Before She Was Mine (31 page)

‘I’m fine. Just can’t sleep. And I wanted to check you were OK. You’ve not been yourself this evening.’

‘It was nice to see Melody looking so well,’ I said, side-stepping the question. ‘The job sounds perfect for her.’

‘It does, doesn’t it? Yes, it was good to see her. Michael too, of course. He’s a lovely man. They’re a decent family, really. Let’s have another look at your
ring.’

I passed it over and her rough fingers stroked the smooth metal sides. I could tell she was as impressed as I was. I wondered idly how much it was worth.

I said, ‘Did you mind about the picture?’

Liv glanced up in surprise. ‘I thought it was great. Very well done. He’s a talented artist.’

‘It shows me with Melody, though. Like she’s sort of – staking her claim.’

Round and round she twisted the ring, studying the colours inside the garnet the way I’d done. Then she said, ‘It’s not about who you belong to. Maybe at first, years ago when
you were very young and I was a brand new mum and not so sure of myself. I used to have these silly nightmares. But I don’t think of you as hers or mine, I think of you as yourself. Gosh,
look at you. All grown up.’ She placed the ring back on the bed, then reached over and ran her finger down my cheek and under my chin.

‘And I’d treasure any picture of you as a baby,’ she went on, ‘because that was the happiest period of my life, when you came along. The three years before we got you
were dreadful, actually. Dreadful.’

I’d seen plenty of photos of Liv and Colin before they adopted me. When I got to twelve or thirteen, I’d become obsessed with them, poring over old albums repeatedly, unsticking
every picture to see if there were any messages written on the back, taking copies to make screensavers, wallpaper for my phone, my own mini-album. There were pictures from college, wedding ones,
holiday snaps and a couple of what looked like parties or work dos: Liv, in her twenties then, long red hair and full, plump cheeks, and Colin resplendent in patterned sweaters and a side parting.
They seemed carefree and young. I’d never thought about them having tough years. I suppose the story I’d told myself was that one day they decided they’d like a baby, so they just
trotted along to the adoption agency and got one. That simple. ‘Is it hard, adopting? The process, I mean. Does it take a long time?’

She grimaced. ‘You have
no
idea, Frey. God, the hoops they have you jumping through, endless. Constantly worried you’re going to fail at every one. You see, whatever feelings
I’ve had towards Melody over the years, underneath everything I’ll always be so grateful to her. Because of what she rescued us from. As soon as we married we were trying and trying for
a baby, and getting nowhere. People would ask when we were going to start a family – it’s one of those questions complete strangers feel they can come out with – and we had to
pretend we didn’t want one.’

‘Why didn’t you tell them the truth?’

‘It was easier. If you reveal you’re infertile then that’s the green light for a lot of intrusive and sometimes quite unkind personal questions. Pitying looks, whispers. And
friends, family were all busy producing, and we’d get cards through the post with photos of newborns, and we’d have to go to christenings and I’d be given other women’s
babies to hold. You can’t lock yourself away from it, much as you’d like to.

‘Then in the end it turned out to be my fault, my dodgy tubes, and that was rotten because I felt as though I’d let Colin down. I thought he might want to walk away, to start again
with a woman whose insides were in proper working order. But he was so good with me, Frey. He said, “We’re in this together.” And he kept telling me we’d be all right,
he’d get me a baby somehow. I didn’t think we’d ever get there, though. The paperwork and the waiting, the endless interviews. They were dark times. Very dark.’

‘You never told me much about it.’

‘It stopped mattering when you came along.’ Her eyes were seeing something far away. ‘I remember particularly, there was this one weekend when we went to Avebury – Colin
booked it as a surprise, to cheer me up – and I was so sure I was pregnant. We walked all round the standing stones, and he was going on about so-called primitive societies being more
sophisticated than we gave them credit for, and would someone today be able to make a polished axe head using their bare hands, and all I could think of was that I might really be having a baby.
The sun was shining and there were these mallard ducklings by the car park, it was perfect. Then, on the way home, we stopped for a meal at a pub and I found out my period had started. I was
inconsolable, the weekend ruined. Poor Col.’

We’re in this together.
What a lovely thing to say. I thought of Oggy, his disconnection, his sheer bloody uselessness, and then of the father I hardly got to know.

Liv stood up and went over to the window, drew back the curtain.

‘What can you see?’ I asked. From where I lay it was all reflection.

‘Checking for our bat. Our little pip.’

‘Is he there?’

‘Can’t see him. Lots of moths about so he won’t be going hungry.’

Snatches of the past slid against each other and clicked into place. New patterns formed out of the darkness. There was this feel about the room, like we’d entered a charmed hour, a space
where we could talk about all sorts of things we normally avoided.

‘Melody’s phoned you again.’

‘I’ve chatted to her a few times lately.’

‘What do you talk about?’

‘Well – baby Elizabeth. Cancer. Loss. You.’ She turned and smiled at me. ‘Oh, you know she wants to make up my eyes with some expensive shadow she’s discovered?
Give me false eyelashes, brows, the works. Can you imagine?’

‘That’s thoughtful.’

‘I know.’

‘Will you let her?’

‘I can’t be bothered with it. I might tell her the chemo makes me allergic.’

She peered through the glass again.

‘Do you like Melody?’ I said. ‘As a person, aside from who she is.’

‘I feel dreadfully sorry for what she’s gone through.’

‘But do you like her?’

‘I think I do, yes. Now I understand her better.’

‘You haven’t always.’

Stillness, and the tiny ping of an insect against the pane.

‘Did you mind when I first got in touch with her? I know you said you didn’t, but did you, really?’

Liv sighed. ‘It wasn’t for me to mind, Frey. I always knew it would happen.’

‘You were upset, though, weren’t you? I didn’t get it at the time. Like, lately, when I’ve been thinking back, there were all these little details I didn’t pick up
on. I can see them now. I don’t know how I missed them.’ I was thinking of a trip Mel, Michael and I had taken to Alton Towers. Getting back late, falling through our front door,
shrieking with laughter and wet from a Coke-bottle fight, while behind me Melody and Michael wrestled over a feathered headdress they’d bought off one of the stalls. Liv’s face lined
and stern as she stood under the harsh hall light.

‘I suppose it would have been easier if
she’d
contacted
you
, then you and I would have been in it together. As it was, you were so full of your new mother, so full of
new ideas. You obviously wanted to re-invent yourself. And of course Melody’s so glamorous. I felt like a clapped-out old nag next to her.’ She gave an awkward laugh.

‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

‘Because ever since you came to me, whatever else has been happening, my number one instinct’s been to protect you. You can’t blame me. I’m a mum: it’s what we
do.’

‘I’m grown up now.’

‘My head knows that. The rest of me – it’s hard to let go sometimes.’

‘Which is why you won’t talk to me about your cancer any more.’

She blinked, and her lips formed words I couldn’t hear. Then she said: ‘The trouble with mothers is we want to keep you safe against all the odds. Like King Canute battling the tide.
We can’t help trying, even though we’re doomed to failure.’

Liv left the window and sat by me again. I could smell her aloe vera face cream, and it was comforting. When I was in the infants, she used to rub me with sunscreen that had the same scent. Her
palms were always sandpapery with working outdoors. When she bent to massage my legs, her long hair would shake in a wavy curtain.

‘I wish,’ she said, ‘I wish in retrospect you’d had a bit of proper adoption counselling. Social Services wanted you to. They were good with me. They got me to keep a
diary, just a personal one, for myself. It was very helpful, actually.’

‘Did you?’ I was amazed she’d never mentioned it.

‘Only for a few months. Till things settled down.’

‘Have you still got it? Can I read it?

‘No,’ she said. I didn’t know which question she was answering.

I put out my arms and buried my face against her as if I was still a little girl. When I let her go her scarf had slipped to one side. Her face was pink as she pulled the material back into
place.

She said, ‘I think it’s been hard for you, juggling two mothers.’

‘I belong to an adaptable generation. Plus it’s one of those situations that probably seems much more hectic from the outside than it is.’

‘I hope that’s true. I’ve fretted for years about the effect it’s had on your confidence. Because you’re not very confident, are you? And I don’t know why.
Have I tried to protect you too much? Is it my fault? Is it Melody’s?’

‘It’s no one’s. I’m fine. Look at me, happy happy happy. Really, I am. Anyway, according to Mrs Steuer I’ve been “terribly brave”. I think she’s
been dying for me to have a meltdown and run away or go on drugs. She talks about “your family trouble”, as though we’re all marked with some terrible curse. You know she still
refers to divorced households as “broken homes”.’

‘I expect she calls Melody a Fallen Woman.’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised. Once she told me I’d “survived a hellish upbringing very well”.’

Liv gave a weak smile. ‘Funny, I’ve often looked at Nicky and thought the same thing about her.’

Both of us began to snigger meanly. Joan Steuer with her forest of Swarovski, her massed ranks of Doulton figurines. Derek bringing out the after-dinner port in a silver-labelled decanter.

‘God, Mum, imagine being brought up in that house. Petrified of knocking over a little table or nudging some crinoline lady off a shelf. Being made to leave your Doc Martens by the
door.’

‘Would she even have let you own anything as subversive as Doc Martens?’

‘No way. She’d have put me into care the day I refused to wear heels. Or had me sectioned.’

‘See, you could have had a worse mum.’

‘Well, I could.’

Now, across the sympathetic hush that fell between us, began a weird snuffling and shuffling from the other side of the door. The landing light flicked on and off several times, followed by a
thud at skirting level and a cry.

We looked at each other.

A feeble scrabble and then the door burst open: Geraint was wearing a knackered grey T-shirt with a Led Zeppelin motif, and a towel wrapped round his waist. His glasses were missing, making the
top half of his face look lopsided and unfinished.

He stood and blinked at us resentfully. ‘I didn’t know where everyone was.’

‘What the
hell
are you wearing?’ I asked him.

He cast his eyes down, forlorn. ‘It was all I could find. Liv took my dressing gown for a badger cub, for lining its box. I never got it back.’

‘Oh, God, I’d forgotten about that.’ She tried to look contrite, but I could see she was struggling not to smile. ‘It’s probably still at Woodlands Mammal Shelter.
Sorry. I’ll pick it up next week, I promise. It might need a wash.’

‘Aw, Geraint, that’s tragic, though. Would you deprive a baby badger of its only comfort?’

‘Frey! I’ll go over on Tuesday, first thing.’

‘But it’s probably too late, isn’t it?’ I went on. ‘They’ll have made nests and bedding out of it. The staff might have cut it up for bandages. I mean, think
how many poorly weasels you could splint out of a dressing gown that size. About a million, probably. And even if it’s still in one piece, it’ll be covered in filth. You know what
frightened animals do. I’d definitely be checking the pockets before you put it in the machine, ’cause you don’t want a drumful of undigested pellets. Little mouse bones poking
you in the stomach afterwards.’

‘I could try some fabric conditioner—’

‘That lingering smell of rescue centre. Whiff of Polecat. Hint of Mink.’

‘You know they don’t take in mink.’

‘Pong of Otter.’

‘
Frey!
’

Geraint stood and peered at us for a few more seconds, then without a word he turned and walked away, closing the door behind him with an offended click. I let out a great snort of mirth. Liv
flapped her hand at me to stop, but I was too far gone. Soon we were both helpless on the bed.

‘He—’ She was trying to say something but she couldn’t get the words out. ‘He—’

‘Smells of badger?’

Her scarf slipped off and there she was in her baldness, with tears running down her face. The naked skin didn’t matter. ‘Don’t make me— He’s a decent
man—’

‘Who smells of badger.’

My belly hurt but I couldn’t stop. I don’t know how long we lay together, laughing into the night.

Case Notes on: Melody Jacqueline Brewster

Meeting Location:
42,
Love Lane, Nantwich

Present: Miss Melody Brewster, Mrs Abby Brewster, Mrs Diane Kozyra

Date:
10.45
a.m.,
29/4/87

Some concerns raised by this visit. I found Melody very upset. Mrs Brewster said her daughter was struggling with her school-work, had not been sleeping well and had been
experiencing some shortness of breath. Her GP is investigating asthma, though he’d said the breathlessness could also be panic attacks.

Eventually Melody asked if she could speak to me alone and Mrs Brewster agreed to leave us together for a short time. Then Melody told me she was worried about her baby. I asked whether she
was changing her mind about the adoption, but she was adamant that she was not. However she did express the following specific anxieties: What if Fay cried in the night and the new parents
didn’t hear her? What if she became ill and they didn’t notice till it was too late? What if the man secretly wanted a son and hadn’t told his wife?