Chapter 22 Eleven Unknown Numbers on a Mobile Phone Screen
I am at the end of an especially tedious staff meeting a few days later when my phone rings. We have been discussing exciting issues like budgetary constraints, renovations in the science block, and student parking passes being shared illicitly. Nothing gets the blood flowing quite like an illicit parking pass.
I have been avoiding Karim’s eyes for most of this endurance test because I know he will make me laugh. He will roll his eyes or mouth something at me or mime shooting himself in the head, and I will not be able to help myself. I will giggle. We will behave like the students and disrupt the very important business being very earnestly discussed.
I have forgotten about my phone, which very rarely rings anyway. Margie knows not to contact me during work hours, and either texts or uses my landline. Karim, the only other person likely to actually call, is sitting here in the same overfull room, the breath of the assembled staff steaming up the windows.
So when it rings I jump in surprise, rummaging around in my handbag so I can pull it out and silence it. There is a moment of quiet and I feel all eyes on me, some in sympathy, others in rebuke. Naughty Gemma. Behaving like a student even when I tried not to.
I mutter an apology and the meeting wheezes to an end, everyone running out of steam. The head of maintenance finishes his talk and asks if there are any questions. I look around and see that everyone is steadfastly refusing to put their hand up—if we ask questions, we will have to stay longer. This is already like detention and I’m not the only one keen to leave.
We draw to a close and everyone shuffles out, forming into small groups of friends and colleagues, all keeping their comments to themselves until they are safely away.
I am sitting near the door—I am no fool; I plan this stuff—and am one of the first out. Karim catches up with me in the corridor, the subtle scent of his aftershave warning me he is near. And, weirdly, making me smile.
“Who was on the phone, Miss Jones? Who was so important that they could interrupt the G8 summit?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, walking briskly, knowing he will easily keep up. “I think it might have been Leonardo DiCaprio. He won’t leave me alone.”
“Want me to have a word? I think I can take him.”
I laugh, and we finally reach the exit and walk together toward the car park. I pull out my phone as I reach my car and check the number that called me.
“Huh,” I say quietly, “it’s not one of my contacts. And I don’t recognize it. So it might actually be Leonardo DiCaprio.”
He peers at the screen, shakes his head, and replies, “Could it be the Adoption Register people? I know you’re deliberately not mentioning that very much, but I also know you probably think about it a lot.”
“You’re right, on both counts,” I say, unlocking my car. “But no, it won’t be them, or . . . her. The way it works is that if she gets in touch, if she asks for my details, they notify me. And they haven’t. So she hasn’t. If that makes sense. My money’s still on Leo. See you later?”
He is standing close to me, a small crooked smile on his face. He is doing that thing where he somehow manages to do sexy flirting without saying a single word. We are not “out” at work, so he does not touch me—but somehow his gaze lets me know that he would like to. I feel a flush of heat and know that I am blushing.
“It’s a date, Miss Jones—see you at the pub quiz,” he says, the crooked smile ramping up into a full grin. He gives me a wave and saunters off to his own car. As ever, I seem powerless to remove my eyes from his rear view as he leaves.
I sigh and climb into the driver’s seat. I slam the door, switch on the engine, and turn up the heater.
I was, of course, joking about Leonardo. We ended it years ago. But something about that call, something about that mysterious number, has rattled me. Put me on high alert. No voicemail was left, and I have no real reason to feel as I do.
Except . . . except I know that Geoff with a G would have passed it on, down the chain, through the top-secret Social Worker Fight Club. Possibly all the way to her—to my mother.
When I was little, I didn’t have a mobile phone—not many people did. They were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are now; nowhere were they seen as essential to modern life. For most of the time, we didn’t even have a landline—we’d have spells where the phone was hooked up, but then there would be a bill that went unpaid, and magically it was gone. I used pay phones, which seem to be a thing of the past now.
By the time I was at Audrey’s, I had a very simple pay-as-you-go brick that did phone calls and texts and nothing else—it was way before the era we live in now, when everyone carries the Internet around in their pocket. I’m not sure my mother ever called me on that little Nokia, even though she had the number.
I try to recall the last time I heard my mother’s voice on the phone, and realize that it was so many years ago I don’t even remember what we talked about. Just that it felt like an ordeal for both of us.
The car has heated up, and I turn the engine off again. It is dusk, and all around me yellow headlights swoop and sweep across the car park as staff leave. It is like a carefully choreographed dance, bathed in illumination. Soon, I am the only one there. One small Hyundai in a sea of space.
I decide that I will call that number. That I will do it here because, for some reason, I do not want to take it home with me. Back to my safe place, where it might somehow take hold and invade and infect in a way I cannot control.
I call the number back, telling myself as it rings out that it could be anything—it could be a sales call. It could be phone junk. It could be a Hollywood superstar asking me out to dinner.
It is none of those things. It is, as I suspected, as some buried instinct told me, her. My mother.
“Gems? Is that you?” she says.
Those few simple words plunge me back to a different world. Her voice, the rasp of cigarettes, the surprisingly gentle tone. When she was calm, she spoke so softly, it was almost lyrical. And Gems. She was the only person who ever called me that, before or after. I have not been Gems for so many years, and I feel the sharp sting of tears when I become her once more.
“It’s me, Mum,” I reply, swallowing down the unexpected lump in my throat. It is fast and it is strange and it is inexplicable—but I am engulfed in a rush of warmth. Of relief. Of a comfort that I rarely felt when I was with her, but which I have never forgotten, which has never been replaced. It is a ghost of our real life, a shadow at the edges of harder times, but it is there—the long-ago memory of my mother making me feel safe and loved.
We are both silent, and I try to imagine her—over a decade older, sitting who knows where. I hear the grind of a cigarette lighter sparking into life, and smile. The sound of childhood.
“How are you, Gems? It’s . . . it’s been a while, eh, babe?”
“It has, Mum, yeah. I’m good. Really good. It’s so nice to hear your voice again.”
She laughs, and I laugh too. I can’t believe what I’ve just said, but it’s true—all of the ambiguity, all of the borderline dread I was feeling about this conversation has gone up in a puff of smoke. Her lighter has burned it away.
“Where are you, Mum? Are you still in London? I came to the estate. Tried to find you. Someone told me they thought you were dead.” She coughs, and I hear her move the phone away while she does it, before she can speak again.
“Almost, love, but not quite! Can’t believe you went back to that place, Gems. Can’t have been easy for you.”
“It wasn’t, no.”
There is a pause, and I feel the weight of our mutual silence, the words we have not said, the thoughts we have not shared. The years that separate us, the blood that binds us.
“I’m sorry about that, love. I left a few years ago. I ended up—well, it’s a long story, not a pretty one. But I left, and I’m living in Stoke-on-Trent now. Did one of those house-swap things the councils do, someone who wanted to move to London when I wanted to get out. Didn’t care where I ended up, to be honest, as long as it wasn’t there, you know? I needed to leave it all behind.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. I nod because I do understand—I understand the power of leaving it all behind. I, I have to assume, was part of the past she needed to escape from. It hurts, but I get it. Sometimes we have to make tough decisions, and the brutal compartmentalization of our lives seems to be a thread that connects us.
“What’s it like?” I ask, not even sure where Stoke-on-Trent is. Somewhere in the middle, I think, my mind conjuring up images of Wedgwood and fine china factories.
“It’s okay. People are nice. What about you, Gems? Have you settled anywhere?”
“I’m in Liverpool,” I say simply. “Kind of settled. Can I—can I come and see you, Mum? Would that be okay?”
I am as surprised as she is by those words. I had anticipated possibly speaking to her—but I have shocked myself with how strongly I want to sit with her. To be in her company. To feel her arms around me. I know it is probably a fantasy, but I still feel it.
I have no idea what her mental state is these days, or if she is still in love with the various substances that overwhelmed her love for everything else. But she sounds well—she sounds in control. Sad but sane. It might be a phase, or she might have picked a clear day to call me. It might be an illusion, but it is one that I desperately want to be true.
She does not reply immediately, and I feel a leaden churn in my stomach, the creeping doubt, the opening tremors of rejection. It is not an unfamiliar sensation. She has rejected me before, in many different ways. I wonder for a moment if I have been a fool to lay myself so open to being rejected again.
“I’d like that, Gems,” she says eventually, her own voice heavy with emotion. It must have been hard for her too, to make this call. To not know what reception she would be given. To anticipate her own rejection, another in a long line from a world that has never understood her.
“Okay, Mum. I will, I promise. I’ll see you soon.”