Well, I wasn’t sure what I was doing really, going along to hold the hand of somebody practically old enough to be my mother. But in the car on the way to the hospital Alison started talking, and she seemed to have thought it all through, very matter-of-fact she was, and she said she was going to ask for a termination. She hadn’t intended the pregnancy, and she was talking about her kids. How the eldest boy, Robert, has got GCSEs next year, and how the autistic one, Edward, has been hell to live with just recently, and how disruptive it would be to have a baby in the house. She didn’t mention her husband at all, so I didn’t like to ask what he thought about it. Sitting in the waiting room at the maternity ward was awful. Everyone else seemed to be in couples, sitting holding hands and looking happy, and I thought how Alison had probably sat here before, with her husband, when she was expecting her other children, and wondered if she was thinking the same thing. It was actually quite funny, though, because they had told Alison to drink plenty of fluids beforehand and come with a full bladder, because of the scan, and then we had to wait a long time, and poor Alison was bursting, so we daren’t even have a cup of tea from the machine.
Eventually they called her in, and she asked if I would go with her, and the woman doctor got her on a bed and put vaseline on her tummy and rubbed the scanner thing around a bit, looked at the screen, and hmmed to herself. Then she said, ‘Wait here, I’m just going to fetch another doctor because I want a second opinion.’ And we were left there for what seemed like ages, with Alison all cold and vaseliny and still dying for the loo. When she came back, with a male colleague, they both moved the scanner about and studied the screen, and then they nodded to each other, and the first doctor (the woman) said, ‘There is an eight-week foetus there, Mrs Whiteley, but I’m afraid we can’t find any heartbeat.’ It was suddenly all just too much for Alison, after all that being brave and sensible and strong, and she just burst into tears. And the male doctor looked at her notes and said, ‘But I thought you were planning on having a termination anyway?’ as if to say, in that case what possible reason could she have for being emotional, she should be glad she’d been spared the difficulty! Well, I’m afraid I couldn’t restrain myself then, Gran, even though I’m sure Alison just found it embarrassing. I had a real go at him. I actually asked him how he would feel if he’d just been told that his baby was dead inside him! And poor Alison now has to wait for a miscarriage, which can’t be a very pleasant prospect.
I hope you don’t mind my telling you all this, Gran, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot. There is one more cheerful thing to tell you, though. Cora decided to do some evening classes with Persephone, who is one of the women from the hostel support group, and the classes were on herbalism. I thought it was an odd choice, because Cora isn’t usually interested in all those alternative therapies, in fact she goes to her GP and demands antibiotics if she gets so much as a cold. Well, it turned out that Cora thought herbalism meant how to grow herbs! I would love to have seen her face when she got there expecting gardening, and it was all these women talking about healing, and rediscovering the ancient lore of their grandmothers. (Not that you ever brewed up many herbal potions, at least not that I remember, Gran! A cup of tea and a hot water bottle was your usual prescription!)
Anyway, this letter is getting very long. I think I’d better stop there. But do look after yourself, and I hope your ankle is getting much better. I’ll see you next Saturday.
Lots of love,
Margaret xxx
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 31/5/05 14:11
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
He didn’t turn up – he sodding well didn’t turn up!!! There were Nas and I, down by Sir Alf Ramsey as arranged – ten minutes early, even, because when I went round to the hostel to pick her up she was actually waiting outside the door for me, she was so excited about this meeting, and going to London, and everything. She had put such hopes on it, even though we’d all told her not to. She seemed certain this was going to be the solution to everything, that she would be able to stay in England, stay at Witch House. Well, he was supposed to be meeting us at 12.30, in order to catch the London train at 12.52, but it got to 12.45 and he still hadn’t appeared, and we had to decide what to do. Nas wanted to go to the station and get the train anyway, but of course we didn’t have the details of exactly who this human rights person at the Foreign Office is, nor any idea where to go to find her, so I tried to explain all this to Nas, but of course she got very upset – it was like all her hopes were evaporating before her eyes. How can he do this to her? So I took her back to the hostel, and came back here to try to call him and find out what on earth he was playing at. I had a real nightmare trying to find out his private number at the House of Commons, and when I eventually got hold of it, he wasn’t answering his bloody phone.
Sorry to hit you with all this, Becs – but, God, I hate men sometimes! And speaking of men . . . how are things down there in the burning fiery furnace?
Love,
Margaret xx
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 31/5/05 14:45
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Typical! He probably found he’d got some dreadfully important meeting he had to go to – far more i mportant than Nasreen’s whole future – about mackerel quotas, or what buns to get in the House of Commons tea room. Tell him he’s a worm and you’ll be voting LibDem next time.
As to the fiery furnace, literal and metaphorical, both problems have been solved in one fell swoop, since you ask. My immortal soul is safe for the moment. I decided you were right, about not coming between the vindaloo brothers. And that you were probably right before that too, about not dating a parent. And then your unimpeachable and all-pervading rightness was confirmed by the gods of alphabetical providence, who sent me a sign. In the form of the Adonis who came to mend my central heating. Except he was not so much Adonis (I’ve done A, as you know) as Frankie. I’ve ended it with Declan, I’m not returning Elliot’s calls, and I’m going out for a drink with Frankie tomorrow night.
Big hugs,
Becs xx
From: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent: 31/5/05 14:49
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
I despair of you, I really do. Even you cannot seriously have got it on with the plumber who came round to fix your pipes! Your life is descending into an imitation of a bad porno movie. And where is it all going to end? Are you finally going to settle down and get married to a guy named Zorba when you are fifty-eight?
Love,
Margaret xxx
Dear Margaret and every one,
I just want to say I’m thanking you for every thing you doing for me. But now I’m going to London. Maybe I’m being safer in London, maybe I’m not being sent back home then.
I missing you,
Nasreen xx
From: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent: 31/5/05 23:16
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
Oh, God, what am I going to do? It’s just terrible, and I feel as if it’s my fault! Except it isn’t, it’s bloody Richard Slater’s fault – he should never have offered to help Nas, and got her hopes up, if he was going to ditch her like that, and leave her high and dry. Oh, Becs, it’s just so awful, I hardly know how to tell you, but Cora’s light was off when I got in, and I don’t like to wake her, and I’ve just got to tell someone. I went round to the hostel at about ten o’clock – it was my turn to sit with Helen (we’ve got a rota going, you see), and afterwards I thought I’d just look in on Nas. But when I knocked on her door there was no reply, and what was odd was that the door wasn’t quite closed, which was strange if she was asleep, so I just poked my head a little way round the door, just to check she wa
s OK, because I had a sort of nasty feeling . . . And there was a note on the bed. Scribbled down on the back of an opened-out cardboard toothpaste packet. I suppose it was all she could find, probably from the bin. And it just said thanks and goodbye, and that she has gone to London! She seems to think that she will be safer there, that she won’t get sent back to Albania if she is in London. But where can she go? She doesn’t know anyone there – she doesn’t know anyone at all in England except us. I wondered if she’d got some crazy idea about trying to see that Foreign Office lawyer, because that’s where we had been going to go today. Or maybe she just wants to ‘disappear’, like you hear about asylum seekers doing, and thinks it will be easier in London than in Ipswich, where there’s always someone who knows someone who knows you . . . But it will be so dangerous – anyone could take advantage of her, she’s so young, and she’s got hardly any money and can’t sign on, and her English still isn’t very good. I don’t want to call the police – that’s the last thing she’d want, she’d be so scared if they came after her. And if she really does want to disappear, well, I don’t really want to turn her in, do I? Oh, Becs, I feel I should go and look for her, but where would I even know where to start?
Love,
Margaret xx
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 31/5/05 23:32
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Margaret, I really am very sorry to hear about Nasreen and have no idea what to suggest. You must be really upset, hon. (In fact, I can tell by the state of your mixed metaphors. How can someone be both ditched and high and dry?) But don’t worry, honestly. I’m sure London is not really the corrupting pit of iniquity you country bumpkins imagine it to be, and there are places she can go where they will help her. She managed to get out from Albania all right and made it to England by herself, so the girl must have a fair bit of gumption. She’ll be OK, I’m certain of it. Maybe she’ll try to contact your Richard bloke (though a fat lot of help he’ll be, by the sound of it). Why don’t you phone him in the morning?
Lots of love and hugs,
Becs xxx
From: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
Sent: 1/6/05 03:24
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Oh, Becs, worse and worse. I woke up in the middle of the night with a lurching sensation in the pit of my stomach. It was something the head had said at school the other week about the 1970s, and it had suddenly come back to me in my sleep. I had this dreadful fear . . . well, it was more of a conviction really, but I had to make sure. So I got out of bed – it was nearly 3 a.m. – and I was too agitated even to get dressed, I just put on my fleece and wellies over my pyjamas like an escaped long-term psychiatric patient, and got my bike out and cycled off in the direction of the station. I went to the statue, where we’d waited for Richard. And it was just as I’d feared – it wasn’t Sir Alf Ramsey. It was Sir Bobby Robson.
How was I to know, Becs? Dad was only interested in books, and for Mum sport began and ended with Torvill and Dean’s gold medal-winning performance at the 1984 Winter Olympics. How was I supposed to be able to tell one bronze former England football manager from another? And what do they want to go and have two of them for, anyway? And how can I ever face Richard now? Because it’s all my fault about Nasreen after all!
Love,
Margaret xxx
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 1/6/05 08:23
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
I appreciate that now may not be the moment, my poor dear Margaret, to lambast you for your i gnorance. I know almost nothing about football either, but (for future reference) Sir Alf is the tight-lipped sourface, and Sir Bob is the one who looks like a more enthusiastic version of somebody’s grandad.
Becs xx
From: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent: 1/6/05 15:12
To: Michael Carragan [[email protected]]
Hi Michael,
She never turned up! There I was, waiting by Sir Alf as agreed – in fact I got there ten minutes early, I was so determined not to keep them waiting. And that despite spending a considerable time in W. H. Smith’s on my way down there, trying to choose between a copy of the New Internationalist to read on the train (which would say I was concerned, with a broad outlook) and Private Eye (to show I don’t take myself or the administration too seriously). In the end I bought both, just to be on the safe side. Well, we were meant to be meeting at 12.30, so we could catch the 12.52 train to Liverpool Street. When it got to 12.45 and they still hadn’t arrived, I had to decide what to do. My urge was to go and look for her, but then I remembered that Liz Thompson would be expecting us, and you know what these Foreign Office types are like – alpha males of both genders! And of course I am still trying not to blot my copybook, and the Rottweiler always has his nose close to the ground in the FO. So I had a long lonely train ride back to London – though at least I had no shortage of reading material.
I kept wondering why Margaret hadn’t come. It occurred to me that maybe the recollection of my lunatic hair-grabbing antics had made her change her mind at the last minute. But she doesn’t strike me as the nervous type – I would have imagined her as more likely to stand and face even an unwanted and slightly deranged predator than to take flight. And she seemed so dedicated to Nasreen. I just can’t understand it, Mike.
I headed for my office, intending to call in and see if she had left a message for me, but only got as far as the doorstep, where I found the other lawyer (that solicitor friend of Margaret’s from the refugee centre, Caroline she’s called – another fearsomely forthright female) lying in wait for me. As we were already rather late, we headed straight round to Liz’s chambers. (Why do the FO’s lawyers insist upon calling their rooms ‘chambers’ as if they were Rumpole of the Bailey? All the other Government Legal Service people I’ve come across just have ‘offices’ like normal human beings.) Anyway, soon the two legal ladies were hard at it. The air was thick with acronyms, it was all CEDAW and UNHCR and ECRE, and they were bandying terms like ‘genderspecific violence’ and ‘agents of persecution’ and ‘indirect state responsibility’. I must admit I had stopped trying to follow it all and was picturing Margaret’s eyes the way they had looked in the Corn Exchange café, when suddenly they seemed to have cooked up between the two of them a brand new government policy directive. Exceptions for gender-based oppression, including intra-familial violence (or some such formula), even for women from countries on The List. Liz Thompson was going to take it up with her opposite number at your end today. I don’t know who the poor sap is, but I do know I shouldn’t want to be the one to stand in her way. When I left her chambers, she seemed to have the bit firmly between her teeth.
I wanted to ring Margaret straight away, but I didn’t like to somehow. I didn’t want to put pressure on her about whyever it was that she hadn’t turned up at Sir Alf. But Liz said she’d phone me this afternoon and let me know what happened with the Home Office lawyer. If it’s been agreed, then I am off to gift-wrap this important little piece of feminist policy reform, tie a big pink ribbon round it, write a gift tag falsely claiming it as all my own work, and lay it at Margaret’s feet along with my poor trampled heart. Or at least, I am going to ring her up, anyway. Wish me luck!
Richard.
Richard Slater (Labour)
Member of Parliament for Ipswich
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
1 June 2005
Darling Petey,
Well, I’m on my own here tonight, so I thought I’d write to you with the latest news. Life is certainly more exciting since Margaret has been around! She appeared at breakfast looking dreadful – hair all over the place, under her eyes great dark circles, and in them a sort of feverish glitter. Nasreen has run away! She’s gone to London, but no one knows exactly where. She left a note, which Marga
ret found last night, late, but it didn’t give any clues about where she was planning to go. It seems to be something to do with that MP, Mr Slater. He was meant to be taking them both to London yesterday for a meeting – I think I told you about it – but he didn’t turn up, and it seems that’s what got Nasreen so upset. Margaret was cursing him yesterday at suppertime, I can tell you, though this morning when I mentioned him she went rather quiet and didn’t say much at all. She seemed terribly upset, though. She didn’t seem to know what to do, and even though I told her not to go blaming herself, I could see that was what she was thinking.
Then I had to go off to work, of course, although I hated leaving her alone. All day at the bank I kept imagining her, moping round the house by herself, because this week is her half term break. Anyway, as soon as I put my key in the lock tonight I could hear the phone ringing, so I rushed to pick it up, and it was Mr Slater, and he sounded excited, but also a bit worried, because he said he’d been calling and calling and hadn’t got any reply, and did I know where Margaret was, because he really wanted to speak to her. I was opening my mouth to say I didn’t know where she was, when my eye fell on a note, lying there just by the telephone. It was from Margaret, and it said that she has gone to London, too, to see if she can find Nasreen! Not a word about where she’s going to look, or when she’ll be back, or anything! So I read it to Mr Slater, and he said, what does she mean about Nasreen? So I explained to him about Nasreen running away, and about how upset Margaret was, and I nearly gave him a piece of my mind about agreeing to meet them yesterday and then not doing, but I bit it back, because it isn’t really any of my business, is it? And it didn’t seem right, really, to be rude to a Member of Parliament. Well, he went very quiet, in fact I actually wondered if he was still there, and then he suddenly just said ‘thank you’ as if he’d just remembered that I was there, and rang off.
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