Chapter Twelve
Nicola walks the drizzly streets with four-month-old Jade bundled warmly inside her pram. It’s July, but a British July, which means cold rain and grey skies. Her thoughts are sliding all over the place. She doesn’t feel like herself.
The past few months have been a blur of exhaustion, resentment, and fear.
Fear that she’s made the wrong decision.
That she’s messed up her life. That she’s going to mess up Jade’s life.
Her days are dictated by her daughter’s wailing and her insatiable hunger.
When she sleeps – which isn’t often – Nicola slumps comatose on the sofa or dozes fitfully under her unwashed duvet.
Sometimes, when she looks at Jade, she feels a surge of pure, uncut love – physical, like being punched in the heart.
Other times, she feels nothing at all, just a blankness, a sense of going through the motions.
She worries that this makes her a bad mother, but she read in a magazine that many women feel the same way.
That apparently there are mums who love their babies and hate them in equal measure.
She takes comfort in these articles. It makes her own failings feel less unique.
When Jade was six weeks old, the social worker said that she thought Nicola had borderline postnatal depression, and so her GP referred her to a therapist. She started seeing her the week after Easter.
Her name was Helen, and she wore chunky jewellery and never asked about anything unless Nicola brought it up first. She liked that about her.
Helen let her talk about her childhood, about the day Penni fell out of the tree, about how she and her sister had previously sworn never to let anything come between them.
She didn’t tell Helen she regretted breaking that promise.
She just told her she didn’t know how to fix it.
‘You’re grieving two separate things,’ Helen said.
‘The future you thought you’d have, and the relationship you lost with your sister.
’ She sipped her tea and waited for Nicola to speak.
She never did. She just let the words hang there, solid and irrefutable.
That was the last time Nicola attended. It was too real. Too painful.
Now she’s living a new reality with her daughter.
Just the two of them. It’s lonely, but she doesn’t have the energy to fix that.
To go out and talk to people. She met up with Leila, the girl from antenatal classes, a couple of times.
But, aside from their babies, they didn’t have anything in common.
Leila’s married with a supportive husband, and a big, loving, noisy family close by.
Nicola felt too overwhelmed by all that, as well as a little envious, so she pulled back, made excuses not to meet up.
She knows it was a silly thing to do. Leila was sweet, generous, good company.
But Nicola couldn’t handle it. It made her feel socially awkward and unworthy.
So, here she is, pushing a pram along the streets of Middlesbrough alone.
Drizzle turns to great splattering raindrops that ping against the rain guard like popcorn in a pan.
Cars sweep past, spraying puddles, and Nicola is soaked through, her hands frozen and stiff as they grip the handle.
It’s at moments like this when she understands how big a mistake she’s made.
What the hell is she doing with a baby? She’s single with no family, hardly any friends.
She’s only twenty-nine years old, and her life feels like it’s over.
Part of her really did want to keep Jade, but the other part did it to spite Penni.
She can admit that to herself. Although if she were given the opportunity to go back and reverse it, she knows she never would.
Jade has somehow burrowed her way into Nicola’s heart.
Penni and Paul haven’t been in touch, other than to tell her they’re moving down south because of the business.
Bullshit. Nicola suspected they might do something like that.
That they’d want to get away from her. Penni’s probably scared Nicola might try to lay claim to her other daughter.
If Nicola had a partner, she probably would.
But it’s enough to deal with one baby on her own.
Two might finish her. At least she has Paul’s money to tide her over for a few months, along with the lump sum to buy a nice little terraced house. That was the plan, anyway.
But now that Penni and Paul are relocating from Whitby, Nicola has the germ of an idea.
It’s not definite yet, but it’s something that could become a reality if she makes it happen.
Once her sister is settled down south, Nicola is going to find out where.
It shouldn’t be too hard, as they’re moving their business too.
She seems to remember that Paul’s originally from Hampshire, so maybe that’s where they’re going.
Once they’re established, Nicola will use her funds to buy a little flat nearby.
Not too near that they run into one another, but close enough that she can keep an eye on her other daughter.
To stay close to her. To shorten the mother–daughter cord that will be painfully stretched to breaking point if she’s taken too far away.
The rain is hammering down now, so Nicola takes refuge in an empty bus shelter. She rubs her hands together to warm them and wipes the droplets from her face before peering into the pram to see her daughter sound asleep.
Despite the hardship and the loneliness and the fear and sleep deprivation, despite the fallout with her family, and the slow road to her mental and physical recovery, she still can’t believe this little human being is hers.
She can’t believe any of it. For the first time in her life, she feels like she has something to lose.
And she’s going to do everything she can to keep it.