Chapter 3 #2
She had no idea if he was teasing or not. But that’s how it started, with Celia and this man; twenty-seven (so he said) to her tender eighteen. As Amanda made plans for a thrilling new life in London that wouldn’t include her, he swept Celia off her feet.
Only when it was all over and he’d disappeared from her life, from Glasgow – from the Earth , so it seemed – did Celia realise that something was different. That there was no going back to how things had been before.
Determinedly, she adopted the approach she had always relied on whenever there’d been a late-night party, or a fight, downstairs. If I ignore it for long enough, it’ll stop.
She kept herself busy in her garden, and if there was ever a fleeting thought of Shouldn’t I have had a period by now? , that too was pushed away, buried deep into the loamy earth.
It was her mother who’d noticed her changing body and made her do a test. Who was this boyfriend? Celia never had boyfriends! ‘She’s gone and got herself pregnant,’ her mum told all and sundry – as if she’d done it all by herself. Well done, Celia. A medical first!
She yearned for a friend to spill it all out to, but it was too late for that.
Amanda was on the verge of moving away, and Celia rarely saw her anyway, especially after she told her she was having a baby.
She suspected she was actually afraid to come near her, as if unplanned pregnancies were contagious.
The baby arrived and Celia no longer cared about how it had happened or that Amanda was 400 miles away.
A few letters were exchanged – letters! How quaint!
– but these soon petered out and Celia told herself she didn’t need anyone any more.
Not now that she had this perfect little thing nestling in her arms, needing her – his blue eyes wide and round, focussed fully on her, his mouth a perfect pink bud.
Her baby was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.
Celia felt that, somehow, this was her destiny.
That she was complete. Never mind cuttings and seedlings and thinning out.
All of that was forgotten as she looked after her son, immersed in a bubble of feeds and sleeps and cuddles.
In her childhood bedroom, she didn’t even mind the night wakes or nappies or any of that.
She had grown this tiny person who loved and needed her absolutely.
With remarkable speed, the weeds re-colonised her lawn and herbaceous borders, but Celia didn’t care.
There would be no horticulture course now; no future in creating beautiful gardens.
Because at nineteen she had her hands full with baby Logan – and then along came Geoffrey Bloom.
Ordinary Geoff, whom she’d never really noticed at school.
Later he’d have to remind her that he’d been in her maths class.
But back then he’d turned up at her house, saying, rather shyly, ‘I heard you’d had a baby?
’ And he’d handed her a bunch of peach carnations from the petrol station at the end of her street.
Never mind that she hadn’t swooned like a heroine in one of her mum’s romance novels.
He was obviously keen, and happy to go for walks with her and the baby in his buggy (Celia wouldn’t have left a guinea pig in her mother’s care).
And gradually, Geoff grew on Celia and she decided she liked him very much.
Compared to the person who had come before him, there were two major points in his favour.
One: he was her age. Still a boy, really – not a man.
And two: he was normal! Compared to the only other person she’d slept with – not to mention her home life – Geoff was ordinariness personified.
And these same age plus normality aspects elevated him to perfect boyfriend status and soon, with a little help from his ever-generous mum, he and Celia managed to scrape together enough money to rent a tiny one-bedroomed flat.
‘Lovely Geoffrey,’ her mother would croon to her friends. ‘Celia’s so lucky that he took her on.’ As if she were a lame old horse – useful only for colossal vet’s bills.
Geoff knew what had happened with Celia and the man she’d met in the park.
However, as soon as she’d told him, he politely asked her not to speak of it ever again.
He wouldn’t even say his name. Whenever it was unavoidable, it was just The Person.
Obviously, The Person wasn’t named on Logan’s birth certificate.
Celia would no more have put ‘Santa Claus’ in the ‘father’ part and it was left blank.
From that point on it was always assumed that Geoff was Logan’s dad, and in all but the actual conception part, he was.
They were a proper family of three and in time, as Celia started working locally, they managed to buy the slightly run-down tenement flat in which they still live.
Terri has told her off whenever she has mentioned being ‘rescued’ by Geoff (‘No, honey – you rescued yourself .’).
But without him, where would she have been?
Celia told herself she was lucky and, in those early years, Geoff seemed to care for her and made her feel safe.
But now something is happening and she can’t put her finger on what it is.
It’s not just the way he shovels down the dinners she cooks without comment or thanks.
It’s not even those frequent weekends away and golfing holidays with the Bakery Boys.
There’s something else, she can sense it: his dad’s caravan, for one thing.
And his refusal to discuss what they’ll do with it.
Not my problem , Celia tells herself as she opens up the shop.
She has a son she adores and she presides over Glasgow’s only houseplant hospital. And if Celia focusses hard enough, and goes through the motions of running her neat and orderly life, then she can almost believe that everything is going to be all right.