Chapter 12
Tuesday morning brought a welcome stillness to the house. Joe had gone to work after taking Monday off in lieu of his monthly working Saturday. Adele had gone to the GP’s surgery to register and, hopefully, access some antenatal care. Fiona surveyed her home. The place felt and looked as though it had been invaded by aliens. The bed in the guest room was a dishevelled mess. Adele’s rucksack spewed crumpled clothes on the floor, and the open wardrobe showed a half-hearted attempt at unpacking — presumably symbolic of the fact that Adele didn’t want to be there. A feeling of compassion for this disorientated young woman, heavy with child and hormones, made Fiona start tidying. If her own daughter had lived and found herself in this situation, Fiona would want some other woman to show her understanding and make her welcome. She fully emptied the rucksack, filling the bedside drawers and the wardrobe. Then she remembered the scented drawer liners, an unwanted raffle prize from the summer fayre at her mother’s retirement complex. She emptied the drawers again and carefully cut the violet-scented paper sheets to size. The smell wasn’t the most attractive in the universe but it was a touch of luxury that she hoped the girl would appreciate. She wanted Adele to get the message that Fiona was doing her best.
Afterwards she cleaned the bathroom, which was suffering under triple the usage it normally saw, and then her own bedroom. That was the room that felt most violated. Until a few days ago it had been her private sanctuary, with Fiona able to control who went in and how frequently — i.e. Joe, but only at pre-arranged and rationed times. Now it almost felt as though it was open to the public.
She boiled the kettle and dwelt again on the previous day’s supermarket trip and her inability to cope with the baby department. She was counting on Adele having left before the baby came in a month’s time. Or six weeks if it was late. The thought of having to handle a newborn, to see its detritus everywhere, or at the very least hear it cry and possibly feel a ghostly tingle in her nipples, made her hands shake as she poured a mug of tea. She couldn’t do it. She could pay for Adele to decamp to a hotel. A newspaper headline appeared in her mind: ‘Selfish girlfriend evicts lover’s pregnant daughter at Christmas time’. Not good.
The tea calmed her temporarily. She had to do it. She had to cope with a baby in her home or explain why not. And she couldn’t explain because of the pity tsunami. Pity would open the chute back into that big black hole and remind her that the only person you can properly trust in this world is yourself. Telling her story to Joe, Adele, or even Meeko, would cause them to hover and fuss and treat her like someone who didn’t know her own mind. Just like thirty years ago when Rob had insisted that she needed her mother’s care and had phoned Dorothea without his wife’s permission. Regardless of the pleas from her mother, father, husband, GP and relationship counsellor to let the hormones and grief settle and give Rob a second chance, she’d ploughed on with the divorce. She’d wanted to show them that she did know her own mind, and that meant shedding her skin like a snake and starting afresh, in a new job and free from old relationships. Her friendship circle had eventually got the message and drifted away. Her parents were the only ones she’d felt obliged to provide with her new address and phone number when the marital home was sold and she was forced to rent until she could afford the deposit on a house solely in her name. Consequently, her mother was the only person still in her life today who knew everything that had happened back then.
Without pausing to think, she pulled on a jacket and drove to her mum’s flat. She didn’t want to talk to the old lady about the past or its impact on her current situation — she just wanted to be with someone who knew her completely. Even if the two of them rarely agreed on anything.
“Fiona! I was hoping you’d pop by but I didn’t like to ring because I know what you’re like for sticking to a schedule.”
Despite Fiona’s protestations that she’d only just had a cup of tea, the kettle went on, two homemade scones were warmed and a lacy cloth went over the teak coffee table.
“It’s not your usual day — is something wrong?”
“No.” She didn’t need her mother offering solutions to a problem the old lady couldn’t fully understand.
“So why have you come today?”
That rigid visit schedule was backfiring on her. At the beginning of the year Fiona had annotated her mother’s calendar with all the dates that she could expect to see her only child. This was as much to set expectations on her mother’s side as to give Fiona a sense of order and control in her own life. Dorothea was struggling with loneliness and Fiona wanted her to be heartened by the sight of regular bright orange circles on the calendar, in the same way that yellow circles of sunshine on the weather forecast can make you feel the warmth of the sun on your back. She didn’t want her mum sitting in the flat wondering when or if Fiona might come. This meant she now had to provide a reason for turning up, or run the risk that her mother would expect multiple ad hoc visits in the future — and then suffer disappointment on top of her loneliness.
“The sale of your house.” The letter had arrived on Saturday and ideally Fiona had wanted more time to put plans in place before presenting a fully formed timetable to her mother, but it was the best reason for her visit that she could come up with.
“Am I going to be rich soon?”
“Not exactly. The buyer’s survey has shown some damp in the cellar and a fault with the electrics. They’re asking for a ten-thousand reduction in the price.”
“You do know that your dad and I paid under three thousand for it when we got married in 1960? Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth.”
Fiona had long ago stopped trying to explain that the price her mother had had to pay for the retirement flat, the bridging loan plus the ongoing, sky-high service charge, meant there was no profit from the house sale and her mother’s savings had taken a hit.
“I wouldn’t call it a gift horse but we’ll take the offer because you need that cash now — we can’t wait for another buyer to come along.” It grieved her but it was a financial necessity.
“Have a scone.” Her mother had spread butter and jam thickly on them both. “It’s so nice to have company to eat them. I miss having someone to bake for.”
“I’m not hungry, Mum.”
“I told you before, my freezer’s full of baking and no one to eat it.”
“Could you ask the complex manager to organise a coffee morning and you’ll supply the eats?”
“I don’t know about that. They all keep themselves to themselves around here. Probably no one would come. Go on — have one now. You’ve not an ounce of fat on you.”
And I want to keep it that way. “Can I wrap a couple up and take them home for Joe?”
The old lady beamed. “Take four — men always have a good appetite.”
There were definite benefits to Joe’s presence. Fiona wrapped the scones and dropped them into a plastic carrier bag that Dorothea produced from a kitchen drawer. Then she felt the need to continue justifying her presence at her mother’s flat on an unscheduled day. It was difficult because she didn’t understand herself why she’d suddenly had to come. “I’m clearing out the last few bits in the house,” she said. “There are boxes and boxes full of letters and cards.”
The older lady sat back in her armchair and pressed a button. Silently the foot rest rose and Fiona’s mother’s eyes closed. “Keep the ones that mean something to me. Bin the rest. Most people don’t mean those flowery words, exaggerated kisses and scrawls of ‘with love’. Don’t trust anything that people write in cards.”
True. Fiona thought about her unwritten Christmas cards. But sometimes you had to toe the line of societal norms — in the same way that you couldn’t make a pregnant woman homeless. Write Christmas cards was still sitting on Fiona’s ‘To-Do’ list, the task rudely interrupted by the arrival of Adele. If Fiona’s world hadn’t imploded this weekend, those cards would now be in envelopes, expensively stamped in the top right corner with the over-colourful wings of an angel. “How do I know which mean something to you? Shall I bring them over so you can sort through them?”
“Dear God, no! That would take longer than I’ve got left on this earth. You go through them and pick what I should keep. You’ve got a better analytical eye than me.”
Rare praise! Or emotional blackmail to get a job done. “It won’t be soon, Mum. I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment . . .”
“I thought you’d retired and had all the time in the world?” Dorothea suddenly sat upright, pressing the button to retract the foot rest. She leaned eagerly towards Fiona. “I’ve just remembered what I was going to ask you last time you came. Christmas! Last year we went to that lovely restaurant. Have you remembered to book it again? I know it’s a bit pricey but I’ll pay my share. It would be different if there were going to be babies and children and family around.” A fleeting look of disappointment crossed her mother’s face and then she looked eager again. “But we need to make the best of a . . .”
Bad job . Fiona mentally finished the sentence which her mother had left hanging in the air. The restaurant was booked. She’d done that weeks ago because it was so popular, plus she wanted to avoid the two of them feeling like Billy No-Mates at her dining table with only a game of Scrabble to look forward to. That was before the arrival of Joe and Adele. The expectations of seasonal jollity and inclusion meant that she couldn’t leave them home alone, but in order to do anything else she would have to tell her mother about Adele and the imminent baby. And she had to do it now in order to give her time to get used to the idea so she didn’t go wading into the conversation with size ten boots on.
“I’m glad you brought that up, Mum.” How to phrase what came next in the best possible light?
“Don’t tell me that my ultra-efficient daughter forgot to get our lives organised six months in advance?”
“I hadn’t forgotten. It is booked. But things have changed.” She took a breath. “There will be four of us on Christmas Day.” Technically four and a half.
A smile played around her mother’s lips. “Go on. I’m guessing I’m finally going to meet jolly Joe. You’ve kept him so well hidden, I was beginning to think there must be something wrong with him.”
Fiona sighed. Even though her mum knew all about Rob and the baby, Dorothea still wouldn’t grasp that it was safer for Fiona to keep everyone in their little box and to only have relationships that could never, ever send everything out of control again. “We just don’t live in each other’s pockets, that’s all.”
This time Dorothea sighed, and then suddenly realised exactly what Fiona had said. “What do you mean by four of us?”
“Joe’s daughter, Adele, she’s staying with us as well. And she’s eight months pregnant.” Done. That was all she needed to say. The bare facts were out there and her mother could make of them what she wanted. She didn’t need to explain that there was no baby’s father on the scene. Her mother would make her own skewed judgements on that. “She’ll be with us on Christmas Day.”
There was a moment’s silence while Dorothea computed the facts. Then the old lady’s face shone with sudden delight. “A new baby on the way! Can I call myself a granny-by-proxy? That would be one in the eye for my neighbours — they pity me for not having a phone full of grandchildren photos. It’d better be beautiful, bouncy and hit all its development milestones before any other baby that’s ever lived.”
This wasn’t the reaction Fiona had expected and suddenly she felt sad. Over all these years she’d been consumed by her own grief, her own inability to trust again and therefore to create a family. She’d never thought how this might have affected her mother. By allowing Adele to stay, she was finally doing something right in her mother’s eyes. She smiled. “I think it makes you a great- granny-by-proxy.”
Dorothea looked content. “I think we should eat at your house, not the restaurant. Adele might appreciate being able to have a lie-down — you know how tiring it is being pregnant.”
Fiona put her hand on the yellow stone hanging from the chain around her neck. She only knew the emotions of early pregnancy, not how tiring being heavily pregnant might be.
“Does he know?” Her mother had intuited what she was thinking about Amber.
Fiona shook her head, the lump in her throat blocking her voice.
“If you’re going to be a couple, he needs to know.”
Fiona shrugged again and reached for her coat. Thoughts of Amber had brought her here, but now the subject was out in the open, she couldn’t stay. And she couldn’t countenance telling Joe about her lost daughter.
“I’ll bring the cards and stuff when I’ve been through them all.”
Her mother touched Fiona’s arm. “I’ve got my misgivings but I do hope it works out with Joe. The baby might help banish your demons for good.”
A sudden thought halted Fiona at the door. “You mentioned Rob’s return last time I was here. You and his mum won’t encourage anything, will you? I can’t . . .”
“Thank goodness you reminded me. There’s a card for you on the mantlepiece from him. I think it’s got a letter inside.”
Fiona’s heart dropped like a stone. She stuffed the envelope into her handbag.
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Later.” Or I might just bin it. I have to look to the future, not the past.
“Just one more thing — with all this excitement at home, you won’t abandon me, will you?”
Fiona gave her mum a quick hug. “Of course I won’t. All those bright orange days are still on the calendar.”
“Hmmmm.” Her mother didn’t look convinced, and then her face suddenly came to life. “Take four more scones. That girl . . . Adele, was it? She’ll be eating for two now.”