susan liked excitement. When she stopped drinking and I didn’t, it wasn’t so much fun being with me.’
‘She stopped – ’
‘She got pregnant. She miscarried very early, but never went back to drinking. She found her kicks in other ways. Or her consolation.’
There was so much here, Frances could not take it in. All these lost babies, she was thinking, but he was still talking and she had to listen.
‘Then there was Mike, who was married too, but his wife had given up on him and they were living apart. I think Susan had an on-off thing with him for years.’ His voice rose. ‘I wasn’t blameless, I know that. The drinking, the life we had with me working all hours or between jobs, that uncertainty. But I protected Kate, I did do that. She never knew about her mother, she never knew any of this. Don’t tell her now.’
‘I won’t, don’t worry.’
‘We must both protect her now,’ he agreed. ‘And the baby.’ He fell silent, brooding. After a moment, Frances said,
‘So she was never at the place you said – the Retreat?’
‘Well, she did go there sometimes.’
‘But you never believed she had this time? You lied.’
‘There’s more to it than that,’ he said quietly.
Frances waited, not knowing whether she wanted to hear.
‘The row,’ he began. ‘It started about that, about her going off again. Everything was about Susan, it all had to centre on her. She was incapable of seeing anyone else’s point of view or understanding their feelings. This time, I don’t know why, this time I lost it. I’d been working long hours, I was shattered, I stopped caring what I said. I told her I wished I’d stayed with you. I said I wished I’d had the gumption to stand up to the pair of you, make you listen, tell her to leave us alone, let us sort out our marriage. I said I wished to God I’d turned her down.’
Frances put her hands over her mouth, appalled. The past welled up and for a surreal moment she and Alec were young again, facing each other over the ruins of their marriage, as if that marriage still existed. Alec, scarcely noticing what he did, fumbled for his cigarettes, took one out and lit it.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Never mind, just smoke. It doesn’t matter.’ Frances leaned forward, hands clasped round her knees. ‘What did she say, what happened?’
‘She started chucking plates. Then she got the cutlery drawer out, God knows why, maybe it wasn’t closed properly, she just grabbed at it, hauled it out. It was so heavy it fell at her feet and all the bloody forks and knives slid across the floor – the noise they made – ’ He stopped, drew hard on his cigarette, then got a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. ‘Oh God.’
After a moment he went on. ‘She said she got the blame for everything. Said if I was so keen on you, why didn’t I go back to you?’ He paused to sip his cooling tea. He looked round for somewhere to tip the ash from his cigarette, then leaning towards the fire, flicked it into the grate. When he began speaking again, his voice was calmer.
‘She said I’d be sorry, that if I was so keen to be rid of her, I might get my wish. And then I’d be even more sorry.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Then she … she snatched up this knife and she came at me, she just kind of jumped forward and – ’ He threw the stub of his cigarette into the grate, and rubbed both hands over his face.
Frances felt her heart thudding in her chest. No, she pleaded, no, please don’t let this be true.
Alec looked up, his face clear as if he had rubbed away the worst of the memory. ‘I’m no catch, Fran,’ he said, ‘I admit it. I’m a drunk and I’ve been a useless husband, as you once told me. But I’m not a violent man.’
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘I tried to get hold of the knife, but she slipped on something on the floor, one of the sodding forks, I suppose, and we were in each other’s arms, it was bizarre, and she screamed, so I let her go. I got myself out and I grabbed my fags and I left the house.’
‘Was she – had you – ?’
‘I walked round the block. I knew if I stayed I’d grab the knife from her and I’d kill her. I didn’t want to kill her, Fran, I never meant to hurt anyone.’
‘But you went back, you went back to the house, Kate said in the morning you were there and Susan wasn’t – ’
‘Of course I went back. I cooled down and I went back. I walked up the garden path and into the house and it was empty, there was nothing, she had gone.’
‘She wasn’t hurt, she was all right, oh thank God for that.’
He looked away, not meeting her frightened eyes. ‘She was all right enough to pick up her bank cards and a few other things before she left.’
‘That was the last time you saw her?’
>
He shrugged. ‘She meant what she said – I’m rid of her.’
We all are, Frances realised, she’s gone. ‘You checked though with this Mike, you checked she’s not with him.’
‘Apparently he went to the States a year ago. I’ve no idea where.’
‘So she could be with some other man?’
‘Or with him. I have no idea. More likely him.’
‘If she’s with him the police could find out if she left the country, couldn’t they?’
‘If she did.’
‘You don’t think so?’
‘No.’
For several minutes, they sat in silence, until the shock of the telephone ringing jolted them into the present.
It was Grace. Frances had had a long conversation with her in the morning but her mother knew she would have seen Kate again by now. She took a deep breath, hoping Grace would not realise anything was wrong. Still, she was trembling.
‘I think we’ll come up tomorrow,’ Grace said, when she was reassured the hospital was up to scratch, the baby was feeding and Kate was coping.
‘Oh Mum, I have a houseful just now. Alec’s here already and Gillian’s coming to help me. It would be lovely to see you but – ’ How could she say no when it looked as if the rest of the world would be in her house anyway?
‘We’ll get a B&B. Book us into that nice one in Dingwall Barbara stayed in once – what was their name? Your Dad and I just want to give Kate a wee something for the baby.’
Frances knew her mother wanted to inspect the baby herself.
‘My first great-grandchild,’ Grace went on. ‘I know it’s not the way we might have wanted but a baby is a baby, and I’ve bought a lovely wee suit. I took a chance, and it’s a peachy colour, not really pink but nice for a girl.’
Frances had just put the receiver down when there was another call. As she picked up the phone this time Alec went past, heading for the back door. He held up his cigarette packet.
Tell Me Where You Are Page 31
