Freeing Grace

by Charity Norman

  ‘I’d been siphoning off funds into a separate bank account for years. About seventeen years, actually. I had a bit invested. There’s no need to look as though you’re sucking on a lemon.’

  I was gawping at her. I mean, we all make mistakes. But stealing the housekeeping money for all those years—stashing it away from the very first day of your marriage—well, that’s over the top. That’s dishonesty on a pretty monumental scale.

  She kicked a spray of sapphires into the air. ‘Look, Mr Goody-Goody, there’s no call for you to be sanctimonious. It was my money too. I spent my entire adult life working for that family. They got a free nanny, chauffeur, housekeeper, cook and cleaner. Bargain! So I gave myself the odd bonus. So what? I won’t ask Perry for more. I could demand a share in his army pension, make him sell the house. But I won’t. He’s getting off bloody lightly.’

  ‘He is—financially. So there you were, ready to go.’

  ‘All ready to go.’ She held up both hands in a gesture of finality. ‘Filled the freezer, cleaned the place from top to bottom, got the cleaner to increase her hours. The Great Escape.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them you wouldn’t be back this time?’

  ‘Didn’t tell them . . . ?’ She looked scandalised. ‘I did !’

  My jaw dropped. ‘They lied to me.’

  ‘Of course they lied to you. Otherwise you wouldn’t have agreed to come. I told them on the day I left. I didn’t say where I was going, just that after I’d written my piece I wasn’t coming back. Perry took it hard, as I expected. Matt just went out. And Lucy gave me an ear bashing.’

  ‘She’s not in your fan club, is she?’

  Deborah looked unhappy. ‘I’ve abandoned her twice, really. She’s never forgotten the first time, and she may never forgive the second. I would have been in touch, you know. Once the dust had settled. But the sad fact is that my children couldn’t care less if I emigrated to Mars.’

  ‘You’re wrong there. Matt literally begged me to find you.’

  She splashed back up the beach and knelt down, looking into my face. ‘Really?’ ‘Really.’

  Her face fell. ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he?’ she said bitterly. ‘So he can play with his new doll, which really cries and wets its nappy. If I don’t play too, they have to take her back to the shop.’

  I let it go. The air was distorted now, quivering as though the sand was on fire, and our patch of shade had shrunk.

  ‘Rod will be home by this evening.’ She sounded desperate. ‘I have to decide before then. Tell me, Jake. Advise me. What do I do? What I want to do is burn Perry’s letter and stay here, where I’ve found happiness.’

  ‘That’s a very rare commodity, happiness. Very, very rare.’ I meant it. I’d been searching for years, and the pot of gold always disappeared when I got closer.

  ‘A great gift,’ she agreed.

  ‘So. Stay.’

  ‘But then my grandchild will be given away to strangers, and Matt will never see her again.’ She rubbed her eyes despairingly. ‘He’ll never forgive me. And I’ll never forgive me. Those photos . . . Matt and his tiny daughter. Made me want to cry.’

  It’s life and death, tell her. Bring her back.

  ‘Lots of kids get adopted,’ I argued half-heartedly.

  ‘C’mon, Jake. Be realistic. It may be a miserable existence, where nobody loves her. Paedophiles have even adopted children especially so they can abuse them.’

  ‘That can’t be very common.’

  ‘But it happens. And she’d never be able to contact us. We’d never sleep easy again.’

  Promise you’ll bring her home with you. Promise.

  She met my eyes. ‘So must I start all over again? Another seventeen years in the slammer?’

  ‘Matt could have her back one day,’ I suggested doubtfully.

  ‘I’ll be her mother . . . I’ll love her. It means nothing to me any more, that half-life of the privileged. Plastic friendships. Hairdos and aerobics and personalised number plates. Fussing about whether our darlings will be brain surgeons or concert pianists. People here—those women you can hear, chatting, pounding maize—they worry about whether their children are even going to make it through the latest drought. Their lives are real.’ Her hand fastened on my arm. ‘Help me, Jake! I don’t know what to do.’

  At first I didn’t answer. I was watching the silver trail of a jet as it inched across the emptiness, and wishing I had a better answer for her.

  ‘I know what I’d do,’ I said. ‘I’d develop a sudden urge to explore Outer Mongolia. I’m a gold medallist at running away.’

  I felt her fingers tighten. ‘Good plan.’

  I sighed. It was no use. ‘But I know what you’re going to do, Deborah, and so do you. I think you made your decision sometime around dawn this morning. I don’t think the sun gave you his blessing this time.’

  She hid her face in her hands, and I laid an arm around her shoulder as she grieved. The heat seemed to breathe, like a sleeping dragon.

  I heard her laugh. Or sob. Either way, it was a bitter sound.

  ‘I wait seventeen years,’ she said. ‘And Matt forgets to buy a condom.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  David had something on his mind. She knew it, even before he’d hung up his coat.

  Leila had arrived home first, to a darkened house. The answer machine was flashing hysterically, as usual, but she ignored it. She wasn’t in the mood to be David’s secretary.

  She mustn’t give herself time to mope. Rolling up her sleeves, she attacked last night’s washing-up with determined energy. Sent an email to her brother. Sat at the piano and started getting to grips with a song Patrick had written for the Defibrillators. Nice rhythm, but the lyrics were pure schmaltz.

  David called out as soon as he opened the front door, as though checking she was there. Unusual. And as he carried his bag up to the study his footsteps sounded oddly resolute and purposeful. There was no tuneless baritone this evening, no jovial gossip about Vanessa and Kevin, yelled from upstairs. When he padded back down the stairs—often he jumped the last four steps, landing with a cheerful thud that shook the walls, but not tonight—she was standing rigidly in the hall, waiting for him. He held out his arms.

  ‘Evening, my lovely,’ he said quietly, and drew her close to him.

  ‘Something’s up,’ she insisted, stiffening. ‘What’s happened? Is it Mum?’

  ‘No. There’s no bad news.’ He ran a hand around the back of his neck. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

  She hung around by the kitchen table, watching unhappily as he uncorked a bottle.

  ‘Look,’ he began heavily. ‘There’s—’

  Out in the hall, the telephone rang. David didn’t move. ‘For God’s sake,’ he snapped, flinging the corkscrew onto the table. ‘They can leave a message.’

  Amazing, the fretful desperation in the sound of a ringing phone. Like a baby, crying. Every ring was an accusation. It cried out eight times before the answer machine soothed it. In the sudden silence they stared at one another, afraid to look into their future. A vice had begun to squeeze the breath from Leila’s chest. She watched his hands as he poured.

  ‘Look,’ he began again. ‘There’s much more to our marriage than having children.’

  Leila froze as the vice tightened. There wasn’t enough air. ‘Meaning what?’

  He lowered himself into a chair, reaching for her hand. She felt the distracted strength of his fingers, tangling with hers. ‘I love you, Leila. I want us to be happy, and we can’t be happy while we’re yearning for something that may never happen.’ His warm, dry palm drifted up her forearm. ‘We can’t carry on longing for a child.’

  Abruptly, Leila sat down. She meant to take a sip to give herself time, but her wrist shook uncontrollably. Red wine spilled down her sleeve and onto the table.

  ‘But we do long for it. There’s no off switch.’

  David moved his chair closer, searching her face with fearful eyes. He took her other
hand also, embracing them both, holding them against his chest.

  ‘I don’t think this is worth it any more.’

  She was silent for a good ten seconds, marshalling the hornet thoughts that buzzed furiously to the surface of her mind.

  ‘Not worth it?’ Snatching her fingers away, she spat out the words as though they were poisoned. ‘After all we’ve been through? Everything we’ve had to put up with—the IVF, everything—not worth it?’

  ‘Leila . . . I didn’t mean that we should never have tried. I just mean that it isn’t worth the constant stress. Not any more. It’s making you so unhappy.’

  ‘That’s my problem.’

  ‘Can’t we take ourselves off the adoption register? Can’t we have a real future, not a fantasy one? It’s been so long. We have to stop dreaming.’

  She was glaring wildly at him, the back of her hand pressed to her mouth. ‘Stop dreaming.’ She gagged on the horror. ‘It’s what we do. It’s who we are.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be.’

  ‘Really?’ She found herself on her feet, hating him, wanting to hurt him. ‘What else have we got?’

  The question hung maliciously between them. Leila strode to the door and then to the sink, trying to escape the despair. Sorrow was welling up in her throat, choking her. She had a frantic need to keep moving. She seized a dishcloth, held it under the tap and frenziedly mopped the draining board.

  ‘Leila,’ said David quietly, from behind her. ‘Please.’

  Her movement was arrested, the cloth dripping in her hand.

  His voice had a hopeless precision. ‘Do you think I don’t mourn for the children we’ll never have? Do you think I never imagine what they would have been like? My son, my daughter?’

  She turned, startled. Never before had she heard David acknowledge his own grief. He looked weary suddenly, his eyes deep in their own shadows. She could see one—no, more—strands of grey, glinting in his hair. She’d never noticed them. How could she have failed to notice? David wasn’t young any more.

  Ashamed, she took a step towards him and opened her mouth to speak without knowing what she would say.

  The telephone shrieked again, furiously, a child who would not be pacified. Leila jerked her head towards the sound, grateful now for the interruption. It would give her time.

  ‘Go on, answer the wretched thing. We can’t just leave it again. Someone might be in trouble.’

  He caught the wretched thing at the seventh ring. ‘David Edmunds.’

  It was astonishing, Leila reflected bitterly, how the man managed to sound sincere and wise and concerned, even at a time like this. She wasn’t listening to his conversation; she had not the slightest interest in which nagging fishwife was after her husband’s time and energy. She stood in the middle of the kitchen floor, while her cloth dripped a pool of water onto the lino.

  He wanted to give up. How could he want to give up?

  And yet. There was something different about this call. In the hall, David was momentarily silent, listening. The very air seemed to grow watchful, to lean closer, to hold its breath. Leila let his words trickle into her consciousness.

  ‘Linda Hooper,’ he said. ‘Yes, Linda, of course I remember. From the adoption team. What can I do for you?’ Caught by a sudden draught, the kitchen door swung shut.

  A small, beguiling hope began to flutter away somewhere under her rib cage, but she sternly ignored it. There had been too many fluttering hopes over the years, too many secret little pets of happiness, and they had all died horribly.

  Then David was shouting.

  It was probably bad news, Leila told herself. They’d been taken off the register. Too old, perhaps.

  The kitchen door crashed against the wall as he launched himself into the room and grabbed her by the elbows. He was grinning like a gleeful schoolboy who has discovered where they keep the key to the tuck cupboard.

  ‘They’ve found one! They’ve found one!’ He was making less sense than a schoolboy, too.

  ‘Found what, you ridiculous man?’

  ‘A baby.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’

  ‘A baby, Leila! It was that social worker on the phone—Linda. There’s a baby girl needing a family right now, and we’re top of the list!’

  Leila began to wring her hands together, agonised by the possibility, trying not to believe. She was horribly afraid to believe.

  ‘Aren’t there others who want her?’

  ‘Of course there are! But we’re the front runners because she’s mixed race. Also, we tick the box on the father’s wishes—he wanted one or both adoptive parents to be professionals, apparently, and wasn’t fussy about age. They’ve compared our assessment report—remember that thing, a gazillion pages of questions?—with the baby’s. And we’re the nearest match.’

  They stared dumbly at one another. David was rolling from one foot to the other as if unable to be still. Leila lifted a hand to her cheek. The hope began to flutter more insistently under her ribs, drawing breath, unfolding its beautiful wings.

  ‘Who’s looking after her at the moment?’ she asked. ‘The parents?’

  ‘No, no. Foster care. In another region altogether.’

  ‘So how does it all work?’

  ‘One or two formalities, a lot of faffing around, but Linda says she sees no reason why we shouldn’t—’

  ‘When?’

  ‘I’m not sure about the timing. You can call her back tomorrow, she’ll have gone by now. She’s been trying to get hold of us all day, she said, left messages on the machine, gave us one last go before she knocked off.’

  Leila stood stunned, wondering where the catch lay. There had to be a catch. ‘Have the parents given the baby up, or what?’

  ‘The mother’s died.’

  ‘Died ? How?’

  ‘She wouldn’t tell me. And the father can’t look after her but I don’t know why.’

  ‘Oh, poor man. He loses his wife—or whatever—then his child.’

  ‘He hasn’t agreed to give her up, but—no, no, Leila, wait, listen—he won’t actually object. Apparently that’s normal. People just can’t bring themselves to sign on the dotted line. So Linda says there will have to be a short court hearing, a technicality. Then she’s ours.’

  She looked at him, her lips moving, trying to digest the news. David encircled her waist with his arms, lifting her off the ground. She was wide-eyed, blinking through uncomprehending tears.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ he shouted, spinning them both in a tottering, dangerous waltz. ‘Can you believe it?’

  ‘I can’t,’ whispered Leila, and no other words would come. The years of waiting pooled, spilled, shone upon her face. ‘I can’t.’

  Neither of them wanted to sleep; the magic of it was too beautiful to waste.

  They entwined in the dark, talking, planning, laughing quietly with excitement and relief. A small girl now shared their future. They swapped images of her: in a high chair at the table, or in a sandpit in the garden, or snuggled between them on the sofa. They planned her bedroom. They decided on her name. Through the open window, a new moon smiled serenely upon their happiness. Those were, perhaps, the most perfect, precious hours either had ever known. Neither would ever forget them.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The sun was mellowing by the time we walked back. Deborah shaded her eyes with her hands, gazing along the beach towards the buildings.

  ‘I don’t imagine Hamisi’s ever tried to shirk his responsibilities,’ she said.

  ‘Hamisi? The manager?’

  ‘Rod’s business partner, actually. He’s lost two children to AIDS, and another in a car crash earlier this year. He and his wife look after eight grandchildren, but I’ve never heard him complain. Not a murmur.’

  ‘That’s incredible.’

  ‘He doesn’t have the luxury of a choice.’ She sighed. ‘Not sure I do, either.’

  After another fifty paces, she stopped. ‘Rod’s going to be . . . What am I th
inking? How can I do this to him again?’

  Only now did the obvious thought strike me. ‘He knows you’re Deborah Harrison, right?’

  ‘Of course. Another me, in another life. The only lie I’ve ever told him was about my father being ill. But to him I’m Susie Bridges, and always will be.’

  I whistled. ‘He told me he’d never heard of you, never clapped eyes on the person in the photo. Wrong woman, sod off. He generously promised to look out for a rogue English bluestocking. I only came back because I wanted a swim.’

  ‘Well. No offence, but I wish you hadn’t.’

  Rod’s battered pick-up was parked under the trees as we walked up. His dog, Cheza, came galloping across as we approached, prancing merrily around Deborah with a big open mouth, making welcoming sounds and swishing his tail. I bent down to pat him. As I straightened up, Rod appeared in the doorway of the office, also looking for her, smiling cheerfully. Poor bastard. He stood very still when he saw me, as though I was pointing a gun at his head.

  ‘You found her then?’ he said quietly.

  I put up my hands in a feeble gesture of apology. I’d never in my life done anything that affected other people. Not really. Just drifted along, trying not to do any damage, avoiding anything that mattered. My aim, I suppose, was to be irrelevant. And now I’d made a difference in the lives of Deborah and Rod, and I wasn’t enjoying it at all. It was like being the Grim Reaper.

  She walked straight up to him and put her arms around his neck, and I pushed off, feeling like a total prick.

  Mission accomplished.

  I didn’t see Deborah or Rod again until that evening, while I was buying one last round for myself and my brand-new lifelong mates.

  I’d spent the rest of the afternoon on and off a kayak, snorkel-ling along the reef. By the time the sun went down I’d made myself at home in the bar, facing out to sea and yarning with two Irish guys who’d pulled in that afternoon. They were on their way down the east coast in an incredibly old Land Rover that really belonged in a museum. They’d driven this dinosaur all the way from London and were going on down to Cape Town, but they needed some time out. One of them was getting over a bout of malaria, and they both had seriously dodgy stomachs—walked around bent over like old geezers. They planned to stop here for a couple of weeks, rest up a bit and replace the Land Rover’s gearbox. After a bottle of Tusker, I offered to give them a hand. After another four, they asked if I’d like to come along with them, down to South Africa, and I said thanks, great idea, I’ll seriously think about it.