Chapter 34
Cherry
Cherry stepped inside the caravan, the cloying scent of incense and amber catching in her throat.
The memory of being here with Sean was potent.
She remembered his hand wrapped around hers, her free fingers fiddling with the tassels on the garish cushions, while her mum gave him the third degree.
His body was warm and comforting next to hers as she’d thought about everyone missing from the photographs – those passed on and those who had never got to be here at all.
She rubbed at the wedding band – on the same chain as her locket. Not her own ring but the one she’d found in the front pocket of her bag during the bus ride from Kinshore to Edinburgh.
Sean’s wedding ring.
Cherry stepped into the warm, whisky-coloured glow the September sun cast across the caravan’s interior. It, too, reminded her of Sean. Whisky would forever remind her of Sean. Sunsets over the Forth would remind her of him. Everything reminded her of him.
Pam, back to her normal dress code of lounge pants and a long wrap cardigan, filled the kettle and flicked the switch to boil. ‘Where’s that lovely husband of yours?’ she asked.
‘He’s back in Kinshore, Mum.’
Pam paused, halfway in her pursuit of Jaffa Cakes from the cupboard above the kettle. ‘Is everything okay? How is he?’
‘He’s still lovely, inside and out.’ Waves of pain and regret surged behind Cherry’s ribs. ‘But I dunno what’s happening with us.’
‘Oh, Cherry, for goodness’ sake.’ Pam nibbled on a Jaffa cake as if a marriage stalling was another cab off the rank in a long line of Cherry’s trivial mistakes, like the time she’d dyed her hair yellow.
‘Please don’t for goodness’ sake me, Mum.’
Pam studied her daughter and then sighed. ‘I can see you’re upset; I’ll get the cards.’
‘No, Mum. No cards. They don’t help. Not your kind, not my kind. Both of them are just blocking things out right now. Things that need facing head-on. Talking about.’ Cherry’s voice cracked like the hairline fractures in her mum’s Doulton figurines.
‘Fair enough. But sit down.’ Pam gestured to the banquette. ‘Are you staying the night?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know, maybe.
Listen, there’s something I need to ask you.
’ Cherry sat and reached into her bag, pulling out the photograph her mum had sent.
It felt heavier than usual. She softened her voice, apropos of what she was about to broach.
‘You sent me this photo with this poem on the back for a reason?’
Pam glanced at the photograph then back at Cherry.
‘It’s the same one that’s in your locket,’ she said, a little too airily, the gaps between her sentences betraying her discomfort.
‘I thought it was about time you had the proper version.’ She sipped her tea but didn’t mention the poem. She didn’t need to.
Cherry nodded, her throat tight. God, this was difficult. Her heart was beating so loudly it almost drowned out the sound of someone singing badly in the next caravan, as they always did when she visited. This conversation did not need a soundtrack, and definitely not Kenny Rogers.
She bit the bullet. ‘Mum, in this photo, were you pregnant?’
Pam stiffened. It was a microscopic shift, but enough to suggest that she’d known the question was coming and that the answer was more than a simple no.
The room was silent for a short time until she relented and nodded. ‘I was, darling, yes.’
Cherry’s mind was a time lapse of possibilities.
Images of what might have been flickered by.
A sibling? Someone she had carried in her locket unwittingly all these years who could have stood here with her now, because unless her mother led a double life, then there was only one ending to this story.
It was the last thing she wanted to do, but she had to pull the Band-Aid off.
‘What happened to that baby, Mum? Did it… Did it not make it?’ The words caught in her throat, so inextricably linked to her own experience.
Pam picked at another biscuit and then put it down again. ‘It wasn’t meant to be.’ She forced a smile that she may as well not have bothered with. ‘We don’t always get what we want.’
Cherry swallowed. Stared at the rejected Jaffa Cake. Over thirty years ago, her mum had gone through the same thing Cherry had endured. A miscarriage, a bone-shattering loss, becoming a carved-out void. This explained so much. Her mum’s sadness and difficulty dealing with Cherry’s own situation.
Yet made no sense at all. Where was the compassion? The understanding?
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Truly sorry. I wish I’d known. I have so many questions.’
Pam swallowed and spoke as if she wanted the questions dealt with as quickly as possible. ‘Three months. A boy; we named him Owen. I never fell pregnant again.’
Tears burst through Cherry’s defences. ‘Owen.’ A baby brother called Owen. ‘Did they tell you why it happened?’ She rubbed her eyes with her cuff.
Pam shook her head. ‘They mentioned stress. They also said I got very lucky having you at all.’
‘I’m so sorry. That’s not helpful advice at all.’
‘No, no, it isn’t, but I accepted it because I had you. I took the word lucky and focused on that.’
‘That makes sense. But all this time, you’ve known exactly what I went through. Why did you never tell me? It might have helped us both feel less alone. Helped me feel less like it was my fault.’
Pam held her cup in both hands. Her face held an expression of sadness that provoked the hope of honesty.
‘Some things are too difficult to talk about, even years later. I’ve never thought it was your fault, only that there were certain things you could have prioritised to help yourself fulfil your dreams.’
A sharp tang of laughter burst from Cherry. ‘That is blaming me.’
‘It isn’t meant to. There are things I could have done, too.
’ Pam smoothed the handle of the cup. ‘Like asking your dad to stop working all the hours, stop smoking in the house, stop drinking so much as it caused me stress. But I didn’t.
So, all I ever wanted was for you not to make the same mistakes I did. ’
Cherry studied the glowing woman in the photograph. How had that happy lady, excited for the future, become this troubled, complicated person sitting before her now?
‘By never telling me why you were so critical of my lifestyle?’
‘Was I?’ Pam seemed genuinely puzzled.
‘Yes. Cherry lifted her fingers into air quotes. ‘“Travelling around the world playing poker is no way to carry a baby to term.” Criticising my choice in men.’
‘Well, how many pregnant women play poker for a living? And Dale was wrong for you. Take it from someone who married a man who liked a drink. I loved your dad dearly, but his bad habits ruined us. Sean, though, I like him.’
Cherry took a long blink, recovering from the words that scalded. ‘That’s nice, Mum. I like him too. I love him, and I need him. You know, I thought it was all going to be fine, then you did that reading with the death card and you said that I had to leave some things behind me. Some dreams.’
‘That can mean so many things, Cherry. I want you to go into the future with your eyes open.’
‘Eyes open to the empty road ahead? The empty nest? I have dreams, Mum. Sean has dreams. And when I don’t think you believe in me, it makes it so hard to let someone else put their faith in me.’
‘Oh, Cherry.’ Pam adopted a soothing tone, but Cherry heard the patronising undercurrent. ‘You know that my saying you’re worth something won’t solve things if you don’t believe it yourself.’
‘I get that, but it would be the start I need. You’re my mum. If anyone is meant to believe in me, it’s you. Do you know how crushing it is to think that your own mother thinks you’re wasted potential? No potential?’
The light in Pam’s eyes darkened. ‘I don’t think that at all. But we don’t all get our own cheerleading squad. It’s not something I heard a lot from my mother, you know? Nobody said “I love you” to their children when I was growing up.’
‘Okay, fine, but did she tell you to let your dreams die? Did she watch you lose four babies and tell you to accept? Mum, I had four miscarriages. Four! Did you ever think that might be an ever-so-slightly insensitive way of helping me cope?’
Pam rose from the banquette, started tidying away the biscuits and mugs. ‘I’ve only ever dealt with life in the best way I could. I know everyone is more open these days, talking about their feelings and sharing everything, but that isn’t me, Cherry.’
Cherry rubbed the scratchy fabric of the seat. It was hard to be emotionally open when you hadn’t had a role model since you were thirteen. ‘Allow me, Mum. I love you. And I’m sorry you went through that and that it’s taken until I’m thirty-seven to find out about it.’
Silence. Even the neighbour had stopped singing. Pam looked at the table and at Cherry, her eyes glassy. Those three words might have flicked a switch in her. Cherry waited. Her mum fumbled with the mugs before letting her hands rest on the counter surface.
‘I’m sorry, too, darling. But I’m just… Oh, it was your dad who was good at all this stuff.’
‘But he’s not here, Mum. He’s been gone for over twenty years. It’s only us now.’ Cherry stood to meet her mother.
‘What is it you need from me, Cherry?’
‘I don’t know. To know that you have my back. The doctors said it wasn’t my fault, but I feel like you think it was. These things happen, right? To good people who didn’t do anything wrong. And some people have lots of miscarriages and go on to have babies.’
Pam nodded. ‘Yes, that’s true. Please, don’t listen to me; listen to the doctors. I come from a different time where everyone blamed women and nobody talked to counsellors like they do now.’
Cherry was sad for her mum, for the pain she had gone and still was going through. The small shaft of openness helped her, though. She needed to hear that it wasn’t her fault.
But it wasn’t a magic cure for her lingering feelings about not being enough for Sean, feelings that were going to crop up when people made thoughtless comments, or she saw a mother cooing lovingly at her child, or a plotline on TV triggered her.
That was something she would have to decide about on her own.
About whether she could let him love her and forget about the outside noise.