Freeing Grace

by Charity Norman

  ‘We’ve finished doing food,’ she yelled.

  ‘Oh.’ None of us knew what to do next, and she took pity on us. ‘I can do hot beverages. Or a snack out of the machine over there.’ She jerked her head at one of those tall, glass-fronted robots that drop your crisps into a well; you have to reach through the flap for them, and it always swings back and traps your hand.

  We crossed the concourse and Deborah lowered herself onto one of the metal seats. Her movements seemed uncoordinated. ‘Coffee, Jake, please,’ she said faintly. I looked at Matt, but he shrugged. He followed me to the counter and leaned against it, his hands jammed into the pockets of his suit, while I negotiated with the scary soup dragon.

  I glanced at him. ‘You okay, mate? You look a bit crook.’

  The poor kid couldn’t keep still. He pushed himself off the counter and furiously scrunched up his hair with both hands, as though his head was about to explode.

  ‘Fuck, Jake, why are we here?’

  I wanted to put my arm around his shoulder. Wanted to tell him it would be all right. But it wasn’t all right.

  ‘Matt,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to agree to this. It’s not too late. You can change your mind.’

  His eyes looked all screwed inwards with some kind of pain. They were burning holes into his brain. He took a step away, and then swung back as though he had more to say. I waited, but he shook his head without looking at me and slouched off to throw himself down beside Deborah.

  Our drinks went cold, as we sat there. No one spoke. I think we were all huddling over our images of Perry—ghastly, guilty, grieving images. I think we’d forgotten where we were, and why.

  We’d forgotten Grace.

  And that was when I heard the lift grinding up to our floor, stopping with a soft ting.

  I was the only one facing that way. Deborah and Matt had their backs to the lift, and anyway, they were both on another planet. So they never noticed when a woman stepped out and stood on the concourse, looking hesitantly around. I remember thinking dimly that she was quite a headturner. She was black—much more so than Grace—and she had a great figure, curvy and confident. She was wearing a long jacket, like a very trendy highwayman’s, rather swish boots, and a little kilt thing that stopped well short of her knees. A green band was tied around her head, holding back a mass of braids.

  I watched as her eyes fell upon our group. There was something compelling about those eyes. I couldn’t stop looking. She took a firm hold of her handbag, as if it was a riot shield, and began to walk steadily towards us. Her footsteps sounded like hammer blows on the silent concourse, and the kilt swayed jauntily along with her.

  ‘I’m closed, love,’ came a bellow from behind the counter, but the woman completely ignored it. Her eyes were fixed on Deborah now, as she came to a halt near our table.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said quietly. She had a rich voice, like dark chocolate. ‘I’m sorry to bother you.’

  Deborah stared blankly at her for a moment; then her gaze slipped away, as though this intruder did not exist. Matt didn’t even look up.

  The newcomer took a step closer. She was older than I’d thought, somewhere in her thirties perhaps, and she had a fight or flight look about her. I noticed she had incredibly pretty ears. They were small and tidy, with heavy gold hoops in them, and they somehow set off her face.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said again, and this time there was an insistent edge to the chocolate voice.

  Deborah blinked, turning on a polite, empty smile. ‘So sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘Are you the grandmother in the case in Court Three? The one about the adoption?’

  Deborah peered at her as though trying to lip-read. ‘Yes,’ she said and nodded. ‘I suppose I am. Are we needed already?’

  The woman gripped her bag with both hands—it was big and colourful, this handbag, with embroidery and tiny mirrors all over it. She stood speechless for several seconds, gazing from one to the other of us with her Egyptian goddess eyes. Then she took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m Leila Edmunds,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean anything to you, I imagine. I’m the one who wants to adopt your granddaughter.’

  There was a silence. Deborah frowned uncomprehendingly. ‘But you can’t be. You don’t know who we are, where we live. You can’t possibly be.’

  The woman—Leila—glanced around, as if nervous of listening walls. ‘I am, though. I found out which court it was. I’ve driven from Birmingham to get here . . . I thought I was too late.’ She was shaking visibly.

  ‘Here.’ I made room for her on my side of the table.

  She perched at the edge of the seat, looking me over anxiously.

  ‘You’re the grandfather?’

  ‘God, no!’ I was appalled.

  She wrinkled her forehead and turned uncertainly to Matt.

  ‘Yes,’ said Deborah firmly. ‘That’s the father. And Grace doesn’t need to be adopted. We can take care of her perfectly well, thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Leila nodded, her eyes filling. ‘I shouldn’t have come.’

  Matt seemed to stir, then. ‘Why did you come?’ He looked at her with a sort of hopeless desperation, as though she was the last lifeboat and now she was sinking too. ‘You’ll be in very big trouble with the SS if they find out. They’ll take you off their list of adopters. You’re a rebel.’

  ‘I know.’ She fished a bit of bog paper out of her bag and blew her nose on it. ‘Sorry . . . I’m very strung up, such a long drive, and roadworks, and then getting lost . . . My ears are ringing.’ She squeezed her eyelids shut but the tears poured out anyway, and we all sat like shop window dummies and stared at her.

  ‘I thought that maybe if you met me, you’d see I’m not an ogre. And I’m not a fool.’

  She dabbed defiantly at her cheeks with that soggy little bit of paper. She rested her nose on it, thinking. Then she seemed to regain control, facing Matt and Deborah.

  ‘I’ve risked everything to come here. I came to tell you that I will care for your little girl, and I will love her always, and I will not let you down. She’ll know who she is, where she’s come from. You won’t be forgotten, I promise. I’ve been going over and over it in the car, thinking what to say. And now none of it seems right.’ Her gaze came to rest on Deborah. ‘I wish you could meet my husband, David. You’d trust him.’

  Deborah sighed. ‘Does he know you’re here?’

  Leila didn’t answer, but I thought I saw a guilty smile sweep around the edges of her lips.

  Deborah picked up a little packet of sugar and began to twist it. ‘I expect you and he both think that having a baby will solve all the problems in your lives, maybe in your marriage. You imagine that it will bring you closer together. Yes? Am I right?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Well, it won’t. Believe me, Leila. Once you’ve been up three times a night every night for six years, you’ll know what I mean. Once you’ve been yelled at and spat at and told to sod off by your own child, you’ll know.’

  Leila held up her hands. ‘I helped to raise my youngest brother.’

  Deborah touched her own forehead in a gesture of exasperation, or perhaps pity.

  ‘It’s not the same . . . Leila, I’ve brought up two children. They look very sweet as babies, especially when they’re asleep. But then they start encroaching on your life. They are everything, and the mother is nothing. Nothing. She pours her entire being into them. They take without thought or thanks, they expect to be heard and respected and worshipped, but they give absolutely nothing back.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Matt, looking shocked. Leila was watching Deborah intently with those exotic eyes. There was a determined, rebellious lift to her chin.

  ‘When they are your own family,’ Deborah persisted, ‘you can just about pull it off. You may occasionally feel like throttling them, but you don’t because they carry your genes and you have an irrational obsession with them. A bond. Love. But I don’t see—I really, really do not se
e—how you could do it for a child who is completely unrelated to you; a child who has simply landed on your front doorstep like a bottle of milk.’

  What about Lucy? I wanted to protest. She wasn’t yours, but you loved her. I kept my trap shut, though. Deborah’s current relationship with Lucy was hardly a fine example of the genre.

  Leila clutched the toilet paper in one clenched fist. Her eyes were narrowed, now, and they focused sharply on Deborah’s face. When she spoke, we all listened.

  ‘Irrational? Was your love for your children irrational?’

  Deborah pulled back her head, glancing at Matt. ‘Well, no. Of course not.’ The packet of sugar split under her hands.

  Leila pressed her advantage. ‘How long will it be before this baby, too, begins to encroach on your life?’

  Good shot, I thought. Bullseye. Deborah took a long breath, but Leila didn’t give her time to reply.

  ‘I can’t have my own children, you know? I can’t . . . I’ll never have my own. The one I adopt will be my own. She will be the little Leila, the one who will share the rest of my life. She will be a part of me, and I’ll spend every waking hour with her that I can, and we’ll become as close as any mother and daughter can be.’

  She looked at Matt. ‘I promise.’ She pressed her palms together as if in prayer, and dipped her head. ‘I promise. I promise.’

  ‘I don’t know you,’ said Matt and yet he stared at her, clearly fascinated. ‘I wouldn’t even buy a second-hand stereo from someone I didn’t know. Once Grace has gone, we’ll never hear from her again. We’ll never know if she’s all right.’

  ‘Okay, then!’ Leila began to fumble with her handbag. ‘Bloody zip!’ she fumed through gritted teeth. ‘Come on.’ She managed to force her hand in, and dragged out a pen and a dog-eared diary.

  ‘Here,’ she cried, vehemently, tearing a page out of the diary and scribbling across it in big, loopy letters. ‘Here’s my address, and my telephone number, and my email. You can have my shoe size, too. You can have anything you want.’ She flung the page across the table. It was a challenge.

  None of us moved.

  Deborah recovered herself first. ‘You’re being silly. You don’t know us. We might turn up one day and snatch the baby back.’

  ‘I’m prepared to take that risk.’

  Jeez, you had to admire this woman, Leila. What a stonker. She sat there regally, her chin up, looking Deborah full in the face.

  For an age, Matt looked longingly at that scruffy piece of paper. We all did. Grace’s future was poised, waiting for his decision.

  He didn’t pick it up.

  The lift was at it again, whirring fussily up to our floor and coughing up the Spiv. He stepped out, tapping his watch.

  ‘It’s quarter to, Mrs Harrison,’ he called, with determined jollity.

  ‘Quarter to three. Back to the grindstone!’

  The three of us got to our feet in a slavish little show of obedience.

  Leila didn’t move, though. She hugged her handbag, staring wordlessly from one of us to the other.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Deborah. ‘It was brave of you to come.’ Then she turned away. ‘Yes, Stuart. Lead on.’

  Spiv stood back to let us into the lift. I hesitated by our table for a few more seconds, desperate to say something—anything—to this woman. She sat defeated, tears pooling once more in the darkness of her eyes. She’d shown more courage than I could even imagine, and yet I couldn’t think of a word to express my admiration. Not a single bloody word. In the end, I put out my hand. She looked startled, but slipped hers into mine and we shook politely, like two business people at a meeting. Then I legged it across the concourse and into the lift.

  ‘Just in time,’ sang the Spiv, maliciously letting the doors go so that they trapped my trouser leg. ‘Whoops . . . never mind, no damage done. Who was the lady?’

  ‘No one,’ I muttered, with my calf stuck to the doors.

  He looked snide. ‘I wish I could befriend dark and mysterious strangers in cafeterias.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, forcing Deborah to catch my eye. ‘She seemed like a hell of a woman, to me. One in a million.’

  As the lift slowed, I spoke again. It was on my mind, and it had to be said. ‘In fact, I reckon I’d trust her with my most precious possession.’

  Matt’s eyes darted briefly towards me, but he said nothing. When the doors opened he was staring at his polished shoes.

  As it turned out they still weren’t ready for us in court, so I excused myself and scurried off to the bogs. The first lot was closed for cleaning— there was a terrifying troll in there with a mop—so I trotted downstairs and found some more. Apart from a platoon of cleaners and a couple of security guards doing the crossword in the lobby, I didn’t spot another soul. Perhaps our judge was the last one working. God, I thought. What a day.

  Back on the second floor, the Harrison contingent were closeted in the same little room. I didn’t want to join them, and I knew I wasn’t needed. I slumped on the blue seats outside and retied my bootlaces, barely stirring when the door swung open and Spiv shot past me. I paid him no attention; I was thinking about Perry, and then about Leila Edmunds and her long, lonely journey, all for nothing. I wondered how she’d find the heart to get back into her car.

  There seemed to be a fair amount of activity around me. A couple of the lawyers wandered past.

  ‘This is turning into a real pain in the arse,’ complained the woman, with a glance at her watch. She was a sharp-faced brunette with silver fingernails, modelling the latest in Italian suits. ‘At this rate, we’ll miss the fast train back to London, and tonight’s chambers Christmas party.’

  ‘Complete cock-up all round,’ agreed the threadbare man. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, slightly nervously. ‘Have you seen Mrs H, though? Most unlikely-looking granny I’ve ever clapped eyes upon.’ He growled appreciatively, and I considered getting up and socking him. ‘Foxy! She should be modelling scent or something.’

  His colleague yawned. ‘Well, the father’s the black sheep of a middle-class family, isn’t he? This is a posh cock-up, not your common or garden one.’

  They spotted me then, and started talking earnestly about the weather. I imagined Grace in her bubblegum-pink suit. Perhaps she was bouncing in one of those swing contraptions, gurgling merrily, not a care in the world. And she was causing a silver-nailed barrister to miss her Christmas party.

  Meanwhile, Spiv was rushing in and out, bursting into other meeting rooms along the concourse and gabbling away. He reminded me a bit of the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, racing around in a dreamlike state of anxiety. I wondered what had got him into such a tizzy.

  Just as I was thinking we’d have to pitch tents and light a campfire, Mandy the usher bounced out through the swing doors of the court, throwing back her head like a cockerel and crowing, ‘Re K! All parties in re K!’

  The door of our room opened immediately, and Deborah and Matt trickled out.

  ‘That’s us.’ Deborah nodded towards the usher.

  Spiv planted himself in front of my seat and took hold of his braces. ‘I’ve had a word with the other parties,’ he intoned. He was sweating a little. ‘No one objects to you coming in as a support person. You can sit in the public area, so long as you understand the rules of confidentiality and don’t interfere.’

  ‘Jake never interferes.’ Debs smiled down at me. ‘It’s against his religion.’

  ‘No way I’m going in there,’ I objected, stubbornly crossing my arms. ‘I’ll just wait for you.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ said Spiv. He strutted away through the double doors, tossing his tussock grass.

  Deborah watched him go and then sat down beside me. ‘I don’t know how I’m getting through this day,’ she said quietly. ‘I feel as though I’m drunk, and at any moment I’m going to start giggling, or screaming, or both. And Matt is even closer to the edge.’

  I glanced up at the unhappy figure of my young frie
nd, wearing his best suit, his bleached tangles carefully brushed out. He looked so young. So lost. A schoolkid who had fallen over and scraped his knee. As I watched, he pressed his eyes into the palm of his hand, and I felt a bloody great jolt somewhere in my chest.

  Debs squeezed my arm. ‘We need you to look solid and dependable in your homespun sweater and desert boots. We need you to be in there as our friend. Please.’

  And before I’d even found the strength to argue, we were in.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Leila had reached the end of the road.

  She was alone. The fourth floor was completely empty now, the lights turned off. There was no sound except for a vague electrical hum from the drinks machine. Even the cook had locked up her kitchen and gone home to her family.

  She was frozen, isolated, in this void. There was no one to eavesdrop on her grief. It felt as though nobody else existed in the whole world. Some catastrophe had wiped them all out: perhaps nuclear war. When she finally stepped out onto the street there would be no traffic, no Big Issue sellers, no schoolchildren at the bus stop, no gnarled old ladies walking their dogs. Nothing.

  For almost a decade she had lived in limbo, forever waiting, hanging on, suspending her decisions until the arrival of the children who were to join them. After every disappointment, she’d dragged herself up and made a new plan. It had become her career. It was what defined her. And this had been her final effort. She had risked everything, even David’s trust. She had done her very, very best. And she had failed.

  On the table in front of her, between three untouched plastic cups of coffee, the crumpled page of her diary lay rejected. It had been her trump card, but it had done no good. She covered it with her fist and stuffed it into a pocket.

  The baby’s family were not as she’d imagined. Not at all. They were real people. Distracted, perhaps, and oddly melancholy, but real. The man—the quiet uncle, in whom she’d sensed such unease—had even shaken her hand. They were not mad or drunk or evil or filthy. They wanted to keep their baby, and who could blame them? The little one was a part of their family. Leila had no place in her life.