by Casey Watson
So, just like every other time we’d gone to London, we drove. Or, rather, we had been driven, and we were currently on the M25 – ‘Britain’s biggest car park’, as hardened commuters apparently put it – on our way to reunite Adrianna with her baby.
Having refrained from scaring Adrianna completely witless during the first part of the meeting, the two police officers had said their farewells and left us. They had taken another copy of Adrianna’s birth certificate and some further details about her movements around the UK, and told her they’d be in touch in the next couple of days to pick her up and take her to the Victim Support Unit, where she could make her formal statement.
It would be a process that could, they warned, take several hours, as there was such a lot of ground to be covered. But they reassured her that they’d take her through it every step of the way and that she had nothing to fear in terms of repercussions from any of the gang members. Only after that – and a while after that, in all probability – would they ask her to cast her eye over any ‘mug shots’.
‘Why do they call them mug shots?’ Adrianna had asked me, immediately after they left.
‘It’s a slang term,’ I explained – ‘as in “ugly mug” – mug meaning face.’
‘Why face?’ she’d then wanted to know. To which I said I didn’t know the answer. And there followed a conversation about where the term really came from, Jasmine pointing out that the term ‘mug’ also meant sucker, and John chipping in with ‘mugger’, which none of us had thought about, all of which diffused the tension very nicely.
And then to the good bit, which was the news John had to impart – that the couple who were currently taking care of the baby were called Jack and Sarah, and that they already had a four-year-old boy of their own. And, best of all, that they were currently just ‘testing the water’ with fostering, doing short-term placements to see if the fostering lifestyle suited them.
The words ‘short-term’ were key. It wasn’t necessary to say more than that, so John obviously didn’t, but we both knew – Jasmine too – that this was good news indeed. Had they been a young, childless couple fostering with a view to adoption it might have been a very different story. This was a common scenario when it came to placing babies, because adoptive parents, like mothers who wished to be reunited with their own children, often went through an initial period of fostering in order to increase their chances of being accepted. It was almost like an item to improve their CVs.
That they weren’t in this category could not have mattered more here. Because given that they’d been taking care of him for close on three months now, it would have been just awful for everybody concerned.
So far, so good, then. As was the fact that they were very happy for Adrianna to come and visit just as soon as she liked.
‘And do you want to know what his name is?’ John asked her.
Adrianna nodded.
‘They called him Ethan,’ he said, ‘after the policeman who found him.’
‘Ee-than.’ Adrianna tested the word on her tongue. And, for myself, I couldn’t help thinking ‘awww’. And it also made me wonder about that day, far, far into the future, when Adrianna would have to think hard and make the decision about what, if anything, she should tell him about how he came into the world, and how he came by his first name. Not to mention who his biological father was. Where on earth would you start? Such a difficult decision to have to make.
Such a difficult thing to have to think about, even. Adrianna hadn’t brought it up and, taking her lead, neither had I, but it must surely have crossed her mind what kind of man – or rather, monster – his father was. Thank God I believed in the power of nurture over nature, I decided, because if she had asked me, my reassurance that she mustn’t even think about those genes would at least have the benefit of being genuine.
In the meantime, however, she seemed happy with this news, having, I think, understood and accepted how things had to be. In fact, I’d thought about it subsequently, and I wondered how much it even mattered that he kept it, if she didn’t want that to be the case. After all, people changed their names all the time, didn’t they? And as a toddler, he would not only get used to it very quickly; in a few years’ time he’d have no memory of ever having been called anything else.
But my hunch was that Adrianna would respect both the past and the policeman, and let her little boy’s first name stay as it was. And another small nugget of joy, to further leaven the meeting, was that it seemed Jasmine had a nephew called Ethan too. And, better still, a son of her own.
‘He’s just started nursery school,’ she explained, ‘which is why I’m back working full time. Or, as I like to put it, twenty-five seven.’
‘And you have lots I can learn,’ Adrianna enthused. Then proceeded, almost as if they were long-lost sisters, to grill Jasmine mercilessly on every aspect of motherhood, from why she’d called her son Jake (after an actor she particularly liked), to what books she read him, to how many teeth he had. And as I listened, I got the impression that, in Jasmine, here was the phrase ‘if you want something done, ask a busy person’ personified.
And Jasmine was clearly the poster girl for working motherhood. She hadn’t joined us in the car for our trip down this morning because she was already going to be in London on a course, having left Mr Jazz (the kids she’d worked with apparently loved it that she called her partner that, and it had stuck) in charge of Jake overnight. ‘Which means he’ll have his nappy pants on back to front and his clothes on inside out,’ she’d explained to me when we were on the phone making arrangements, ‘but I’m sure it’ll be character building for them both.’
And with the traffic finally moving I’d just got my phone out to text her, so she knew what time to expect us. ‘What’s our ETA?’ I asked Mike. ‘Half an hour?’
‘Or thereabouts,’ he said.
‘So we are nearly there now?’ Adrianna asked from the back seat.
Because I was keen that Mike drive us and a weekend was out of the question, almost a fortnight had passed since we’d had our formal meeting, and she’d wished every day of it away. If she’d had a calendar in her room she would probably have taken a pen and marked crosses on it, like a convict. But now the day had come she had become quiet and withdrawn. She’d been unable to stomach breakfast, and, when we stopped midway at the motorway services, had to rush to the loos because she thought she was going to be sick.
I’d bought some travel-sickness pills at the services, hoping they’d help settle her a little, and she subsequently slept the rest of the way.
I twisted around to take a look at her. ‘Not far now,’ I said. ‘How are you feeling, sweetheart? Still nervous?’
‘A bit,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘In fact a big bit,’ she corrected. ‘No ants in my pants today. But I’m okay, I will be fine.’ She wiped a hand across her window and peered out. ‘It seems a very long way away.’
We’d almost reached our motorway junction, and I peered ahead too. We were actually on the outskirts of north London, which was a blessing, at least. Had the baby been fostered somewhere central it would have added a lot to the journey.
Mike must have read my thoughts. ‘Never ceases to amaze me just how many people seem to be on the move at any time in this place,’ he mused. ‘It’s like a permanent rush hour, isn’t it? Where are they all going?’
‘I read somewhere that building the M25 changed people’s habits to a degree they’d never envisaged,’ I said. ‘That people started taking jobs huge distances away precisely because it had been built. Commuting distances they’d never have dreamed of before. It’s something to think about, isn’t it? That people are prepared to spend such a big chunk of their days just getting from one place to another. I think it would drive me mad. Such a waste of time. Speaking of which,’ I added, reading the message that had just appeared on the screen of my smartphone, ‘Jasmine reckons she’s almost there. Says it’s taken her almost an hour just from where her course is.’
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br /> ‘She will be there before us, then?’ Adrianna asked. ‘So she will see my baby before me?’
‘I imagine so, sweetheart,’ I said, wondering why she’d asked that.
‘And me. Will she tell them that I am not a bad person? Do they know about me? I keep thinking. Will they hate me for leaving him?’
‘Oh, lord, Adrianna. No. No, they won’t think that at all. They will have been told all about what happened to you and they will understand why you had to leave him. And, remember, you didn’t abandon him. You took him somewhere where he would be safe – precisely so people like them could take care of him while you couldn’t. I’m sure they are lovely,’ I added. ‘Just you wait and see.’
Of course, I had no way of knowing that would be the case, because I didn’t know them from Adam, but, in this, too, I trusted my instinct. It took a special kind of family to take on the commitment and stress of caring for a new-born baby – it definitely wasn’t something for everyone, as anyone who’s ever had a newborn baby in their lives will already know. Just like any other parents of newborns they would be chronically sleep deprived, so, even though they had the benefit of confidence – having done it once, with their own son – there was no way around the sheer 24-hour grind of it all.
But as we pulled up outside their neat semi I had a hunch that they were coping just fine. Spring springs early down in London and their square of front garden was already shrugging off its heavy winter blanket, overseen by a flowering cherry sitting in the centre of a circular lawn, which made everything look at pretty as a picture.
And the impression was only increased when the front door opened – even as we were clambering stiffly from the car – to reveal a smiling young woman in jeans and a spotted sweater. ‘Hello!’ she said in greeting. ‘You made it!’
Adrianna’s reaction to her was curious. It was almost as if she shrank a little, as the reality of their disparity sank in. The disparity that, being an intelligent girl, she couldn’t fail to notice, between their ages and situation. And seeing the way she eyed her – with a kind of wariness, tempered, perhaps, by embarrassment – made me think about what an emotional ordeal this must be. She had come to claim her child – her biological child, whom she had a visceral love and need for – and was now faced with the reality that the child was probably happy. And well fed and cared for, and in a better place than he might have been – such a very great deal to take on board.
I gave silent thanks for the knowledge that this couple had no apparent desire to keep him. That like me, they did what they did driven by other motivations; to do their bit. To help in a crisis. To help children, plural. If it worked out that way, anyway. If they decided it was, in fact, for them.
I took Adrianna’s hand – something that had become increasingly natural. Though it might slightly diminish her, making her seem very much the gauche, dependent teenager in the woman’s eyes, the trade-off was the support that was transmitting now between us. She gripped my hand back and held it tightly as we walked up the path.
Mike brought up the rear, clutching the back of his spine and protesting about his aching back, as you do. Her answering commiserations, and offer of a restorative cup of tea, made for a good and welcome ice-breaker.
As did the appearance of Jasmine, emerging into the hall from a front room as we entered. ‘Oh, Adrianna,’ she said immediately, grasping her and hugging her. ‘He is gorgeous! He is gorgeous.’ She held her at arm’s length again. ‘And how are you?’
What a difference ten days could make, I thought, as introductions were made and coats were shed. Since the meeting, Jazz had both been round for a more informal visit and made a phone call, seeming to have a natural instinct for making that important early bond with the people in her care.
‘Scared and happy all at once,’ Adrianna said, with her usual directness.
‘Oh, I’ll bet,’ said the foster mother, Sarah. ‘Come on, let’s put you out of your misery, shall we?’
We all trooped into a sunny living room – an IKEA room-set kind of living room. All blonde wood and pale rugs and clean, simple lines. And in the midst of it, in contrast, was a splash of poster-paint colour; a baby floor gym – a play mat, complete with hanging mobile.
And in the midst of that … Well, it was difficult to get a proper look initially, as Adrianna, with a sob, seemed to float down to the floor, unhooking her bag from her shoulder, looping her long hair behind her ears, and sinking to her knees before the baby, almost as if in supplication.
We all exchanged looks, like a celebratory gathering would clink glasses, all content just to stay within the moment. And Jazz had been right. He was undeniably gorgeous. Dark haired, like his mother, with berry-bright eyes that gazed up at her with the unquestioning joy of discovery so common in babies of that age, waving his arms and kicking out delightedly with his legs. It was one for the memory banks and I half wished I’d whipped out my phone to capture it – it really was like something out of a photoshoot.
‘Oh, my beautiful baby boy,’ she sobbed, just staring and staring. Then wiping away tears, lest they spill on him. ‘Oh, my little boy.’
The foster dad, Jack, touched both Mike and me on the shoulder, and made the sign for sipping from a cup. ‘Was it tea, then, or coffee?’
We both told him the latter and Mike followed him across the hall into the kitchen, there to chat, no doubt, about the state of Britain’s road network. I stayed, standing with Jazz, while Sarah approached Adrianna. ‘Pick him up, honey. He’s your baby,’ she said. ‘I bet he’s missed you.’
Adrianna looked up at her as if she couldn’t quite believe what she’d just heard. Then she scooped him up, at first tentatively, but then with an obvious confidence – perhaps as the words had fully sunk in. She groaned softly as she held him to her, cradling his head close to her face. You could almost see the intoxication as she drank the scent of him in.
And in that instant I wished I could wave my own magic wand so that the whole lengthy business of her re-establishing her right to him could be erased – so that she could simply take him home. She was speaking to him now too, whispering streams of words that none of us understood. Though the content would have been obvious to any mother, in any language, which only increased my sense of frustration.
But the moment was fleeting. Perhaps such a situation would work in fairy tales, but the real world was a very different place. This was a 16-year-old girl, far from family support. And all the love in the world, pure and unconditional as it was, did not make a future for a vulnerable baby. Adrianna had a mountain to climb yet, and she knew it, which was perhaps why she was busy drinking in every drop of this first contact, the culmination of the long, long road trip we’d made this morning, adding our sixpence-worth to the traffic on the M25.
We didn’t stay with the family that long. We’d been promised an hour, which was usual, and, as it usually did when a contact meeting was precious to all parties, it went by in a flash. I had a cuddle, as did Mike, and there was the usual baby chit-chat, about how he slept, whether he had colic, what sort of baby he had been. Which made it all very natural, and our chatter created a pleasant background hum, at the centre of which Adrianna cuddled and played with her baby who, to his credit (or his foster mum’s), seemed perfectly content to have this young stranger giving him her undivided attention. And I was relieved. It would certainly nourish her till the next time they met, and reminded me how lucky it was that he was still sub-six months, when stranger anxiety and attachment issues usually kicked in. How awful would it have been if she’d come to be reunited with him, only to have him scream his lungs off the moment she picked him up?
Jazz, throughout all this, took a back seat. And literally – choosing a kitchen chair in the corner on which to sit and just observe. For that was as big a part of her job as any other in this process. To observe and report on Adrianna as the baby’s mother – her observations, and the recommendations she made subsequent to them, would play a big part in Adrianna ha
ving him returned to her.
And it seemed the first hurdle had been negotiated successfully. Hard though it was for Adrianna to leave Ethan, she managed it with composure, buoyed in part by Jasmine confirming, as we prepared to get in our respective cars, that on the basis of this visit she was happy to recommend another. She lingered a while, too, waving alongside the couple as we drove away, and I wondered if she was giving them an impromptu debrief, discussing the practicality – or otherwise – of Ethan being billeted so far away. I hoped so.
But as surely as the joy of it all was lifting Adrianna up now, I knew there would be a long way to fall. And joyous she was – the journey home again could not have been more different. It was as if she’d been slipped a dose of some euphoria-inducing drug. She talked about the baby non-stop all the way to our break at the services, about how Jazz was sorting everything out, about how she couldn’t wait to hold her son in her arms again, how she was counting the days, about the things that she’d buy for him and the fun they would have, right down to how she was planning to decorate his room once they finally had their own little home.
‘With whitewashed walls, ivy around the front door and a picket fence?’ I wondered aloud to Mike, while, a burger and chips dispatched to assuage her sudden appetite, she’d gone off to the loo. ‘I see a great fall on the horizon.’
‘Course,’ Mike said, nodding. ‘I think we can take that as read, love … but for the moment, she’s fine as she is, rabbiting on. She’s bound to be excited and full of plans, isn’t she? Even if they are a little pie in the sky yet. Be time to talk some sense to her tomorrow, once she’s had a chance to sleep on it.’
And he was right. She’d have that come-down, and it would hit her like a sledgehammer. So, in the meantime, who was I to burst her bubble?
Chapter 17