by Mary Hooper
The lonelier I felt, the more I missed Jack. I watched ‘Chelsea’ and ‘Jonquil’ falling all over the two boys and wondered what he was doing. He’d been fast asleep when I’d left – had he woken up again and missed me? He was OK with Mum if I wasn’t around, but what with the broken nights he was having lately, neither of us was much good at getting him back to sleep.
I looked at my watch. It was only ten o’clock and I’d told Mum and George that I’d be home on the last bus, which didn’t go until five past eleven. I couldn’t go yet. And anyway, hadn’t I been desperate to get out for ages? If I went home early wouldn’t I regret it later, when I was warming jars of baby food or folding sleeping suits or sorting out the airing cupboard?
I sat with a rigid smile on my face, looking into the distance as if I could see something extremely interesting in the shadows. When any of the four looked over to me I waved cheerily or pulled a face or did something which meant I was having a bloody good time.
By ten-fifteen I couldn’t stand it any longer. Even if what Josie had said was true, it would be OK to go home now because Ellie was due in at ten, so I wasn’t going to interrupt anything. I said goodbye to the others – by true mistake calling Josie by her real name instead of Jonquil – and set off.
Back at the flats, Witch’s Brew had just come out of her friend’s flat on our floor. It was uncanny really, any coming and going anywhere in our block and she seemed to be there.
‘How’s the new addition to your household?’ she asked.
‘Jack? I’ve had him over a year now,’ I said, deliberately misunderstanding her.
‘I don’t mean Jack – I mean your mum’s fancy man. Settled in, has he?’
I grinned to myself. ‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Be getting crowded in your place now.’
‘It is a bit.’
‘Still, maybe he’ll be buying you a new house soon.’
‘That’d be nice,’ I said, opening the front door.
I was just going to shout out hello when Mum called, ‘Is that you, Megan? About time!’
‘What d’you mean? I’m early!’ I called back, and then there was a thump as Jack jumped down from the sofa and ran along the corridor towards me. He made a noise that was something like ‘Moom!’, hurled his arms around my legs and hugged me tight, and I felt the funny mixture of delight and exasperation that I always felt when I came in and he clung on to me. A part of me was thrilled that he was so pleased to see me, but the other part was irritated at him acting as if I’d been to the Himalayas for six weeks when I’d only been out of the house a couple of hours.
George came out into the hall. ‘We’ve had one hell of an evening.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘That child of yours. The door had hardly closed behind you before he was out of bed. And d’you think your mother and I could get him back to sleep again?’
I went past him into the sitting room, Jack still clinging on to me. ‘Where’s Ellie?’
‘Gone to bed,’ Mum said. ‘We really have had an awful time of it. As soon as he knew you weren’t around he started playing up.’
I sat down and lifted Jack on to my lap. He immediately put his head on my shoulder. ‘Bye-byes,’ he said.
‘He’s not really been naughty, then – just awake?’
‘Your mother and I were hoping for a nice quiet night to ourselves,’ George said humpily.
‘You’ll really have to ask the health visitor about his sleeping pattern,’ Mum said. ‘We can’t have this night after night.’
‘He was only bad tonight because I wasn’t in,’ I said defensively.
‘But he nearly always wakes up in the evenings now. Several times, sometimes.’
‘It’s just a stage he’s going through.’ I stood up, hoisting Jack on to my shoulder. ‘I’ll put him down now,’ I said. ‘And then I’ll go to bed myself.’
I said goodnight – I’d stopped kissing Mum goodnight over the last few days because I didn’t fancy having to kiss George, too – and went into my bedroom. Ellie was in bed, listening to music on her headphones. I pointed outside and made a face and she took the headphones off. ‘He wasn’t that bad,’ she said. ‘Just running about a bit.’
‘What time did you get in?’
‘Just after ten.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘It was weird. As I was coming into the flats it seemed… funny. As if it wasn’t our flat any more.’
I put Jack into his cot, laid his blanket next to him and tucked his duvet round him. ‘I know what you mean,’ I said. ‘It’s because of George, isn’t it?’ I bent to kiss Jack, saying, ‘Night-night, Jack, see you in the morning’ in the right, firm way, then sat on the bed to take off my make-up (which was actually Ellie’s makeup). ‘Maybe it won’t last very long,’ I whispered. ‘Mum and George, I mean.’
‘Bet it does,’ Ellie said gloomily. ‘She’s never had a boyfriend before so she’s going to hang on to him.’
I shrugged. ‘So if she wants him around, what can we do?’
‘Nothing,’ Ellie said.
Outside in the hall I could hear low talk and footsteps as Mum and George got ready for bed. ‘I’m glad our bedroom’s not right next to theirs,’ I said to Ellie.
‘Why?’
‘You know,’ I said. ‘Noises.’
‘Noises?’ She sat up on one elbow and looked at me, puzzled, and I thought, God, she doesn’t know what I mean. She might go in for a spot of snogging but she’s still only twelve. ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said.
I hung a scarf over our bedside light to kill it a little and help Jack go to sleep.
‘Did you go to that California place then? Did you have a good time?’
‘Yeah. Great,’ I said automatically, and then I thought about it and added, ‘No. Not really. It was a bit of a dead loss.’
There was a scuffling noise from Jack’s cot and a rattle of the cot bars as he pulled himself up. I groaned to myself. I’d been thinking about putting up some sort of curtain affair so that when Jack was in his cot he couldn’t see me, but I hadn’t yet worked out how to do it.
‘Momomomo,’ he said, waving at me.
‘Ssshh! Bedtime!’ I said. I turned off the light, laid down and closed my eyes, and after a while Jack did the same. I then lay there like a dead lump, scared to go and clean my teeth or even move in case it disturbed him. In the end he fell asleep and I did, too.
Chapter Ten
‘Whatever’s that child got on?’ Mum said as I carried Jack into the kitchen for breakfast.
‘Give it a rest, Mum,’ I said.
‘Well – what is it?’
‘It’s called a bandana.’ I sat Jack in his high chair and adjusted the red cotton scarf over Jack’s forehead. ‘And doesn’t he look gorgeous in it?’
‘He looks ridiculous!’
‘Perhaps he’s supposed to be a pirate,’ George said with a smirk, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘All he needs is an earring.’
Mum turned to look at me. ‘I hope you wouldn’t ever think of having his ears pierced, Megan.’
‘Don’t worry, I can’t afford it,’ I said, adding milk to Jack’s breakfast cereal and stirring it. I’d been thinking about an earring since Josie had once suggested it, but couldn’t decide whether they were super cool or just plain common. ‘Anyway, I’d only have one ear done,’ I added.
‘Ghastly,’ Mum shuddered. She put a plate of toast in front of George, and he was just stretching across the table for the butter when Jack suddenly kicked up his legs, striking the underneath of his high chair tray. The tray, holding a full bowl of porridge, went up in the air and the porridge went all over him. It also went right along the arm of George’s pale blue shirt.
There was a moment’s shocked silence and then George jumped up shouting, ‘Oh bugger the little bastard!’
Jack, at the shock of being covered in porridge and at the harsh sound of George’s voice, burst into tears.
‘Don’t call him that!’ I said, gatherin
g Jack up and getting covered in porridgey bits. ‘It was just an accident.’
‘Look at what he’s done!’ He got up, brushing at his sleeve. ‘I’ll have to go and change. Last night and now this – what a bloody fiasco!’
I rocked Jack on my lap, soothing him and shooting a look of hatred at George. ‘He didn’t do it deliberately – he was just kicking his legs around. And there’s no need for you to shout at him.’
‘Well, he is, isn’t he? He is exactly what I called him,’ George said, and he went out, slamming the door behind him.
‘Mum!’ I protested. ‘That’s a horrible thing to say. I’m not having him talk to me and Jack like that.’
Mum carried on wiping round the sink. ‘He just lost his temper, that’s all,’ she said. ‘You know what men are like. He didn’t mean it like it sounded.’
‘Oh, but he did. He said that’s what Jack is.’
‘He was just cross, that’s all,’ Mum said. ‘And we did have an awful time of it last night.’
‘It was you who offered to babysit!’ I pointed out.
By the time I’d changed us both, given Jack his breakfast and collected the one hundred and one things I needed for the day, my taxi had been waiting ten minutes. Consequently I had to hear a tirade about ‘I ought to get waiting time, the amount of time I waste hanging around’ and ‘You’d think if people were getting free taxis everywhere at least they’d know not to keep them waiting’.
I didn’t say anything. I could have started a row but just couldn’t be bothered, so I sat there and stared out of the window. I should have been saying ‘car’, ‘tree’, ‘dog’, ‘woman’ and so on, but I was too utterly fed up. Why was my life so boring, so samey? Why were there such losers in it? Why didn’t someone like Heathcliff (I’d decided that yes, he was untamed and passionate) come along on a black horse, throw me over the saddle and gallop off over the moors?
As soon as I got to Poppies I went to find Kirsty, who was in the nursery with Stella, giving her a bottle.
‘It’s easier to feed her here than in my grotty room,’ she said. ‘And at least I can warm the bottle up.’
‘Did you have any luck with finding somewhere to stay?’
She shook her head. ‘I spoke to my landlady and she said they can’t put the redecorating off for any longer.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘They’re only saying that to get me out, though. I know they are. I bet they don’t do any work on my room at all.’
She finished feeding Stella, then sat her up and winded her. ‘Does she look OK?’ she asked me anxiously. ‘I’ve put her best things on her. I don’t want Vicki to think I’m not looking after her properly.’
‘She looks fine to me,’ I said, although actually the little stretch suit the baby was wearing didn’t look all that clean. I knew Kirsty didn’t have a washing machine, she’d told me before that she just hand-washed in the basin in her room. ‘Do you need any baby clothes?’ I asked her. ‘Only I’ve got loads of old stuff of Jack’s – sleeping suits and so on. He only wore his newborn clothes a few times because he grew so quickly. Do you want me to look some things out for you?’
Kirsty nodded. ‘Brilliant. Thanks.’
‘I won’t be needing them myself for a long, long time,’ I said, thinking that the next time I got pregnant I was going to have all new things. My stuff was OK, but most of it had been second- or third-hand from charity shops or jumble sales. Next time it was going to be different, planned. The next baby would have the best of everything.
‘Where d’you think you’re going to live, then?’ I asked. I settled Jack down with Sinna’s baby, and they began to pull at a threadbare teddy.
Kirsty shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was thinking that my landlady couldn’t possibly throw me out on the street, so if I just tell her that I’ve got nowhere to go then I might be allowed to stay there.’
‘But what about them trying to keep you out of the kitchen?’ I said, ‘and what about them complaining about Stella crying all the time?’
‘Well, she won’t cry so much as she gets older, will she?’
‘Don’t you believe it,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do…’ All the time she was speaking she was patting Stella on the back. Suddenly the baby coughed and brought up what looked like half her feed all down her. Some of it went on to her bib, but most of it went all over the stretch suit. Startled, Stella coughed again and started crying.
Kirsty looked at me in anguish. ‘Oh no! She’ll be hungry again now – and I’ve only got one more bottle for the day. And I didn’t bring her a change of clothes, either!’
I was about to start rummaging for something of Jack’s to lend her when Marie, one of the nursery nurses, came over. ‘Never mind,’ she said. ‘I’ll take Stella off and give her a little bath, shall I?’
As Stella was whisked away, Kirsty’s bottom lip trembled. ‘I can’t do anything right, can I? I can’t even feed my own baby without her being sick.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I said. ‘Jack’s been sick millions of times. It’s what they like doing best – being sick!’
She tried to smile. ‘What shall I do about another bottle, though?’
‘They’ll be able to mix you up one here. And they’ve got loads of baby clothes to put her in. It’ll be OK!’
She smiled again, but her eyes were full of tears and they brimmed over. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I know I keep crying all the time but I’m just really tired. I was awake all last night trying to stop Stella screaming. I really wanted everything to be all right today, too. I wanted Vicki to see that I could cope.’ She gave a sob. ‘And now everything’s going wrong and they’ll tell Vicki that Stella was sick and everything!’
‘That’s nothing!’ I said. ‘Really. We all have bad days.’
‘All my days are bad days,’ Kirsty said.
She went off to help bath Stella and I went off to an English lesson. Later in the morning I was in one of the study rooms waiting for my tutor when Vicki came in.
‘I know Kirsty is a particular friend of yours so I wanted you to know that she won’t be coming here for a little while,’ she said.
I looked at Vicki in surprise. ‘Why not?’
‘We’re giving her a break. We think trying to cope on her own is all a bit much for her, so she’s going to live with a foster mother for a while.’
‘And Stella as well?’ I asked immediately.
‘In a week or so, yes,’ Vicki said. She hesitated. ‘We hope – I very much hope – that they’ll be living together again soon.’
‘But why… what’s happening now, then?’
‘Well, it’s felt by Social Services that Stella is in need of a little more care. She’s going to be taken into the baby unit of a hospital for a few days to be fed up and to get into some sort of routine. And then she and Kirsty will live with a foster mother who’ll be able to give Kirsty some mothering experience and get them off on the right foot. Kirsty’s just not ready to be completely on her own with Stella at the moment.’
‘Where is she now, then?’ I asked, because I hadn’t seen any comings and goings. ‘Has she gone already?’
Vicki nodded. ‘They’ve gone off to the hospital.’
‘I didn’t know,’ I said, meaning that she hadn’t come and said goodbye to me.
‘Kirsty was quite upset,’ Vicki said, ‘so we didn’t want her disturbing everyone else. She’s going to settle Stella at the hospital and collect her stuff from her lodgings before she goes to her new place. Then she can get sorted out before Stella joins her.’
I bit my lip. It could happen, then: they could take babies away. The thought was so scary that I felt like snatching up Jack there and then and rushing off with him.
‘It’s OK,’ Vicki said gently, ‘I know what you’re thinking but she will get Stella back. Social Services don’t intend to steal her away and keep her.’
‘Kirsty will be so miserable without he
r,’ I said.
‘I know,’ Vicki said, ‘but although Kirsty’s a lovely girl, she’s very young and she does need a little extra help. It’s for her sake as much as anyone’s – we don’t want her to end up with post-natal depression. The ideal thing would be for her to live with her own mum, but as that’s not possible, everyone thinks this is the best solution.’
‘Can’t Kirsty’s own mum be made to have her back?’ I burst out, but Vicki was shaking her head before I’d even finished the sentence.
‘That would be no good, would it? Kirsty’s life would be even more miserable living with someone who didn’t want her.’
‘So when she’s settled with the foster mother, will she be able to come back here during the day?’
Vicki nodded. ‘I hope so. She’ll be living out of the area but I think we can get something sorted out. In the meantime I’ll try and find out the phone number of where she’ll be living so you can keep in touch.’
The other girls and I talked about Kirsty at lunch break and everyone said that if they were in any difficulties they would never tell anyone.
‘Bet she doesn’t get that baby back,’ Stacey said darkly.
‘Bet it’s just taken away and adopted,’ Hannah added.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think Vicki would let it happen.’
‘It’s nothing to do with Vicki,’ Stacey said. ‘She’s just in charge here. It’s all down to social workers, see. They’re always watching. You blow your nose the wrong way and they’ll be on to you.’
We all laughed. ‘They’ve been OK with me, though,’ I said. ‘In fact, I haven’t seen any social workers since I was pregnant.’
‘That’s because you’re living at home with your mum,’ Hannah said. ‘If you weren’t, they’d be watching your every move.’
Stacey looked down at her engagement ring proudly. ‘As soon as I started living with Eliot they were on to me,’ she said, ‘checking him out and making sure he was OK. Nearly frightened him off, they did. You wait till you start living with someone,’ she said to me.