The Push

by Claire McGowan

  Because a girl couldn’t do that. Alison clenched her fists by her side, tried to nod politely. ‘But it didn’t work out?’

  She hesitated. ‘You have to understand we tried. Georgina simply would not tell us who the boy’s father was, no matter what we did. At first, we couldn’t see it, it wasn’t obvious. But as he grew up, and his hair came in – well, he just looked darker and darker, and we couldn’t take that. We felt it would be better for the boy to be with people like him.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Diana coolly, though she must have known very well.

  ‘Well, isn’t it obvious? The father was black. Goodness knows how she even met a boy like that round here – wild, as I said. Adoption seemed kindest.’

  ‘I see. So your grandson was taken into care at what age?’

  Her hands twisted on the dog, who yelped slightly. ‘I believe he was two. Almost three.’

  Old enough to know his mother, to remember a little of the life he’d had. ‘And Georgina?’

  ‘Oh, she wanted to keep him. Ridiculous. She had no money, wasn’t even eighteen. She threatened to run away with him, but we just made sure she was gone the day they came. She made quite a fuss when she found out, but it was in everyone’s best interests.’

  A stunned silence from Diana and Alison. Alison forced herself to keep her voice neutral. ‘So – Georgina has a son out there somewhere? He’d be in his twenties now?’

  ‘I suppose so. I try not to think of it – I have real grandchildren now, my son and his wife.’ She indicated a huge framed picture of a smiling white couple and angelic, white children.

  ‘Right. Is there anything else you can tell us, anything that might help us find out who killed Nina?’

  ‘Georgina. I honestly have no idea what her life was. She chose it, instead of the one we gave her, private school and a pony and everything she asked for. What kind of person turns their back on all that?’

  ‘And the boy’s father, he never surfaced?’

  ‘Never. I have no idea who he was and don’t wish to think about it.’

  There seemed nothing more to say. Alison had not drunk her coffee, which she suddenly couldn’t stomach. This period they were discussing had been in the nineties, 1995 to be exact, not the fifties or sixties. This family had brought up a grandson, loved him presumably as much as they knew how to for two years, then abandoned him to care as soon as he started looking a bit too black. Taken him from his mother, who had wanted to keep him. No wonder she’d run wild. Poor Nina – Georgina. She stood, as did Diana. ‘One more thing. Would Nina have been trying to find him, do you think? Her son? Edward?’

  ‘I doubt he’s still called that,’ Elaine said. ‘We asked them to change his name. A clean break. But yes, I imagine she wanted to find him.’

  Diana was frowning. ‘One thing I don’t understand – if she wanted him, given the preference of the system for the birth mother, why would she not have got him once she was eighteen? Assuming he wasn’t adopted already.’

  Another sigh. ‘Oh, because she wasn’t well. That’s where she was when they came for him. She was sectioned – we just wanted to help her, really. She needed to learn that we had her best interests at heart.’

  The day of – Chloe

  2.59 p.m.

  Her mother was the worst. The worst of the worst. She’d been ignoring Isabella all day, leaving her alone in the room, then dressing her up in that horrible frilly pink horror to parade her about these strangers. Who even were they? Why did it matter what they thought? Chloe knew her mother wanted her to stay in her room as well, as helpless as the baby, but after an hour or so listening to the party downstairs, she snapped. She picked Isabella out of her cot and took her downstairs. She loved the feel of the solid, hot little body in her arms. The way the baby’s eyes, barely open yet, took everything in. The people actually weren’t so bad, kind of nice really. There was a woman in a pretty headscarf, and a young good-looking guy who had a baby with an older woman. There was a woman who didn’t have a baby at all but had been at the group, and her baby was supposed to come from America or something but hadn’t. There were two gay women even – this was the most interesting group of people the house had ever seen. Much better than Ed’s gammon-faced golf buddies and their screechy wives, rattling with jewellery.

  Chloe liked carrying the baby. She liked how people smiled at her, how natural it was. Isabella was a good baby, and hardly ever cried, which was lucky because Monica certainly didn’t have the time or patience for a difficult one. She wondered how it was all going to work as Isabella got older, when Chloe left school and maybe went to university. Could she abandon the little girl here with Monica and Ed? In the garden, she imagined opening the door and walking down the street, far away. Monica wouldn’t even notice for a while, she was too busy wanging on about salad. But what would she live on? Maybe if she could find Sam, they could live there. He’d made his parents sound so nice. But she’d never been to his house and didn’t know the address, and Monica had taken her phone away so she was basically a prisoner in this shiny glass palace.

  She missed Sam. The shy way he smiled at her in debate club. The way he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, the red marks on his nose. Monica tolerated her being at the party for a while – probably because it would look weird if she stayed upstairs – but after that thing happened with the baby and the weird red-eyed woman, who’d lost her own baby or something, Monica’s patience had run out. She was mad at Ed for something, so of course she took it out on Chloe. ‘What are you doing down here with the baby?’ she hissed, as soon as no one was in the kitchen. ‘You know the rules. I don’t want you around her too much, people will talk.’

  ‘So what if they do? It’s hardly the end of the world.’

  Monica’s eyes bulged. ‘This is the only way! You agreed to it, and I’ve held up my end of the bargain. Just behave yourself for three years and you can be out of this house, we’ll give you an allowance and you can live your life. That’s what we agreed. Isn’t it?’

  God, why did money have to be such a powerful thing? Chloe had always had it growing up and knew she couldn’t find a job and live in a bedsit all by herself. Or even not by herself, as she sometimes dreamed of. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Right. So go upstairs before someone puts two and two together. Take her and put her down.’

  Her. Not Isabella. There seemed to be no love between Monica and the baby, just as little as there was between her and Chloe. It wasn’t fair, Chloe thought, to put another person through that. But she went upstairs all the same, thinking she’d bring the baby into her own room. Monica wouldn’t find out.

  As she went up, she saw people on the balcony. A few different people. Talking. Arguing, actually. She could hear the raised voices through the glass, but not the words. She should take the baby away, keep her safe. But something sent Chloe forward, towards the door.

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  In the middle of the night I broke in two. That was how it felt, anyway. Ripples of fire rolled down my middle, and I was sure I was going to die soon, which was something of a relief, if it would make the pain stop. I tried to call a nurse and found I didn’t have a bell; I also couldn’t seem to speak. ‘Urgggh. Urrgh!’

  I had disturbed the woman in the bed next to me. ‘What’s up with you?’

  ‘Urrrggggh.’ I flailed around some more.

  ‘Oi!’ She was able to shout, anyway. ‘There’s something not right with this one.’ A bored nurse sauntered over.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I tried again. ‘Urggggh.’

  ‘Come on, let’s sort you out then.’

  I still couldn’t speak. Perhaps I had in fact had a stroke, on top of labour. As they wheeled me away, I was thinking of Aaron. How we hadn’t chosen the name for the baby. How we hadn’t made up yet, and I hadn’t told him that none of it was his fault, despite what I’d said. It was mine.

  The day of – Jax

  2.35 p.m.
>
  I knew that, after this terrible day was over, I would add the events of it to the file of things in my head that I didn’t want to think about. Not just Mark. Not just the fact that Aaron and I were still living apart, and we’d come to this party to pretend everything was fine. The endless seconds when Hadley was gone, and I knew it was my fault. Kelly’s broken-hearted crying, knowing we’d accused her of child abduction when she’d just taken the baby into the park because no one was looking after her. This was true. Aaron had assumed I was watching her and had felt unable to refuse Ed’s invitation to his shed. I had been in a kind of daze. Perhaps Kelly had done me a favour, showing me how bad things were with me. Not long after that, Jeremy had driven Kelly home, still weeping and barely able to walk, collapsed in grief.

  As soon as we were alone, Aaron and I turned to each other, in that moment bleak-eyed strangers. ‘How did this happen?’ I was trying hard not to blame him. I knew it was more my fault than his, but admitting that meant admitting things I had long feared about myself but had been unable to face. ‘Where did you go?’

  Aaron’s arms were locked tight in shock. ‘Ed made us – he wanted to show us stuff in his shed.’

  ‘What stuff?’ I had been sure I would never feel Hadley in my arms again, and now I had her, light and squashy and radiating heat, I wanted to cry. Without me she would die in days, and I wasn’t sure I was up to the task of looking after her. I had taken on too much, that’s all there was to it.

  Aaron looked around furtively. ‘It was . . . He called it erotic art, all this Japanese stuff and that, but Jax, it was porn. He showed us porn.’

  I was standing in the middle of a sunny lawn, inside a fenced garden, and I had my baby back in my arms and my partner at my side. I should have felt safe, relieved. Instead I felt a cold trickle down my back, the bad feeling from that morning back again, despite having experienced and averted one near-disaster already that day.

  Then Monica came out of the house, clapped her hands like a teacher rounding up pupils. ‘Alright, everyone, it’s time to do the group photo, before anything else goes wrong! I want all the babies in a circle on the rug, please. Heads in.’ She was brandishing her iPhone. The last thing I wanted was to put Hadley in a photo, to have a reminder of this day, or even to let my daughter out of my arms. Aaron seemed to pick up on this.

  ‘Monica, I don’t know if we really want . . . We didn’t want her in pictures yet.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Hazel, who still held barbecue tongs. ‘We want Arthur to live a screen-free life until he’s at least two.’

  Monica gave a merry laugh. ‘Well, he doesn’t have to look at it, Hazel, just be in it! Come on. Who knows when they’ll all be together again. It’ll be such a lovely memory. Ed, fix the rug.’ Already she was managing the scene, pointing where to straighten the mat and directing him to pick some flowers and lay them out between the babies, pouncing on a cute stuffed dog that was Arthur’s to add to the general adorableness. ‘Where’s Isabella?’

  Chloe appeared in the doorway, holding the child, who before this had apparently been asleep for much of the day, missing the drama. She was awake now, her eyes half open, but appeared floppy and placid, in a pink dress that must have been terribly impractical to get on and off.

  I sighed. I didn’t have the energy to fight this. ‘Fine. Put her down.’ And I handed Hadley to Aaron to carry forward and lay down. Aisha brought Hari over, and Cathy did the same with Arthur, after a defiant glance at Hazel. Immediately he began to cry, his feet up in the air. Isabella lay there, a little doll. Hari clenched and unclenched his fists, as if he might be filling his nappy. Hadley gave a small moan of distress. ‘Ready?’ Monica raised her phone. The picture was taken. It was 2.35 p.m.

  Jax – two weeks earlier

  I wasn’t dead. I was somehow awake, and I had a baby. A daughter. She lay on my chest, pink and squirming, like the naked mole rats they had at London Zoo. The past few hours – thirty hours, it seemed, a whole day of my life swallowed up by anaesthetic, C-section, and the sheer time-warping properties of a medical emergency – was a blur to me. The contours of my body seemed changed – the bump gone, packing gauze in odd places. But I appeared to be alive.

  Aaron was sitting beside me. ‘Have you been here the whole time?’ I had no memory of him arriving and yet it was a different day, like an especially hellish kind of jet lag.

  ‘Most of it, yeah.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything.’ I vaguely recalled being told I’d had a Caesarean. I bet Monica would have her baby naturally, with an intact perineum too. In some distant corner of my mind I cared about that, but it was so far away, a different galaxy.

  Aaron was pale, like a boy soldier back from the trenches. ‘Probably for the best.’ I wondered if he’d ever find me sexy again, and reflected that maybe the old-fashioned way was best, whisky and cigars in the waiting room. ‘Is she alright?’ He nodded to the baby. His daughter.

  ‘I think so.’ She looked fine, if alien. She had been inside me, and yet I didn’t recognise her at all. I was so tired that if she slipped from my arms and to the ground, I wasn’t sure I could bend to pick her up, like I’d once read happened to sloths in the jungle. ‘You can hold her, you know.’

  Had he been waiting for permission? I passed her over and he held her, looking stunned. ‘What’s going to happen now?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ My mother would arrive at some point; I was surprised she wasn’t here already. The last few weeks had been a nightmare, reliving everything with Mark and Claudia, convinced someone was stalking me as I silently gestated, flat on my back. Now I had to return to my life and try to live it, raise this baby, fix my relationship if that was even possible, sort my job out, clear my name. It was too much. Part of me wanted to ask for more anaesthetic, and just go to sleep for a week.

  The day of – Anita

  3.01 p.m.

  Jeremy came back from dropping Kelly off about twenty minutes later. She had been counting them down, hovering at the edge of the house, feeling uneasy, while everyone else settled back into gales of relieved laughter and nervous smiles. They had taken a picture of the babies, and of course Anita had none to place in the circle. Disaster had been averted. Nothing bad had happened after all, in this suburban garden on a sunny day. Kelly had not stolen the baby. She saw Ed open another bottle of wine, slosh it into glasses, spilling some on the table. But Anita could not smile or laugh or feel relieved. Because what they thought Kelly had done, picked up an unattended child and spirited her away, hadn’t that very thing crossed Anita’s mind? She had seen Hadley alone, and worried that she was too hot in the sun. She’d seen a bee crawling on the nearby bush and worried she’d get stung. She’d thought about picking her up, taking her out of danger, and then the thought had progressed. Walking out to the car, taking her home. Holding her on her knee in the nursing chair she’d already bought, not that she would be able to feed Victoria when she came. Kissing the silky-soft top of her head, stroking her tiny fingers and the soft pads of her feet, never walked on yet. She’d understood that impulse and it scared her. She wasn’t that woman, the one people were afraid of, desperate for a baby, snatching one from a pram outside a shop. She’d never been desperate – if she had, she wouldn’t have waited until thirty-six before even trying. It was simply a madness that had taken over her, the disappointment that came from outside yourself, the smugness of mothers, the clinical way you were herded through the IVF system. A sunk-cost fallacy – we’ve come this far, we may as well carry on.

  Jeremy pulled in at the kerb, and she went to meet him. She saw him take out his phone, and frown at it. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. She thought how tired he looked. She went over.

  ‘Is Kelly alright?’

  ‘I don’t know. I asked if I should ring her mother, but she said no.’ He was still looking at his phone, frowning.

  ‘News?’ she said lightly.

  He hesitated. ‘I’ve had an email from Madeleine.’ The ad
option lawyer.

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Darling, I . . .’

  ‘She’s not coming, is she? Victoria.’ It was as if she’d always known it. Strange, how strongly you could picture it, play out scenes in your mind as if they had already happened, and then in a single moment it was all gone. She would never meet that baby from Alabama, if there even was a baby.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jeremy looked wretched. All that time and money and heartache. ‘The mother’s gone AWOL. They think she wants to keep the child after all – apparently, she’d been dropping hints about it. They’ll try to track her down, but . . . Madeleine thinks we could sue the agency for our costs, at least.’

  She found she didn’t much care about that. She had brought home almost one million pounds that year. So much money and nothing she really wanted that could be bought. ‘So . . . what can we do? If they don’t find her?’

  ‘Legally, there’s not much to be done, even if we track her down. She still has parental rights. And the cost of a civil case, well . . .’

  She took his hand. ‘Let’s just go home, Jeremy. I don’t know why we came here, put ourselves through this.’ She had taken a whole antenatal class and had no baby to show for it. She was childless in a house full of babies. Her and poor Kelly. ‘It’s OK.’ Anita felt the small, soothing feeling of giving up. She would not throw herself any more at this barbed-wire fence. ‘She was never really ours, you know.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. You wanted this so much.’

  ‘I think I just . . . went a little mad. I did want a baby. But not instead of everything else. Not instead of my life.’