Fear of Falling

by Cath Staincliffe

  ‘Bel!’ I couldn’t help but laugh. How much of Bel’s recklessness had been shaped by her parents? How much was just her personality?

  ‘D’you want some?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Lydia.’ She put her palm to my cheek, cupping my chin. ‘What would I do without you? I’m so glad you’re here.’ Her eyes glistened, the pupils changing size with the effects of the cocaine. ‘Whooo!’ She shook her head. ‘Right. Up and at ’em. Roll on tomorrow morning. Adieu. And good riddance.’

  ‘It’s nice of them to help with the deposit,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, well, money costs nothing,’ she said, then giggled. ‘They think they can keep me in line if they own the roof over my head. We’ll see. “Once more unto the breach, dear friend . . .”’ And off she went, high as a kite.

  *

  Janette met and interviewed our referees – my mum, Mac’s sister Terese, and Bel – and told us that they had all given glowing reports. With the checks in place and preparation sessions complete, we started the second stage of the process. Assessment and home study. At the end of this, Janette would put forward our application to be considered as adopters to a formal panel.

  ‘People worry a lot about this stage,’ she said. ‘You’ve heard talk about the F form?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mac said. ‘It’s like a job application for the job of parent.’

  She smiled. ‘It can feel very intrusive. You’ll share things that many couples would never dream of sharing and consider questions that most people starting a family wouldn’t need to think about. To start off I want you to write down your life story, include all the key events, everything that made you into the person you are today.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Mac said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Janette. ‘Along with that, fill in this information form and find a recent photo that you’d like to use for your profile.’

  After work each night I returned to the task. We had no indication of how much or how little we should include, and at first I thought I had hardly anything to write. My life had been stable, unremarkable, but gradually I fleshed it out, remembering things I hadn’t thought of in years. My mum going into hospital, when I was ten and Steven six, and being sent to stay with my grandma for several weeks. I had a stomach-ache all the time. I couldn’t sleep, missing my mum, my home. She’d had a hysterectomy, I found out when I was older.

  Steven breaking his wrist at the park, the horrible screaming sound he made, and me running for help. Pixie the cat getting run over. The fox breaking into my rabbit hutch and savaging my beloved Moppet.

  We each met with Janette separately to talk about ourselves, how we dealt with conflict and rejection, our prior relationships, our fears, weaknesses and vulnerabilities, our childhoods.

  After that we had to talk about ourselves as a couple. It felt strange, trying to analyse how we worked. ‘Mac is the one who puts it into words. When there’s a problem, he makes us face it,’ I said. ‘And we don’t row, do we, not really? Is that weird?’

  She shook her head. ‘Did your parents?’

  ‘No, not really. They’d sulk a bit, my mum would get snappy with us, but I never heard them shouting.’

  ‘And yours?’ she asked Mac.

  ‘Oh, my mother had a temper. She’d kick my father out of the house every so often. Till bedtime. Dishes were thrown.’

  Christ! Would this count as violence? Would it be held against us?

  ‘Luckily she had a terrible aim, missed every time.’ He grinned.

  ‘What did they argue about?’ Janette said.

  ‘Money, mainly,’ he said.

  Brendan had seemed so calm, so settled. Had those outbursts been hard for him? Now he was a widower, was that one thing he didn’t miss?

  ‘I don’t like conflict, not shouting and chucking stuff,’ Mac said. ‘I guess that’s why.’

  ‘What about house rules?’ Janette said. ‘What were the rules for each of you growing up? What will your house rules be?’ She encouraged us to look beyond the obvious – set bedtimes or no shoes in the house – to those unspoken rules we’d learned: listening to others, greeting people when we came home, looking after people’s possessions, sharing food.

  We also looked at the logistical aspects of becoming parents. Where would a child or children eat and sleep? What nurseries and schools were in the area? Where were the outdoor play facilities? The house was checked for any health and safety issues. We’d already child-proofed much of it for Freya: at nine months old she was pulling herself up on furniture, crawling at a fast sprint, fingers into everything.

  It was made clear that I’d have to take a year’s leave and be a full-time carer. We’d have to manage on a lower income. And stability was paramount. ‘Moving house won’t be an option,’ Janette said, ‘not for some considerable time. You’ll need to create and stick to routines, minimise any change in your circumstances. New situations reawaken a sense of dislocation and trauma in lookedafter children.’ Lookedafter children – the term was used a lot by the professionals we met, interchangeable with ‘children in care’.

  We kept a diary for a week, our times at work, at home, what we were doing when. Then Janette talked us through it. ‘You’ll probably be getting up an hour or two earlier. You might have been up in the night. A child will want to eat before seven in the evening and we’ve looked at how important mealtimes together are. How can that be managed with Mac still at work?’

  One of the last things we had to do was fill in the check-list covering what type of children we would consider adopting.

  ‘I don’t know where to start,’ I said to Mac. ‘Look.’ I jumped through the sections. ‘Female or male, number of children . . . biracial . . . Would you consider a child with cerebral palsy . . . limited life expectancy . . . foetal alcohol syndrome . . . blindness . . . delayed development . . . epilepsy . . . autism?’

  ‘Boy or girl’s easy,’ Mac said. ‘If it was a birth-child we wouldn’t get to pick.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’m happy with that.’

  ‘We’d likely be matched more quickly if we went for a sibling group rather than a single child,’ he said. ‘I think of having a crowd of them, two or three. They’d have each other. I like that idea.’

  It overwhelmed me. Slightly panicked, I said, ‘I don’t know. Isn’t one enough? And wouldn’t one child be easier to manage? Wouldn’t they settle more quickly if they had all our attention?’ I looked back at the form. ‘How on earth are we going to decide about all these?’

  ‘We just work through it. Talk about it. It’ll take some time.’

  ‘You’re not kidding.’

  ‘I feel guilty saying no,’ I told Mac, as we rejected various options. ‘But I think it’ll be hard enough without taking on a child with any special needs.’

  We finally settled on a boy or girl under four, of any racial background, and would consider minor hearing or visual impairments and allergies. Our application went to the local authority. Now we waited for an adoption panel date.

  Chapter Twenty

  I was so nervous. My stomach was in knots and my armpits prickled with sweat as we sat in the waiting room. Mac was drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair.

  We would be called into the panel meeting after they’d examined our application so we could answer any questions that had arisen and raise anything we wanted to.

  ‘What do we wear?’ I’d asked Mac the night before. ‘Do we dress up?’

  ‘Sure, as long as we look clean, I don’t think they’ll care at all.’

  Now, I tried to distract myself, looking at the old paintings of aldermen and mayors on the walls, then wandering over to stare out of the window at the crowds crossing the square below, many holding umbrellas. A drizzly March day.

  The country was at war: UK troops had invaded Iraq. It was hard to comprehend. Here we all were, going about our business, while thousands of miles away bombs were falling. But even thinking about that gravest of news couldn’t divert me for
long.

  If we weren’t approved, if they said no . . . But why would they? We were settled, educated, financially solvent. We had a lovely home. We could offer love and safety and comfort. If they said no . . .

  My phone pinged. A text from my mum. Thinking of you today x. She’d taken to mobile technology with aplomb and, in her retirement, had joined a computer class at the library.

  Then Janette was at the door, asking us to come.

  There were nine other people in the room. They introduced themselves but I forgot immediately who was who and what their role was. I was close to tears with the stress.

  The chair thanked us for coming and said they had a couple of questions for us.

  One of the women asked how I would cope with being at home for a year after working full-time.

  ‘I’ll have to adjust,’ I said. ‘It’ll be a big change.’

  ‘It could be very difficult?’ she said.

  I floundered. ‘Well, yes. I won’t know until I’ve done it.’ Shit. Did I sound too defensive? Hostile?

  A woman with grey hair, who I realised must be the doctor on the panel, brought up my depression. Would I be able to recognise the symptoms if there was any recurrence and seek help?

  I could feel my cheeks blazing. ‘Yes, I think so, now I’ve been through it. And I’m sure Mac would tell me if he had any concerns.’

  Someone else wanted to know how we’d found the whole process, and Mac talked about it being hard work and emotionally demanding but said we’d learned a lot.

  He was asked to elaborate and I wondered if they were trying to trip him up but he didn’t hesitate or fumble his reply. ‘We know so much more about the needs of children in care and our own skills and strengths as a couple.’

  ‘What are you most scared of if you do get a match?’ said a young woman, with huge tortoiseshell glasses and hair that flicked up at the ends.

  That I won’t love the child. I didn’t say it aloud, and Mac said, ‘That the child won’t settle, we won’t be able to make them happy.’

  ‘Lydia?’ the woman said.

  ‘The same, I think. That the placement will break down. That we’ll lose the child.’ I felt a swoop of light-headedness, the sickening sensation of being somewhere high up. I gripped my hands on my lap and locked my eyes on the water jug they had beside the bowl of grapes and plate of biscuits.

  Mac said my name. Someone else had been speaking. A young man with a pointy face.

  ‘Sorry?’ I said.

  ‘Lydia, your medical was generally good but your overall BMI puts you well into the overweight category. Could you tell us a bit about your diet and whether you have any concerns about it?’

  I felt as if I’d been slapped. I cleared my throat. ‘I’ve always had a big appetite,’ I said. ‘And a sweet tooth. I comfort-eat at times, I’m aware of that, but my weight hasn’t changed a great deal over the past few years. It’s pretty stable.’

  ‘And in terms of feeding a child, of setting an example?’ he said, tapping his pen on the table.

  ‘I know nutrition is very important for children, a good balanced diet, with plenty of good fats, vitamins, proteins for growth. We’d do that. We’d eat together, and most of the food we’d have would be home-cooked.’

  No one nodded or smiled or seemed to appreciate my answer. I wanted to shrink away. The pointy man spoke again: ‘A child might be physically demanding. Will you be able to deal with that? Running around, outdoor activity, exercise?’ He waved the pen in the air.

  ‘Yes, of course.’ My voice shook. ‘We often go walking. I swim too.’ I wanted to say more, to object to the questions but these people had our fate in their hands. They had all the power.

  We were asked to return to the waiting room while they finished their discussion, and Janette showed us through, putting out her hand to touch my arm. ‘You did fine, it’s going well,’ she said. ‘We shouldn’t be much longer.’

  ‘What a dick!’ Mac said, about the man who’d queried my fitness.

  ‘We can’t all be fucking stick insects,’ I said.

  ‘And I’d never want you to be.’ Mac hugged me. ‘Soon be over.’

  But what if it was over? What if this was the end of our ‘adoption journey’, as the jargon went? If we were refused here, would we have a chance anywhere else? With a private agency, or abroad, like Terese’s friend?

  The chair of the panel came out after a few minutes and asked us to join them.

  With a thumping heart I followed Mac into the room and we took our seats. My ears whined and my skull buzzed. I felt sick. What if I was sick in front of everybody?

  I heard individual words: pleased, recommend, subject to final approval, decision maker.

  ‘Thank you!’ Mac said, laughing. He pulled me to him, one arm around my shoulders. ‘Thank you so much. That’s just brilliant!’

  Ten days later I was in the lab. Pattie and I had been for lunch. I’d had a prawn-salad sandwich and a granola bar. Pattie and I had got to know each other since I’d come back to work after my sick leave. Her baby was teething and she had been up half the night. ‘It’s the one thing I miss more than anything else – sleep, proper sleep,’ she said. Then yawned and apologised.

  Everyone in my department knew Mac and I were hoping to adopt, now waiting for final confirmation that we could go ahead.

  The phone rang at my desk, and when I answered, Janette said, ‘Congratulations, Lydia, you’ve got final approval, you and Mac.’

  I couldn’t talk. My eyes filled with tears and I pressed my hand to my mouth, trying to keep control. Even though I’d washed my hands there was the smell of prawns.

  ‘Lydia?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I squeaked.

  Across the room Pattie was on her feet, eager for news. I nodded to her and she grinned, turning to the others.

  ‘I’ll ring you later,’ Janette said. ‘It’s fantastic news. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I managed, between sobs. ‘Thank you for everything.’ I put the phone down and the room burst into applause.

  We’d done it. The last day of March 2003. Four years after we’d first started trying for a family, we were formally approved to adopt.

  Now we had to wait for a match. A son or a daughter to call our own.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  ‘Let’s see, then.’ Bel sat beside me on the bench.

  Freya was driving the playground train, twisting the steering wheel and chattering to herself.

  I opened my bag and pulled out the photograph of Chloë.

  Bel held the hair out of her eyes. It was a gusty November day, bright and chilly, the leaves skittering around, swirling in circles and clustering in heaps against the fence and the foot of the trees. ‘She’s lovely.’

  ‘Yes.’ My heart rose every time I looked at her. In the picture she was sitting on the floor, soft toys scattered around, a baby-walker to one side. She was looking up at the camera, the smallest of smiles on her face. Delicate features, not baby-like, really, a heart-shaped face and short, wispy blonde hair. She was wearing a pink top with a silver star appliquéd to the chest. Matching pink trousers. Would she be a girly girl? Would she want pink and princess dresses and Barbie dolls? I’d pored over every inch of the photograph, as if I could find more clues as to who Chloë was.

  I carried it with me. Mac had made a copy for himself.

  ‘It’s a bit like people do with scans,’ I’d said to Pattie. ‘That first glimpse.’

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ Pattie said. ‘We’ll have to get together when you’re on leave. It’ll be weird, you know, you not being here.’

  ‘If,’ I said, ‘if . . .’

  She smiled, inclined her head. ‘OK, if . . .’

  Mac’s sister Angela had wanted to send us some of her kids’ clothes when she’d heard it was a girl, but we’d turned her down. Not yet. We didn’t want anything, didn’t even dare to start preparing a room, until it was more definite. I was poised on a cliff edge, the unc
ertainty reminding me of having IVF, that same balancing act between hope and fear.

  ‘She’s two months older than Freya, nineteen months now,’ I said to Bel. ‘Born in April last year.’

  ‘Have you said yes?’ Bel asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I wanted to cry. The enormity of it all. Chloë. Chloë. ‘Now we have to wait for the matching panel.’

  ‘So they decide who gets who before you’ve even met?’ Bel said.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Weird.’

  ‘Mama!’ Freya called.

  Bel waved at her and shouted, ‘Ring the bell.’

  Freya nodded enthusiastically and reached to tug the rope. The bell clanged. A dog on the perimeter path barked in response.

  ‘If they think we’re not right for her, they could backtrack, say no. I don’t think I could bear that.’

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ Bel flicked her lighter, cigarette in her mouth. The wind snatched the flame. She tried again, stooping lower, snick, snick, and it caught. ‘They’d be insane to turn you two down. Do you know why she’s in care?’

  Freya jangled the bell again and again.

  ‘Neglected. Her mother’s a drug-user – she’s not been able to look after her. That’s about all we know so far. She’s been in foster-care since she was thirteen months. We don’t know anything about the father. I don’t think he’s on the scene.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’ Bel said drily.

  ‘What will you tell Freya?’ I said. ‘When she starts asking about her dad.’

  ‘That he’s dead.’

  ‘Bel!’

  ‘What?’ She blew a stream of smoke. ‘Freya! Enough with the bell. Stop it.’

  ‘You can’t tell her he’s dead,’ I said. ‘She’ll need to know the truth.’

  ‘What – that he’s a dick who didn’t give a shit? Didn’t even want to meet her?’ she said.

  ‘And if he turns up in the future and wants to get to know her? You hear stories like that all the time. You’d be lying to her for years.’

  Freya shrieked for me: ‘Lydia. Me go on a swing. Go on a swing.’