by Zosia Wand
‘I’m not afraid! It was a difficult time and, if he doesn’t want to talk about it, I respect that.’
Footsteps approach up the gravel path to the back of the house as Mum says, ‘I worry about you, Evangeline. This is a big commitment. A child is such a responsibility.’
I stare at her, winded. She’s watching me, that eyebrow slightly raised. Unconvinced. She doesn’t believe I can do this.
‘Daddy!’ Milly jumps down from the table and throws her arms around his legs.
‘What’s going on?’ His nose twitches, sniffing her out.
Mum takes her soapy hands out of the washing up bowl and wipes them on the tea towel. ‘We’re just having a little chat.’
‘You OK, Eve?’
I nod, trying to steady my breath, aware of Milly watching us, her eyes moving from Mum to me. Neil carries her out of the kitchen.
My voice is tight. ‘I know it’s a big responsibility. And it’s frightening. I don’t need you to remind me of that.’ I think of Shona, her quiet confidence, her assurances. Shona believes in us. Shona thinks we’ll be good parents. ‘We haven’t entered into this lightly.’ I feel a little stronger now. ‘We’ve been through six months of assessment, talking about the kind of parents we hope to be, our family histories, how we were parented and what we learned from that—’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means that I’m well aware of my inadequacies!’
‘What inadequacies? There is nothing inadequate about you, Evangeline. I brought you up to believe in yourself. You were a confident young woman. You had such dreams. You were going to be a head teacher.’
‘I didn’t enjoy teaching. Most teachers would give their right arm to have the job I’ve got now, the creative freedom, the flexible hours, the quality of life—’
‘You had the chance to go to London—’
‘I didn’t want to live in London.’
‘You did before you met him.’
‘How many times? Neil didn’t stop me going to London!’ I grip the table edge and take a long, steadying breath. I must not let her get to me. I need to be firm. ‘I don’t want Milly to hear you talking like this. We’re supposed to be making her feel secure and the last thing she needs is to hear you bad-mouthing her daddy.’
I look up and see Neil in the doorway. I’m glad he’s heard me. I want him to see I can stand up to her. ‘Where’s Milly?’
‘She’s playing a game on her tablet.’
‘Is she OK?’
Mum interjects, ‘She’s fine. She wasn’t listening to us and I didn’t say anything that might upset her, I was simply asking questions. Important questions. You need to stop making such a fuss of that child, Evangeline. She has to understand she’s not the centre of the universe.’
Neil voice whips the air. ‘That’s rich!’
‘Excuse me?’
‘No, no, I don’t excuse you. Turning up, out of the blue, no warning, after years sulking—’ His voice is getting louder. The telltale flush is rising up his neck.
‘Neil.’
He turns on me. ‘She kidnapped our fucking child, Eve! How far does she have to go?’
Mum gives a contemptuous puff. ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
‘Police? Sniffer dogs? Helicopter? You call that ridiculous? They’ll have you for wasting police time!’
‘I wasn’t the one who left her unattended in the garden.’
‘It was minutes!’
‘So you say. Where were you?’
‘I was making lunch!’
‘Who with?’
He jerks back. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘This is terribly inconvenient for you, isn’t it? Me being here.’
‘Inconvenient doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
‘Well, get used to it. You had your own way for a while, but that’s over.’
‘Mum, please!’
‘Evangeline has a mother who loves her.’
‘She has a husband!’
‘You made her choose! What kind of man forces a woman to reject her own mother?’
Neil growls. ‘Don’t push me, Joan.’
‘Is that a threat?’ The silence gathers between them like fumes. I’m afraid to say anything that might send a spark and set the room alight. Her eyes become two thin lines and she lifts her nose a little. ‘What is it you’re afraid of, Neil?’
He watches her for a moment, then shakes his head and says, ‘You.’
She gives a satisfied smile and Neil shoves his way out of the room.
I lower my forehead to the table. I want to close my eyes and pretend none of this has happened. The enormity of what I’ve got to get through to create peace again is too much to contemplate.
The front door slams.
6
I make up a bed on the first floor in the spare room next to Milly’s. Neil and I sleep on the top floor in a large room under the eaves. He won’t want Mum staying the night, but we can’t expect her to get a train home today. A flight of stairs between them will have to do.
Neil has texted to ask what’s on the shopping list, looking for excuses to stay away, and I’m in no hurry to bring him and Mum back together. I phone the office and Lizzie answers. She works alongside me, my right-hand woman and now job-share partner. ‘Kath called me. Is Milly OK? India spoke to the policewoman. They said you found her?’
‘She was with my mum.’ I’m horribly embarrassed. India lives next door and will have seen the officers coming in and out of the house. She’s a good neighbour, bringing us bits and pieces from her garden: dahlias, blackcurrants, apples. At Christmas, she delivered a home-made candle in a decorative jar. She will have been concerned, rather than nosy, seeking reassurance. We often exchange news over the garden wall and have given her regular updates about the adoption process. India was one of the first people to meet Milly when she skipped up the front path for her first visit, greeting her with a handful of wild strawberries from her garden, with her usual easy charm. Milly declared them fairy strawberries and that’s what we’ve called them ever since.
I can see the park staff from my bedroom window, dealing with the aftermath of the search, the mess the helicopter has made of the grass. How do I explain what’s happened here? What sort of family are people going to think we are? I won’t be able to step out onto the street for days without someone approaching me to find out more. This wasn’t how it was meant to be. I wanted Milly to be the centre of attention. I wanted these days to be about building relationships for our new daughter with our neighbours and friends, but now it’s all about my mother inadvertently instigating a major police incident.
I say, ‘It was good of you to come in to the office at such short notice.’ Lizzie will have had to drop everything, organise childcare. ‘What about Pearl?’ Lizzie has a baby daughter of her own to consider.
‘She’s with India.’
Everyone has had to rally around. All this fuss. I itch with the shame of it.
My mother is disappointed that I gave up on teaching. I’d planned to do a degree in Theatre Studies when I left school, but she persuaded me to do History because it was more academic and I clearly had no intention of being an actress. With this job it didn’t matter what degree I had, what was crucial was my experience. Mum was horrified when I left teaching and took a low paid job as a community arts worker, but it didn’t take long for me to move into project management and fundraising, which provided me with an income to match what I had been earning, though it was freelance and precarious. Of course, she’d always hoped I’d be a head teacher, because this was the pinnacle of her profession, but I’m not that sort of person. I prefer to work in a more creative, flexible environment. I have a supportive board of trustees and a high-profile role within my local community. The park is a very special project, providing valuable training and support to vulnerable people through the volunteer scheme, a safe place for children and young people, a café that’s popular with touris
ts and locals. I’ve earned the respect of my staff as an enabler rather than a manager and I’m proud of that. The kitchen garden project is flourishing and the outdoor pizza oven and cookery demonstrations have been a huge success. We regularly brainstorm ideas for new projects and raise money to implement them. My work is never repetitive or dull and the possibilities are limitless. Maybe, now she’s here, Mum will see this for herself and appreciate it. Maybe, finally, she’ll be proud of me.
I go into Milly’s room to check today’s events haven’t disturbed her. She’s sitting on her new white iron bed, playing on her tablet. I’d prefer her to be looking at a book, but the tablet came with her, a present from her mother, so it’s not something that can be removed easily. The room is pink, her choice, surprisingly, for a girl who only wears black leggings and grey T-shirts. It’s not a bright lipstick pink, but a more muted chalky shade which satisfied her and didn’t grate on me too much. Next to her bed is a long shelving unit with books, games and soft toys and an entire shelf given over to her collection of plastic Moshi Monsters. At her age, I had a similar collection of china Whimsie figurines. My mother still has a few of them in among the ornaments on her window sill. Milly looks up and smiles at me through her hair as I perch on the edge of her bed.
‘You OK?’ She nods, but I get the impression this is to reassure me and not necessarily how she really feels. Her beloved Gerry is tucked beside her; a soft toy, in the shape of a cow with the colouring of a giraffe which, after much debate, we’ve agreed is a ‘girrow’. She sleeps with him every night and if she’s upset or anxious, she’ll reach for him to comfort her. I wish I knew his history, but her grandparents couldn’t remember where he came from or why he became significant. ‘I’m sorry we got cross earlier.’
‘’S’OK.’
How did this happen? Only a matter of weeks in and we’ve already hurt this little girl we promised to protect. ‘Grown-ups can get it wrong sometimes too.’
‘That’s what Nana says.’ Nana. Not my mother, nor Neil’s, but Milly’s maternal grandmother. The woman who’s been caring for her since she was born.
‘She does?’
‘Mummy was cross. She broked the glass in the back door.’ While Milly’s grandparents have done their best to provide her with a stable and loving home, her troubled birth mother, Claire, has been a sporadic, at times difficult, visitor. ‘I had to wear my wellies even after Gramps sweeped it up.’
We were supposed to be taking her away from all that. ‘Sometimes people get angry because they’re afraid. Daddy was afraid we’d lost you.’
‘The lady maked him cross.’
I nod. There’s no disputing that. ‘Grandma should not have taken you without checking with Daddy.’ I hesitate. ‘And you should not have gone with someone who was a stranger to you.’
Milly is thoughtful and for a moment I think she’s going to say something, but before she can speak my mother calls from next door. ‘Evangeline?’
Milly looks puzzled. I explain that Evangeline is my name. I lean in and whisper, ‘But I prefer Eve.’
That thoughtful look again. I remember my best friend, Naz, telling me that her son, Max, has wise eyes. ‘He’s been here before,’ she said, cradling him, something new and tender blossoming in her as I watched. I think I understand what she meant now, looking at Milly; there’s a lot going on behind those eyes.
‘Evangeline!’
‘You have to go.’ Milly turns her attention back to her screen.
I feel absurdly dismissed and simultaneously irritated by my mother’s summons. I don’t want to go; I want to stay here with Milly and find out what she’s really thinking, but I get up and call out, ‘Coming,’ before my mother can shout again.
Mum has her suitcase open on the floor and a number of blouses laid out on the bed. The wardrobe door is open. ‘Do you have any more hangers?’
‘I’ll have a look upstairs.’
She unfolds another blouse. How long is she planning to stay? ‘Are there no curtains in this room?’
‘There’s a blackout blind.’
From this window she has a perfect view of the park. We were going to use this as a bedroom for Milly, but she preferred the smaller room that looks out over the back.
We’ve lived in this house for two years, but this is the first time my mother has visited. When we first moved up, I’d travel down to see her regularly, every other weekend. Neil would catch up with his parents and siblings in Stevenage, while I hung out with Mum in Hitchin. It was my way of making up for leaving her, giving her my undivided attention for two days. She was still stinging after the New York fallout, but once Neil was out of the way, she couldn’t have been more attentive. We developed a routine and there was something comforting and rather lovely about that. We’d mooch around the shops, sometimes lunch in a café, then head back home and watch an old black and white film with Ingrid Bergman or Bette Davis. I’d make something simple for the two of us for dinner, letting her relax and be looked after for a change, and we’d eat it from a tray on our knees, watching Saturday night family TV with a glass of sherry for Mum and wine for me. It would be Neil’s idea of hell, but with just the two of us, it was fine. I quite enjoyed these little forays back into my childhood for a limited period, and it made Mum happy.
After a few months, Neil stopped travelling down so often, preferring to stay in Cumbria and go cycling or sailing on Sundays with Guy, India’s husband. Guy also teaches at the school, and has a friend with a sailing dinghy. While I kept returning to Hitchin that summer, Neil was out on the lake and in the forest, enjoying his new life. His parents and siblings would take it in turns to visit, but Mum refused to come. She expected me to go to her. ‘This will always be your home, Evangeline.’ Every time I tried to suggest a change to the routine, she’d have a reason to keep things as they were. There were the cats to consider. One has a heart problem of some sort, apparently, and can’t be left at a cattery. When I suggested someone cat-sit, she told me she didn’t like the idea of a stranger in her house while she was away, and the journey north was too much for a woman of her age, her knee was playing up, she had a cold. ‘Face it,’ Neil said, ‘she isn’t prepared to come.’
‘Who’s taking care of the cats?’
‘There’s only one cat now. Sheba died last year and Woody was hit by a car.’
‘No!’ Woody was a Siamese with a creamy coat and blue eyes. He liked to sleep on my bed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’ I bite my tongue. ‘I have someone popping in to check on Inky.’
I wonder who the someone is, but she clearly wants to keep that information to herself for now. ‘So, what do you think of my home?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘Your home, Evangeline, will always be Hitchin.’
The park volunteers are migrating towards the café. Lizzie will be offering them tea and scones to thank them for their efforts supporting the police search. I stand beside Mum, looking out over the tarn and the town nestled beneath the fell. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’
She makes a little sound that could be agreement, or not, it’s difficult to tell. ‘It must get terribly cold in winter, exposed like this.’
What would it cost her to say something nice? How can she look out at that view and not be moved? ‘There’s heating.’
She looks down at the bare floorboards Neil sanded over a half-term break. He appeared in the kitchen like a ghost of himself, covered in a fine, pale dust and chased me up the stairs into the bathroom. I remember thinking, am I fertile right now? Could this be it? My mother’s house has wall-to-wall carpet and the heating is always on, the windows sealed.
‘The money he spent on that trip to New York could have paid for some double glazing.’
It will be three years this Christmas, and she’s still smarting. But all that’s in the past. What matters is that she’s come, finally. I am not going to let anything spoil that. Milly, currently singing along t
o a Disney song in the room next door, is an opportunity for things to shift into a different gear. I’ve become a mother and I want my mother to delight in that with me.
I think of the grandmother sitting at the picnic bench outside the adventure playground at Brockhole. I imagine her looking out of this window, admiring the view, telling me how happy she is for me. ‘So,’ I prompt, ‘how was it with Milly?’
She frowns. ‘Milly,’ she says, eventually. ‘What kind of name is that?’
I glance to the hallway. ‘Mum! Ssssh!’ and pull the door to, just in case. ‘It’s a lovely name.’
Mum wrinkles her nose. ‘It’s something you’d call a cat or a small dog, not a child. What’s it short for?’
‘It’s not short for anything.’
‘What does it say on her birth certificate?’
‘Milly.’
‘Not Millicent?’
‘Millicent?’
Mum concedes with a smile. ‘It is a bit dated. Camilla? Camellia?’
‘Camellia? That’s a plant!’
‘It’s a very beautiful flower. My favourite.’
‘It’s not a name.’ Before she can say it could be, I add, ‘More to the point, it’s not her name.’
‘Amelia? Amelia. Now that’s lovely.’
‘But it’s not her name.’
She gives a little shrug and turns back to her suitcase. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m sure you’ll be able to change it when you get the new birth certificate.’
‘We’re not changing her name. Social services won’t let us.’
‘Won’t let you? Who’s adopting this child? What business is it of theirs what you call her? I’m going to call her Amelia.’
‘Mum, stop.’
‘You’re doing them a favour, remember.’
Again, my mind leaps back to the grandmother at Brockhole, but I shove her aside. I don’t know her. She won’t be perfect either. I nod to the bed. ‘Sit down. I need to talk to you about this.’