Freeing Grace

by Charity Norman

  ‘I’m not coming,’ I said. And she smiled.

  I disliked the place on sight. It did its best to look inconspicuous, hiding coyly in the middle of a row of other oversized townhouses. Victorian, I should think. Red brick. Lots of ivy. It sported a discreet little sign: Fintan House. There was a shrubbery at the front, but you could tell it wasn’t just somebody’s garden. It had that municipal look about it, and beyond the main building lurked a concrete and glass extension.

  The three of us trudged up the wheelchair ramp to a solid wooden door. It was a desolate morning; the damp was creeping in under my collar, and I had an ache in one knee. Matt was an old hand. He rang the bell and grunted into an intercom, and the door clicked, letting us into a blue-and-brown-tiled hall with a wide wooden staircase curling up into the shadows. We stood there for a second. I felt like an extra in a horror movie, half expecting to hear wild evil-genius laughter and someone crashing chords on an organ.

  The hall smelled of bleach and polish, like my old boarding school. I spotted a door to the right marked Reception—All Visitors, and from somewhere on our left floated a brisk female voice.

  ‘Hi, there! Hi, Matt. Come on in.’ A woman was waiting, holding a mug in one hand and jamming the fire door open with her foot.

  Matt jerked his head towards her in greeting, and we followed her into a room with a high ceiling and long sash windows. Wooden partitions subdivided it; and behind one I glimpsed a guy with a harassed crewcut, hunched over a laptop.

  The woman transferred the cup into her left hand and held out her right. She was around thirty, I’d have said. More or less blonde, with a little help. Hair in a long ponytail—it really did look like a pony’s tail. Attractive, actually, although the barn-door chin was a bit disappointing. Engagement ring, quite flashy. Linen trousers. And tall: her eyes were almost on a level with mine.

  ‘Mrs Harrison? Imogen Christie.’ She spoke in a clipped, detached shade of Essex.

  ‘Hi, Imogen.’ Deborah didn’t sound like herself at all. She seemed edgy and ingratiating, and once again I wished I hadn’t come.

  The social worker eyed her for a moment longer than was polite. ‘Did you have a good flight? When did you get home?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘Just last night?’ Imogen’s appraisal flickered over me, and I felt like a cockroach in a bakery. Behind her, Crew cut’s phone began to bleat.

  Deborah took a nervous step away from me. ‘This is Jake Kelly, a friend of the family,’ she explained apologetically. ‘Matt wanted him to be here today, since Perry couldn’t come. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I won’t be any trouble,’ I said, and put on my most appealing face.

  My charms didn’t work on Imogen. ‘I’m not sure . . . The team manager, Lenora Blunt, will be available in a minute. She’s making an urgent telephone call right now. Coffee?’ She gestured towards a dusty kettle on a tray.

  ‘Er . . . lovely,’ said Deborah.

  Crew cut had answered the phone but was still staring at his screen and jabbing at the odd key. Imogen picked up two of those glass mugs that make coffee look and taste like the run-off from a sewage plant. Opening a jar of brown talcum powder, she called back over her shoulder towards Matt, who was hanging around in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, looking surly.

  ‘Matt, Lenora and I are going to have a chat with your mum upstairs. D’you want to come back in an hour?’

  He scowled, mumbled something about going downtown, and slouched out. I heard the heavy front door screech shut behind him.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me for just a minute,’ said Imogen. ‘There’s a waiting area off the hall.’

  We parked our backsides on a wooden pew. There was a table with a pile of women’s magazines, and Deborah began to leaf through one. I gave up on the muck they passed off as coffee and stood up again, stretching my knee.

  The telephone rang in Imogen’s office, and I strolled into the hall as she answered it. I wasn’t being nosy, honestly. I was just bored.

  ‘Hi. Yes, Lenora . . . mutter, mutter . . . got hold of the lawyer?’

  There was a long silence until I heard Imogen shift abruptly; her voice sharpened. ‘What? Does he realise how far along the line we’ve got?’ Pause. ‘And he understands that the grandfather’s never bothered to show up? . . . It’s not good enough, Lenora. Where’s Grace in all of this? . . . How are we supposed to carry out an assessment in four weeks flat? Does he realise how understaffed we are? My case load . . . yes, I agree . . . I mean, it’s us who have to pick up the pieces.’ Sigh. ‘Oh, well, we’re stuck, then. I’ll wheel the grandmother up. Perhaps we can talk her out of it.’

  She dropped her voice to a murmur. I caught the words support person and come along to hold her hand.

  A thud—phone crashing down?—and Crew cut laughed and said something about a magic, reappearing grandma. There was a pause, for head-shaking I guessed. I scooted back to the waiting room, sharpish. Skidded across the tiles, fell down next to Deborah and snatched up a magazine. Seconds later, Imogen appeared at the door, chin jutting crossly.

  We followed her linen trousers up the stairs and past a cupboard that was trying to be a kitchen. Deborah was staring straight ahead with a glassy expression, like a sleepwalker in a play. Eventually Imogen held open a door, and we trooped in.

  The room was obviously intended for meetings—oblong table, whiteboard and a general air of underuse. A couple of cardboard files were stacked on the table. Facing the door, wearing a ghastly smile, was the weirdest-looking woman I have ever seen. This raven-haired creature would have been well cast as the housekeeper in a spooky nineteen forties film set in a sinister Estonian castle. She might have been fifty, or sixty, or eighty. It was hard to tell under all that makeup.

  She stared, wide-eyed, before extending a bony hand. ‘Mrs Harrison? I’m Lenora Blunt, team manager.’ She had a limp voice, as though she were about to swoon, with an accent I couldn’t quite place. I think it might have been eastern European, which fitted, somehow.

  Deborah introduced me, and Blunt looked me up and down.

  ‘I won’t say a word,’ I promised, and pinched my lips together with my fingers.

  Blunt nodded with bad grace and gestured towards the table. We sat around it, and I tried to be invisible.

  ‘It’s very good of you both to fit me in like this,’ said Deborah, politely.

  ‘We’ve had to shuffle things.’ The Estonian housekeeper waved an impatient arm; she was wearing a charm bracelet, and it jangled. ‘This couldn’t wait. We’re working to a strict timetable, set by the court.’

  ‘You’re extremely late in the day,’ scolded Imogen. She sounded like a plumber tut-tutting over your pre-war hot-water tank. I hate plumbers.

  They always make me feel less than a man. ‘It’s eight months since we discovered Cherie was pregnant. We’ve been planning for Grace ever since. And you turn up now.

  ’ ‘How did that poor child manage to become pregnant,’ Deborah seemed to be recovering her usual composure, ‘given that she was in your care at the time?’

  Lenora Blunt flushed. ‘We can’t fit them all with chastity belts,’ she snapped, defensively. ‘We haven’t the budget.’

  There was a brief, incredulous silence. Imogen threw her manager a look of pure contempt before turning back to Deborah. ‘We’ve tried hard to find a place for Grace within both her birth families. No one came forward. Meanwhile, she’s starting to bond with her foster carer. Adoption is tricky, Mrs Harrison. The younger the child, the better. Grace needs to move on.’

  ‘I see,’ said Deborah. ‘Well, I can take her home today if you want.’

  The social workers both shook their heads, with identical patronising smiles.

  ‘You haven’t been assessed,’ said Imogen, and she almost waggled a finger.

  Deborah looked unimpressed. ‘No one assessed me when I had my own children.’

  ‘We’ve found a match,’ wailed Blunt, fingering a gla
ss bead necklace the size of a small chandelier. ‘It’s an outstanding placement.’

  ‘Lovely people.’ Imogen tapped a blue file marked Grace Serenity King. ‘Mixed race, of course. He’s a vicar.’

  I saw the steel shooting into Deborah’s backbone.

  ‘That’s all very wholesome. But Matt is actually her father,’ she reminded them sternly, folding her arms. ‘You’re not supposed to be social engineers. It isn’t your job to churn out babies for childless couples, even nice middle-class Christian ones. Babies don’t just grow on trees. They have families, with whom they belong.’

  ‘Matt couldn’t cope,’ insisted Imogen. ‘His heart’s in the right place, I’ll grant you. He’s lovely with Grace. But he couldn’t look after her.’

  Deborah nodded. ‘I agree. But I can.’ She was magnificent, she really was; I wanted to applaud. ‘Look, Imogen, Lenora. I’m truly sorry I haven’t been here for your assessments, but I knew nothing about any baby.’

  ‘You haven’t kept in touch,’ said Imogen, her sharp eyes flicking inquisitively from Deborah to me. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was in a remote area. No internet.’ Deborah put on a super-honest face. ‘And my mobile phone was stolen.’

  She caught my eye, and I gave her a schoolmaster frown—I mean, what a couple of monumental whoppers. Then the outer corners of her eyes lifted, and I forgave her.

  ‘But I did write,’ she said. It sounded a bit thin, frankly. She bit her lip ruefully. ‘I know, I know. I’ll admit I had my head buried in work.

  But the moment I understood the situation I took the first flight back. And I’ll undertake to give up my work immediately. That’s because I am absolutely, fundamentally committed to caring for this little girl.’

  Blunt was trying to get a word in, neurotically spinning her bracelet. ‘I wonder whether you appreciate the difficulties.’

  ‘Difficulties?’

  ‘Yes. You’re the grandmother, not the mother. You’re not of dual heritage, which puts all sorts of cultural and practical barriers between yourself and the child. Hair care, for instance. It’s completely different.’

  ‘Hair care?’ Deborah stared, in disbelief. ‘You’re not seriously putting that forward as a reason for the permanent removal of a child from her family?’

  Blunt blushed. ‘Well, but it’s a part of her cultural roots.’

  ‘We are her roots! That’s the point, Lenora. I’m trying to save her from becoming rootless.

  ’ Imogen leaned closer. ‘The thing is, though, Deborah,’ (first-name terms, I thought. We are getting chummy) ‘that this will be more complicated than bringing up your own family. And you’re . . . older, too.’

  I had to chuckle at that.

  ‘I’m thirty-seven!’ Debs looked genuinely aggrieved. ‘Nowadays lots of people start their families at my age. Lots and lots of people.’ She pointed at me. ‘Jake hasn’t even found a mother to bear his children yet.’

  ‘Look, Deborah,’ insisted Imogen. ‘Think about it. It will take so much commitment. So much.’

  Deborah nodded. ‘A baby is for life, not just for Christmas. I know that, Imogen.’

  Or perhaps, I thought disloyally, a baby is for about seventeen years?

  ‘I’ve done it twice before, remember?’ said Deborah. ‘Matt’s sister, Lucy, wasn’t mine, but I brought her up just as if she was. I’ve got buckets of commitment. That’s why I’m here.’

  Imogen narrowed her eyes. ‘What about Mr Harrison? Why hasn’t he been in to see Grace?’

  ‘That’s easy.’ Deborah laughed gaily. ‘Perry’s agoraphobic. He’s longing to meet her but he just can’t travel. He’s very competent with babies, actually. Come to our home and talk to him.’

  ‘We have. He didn’t tell us what you just have.’

  ‘Of course he didn’t. It’s a feature of the condition. The shame, the secretiveness. Surely you know this? People sometimes go for years, hiding it even from their own families.’

  Imogen nodded, thinking. ‘That explains a lot,’ she said slowly.

  ‘So.’ Lenora obviously wasn’t giving up without a fight. ‘The upshot is that you have a husband with mental health issues, a son with behavioural problems, and you saw fit to leave home for several months. Yours is a dysfunctional family, Deborah. How can we place a baby with you?’

  I saw a flash of triumph cross Deborah’s face. She leaned forward and looked Blunt square in the eye. ‘My husband has a condition. A disability. Surely, Lenora, you aren’t going to write him off on that ground? I don’t think you’re allowed to do that, are you? You’ve got to assess him like anyone else.’

  There was a nasty silence. Blunt flared her nostrils. ‘I’m just trying to—’

  ‘Look.’ Deborah had the ball now and she was sprinting away towards the line. ‘We’re her birth family. It’s not a conventional nuclear family—whose is, these days? But she will know exactly who she is. You have a duty, don’t you, to achieve that if you can? Right. Well, here I am: willing, healthy and able. You can’t just shut the door on me. You aren’t allowed to, and you know it. You have to assess me, properly and fairly.’

  The social workers exchanged glances. Lenora had red spots on her cheeks, like a sulky doll.

  ‘All right then,’ sighed Imogen, and she opened a blue file.

  Score!

  ‘But we can’t lose any more time, so we’ll be taking a twin-track approach. We’ll carry on with our adoption procedure while assessing you.’

  Deborah had won. She could collect the cup and do a victory lap. And yet I saw her shoulders slump. A phone on the table trilled, and the sinister housekeeper answered it. She listened for a moment, whispered, ‘Thank you,’ and turned those anguished eyes on us.

  ‘Grace has arrived,’ she announced.

  Deborah immediately stood up. Blunt swung her arm out in front of me like a lollipop lady.

  ‘Just you, Mrs Harrison. Your, er, support person can’t have contact with Grace. I’m sure you’ll understand that.’ She spoke to my left ear lobe. ‘If you’d come back in an hour?’

  Deborah gave me a faint smile. ‘Go on home, Jake,’ she said. ‘Take my car. Here are the keys. I’m going to walk Matt back to school after this, and have a talk with his headmaster.’

  Then she let them lead her away to become a grandmother.

  Chapter Twenty

  Leila’s future was changing shape. It was like an animated piece of plasticine: unrolling, opening its eyes, squeezing itself into a bustling landscape of colour and fulfilment. Nothing looked the same.

  On Tuesday she dropped in at work to explain the situation to her manager. Then she had an appointment with Linda Hooper, the social worker. Afterwards she met Maggie in a department store for coffee, ostensibly to brainstorm the Defibrillators’ repertoire but really to discuss far more pressing matters. By the time they’d got up the escalator, Leila had relayed the gist of her conversation with the social worker. More meetings, more formalities, more proving themselves. But there was to be a baby at the end of it all.

  ‘So.’ Maggie slid their little plastic tray along the counter. ‘You’re a mother-to-be.’

  Leila grabbed a blueberry muffin from the glass shelves. ‘Eating for two,’ she said.

  ‘Quite right, love. Got to keep your strength up.’ Maggie chose an alarmingly sticky jam doughnut, and got out her purse. ‘Two large lattes, please. No, put away your massive sparkly handbag, woman. This is on me. Celebration time!’

  They found a table under a potted palm. ‘How d’you feel?’ asked Maggie, unloading the tray.

  Leila draped her coat over the chair back. ‘I feel . . . ooh. How do I feel?’ She sat down, scratching her head thoughtfully. ‘I feel like the happiest woman in the world. I feel as though the clouds have rolled away from the sun and it’s a brilliant blue-sky day, with . . .’ She paused for a moment, and then finished with a lyrical flourish of her hands: ‘With glittering frost on the grass and joy in the air.’

  M
aggie waited. She seemed to be expecting more.

  ‘But there again . . .’ Leila dipped her head as she broke up her muffin. She was wearing a midnight-blue cloth around her hair, and earrings the same colour. ‘If I’m really honest with myself, I am sometimes a teeny bit scared.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘First, because I’m waiting for the blow to fall.’ Leila held up two sets of crossed fingers. ‘Maggie, Maggie! Heaven doesn’t come to earth.’

  Maggie took a bite of sugar-laden delight, and her wispy locks fell dangerously close to the jam. ‘Yum . . . they do the best doughnuts in here. Relax, Leila. Babies aren’t heaven. They squawk all night. They whine all day. They vomit down your clothes and they trash your house.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Leila picked up her coffee. ‘Your Toby is tidier than you are.

  ’ ‘Well, that’s true. But sorry,’ said Maggie. ‘I shouldn’t have interrupted. I know this is serious. You said that was the first thing. What’s the second?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Leila’s brow crinkled. ‘It’s all a bit like collecting a kitten or something. I’m not pregnant and bloomingly hormonal. My hair isn’t shining, my bust isn’t three times its normal size. I’m not sure I feel like a real mother would.’

  ‘Mm, I’ve got you. You don’t have heartburn, your ankles aren’t swollen, your back isn’t killing you, and your stomach doesn’t enter the room three minutes before the rest of you.’

  ‘Well, no,’ Leila agreed. ‘The social worker’s talking about parenting classes. Preparation work. I’m happy to do it, of course.’

  ‘Ooh! How d’you stand it? They are so bossy!’

  ‘They are very bossy, but we’re in no position to argue. David and I will do anything they say, anything at all, and be top of the class. But I reckon that’s all window dressing. I can manage the practicalities, I think . . . We’re adults, aren’t we? But that’s not the issue. What really matters is, will I be a proper mother to this little girl? Will I be able to replace her real mother? What if I’m just plain useless at it? What if . . .’