by Zosia Wand
Milly. Our Milly. She is our Milly now, there’s no going back. She’s part of our lives and we’re part of hers. We have the beginning of a shared history. I thought it would be the big things that make the memories: the excursions into the Lakes for family activities, the cruise we took along Coniston in the summer drizzle on the steam gondola, that first trip to Brockhole adventure playground on Windermere, or the bike ride through Grizedale Forest, with Milly’s bike attached to Neil’s on the tailgator, me bringing up the rear, twisting and turning and pushing over muddy roots and hidden stones, but I was wrong. It’s not about those photograph moments. It’s about the incidental experiences and repeated day-to-day activities: the way Milly slips out of her bed every morning as soon as she hears Neil heading into the shower and is waiting for him at the kitchen table when he comes down, the little conversations the two of them have before I’m up, how she stands in front of the hall mirror, her face set in a look of concentration as I brush her hair, the last minute ‘Where are my shoes!’ panic when her trainers are not on the shelf where they should be, but wherever she kicked them off when she came in the day before.
As adopters we have the added delight of the transitional rituals that Milly has carried from one world into the other, like the way she prepares the teapot in the morning, with a little warm water from the tap, and puts the kettle on to boil. We’ve had to buy a tea cosy and I postpone my morning coffee to allow her to continue with this. It’s important; a thread from one world to the other, a gift, from her to us. Watching her carefully measuring the milk into each cup I think of her grandparents and how they must be missing her. Shona tells me not to worry, they’re confident that she’s well cared for and loved, but still, I’d like for them to see her in our world. It’s as much for me as for them. I need their blessing.
Would they give their blessing if they knew what I know now?
Naz thinks it’s better not to talk to Neil until after the review. She’s worried I won’t be able to keep a secret like this, but she’s wrong. I couldn’t before, but I can now. I can do this for Milly. I will do this to keep Milly.
What has Mum done? The smack was shocking, but this is worse. To accuse him of rape. To take the fact of a child, a child we didn’t know about, is shocking enough, but to embellish it with this additional horror is beyond cruel. The smack was a moment of poor judgement, but this is calculated and devastating. She has been talking to people, gathering information to incriminate Neil, to break my family apart. Who has she spoken to? Who else knows this awful secret?
I am not going to let her get away with it. Nothing has changed. Neil wouldn’t have known about the pregnancy. He still doesn’t know. He never needs to know. My mother wants me back. She’s prepared to go to any lengths to achieve that, but I don’t have to let her. I’ve managed without her before and I can do it again. If she wants a relationship with me it will be on my terms from now on.
Neil is never going to find out about this. We’re going to carry on as normal.
The level of noise is deafening. They’re all talking but no one is really listening to anyone else. It’s like a competition in this family, with everyone vying for attention, whoever can shout loudest wins, but it’s done with good humour. No one expects to be heard, they’re just delighted to be back with one another. This is Neil’s family, here in this room.
This is the family I want for Milly. This is the world I hope to create. I’ll never be Betty, I’ve left it too late to have so many children and, in truth, I wouldn’t cope with this level of chaos, but something on a smaller scale. Something as warm and embracing and healthy as this. If we do our job well, Neil and I, if we’re the parents we envisaged and explored during those assessment meetings, if we achieve that, then Milly will have her own version of this, a family home to return to, where she’s allowed to be the adult she’s become. Love without strings attached.
This is our family. Tina Lord has hers. She has made that work. Ann said Tina was fine. She lives somewhere in the north of England now. This is history. Tina must have made the decision not to tell Neil. She has not asked to be part of his life. She and her son do not belong here. That’s been their choice. I am respecting that choice.
Betty called Mum and invited her over today, but she wouldn’t come. Of course she wouldn’t. Here, where Neil is loved and supported, she’d be outnumbered and insignificant. She prefers to sit at home and sulk. Good luck to her.
Tina brought up her child alone. She’s coped. She’s built a life. What business do we have interfering in that? Or she may have married. Tina’s son may believe that man to be his natural father. If Tina wanted Neil to be involved, she would have told him. He’ll want to meet his son, but is that necessarily for the best if that son believes his natural father is someone else? Why cause so many people so much unnecessary pain?
This is our family. Here. Now. Me, Neil and Milly. This house. These uncles and aunts and cousins and dogs. This is Neil’s world and now it will be part of Milly’s. She belongs here. It’s Milly we need to focus on. Milly is five years old. She is still a child. Neil’s son is an adult man. He doesn’t need us.
Neil comes over, relaxed in a way I haven’t seen since Milly first arrived with us. This is my Neil, this jovial, jostling man, so loved by his family and at ease with himself. He’s still that boy with the wide smile who reached down into the water to help me. I was dripping wet, my costume twisted, exposing part of my breast, but he wasn’t looking at that, he was looking into my eyes, and I knew then it would be him. His strong arm pulling me up, that firm grip around my wrist.
He was eighteen then. When did the Tina thing happen? Months before? Weeks? I picture that boy with the khaki freckles and gentle smile. Not a rapist. Not my Neil.
He hands me a bottle of beer and holds his own up in a salute. ‘Happy?’ I nod, determined, shoving all that ugly doubt out of my mind.
Betty has decorated this house in her usual bohemian style: bold yellow walls in the kitchen-diner leading onto broad decking and a vast lawn with an apple tree at the far end. We’re sleeping in the spare bedroom, all three of us together. Milly has a little mattress on the floor, but she crawled in with us this morning and I lay there with Neil beside me, our daughter between us, feeling the beginning of something resembling peace.
Laura waddles over, face flushed, her distended pregnant belly protruding in front of her. She rolls her ice-filled glass across her forehead. ‘You aren’t missing anything by avoiding this, Eve! What I would give now to have a child delivered to me, clean, dressed and sleeping through the night!’
‘Broken in with table manners and all,’ says Neil, grinning across at Milly who is tearing at the hot soda bread with the other children.
Laura is saying something about parenting sabbaticals. ‘When it all gets a bit much we could just send them to a temporary family for a bit of respite and they come back sorted.’
Betty calls over from the hob, ‘I think they do that already. It’s called fostering.’
‘For people who genuinely need it,’ Neil adds, giving his sister a playful punch. ‘Not lazy arses like you!’
It’s such a relief to be able to laugh about our situation, rather than tiptoeing around it. People with no experience of adopting can sometimes make me feel like we’ve got a disease of some kind. They mean well, trying to spare our feelings, but in doing that they are as good as blowing a whistle and saying, ‘Watch out!’ Laura has no such reservations. In this family being adopted offers you no special privileges and there are no apologies. We are normal.
Laura’s husband Joe, a large, cuddly man with a lopsided smile, is surreptitiously buttering a piece of soda bread and throws a guilty glance in her direction. He gives an apologetic shrug and grins. ‘He’s supposed to be on a diet,’ she tells me, shaking her head. ‘But my man loves his food.’
My man. Neil is my man. More than twenty years. I know him. I know the truth. The truth is not words, it’s what we know on a differen
t level. It’s what we feel to be true.
The children slip away from the table, bowls wiped clean by bread, and the dogs and adults follow them into the garden leaving me in the kitchen with Betty.
‘Are you all right, Eve?’ she asks. ‘You seem a bit preoccupied.’
‘I’m fine.’ She isn’t convinced. There’s nothing I’d like more than to talk to Betty, to lay this whole thing out on the table in front of her and let her tell me what to do, but I can’t. How can I tell Betty she has a grandson she’s never met? But if I could tell her, she would dismiss the notion of rape. I would have an ally in this. Betty knows her son as well as I do, better, perhaps.
‘Eve?’ Betty leans towards me. ‘You can talk to me. Is everything OK with you and Neil?’
‘Of course! Why do you ask that?’
She sighs. ‘Your mum…’
‘What has she said?’
‘Nothing. Nothing, really.’
‘Tell me.’
She hesitates. ‘She popped in, after she’d been up to see you. To show us some photographs.’ To show off. To rub it in that she’d seen Milly first. ‘And she was asking, we got talking.’ She bites her lip and glances out to the garden, to Neil.
‘What did she ask?’
Betty looks down at her hands. ‘We got talking, about teenagers, I don’t know how… She’s good, your mum, at getting people to talk.’ I wait. Betty glances back out at Neil. ‘He’s told you, about Tina?’
I hold my breath. Shake my head. Does Betty know?
She pulls at her lower lip with her tooth. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s not important. I shouldn’t… We got talking about teenagers and those first, difficult relationships and…’ So this is where she started her search. With Betty, with Neil’s own mother.
‘Tell me.’
She shrugs. ‘It’s nothing. Really.’
Nothing really. She doesn’t know. She can’t know.
‘She wasn’t – just a girl he met at a party. Just the once – before he met you. He tried calling, but her dad wouldn’t let him speak to her. It upset him. More than – I don’t know. It wasn’t a good time. I shouldn’t have mentioned it. I’m sorry. I don’t know why…’
We both look out at Neil. She’s worried at betraying him. He’s standing under the apple tree with Milly on his shoulders and she’s stretching up to reach the branches. My mother, with her clever questioning. Twisting, not just the truth, but people. Betty, Ann. Who else has she manipulated? ‘It’s all right.’ My voice is steady. ‘I won’t say anything.’
It upset him, not being able to talk to Tina. More than it should have done and Betty doesn’t know why. But I do.
She pats my hand. ‘This whole adoption thing. It’s so much more complicated than it was in our day. Are you sure you’re all right, the two of you?’
Dear Betty. She knows Mum’s stirring. How can I tell her? I have become a keeper of secrets, but I’m not a liar. ‘You know my mum, Betty. She worries about me.’ This is our code. Betty knows it’s far darker and more destructive than that. ‘We’re good, Neil and I, there’s nothing she can do to shake that.’ Betty smiles, reassured, while I do my best to swallow the hot bile rising in my throat.
20
The spare room at Betty’s is an adult room, all vestige of Neil’s teenage years stripped away and painted over. In this house, children grow up, time moves on.
As we get ready for bed, I tell Neil about my dad. There are only so many secrets I can keep, and sharing this one eases my conscience temporarily. ‘She says it was a birthday card, but I’m not so sure. There might have been a letter.’
Neil pulls back the duvet and climbs into bed. ‘What difference does it make?’ He removes his watch, placing it on the side table, oblivious, then looks up. ‘What?’
It takes me a moment to respond. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘This is my dad we’re talking about.’
It’s as if we’re speaking a different language. He tilts his head a little. ‘But he wasn’t, was he? Not in any real sense.’ His words are like little pinches. I can feel my face stinging and it must be visible because he softens his tone and adds, ‘I’m sorry, but it’s not like you missed him. You’ve never talked about him.’
Is this how he sees it? Out of sight, out of mind? Is this how he’s justified it to himself? Did he know Tina was pregnant, but chose to forget? Did he pretend it never happened? I look at him, this man I thought I knew, and see a stranger.
He frowns. ‘What is it?’ I can’t speak.
All those tests when all the time he knew it was me who couldn’t conceive, not him? Who is this man? Do I really know him at all?
‘Eve?’ He’s worried now. ‘I’m sorry. What is it? What have I said?’ I shake my head. ‘You always said he wasn’t important.’
‘I thought he didn’t want to know me.’ My voice cracks.
He moves over to make space, waiting to envelop me, but I can’t move. I climb into bed beside him because I don’t know where else to go. He slides his arm around me and I let him pull me against his chest. I can hear the steady beat of his heart. Not racing. Not panicked or scared. He is calm. He has no idea. Resting his chin on my head, he strokes my hair. His voice rumbles through me. ‘Do you want to see him?’ The question is gentle, compassionate. This is the Neil that I know. This is the Neil I want to cling to.
‘I don’t know.’
‘What good would it do now, do you think?’
Maybe he’s right. What’s the point? He wrote over twenty years ago. He’ll be an old man now, if he’s alive at all.
‘You don’t need him.’
Neil drops a kiss on the top of my head.
A father is the man who’s there while you’re growing up. Taking care of you, guiding you, witnessing the milestones in your life. My father was not there for that. Neil was not there for his son. What’s done can’t be undone. It’s too late.
*
But it isn’t as simple as that. It’s like an itch I need to scratch, returning later, snagging me from sleep. I slip out of the bed. Neil’s snoring softly, Milly’s on her mattress on the floor, face buried in the pillow, her hair a sweaty tangle. She fell into bed before I could brush it tonight. It was all I could do to get her clothes off her and brush her teeth, she was that exhausted from all the excitement with her new cousins and the dogs. She’s happy here. Neil’s world. Already she belongs. I had no siblings or cousins growing up. There was none of this bustle and energy. I’m glad we’re able to provide it for Milly.
I kneel beside her and stroke her hair gently. She stirs. This little girl. My daughter. I can no longer imagine a life without her. She belongs. We belong. Brushing the matted hair from her face, I touch my lips to her cheek. She gives a little groan of contentment and rolls away from me.
I straighten up and check my watch in the moonlight that seeps around the curtain. I’m not surprised to see it’s ten to four. I often wake at this time, but usually manage to drift back off. If I don’t, I know it’ll be at least an hour before my brain settles again. Grabbing the jumper Neil tossed onto the chair, I pull it over my pyjamas, slip out of the room and creep downstairs.
In the darkness of the kitchen I can see I’m not the only night owl. Laura is sitting outside on a garden chair, her feet raised onto the table, head back, looking at the stars. Her hands rest on her belly and her profile is outlined in silver, as if the moon has dissolved over her face. She looks up and smiles as I open the door. ‘Ah! Someone else who can’t sleep.’
I pull up a chair next to her and she explains the various constellations. Neil’s talked me through this before; Mike taught all the kids how to recognise the stars on family camping trips. Neil introduced me to them on our first proper date, taking a detour as he walked me home one night, lying back in the grass on Windmill Hill, his hands drawing the shapes in the air. I remember when we first moved to Cumbria, how delight
ed he was to see the night sky, the diamonds burning so much brighter away from the urban light pollution. ‘As if they’re telling us we’ve done the right thing by coming here,’ he whispered, still searching for reasons to justify the huge upheaval. I forget that he had to leave his family behind too, that he must miss them as much as I miss Mum. He gave this up for us.
‘So,’ says Laura, getting straight to the point. ‘What’s keeping you awake?’
‘Is it that obvious?’
She laughs. ‘Spill the beans.’
I realise that Laura will be the same age as Tina. They were both Stevenage girls. ‘Did you know Tina Lord?’
‘Tina? Yeah. She was in my year. Didn’t Neil…?’ She trails off and waits and I’m glad of the night and our inability to see into one another’s eyes. How much does she know? A pregnant school girl would have been major gossip. A beat and then, ‘She was months before. He didn’t two-time you, Eve. Neil wouldn’t do that.’
She doesn’t know about the pregnancy. How could she not know? If a girl in her year had had a baby, that cautionary tale would have been repeated at every opportunity. Jenifer Martin had a baby at fifteen. A little girl. She was two years ahead of me at school and I remember every detail. She carried on at school. Her mother took care of the baby. If Tina Lord had a baby, why didn’t Laura know about it?
She says, ‘Why are you worrying about this now?’ I shrug, give a dismissive grunt, trying to make light of it. ‘I used to be the same. Wanted to know every detail. And there were a lot of details with Joe, you know what I mean? He wasn’t always a pudgy, middle-aged man!’
‘Did he hide anything from you?’
She pauses, peering at me in the silvery light. ‘Neil isn’t hiding anything, Eve. He’s just private. You know that. He’ll be protecting you.’
‘From what?’
‘From something that doesn’t matter. She got to him, not because she was special, but she was trapped and he couldn’t help her and there was all that stuff going on with his mum.’ She leans closer, searches my face. ‘He didn’t tell you.’