How Not to Disappear

by Clare Furniss

  He watches me for a while, then looks into the cot, then back at me.

  ‘Don’t you like your baby?’ he says.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘Not much.’

  He looks pleased. ‘I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss about them. Everyone says babies are beautiful, don’t they? But really they’re rather ugly, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looks at me some more as if waiting for me to say something.

  ‘Want a wine gum?’ he says at last, taking a rather grubby-looking paper bag from his pocket, along with an even grubbier piece of string and a marble.

  I’m about to tell him that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me since I got to hospital and that he’s going to make a splendid big brother, when his father spots him from across the ward.

  ‘Eric!’ He marches over and hauls him away. He doesn’t acknowledge me.

  After they’ve gone, Eric’s mother, who hasn’t spoken to me since she arrived on the ward yesterday, says, ‘Miss Harper? I don’t want the likes of you talking to my son. It’s bad enough that we have to put up with you on the same ward as us.’

  The next time, I pull the curtains round my bed at visiting time and I pretend to be asleep. I lie with my eyes stubbornly closed, ignoring the noise and chatter all around me, the coos and the clucking, the laughter.

  ‘Mrs Harper,’ says a voice.

  I don’t open my eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a visitor here for you.’

  My eyes open involuntarily and I see a nurse standing there by the bed.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You’ve made a mistake. There’s no visitor for me.’

  And then Gwen’s head appears round the curtain. She hands me a bunch of yellow roses and stands, as if she’s unsure what to do or say.

  ‘You came all this way,’ I say, disbelieving.

  ‘I had to make sure you were all right,’ she says. ‘But I can’t stay long. I’m going straight back on the train after this. Vinnie doesn’t know I’m here. I told him Mum was ill and I had to go and stay with her overnight. He won’t be happy if he finds out.’

  Thank you. I say it in my head because I can’t get the words out.

  ‘Where’s your baby?’ Gwen says.

  I just lie there, not looking at her, picking petals off the roses Gwen brought, pressing my fingertips into the smoothness of them, rolling them against my thumb.

  ‘They’ve taken him off somewhere,’ I say. ‘To weigh him or something.’

  ‘This is Gloria’s baby,’ says the nurse, bustling in carrying him in her arms. It’s the nice nurse, Patsy. She’s the only one who hasn’t treated me like muck in this place, apart from the cleaner. She hands the baby to Gwen ‘Isn’t he a handsome little fellow?’

  That night I lie awake in the hospital ward thinking of Sam, remembering him so clearly it makes my chest ache. I have a perfect, clear memory of that day in Cambridge after the boy called us names.

  ‘People think being brave means not being scared of anything. But that’s wrong, Gloria. How can you be brave if you’re not scared? Feeling afraid and not letting it stop you. That’s being brave.’

  I will not cry. All the girls at the Home cry at night but I never do. Some like to make a big song and dance of it, snuffling and then wailing until they get the attention of everyone in the dorm, and everyone crowds round to comfort them, to put their arms round them and stroke their hair and tell them everything will be okay. Some try to do it silently so as not to wake anyone, so that no one will know how sad they are. Edie is one of those. Hard to believe, but I can’t wait to get back to the Home. I can’t wait to see Edie.

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ says the sat nav.

  We’re outside a pretty old stone house on the edge of a picture-postcardy kind of village, all roses growing over doorways and village greens and probably a vicar on a bicycle somewhere, although I haven’t spotted one yet. It is exactly what people from other countries think England looks like.

  ‘It’s so quaint, isn’t it? I bet everyone has marrow-growing competitions and keeps chickens and they bake each other cakes and stuff like that.’

  ‘Ha,’ says Gloria. ‘Villages. Behind the hanging baskets I bet it’s all swingers parties and unmentionable fetishes.’

  I switch off the engine and look at her.

  ‘So, are you going to stop all the cloak-and-dagger stuff and tell me who we’ve come to see?’

  She looks at me and I realize suddenly how incredibly nervous she is. Her hands are clenched together in her lap.

  ‘Gloria?’

  ‘Perhaps it was a mistake,’ she says, to herself more than me.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We’ve come all this way. Who lives in that house, Gloria?’

  She takes a deep breath.

  ‘Edie,’ she says. ‘Edie lives there.’

  ‘Edie?’ I say. ‘You kept in touch all these years?’

  ‘No,’ Gloria says. ‘I haven’t seen her for more than fifty years. But we write to each other occasionally and she sends Christmas cards and so I had her address. I don’t suppose she expected me to turn up on her doorstep, though. What if she doesn’t want to see me?’

  Gloria looks almost childlike; I can imagine the frightened girl who Edie took under her wing at St Monica’s the first day she arrived.

  ‘Of course she’ll want to see you.’

  ‘What if she’s not there?’

  ‘Only one way to find out.’

  After I’ve rung the doorbell I begin to panic just a tiny bit. What if she doesn’t want to see Gloria? What if the time in the Home is something she wants to forget, a secret she’s kept from her family. What if Gloria has the wrong address? For all I know this could be where Edie lived twenty years ago and a complete stranger might open the door. But as soon as the door opens and I see the woman standing behind it, I know she’s Edie and I know it’s all going to be okay. She looks a bit younger than Gloria, even though I know she’s the same age, with a kind of healthy glow that makes me think she spends a lot of time outdoors. She has creases round her eyes that show she laughs a lot, silvery hair in a pixie cut, and an open, kind face. She’s the sort of person who makes you feel happier as soon as you see her. I picture her as a girl and imagine what a friend she must have been to Gloria. As I do I feel a pang of sadness, thinking of Kat and how much I miss her.

  I smile at Edie and then turn to Gloria, waiting for her to introduce herself, but I can see that, for once, she’s completely lost for words. She’s looking at Edie and her expression is so raw and open that I’m taken aback. She does such a good job of covering up her emotions, Gloria, but here, seeing Edie, she’s laid bare.

  I turn back to Edie.

  ‘Hello,’ I say brightly. ‘I’m Hattie, and this is my great-aunt—’

  ‘I know who you are,’ Edie says softly, not looking at me. ‘You’re Gloria.’

  Her eyes fill with tears and she throws her arms round Gloria and they laugh and hug each other, Gloria’s bony frame against Edie’s plump one. Then Edie holds her back so she can look at her. They don’t speak for a while and I wonder what memories are going through their minds. ‘Look at you,’ she says. ‘I’d know you anywhere. You always were the stylish one, weren’t you?’

  ‘And this is Hattie,’ Gloria says. ‘She’s my nephew Dominic’s daughter.’ She says it rather forcefully, and I wonder if she doesn’t want Edie to guess about her dementia.

  ‘Oh,’ Edie says. ‘Yes, of course. Lovely to meet you, Hattie.’

  ‘Sorry to arrive unannounced,’ Gloria says. ‘I hope we haven’t caught you at a bad moment?’

  ‘Not at all!’ Edie says. ‘Come through and we’ll go and sit in the garden and have a cup of tea and some cake. My grandchildren are out there, I’m on childminding duty over the summer holidays.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I say, and we have a chat about Alice and Ollie and Edie’s grandchildren, Tariq and Yasmeen, as we
go through to the garden.

  * * *

  We sit in the garden in the sunshine and drink tea and eat lemon drizzle cake and I lean back in Edie’s comfy garden chairs and shut my eyes and try not to listen too closely to Edie and Gloria’s conversation in case there’s private stuff they want to discuss, but at the same time I do really want to know EVERYTHING.

  I gather from their conversation that Edie married and had children a few years after she and Gloria were in the Mother and Baby Home together.

  ‘Five,’ she says.

  ‘Five?’ says Gloria, horrified. ‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I remember you telling me back at St Monica’s you wanted ten.’

  Edie laughs. She tells Gloria about how she landed on her feet with her husband Robert, and how he built up his own business from scratch. I get bored and go off to play with the grandchildren, who make me play hide-and-seek and bounce on the trampoline. Suddenly I really miss Alice and Ollie. Not long till I see them, though. One more night in our little cottage and then on to Whitby. And then home.

  I turn and watch Gloria and Edie together. I notice that the teacups have been replaced by large glasses of white wine and the two of them are in animated conversation, Gloria throwing her head back and laughing. I’ve not really seen her like this in the whole time I’ve known her: relaxed, happy, full of life. That’s what friendship does, I suppose, even when you haven’t seen each other for decades. Will Kat and I still be friends in fifty years’ time? I can’t imagine not being friends with her. And seeing Gloria and Edie makes me realize that I’m not going to let Zoe-from-Kettering or anything else get in the way of our friendship.

  I get out my phone and try to send Kat a text but then I remember that I’ve let the battery run out. I tell myself I’ll charge it up and send her a message tonight.

  I stroll over to where Gloria and Edie are sitting. ‘They’re lovely kids,’ I say to Edie.

  ‘They’re my Ian’s children from his second marriage,’ Edie says. ‘Ian was the baby I had at the Home when I first met you, Gloria.’

  ‘But I thought his name was Ted?’ I say.

  Edie sighs. ‘It was. I still think of him as Ted deep down. But Ian’s the name his adoptive parents gave him.’

  ‘So you got back in touch with him?’ I say.

  She nods. ‘Eventually. It took a long time.’

  I want to ask more, because the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Gloria going to find her son could be a bad idea. What if he doesn’t want to know? What if his adoptive parents never told him he was adopted at all? But I can hardly start interrogating Edie with Gloria sitting there.

  ‘I always knew you would find him,’ Gloria says, smiling. ‘I told you, didn’t I? You loved him too much to let him go for ever.’

  Edie rushes down to see her baby every morning. The first feed happens before it’s properly light, but she’s always up and ready, itching to get down there. I lie in bed, heavy and tired, wishing I could just sleep.

  ‘How can you have so much energy?’ I groan.

  ‘I just can’t wait to see him,’ she says. ‘I’ve not got him for long so I’m going to make the most of every second. Don’t you feel like that?’

  I sit up in bed and swing my legs out but I don’t reply.

  She’d looked at me, curious.

  ‘Do you love your baby?’

  Her question freezes me. It’s the question I’d been dreading, hoping none of the girls would never ask. But I’m a good liar, always have been, so I smiled and I thought I was going to say, ‘Course I do.’

  But I can’t. The words stick. I can’t speak. I sit on the narrow, hard bed and I can’t move. I can’t even breathe.

  She reaches up, gently, and wipes away a tear that is somehow on my cheek.

  ‘Thought you’d forgotten how to do that,’ she said, taking hold of my hand. It’s true: I haven’t cried once since the first day I arrived here. ‘I think I cry enough for both of us, don’t you? In tears every day and twice on Thursdays.’ I know she’s trying to make me laugh, but I can’t.

  ‘I’m not like you, Edie,’ I say once I know I can keep my voice steady. ‘I’m not the maternal type. I know you’re not supposed to feel like that about your own baby but . . .’ I shrug. ‘Give us a ciggie, will you?’

  She hands me one and as I hold the match to the end of it my hand is shaking.

  ‘Sometimes I think I hate him,’ I say, and I can’t look at her face because I know how shocked she’ll be and she won’t be able to hide it.

  ‘You’re just scared,’ she says.

  I want to say, ‘I’m not scared of anything.’ It’s what I’ve always said.

  But I can’t say it now.

  ‘It’s so wonderful to see her after all these years,’ Edie says to me. Asma, Ian’s wife, has been to pick up the children now and Gloria is dozing next to us. Everything feels so peaceful; I’ll be sorry when we have to leave.

  ‘So when did you get back in touch with Ian?’

  ‘Ooh, about twenty years ago now.’

  ‘That must have been amazing,’ I say. ‘When you hadn’t seen him since he was a baby.’

  I try to imagine how it must have felt to give up the baby she loved for adoption. Could I do that? It’s an option, I suppose. But I don’t think I’d be able to do it. Poor Edie didn’t have a choice.

  ‘It wasn’t easy. Ian didn’t want to know at first, he was worried it’d upset his adoptive mother. Which I could understand. She was a lovely woman. She’d brought him up well. I couldn’t have wished for a better family for him. He felt she might think it was disloyal of him to get to know me. And it was hard for him to understand that I hadn’t wanted to give him up. He couldn’t see why I hadn’t just said no. But you couldn’t. You didn’t have a choice. I’d have done anything to keep him.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘Gloria told me.’

  ‘He felt rejected, and of course I’d gone on to get married and have another family. But when Sheila, his adoptive mother, died, he felt able to get in touch.’

  It comes out in a rush. ‘Is that why we’re going to Whitby? Did Gloria say anything to you? Are we going to meet her son?’

  Edie looks at me, with that nervous, guarded look again, as if she’s anxious about saying something she shouldn’t.

  ‘Are you worried about how he might react?’ I guess at last. ‘That her son might not want to see her?’ This thought hadn’t occurred to me. As far as I was concerned it was all going to be happy reunions, hugs and tears and making up for a lifetime of not knowing each other just in the nick of time. And I would have made it happen. But what if it wasn’t like that? What if he slammed the door in her face and said he wanted nothing to do with her? What if he blamed her for abandoning him? I remember what Gloria had told me, the sickening fact that back then a baby with a black father wouldn’t be adopted, so they’d be put in a children’s home. You heard awful stories about what happened in homes back then. What if that’s what happened to him and he blamed it all on her?

  ‘What has Gloria told you?’ she says.

  ‘About why we’re going to Whitby? Nothing,’ I say. ‘Just that it’s “where the story ends”. She likes being cryptic.’

  I smile at Edie, but she doesn’t smile back. She seems worried.

  ‘So Gloria hasn’t said anything about . . .’ She pauses. ‘About what happened in Whitby? What do you know about what happened to her son? About what happened to her?’

  There’s something about the way she says it that makes me feel a bit sick. She says it in a way that makes me think whatever it was that happened wasn’t anything good.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘But if there’s something you think I ought to know . . .’

  She looks uncertain for a moment. Then she reaches over and takes my hand.

  ‘Gloria will tell you in her own good time,’ she says. ‘It’s not easy for her. These are difficult things to remember for her. Just – don’t be shocked. Don’
t judge her.’

  ‘Of course not,’ I say, taking my hand away. ‘Why would I?’

  She gives me a bright smile. ‘No reason,’ she says. ‘No reason at all. It’s just me being silly, love. All these memories being stirred up. It’s got me all worked up. Ignore me.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind us coming,’ I say. ‘I know it must have been a shock after all this time.’

  ‘Mind? I’m delighted. I can’t thank you enough, pet. When you go through something like that together it’s a real bond.’

  ‘How come you didn’t keep in touch? I mean, I know you wrote but did you never meet up?’

  ‘I loved Gloria; I missed her terribly. But none of the girls really kept in touch,’ Edie says. ‘I never even heard from any of the others after we’d left. It’s hard to explain. The Home seemed like another world. It was another world really. Different rules applied. In the real world we were sinful, shameful. In there we were just . . . girls. But leaving was so painful. We were encouraged to put it all behind us, pretend it had never happened. Some of the girls had never wanted babies, of course, and it was a relief to be able to put it behind them and get on with their lives. And even for those of us that wanted to keep our babies, it was easier that way. I grieved for my Ted. It was almost as if he’d died. Thinking about him growing up with some other family, another mummy going in to get him in the morning and him smiling and chuckling, his first steps, all of that. I couldn’t bear to think about it. Once you were back in your old life it almost seemed as though the Home was a dream. Nobody at home outside the family had known I was expecting. It was easier to pretend it had never happened.’

  ‘So you never saw each other again after you left the Home?’

  Edie looks anxious.

  ‘Just the once,’ she says, awkward, as though she’s not sure whether she should be telling me. ‘Anyway, it’s wonderful to see her now.’