The House We Grew Up In
Page 35
‘A what?’
‘It was my idea,’ he said. ‘Well, actually, it was one of the women at the commune. She was trying to persuade Kayleigh into doing it when she was having Tia. But Kayleigh wasn’t having any of that. “What, lying about in bed on my skinny arse all day with a baby, I’d go nuts!” But I always thought it sounded like a great idea. So I talked Beth into it.’ He held out his hands for bags and led everyone through the house. The kitchen was so cosy: the sun was shining through the leaded windows and casting rainbows about the place, there was a half-read newspaper on the table, mugs in the sink, a pot of yellow butter open on the counter, Babygros drying on the Aga, and the scrubbed flagstones were warm underfoot. Beth had put pink gingham curtains at the windows and the room smelled of toast and coffee.
The boys raced upstairs to their room. (It was Rhys’s old room, finally exorcised, finally just a room again. Megan had bought two sets of bunks and paid for the room to be painted Farrow & Ball Cook’s Blue.) Bill stayed downstairs to help Rory make tea for everyone, and Molly and Megan squirted Milton antibacterial hand gel into their palms and tiptoed quietly up the stairs to the room that had once been Lorelei and Colin’s and then Lorelei and Vicky’s and then just Lorelei’s. Bethan had gone to town on this room once it had finally been emptied. She’d papered it with baby-pink rosebuds and curtained it with cream silk. She’d bought a brass bed from a local auction and clothed it with antique lace and satin eiderdowns. She’d painted all her mother’s wardrobes and her dressing table in cream and carpeted the floorboards with pastel sheepskins and shagpile rugs. But she’d left some of Lorelei’s touches too: the trio of cameos of fat-bottomed cherubs in porcelain frames, a few gilt-framed oil paintings of indeterminate heritage, a couple of fussy bugle-bead-trimmed table lamps. Megan could not have stood for it. She’d have wanted it gone, every last shred of the hellhole that this room had once been. But it wasn’t her room. It was Bethan’s room. And it was lovely.
She’d been so proud of it. ‘My first real room,’ she’d said, last time Megan had visited.
‘What about your room in Sydney?’
Bethan had sighed, her hand touching a small Perspex cabinet on the windowsill which housed a small pink pebble and the handwritten note from Vicky. ‘That wasn’t a room. It was a stage set. A doll’s house. It was where I lived when I was pretending to be a person.’
Now Megan knocked gently on the door.
‘Come in!’
She and Molly exchanged a small smile and then they stepped inside.
And there she was.
The newest Bird.
She was tiny – under seven pounds – much smaller than she’d looked in the photos Beth had been texting her, and with a full head of dark hair. Beth sat cross-legged on the bed in a cream embroidered smock that Megan recognised as one of Lorelei’s, unearthed during the clear-out, and grey leggings. The baby lay in the nest created between her legs, in a pale-grey Babygro with pink spots on it. She was wide awake and the two of them were just staring at each other.
Bethan looked up at Megan and Molly and smiled. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘look at her. Isn’t she amazing?’
They moved closer, barely making a sound. The whole tableau was so excruciatingly, mesmerisingly perfect, Megan could not bear to mar it in any way.
‘Oh, my God,’ she whispered, resting the palm of her germ-free hand against the baby’s crown. ‘Oh, Beth. She is beautiful!’
Molly stared down at the baby, awestruck. ‘Oh, God,’ she said, ‘she’s so tiny! She’s so precious!’
‘I know,’ said Beth. ‘I know.’
Megan felt that familiar ache in her lower abdomen, that keening and calling of parts of herself over which she had no control. But no, she thought. No. No more babies. Here they were now. Here they all were.
Beth was surrounded by all the things she needed during her babymoon: litre bottles of water, muslins, nappies, wipes, creams, cards, flowers, clothes, books, a laptop and a phone. She had that aura of glorious tiredness of the first-time mother, the mother who has nobody else to care for but her baby and herself. She looked beautiful.
‘You look amazing,’ Meg said, cradling the baby in her arms, perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Are you getting any sleep?’
‘Tons,’ said Beth. ‘I’m feeding her in my sleep. I just roll over when she grizzles. Bam. Boob in mouth.’
Molly shuddered gently and smiled grimly.
Megan said, ‘Oh, you’re co-sleeping?’
Beth said, ‘Yes. I mean, where else would she sleep?’
And Megan said nothing because none of her babies had ever slept in her bed because that would have been a bed made to lie in. She smiled instead and said, ‘Have you got a name yet?’
The baby had been ‘the baby’ for three days now and Megan was growing impatient.
‘Yes!’ said Beth. ‘I do.’
Molly and Megan looked at her expectantly.
‘Elsa Athena Rose,’ she said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Athena for Mum’s sister?’
Beth nodded.
‘I love it,’ she said.
There was a knock at the door and Rory and Bill came in with trays of tea and the biscuits that Megan and Molly had made together that morning in Tufnell Park. Rory sat on the other side of the bed and stroked Elsa’s hair. Bill stood by Megan’s side and smiled down at her. ‘Well done, Beth,’ he said, ‘well done. She’s absolutely superb. Really.’
Then the three boys came in, primed by someone, Bill she assumed, to be very quiet indeed. They tiptoed in, one behind the other, and then the room was full of them. Her family. She heard a car pull up upside and handed the baby back to Beth so she could peer from the window. It was a taxi, and as she watched she saw her father step out and pass a £10 note to the driver. From the other side of the taxi she saw the thin, pale legs of Kayleigh and the even thinner legs of Tia and the bottom of a suitcase and the handles of a pink gift bag. She pushed open the window and she hung over the ledge.
‘Dad!’ she called. ‘Kayleigh! Come up to Mum’s room. Come straight up! We’re all here.’
Acknowledgements
Thank you, Selina Walker. This was our first writer/editor collaboration and I have enjoyed every moment of working with you. Every writer should be so lucky.
Thank you, Najma Finlay for publicising. Jen Doyle for marketing and Richard Ogle for putting up with me bombarding you with ideas for covers while you were quietly trying to get on with it.
Thank you to everyone else at Random House; to Susan Sandon, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, the sales team and everybody who has worked so hard on my behalf.
Thank you to my wondrous agent, Jonny Geller and his amazing assistant, Lisa Babalis.
Thank you to the staff at Apostrophe, my ‘office’. Thank you for the coffee, and Maya – good luck with that film role!
Thank you to Mary Chamberlain, my copy editor, for painstaking attention to detail, I challenge anyone to find one single date out of alignment in here.
Thank you to my flesh-and-blood friends on the Board. Fourteen years and counting. I’d be lost without you. And thank you also to my virtual friends on Twitter and Facebook. You’re all so supportive and wonderful. I’d be lost without you too.
And lastly, as ever, thank you to my people; to Jascha, Amelie and Evie, to my sisters and my father and my in-laws, my nieces, my nephews and my incredible friends. How blessed I am.
The name ‘Stella Richards’ was given to me by Sarah Richards who won a character name in an auction raising money for Camille’s Appeal. Camille’s Appeal is a charity focused on supporting the recovery of children diagnosed with brain tumours. Working in partnership with other charities and the NHS, they are funding specialised rehabilitation units to allow children to access the support and therapy they need to help them reach their full potential. You can find out more about Camille’s Appeal here: http://www.camillesappeal.co.uk/. It’s a brilliant cause and I hope Sarah’s daughter, Stella, whose name I have u
sed, enjoys her fictional turn as a Cotswolds coroner!
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Copyright © Lisa Jewell 2013
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This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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