Call Me Star Girl

by Louise Beech

  ‘You know what.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘Say you don’t know who your father is.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I say it on my show? Just because I never brought it up, doesn’t mean I don’t wonder. Of course I do! Who wouldn’t? But why is it my responsibility to mention it to you?’

  I’ve never spoken this brusquely to her. Our conversations are gentle. I always consider her feelings; am mindful of topics that might hurt. Avoid anything that might send her scuttling from my life again. Once there was an episode of Long Lost Family on the TV while I was at her house for an hour. In it the daughter found her dad, and my mum just turned it over without a word. That’s what we do – we switch channels. Ignore what’s on the other side.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says quietly. ‘I never quite knew whether to bring it up.’

  ‘Now it’s out there.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘So?’ I demand.

  ‘I can’t just tell you on the phone like this.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you rang for?’

  ‘No. There’s something else I—’

  ‘Just tell me his name,’ I interrupt. ‘Maybe summarise what he’s like, where he lives…’

  ‘He doesn’t live anywhere.’ I hear an intake of breath. ‘He’s dead.’

  This possibility has never occurred to me.

  ‘Before I was born?’ This will make me feel better. This could be a perfectly acceptable reason to keep it from me. Grief.

  ‘No … at the end of last year.’

  ‘Last year?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry?’

  I look up. Stephen is standing in front of me. I start.

  ‘The news,’ he hisses. ‘If you’re going into the national news, you missed the bloody start!’

  I realise the song has died. That dreaded, forbidden silence fills the studio.

  ‘Mum, I have to go!’

  ‘But there’s something else, that’s not what I—’

  ‘Not now!’

  I hang up.

  ‘Shit.’

  I scramble for the fader. I could still go into the national bulletin, but no presenter wants to go from silence to mid-sentence news.

  ‘You’ll have to replay mine,’ Stephen snaps. ‘For God’s sake! The bloody airwaves have been silent for half a minute!’

  I play Stephen’s news and put my head in my hands.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he demands. ‘Taking calls during a show?’

  ‘It was my mum,’ I explain. ‘She … It was important.’

  ‘Unless someone died, it can wait.’

  ‘Someone did,’ I say before I can think.

  Stephen opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I add quickly. ‘It was last year. I just didn’t know. It’s nothing. Sorry. I’m back on it now.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asks kindly. ‘You don’t seem okay? To be honest, you haven’t all evening.’

  ‘I guess it’s a strange kind of night,’ I say. ‘Maeve is missing. We know they’ve got a new suspect in the Victoria’s murder investigation.’ I almost add that The Man Who Knows has called again too, but remember that one is my secret. ‘Look, why don’t you go home? Seriously. What good can you do staying all night too? Sitting here waiting for her won’t bring Maeve in. And anyway, she’s not going to come here now, is she? If she goes anywhere, it’ll be home.’ I pause. ‘What did Jim say?’

  ‘He’s heard nothing. As you can imagine, he’s going out of his mind. He’s called everyone he can think of.’

  ‘Poor Jim.’

  ‘I guess I can leave,’ says Stephen, not sounding altogether convinced. He checks the monitor. I follow his gaze. I have one minute.

  ‘You can’t do anything here,’ I remind him. ‘Look, I’m sorry about the call with my mum. I’ve a lot going on in my life at the moment. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’re such a closed book, Stella. Five years of your show, almost two before in training, and I don’t feel like I know you at all.’ Stephen pauses. ‘Will you come in and see us all again?’

  I realise this is our goodbye. Unless I make the effort to come into the station I might never see Stephen again.

  ‘Of course,’ I lie.

  ‘Good. Okay, I’ll go. I’ll keep my phone by the bed, so please, if you hear from Jim, let me know.’

  He goes into the foyer, puts his coat on. I remember that Victoria Valbon was wrapped in her coat. It would not have warmed her or her poor child.

  ‘I think we’ll know by morning,’ I call to him.

  ‘Know what? About Maeve?’

  The note that was attached to Harland Grey’s book comes to me: Stella, this will tell you everything.

  ‘About everything,’ I say, not even sure what I mean.

  The door slams after him. I have ten seconds until I become Maeve Lynch for the next two hours.

  Five seconds until I fill in for a missing woman.

  Two seconds.

  One…

  I close my eyes, take a breath, and slide up the fader. ‘And so it’s the Late-Night Love Affair. Are you all ready for some great music? Some love requests and dedications? Some passion? Because I am…’

  19

  ELIZABETH

  THEN

  If I thought I could become a kinder person by helping other women have their babies, then destiny, fate, or whatever you want to call it, decided to test me. I hadn’t thought it would be an easy job – I chose to do it for that very reason. I just didn’t realise how hard it would be, right from the start.

  On the doula training course, we were warned that the job would mean being woken at all hours of the night, missing events, spending many hours in hospitals, and crying a lot. An experienced doula came in to chat to us during one session. She said she had missed her son’s graduation day. She lost so much sleep she became ill. And at times she thought she might lose her husband. She said this was why it was best that doulas were already mothers themselves – mothers know what it is to be tired, to miss out.

  I cringed then. Did I even deserve the title mother? I had missed most of my child’s life. I was going to earn them, I decided – the title mother and the title doula. But, looking back, I didn’t really have a clue.

  I got my first client two weeks after my reunion with Stella. She and I had met up again just the day before. It felt right to meet away from our homes. On neutral ground. I called her. We had texted a little. Short messages. Polite. When I rang I wondered if she would answer. Wondered what she had called me in her contacts list? When she saw it pop up, would she ignore me?

  She answered.

  My first thought, after saying, I hope you don’t mind, was to ask if she needed anything. Not sure where it came from. She thanked me but said no. I suggested we have lunch in town.

  Stella picked the place. A café above a chain bakery. We both ordered the same jacket potato topping at the same time – tuna and mayonnaise – and laughed. It broke the ice. Stella ate slowly, as if she was savouring every bite. Like I do. I guess these are the innate habits that we can’t control.

  She didn’t ask any questions. I expected her to: even though she’d only asked one at our reunion I thought she’d have come back with more. I was waiting for them. For a particular one. One I dreaded yet longed for.

  Instead, I asked her how Sandra was. I almost called her Frumpy Sandra, as I cruelly had years ago, but I bit my tongue.

  Stella looked sad. She sighed, said that Sandra passed away two years before. Had a stroke.

  I almost said she was too young and then realised she’d have been more than sixty-five. Time is odd like that: your mind freezes things, but it passes anyway. I wanted to ask how life had been with Sandra, but I was afraid. Of what, I wasn’t sure.

  I enquired about Stella’s life now. She admitted that, for the first time in her life, she thought it might be nice to meet someone. As soon as she’d
said it she shook her head and wrinkled her nose. Added that it wasn’t that she wanted to, just that she had this feeling there was someone there. Just around the corner. Waiting for her. Even though she didn’t want it to happen.

  God, those words pierced me. I knew them. Had experienced that knowing once, when I was younger. I’d wanted love so much that I looked everywhere for it. Willed it to happen. But it was just attention I desired. Until Stella’s father.

  I changed the topic. Told Stella I was still waiting for my first client. She said she was sure destiny would send me the right one.

  When I got home, I had a message on my phone. A young single mum needed me. Sarah was nearly six months pregnant. Her partner had dumped her, and she needed support, mainly because she had learning difficulties, and none of her family were around. My agency felt that, since I’d been only twenty when I became a mum, and had also done it alone, I would be the most sympathetic to her needs.

  My first thought was I can’t do this.

  My second was a guilt-filled: How can I help her when I left Stella?

  My third was this is why you’re doing it.

  I remembered what Stella had said earlier. That destiny would send me the right one. I agreed to meet Sarah. It is recommended that doulas meet clients on neutral ground; it wasn’t lost on me that that was how I’d just met my own daughter.

  I met Sarah in the café where I’d met Stella, but I avoided the same table. We didn’t get the same jacket potato topping either. She was thin, her twenty-five-week pregnancy barely visible under a thin T-shirt. Her hand was cool against mine. I knew she was twenty, but she looked seventeen. We talked about how she had been feeling, what kind of birth she wanted, and about eating healthily and what to avoid. She said her boyfriend had been mean. I opened my mouth to ask what she meant by ‘mean’ but decided she would tell me if she wanted to.

  I paid for our lunch. This isn’t part of being a doula, but I wanted to. I’d been told she had some learning difficulties, but I found her sharp and aware. I guessed her issues were more emotional than to do with any lack of intelligence. Her eyes were grey and sad. We agreed that I’d go to her next midwife appointment with her, and then to the scan. I said Sarah could call me anytime, about any concerns she had.

  As we turned to part ways, she grabbed my arm and said, ‘My mum has never bothered with me since I’ve been fostered. I want to be everything she wasn’t.’

  I wondered if Stella would feel that way one day.

  Back home I wanted to call my daughter and share my experience. I didn’t. I realised how many things she must have wanted to share with me over the years. I decided I should be the one to listen now, not to talk.

  The next day I got a call in the middle of the night. Sarah had gone into early labour, and I needed to get there as fast as I could. I drove to the hospital, afraid of what might be waiting, rushing through two red lights. Again, I began to think I wasn’t up to this. I might have given birth, but it was twenty-six years ago, and I’d been angry and uninterested.

  I was too late to be Sarah’s birth partner. Her tiny girl was already born, weighing only a pound and a half, and had been taken straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I comforted her as best I could. Reminded her that these days they can do miracles. That her baby was in the best hands possible.

  Over the next week I was with Sarah every day. She called her daughter Jade. Jade’s world was an incubator, where tubes fed and monitored her. I watched Sarah do the cares, as it’s called, for her. Watched her clean those spiky hands and thin body with a cotton bud. Watched her read children’s stories to her, so Jade would know her voice, she said. Watched her stroke that hairless head. I took a photo of them with my good camera and had it developed so she had something when she wasn’t with Jade.

  The days were a round of cold cups of tea, waiting for medical updates, and watching Jade breathe, all accompanied by the beeping of a heart monitor.

  Stella texted me one evening about meeting again. I was exhausted and realised I’d been wrapped up in Sarah. I felt bad. Neglectful again. Stella said she’d met a man. Said he was called Tom, and something felt oddly ‘meant to be’ about it. We arranged to meet the following Saturday in the same café; I said she could tell me all about him. I decided I would not burden her with what I was going through as a doula. I’d answer briefly if she asked, say yes, it’s going okay. I’d make it all about her, all about her new man, Tom.

  After a week, baby Jade became ill.

  The doctor told us the infection was in her stomach. That they were doing all they could. The only thing about doing all you can is that there is a limit. A moment when nothing more can be done.

  I held Sarah’s hand as the nurse said Jade would definitely die, if not today, then tomorrow. I swallowed my own tears to give more space for Sarah’s. The nurse asked if Sarah would like Jade to be taken off the machines, so she could hold her as she went. Eventually Sarah nodded. And then we went into a private room and waited for Jade to be freed from her tubes and brought to us. The tears I tried to stem as we waited were partly guilt-born. Partly selfish. Even being there for Sarah, for little Jade, was for me.

  I can’t change what I am. But in knowing it, I can actively try and do the opposite.

  Sarah held Jade. The little mite tried to breathe by herself for half an hour. Then she became still. The pink faded. Wordlessly, a nurse listened for a heartbeat, held my gaze and left us alone. Sarah whispered to her cold daughter that she’d had so many things planned – Disneyland, Christmas presents, and all the love her own mother had never given her. After a while, a nurse asked Sarah what she wanted. Sarah said she’d like to bathe her daughter, as she’d never had the chance to do that. She did, in a small tub, cooing and whispering, so gentle.

  They took Jade to the chapel of rest. I knew this was a kind phrase for a freezer, but I didn’t say it. Sarah didn’t cry. She packed the things she had brought to the hospital and I walked her out to the bus stop. I offered to drive her home, then insisted I come on the bus with her. But she said she really wanted to just go home and be alone. She thanked me for all I had done. Kissed my cheek.

  And I watched her go.

  I never saw her again. It was Sarah’s choice, though I offered my continued support as a doula. I thought of Stella. Of how she must have felt when I left. It was too much. My heart contracted. I decided I was going to give it up, being a doula. There and then. I almost called them and said I had made a huge mistake.

  But then I got a client who changed everything.

  20

  STELLA

  WITH TOM

  Fourteen days after Victoria Valbon’s murder I got Tom a cat.

  I hadn’t planned it. His distress at Duchess being taken away by the bin men when he was a child must have been on my mind as I lingered over the small card on the radio-station noticeboard. Gilly Morgan had written an advert saying she wanted a new home for her cat, Perry, as she was moving in with her partner Jane, and Jane was allergic to them.

  I collected Perry the next day. She was wash-powder white with a smudge of grey on her tail – as if it had been dipped in paint. Sweet and docile, she studied me when I picked her up, and barely grumbled about her short trip in a cardboard box in the back of my car.

  I found Tom sleeping on the blood-red sofa, his hands together beneath his flushed cheek, as though in prayer. I watched him for a moment. Smiled at the way his eyes moved beneath their lids, hinting at dreams that in my head were deliciously illicit. I ran a finger along his back; it was damp. I sniffed his warm neck. He stirred. Turned to meet my lips with his.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ I said into his mouth.

  ‘I hope it’s you.’

  ‘A pussy,’ I said, reluctantly pulling free.

  Tom laughed. ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  I took Perry from her box. She purred in my arms. The sound vibrated along my skin. ‘For you,’ I said.

  Tom sat up; his hair was
stuck to his head on one side. ‘Really?’ He took her. Held her at arm’s length, facing him, as though to assess what she was about.

  ‘Because of Duchess,’ I said.

  ‘Duchess?’

  ‘You lost her, so I found you this one.’

  ‘She’s cute.’ He nuzzled his nose to hers. ‘Thank you. This is really … kind. No one ever got me a gift like this.’

  ‘Yes, they did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I did. The silver keys with our initials on.’

  Tom studied me. I couldn’t work out the expression.

  ‘She’s called Perry.’ I sat next to him. ‘I never had a pet when I was little, and your experience with one wasn’t good, so we can change that together. We can make pet-having something unique to us.’

  Tom put her on the sofa. Stark white against the red, she was a ghost – a figment of some past, here to change our now. He touched my cheek with featherlike fingers. I love Tom’s soft side. I don’t see it often, but I know it’s there, lurking behind the bolshie boy like a shy twin. I think that’s why I love him without condition, and why the thought of losing him kills me.

  ‘You always surprise me,’ he said then.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Never stop,’ he whispered, urgently.

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I need that … danger.’

  ‘I know.’

  Then he kissed me, carefully at first. But we rarely remain gentle. He must exude a hormone that fires mine. Some delicate but perfect scent that arouses me absolutely. I have often thought that this is why I’ve never worn perfume. I’m always waiting for his. I don’t want anything to outdo it.

  I don’t want anyone who smells different.

  Tom pulled me onto the sofa. He moved behind me, pushed me so that I was on all fours, catlike. Without even removing my underwear, he thrust into me, my gasp merging with his greedy grunt. His teeth in my neck heightened the exquisite pleasure. I clawed behind me, scratching whatever skin I could find. He tugged my hair, and whispered my name over and over, like a spell.