By the time we got home, it was pitch-black, cold, and I was very much over my birthday. Mostly because I’d spent all day ignoring the feeling I get every year when I compare my life to Mum’s at the same age. She’d stopped watching trashy films on her birthday long before that. She’d achieved stuff by now. Kids. A husband. A proper job for a grown-up. I can’t for the life of me think what I’ve achieved. A top score on Angry Birds, and brief notoriety on Twitter when one of the girls from Little Mix (I forget which one) retweeted one of my tweets. Even the subsequent spike in followers has since fallen back down to eighty-five.
What else? I flunked my archaeology degree when I realised I didn’t actually want to spend my life dusting rocks in a remote desert somewhere north of nowhere. And I know I shouldn’t compare us, but Mo did media at uni, a subject we all know is an excuse to go out on the lash for three years, and now she’s a £400-a-day marketing consultant working up and down the country. Where can eight months’ study of Anglo-Saxon burial grounds take me? Or even seven years working as a nursery nurse?
And if either can take me anywhere, is it somewhere I’d like to be? And would it pay enough to get rid of the subsequent student debt for a degree I never finished?
I stare out of my bedroom window at the red-brick walls of buildings that surround us. A street light gives off an orangey glow, and I can’t work out if our flat, nestled among office blocks, student accommodation and private flats, is somewhere magical, where anything can happen, or somewhere claustrophobic that I’ll never escape from. I’m twenty-seven. Lying in a bed I haven’t bothered to make today. What do I really want out of life? What do I need to do? What is the thing that will take me from plodding daily to achieving success? What does success even look like? I glance down at my panda onesie, catch sight (again) of my (still) unwashed hair, and run my tongue across fur-lined teeth. Success probably doesn’t look exactly like this.
I reach for my phone, bring up Dad’s number and call.
‘Rachel, darling! Hello, happy birthday! I thought you were going to be back late?’
I shift guiltily on my bed, wishing I hadn’t texted him to say I couldn’t talk today. ‘Oh, we’d had enough… came back early… getting too old for birthdays now,’ I explain lamely.
‘Nonsense. Though I seem to remember it was around your age when your mother decided she should stop partying.’
‘Did she?’ I ask, surprised at the description of a mother I don’t recognise. I’d never seen her as a party animal.
‘Yes! You were seven, maybe eight. You came bounding in, then jumped up and down on our bed one morning after she’d been out with friends. Told us you needed to go to Sherwood Forest to do some early research for a project at school, then looked at her, green-gilled and hungover as she was, and asked if she’d been out drinking… again!’
‘Did I?’
‘She was mortified. Barely drank after that.’
‘I don’t remember that at all. I thought she just didn’t like alcohol.’
‘Ha ha ha, nope! She’d probably say it didn’t like her.’
‘I get that,’ I say, realising the drink chat was bringing back my own alcohol-infused nausea. When did I get to an age when hangovers lasted a full day and night?
‘I’ve got your present here, love, if you want to come by and get it when you’re free? And some more of your mum’s old magazines. I found a load of history ones I thought you might like.’
‘History?’ I’m not sure why she had them, or why Dad thinks I’d like them.
‘Yep. She was beginning to flirt with the idea of going to college to train as a secondary-school teacher… or whatever you’d call that now.’
‘Dad, are you intentionally giving me brand-new information about Mum today, or is this stuff I’ve always known and forgotten about?’
‘You knew your mother as your mum, I knew her as my wife. Same person, different sides. There will always be things I can tell you about her, things you never knew. It’s one of the joys we still have left.’
‘But she worked at that engineering firm on the edge of town. In accounts, wasn’t it?’
‘Yep. But only really because we didn’t have the money to support her if she retrained. Biggest regret of my life, that. If there’s one thing you must never do, it’s to not chase after your dreams. Even if they cost money, there’ll be a way.’
‘Oh, Dad!’ I lean back in my bed. Soft pillows swallow my body as I pull the duvet up under my chin and shift the hot-water bottle I’ve been cradling for comfort. ‘Chasing them would be far easier if I knew what they were.’
‘Come on, you must have something?’
‘I don’t know.’ My mind goes blank.
‘What would you do if time, money, access and opportunity were no object?’
‘Marry Tom Hardy.’
‘Rachel!’
‘Okay, okay. I know, he’s got a girlfriend. I don’t know… what sort of a question is that?’
‘It’s one you should be able to answer.’
I sink further down into the bed. ‘I’m probably too old for change.’
‘Nonsense. Gosh, if your mother could hear you. Right, here’s a task. A birthday task. Get a piece of paper, get a pen, write a list of all the jobs you could do. I bet you that, within a few days, the perfect one comes to mind. Then we just work out how to get you there. Okay?’
‘Okay…’
‘Great. Now, the new people in Betty and Doug’s old place came round earlier. Their little girl’s been baking brownies for charity. I’ll save you one if you come over tomorrow for your present.’
‘You didn’t have to buy me anything, Dad.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s something I found of your mother’s that I thought you might like. Might come in handy now…’
‘Ooh, the suspense. I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Dad.’
‘Look forward to it. Happy birthday, Rachel. I love you.’
Part Two
MARCH 2012
Seven
Rachel
It’s been six weeks since my birthday, which is apparently long enough for Dad to accept an offer on the house and tell me that he would like to pay for me to go back to university. No student debt, no excuse. He called me last night to tell me the ‘good’ news.
The list he told me to write didn’t really help, and now the offer of money has lit the blue touchpaper on a sudden rush of anxiety about the rest of my life, which, it would appear, is sending my mind completely blank.
Dad’s present to me was an old briefcase of Mum’s. It was a gift from her (mysteriously appearing) uncle at her dad’s funeral. Complicated, but stick with me. Apparently it had been a gift from Grandpa on Great-Uncle Cyril’s graduation and he wanted Mum to have it. Which was sweet of him then, and sweet of Dad now, but it was taunting me so much when I looked at it that after a few days I had to hide it in my wardrobe.
So, I’m no clearer on a job, which – as I stand here, cuticles deep in baby poo – makes me feel like an abject failure.
A text comes through on my phone and I check over my shoulder to make sure Vicky – our boss – isn’t in sight. Reading it, I roll my eyes, shoving my phone back in my pocket. It’s no longer just Dad. Now Mo is on one with career suggestions, the latest being sports therapist, no doubt inspired by Olympic fever (and, I imagine, the opportunity to hang around me while I treat men with thighs like Jonny Wilkinson… maybe she’s onto something!). It’s more appropriate than her previous suggestions, which include international civil rights lawyer (because, sure, I’m that smart), aeronautical engineer (so ‘we can be among the first when making a new life on a new planet’), and my personal favourite: roller-coaster tester. Apparently it’s a real job, but I’m not convinced you need a degree for it, just a strong stomach and excellent pelvic floor.
I pull my phone back out, tapping a response:
I was thinking lion tamer.
To which M
o responds almost instantly with:
Is this a euphemism?
I’m unclear what kind of euphemism she’s insinuating, which – if nothing else – gives me somewhere to drift off to as I pick out the baby poo from my nails with a wet wipe.
I snort, remembering the look on our teacher’s face when Mo said she was going to marry Ryan Giggs and therefore didn’t need to work. For someone as smart and independent as she is now, her brief hormone flirtation with being a WAG still makes me chuckle. I guess on some level I can see the appeal... the lifestyle, the cars the... Actually, no, scratch that. I can't. I can't see the appeal at all. Total dependence on one man’s career aside, I don’t like champagne or football, and I flatly refuse to go bare down there... not that waxing your nether regions to within an inch of their life is necessarily a prerequisite to being married to a footballer, Premier League or otherwise... but the whole self-grooming thing is generally something I do out of necessity, not as a career.
A quiet tap on the glass alerts me to Vicky, peering through the observation window. My mind was hurtling towards the memory of an ill-gotten vajazzle and an industrial tub of Sudocrem, so her interruption is well timed. She stage whispers through a crack in the door, keen not to wake the sleeping babies. ‘Can you show a new parent around this afternoon? Mr Moran. Due in at three.’
‘Of course, no problem. How old’s baby?’
Vicky adopts an artificially informed tone... artificial because I know she plays Sudoku on her laptop when hidden away in her mezzanine office and is usually thus distracted. ‘Just him aaaand...’ Note check, note check. ‘Yes, and the baby’ – she turns the notes upside down – ‘eight-week-old, Oli.’
‘Ahhh, a little one, lovely,’ I say.
Phoebe, the new girl on a four-week trial, slopes back in from her lunch break. She smiles as she bites her nails and chews the reward, waiting for me to delegate a job. Another reason for my considering a move: I’m not cut out for managing people. It’s not her fault, I just feel bad giving people orders. I end up doing things myself, because I’d hate it if she thought I was being overly bossy.
A word that, each time I think it, I can hear Mo shout, ‘Nobody calls a man bossy!’
I cough, then try my hardest. ‘Phoebe, can you finish sorting the nappy area, please? Give it a good wipe down and general tidy up. If that’s okay. Thank you. Please.’
‘Sure,’ she drawls, not moving.
‘We've a visitor due in at three. Potential new parent. Between now and then we need to be on top of the room, keep it shipshape.'
Shipshape? This is what I mean. I never use words like that in real life! There is something about managing staff that has driven me to introduce aged phrases to my vocabulary. I make a mental note to stop it. Then a mental note to stop making mental notes. I move, but Phoebe stays looking at me.
‘Then if you could start with Thomas and move along that back wall, we need to change them all,’ I add, slightly flustered, but then, realising that this means I won’t have to change another nappy for a good few hours, I begin to see a glimmer of the appeal of management. ‘There's more Milton over there,’ I say with an emerging air of authority.
The passing of time is punctuated by disinfectant spraying, the room being gradually tidied, and babies waking then wailing to be fed, changed and entertained.
Soon enough, Vicky’s dulcet tones echo down the corridor, past all the pre-schoolers’ paintings and the rarely looked-at parents’ noticeboard. I pick up Maisie – a cute and relatively chilled-out eight-month-old – taking her over to the sensory area. It always helps if the new parents see us being proactive and engaging with the babies. ‘Come on, Mais, let's have a look at some bubbles.’
The door opens slowly. ‘Rachel, Mr Moran’s here.’
Eight
Ed
The nursery manager ushers me in. ‘Mr Moran, this is Rachel. She’s in charge of the baby room.’
‘Ah, hello, Mr Moran.’ A young woman in nursery uniform of jeans and a branded hoody flicks on some lights and bubbles for a young baby to play with. ‘Welcome.’ She shakes my hand firmly, and I retract it pretty quickly. ‘Thanks for coming in to see us.’
I nod, looking around the room, uncertain what questions I’m supposed to ask. Would Ellie have known?
As if picking up on my lack of questions, the nursery nurse continues. ‘This is where the babies stay until they’re about one, Mr Moran. Then they tend to move into the next room, where their requirements for play can be better catered for. We can feed them their own food, or you can pay slightly more for our kitchen to make them food. They tend to have the same as the older children, just blended according to age. Okay?’
I nod again, scanning the room. It’s immaculate, apart from a cobweb that spans from ceiling fan to window frame of the old school building. There’s a row of cots; an area where presumably they change the babies; a tidy book corner with cushions all plumped… They take pride in the space, that’s clear.
‘We’ve only a few of our babies in today, hence it being just myself and Phoebe here,’ she explains. ‘We have another two girls who join us on the busier days. We always try to have a 1:3 ratio in this room.’
I wonder if she notices my eyes glaze over at facts I don’t really understand or care about. I wouldn’t even be here if I didn’t have to be. If I didn’t need the money.
‘Wednesday does tend to be our quietest day, and Monday is the busiest,’ she says.
Having reeled off her well-practised patter, both women, whose names I’ve totally forgotten, stand beside me in an awkward silence that is eventually broken by a kid in the corner, farting. Ellie would have howled, but my sense of humour remains absent.
‘If it’s okay with you, Mr Moran’ – the woman who introduced me to the room touches my arm, making me flinch; do they notice? – ‘I’ll leave you in Rachel’s capable hands for a while.’
Rachel. Remember… Rachel.
‘You can spend time in the room, ask her any questions you may have. See how baby likes it, okay?’ She doesn't wait for my answer and we are united by her turning her back on us and exiting the room.
‘So, am I right in thinking that Oli is six weeks old, Mr Moran?’
‘Ed,’ I say.
‘Oh God. Sorry!’ She colours. ‘I thought Vicky said...’ She waves a hand, passing the blame on to her colleague. ‘Of course. I meant Ed.’ She smiles, looking at Oli. ‘Am I right in thinking Ed is six weeks old now, Mr Moran?’
‘He is Oli,’ I say, hand on Oli’s chest. ‘I am Ed.’ Her colour deepens. ‘I was just saying you could call me Ed, not Mr Moran.’
She laughs, like a train, then stops abruptly. The fact she is so human is somewhat helpful, given that I’ve no idea what I’m doing. I don’t feel so out of my depth. ‘Sorry – God, Ed. Hello. Hi. I'm Rachel. Rubbish at being a professional and, on occasion, a grown-up!’
‘Right.’ Ellie always thought being a grown-up was overrated anyway. She’d have liked this girl… Rachel.
‘I’m rarely rubbish at childcare though,’ she adds, with a slight grin.
‘Oli is eight weeks old,’ I say, realising that if she’s going to look after him, I need to see if they could develop a bond. Oli cries when I’m not holding him; how will she do here? I kiss the top of his head, take a deep breath, then hand him over.
‘Hello, little one,’ she says. ‘You are a handsome boy.’
‘He takes after his mother,’ I say.
‘Ah, very good answer, Daddy.’ She coos in Oli’s direction. ‘So, Mummy and Daddy are going back to work and they need someone to look after you, then, is that it?’
‘Well, it’s not quite…’ I take another deep breath, feeling the backs of my eyes sting. ‘My wife’ – I cough the words free – ‘she passed away.’ God, it hurts, every time I say it.
‘Oh, no!’ Her hand flies to her mouth, then she pulls Oli in closer to her. He doesn’t mutter or mumble, but seems to almost snuggle into her.
‘Ed, I’m so sorry! I can’t even begin to imagine how that must be for you.’ She looks down at Oli. ‘And he’s so… God, you must be devastated.’
That’s one word, I think.
‘God, that’s a stupid thing to say. Of course you’re devastated. Sorry!’
‘It’s okay.’
‘I remember when my mum died, people would say things like, “She’s in a better place,” or, “It will get easier with time,” and I remember wondering how they could be so stupid. Sorry, I should have known better.’
She offers Oli back to me, as if instinctively she sees I need him. I hold him in tight, as if my life depends on him… which it probably does. Does she see that? Given that she understands grief.
‘Are you seeing any other nurseries?’ she asks.
‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ I say. Certain about the first thing since Ellie died. ‘Here is perfect, thank you.’
‘We’d love to have Oli. I’d love to have him. And we can go at your pace, there’s no rush to leave him. However long it takes to establish the new routine for you is fine.’
‘I have to get back to work, I’m paid on bonuses. I can’t really afford not to.’
‘Ah, I see. Okay, well, we would normally do two sessions to ease him in, make sure he settles okay. If you’d rather we do more, that’s fine. When you’re ready, we’d encourage you to leave him so that you can both see how you do without each other.’
My heart thumps.
‘It’s okay,’ she says, as if she feels it. ‘You can grab a coffee and sit in the office with Vicky, if that’s easier. It’s just so that we can all see how easily Oli will settle.’
The Lost Wife: An uplifting page-turner about grief, love and friendship Page 3