“Anyway, back to your room. Yeah, we can paint the walls, I’ll get you a rug or something because this laminate flooring, although it looks very nice, is pretty cold in the mornings. I’ll take out the desk, put that in my bedroom, it should fit in there. And we’ll use the kitchen as a living room as well as a kitchen. It’s big enough, thankfully. Does that sound all right to you?”
Tegan stared at me.
“Am I talking too fast?”
She squeezed up her nose and mouth and nodded, her bunches bouncing as she confirmed that I was a gabbling fool.
I exhaled deeply, plonked myself down beside her on the sofa. “Sorry,” I said. “I just want you to…” That sounded like I was putting pressure on her. Saying that if she didn’t feel instantly at home, she’d be wrong. She’d upset me. “Sorry,” I repeated although she didn’t know why I was apologizing.
We’d taken the train to Leeds this morning. My parents had offered to drive us up here but I’d said no. I wanted a clean break from London, for us to start as we were going to go on—just the two of us. “It’ll be easier all round if we get the train,” I’d said. “You can come and visit another time.” I’d hired a man with a van who had set off before us with Adele’s boxes, our biggest bags and everything else we couldn’t carry. The boxes were currently piled up in the communal hallway downstairs, awaiting a place in the flat. My flat had seemed huge two years ago when I moved in, but I had accumulated a lot of possessions: books, CDs, videos, DVDs, magazines, electrical equipment, knickknacks I wouldn’t be parted from, so now space was going to be an issue. I would have to find a place for the few possessions Adele had left behind. When I’d arrived at the storage facility, I’d been horrified that her unit was the smallest they had, and even then her ten boxes hadn’t made a dent in the space. Her whole life, her thirty-two years, had fit into ten boxes. Most of the ten boxes contained things she wanted me to pass on to Tegan. Adele had never been a hoarder, never accumulated knickknacks or keepsakes, and she made sure she didn’t take up any more room than necessary now that she was gone. Well, as gone as she could be. I had her ashes in one of my bags. I wasn’t going to scatter them; I’d have them buried near us so Tegan and I had somewhere to go if we wanted to lay flowers or visit her.
“I like the windows,” Tegan commented quietly. I’d been blessed not only with large rooms in my flat but also with six-foot-high sash windows in my bedroom and the kitchen, and two large windows in what was going to be Tegan’s room. They were gorgeous…But were they a potential danger?
Stop worrying, I warned myself. Tegan had managed not to fall out of any windows so far, why would she start now?
“Thank you,” I replied. “I like the windows too. Listen, we need some food and some other bits like a new toothbrush, shampoo and stuff for you, so how about we go shopping? How does that sound?”
“I like that idea,” Tegan said in her small voice.
“You’re not tired from all the traveling?” We’d been in the flat only a few minutes but I wanted to get moving. Constant motion stopped me from thinking about how things could go wrong, what we’d lost, what this situation truly meant.
“No.” She smiled. “I’m not tired.”
“Well that’s just what I wanted to hear.”
Conspiracy. There was some kind of conspiracy.
A shampoo conspiracy. Who knew you could get so much shampoo?
I’d been up and down the aisles of the supermarket, looking for shampoo for Tegan’s hair, and discovered there was a lot of the stuff. Since I got my shampoo from the salon where I had my hair straightened every six weeks, I never went down these aisles—I never needed to know what types of shampoo there were out there for white hair. And how it related to a small white girl’s hair. Scanning the shelves, I’d noticed most of the bottles with their fancy names that I remembered from television adverts were for adults. They had ceramides and fruit oils and other things I knew nothing of. Would they be good for a child’s locks? In the hotel I’d just used the small bottles the cleaner left every morning, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good practice long-term. And my shampoo probably wasn’t good for Tegan’s hair. When we lived together, Adele often swiped my shampoo if she ran out, but that wasn’t that often. And Adele’s hair was curly and strong, it needed lots of moisturizing she told me. Tegan’s hair was bone straight, each strand fine and fragile, like delicate silk threads. I didn’t want to damage it, to replace the mane of silk threads with a bird’s nest of strawlike locks.
Why didn’t Adele tell me about things like this? I thought, anxiety clawing at me. Was this the thing that was going to crack my veneer of calm? Not the funeral, not receiving the urn of Adele’s ashes, but the inability to find the right shampoo.
It wasn’t simply shampoo, though, it represented much more. How little I knew of my young charge. She had likes and dislikes that I hadn’t a clue about. Television shows she didn’t want to miss, others she could go the rest of her life without seeing. Food she was allergic to, others that she wouldn’t eat because she simply didn’t like them. Events and phrases that would cause her temper to flare. Products that were good for her hair. Tegan was a universe of thoughts, emotions, needs and wants that I had no access to.
I leaned against the shopping cart, visually ransacking the shelves for something that would do, each second that passed stoking the fires of insecurity inside me. “Do you remember which shampoo you used to use?” I asked Tegan, who was standing beside me, holding on to Meg. She looked up at me and shook her head.
How can this be so hard? I asked myself. It’s only shampoo. It’s literally shampoo. I should just pick one and be done with it. But I wouldn’t just pick one for me. It had taken me years to find the right one for me, I should afford Tegan the same respect. Get a grip, Matika, it’s only shampoo, I intervened with myself.
From the corner of my eye I saw a supermarket helper approaching. She was younger than me, didn’t look as though she had children, but her straight hair was a similar shade of pale gold blond to Tegan’s. She might be able to give me some pointers. “Excuse me,” I said, stepping into her path.
Her small brown eyes remained unfriendly despite the smile she spread on her face as she asked, “Yes, madam?”
“I was wondering if you could help me? I’m trying to find the best shampoo for a child’s hair.” I indicated Tegan, who dutifully smiled at her. “I was wondering if you could tell me which is the best one?”
“Oh, um…” the woman began, turning to the shelves.
Before she could finish her reply a voice cut in, “Don’t you know?”
We looked to the source of the voice and a motherly woman, about forty, with a round body, dressed in a blouse and a flowery skirt was staring at us.
“Sorry, were you talking to me?” I asked.
“Yes. Don’t you know which shampoo you should be buying?”
What’s it to you? I thought. “Erm, I’ve never bought it before,” I replied, trying to restrain myself from being out and out rude. I turned back to the supermarket helper, shutting the interloper out of the conversation.
“Why didn’t you ask your employer before you came out?” the woman continued.
I ignored her for a moment, then what she said filtered into my mind. I spun back to her. “Why would I ask a marketing director about children’s shampoo?” I asked with a frown.
“Her parents will obviously know what shampoo they use.”
Oh, it was suddenly clear: a black woman with a small white girl could only mean that I was staff; an au pair. Do I look like an au pair? I glanced down at myself: I was wearing baggy navy blue jeans, a red top that had cutaway sleeves and a slashed neck, black trainers, and on my back was a black leather rucksack. If you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t look at me and think I was a successful thirty-two-year-old national marketing manager, that was true. However, no one who looked at me would think I had the temperament to be a nanny. More than a few people had told me that I had a st
andoffish air about me, that friendliness wasn’t what they thought of when I came to mind. Who would pay me to look after their child? And, anyway, why couldn’t I be her parent? Why did this woman look at me and instantly think employee? I could be Tegan’s stepmother, for all she knew.
“Well, her parents don’t,” I said through tight lips. The supermarket helper sidled away, perhaps to get security in case things got physical, but probably because she didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire if we did start chucking bottles at each other.
“Where are her parents?” the woman asked, as though she fully expected me to spontaneously confess that I had snatched the child beside me.
“What’s it to you?” I asked calmly, although a rivulet of indignant venom ran through the words.
“What are you doing with that child?”
“If you must know,” I snapped, “she’s my child. I’m her parent.”
“You?”
“Yes, me.”
“Do her parents know you’re trying to pretend she’s your daughter?” The woman raised her voice, drawing attention to us. Other shoppers instantly tuned in, keeping up the pretense of looking at diapers, cotton wool, baby food and feeding bottles while keeping a close eye on us.
“I’m not pretending anything,” I hissed.
“Then what are you doing?” she said, just as loudly.
What am I doing? I’m struggling to deal with all this, is what I’m doing. I’m doing my best not to break down in tears because I can’t find the right shampoo. I’m just about managing to stop myself from opening a bottle of vodka every night and drinking until my best friend is alive again, my fiancé isn’t a cheat and I’m still living in London being regional marketing manager of the company I’ve given seven years of my life to.
Tegan tugged on my jeans just above the knee until I looked down at her.
“I like this one,” she said, holding a bottle of shampoo in a bright orange container up to me. I hadn’t even noticed she’d wandered away. I took the container and, aware that everyone down the aisle was watching me, took my time in reading the label. I wasn’t really taking in the words, wasn’t reading the ingredients, I simply wasn’t going to be intimidated. No one was going to make me run and hide, no matter how much I wanted to. I grinned down at Tegan who, surprisingly, smiled back up at me, before I dropped the shampoo into the shopping cart.
The woman’s question, “What are you doing?” still hung in the air. I looked back up at her and smiled sweetly.
“What am I doing? I’m buying shampoo.”
Tegan slipped her hand into mine and, pushing the cart, we strode away from the aisle with our heads held high.
My heart was racing in my chest and thudding loudly in my ears. This was going to happen a lot in the coming weeks, months and, probably, years. Outsiders were going to question my status in Tegan’s life, they weren’t going to instantly believe I was Tegan’s legal guardian, her parent. Since I’d sent the adoption papers off, I’d found out that it wouldn’t be straightforward to adopt Tegan. It’d take months, possibly years. I had an array of official hoops to jump through, a mountain of forms to fill in, masses of personal information to disclose to any stranger who asked, but even then it might not be enough. Cross-racial adoptions were very, very rare, especially this way round, a black woman adopting a white child. I had to do it, though.
As Tegan’s crying had subsided that day in the hotel, as she stood limp and helpless in my arms after learning her mother had gone to heaven, a moment of clarity came over me. There was something I could do to make it up to Adele for not being there at the end, for not helping out when I could have. There was one way I could prove to Tegan that she really did have me—I had to adopt her. Not merely take her on, be her legal guardian, but make her part of my family. Be her mother like Adele wanted. From what I’d found out so far, however, I might not be allowed to.
“Mummy Ryn,” Tegan said, making me jump out of the thoughts I’d been immersed in. I frowned down at her.
“What did you call me?”
“Mummy Ryn,” Tegan repeated, as though it was every day she called me “Mummy” when she’d been calling me Auntie Ryn most of her life.
“Why did you call me Mummy?” I asked.
“You said you are my new mummy,” she whispered, her royal blue eyes filling with tears, her voice accusing me of lying to her.
I crouched down to her height, willing her not to cry. My last experience with her weeping had been harrowing and we’d both taken mental blows from that, it’d taken hours for us to calm down. I didn’t want her breaking her heart in the middle of a supermarket over something as trivial as what she called me. “I am,” I reassured her pale face. I stroked her hair and tried a smile to calm her.
She shook her head. “But you are not my real mummy. My real mummy has gone to heaven. And she’s not coming back.”
A lump rose in my throat. “That’s right,” I agreed quietly.
“So you are not Auntie Ryn no more.”
“I suppose not.”
“You are Mummy Ryn,” she concluded. I was impressed with her reasoning skills, it proved how intelligent she was. I’d forgotten that about her, how even when she was three Tegan could put forward a good argument to change her bedtime.
“OK, I’m Mummy Ryn. What did you want to ask me?”
Tegan sniffed, wiped at one of her teared-up eyes with the back of her hand. “Am…” She gulped. “Am I allowed to have some chocolate?”
“Yes, but only if you eat all your vegetables as well.” Responsible adults were meant to say things like that, weren’t they?
Her heart-shaped face suddenly brightened with a smile. She shook her head. “We haven’t got no vegetables,” she giggled, pointing to the food in our wire-framed cart.
I decided we weren’t going to buy vegetables today. It’d been so long since I heard soft little gurglings rise up from her throat in a giggle and so long since I saw her face spread wide in a smile, there was no way I could force vegetables on her now. “You’ve got me there,” I agreed with a grin. “No vegetables today. But tomorrow, we’re going to start eating healthily. OK?”
She nodded. Then, before I could stand up, she slipped her arms around my neck, gave me a quick squeeze, then let me go. She went back to her position beside the cart and stood there, cradling Meg in both arms, staring off into the distance as though she hadn’t hugged me at all.
As I straightened up I remembered the one time I’d been on a boat and how I’d clung to the side, feeling as though my insides were being churned over in a solution of bile and brine. That violent nausea rose and fell in my stomach again. What will we do if I’m not allowed to adopt her?
chapter 13
I had this life before I got Del’s card and went to London and inherited Tegan. It was a life of work. Nothing but work. It was what kept me sane when I moved to Leeds.
My job title was national marketing manager for Angeles, the department store. The chain had begun a hundred years ago as a haberdashery store in Leeds and the head office was still based there, not in London. We had branches in every major British city and our long-term goal was to become the country’s biggest department store chain. I’d started in the London store as a regional marketing assistant and had worked my way up to my current position as second in command for the entire company’s marketing department—main role: running the in-store magazine, Living Angeles. I did everything from picking the magazine’s theme for the month to signing off on the finished copies. I’d helped the national marketing director, Ted Payne, set it up and, two months before my non-wedding, the plan had been for me to spend a month in Leeds coordinating the magazine’s launch. After I left Nate and Adele, I’d asked Ted if I could accept the job as national marketing manager that he’d been offering me since we’d met. When he agreed, I’d then pushed my luck by asking if I could work out my notice for the London job in Leeds.
In the past few years the magazine had grown
from being published once a season to coming out every month. My workload had tripled, but I didn’t mind—work was my life.
All my life I’d lived with people: my family, then Adele, then Nate. The echo of a permanently empty flat in a suburb of Leeds was something I had to psych myself up to face every time I left the office. It seemed too big for me. I wasn’t cut out for living in silence and solitude.
I knew I had two choices at that moment: buckle under the strain of it all or spend as much time as possible at work. I didn’t see the flat in daylight for months. I’d get into work at 7 a.m. and leave around 10 p.m., then would be too tired to do anything but crawl into bed. I’d even work weekends, just so I wouldn’t be alone in the flat.
As time wore on, of course, I eased off the manic work schedule and made some real friends at work. One of them was Betsy Dawali, who I shared a glass-walled office with. The other was my boss, Ted Payne. I was closer to Ted than anyone else at work.
Ted was fifty or so, one of those older men whose neat white hair and barely lined, strong-jawed face made him exceptionally attractive. It wasn’t simply his looks, though; Ted had an unwavering decency, and a calm, straightforward way of talking that made him incredibly sexy.
The night he came to visit me after my return to Leeds he wore an expensive, immaculately pressed navy blue suit with a white shirt and red tie. He sat on my sofa, staring into a glass of white wine. He’d destroyed his neat, work-day appearance by loosening his tie and raking his hand through his white hair. But while he’d relaxed his facade, he’d been unsettled since he walked in the door. He never met my eye for any length of time and had cast his eyes down as soon as he accepted a glass of white wine with a thin smile. I’d settled myself down on my big red beanbag with a glass of wine and watched Ted avoid looking at me.
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