Book of Lost Threads (5 page)

Amy settled back to listen. Linsey was a very good planner.

‘We’ll advertise in
Vox Discipuli
,’ Linsey told her. ‘Offer money. That should find the target market.’

Target market. Odd language
, Amy thought briefly.

Linsey would always look back on the period of Amy’s pregnancy as the happiest of their lives together. After a passing nod to morning sickness, Amy bloomed. Her skin glowed, her dimple deepened and her hair shone. As her belly rounded, she lay on the sun-lounge, sleepy-eyed and full of promise, with a kind of tawny, feline grace that reminded Linsey of the great cats of Africa.

‘But without the claws.’ She laughed as she stroked the burgeoning belly. And Amy laughed with her. At the time, neither of them understood the ferocity at the heart of a mother’s love.

Linsey fussed, of course. And Amy cooperated amiably with the exercise and diet regime that Linsey devised from the many books she’d acquired on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth.

As the pregnancy unfolded, their families, knowingly or unknowingly, participated in the fiction of the two women as housemates. Amy’s mother, Kathy, was very impressed with Linsey’s devotion to her pregnant daughter. ‘Linsey’s so good to her,’ she said to Linsey’s mother. ‘I don’t know what she would have done without her.’

‘I don’t believe it’s such a great burden,’ the other woman replied drily, watching her daughter pour the coffee.

‘Still, I wish she’d tell us who the father is.’ Kathy was mortified at the thought of her daughter as an unmarried mother, let alone the issue of a one-night 35 stand. She still had faint hopes of a wedding.

‘I doubt that will happen,’ Meredith Brookes replied. ‘I doubt that very much indeed.’

Amy gave birth to an eight-pound baby girl with huge, fathomless eyes and a thatch of dark hair that stood straight up, giving her a look of mild shock.

‘Funny little thing. She looks surprised by the world,’ Linsey said as she held her daughter close. ‘Amy, I love you both so much.’

‘Me too,’ murmured a sleepy Amy.

If the pregnancy had been a time of happiness for Linsey, the birth was a time of such fierce and overwhelming joy that she could scarcely breathe for the wonder of it. She vowed that this child would be loved and cared for, that she would have the best education, the best start in life of any child who had ever lived. She plunged into motherhood with an intense, controlling passion. Her emotional extravagance was all the more tragic in that she had no natural facility with children and didn’t understand how to translate her love into language that a child could understand. By contrast, while Linsey devoured books on childcare, Amy’s love flowed with her milk and she sang little nonsense songs and played with her baby’s toes.

Linsey was godmother when Miranda Ophelia was christened in the cream brick Uniting church where her birth mother had gone to Sunday school. Amy’s single status was met with some disapproval by the congregation.
She always was
a bit flighty
, they sniffed as they sipped their tea.
She’s lucky to
have found such a fine person to be godmother.
Kathy had broadcast Linsey’s merit throughout the parish, innocently placing her where a father might more usually be found.

Linsey’s family were puzzled by the thought of a christening. Her brother, Robert, was happy to go along without question, but Felicity couldn’t resist. ‘You’re not even a Christian, Lins,’ she said. ‘What’s this all about?’

But Linsey knew exactly what she was about. Amy, as birth mother, had a legitimate title, a legitimate claim for recognition as the baby’s mother. ‘Being godmother gives me some small public connection with Miranda,’ Linsey said simply.

Felicity put an arm around her sister’s thin shoulders. ‘You know best, Lins.’

When Moss awoke, the kitchen was still dark, but, try as she might, she couldn’t go back to sleep. The air mattress had deflated and her hipbone was uncomfortably sharp against the floor. She turned onto her back. She plumped the pillow. She listened to the rain drumming on the roof. Finally, she sat up and clasped her knees, wondering what Linsey would say if she knew where she was.

Her earliest memory was of a day at the beach. She must have been three or four. Her mothers were each holding a hand and swinging her over the waves. She was giggling and squealing until her hand slipped from Amy’s grasp and suddenly she was choking on a mouthful of water. Linsey was scooping her up and Moss felt the fear that rippled along the encircling arms. Coughing up the last of the water, she squirmed to escape.

‘Mummy Amy,’ she called. ‘Mummy Amy.’

Linsey released her abruptly. ‘Here. You take her,’ she said, pushing the child into Amy’s arms. ‘And for God’s sake, try to be a bit more careful in future.’

Had her own actions helped push Linsey away? This thought had always made her uneasy. The night she was rushed to hospital with asthma, for instance. It was Linsey who bundled her up so decisively and confronted the triage nurse, ensuring that not a moment was wasted.

Moss remembered waking up in the narrow cot, the nebuliser over her face, to find a dark figure watching over her. It was Linsey, her hand threaded through the bars of the cot and resting lightly on her own.

‘Where’s Mummy? Where’s Mummy?’ Moss clawed at the 37 mask, dislodging it.

Linsey’s voice was soothing. ‘It’s okay, Miranda. I’m here.’

‘I want Mummy
Amy
.’ As Moss’s wail filled the sleeping ward, Linsey tried frantically to calm her.

‘Mummy Amy’s just gone to get a coffee. She won’t be long, now. Shh, Miranda. You’ll wake the other children. Look, you’ve started to wheeze again.’ Linsey struggled to replace the nebuliser but Moss continued to wheeze and wail until Amy came hurrying back. Her mothers changed places at her bedside while a nurse dealt with the nebuliser.

‘Thank God you’re back, Amy.’ Linsey sounded really frightened. ‘That awful wheeze . . .’

Why had she acted in that way? Moss now wondered. Small children are said to sometimes favour one parent, then the other, but Moss had always favoured Amy. She
had
loved Linsey, but always felt she had to measure up, whereas with Amy, she felt she had nothing to prove.

One way and another, Moss had had a singular upbringing. Until she started school, she hadn’t realised that there was something odd about her family. She knew of at least two other children who didn’t seem to have fathers and it had never occurred to her that there was anything remarkable about having two mothers.

She was still in first grade when, walking home from school one day, she was confronted by three older boys who shattered her simple view of the world. She was with Zoe and Michelle, her two best friends. They were nice friends, she remembered. It was a nice day and they were talking about—she couldn’t remember what, but it was funny. They were giggling, smothering their giggles behind grubby fingers, doubled over with secret laughter. She did remember that—that and a little cloud, shaped like her granny’s Staffie, Geordie. The three friends crossed the road at the lights and began to skip across the park. They were nearly at the other side when three fourth-grade boys leaped out from the bushes in front of them.

‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’ they chanted. ‘M’randa’s mother’s a lezzo!’

The little girls moved closer together. Puzzled, Zoe and Michelle looked at each other and then at Moss, who was equally puzzled but on the defensive. The trouble was, she wasn’t sure whether it was Amy or Linsey she had to defend.

‘Which mother?’ she challenged.

The boys feigned paroxysms of laughter, snorting and guffawing, punching each other with delight. ‘Which mother! Did you hear what she said? Which mother!’

The little girls took the opportunity to flee.

‘Lezzos,’ her tormentors called out after her. ‘Lezzos.’

Moss burst through the door and flung herself at Amy. ‘David Hynes and the other boys said you and Mummy Linsey are lizards,’ she sobbed.

Twenty-three-year-old Moss slid down into her sleeping bag and remembered Linsey’s distressed indignation and the embrace of Amy’s soft arms as her mothers attempted to explain their relationship to a little girl struggling with matters beyond her comprehension. She had finally found comfort in one certainty. ‘I knew you weren’t lizards,’ she told them firmly. ‘David’s a stupid idiot.’

Kids like me have it so much easier today
, Moss thought.
It
was so unfair. They were good parents, both of them.

Yes, she loved them both, but there was a stillness, a placidity, in Amy that made her seem somehow safer. As she matured, Moss became aware that Linsey was all angles and energy, and she saw how Amy’s slow, slovenly beauty drove her partner to a distraction of love and fury. In many ways Moss was like Linsey, but despite that, or because of it, the child gravitated to Amy. As a consequence, she too experienced Linsey’s sharpness and often felt she had fallen short. In her childish way, Moss tried to please, tidying her bedroom, for instance, only for Linsey to cluck over the books she’d pushed under the bed, or flick at the dust she’d failed to see on the dressing-table.

‘Miranda, is it too much to ask that you put a little effort into your room? Go back and do it properly.’

And if Amy didn’t come to her rescue, Moss would sulkily comply.

She tried hard at school, but soon discovered that she wasn’t the prodigy Linsey believed she ought to be. Despite her best efforts, the As were elusive and Cs more common than Bs. With the exception of music, at which she excelled,
Miranda
tries hard
was the best she could hope for on her school reports.

Linsey was neither cruel nor ignorant. She knew that a child who is trying and only achieving Bs and Cs is worthy of praise, possibly even more so than the gifted A student. But Moss always ran first to Amy with her report and sheltered there from the frown of disappointment she sensed rather than saw as Linsey scanned her meagre achievements. It mattered little that this was always followed by:
Good girl. Maybe better
next time.
Moss didn’t want to be a good girl. She wanted to be a smart girl. A clever girl. A girl of whom Mummy Linsey could be proud.

‘To think your father was a mathematician,’ Linsey once said, shaking her head over the results of a maths test. Moss was instantly alert.

‘Linsey . . .’ Amy’s voice was laden with warning.

Moss had filed that snippet away. It was all she knew of her father, and she never dared to ask for more until much later.

The last of the rain spattered like gravel on her father’s tin roof, and Moss became aware of the stirring of a new day. A cock crowed in the distance and the window shape emerged, a faint luminosity on the opposite wall. She thought of the morning when Linsey (she was just Linsey, by then; the ‘mother’ tag had stuck only to Amy) had come into her room to say goodbye. The noises then were city noises, but the dawn window glow was the same.

She had heard the door open and saw Linsey’s dark shape materialise beside her bed. Amy, a much larger woman, always moved on cat-feet, but Linsey, who barely cast a shadow, was inclined to stomp and crash about in her nervous haste. That morning, though, she was like a wraith. Moss felt a hand linger on her cheek and smelled the familiar musky hand cream. A kiss like a breath, a whispered
I love you
, and she was gone.

Moss saw her young self lying still, hands clenched, averting her eyes from the void she now sensed in the house. Linsey had always been there for her. There was a strength in her mother Linsey that made Moss feel safe. Linsey had always discussed things seriously with her, showing her the kind of respect one would show to an equal. Moss didn’t appreciate this approach as a child, but with adolescence she began to value it more. Now Linsey was gone. Bereft, Moss continued to lie stiffly in her bed until she heard Amy pad down the hall. Jumping out of bed and flinging herself at the pyjama-clad figure, she cried out in real fear: ‘Mum! Mum! Don’t you go too!’

Amy gathered her in. ‘Of course I won’t go. You know that. Linsey will come back to see you. You can visit her like we said. She’s your mum too, remember. Don’t cry, sweetheart. I’m here.’ She smoothed the tangled brown hair. ‘We talked about it, Miranda—you said you understood.’

They had talked about it, but Moss hadn’t wanted to listen. For a long time she had tried to ignore the obvious fact that her two mothers were growing apart. Now she couldn’t ignore it any more. On the contrary, she clung to it as the best explanation for Linsey’s departure and never allowed herself to explore the other, more disturbing possibility that she, Moss, might be the real reason that Linsey left them.

By that time, Amy was a plump, untidy woman in her early forties, with sleepy blue eyes and a slow, tantalising smile. The dimple gave her a girlish air and her skin remained remarkably fine. She had never fulfilled her early promise as a musician— but perhaps she never was very good, her grown daughter thought suddenly. Linsey was always so careful to speak well of Amy.

These thoughts were only contributing to her wakefulness. Moss returned her head to the pillow, trying to make her mind blank. She was beginning to drift off to sleep when she became aware of a soft footfall and saw Finn’s unfamiliar shape as he crept into the kitchen. She didn’t stir, but watched as he paused at the table for a moment before opening the door and disappearing into the half-light outside. She heard the gate squeak and then silence. The birds had momentarily ceased their morning song. She wriggled deeper into her sleeping bag. She was so tired.