by Imogen Clark
In different circumstances, maybe she and Leah could have been friends. Clio would have liked that. But as things stood it would be unfair to chase a relationship there. The best thing for Leah was for Clio to just drop out of her life. Clio had sated her curiosity and that would have to be enough. There was nothing to be gained by pulling their different worlds any closer together. It was a shame, but that was the grown-up thing to do.
Clio unfolded herself from the sofa and went to make herself a drink. Mozart struggled to his feet and padded after her, his tail wagging feebly as he went.
5
GRACE – THEN
Grace sat in the orangery trying to summon up the energy to move. She had estate business that she ought to be dealing with, but everything felt like such an effort these days that it was hard to muster up the enthusiasm. Just five more minutes, she thought. Perhaps she would make her weary way to the office when Marguerite came to take away her tea tray.
Grace rested her hand on her bump and felt a hard angular shape, an elbow maybe, or a heel, pushing out against the wall of her stomach. She pressed the knobble gently and the baby kicked back against her hand impatiently as if she had disturbed it at a crucial moment. Soon they would be three and she would have an heir to the barony that she had inherited from her father. It was very exciting, but if she let her mind dwell on the shadowy details of the impending childbirth for too long her excitement morphed very quickly into gut-wrenching anxiety. It was best to keep busy, if only she could find the verve.
The double doors into the orangery creaked open and in strolled Charles. Her husband, tall and broad with chestnut hair brushed back from his face and tawny eyes, was the most handsome man Grace had ever known and, whilst she knew it was shallow of her to think so, she just could not help it. When they attended social functions together she loved the way he could command a room, turning heads as he went, and she felt proud when after charming all the right people, he always settled back at her side.
Charles was dressed for work in his satin-trimmed dinner jacket and a crisp white dress shirt, the bow tie still dangling untied around his neck.
‘Ah, there you are, darling,’ he said as he approached. ‘I’ve been hunting for you all over.’
He was at her side now and he reached down and gently pressed the flat of his hand against the swell that was their baby.
‘Hello, Junior,’ he said in a squeaky voice that made Grace giggle. ‘This is your father speaking. Are you okay in there? Good. Well, I’ll see you very soon.’ Then he turned his attention back to Grace. ‘You couldn’t help me with this tie, could you?’ he asked with a lopsided grin.
Charles was perfectly capable of tying his own bow tie, but Grace liked that he still asked her to do it for him. It was becoming increasingly difficult, though, as her bump forced them to stand further and further apart.
‘Come here,’ she said, getting to her feet with difficulty and opening her arms. Charles came and stood in front of her so that she could stretch her arms around his neck. She could still reach, but only just. He leant back against her and although it was a little uncomfortable to have the weight of him so close to her, she didn’t push him away. She tied the bow tie deftly, but just as she was pulling the ends into shape the baby gave a huge kick that made her catch her breath.
‘Ouch!’ said Charles. ‘I felt that! My son, the 14th baron of Hartsford, is going to play for Newcastle one day.’
‘He might be a she,’ said Grace, raising a neatly plucked eyebrow at him.
‘With a right foot like that? Not on your Nelly,’ said Charles.
He spun round on the spot and kissed her passionately on the lips. It was the kind of kiss that would definitely have led them upstairs before, but Grace was just too tired to contemplate that kind of thing these days. She put her arms on his shoulders and they swayed there for a moment. Grace liked to sway. It made the pressure on her pelvis easier to bear.
‘What is it tonight?’ she asked as he checked his watch.
He pulled away from her gently. ‘Sibelius 2, that Grieg you’ve always liked and the Strauss horn concerto,’ he said. ‘Nice programme, actually. I’m looking forward to it.’
‘And you know the plan?’ Grace checked anxiously. ‘Just in case.’
‘He won’t arrive tonight,’ said Charles. ‘You’re not due for days yet. And he knows better than to put in an appearance on a concert night.’
‘But still,’ said Grace, her hand automatically finding the spot where the little foot had been just moments before.
They had reached that stage in her pregnancy when she could go into labour at any moment, although her actual due date was not for a couple of weeks. Her bag was packed with everything that the dozens of books and magazines that she had read on the subject suggested would be vital, and it had sat in the corner of their bedroom for almost a month now. It was as if she were planning a pleasant little city break rather than a painful hospital stay.
Charles seemed far too relaxed about what was about to happen, Grace thought. She, however, was a bag of nerves. Whenever he went to work she fretted that she wouldn’t be able to get a message to him in time, that he would miss it all and that she would have to go through everything on her own. Her father had not been present at her birth, or so her nanny Mrs Finn had told her. Granted, when she had been born back in the fifties men had not troubled themselves with that kind of female activity, but it was the eighties now and things had changed. Charles was keen to take an active role in the birth of his firstborn.
‘I was there at the start of this adventure,’ he had said with a rakish wink, ‘and I’m damn well going to be there at the end.’
Grace hoped he was right.
‘Don’t you worry, my darling,’ Charles said now, his smile tender but indulgent. ‘I’ve told anyone that could possibly answer a telephone in the entire building to be on red alert. I don’t believe there’s a soul in Newcastle who doesn’t know that I am about to become a father. If the call comes through then someone will let me know and I’ll come hotfooting it to the hospital. But if you could just cross your legs until after the Grieg . . .’ He grinned, his expression as cheeky as a schoolboy’s.
‘I’ll do my best,’ she said weakly.
She gave him a wide smile and hoped that it was enough to disguise her terror at the prospect of what lay ahead. As if he could read her mind, Charles reached over and took her hand in his, rubbing the pad of his thumb up and down her palm soothingly. He had big hands with such thick fingers that it was hard to believe that he could tease such exquisite music from a violin.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, squeezing gently. ‘It’s going to be fine. And when you need me I’ll be there. I’ll walk off stage in the middle of a movement if needs be. Just get someone to make the call and I’ll be by your side in the blink of an eye.’ He gave her another kiss, this time on the end of her nose, and then he strode out of the orangery and was gone.
‘Good luck,’ she called out after him. ‘Play well.’
6
LEAH – NOW
I found my mind flicking back to Clio quite often that weekend. For all her big house and what sounded like a celebrity lifestyle, she seemed adrift somehow, like she really didn’t know where she fitted into the world at all. Of course, that might just be because her dad had died. Losing a parent can knock you for six. I know. I was only eighteen when Dad left and then Mum died. I was pretty much abandoned to get on with life on my own and it was touch and go for a while.
But I’d had the house and that was my salvation. Somehow, God knows how, my parents had owned our tiny terraced house outright, so there had been no mortgage for me to cover, just the bills. That was struggle enough, but at least I wasn’t catapulted out on to the streets.
I did have to rethink my life plans, though. I was in the middle of my A-levels when it all happened. Mum could never understand why I wanted to stay on at school. To her way of thinking, getting an education was a form of tort
ure that had to be endured rather than a ticket to a new world. But even though she thought I’d be better off leaving as soon as I could, she did try to be supportive. Whenever I got into trouble, she’d storm down there to defend me, but she often ended up getting into a row with the teachers and making things worse. Dad seemed to get it more, but then he wasn’t always there so that didn’t really help. I knew, though, that if I was going to do the stuff I dreamed of then I needed to get myself to university.
All that went out of the window when Mum died. How could I afford university when it was just me? So I left school, got myself a job as a cleaner and worked myself up from there. I thought I’d get back to my plans once the dust had settled, but then I was pregnant and that was that. For a while I still dreamed of finishing my A-levels but it’s been fifteen years now and I’ve never done anything about it, so I think I’ve probably blown my chances. Not that I regret anything – well, not often, anyway. I wouldn’t be without the kids and I may still find a way of travelling. Never give up hope, that’s what I say.
That night we’d gone down to the beach for an end-of-weekend run around. Poppy was chasing her little brother across the beach. She was thirteen going on sixteen most of the time but out there running across the sand, her hair flying out behind her like ribbons, she looked like a little girl again, which was absolutely fine by me. Girls grow up way too fast, in my opinion.
I saw Noah turn his head to see how close his sister was getting to him and then he tumbled, head over heels, landing in a crumpled heap on the sand. My heart was in my mouth. I can’t bear to see them hurt themselves and I leapt to my feet, ready to rush over there and give him a special Mummy hug, but there was no need. Poppy had got to him and was sitting him up, smoothing his hair and putting her ear to his chest. She looked so silly that he forgot about crying. He was lucky to have such a great big sister, although really I knew there wasn’t an iota of luck about it. I’d put my heart and soul into bringing them up right.
And then Clio popped into my head yet again. She had mentioned a brother, though not by name. Maybe they didn’t have such a great relationship as my two. That would fit with what I thought I knew about Clio so far. I’d got the impression that her family weren’t that close. It was ironic really, because if I’d had any family, other than the kids of course, I’d have made it my business to keep us all tight, a little ball of strength safe against whatever the outside world could hurl at us.
I’d looked Clio up on Facebook. With a name like hers she wasn’t hard to find. She hadn’t been lying about her house being big, either. It was some kind of stately home. It even had a Facebook page of its own and you could hire it out for weddings. There was a smaller wing on either end of the main house. I could picture Clio living in one of them and her brother in the other with their mother keeping the peace between them. From the pictures, it looked like these wings would dwarf my whole house. How the other half lived, eh?
There were plenty of pictures of Clio, too, with various blonde, expensive-looking friends on yachts and ski slopes and relaxing at extravagantly laid dining tables. I felt a bit bad spying on her like that, but I couldn’t stop looking. I clicked further and further back into Clio’s past until her timeline came to an end. There were no pictures of anyone who might be her family, no smiling faces around a Christmas tree or birthday celebrations, none of that, just a string of photos that she’d been tagged into by other people. It looked like Clio had no life of her own, just what she got from others.
I suppose I felt much richer than her then. Yes, she’d been to all the places that I was desperate to see, but what was the point of travelling if you didn’t have anything to come home to? If things had been different I let myself think that we might have been friends. We’d got on well, even if the only thing we had in common was having a dead parent. And so, in a moment of tipsy madness, I sent her a Facebook friend request although I very much doubted she’d respond.
She did, though, pretty much by return, but then I didn’t know what to do. I was sure she’d accepted me because she felt obliged to and that was embarrassing, so I’d just logged off rather than getting in touch.
I watched Poppy and Noah. They were building a sandcastle now, piling the sand up and flattening it into shape with the palms of their hands. Buckets are for the tourists. The local kids know how to work the sand without any tools, although Noah always kept his eyes open for any stray bits of brightly coloured plastic that might have been left behind. The beach was getting quiet now, as the sandy day-trippers made their way back to their cars, wiping feet and buckets and shaking out blankets as they went. It was time for us to wander home, too, and start the Sunday evening preparations for the week ahead. I stood up, gathering my jacket and bag, and called down to the kids. They looked up briefly then went back to their work, but then Poppy, who knew the score, stood up, pulling a reluctant Noah to his feet, and pretty soon they were making their way across the sand to where I was sitting.
‘Come on, you two,’ I said warmly as they got close enough to hear. ‘Time for tea and then baths and bed.’
‘Is it pizza?’ asked Noah hopefully.
‘No. It’s shepherd’s pie. With carrots!’ I told him, and he pulled a face. ‘You’ve done all your homework, haven’t you, Poppy?’
My mum never asked me about my school work so I always made a point of checking in with Poppy. She looked down at her feet, scuffing her trainers through the dusty sand at the base of the bench. She nodded. Obviously there was something she hadn’t done but I didn’t press her on it. I trusted that she would.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Let’s go then.’
We headed home, Poppy and me walking side by side whilst Noah ran on ahead, following the winding path with arms stretched out like an aeroplane.
7
MELISSA – THEN
Melissa felt blessed. Her baby was the most beautiful child that had ever been born. Anyone could see that just by looking at her. Leah’s tiny head was the perfect shape. Her hair was the softest there had ever been and her skin the dewiest. Melissa was totally in love, but more than that, she was in awe. How had she – who was, she had to admit, pretty ordinary – managed to create such a heavenly creature? It was nothing short of a miracle.
Leah was reaching the end of her feed now and struggling to stay awake. Her clear blue eyes, so alert and watchful at the beginning of the exercise, slowly lost their focus as her eyelids dropped. She almost reminded Melissa of the punters from the pub where she worked. Drunk on milk. So sweet.
The baby gave a contented little sigh as her rosebud lips released the bottle’s teat from their vice-like grip, and then slipped immediately into a deep sleep. Melissa knew she should put her back into her cot and go back to bed herself – 3.07 a.m. was neither early morning nor late night, and certainly no time to be awake – but instead she sat and looked out through the window as the pale light of the moon shimmered on the surface of the water. It might only be the chilly, grey North Sea but at night it was as beautiful as any other ocean you could care to name, and Melissa loved it.
She pulled the blanket more tightly round the two of them. Despite being spring, it was still freezing cold. The caravan’s single-glazed windows did nothing to retain the small amount of heat that she managed to generate, and were fitted so badly that the crisp night air easily seeped in around their mouldering edges. She should buy some of that draught excluder tape and stick it on. Or maybe nick some? There wasn’t that much spare in the budget to cover extras like that, but she needed to sort it. It wasn’t just her living here now. There was beautiful Leah to consider, and Melissa was determined that she would do everything in her power to protect her daughter. She was going to make sure that Leah had the chances in life that she had never had.
‘You are so loved,’ she whispered to Leah’s sleeping form. ‘I won’t let anything hurt you.’
Carefully, Melissa extracted her hand from the bundle and ran the pads of her fingers gently across Lea
h’s cheek. Three weeks old. Well, three weeks, two days and about, what, seven hours? And already the memory of her life without Leah in it felt like somewhere she had visited once but then forgotten. Nothing in Melissa’s world had ever amounted to much right up until the point when Leah had burst out of her, pink and perfect and ready to take on the world. There had been no terrifying little hiatus of silence like you saw in the films. Leah came into the delivery room shouting without any need for a prompting slap on the backside. It was clear right from her very first moments on earth that she was fit for the challenges of life. Even Ray had said so as he watched, awestruck, whilst his newborn daughter found Melissa’s nipple, rooted and then began to suck.
‘Nothing wrong with her survival instinct,’ he’d said as he wiped his eyes on his white cotton handkerchief. Even in that moment, Melissa had felt proud that her fella carried a real handkerchief. Who did that these days? No one from round her way, that was for sure.
But there was something a bit special about her Ray. She had known that the moment he’d walked up to the bar and ordered a shot of whisky. None of your cheap stuff either. She’d virtually had to dust the bottle as she reached it down from the shelf. There wasn’t much call for single malt in the Coach and Horses. He looked classier than your average punter, too. His jeans hadn’t come from the market and his sweater was wool, not acrylic. She’d noticed it all but not thought much about it at the time. That was how it was with city centre pubs. You got all sorts in through the door and Newcastle was no different.
He had appeared late on a busy Friday night so she hadn’t had much chance to look at him, let alone chat, but as she’d poured endless pints for her increasingly drunken customers she could feel his eyes on her. Self-consciously she straightened her shoulders as she worked so that her cleavage would look at its best, and smiled as often as she could without looking like she was a sandwich short of a picnic. People said that she had a nice smile. And nice tits for that matter.