Roxy's Baby

by Cathy MacPhail

  This book is for all my children, with love and thanks

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  A Note from the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Also by Cathy MacPhail

  Chapter One

  Roxy crouched in a corner listening to the sounds of Dragon House in darkness. A door swinging shut, the creak of a floorboard. Every sound made her jump. Were they searching for her? She imagined them stalking her from room to room, from floor to floor. They would find her before long. She was shaking with fear. She drew in a deep breath. She would not let her fear take over. She couldn’t. She had too much to lose. She had to be strong, to be brave. For once in her life she had to think of someone other than herself.

  She had to stop thinking of the fear. Stop shaking.

  She had to think of something else.

  How did she ever get herself into this situation? She had asked herself that question a thousand times. It was all her own fault. She couldn’t blame anyone else. Yet remembering how it all began was almost as painful as what was happening now.

  She opened her eyes and tried to focus in the darkness. In her imagination shadows were coming to life, creeping towards her, every shadow a terror.

  She tried to forget that they were searching for her. She tried to forget what they would do to her if they found her. She tried to forget that there was a dead body lying just metres away from her.

  And the only way to forget, was to remember. Remember home, and family and her life before this nightmare began …

  ‘Where have you been till this time of night!’ It wasn’t a question. Her mother was screaming at her, not really expecting an answer. ‘I’ve been worried sick!’

  Roxy shrugged. ‘I didn’t realise it was this late. OK!’

  ‘No. Not OK at all. It’s one o’clock in the morning, Roxy. You’re grounded.’

  ‘You wish,’ she said sullenly.

  Her mother’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Don’t you dare talk to me like that.’

  She could see that her mother was almost ready to lash out at her, but Roxy knew she wouldn’t. Her mother had never lifted a hand to either of her daughters. Still, Roxy took a step back, just in case. There was a first time for everything.

  ‘You show your mother some respect.’ It was Paul, her mother’s husband, trying to sound as if he could command her obedience. Standing there in a crumpled T-shirt and jeans, looking as if he’d slept in his clothes.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ Roxy snapped. And it was true. He was nothing to her.

  ‘Get to your bed, Roxy. Right now.’ Her mother almost pushed her up the stairs and Roxy made as much noise as she possibly could, banging her fist against the wall, kicking each step as she went up, anger spewing out of her. She slammed the bedroom door open, not caring if she woke her sister or not. But of course, Jennifer was already awake, sitting up in bed waiting for her, her lips pursed, her arms folded. What was that old saying … ‘nursing her wrath to keep it warm’? That was what Jennifer was doing. Nursing her wrath.

  ‘You don’t care, do you?’

  Jennifer had her long auburn hair curled up on top of her head. It made her look older than twelve, even in the dark of their room, only dimly lit by the street lamp outside.

  ‘Oh, shut up, you!’ Roxy had had enough for one night. She wasn’t going to listen to her little sister … little sister! That was a joke. Jennifer was twelve going on eighteen. She acted as if she was her mother sometimes.

  ‘You make Mum cry every night and you just don’t care!’

  Roxy sat at the dressing table and began brushing through her tangle of red hair. Jennifer was having none of that. She leapt out of bed and pulled her round to face her. The brush flew out of Roxy’s hands.

  ‘You’re going to listen to me for once. You’re out every night with your poxy friends. Friends!’ Jennifer almost spat the word in Roxy’s face. ‘They’re lowlifes, every one of them. And you hang on their every word. They stay out late, so you stay out late. They say jump and you jump. Goodness knows what they get up to.’ Jennifer had tears in her eyes, tears of anger. She sniffed them back, determined not to cry in front of the sister she had come to hate. ‘Don’t you think Mum’s come through enough? She had Dad to look after, and now that she’s got a chance for a bit of happiness herself, you start acting like a selfish idiot.’

  Roxy jumped to her feet. ‘She’s come through enough. Big deal. He was my daddy, and I had to watch him suffer as well. I had to watch him die!’

  ‘So did I,’ Jennifer reminded her as she had so often before. ‘But I don’t make that an excuse for hurting Mum.’

  Roxy grabbed the brush from the floor and started dragging it through her hair again furiously. ‘Don’t worry about her. She’s got a new man. Didn’t wait too long, did she?’

  ‘She waited long enough,’ Jennifer said.

  Roxy could never understand how her sister could think that. Two years? Was that long enough to forget Dad?

  ‘You’re just making excuses for being nasty and selfish.’ Jennifer spat the words out.

  In that second Roxy hated Jennifer. ‘I’ll keep on being selfish.’ Roxy said it with determination. I’m going to look after number one. Me! Nobody else is.’

  ‘In my opinion number one is Mum. Not you!’

  That really made Roxy sick. ‘Of course, Little Miss Perfect’s never selfish, is she? She’s always too perfect to make mistakes.’

  Jennifer lifted her chin defiantly. Her hair was always gleaming, her face shone from her days outside in the fresh air, playing netball, winning races, winning everyone’s heart. The Little Miss Perfect daughter everyone admired.

  She must be such a comfort to you, Mrs Connor. Such a caring wee girl. Everyone said that. The neighbours, the teachers, her dad’s sister, Auntie Val. They all loved Jennifer. Who needed Roxy?

  ‘It’s not hard to look perfect next to you,’ Jennifer snapped.

  Roxy had had enough. She threw the hairbrush at her sister. It caught Jennifer on the eye and she let out a yell as if she’d been shot. She clutched at her face and fell back on the bed.

  ‘Drama queen!’ Roxy yelled at her.

  ‘I’ll make you sorry for that.’ Jennifer leapt towards her. Roxy tried to step aside to avoid her and fell against the mirror. It toppled dangerously, but Roxy was losing her balance too. She grabbed for Jennifer’s long hair, gripping it with both fists. She held on as tight as she could, trying to pull herself upright. Jennifer screamed, she too trying to stop herself from falling. Impossible. Both girls tumbled down, tangled up in each other, yelling, shouting, scratching. The mirror went crashing down beside them, splintering, cracking, sending shards of glass flying across the floor.

  The light was suddenly switched on. Their mother was there, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. She was wearing
her yellow nightshirt with a pig on the front.

  ‘Oh my God! What are you doing!’ She stepped towards them and let out a gasp as she put her bare foot on shattered glass. ‘You broke the mirror.’ She said it to Roxy, only Roxy. She said it as if it was the final straw. ‘Seven years’ bad luck. Does that mean I have to put up with seven more years of you?’

  Roxy gave Jennifer one last punch, and then she ran out of the room. She pushed past Paul, standing on the landing looking confused. He didn’t know what to do. He’d not been in the family long enough to know how to handle this.

  ‘Pig!’ she screamed at him as she passed, and already she could hear little Miss Perfect consoling her mother with soothing words.

  ‘Don’t let her bother you, Mum. We’d be better off without her. I’ll buy you a new mirror. It’s only a stupid superstition. You’ll not have seven years’ bad luck. I’ll make sure of it.’

  Roxy slammed the bathroom door shut. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was long too, like Jennifer’s. But Jennifer’s was straight and shiny and swung around her like silk. Roxy’s was red and wild and unruly. Her eyes had once been hazel bright, but they seemed dull to her now, as if a light had been switched off somewhere inside her. ‘Daddy’s girl’, they had once called her. Now, there was no Daddy to listen to her. Someone else had taken his place. She hated them all. And they hated her.

  She suddenly felt sick. She clamped her hands over her mouth to stop herself from retching. They mustn’t hear her. They mustn’t suspect that there was something else to worry about now, because that would only make them hate her even more. Her mother would never understand and neither would Jennifer.

  She could imagine their accusing stares. The very last straw, they would say.

  ‘We’d be better off without her,’ Jennifer had said. They had a nice family unit without Roxy spoiling it. And she would certainly spoil it now.

  She was going to have a baby.

  Someone else they wouldn’t want.

  Roxy had thought of nothing else for weeks, ever since she suspected she was pregnant. She’d thought about what she was going to do. One thing for sure was that they wouldn’t stand by her. They’d had enough of Roxy. They’d throw her out.

  Well, she would go before she’d give them the chance to do that. She wouldn’t take their condemnation. She couldn’t face telling her mother, or seeing Paul’s patronising look, or listening to her perfect sister’s accusations.

  There was only one thing for her to do. Run.

  Chapter Two

  Roxy stood in the bathroom holding on to the sink, staring at her reflection. She could see the sweat breaking out on her forehead, little beads of sweat like tiny bubbles. Her mouth was dry. She could still hear her mother crying in the bedroom above her, but Roxy couldn’t cry. She was too frightened for tears.

  She had only known for sure yesterday, when she’d taken a bus to the far side of town, to a big impersonal supermarket where she hoped no one would know her and she’d bought the pregnancy test kit. She had stood in the toilet cubicle, listening to the other customers outside laughing and talking, while she stood, shaking with fear, praying, actually praying for one blue line and not two. Because she couldn’t be pregnant. It was impossible. She’d only done it once, and her friends said they’d done it lots of times and that you never get pregnant the first time. They’d promised her – her friends, Pat and Tracey and Jaqueline. She could still see their annoyed looks at the party. Still see the boy (though she could hardly remember his face), swaying, hardly able to focus as he waited for her.

  ‘We’ve all done it, Roxy. Come on, don’t be such a wimp,’ they had said, teasing her, egging her on. And so, after she’d drunk too much Buckfast, giggled too much and let him kiss her, it didn’t seem such a big step. And she so wanted to be one of them; to be like them. Pat and Tracey and Jacqueline didn’t seem to care about anything. They swept through life defiantly.

  They were her friends.

  So she had done it. Once. Could hardly remember a thing about it – except being sick right after. Dead romantic.

  But this wasn’t supposed to happen. She wasn’t supposed to get pregnant.

  She was only fourteen.

  Roxy had never wanted her mother as much as she did at that moment. What was she going to do?

  ‘Get rid of it!’ She could almost hear Pat saying that. If she had confided in her, in any of them, she was sure that would have been their advice. And she was sure she couldn’t do that. So she hadn’t told Pat or Tracey or Jaqueline. She had told no one. No one knew. It was her secret.

  She could see her fear reflected in the face in the mirror. She was so different from Jennifer. Roxy’s hair was a mass of curls, fiery and red and wild. ‘Just like you, Roxy,’ her mother had told her often. Once she had said it with affection, as if she was proud of Roxy’s fire. But lately, it had always been an accusation.

  Roxy sat on the bath and tightened her arms around herself, trying desperately to think. She had no other option but to run. Once she could have told her mother. Once, when her dad was alive. Or would she? Maybe when Dad had been fit and well, she might have told her, told her anything. But not when Dad was dying. She wouldn’t have told her then. Dad dying would have been enough for her mum to cope with.

  Once, she might even have confided in Jennifer. Once, when they had talked and laughed and giggled together.

  Now she hated her sister with a passion. Her self-righteous little sister who never did anything wrong.

  Her mother and Jennifer hated her now too. So did Paul, though she cared nothing for him. All of them hated her. She didn’t belong in this family any more.

  ‘Are you OK in there?’ It was her mother, banging on the door.

  Roxy opened her mouth. It would only take her a second to say … ‘No, Mum, I need you. Help me.’ For a split second she was almost ready to open the door, throw herself into her mother’s arms.

  Not enough time.

  ‘Get you into bed right now! I’ve had enough of your nonsense tonight. You’ve got school in the morning, and I’ve got work.’ There was no compassion in her mother’s voice. She’d had enough.

  Then her angry footsteps pounded into the back bedroom she shared with her new husband. The room she had once shared with Dad. And the door was slammed shut.

  When Roxy did go to bed, Jennifer was already sleeping, or was pretending she was. There was no one to confide in. No one to help her. She knew she had to run away, be independent. But where could she go?

  She lay in bed, watching the moon hanging in the sky, and tried to figure out what to do. There was no family who would take her in. No handy aunt who had always understood and preferred Roxy. On the contrary, she was sure Aunt Val had always had a soft spot for Jennifer. There was no darling old uncle in the country who would harbour her and turn her life around. That only happened in books. This was real life, and there was no one she could turn to. So, where could she go?

  London. Isn’t that where everyone went? There, in such a big city she could lose herself, and in London there had to be places, people who would help girls in her position. All she needed was time to think things through, to work out a plan. But of course, now, time was something she didn’t have too much of.

  Roxy had once read somewhere that if you were looking for something, by some kind of strange magic it usually appeared in front of you. There was a word for it. Serendipity.

  Roxy found the answer she was seeking in her hands the very next day. She idly opened a magazine in the girls’ cloakroom at school. It had been left there by one of the other girls and she began to flick through it. She caught her breath when she found an article about a place, a house in London, just the kind of place she was looking for. A house which took in runaway girls, looked after them, asked no questions and didn’t make them go home if they didn’t want to.

  There was a photograph of the woman in charge. Thin-faced, with an abundance of iron-grey hair and steel in
her eyes. ‘Young girls run for many reasons. It’s not for me to judge, just help them.’

  London. Mayflower House. Jessica Jones.

  The answer to her prayers?

  Roxy ripped the page from the magazine and stuffed it into her rucksack. This was like a message, she was sure of it. If she still had doubts about running away they disappeared when she read that article. It was telling her what she had to do, telling her where she had to go.

  She began to make her plans. Even so, every morning that week she still prayed she might be wrong. That the pregnancy kit she had used had been faulty. And every morning after Paul and her mum had gone off to work she was retching in the bathroom. She was pregnant all right. Nothing could change that. By Friday, she had no choice. She had to leave.

  When she spoke the words to herself it all sounded easy and sensible. ‘You’re running away, you know where you’re going. Someone is going to help you.’ But as she packed her rucksack on that last night she had never wanted to stay so much.

  Everyone had gone out for the evening. Her mum and Paul had been invited to an evening reception at a wedding. Her mother looked so pretty in a scarlet dress and Roxy couldn’t take her eyes off her as she stood in the living room, laughing and sharing a glass of wine with Paul. She even kissed Roxy. Her mother could never stay mad at anyone for long, even her errant daughter. She gave Roxy a hug as they were leaving and for the first time in ages Roxy didn’t pull away from her. All she wanted to do was to hug her back, to hold tight on to her.

  ‘Don’t be late tonight, Roxy. Please. I’m trusting you.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Roxy said, as if it was true, and she watched from the doorway as they climbed into a taxi and waved goodbye to her.

  I’m never going to see her again, Roxy kept thinking. I’ll be out of her life tonight for ever.

  Still the tears wouldn’t come. I must be as hard as nails, Roxy thought, or as strong as steel. She much preferred being strong as steel. She wouldn’t think about it. Too much thinking was bad for her, and anyway, there were too many emotions inside her fighting for her attention.