by Kate Helm
I see a flash of orange in the overgrown grass. A deflated netball. When I was in care – only for a fortnight – the thump of a ball against the wall of my room had seemed like a countdown. But I had no idea what would come next.
After I ran away from my grandad’s, the social workers put me in the residential home as a stopgap, while they looked for a permanent placement. It wasn’t like this place – the building was modern, the inside painted in pop-art colours – yet somehow it had the same abandoned air.
I remember sitting on a tartan-duveted bed, the door propped open, the care workers discussing my ‘risk status’ in the corridor. It was a couple of days after the funeral. I felt as though I’d been scoured out with wire wool, and all that remained was a girl who looked the same but had nothing left but bone and sinew, barely held together by skin.
The other kids tried to rile me on the first day, because that was the game with newcomers, but I didn’t respond to their teases, kicks, a half-hearted punch. They nicknamed me Suzombie.
‘You’re a chicken!’
‘Am not!’
For a moment, I think I am back there.
‘You fucking are. Go on, it’s not really dangerous, they just say that to keep people out.’
The voices are young, and they’re coming from inside. I follow the sounds until I spot a small tear in the metal fence, barely big enough for a dog to squeeze through.
‘There’s a bloody great hole in the floor. Look!’
‘Jump over it.’
‘Goes all the way downstairs, see. I’m dizzy looking through it.’
‘Don’t look, then. You’ll be all right, just—’
Boards creak a warning. Something heavy falls, followed by a gentler rain of rubble or plaster.
‘Shit, what have you done?’
‘You told me to jump. What the fuck am I meant to do now?’
I hear pain in the child’s voice. I think it’s a girl but I can’t be sure.
I try to squeeze through the gap in the fence, but the metal spike catches my T-shirt, scratches the top of my arm. Tiny beads of blood surface on my skin.
‘Oi. Who’s in there?’ My own voice sounds as reedy as the children’s. I try again. ‘Are you OK? Do I need to call an ambulance?’
For a few seconds, I hear nothing. I go towards the building. More rubble falls, followed by a muffled shriek. I hold my breath.
They burst through the rear fire door, dark hoodies sprinkled with ghost-grey plaster, like victims of an earthquake. Two of them. They clock me, and race towards the hole in the fence, tearing at the metal mesh, but I’m behind them, and manage to catch one by the sleeve.
‘What the hell are you thinking? It’s dangerous in there.’
The kid’s hood comes off as he – no, she – tries to pull away: the other is already long gone.
‘Get your dirty hands off me,’ she says, her words spitting out, eyes defiant. The dust has turned her black hair grey.
‘You could have been killed!’
She wrestles with me.
‘Yeah, well, I bet there’s tonnes of bodies in that shithole.’
‘What?’
The girl sees her chance and pulls away, leaving the hoodie behind in my hands, like she’s shed a skin.
‘You’re a dirty paedo too!’ she calls back, as soon as she’s far enough away to realise I’m not going to run after her.
My breathing is rapid from the tussle.
I bet there’s tonnes of bodies in that shithole.
Institutions always attract wild theories, scary stories of bogeymen and wicked crones. But then again, I’ve sketched two cases involving abuse rings in children’s homes: I know what can go on.
I scan the field. No one is watching.
I scramble across nettles and thistles and bits of fallen masonry. This building hasn’t been occupied in years, even though it seems like a prime redevelopment opportunity. Why has Jim waited so long?
I pull open the fire door and step into the musty building. When the door closes behind me, I try to keep calm. Now I smell something rotten: as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see the stripped carcass of a fox or a dog on the cracked white floor tiles. Did it seek shelter and get trapped?
The door immediately to my right leads to a row of toilets; a cracked basin sits upended on the floor, tall as a gravestone. There is one sign for Females but none for Males – perhaps the home was girls-only.
On the left, the door sign reads Laundry, and I can see a hulking tumble drier through the frosted glass. Ahead, the grandest of staircases: this building had another, fancier life before it became a children’s home.
I step carefully, half-expecting the ceiling to come down on top of me.
Light comes through holes in the roof, highlighting the black-and-white mosaic floor. I reach out for the banister. My hand dislodges a layer of dust so thick it makes me cough, but underneath the wood is smooth.
When the tiles stop, the staircase starts. But there are only a few steps before huge gaps appear in the wood, the treads eaten away by woodworm, only darkness beneath. I can’t go any further.
I glance up. A combination of old wallpaper and graffiti covers the wall on the half-landing. The writing is almost unintelligible, layers on top of layers. I try to unscramble what people have painted here. There are tags, and shapes that might be faces or something cruder. I scan the wall, looking for recognisable names or words. For a moment, I think that the loops in the corner seem to read CHARLIE, but when I lean a little heavier on the banister it creaks ominously.
Enough. I retrace my steps back outside. I fold the girl’s hoodie, and lay it next to the hole in the fence. Perhaps she will come back for it.
Once I’m through the barbed wire, I look back at the building. Whatever happened here, it’s a good thing most of these places have closed down. Children do not belong in institutions; even in the best, the environment encourages petty cruelties. And in the worst . . .
As I return to the car, past the fried-chicken shop and the boarded-up bank, I feel conspicuous. Even as the sun beats down, I find I can’t stop shivering.
25
It’s early evening by the time I arrive back on the outskirts of Brighton – the last part of the journey stop-start, as the weekenders queue to get to the coast.
I realise I’ve left my phone off, and when I turn it back on, a flurry of texts light up my screen.
Oli’s wife has gone into labour.
Each round-robin message is more thrilling than the last.
First, at the hospital, we think it’s started a bit early.
An hour or so later, our baby already misbehaving by being breech, so Imogen is being prepped for theatre for a caesarean.
In the next one, Oli explains he’s going into theatre with her so will turn his phone off, and if there’s no news, that’s nothing to worry about.
And after that, nothing. I drop off the hire car, and instead of going straight home, I head for the beach. The tide is out, and the beach is still packed: a balmy evening that makes you want to linger. As I walk, dodging the kids playing and the mums with buggies, I cross-examine myself as rigorously as any barrister.
It could have been me, having Oli’s baby.
Should it have been?
It’s the main reason I broke off our engagement, or at least the reason I gave. Oli has always wanted to be a parent. I never felt that way.
Actually that’s a lie. When I was a very little girl, I pushed a pram and nursed a doll which gobbled water from a bottle and emptied it out the other end. Pip’s arrival showed me real babies were a lot messier and harder to soothe, but I loved to help bathe him, or rock him to sleep.
‘I’m his big mum and you’re his little one,’ my mother would say.
I assumed one day I’d have my own family. Until I lost two-thirds of the one I had in a single afternoon.
Oli’s fortieth birthday and my impending thirtieth brought the issue to a head, with our mar
ried friends dropping less and less subtle hints about getting on with it, ‘while Oli can still play football without his knees giving out.’ Then Oli’s mum got cancer, and even after she recovered, he wanted to get on with producing the grandchild she was looking forward to.
I couldn’t do it.
Everyone told me to think it through. Neena, who’d gone through three rounds of IVF and nine circles of hell to have the twins, was the most bolshie.
‘Even if you haven’t heard it yet, your biological clock will start ticking in the next couple of years, George. And you’ll regret it if you let Oli go. He is perfect father material.’
‘There’s more to a relationship than kids.’
‘Sure, if both of you feel the same way. But Oli actually cooed at my twins last week even though they smelled like farmyard animals and were producing litres of Day-Glo snot. He’s broody. And if you can’t give him what he wants, it’s only fair to let him find someone who will.’
Three years ago now, but my biological clock is still on silent. I either never had the maternal instinct, or what my father did extinguished it.
I stop and stare out to sea. Did my father also pass madness on to me? There was something inside my dad that made two acts of violence possible. Or inevitable, even. That’s the sort of thing you can’t see in an MRI. It could be lying dormant in me?
I was right not to take the risk of having kids: my visions could be yet another sign of bad blood.
The weekenders are following the tide as it shrinks back, and the setting sun turns the pebbles a rich scarlet.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Oli.
A girl. A beautiful girl with a full head of dark hair, 7lb 8oz, don’t ask me what it is in metric. Imogen is a star, and mother and daughter are doing well. More than can be said for me. Am a bloody wreck.
Tears fill my eyes as I imagine Oli’s face. I look up at the sunset and the colours take my breath away. I want to capture it tonight, in a painting for his newborn: her first sunset. I don’t have to have had Oli’s child myself to feel happy for him.
Better to have loved and lost? Maybe. But I can’t risk it again.
26
My flat feels stuffy and stale when I let myself in, so I open up the shutters, make coffee, and sit in my armchair, bathed in the magenta afternoon light. There’s two days’ post on my lap to sort through, mostly junk: pizza flyers, letting agent ads . . .
The envelope is at the bottom of the pile: pale pink, with my name handwritten on the front in familiar block capitals. My heart speeds up.
Already?
I slip my finger under the corner of the envelope and tear it from end to end.
It’s a birthday card, a photograph of two hairy pot-bellied pigs, rolling in rain in a filthy sty.
It’s been signed by Marion and Trevor, with a row of kisses. And on the left-hand side of the card, there’s a longer note from Marion. Her careful handwriting has shrunk with age, making it harder to read. She must be almost seventy by now. Every time I get her news, I fear something might have happened to one of them. I feel the usual dread as I go to the window, hold the card to catch the last of the sunlight.
Dear Georgia,
We never know whether to send a card. The last thing we want to do is remind you of bad times, but Suzanne was the person we first met and learned to love, so we still want to celebrate her birthday.
Guilt fills me. When I left their care for the anonymity of art school in London, I didn’t think how much it’d hurt them. And by the time I realised, it felt far too late to reach out again. I send a Christmas card every year, with brief, perky headlines about my life.
I hope life down by the seaside is treating you well. I’ve seen a few of your incredible drawings lately. You always had a talent and even though we doubted your path a little, perhaps your work helps you deal with what happened.
All is well here – we have the aches and pains of advancing age, but compared to many, we’re lucky. We’ve had a lovely young man staying with us recently, the same age as you were when you first came to us. He’s on track again. There’s something about the farm that really does seem to heal.
I smile. Marion always writes as though it’s the place that is magic. In reality, it’s her and Trevor who mend broken children.
There is one thing. We had a letter from the prison, requesting that we pass on the message that your father has expressed a wish to get in contact.
I grip the card, wishing I could unread those words.
Why now?
My father has been out of my life for more years than he was in it. I never sought him out, and he has never made any effort to explain what he did, or why, other than the pathetic lies he told the police in the hospital.
So what can have changed – is he sick, dying? And if he is, am I supposed to care?
We’d never tell you what to do, you know that. But Ms Penney, who sent the letter, went to some trouble to track us down. Her email is [email protected]
We understand why you keep us at a distance, sweetheart – we must be a reminder of painful times. But never forget there will always be a bed and a hug for you here if you need either. We are proud of the wonderful person you became.
With all our love,
M&T
Wonderful person? Hardly. Alone, a failure at everything except my work, and even that seems a struggle now.
I close the card. Every year the urge to pick up the phone to them is almost irresistible. I remember their number and I know that within seconds of dialling it, I could be talking to the only two people in the world who have known me as both Suzanne and Georgia.
Yesterday was thirty-one years since I was born. I wonder how my parents felt about starting a family? They could never have imagined how it would end.
If my father dies, then the reason behind what he did to us all dies with him. But however he might have rationalised it in the years since, there can never be a reason good enough.
I won’t email Ms Penney. I won’t give my father anything. He doesn’t deserve to be in my thoughts, not now, not ever.
27
On Monday the footballer trial witnesses are so minor that the BBC don’t cover it – Oli’s baby couldn’t have timed her arrival better.
I get the train to London late afternoon, at Oli’s insistence. He greets me at the door to Imogen’s private room. His eyes are bright but tired. He hugs me wordlessly, then lets me inside.
The room is a jungle of extravagant contemporary bouquets, their scent so thick I feel the perfume catching in my lungs. Somewhere in a clearing is Imogen, nursing her baby.
‘Georgia, meet Millie Victoria Priest, aged forty-nine hours and . . .’ he checks his Patek Philippe, his dad’s old watch, ‘twelve minutes.’
‘Oh, Imogen, congratulations!’
I lean over the bed to kiss her on the cheek. Her hair has been blow-dried, but her skin is free of make-up, possibly for the first time since puberty. The baby’s face is tucked discreetly under an exquisite crocheted shawl as she suckles, so all I can see is the tiny body in a dove-grey sleepsuit.
‘Thank you. She’s a hungry little miss, but she won’t be long.’
‘And how are you?’
‘I feel great. High as a kite.’ She waves at the drip. ‘They’re going to stop the drugs tomorrow, apparently. That’s why we’ve tried to get everyone to visit today, while I am still on top form.’
There’s no edge between us: Imogen came along a very decorous eleven months after I left Oli, and we’re very different creatures. I’ve done what I can to paint over my past, but the tells of my middle-class upbringing reveal themselves now and then. Imogen is properly posh, a former chalet girl who can ski, ride and cook. The girl Oli should have fallen for all along.
He’s behind me, watching his wife and daughter. I hand him a box of organic chocolate truffles and a knitted peach-coloured rabbit from a little shop in the Lanes. The sunset painting I started on Saturday isn’t
finished yet; I want it to be perfect.
‘Thank God you didn’t bring flowers, I feel like we’re in Kew Gardens,’ he says, gently touching the smile stitched onto the rabbit’s face. ‘Still can’t quite believe it. We’re parents. We’re supposed to know what we’re doing.’
Imogen laughs softly, so as not to disturb the baby.
‘Thank goodness we have the maternity nurse or I’d be terrified of going home. Ah. I think Miss Millie might have finished for now.’
I look away while she rearranges herself. She doesn’t need the nurse, not really – she has an air of utter capability. And boarding school doesn’t seem to have messed with her head, as it did a little bit with Oli. Instead, I saw the very first time I met her that she radiates a very practical kind of love.
‘Oh . . .’
It comes from Oli, a sigh and a benediction in one.
The baby faces me. The first thing I notice is her dark hair, lush and surprising. Her face seems indistinct – her features still unformed – so I step closer, leaning in. Babies aren’t often beautiful, but this one is. Her lips form a perfect Cupid’s bow, and her eyes are crescent moons.
Déjà vu.
‘Hello, little Millie,’ I say, feeling silly. I lost the art of talking to children a long time ago. ‘Welcome to the world.’
Her arms rise towards me, hands open as though she wants to take hold of mine. She opens her eyes. They’re almost black. I had expected innocence, perhaps the only time in life we have that quality.
But instead, they’re incredibly knowing, and even though it’s impossible, it’s as if I’ve seen them before.
Pip.
My hands are tingling. My breath stops. A sparkling blackness fills my vision.
‘Georgia. Georgia?’
Oli’s voice. The scent of flowers, and disinfectant. Fingers digging into my shoulders, like tent pegs, the only things holding me up.