Chapter 2
Usually, Nicky left once the Bloomers session ended, but after the drama of the day, she invited herself for dinner. Nicky was thirty-one, two years older than me, and had married Theo – the loveliest man I’d ever met – five years ago. She’d gone on to set up Baby Bloomers with me while simultaneously qualifying as a GP and competing in brutal triathlon-type competitions involving mud, sweat and tears.
I could have found all this success a bit irritating, except that the reason she filled her life with other things was because she couldn’t have the thing she wanted most, which was a baby. And in addition to her time spent helping pregnant young women, she also found time to provide love, cuddles and stories to her niece and nephew, for which I would be forever grateful.
‘Auntie Nicky!’ My children, Finn and Isla, came bursting through the front door, down the hall and into my living room, having seen their aunt’s electric car in the driveway.
‘It’s Finn McCool and the Isle of Wight!’ Nicky yelled, jumping up off the sofa and scooping them up in a hug.
‘Shoes!’ I pointed pointlessly at the door back into the hallway. ‘School bags on the rack and lunchboxes by the?—’
‘Yeah, yeah, lunchboxes by the sink. We kno-o-ow-w-w-w,’ Finn replied, rolling eyes the exact same blue as mine from where he was pressed up against Nicky’s ribcage.
‘Well, if you know, then why do you make me say it every single day?’
‘Well,perhaps we need more incentive. Lorcan gets five pounds pocket money every week if he tidies his room and cleans out his rabbits,’ he said, flicking an overgrown strand of thick, dark-blond hair off his face.
‘We don’t have any rabbits,’ Isla said, slipping out of the embrace and coming over to hug me. She had her father’s grey-green eyes, but her hair was the same mass of mahogany curls that I’d had when I was five.
‘Shoes!’ I repeated, spinning her around to show her the fresh trail of mud across my sage-green rug.
‘But I needed to give you a hug!’ Isla’s lip wobbled precariously.
‘That’s lovely.’ My daughter would spend hours entwined around me if possible. ‘But it takes five seconds to take off your shoes, then hug me. It will take a lot longer to clean up the dirty footprints.’
‘Hello-o-o!’ My dad appeared in the doorway, wearing shorts, socks pulled halfway up his shins and no shoes. His hair was a white cloud enfolding his head, his beard bushier than ever. ‘Oh, dear. Did you scallywags forget to take your shoes off again?’
‘They did. As I’ve mentioned, it would really help if you reminded them. Especially when you decide to walk home from school through the fields.’ I hated the irritability in my voice, but I was beyond tired after yet another sleepless night followed by the drama of a baby being born in my kitchen, and adding cleaning the floor to the billion well-overdue tasks on my mental list made me want to roll myself up in that muddy rug and scream.
‘My apologies. I was checking your tyres. Could do with a bit more air in the rear two. I’ll run it over to the garage, if you like.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’ I got up and kissed his cheek, an unspoken apology for snapping. My dad had been a lifesaver in recent years. After retiring from fostering six years ago, when he was fifty-five, he’d tried a few part-time jobs but failed to stick at any of them. After Isla was born he’d downsized from our family home to a tiny cottage and now survived on his share of the profits and a modest pension. He refused to accept any money for picking up his grandchildren from school three times a week, but I paid him in food, craft ales and the occasional gift voucher.
‘Did you check my tyres, too?’ Nicky asked, gesturing at Finn to take off his mud-encrusted shoes.
Dad winked. ‘What do you think?’ Then he disappeared into the kitchen, no doubt looking for any leftover cake from the Bloomers.
Nicky flopped back into a chair as soon as the kids had followed him. ‘Once upon a time you would have resented Dad insinuating you couldn’t take care of your own car.’
‘True. But that was the old Libby who had a point to prove. The new, improved, utterly knackered Libby is happy to admit that she needs help whenever it’s offered.’
She shrugged. ‘As I keep saying, you need to give yourself a break.’
I glanced at my dilapidated living room – the scribbles on the wall from Isla’s ‘creative phase’, the tatty old sofa, myriad stains and scuffmarks and pile of random toys and clutter. Mentally compared my sister’s tailored sleeveless dress showing off toned arms with my faded dungarees and roll of leftover baby bump. The List of a Billion Things to Do flashed into my mind, and I wondered if there’d ever be a day I could find time to even think about a break, let alone give myself one.
‘Looking after two amazing but sometimes excruciatingly exasperating children. Working four days a week and two evenings. Spending your days off dropping round meals to new mums or holding their newborns so they can nap.’ Nicky snorted. ‘If you don’t start taking care of yourself, all that is going to start falling apart.’
I didn’t dare tell Nicky that I suspected it already was. Starting with me.
‘You need to get the dropout to help more. His amount of so-called support is pathetic.’
I cringed at the very thought.
‘I’m not sure Brayden would be especially helpful.’ I refused to call him ‘the dropout’ out loud, even if he had chosen to drop out of our family. He was still the father of my children, despite spending half our marriage sleeping with a woman he met at the gym. I’d discovered his affair when Isla was five months old, and coping with a divorce while raising a baby and toddler and trying to kickstart my business had nearly broken me. A couple of months ago he’d made a passing reference to his new baby, due in early autumn, which he’d assumed I’d known about because he’d announced it on his social media. When I’d replied that I hadn’t looked at his social media since our divorce came through, he’d seemed genuinely stunned. I would have questioned whether letting the mother of his current children find this out on an Instagram post was okay, but I was too busy trying not to burst into tears in front of him.
So, while happy to accept help from my dad, especially knowing that he was as lonely as me, I couldn’t imagine how bad things would have to get before I asked for anything from my ex-husband.
Once Dad had pootled off with my car, the kids played on the trampoline while Nicky and I reheated us all the leftover spaghetti from lunch, prepping a huge bowl of fresh salad because Nicky generally ran on about ten portions of fruit and veg a day.
‘Mummy, why is there a giant and tiny pair of pants under the table?’ Isla asked, her mouth full of pasta.
Before I could react, Finn had dived underneath and sprung up again with the underwear dangling off the end of his fork. ‘Giant and tiny,’ was an apt description for Daisy’s deep-red maternity thong. I leant over to grab the fork, but before I could reach it Finn flicked the knickers across the table, and they landed perfectly draped across his sister’s face.
‘Mu-u-u-u-u-u-ummy!’Isla screamed, frozen in horror with both hands in the air. ‘They smell like Finn when he needs a bath! Get them off me!’
Despite Nicky’s super-quick reflexes as she plucked the thong off Isla’s face and stuffed it into a plastic bag she conveniently had tucked in her satchel, it was too late. My anxious daughter had descended into floods of tears, while her brother channelled his guilt into defiance. By the time I had bundled Isla into the bath, dissuaded Finn from kicking a hole in his bedroom wall and tried to walk the fragile path between loving my children and overindulging them, the meal I was desperate to eat after missing out on lunch had congealed on the plates, and my sister had left with an apologetic hug.
She messaged hours later, after I’d cuddled Isla to sleep, read to Finn until he stopped feeling the need to punch himself for being a bad brother, and had resorted to cold spaghetti and pyjamas in front of the television.
Sorry I had to bail!
No worries. I’d have bailed too if I had the option
Theo’s clan were here to plan the camping trip. It’s not too late for you to join us – see if the dropout will have his own children overnight for once?
My stomach clenched. In marrying the lovely Theo, Nicky had also gained two new parents to replace the one she lost soon after, as well as three siblings, all of whom loved each other fiercely and weren’t afraid to show it. They regularly went off on adventures including activities like white water rafting or bouldering, and, while I was pleased for Nicky, the contrast with our family was stark.
She often invited me to join them, but with two small children, the List of a Billion Things to Do and no money, let alone the energy for running up mountains, even if I’d wanted to be the hanger-on at their family outings, it would have been impossible.
Too tired for another debate about the sorry state of my social life, I sent her a vague reply and moved on to chatting about the exciting events of the afternoon. Daisy had decided to name her boy Bolt, as he’d arrived so quickly. No one was trying to talk her out of it, given that her and her ex-fiancé Raz’s previous choice had been Cobra. We also needed to discuss the fallout from Sienna taking pictures of Daisy in labour. She’d only posted them on the Bloomers WhatsApp group, and they were blurry enough to show not a lot, but it was a serious safeguarding issue, and we’d had to contact her social worker as well as making sure that none of the other eighteen people in the group had kept or shared the images.
Just as Nicky was suggesting again that I invested in blinds, my phone rang with an unknown number.
‘Hi, is this the Baby Bloomers?’ a man asked. That grabbed my attention. Usually the only men who called to ask about the sessions were social workers, and they wouldn’t be on the phone this late in the evening.
‘Yes. Can I help you?’
‘I’m wondering if you have any space in your antenatal classes?’
‘We had a baby born today, actually, so will have room for one more in our Monday sessions. But they aren’t strictly speaking antenatal classes. They’re weekly four-hour support sessions for pregnant mums who fit specific criteria. If you wanted a standard course, I offer a range of those, too. There’s a link on the Bloomers website.’
‘It’s for my sister. And she needs the Bloomers.’
‘Right. Perhaps it would be best if you told me a bit about her?’
‘She’s nineteen.’
I grabbed a scrap of paper and a pencil from the pile of junk on the kids’ craft table. ‘Okay.’
‘She went into foster care age six. Lived in a few different homes before ending up in a residential unit at thirteen. Moved out at seventeen and has lived with various men since.’
Oh boy. I’d heard different versions of this story far too often, but my heart broke every time. Behind this man’s dispassionate, factual telling of it, I detected a devastated big brother.
I also detected a hint of something familiar in his voice, but I dismissed that as I clearly didn’t know this person.
‘After she got pregnant, I persuaded her to move in with me. She’s six months now, and her midwife said she could qualify for your group.’
‘Is there any involvement from the father?’
A brief, grim silence.
‘No.’
‘Any boyfriend, or partner?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘Okay. I’ll email over a form for her to complete before I can confirm, but it sounds like she’d benefit from joining us. Does she have a birth partner?’
Plenty of times our young mums had no one to fulfil this role for them until they became a Bloomer. Nicky and I had held the hands and wiped the brows of twenty-three mothers between us. There were a few baby girls in Sherwood Forest with the middle names Elizabeth or Nicola.
Another pause. ‘That will be me.’
‘Right, okay. The Monday sessions are female only, but you’re welcome to come along to our Thursday evening group. Like the Mondays, it’s a rolling session rather than a fixed-length course, so you can pop along and give us a try whenever.’
‘Thank you. We’ll be there this week.’
I finished my cold pasta while emailing all the details and forms to his sister. While he was the one to make the call, it was important that she started to take responsibility for her role as a mother, where she could. The completed forms came back so quickly she must have been sitting waiting for them.
I paused briefly as I read her name: Ellis.
I’d known an Ellis who’d been in foster care, once. She must be about the same age as this one.
More significantly, I’d known her big brother.
I scanned straight to the box where people could add the details of their birth partner, my heart sinking – in either relief or disappointment, I wasn’t sure – at the unfamiliar name.
The truth was, I’d not simply known him. He’d been my first kiss. The love of my life.
Loving him had nearly destroyed our family.
Losing him had almost destroyed me.