The Baby Group (54 page)

I can’t remember the doctor’s name because it’s very long with a great many syllables, which I think is funny. I mentioned this as Mum and I sat there waiting for him to finish looking at the notes on his screen and deliver the bad news, but no one else was amused. There’s a time and a place for gallows humour, it seems.

The rain is driving down faster now, and heavier; I wished I’d flounced off with my coat. After a while all the roads round here start to look the same: 1930s semis, in row after row, either side of the street. I’m looking for curtains, aren’t I? What colour?

I turn a corner and see a little row of shops, and I stop. I’ve come out for a coffee, then? This is where I come on a Saturday morning with Greg and Esther for a pain au chocolat and a coffee. It’s dark, though, and cold and wet. And I don’t seem to have a coat on, and I check my hand, which is empty of Esther’s, and for a moment I hold on tight to my chest, worrying that I’ve forgotten her. But I didn’t have her when I started. If I’d had her when I started, I’d be carrying her monkey, which she always insists on taking out but never wants to carry herself. So I’ve come here for coffee. I’m having some me time. That’s nice.

I head across the road, grateful for the rush of warm air that greets me as I enter the café. People look up at me as I walk in through the door. I suppose I must look quite a sight with my hair plastered to my face.

I wait at the counter, belatedly realising that I am shivering. I must have forgotten my coat. I wish I could remember why I came out for coffee. Am I meeting someone? Is it Greg? I come here sometimes with Greg and Esther for a pain au chocolat.

‘You all right, love?’ the girl, who’s about Caitlin’s age, asks me. She is smiling, so perhaps I know her. Or perhaps she is just being friendly. A woman sitting with her toddler buggy, just to my left, pushes it a little further away from me. I must look strange, like a lady recently emerged from a lake. Haven’t they ever seen a wet person before?

‘Coffee, please,’ I say. I feel the weight of change in my jeans pocket, and produce it in my fist. I can’t remember how much the coffee is here, and when I look at the board over the counter where I know the information is displayed, I am lost. I hold out the coins in the palm of my hand and offer them up.

The girl wrinkles her nose, as if money I’ve touched might somehow be tainted, and I feel very cold now and very lonely. I want to tell her why I am hesitating, but the words won’t come – not the right ones, anyway. It’s harder to say things out loud than think them in my head. It makes me scared to say anything to anyone I don’t know, in case I say something so ludicrous they just cart me away and lock me up, and by that time I’ve forgotten my name and . . .

I glance towards the door. Where is this café? I went to the hospital with Mum, we saw the consultant, Mr Thingy, I couldn’t remember his name, I thought that was quite funny, and now I am here. But I can’t think why I am here, or even where here is. I shudder, taking the coffee and the brown coins that the girl has left on the counter; and then I go and sit down, very still. I feel like if I move suddenly, I might trip some hidden trap, and that something will harm me or I might fall off something. I feel like I might fall very far. I sit still and concentrate hard on how come I am here and how on earth I will leave. And where I will go. Little pieces come back to me – fragments rushing forward with pieces of information that I must somehow decode. The world is shattered all around me.

I’m not responding to the treatment, that much I know. It was always likely. The odds of the drugs doing anything for me were just the same as flipping a coin and calling heads: fifty-fifty. But everyone hoped that, for me, the treatment would make all the difference. Because I am so young, because I have two daughters, and one of them is only three and one will be left to pick up the pieces. They all hoped it would work for me, and work better than anyone – even the doctor with the long and difficult name – ever thought possible. And I too hoped for the groundbreaking miracle that would change everything. It seemed right that fate or God should allow me, of all people, some special dispensation because of my extenuating circumstances. But fate or God has not done that: whichever one it is that is having a good laugh at my expense has done the opposite. Or perhaps it’s nothing so personal. Perhaps it’s just genealogical accidents stretching back millennia that have brought me to this moment in time when I am the one chosen to bear the consequences. I am deteriorating much faster than anyone thought I would. It’s to do with these little emboli. I can remember that word perfectly well, but I have no idea what the metal stirring thing that came with my coffee is called. But the word emboli is quite beautiful, musical almost, poetic. Tiny little blood clots exploding in my brain. It’s a new feature, not something the experts expected. It makes me almost unique in the world, and everyone at the hospital is very excited about it, even though they try to pretend they are not. All I know is that every time one pops up, some more of me is gone for good – another memory, a face or a word, just lost, like me. I look around me, feeling colder now than before, and realise I feel afraid. I have no idea how to get home. I’m here, and I feel sane, but leaving this place seems impossible.

There are Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling, which is odd. I don’t remember it being Christmas; I am sure it is not Christmas. But what if I’ve been here for weeks? What if I left home and just walked and walked and didn’t stop, and now I’m miles from anywhere and months have gone by and they all think I am dead? I should call Mum. She’ll be angry with me for running off. She tells me that if I want her to treat me like an adult, I need to behave like an adult. She says it’s all about trust. And I say, well, don’t go through my things, then, bitch. I don’t say the bitch bit out loud.

I’d text her, but she doesn’t have a phone. I keep telling her, this is the twentieth century, Mum, get with the programme. But she doesn’t like them. She doesn’t like the fiddly buttons, she reckons. But I wish Mum were here; I wish she were here to take me home, because I am not sure where I am. I look intently around the café. What if she’s here and I have forgotten what she looks like?

Wait, I am ill. I am not a girl any more. I am ill and I have come out for a coffee and I can’t remember why. My curtains are a colour and they glow. Orange, maybe. Orange rings a bell.

‘Hello.’ I look up. There’s a man. I am not supposed to talk to strangers so I look back down at the table. Perhaps he will go away. He does not. ‘Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Well, I’m cold.’

‘Would you mind if I sit here? There’s nowhere else.’ I look around and the café is busy, although I can see other empty chairs. He looks OK, even nice. I like his eyes. I nod. I wonder if I’ll have enough words to be able to talk to him.

‘So you came out without a coat?’ he asks, gesturing at me.

‘Looks like it!’ I say carefully. I smile, so as not to scare him. He smiles in return. I could tell him I am ill. He might help me. But I don’t want to. He has nice eyes. He is talking to me like I’m not about to drop down dead at any second. He doesn’t know anything about me. Neither do I, but that’s beside the point.

‘So what happened?’ He chuckles, looking bemused, amused. I find I want to lean towards him, which I suppose makes him magnetic.

‘I only popped out for a pint of milk,’ I tell him, smiling. ‘And locked myself out. I share a flat with three girls and my . . .’ I stop short of saying my baby. For two reasons. First, because I know that this is now, and that it was years ago when I shared a flat with three girls, and back then I didn’t even have a baby. Secondly, because I don’t want him to know that I’ve got a baby, a baby who is not a baby any more. Caitlin, I have Caitlin, who is not a baby. She will be twenty-one next year and my curtains are ruby red and glow. I remind myself that I am not in a position to flirt: I’m a married mother of two.

‘Can I buy you another coffee?’ He signals to the woman behind the counter, who smiles at him as if she knows him. I find it reassuring that the café woman likes him too. I’m losing the ability to judge people by their expressions, and by those little subtle nuances that let you know what a person is thinking and feeling. He might be looking at me like I am a nutter. All I have to go on is his nice eyes.

‘Thank you.’ He is kind and he is talking to me just like I’m a person. No, not that; I am a person. I am still a person. I mean he’s talking to me like I’m me, and I like it. It’s warming me through, and I feel oddly happy. I miss feeling happy – just happy, without feeling that every moment of joy I experience now must also be tinged with sadness.

‘So, you’re locked out. Is someone going to ring you when they get back, or bring you a key?’

I hesitate. ‘There will be someone in, in a bit.’ I have no idea if that’s a lie. ‘I’ll wait a while and then go back.’ That is a lie. I don’t know where I am or how to get to back, wherever that is.

He chuckles, and I look at him sharply. ‘Sorry.’ He smiles. ‘It’s just that you do actually look like a drowned rat, and a very pretty one, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

‘I don’t mind you saying so,’ I say. ‘Say more like that!’

He laughs again.

‘I’m a fool,’ I say, warming to my new not-ill status. It feels good to be just me, and not me with the disease, the thing that now defines me. I’ve found a moment of peace and normality in this maelstrom of uncertainty, and it is such a relief. I could kiss him with gratitude. Instead I talk too much. I’m famous for talking too much; it used to be a thing about me that people enjoyed. ‘I always have been. If something can go wrong, it happens to me. I don’t know why, but it’s like I’m a magnet for mishap. Ha, mishap. There’s a word you don’t hear often enough.’ I rattle on and I don’t really care what I am saying out loud, conscious only that here I am, a girl talking to a boy.

‘I’m a bit like that too,’ he says. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I will ever grow up.’

‘I know that I won’t,’ I say. ‘I know it for sure.’

‘Here.’ He hands me his paper napkin. ‘You look a little bit like you’ve escaped the apocalypse. Just.’

‘A paper napkin?’ I take it and laugh, dabbing it on my hair, face, wiping it under my eyes. When I take it away, there is black stuff on it, which means I put some black stuff on my eyes at some point today, a fact I find comforting: black stuff on my lashes means my eyes will look better, I will look better, even if I look like a better panda. ‘Better than nothing, I suppose.’

‘There’s a hand dryer in the toilet,’ he says, pointing at a door behind him. ‘You could give yourself a quick blast under that. Take the edge off.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say, patting my damp knees as if to make a point. I do not want to leave this table, this seat, this coffee, and go anywhere else. Here it feels like I am almost safe, like I’m clinging on to a ledge, and as long as I don’t move I will be fine and I won’t fall. The longer I can sit here, without having to think about where I am and how to get home, the better. I push away the surge of fear and panic, and concentrate on now. On feeling happy.

‘How long have you been married?’ He nods at the ring on my finger, which I notice with mild surprise. It feels right there, as if it has bedded into its place on my person, yet somehow it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with me.

‘It’s my father’s,’ I say, the words coming from a long ago moment in the past, another time when I said them to another boy. ‘When he died my mum gave me his ring to wear. I wear it always. One day I’ll give it to the man I love.’

There is a moment of silence, awkwardness, I suppose. Once again, present and past converge, and I’m lost. I am so very lost that really all there is in this world is this moment, this table, this person speaking kindly to me, those very nice eyes.

‘Perhaps I could take you for another coffee, then?’ he says, sounding hesitant, cautious. ‘When you are dry and not stuck in the middle of a disaster. I could meet you here or anywhere you like.’ He reaches over to the counter and picks up a stumpy writing thing that is not a pen and scrawls on my folded napkin. ‘The rain has stopped, shall I walk you home?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘You might be a maniac.’

He smiles. ‘So ring me, then? For a coffee?’

‘I won’t ring you,’ I say, apologetically. ‘I’m very busy. Chances are I won’t remember to.’

He looks at me and laughs. ‘Well, if somehow you find the time or the impulse, then ring me. And don’t worry; you’ll get back into your flat. One of your flatmates will turn up any second, I’m certain.’

‘My name is Claire,’ I tell him in a rush as he gets up. ‘You don’t know my name.’

‘Claire.’ He smiles at me. ‘You look like a Claire.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I laugh. ‘And you, what’s your name?’

‘Ryan,’ he says. ‘I should have written it on the napkin.’

‘Goodbye, Ryan,’ I say, knowing that very soon he won’t even be a memory. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’ He looks perplexed.

‘That napkin!’ I say, holding up the scrunched-up sodden piece of tissue.

I watch him leave the café, chuckling to himself, and disappear into the dark night. I say his name over and over again. Perhaps if I say his name enough times, it will stick. I will be able to pin it down. A woman on the next table is watching him leave. She is frowning, and her frown is disconcerting. It makes me wonder if everything I thought just happened really did – if it was a nice happy moment or if something bad happened that I hadn’t seen, because I’ve stopped being able to tell the difference. I’m not ready for that to happen yet. I don’t want that to be true yet. It’s dark outside now, except for a slash of pink sky cutting through the cloud as the sun sets. The woman is still frowning, and I am stuck on this chair.

‘Claire?’ A woman leans over me. ‘Are you OK? What’s wrong?’

I look at her, her smooth oval face, long straight brown hair. The frown is concern, I think, and I think she knows me.

‘I am not exactly sure how to get home,’ I confide in her, for want of any better solution.

She looks towards the door and then obviously thinks better of what she was about to say. Instead she turns back to me, with the frown again. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? It’s fine, I know about your . . . problem. My name is Leslie, and our daughters are friends. My daughter is Cassie, with the pink hair and the nose piercing? And the awful taste in men? There was a time about four years ago when our girls were inseparable.’