‘Your whole face lights up when you talk about her, you know,’ I said.
‘That’s ’cause she’s the light of my life,’ Grace said, like this was a universal truth. ‘She loves her mum, too. Such a mummy’s girl, she is.’
I nodded, smiling.
‘Attached at the hip when she was growing up. We still are now, although she’s much busier these days – you know, boyfriend, her studies, hobbies …’ She didn’t say which hobbies, which studies, I noticed.
‘She’s the only thing –’ Grace paused, almost to gather herself – ‘I look forward to, darlin’.’
I reached out and put my hand on hers. ‘And you have her,’ I said. We were supposed to be doing her care plan, but we were having such a nice chat, I’d abandoned the form-filling. ‘Nobody can take that away from you, Grace.’
She smiled and drifted off into the distance for a minute or two, then she turned to me. It was like she knew.
‘You’re so lucky,’ she said. You’ve got it all to come. The babies, the life. How old are you? Twenty-five, twenty-six?’
I laughed. ‘Well, I’m extremely flattered, but I’m thirty-two!’
‘And you’ve no babies?’ My cheeks grew hot. Could she tell?
‘No.’
‘And you don’t want ’em?’
‘Oh, yes, yes,’ I said. ‘Very much. One day.’
‘Good.’ Grace reached over then, and patted my thigh, like she was satisfied. ‘Because I’ve seen you with those patients and you’re born to be a mum. Not like me. I messed it all up and it was hard, darlin’, so hard for my Cec. But, you know, despite everything, I don’t regret it. ‘Not for one second of my sorry little life have I ever regretted my Cec.’
I left Grace’s flat a good hour after I’d intended. Grace wanted to accompany me downstairs and outside. I wondered if she wanted me to go at all. The wreath fell off her door again as we closed it. She sighed again and pinned it back up. I wondered how many times she’d done that.
We went down in the lift. Outside, just a small patch of grass separated us from the heaving, wheezing jam of the Walworth Road. ‘Oooh, it’s nice to have some fresh air,’ she said, taking out a Vogue from her cardigan pocket and lighting it, with not even a flicker of recognition at the irony. I wondered if she meant to be funny?
The air was warm and I felt this calm descend. A plane soared noisily overhead on its way to Gatwick. A stream of white froth in its wake.
‘Bloody noisy, them planes,’ said Grace.
‘They are,’ I agreed. ‘Hurts your ears.’
‘Always talking to me. Bla bla bla, all bloody day.’
‘What do they say to you, Grace?’
‘Oh, just messages,’ she said, inhaling. ‘Some nice, some not so nice. I never quite know what I’m going to get.’
I looked at Grace as she stubbed that fag out, in her Yankees cap and her satin wedding dress-slash-nightie, and I thought, even though you think planes are talking to you, and you have a plastic wreath of small animals on your door, you’ve made me feel saner than anyone else has in weeks. Grace Bird might not have the best grip on reality, but she had held her child in her arms and was clear on one universal truth: nobody, no matter how hard it is, no matter how unplanned, regrets a baby.
By the time I left Grace, thick grey cloud had rolled in over the blue sky, like a canopy over a swimming pool, and the world looked saturated in colour, the sky almost navy, the clouds pencil-grey, and the trees so green they looked fake. It looked lit, like a stage set.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how Grace had looked the same when she talked about Cecily. ‘My Cec,’ she’d kept saying. ‘My girl.’ Grace spent her days in the murky, grey world of her mind – like living in the smoker’s room – and her daughter was this spotlight, there. She lit her up.
I’m not saying that I, or even the baby and I together, were all Joe had, because Joe had a rich, full life before I turned up and wreaked havoc. But, whereas I’d only seen this baby as something that could potentially cause more heartache for Joe, now I considered the possibility that it could be
his
spotlight, in what must seem a fairly dark world for him at the moment – a glimmer of hope. I thought about that look on his face, when we’d been lying on the grass outside the museum, just seconds before his face contorted with hurt – and that was what it was, it was hope. And by me just making off like that, I’d taken that hope away from him. Oh, God, what had I done?
I had to call him,
tell him it was going to be okay. That I was going to have this baby. I walked faster, fumbling in my bag for my phone, but it was out of battery, which was just so completely typical. I could go to the office, I thought, but Kaye and Leon were on late shift; it wouldn’t be in any way private. If I waited until I got home to charge my phone, it could be an hour, and suddenly I couldn’t bear one more minute of Joe worrying. I spotted a phone box, just as the big grey belly of sky collapsed and it started hurling it down; so I ran, with my bag over my head, the few metres to it. The door wouldn’t shut properly, so I wedged the bag in the doorway. The inside smelt faintly of wee and it occurred to me how many hours I used to spend doing this during that time Joe and I were together, standing in a pissy phone box, whenever I wasn’t at home, pushing coin after coin into the slot, frantically searching for more coins in my pocket so I didn’t have to hang up.
He answered in the same way he had since I’d known him – ‘Hello, Joseph’ – the intonation going up at the end.
‘Joe, it’s me. It’s Robyn.’
There was silence. I prepared myself for a torrent of anger but he simply said, ‘Robyn?’ and it came out as an exhalation, as relief. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Why are you out of breath?’
‘’Cause my mobile died and I just ran to call you on a payphone and also …’ I felt like once it was out there, it was out there, in the universe – it was fact. ‘I
am
three months pregnant.’
I leaned against the glass, tracing the rain, which fell in rivulets, listening to Joe make this little noise, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Had he thought I might still go through with an abortion? Surely, he knew I’d never do that? But then, judging by my behaviour at his mum’s funeral, how did he know what I was capable of any more?
‘Joe, you do know I would never ever have gone through with a termination, don’t you? I should never have even told you I called them up – it was totally stupid and insensitive of me.’
He was very quiet. I silently kicked the side of the phone box. ‘How have you been?’
‘All right …’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘It’s been one of the worst weeks of my life. You didn’t call me back, Robyn. I didn’t know what you were thinking. I wondered if …’
‘Oh, God, Joe, I’m sorry, but it’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m having the baby.
We’re
having the baby. I’ve got used to the idea now. I feel okay about it.’
‘Okay?’
‘Even happy, sometimes. It’s just, it’s really hard.’
He sighed. ‘Yeah, I know, darling.’
‘And a massive shock.’
‘Maybe it’s just meant to be?’
There was a long silence when it was clear both of us were thinking,
So what now?
I felt a heaviness in my chest. Why couldn’t things be simpler?
‘Look, Joe, I’m sorry, but I still feel like I can’t see you,’ I said. ‘Not just yet …’ The rain was hammering the roof, exploding like little water bombs on the pavement.
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, lamely. How could I tell him? How could I ever explain, that him just being near me made me anxious because he was part of the whole story, not just of losing Lily. That if I were to be with him, I would have to tell him everything, and I couldn’t do that. ‘I just can’t handle it at the moment. It’s too much, emotionally,’ I said. ‘It’s not forever. I’m sure we’ll be able to meet up soon, to be friends …’
‘It’s okay, you don’t have to marry me,’ he said, laughing, and I felt a bit embarrassed.
Was I totally overthinking this? Was he not expecting anything anyway?
‘I just want to be involved, to help you.’
‘Okay.’ It seemed so mean to shut out Joe like this, but I needed to compartmentalize, to do what I had to do, on my own, at least for a little while. ‘Listen, I’ve got my first scan next week,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a call after and let you know how it’s gone, I promise.’
‘When’s the scan?’ he said.
‘Next Thursday afternoon. At the Whittington, it’s really near me.’
‘Right, okay,’ he said. Then, taking a breath, as if he’d found new determination not to let me get away with this, he said, ‘At least let me come to the scan, then? I promise I’ll be good. I won’t ask too many questions. I’ll behave myself.’
I briefly thought of Joe, with his orang-utan arms and legs filling that nice, quiet space.
‘Oh, Joe, I know you will,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry. Please, just understand I need do this on my own. I can’t bear the thought of you being in the room and anything—’
‘I’m thirty-two, Robbie, I’m a big boy.’
‘Joe, you’re lovely. And I’ll call you. Immediately after, I promise.’
I’d arranged to see Niamh for dinner that evening at Wagamama’s in Soho. (Niamh is new to London, and noodles are the current gastro-novelty of choice.)
I was excited. I was looking forward to seeing my little sister in the same way I’d been looking forward to seeing Grace, maybe because there were similarities between Niamh and Grace. Niamh might not have mental-health issues, but she’d never conformed in life either; never adhered to the marriage, house, baby mantra, and not just because she was gay. As she joked she’d say to Dad and Denise when eventually she came clean: ‘
If it wasn’t lesbianism, then it would have been something else. Something much worse.
’
Leah, our elder sister, has always had a ‘normal’ life – as in the trampoline-in-the-back-garden-and-the-Ford-Focus-in-the-driveway kind of normal (although, if you’d have done a straw poll when we were young, she would definitely have been ‘least likely’), but it wasn’t for me or Niamh. Maybe that’s why we bonded more than either of us bonded with Leah these days, despite the fact we loved her all the same.
I was thinking about Niamh all the way to meet her, about that chubby eight-year-old on the football pitch, the straggly blonde hair (now glossy and a drama-student henna-red) that was always tangled across her face, as if she’d just emerged from the Great Deep. Did fate know it then? That ‘normal’ was not what was in store for Niamh, like it wasn’t in store for me? Did losing Mum have anything to do with her being gay? The fact that Leah left Kilterdale two weeks after Mum died and I left as soon as I could, too? Maybe she felt she needed to replace that sisterly intimacy with someone.
Sometimes, I still think about that moment, when Dad’s pick-up truck with Niamh in the front seat drew away from Kilterdale Station after dropping me off for my train to start a new life in London. It was May 1999. Literally days after I’d finished my A levels. A year and four months since Joe and I had finished. I have never willed a year over like that one.
Both Niamh and I were sobbing our hearts out. It tore me apart to leave her. The worse thing was, I could never explain to her or Dad exactly why I felt the need
to
leave like that. They must have thought I was mad, swapping a nice, cosy house (with Denise in it, but at least all my meals would have been provided) for a life crashing on the floor of a friend’s sister’s flat in Seven Sisters. I must have been desperate! I was. To stay in Kilterdale any longer meant constantly being surrounded by memories, risking bumping into people I didn’t want to see.
Of course, she’d laugh wryly if I said this to her. Niamh is very much of the belief that you’re born gay or straight, like you’re born male or female – she always knew deep down. I didn’t doubt that at all, but it’s not the being gay thing that worries me, it’s the being happy thing. And I wonder sometimes how happy she is, and if being gay and in the closet with her close family adds a dimension of difficulty to her life that I wish wasn’t there.
I had decided to tell her I was pregnant tonight. I’d decided her reaction would do me good. She’d be shocked; but mainly she’d just be excited and ‘Yay!’ and uncomplicated about it. She wouldn’t think of the practicalities or even the complicated emotions, and that was fine by me. No, she’d think of a cute, new baby, a new niece or nephew. The baby clothes she could buy.
As soon as I saw her, however, rabidly searching for my face among the diners of Wagamama, Soho, eyebrows knotted, every inch the struggling actress, I knew this wasn’t going to happen. She was crying – which is by no means unusual or alarming for Niamh, but I felt my stomach tense with maternal instinct. It also put a spanner in the works for my own plans to offload.
‘Oh, my
God.
’ She put her various bags down on top of the bench, swung her legs over and slumped forward on the bench. ‘I’ve got to come out to Dad, I’ve
got
to, it’s driving me mad.’
My sister rarely arrived anywhere and just said, ‘Hello.’ When she was little, we used to take bets on what bombshell she’d drop literally as she walked through the door.
‘Ellie’s mum’s had a hysterectomy.’
‘Miss Buck’s off school with a mental breakdown.’
Or what strange, tangential question:
‘How long do you think a monitor lizard can hold its breath?’
She always did have a feel for drama, even then. Still, I felt my sisterly instincts sharpen.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked. ‘Has Denise said something? Has Dad said something?’
After a crap start (most memories of her mother being of her in the oncology ward of Westmoreland Hospital, rigged up to a chemo drip), I dared to think life was finally going well for Niamh. She’d fallen in love, recently got her first acting job and had come out to her friends and me. Being in the closet as far as Denise, Dad and Leah were concerned seemed to be the only thing that was spoiling it.
‘
No
. But that’s the point,’ she said. ‘You know the other weekend when you went to Joe’s mum’s funeral, which we’ll get on to in a minute, I promise you …’ I smiled, I loved how Niamh always had such good intentions of asking me about me, but that it usually happened as we were kissing goodbye. ‘Well, I went home with Mary, because we were doing the Three Peaks challenge, and it was just
so
obvious. I mean, could they not hear her creeping into my bed in the middle of the night? Did they not see me lusting at her over the breakfast table, ogling at her rack?’