by Jo Bartlett
It had been less than a week since the Skills to Foster course and, when she’d spoken to Dexter straight afterwards, Jess had felt certain she was doing the right thing. So much so that she’d fired off an email to the assessment team, asking if she could start the process as soon as possible. When she’d spoken to Anna and the others about it, she’d felt even more confident that fostering was what she was meant to do. But then she’d made the mistake of googling what to expect during the assessment.
Diving into the depths of the internet was a bit like following Alice down the rabbit hole. She’d found plenty of sites that enthused about the joys of being a foster carer and others that painted a far less rosy picture, but nothing she’d read had worried her all that much. At least not until she’d happened upon a blog called Things I Never Knew About Fostering, written by an anonymous woman whose bio said she’d been a foster carer for ten years. Jess had scrolled back through the posts until she’d got to the first one, which was titled:
The Inside Inquisition
The first thing I discovered I didn’t know about fostering, was the depth my assessing social worker would go into about my past life. Every detail of the people I’ve loved and lost, every hurt, failure and mistake, was laid bare for her to pick over. I had to sit with a virtual stranger and discuss how I felt about things I’d promised myself I’d never think about again, knowing it was her job to judge me, with no guarantee that going through all that would result in me becoming a foster carer. Even ten years down the line, I’m still not sure I’d have done it if I’d known.
Jess had forced herself to read the rest of the post, fight or flight kicking in all over again, but this time she wanted to run. The thought of revisiting things she’d spent twenty years trying to forget was something she just wasn’t sure she could do – even if she wanted to. Losing her mother and then being abandoned by her father were bad enough, but a second rejection, from the people she’d seen as her rescuers, and who’d abandoned her all over again, had broken something inside her she wasn’t sure could ever be fixed.
Apparently Dom would be asked for a reference too, and invited to give his opinion about whether he thought she had the skills it took to be a foster carer. It didn’t matter that he had walked out on her not long after the party at Anna and Brae’s the previous Halloween, when they’d had yet another row about her failure to produce a baby of their own. As far as Jess was concerned, his opinion had stopped counting for anything when she’d seen him ten days later, draped around one of the girls from his office, when he and Jess were supposedly still trying to work things out.
If the assessment team had contacted her the day after she’d read the blog post, she’d have told them she was pulling out. But twenty-four hours later, she was back to having no idea what to do for the best. Maybe it would do her good to confront the past. She was always telling her patients that their fears about childbirth were almost certainly going to be worse than the reality. Once you were in labour, you just had to get on with it. And, once it was finished, the prize at the end meant most women would willingly go through the pain ten times over. She’d almost convinced herself that worrying about going through the assessment would be worse than actually doing it, when her phone had pinged with a text alert.
✉︎ From Dom
Hey J-J. Hope u r ok? Let’s meet 2 talk. Miss u xx
She didn’t want to meet Dom. There was nothing to talk about, no explanation he could belatedly come up with that would even begin to justify his behaviour. It seemed horribly unfair that he might hold her future in his hands, when he’d already stolen the one she’d thought they had all mapped out.
Thank God for the distraction of work. She might not have slept well, but Jess was determined to make sure she was still on top of her game. After tucking into yet another one of the fisherman’s feast breakfasts with Anna at The Cookie Jar the day after the treasure hunt, she’d made a promise to herself that she’d start every day for the rest of the week on a healthy note, with a kale smoothie and a handful of pomegranate seeds. But she’d already resorted to vitamin drinks and coffee instead, and her stomach was growling in protest, making her fingers itch to reach out for the tin that was almost certain to contain some of Gwen’s home-made biscuits. Role modelling a healthy lifestyle was one of the many things a foster carer was supposed to do, but when one of Jess’s fellow midwives was as handy with a food processor as Gwen was, it didn’t exactly make it easy to settle for a carrot stick.
‘Morning, Jess.’ Anna’s smile almost instantly turned into a frown. ‘Are you okay, you look really pale?’
‘Just another sleepless night, I know I said I was certain I was meant to foster, but the more I read about it, the more all the old doubts start creeping in.’
‘Oh no, you seemed so ready the other day, has something happened?’
‘I’m just weighing up whether I can face going through the assessment process. It’s pretty invasive by all accounts and things with Dom are still a bit raw, not to mention… well, you know.’ Jess didn’t need to elaborate. Anna had been the first person at the midwifery unit she’d told about growing up in foster care herself. There’d been a problem with getting clearance when Jess had first joined the unit, because of a gap in her address history when she’d turned eighteen, and the only way to explain it had been to tell the truth. Jess had spent three months sofa surfing with friends and acquaintances after her foster parents had turfed her out a week after her eighteenth birthday. Back then eighteen had been the cut-off point for the higher rate of fostering payments and Jess was no longer financially viable. Realising that she came down to a monetary value for the people who’d claimed to love her had been one of the most painful things ever to happen to her – far worse than finding out that Dom had been playing hide the sausage with his boss’s personal assistant.
Thankfully, when her foster carers had sat her down and told her she needed to find somewhere else to live, she’d already had a place at uni to study midwifery and a student loan all lined up. She’d only had to spend three months on friends’ sofas before she’d moved into halls of residence, working shifts in the local Pizza Hut in between lectures and work placements, and somehow she’d got through the first year. Moving into a shared student house with three of the girls from her course in the second year had felt like another major milestone. She was a survivor; nothing and no one would ever hurt her like that again. The only thing that had been worse than that was losing her parents in the first place.
‘What happened to you is all the more reason for you to go for this, Jess.’
‘Anyone would think you were looking forward to me cutting down my hours, so you can get rid of me for good at some point!’
‘You know that isn’t true, and you weren’t even supposed to be here until ten this morning, were you?’
‘No, but one of my ladies who’s a bit anxious about her birth plan asked me if I could fit her in again this week and I said I’d squeeze her in before my other appointments.’
‘In that case, you deserve one of Gwen’s chocolate chip shortbreads and I’ll feel a lot less guilty if I’m not the only one sneaking in an early raid on the biscuit tin before the others arrive. Last week Toni actually started keeping track of how many of Gwen’s biscuits everyone had eaten. She said it was to make sure she didn’t eat too many, but I’m not so sure!’
‘I bet she didn’t count Bobby’s quota!’ Jess could almost guarantee it.
‘Come to mention it, I don’t think she mentioned Bobby’s name, although I have to admit I think I’d already eaten his share before he even did a shift last week.’ Anna laughed. ‘It’s that whole wedding diet thing. As soon as you start trying to cut stuff out, it just makes you want to eat it all the more!’
‘I’ll slip a couple of biscuits into the top drawer of my desk for us to have later, before Toni starts dusting for fingerprints! But you’d better have one to tide you over until then; this wedding planning lark can take it out of y
ou.’ Jess handed Anna one of the shortbreads, but it would be a few hours before she’d have time to have the biscuit she’d saved for herself. She’d have to get moving if she was going to make sure she didn’t keep her first patient waiting. It might not always seem like it, but some things were even more important than where your next biscuit was coming from.
The Red Cliff Hotel was perched so close to the edge of its namesake, there were warning signs all along the road that led up to it about not veering off the designated pathways. The views were spectacular, right across Port Agnes to Titan’s Head and out to the Sisters of Agnes Island, where the old convent was now a five-star hotel. If Anna could have got married anywhere, it would have been on the Sisters of Agnes Island, where Brae had proposed in the hotel’s conservatory. But the truth was she didn’t really care where they got married, as long as they did.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind spending your afternoon off at a wedding fair?’ Anna slipped her hand inside Brae’s as they walked up towards the hotel from the car park.
‘I’m only here because I’m on a promise.’ Brae laughed.
‘Oh really and what promise is that exactly?’
‘The promise of food. I seem to recall you saying that we’d be sampling some food and drink, so we can finalise the menu now that the sea bass caught by my own fair hand isn’t an option.’
‘I know food will always be your first love, but I’m very glad that I’m your second.’ Anna leant into him, breathing in the familiar scent of his aftershave.
‘Nothing comes ahead of you, not even the salted caramel brownies that are apparently the chef’s speciality.’ Laughing again, he turned her to face him. ‘I keep thinking that the next time we’re in the hotel together it’ll be because we’re getting married.’
‘Not getting cold feet, are you?’ Looking up at him, she already knew the answer.
‘I’m more worried about you suddenly realising how much better you can do. Even Morwenna keeps telling me that I’m punching above my weight.’
‘That’s what siblings are for, to keep you grounded!’ It was Anna’s turn to laugh and, for once, the longing she’d always felt for a sibling of her own was way below the surface. Brae’s family had welcomed her in, and seeing how he interacted with his sister and her family just did more to convince her that he was everything she wanted in a partner. His niece and nephew adored him, but then she was yet to meet someone who had a bad word to say about Brae. If anyone was punching above their weight, it was her.
The grandly-named ballroom at the Red Cliff Hotel was probably host to weddings and conferences more often than it was to actual balls, but it had been transformed into a wedding wonderland of pink, champagne and silver, with fabric hung in swathes from the ceiling and confetti seemingly covering every surface. Anna didn’t envy whoever was going to be clearing up afterwards.
‘How are we doing with buying clothes for the honeymoon?’ Brae raised an eyebrow and Anna nudged him in the ribs.
‘We? You’ve actually got the cheek to say, we?’ She shook her head. If it was down to Brae, the packing would happen the night before and probably consist of a couple of pairs of shorts, his three favourite T-shirts and a pair of flip-flops stuffed into a bag for life. He had a million good points, but organisation wasn’t one of them.
‘You’re so much better at all that than me, though.’ Brae grinned. ‘Morwenna did warn you that you’re getting yourself hitched to a big kid.’
‘She also warned me that you might suggest fish finger sandwiches for the wedding breakfast after the sea bass idea fell through, so I suppose I should count myself lucky that you’re even willing to try a taster menu.’
‘I’m not ruling out the fish fingers! But did you see those grilled cheese sandwiches on that stall as we came in? They’re made with Wild Garlic Yarg and if they taste as good as they look, we might need to rethink the menu.’
‘I want to believe you’re joking!’ She really couldn’t be certain, though. Brae was a foodie through and through, and he was also Cornish born and bred, so any opportunity he had to bring his beloved county into the wedding plans was not to be passed up. Much as Anna loved Cornwall, and particularly Port Agnes, she drew the line at having Yarg cheese toasties on the menu at their wedding.
‘How about a compromise and we ditch the diet for the day and have one of their sandwiches for lunch, before we finalise the menu for the wedding?’
‘It’s a deal.’ Linking her arm through his, she pulled him in the direction of a stall covered in bouquets and buttonholes. After the wedding at the hotel, they’d be having a couple of nights back at the cottage before heading off for a honeymoon in the States a few days later. Brae had promised her they’d find time in between to take her bouquet over to the churchyard where her parents were buried, even though it meant a three-hour round trip. Yellow roses had been her mother’s favourite flowers and she was really keen to include them in her bouquet.
‘I hope you’re going to buy some of that fisherman’s cord?’ Brae pointed towards some rope that looked out of place on the stall and much heavier than the twine that was wrapped around the stems for some of the bouquets.
‘What’s it for?’
‘The bride and groom each have a cord and when they’re fastened together they represent the beginning of two lives becoming one.’
‘That’s right.’ The woman behind the stall stood up, although it looked like it was a big effort. Her face was grey and almost waxy looking, and the smile she seemed to be forcing definitely hadn’t reached her eyes. ‘It’s also where the expression tying the knot comes from and a fisherman’s knot is supposed to be the most secure of all, so it’s a Cornish tradition.’
‘That’s lovely.’ Anna made a mental note to ask the hotel’s event planner if they could include the knot tying into their plans. It would be a really nice way to bring Brae’s love of Cornwall into the ceremony.
‘I can also make knots from the same rope to go on your bouquet or even as buttonholes.’ The woman swayed as she spoke, grabbing onto the edge of the stall to stop herself from falling forward.
‘Are you okay?’ Anna moved to the other side of the trestle table, catching hold of the woman’s elbow and helping her to sit down again.
‘I don’t know.’ The woman lowered her voice. ‘I’m pregnant and I haven’t been able to keep anything down for a few days.’
‘How far along are you?’ Anna caught the look of surprise that crossed the other woman’s face. ‘It’s okay, I’m not just being nosy. My name’s Anna. I’m a midwife at the unit in town. If you’re local, you probably get your antenatal care with us?’
‘I haven’t got that far yet, I’m only six weeks. I’ve lost two babies before, one at seven weeks and one at nine. I didn’t want to jinx things by booking in or telling anyone other than my husband. I thought it might be a bug when the sickness first started. All the books I’ve been reading say morning sickness doesn’t start until about five or six weeks at the earliest, and I’ve had it for three weeks already. I can’t help thinking something might be wrong.’
‘Okay, sweetheart, I know how hard this is when you’ve been through so much in the past, but I want to try and put your mind at rest if I can.’ Anna put a hand on her arm. She understood the desire to have a baby all too well, the feeling that you’d do anything, even keep it hidden from the rest of the world, if it meant the baby stuck around. She still had no idea if she’d miscarried back in January, or whether she’d never been pregnant at all, but either way it had hurt like hell. The same tortured look was reflected in this stranger’s eyes. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Miranda.’ The woman gave her a watery smile. ‘I’m so sorry. You’re off work today, you shouldn’t have to be dealing with this.’
‘Don’t worry, she’s never really off duty and she likes it that way.’ Brae’s voice was warm. He didn’t need to tell Anna how proud he was of her for her to know it. ‘Do you want me to leave you to it? I’m sure
the hotel can find you and Anna somewhere private to talk. I could go and ask them.’
‘Actually, would you mind phoning my husband instead? If I do it, I might start crying and then he’ll panic.’ Miranda slid her phone across the stall. ‘He’s the top number in my contacts and the code’s one, two, three, four. I know, I know, it’s terrible! Tom’s always telling me I’ve got to change it.’
‘What do you want me to say?’ Brae looked at the phone as if it was a hand grenade with the pin pulled out.
‘Just that I’m with a midwife but I’m fine, and maybe ask him if he can come up a bit sooner than planned. He was going to take over from me on the stall after lunch, when it usually gets really busy. But I think I might need him now.’
‘Okay, I’ll go outside and call him, it’s a bit too noisy in here.’ Brae headed towards the door. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’
‘Your fiancé’s lovely, when’s the wedding?’ Miranda turned back to Anna as she spoke.
‘He is and not until July; we’re having the wedding here.’
‘It’s a lovely venue. I go to a lot of places for these fairs and this is definitely one of my favourites.’ Miranda managed a wobbly smile, but she was still far too pale for Anna’s liking.
‘Thank you, but I’m more worried about sorting you out right now. When you say you haven’t managed to keep anything down for days, do you really mean anything?’
‘As first I just went off food. But for the last twenty-four hours or so, I haven’t even been able to keep water down.’
‘We need to get you on some IV fluids as soon as possible in that case, something with electrolytes so we can get you back on an even keel.’
