So here we are then, finally. Here I am, taking in the slow chug of the river one last time; one last trip as Rachel, as me. Me. Here I am, inhaling the salty, diesel stink, trying to drink it all in and hold it down, each and every nuance of the early morning – the wind turbines, the seagulls, the ferry boat pulling away and, further down the prom, the huddle of school boys hunched over the railings, gazing out cross-river like the menacing mastheads of an armada. I want to commit all of this to memory – every beat, every inflection of the sky and the low silver light on the water.

It will be different, next time I come.

The tide and all its spume and gullies will have moved on to a distant shore. The sky will have shifted, the clouds drifted away. Everything will have changed. And so, too, shall I.

* * *

A gentle rain. I shelter under the conker tree that bows the sandstone wall of our old house. Before the baby, before all this, I hadn’t much thought of the place in years. Yet I keep coming back, now – back to the river, back for another look at the old wreck; South Lodge. A wreck that, for all its buckled walls and tang of damp, felt loved, lived in; felt like
home
. But it’s a wreck no longer. The sash windows that gave a glimpse of the water and Snowdonia way beyond, sometimes shaky, sometimes stiff, and the glass my doughty mother would devoutly clean when the mellow light exposed the river’s streaks and sprays, those old casement windows have been replaced with durable PVC. And the gardens – Dad’s jungle, where we’d plant the seeds and snips he brought back from his travels; that riot of untamed, secret scent and vine, tangle and trunk – it’s all been hacked away now, cut back, managed and manicured by South Lodge’s new owners, whoever they may be. When I first started coming back down here, I half hoped to catch a glimpse of them. Now I’ve lost interest. Some things just are.

I’m glad that Mum isn’t around to see the old place. She was a snob, my mother. She kept it well hidden, but she was a tyrant at heart. Her disdain for anything modish – ‘fads’, as she used to denounce them – bordered on the manic at times. When the new housing developments began to spring up along the riverfront, her eyes would gleam with spite.

‘Would you
look
at those awful, ticky-tacky porches?’ she’d say. ‘Doric-effect columns, for goodness sake. What on
earth
!’

But she loved the Lodge. She really, truly loved our house, till the day she died. Thinking of her, I’m happy-sad, right now.

The rain peters out to a needle-fine sprinkle, cool on my face and hands. I loiter in the churchyard, waiting for the morning rush hour traffic to drop off before I head over to Lark Lane. I’ll have a lazy mope around the bookstore and antique shops, maybe a coffee at the Moon and Pea if I find something good to read. I’ve been looking forward to my maternity leave for weeks, yet now that it’s here I’m rudderless, guilt-ridden, unable to switch off from work: how will my kids get on in my absence? Keeley Callaghan, up in court again today; Milan, the Roma boy, only thirteen and already having to scrap for dear life, just to get by in cold, hard Kirkdale. And then there’s James. James McIver, my biggest challenge yet. How is he responding to Siobhan? How is
she
coping? Not
too
well, I find myself hoping. I was jealous, I admit, when I went in for the final handover and found her perched on the corner of my desk, chatting and laughing with Milan. He’s been a client since July, but I’d never even seen him smile. It’s hard enough getting him to open up at all – so much darkness already in his young life, so much hatred. But there was Shiv –
Shiv
by
the way! – cracking a joke with little pint-sized Milan. And his beautiful dark eyes sparkled for a moment, and in that moment he was a child again. A kid. My heart lurched, it’s true – I was jealous that my young stand-in was getting responses I could never elicit. Fair enough, then – the kids love Shiv. She’s a natural rusty blonde, she’s tomboy pretty and, at twenty-one, she can engage them on a level I never will at my age. But can she get Milan a school place? They’ve already been back a week and getting him settled was a major priority for us. Did she remember the application for uniform vouchers? And has James Mac been turning up for that plasterer’s course? I finger my work mobile but sigh out loud and bury it deep in my bag. I touch my stomach and smile my apology to the Bean. I
am
going to enjoy this.

I take my time sifting through the books in the Amorous Cat, Miles Davis parsing his sorrow in the background. I find myself vacillating between the books I want to have read and those I want to read. I fudge it, plumping for a collection of Paul Bowles essays and Jackie Collins’
Lady Boss
. I know which august tome will be seeing me through the next few weeks and beyond. I picture the scene: me, sat up in bed reading, a late September sun slanting across the baby’s head as he suckles at my breast. I’m sure the Bean is a boy; he just
feels
like a boy, and if he is I know exactly what I will call him. My tummy does a little flip at the thought of him – that he’ll be
here, in my arms, any time now; but the reverie is broken by the bray of school kids over the road. Instinctively, I grope for my work phone in my bag. I dig it out and fire it up again, recalling Faye’s knowing face admonishing me with a look, hearing again the snap of her North Liverpool accent.

‘You do
not
take that mobile out of this office! Hear me? You are going to take time out and you are going to
enjoy
this marvellous thing.’

Now
there’s
a Lady Boss for you.

I pay, decline the shop’s cute carrier bag and make my way down to the park.

I pass by Keith’s, already filling up with its regular cast of students, retired yet ever-more-opinionated academics, professional malingerers and aspiring musicians. Perhaps I should go in and join them, enjoy a glass of wine. A small Rioja would surely take the edge off my funk, help me to forget about work. But a sudden lunge from within, a tiny heel or fist, jolts me back to the here and now. I carry on past the wine bar, nostalgic but happy again, too.

I
did
love that part of my life – long Saturday afternoons at Keith’s, squabbles about books or music, arcane conversations with strangers at the next table, just one more glass, one more bottle. That’d be me, holed up next to the Indian Professor bickering about nothing in particular. Professor of what, nobody could be certain – he
just turned up one evening and, in that cultured, strident and authoritative voice of his, calmly destroyed Mitch Levin’s argument about liberal Islamic states. I loved him for it, mainly because I despised that beardy wanker Levin so much; he’d routinely thrash single female drinkers with his intellect then try, hatefully, to bed them. But the Indian Professor put paid to that, and in no time at all he was one of us; one of the regulars at the wine bar. It was my world not so long ago, but I’m happy to be leaving it behind. I’m ready for motherhood now, ready to be a mum. I want it so badly, it’s hard to imagine ever caring about anything else. Nothing, but nothing else is important any more.

I smile for my own benefit, because the truth is that a year ago I’d given up thinking about children. I was thirty, enjoying life, enjoying work; I wanted to fall in love, of course I did – and as much as I loved my rogues and ragamuffins at work, I dearly wanted kids of my own. Yet, as time ticked by, on some instinctive level I’d come to understand that love wasn’t going to happen again for me; and I was fine with that. I met plenty enough interesting men – well, I met
some
; one or two. Being relatively tall and, I suppose, passably interesting-looking with my mane of red hair, I’ve never wanted for male attention; it’s just that I’ve never wanted
it
either, really. I may be a harsh judge, but I know within moments whether a man is going to set me on fire, and so, so many of them
just don’t. And it’s fire I’m looking for. If it’s not there, it’s not there.

But that was where I was, then: with the exception of my waning relationship with my father – and I knew we could fix that easily enough with a bit of give from him, a bit of take from me – there was not one single aspect of my world that felt lacking. I was chugging along in a state of grace where everything was in its right place and my world made sense to me; and then I got pregnant.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; spontaneous, unprotected sex opens up the possibility of pregnancy. But I was shocked, when it was confirmed; then deeply frightened. My pure response was one of being unready, caught out, found out. I’d wanted a baby for so long, yet now it was real I felt exposed and wholly ill-equipped for the road ahead. A huge part of that stemmed from the circumstances of the conception – not even a fling, let’s be honest, but a knee-trembler with an old flame. But that was the thing. Ruben was a
flame
; and I just didn’t want to tell him he was daddy. I postponed any decision, bided my time.

And then came the scare at nine weeks, the bleed and the frenzied dash to hospital. That was the
real
shock – that, as the taxi tried to weave a path between the speed bumps and I dug my nails into the ball of my thumb, silently cursing the cabbie to go faster – my plan for this,
for life, just settled upon me like an apparition. I actually laughed out loud. Of course, of
course
I would do this alone! It would be me and the baby; just the two of us. It had been that way for me since Mum died. It was always meant to be like that. And I swore to myself that if my embryo survived this trauma I would love it like no other. I would be the best mother a child could ever have.

The nurse who examined me seemed functional, disengaged; but then I caught her gulping and I knew. The baby was dead. The miniature life form had failed and she didn’t know how to tell me. I tried to envisage just how tiny, how frail its little heart must have been. She gave me a pitying look, swallowed hard and left the room; left me wired up to the monitor, left me to work it out for myself. Her footsteps echoed like gunshots in the corridor beyond. I didn’t move. I didn’t
want
to know. For as long as this moment prevailed, as long as nobody came back into the room and took my hand in theirs, looked me directly in the eye and prefaced their tidings with a sigh, then there was still a chance.

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