“You’re ever so young,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
“Sorry?” She withdraws the hand she was extending.
“No, I mean … I just didn’t expect …” I breathe deep; start again. “I’m Bella Atkins! Please, come on in.”
She steps over the threshold, pulling her tote bag up onto her shoulder in a slightly tetchy fashion. “I’m twenty-eight!” she says, with a bit of an edge. “I’m head of my department!”
“Well, yes, but my sister Polly is twenty-eight. And I’m not sure she should be put in charge of doling out babies to anyone.”
“We’re not … doling out babies …”
“God, I mean children, sorry …” This is ridiculous. My nerves really are getting the better of me. “What I’m saying is, compared to other twenty-eight-year-olds, you’ve obviously done terribly well in such a responsible job …” I force myself, through a massive triumph of will, to STOP TALKING.
There’s a short silence.
Then she extends the hand again. “Well. It’s nice to meet you, Bella. I’m Samantha Reilly.”
I shake the hand. It’s a little bit limp. “Reilly? Is that an Irish name?”
“On my grandmother’s side.”
“How amazing! My boyfriend is Irish!”
“Well, I’m not.”
“No, of course, I just thought maybe with the name … and London has such a wonderfully rich and diverse Irish and Irish-origin community …” I’ve got in diversity and community already! “I just wondered if you might know each other …”
It’s her turn to take a deep breath. “What’s his name?”
“Jamie Keenan.”
“Then no, I don’t know him.” She starts slipping off her jacket. “Can I hang this up somewhere?”
“Of course. I’m so sorry …” I take her jacket, hang it on the pegs by the front door, and usher her through to the kitchen. “I wondered if you might like a cup of tea? A slice of cake?”
“Just a glass of water is fine.”
“Oh.” I can’t hide my disappointment. “It’s really no trouble! The kettle is just boiled, and I have a few homemade cakes for you to try. Or I could rustle you up something toasted …”
“Really, I’m fine with just a glass of water.” Brooking no disagreement—I can see why she’s already risen to the top of her department, small, young, and squirrelly though she is—she pulls back one of my kitchen chairs and sits down at the little gate-leg table, pulling files and pens from her shoulder bag as she does so.
I get a glass and pour her some water from my filter jug. I’m longing for a piece of cake myself—Anna’s chocolate one would really hit the spot right now—but I don’t think I can sit and gorge myself alone.
“So,” she says, nibbling the tip of her pen (well, if she’ll nibble that, why won’t she nibble my delicious cakes?). “This is just a preliminary meeting, you understand? I just want to go through some basic details, give you a chance to ask any questions you may have. And if we’re both happy at the end of the meeting, the next stage is for us to invite you on a Preparation for Adoption course. That’s before the series of official home visits will even begin. Nothing is decided at this stage, OK?”
“Of course.”
“Because I see a lot of people who overthink this initial chat. Get themselves all worked up. As though it’s make or break from the moment I walk in the door.”
I give a little laugh. “How extraordinary!”
“So. I’ll just confirm your basic details. Your name is Bella Atkins. You’re thirty-two. You’re self-employed …”
“As a caterer, yes.” I hazard a smile. “Hence these delicious cakes I’ve made! Are you quite sure you won’t …”
“… and you live with your …?” She casts her eye over my tunicy top. “Civil partner?”
OK. So Anna’s right. I need a new wardrobe. “No, no, my boyfriend! Remember, the one I told you about?”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Keenan.” She makes a note in her file. “So he isn’t applying for adoption with you?”
“Yes. I mean, yes, he is applying for adoption with me.”
“But he couldn’t be here for this meeting?”
Do I hear a note of judgment in her voice already?
“Oh, well, he’d have loved to have been here, of course, but unfortunately he had a prior engagement.” No, that doesn’t sound good enough. “Work, I mean. He had to work. He’s a landscape gardener. Runs his own firm, in fact. And there are never enough hours in the day to work, not when you’re self-employed! Not that he’s a workaholic,” I add hastily, as she makes yet another note in her file. “Nor me, as it happens. I mean, I enjoy my work, obviously …”
Oh, God. What the hell is she writing? And is it counting against us already, that Jamie isn’t even here? Does it look bad that he hasn’t made it a priority?
“And you’ve been together how long?”
“Two years. Which I know is the absolute minimum you guys expect, for couples who are trying to adopt, but I thought that by the time the whole process really gets going, it’ll be a lot closer to three!”
She notes this down. She doesn’t say anything. I’m feeling a wave of judgment heading my way again.
It’s a wave I’ve got to try and surf.
“Or do you prefer it if couples are actually married? Because I’m quite sure that’s something that will happen very soon, for me and Jamie. I mean, weddings are a bit of a dirty word around here just at the moment, unfortunately, because my sister has just run out on a wedding of her own … well, not run out, as such, we’re usually an extremely reliable family! … but I’m sure that as soon as the dust has settled, and she’s back with her fiancé again, Jamie and I will think about tying the knot ourselves …”
She holds up her pen to stop me, which is good, because I was just about to launch into my favorite fantasy, where Jamie and I not only get married (in a simple registry office ceremony, me in ivory trousers and a floaty top—though not a tunicy one, if Samantha’s reaction to today’s outfit is anything to go by), but go on to grow old together in a cottage on the North Devon coast, surrounded by a whole brood of our adopted children’s children, with me in the kitchen making Sunday roasts, and Jamie in the garden teaching the little ones to plant geraniums.
“Bella, it’s up to you what you do with your life. Unmarried couples are perfectly able to adopt. That said, our latest guidance from the Department of Health does mean that we will be prioritizing married couples.”
Damn. Damn damn damn. “Look, Samantha, would it help my application if we were to get engaged, say?”
“I think we shouldn’t be jumping too far ahead,” she says. “Like I said, Bella, this is only a preliminary conversation.”
“Right,” I say miserably. “Of course.”
Silence descends while she scribbles for a little bit more.
God, I wish I knew what she was writing about me. I’m allowed to know, aren’t I? Under … what’s it called … oh, yes, Freedom of Information! Do I have to apply for special permission? Or can I just … reach over and grab it …?
“Anyway, Bella, let’s forget about your marital status for a moment. Tell me a bit about your own family background. Your reasons for wanting to adopt. I assume,” she carries on, without the smallest change in tone, “that you’ve had long-running experience of infertility. Perhaps recently come to the end of your own IVF journey?”
“What? I … no. I mean, there hasn’t been a journey.”
“There’s no shame in it. Most of the prospective adopters I see have just failed a final cycle of IVF.”
“I haven’t done IVF! It’s … it’s different, with me.”
“Well, can you have children or can’t you?” She takes a sip of her water. “Because obviously there is a bit of a trend for people to adopt children just because all the Hollywood stars are doing it. If you’ve not even tried to have your own children, obviously that might make us concerned that …”
“Look, it’s not a matter of trying! I can’t have children, OK?” I snap, before remembering that it probably isn’t a good idea to snap at the woman who holds all my hopes and dreams in the palms of her squirrelly little hands. I force a smile onto my face. “Samantha, I’m not doing this because Angelina Jolie makes it look so pretty, or Sandra Bullock bangs on about it being the ultimate fulfillment in every magazine interview she gives! All I want—actually, all I’ve ever wanted, ever since they brought my little sister home from the hospital—is to have a child of my own. I just want to bring someone into my home, and make them feel wanted, and special, and safe …”
I break off.
Because there’s a naked, and very, very hairy man coming through my kitchen doorway.
My first instinct, despite the fact he could be an escaped mental patient or opportunistic on-the-loose rapist and we could be in really serious trouble, is to flap my hands at him to go away, like he’s a stray cat.
His response is to hold up his own hands and just kind of … gibber at me. (Though maybe I’m being swayed by the fact that he seems to be half-man, half-gorilla.) He looks as astonished by my presence as I am by his.
The most astonished of us all, though, is Samantha. Despite the fact that, as a social worker, you’d have thought she’s seen pretty much everything there is to see, she lets out a shriek that could pierce eardrums, reaches for her glass of water, and chucks the contents vaguely in Gorilla Man’s direction.
“Is this your boyfriend?” she gasps, as she jumps to her feet and clutches her files to her chest. “You let him just … just wander like this?”
“No! He’s not Jamie! I’ve no idea who he is, how he got in …”
At the word Jamie, Gorilla Man begins to gibber a bit more frenetically, recognition in his eyes. It’s this that turns the lightbulb on for me. He has to be one of The Boys. It’s happened before, that a stray one has ended up back in my spare room after one of Jamie’s big nights out, like last night’s evidently was. But they’re never usually naked. And never usually at quite such a disastrously inconvenient moment. Still, the gibberish is making more sense now, if only because I can now recognize it as the familiar sound of a hungover Cork man.
Taking pity on him despite myself, and keen to prevent Samantha from hyperventilating, I throw him a tea towel. “Please, sir, cover yourself up,” I say authoritatively.
He garbles a few words—I can make out jeans … spare room … no idea—then turns and lumbers from the kitchen, giving us a flash of (improbably smooth) backside as he goes.
I turn to a white-faced Samantha. There’s no way of making this sound anything other than the catastrophe it is. All I can do to mitigate matters is to imply that he’s not a total stranger. Naked strangers strolling around your home is—probably?—more off-putting than the idea of a naked person you actually know.
“Samantha, I’m so sorry. He’s a friend of Jamie’s. And it’s never happened before, I promise you.”
“It was extraordinarily unpleasant.”
“I know, maybe you need a piece of cake, to settle your nerves …”
“I do not need a piece of cake!” She reaches for her bag and shoves her files into it. “Look, I think it’s best if I leave you to deal with … well, with that … and we can reschedule this appointment for another time. When we can have more privacy, perhaps.”
“But when will that be?” I follow her out into the hall, making sure the door to the spare room is firmly shut so that she doesn’t accidentally catch a glimpse of a still-naked Gorilla Man bending over to pull his socks on, or some other equally distressing scenario.
“You’ll have to phone my office. It should be some time before Christmas,” she says, shrugging on her jacket and reaching for the front door handle herself.
“Samantha.” I stop her just before she steps out the door and starts making her way down the three floors to the bottom. “This won’t have any impact on my application, will it? This … um … incident? I mean, you said there was nothing decided at this stage …”
She turns to look at me. For a moment I think I can see pity, or at least some form of discernible human emotion, in her eyes. But then she goes into automaton mode again. “Just make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. No amount of good intentions in the world can make up for a repeat of that.”
When I close the door, I turn around to see Gorilla Man behind me.
He’s dressed now, thank God, in jeans and a T-shirt that looks recently ironed but with neat creases from packing. It’s a huge improvement, and not just because they mean I don’t have to avert my eyes from anything that might be … you know … dangling. Clothed, he looks relatively normal. Decent-looking, even. Certainly a lot less like an Early Man exhibit from the Natural History Museum.
Which just makes it even worse, frankly, that Samantha had to see him parading about in all his naked hairiness. If he’d just had the decency to throw something on, it wouldn’t have mattered so much that he was a stranger in my flat. He’d have looked respectable enough not to scare her off.
“Thank you very much!” I spit at him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
“I’m really, really sorry.” His accent is less of a problem for me now that I’m tuned in to it. “I didn’t know anyone was in. I mean, I knew you lived here—you’re Bella, right? But Jamie said he thought you’d be out working this morning, or something.”
This makes sense. Well, it makes sense given that I do bang on to Jamie about my near-constant working hours. Mostly—and fruitlessly—just to try to get him to realize that it’s not easy being the only one in this relationship who brings in any money.
“Well, who the hell are you, anyway?” I demand. “A school friend? A cousin?” This might make the most sense; the hairiness aside, there’s a vague resemblance to Jamie about him, mostly in the size department. His height and build, I mean! Not that size department. I wasn’t looking!
“No, no, I’m not a cousin. Just a mate, from back home. “My name’s Liam. Liam Dempsey. I was at school with Jamie. And I’m … just … well, I’m sort of visiting.”
“Sort of visiting?”
“No, I mean, I am visiting, obviously. I’m just not, you know, on holiday, or anything. I’m over here to look for a job. And Jamie said it was OK if I stayed here.”
“He did, did he?” I feel my fury ratchet up a few notches. Who does Jamie think he is, telling his friends they can stay at my place without telling me about it? “And did he let you know how long I can expect to run this impromptu B&B for? Days? Weeks? And are there more, where you’ve come from? Am I to expect coachloads from Cork, fresh off Ryanair?”
“Look, maybe it’s better if I just leave,” Liam Dempsey says, rather more gruffly than I take kindly to, given the circumstances. “I don’t want to cause you any trouble or inconvenience …”
“Trouble or inconvenience!” I repeat, letting out a strange cackle of laughter. It isn’t anything like my usual, sane-sounding laugh. “Well, as far as trouble and inconvenience go, how about the trouble and inconvenience of fucking up any chance I have of adopting a child?”
Liam Dempsey blinks at me. “You’re kidding.”
“Is it the kind of thing people normally kid you about?”
“No, of course not … Christ …” He runs a hand through his hair. It’s dark and plentiful. Like the hair everywhere else on his body. “I’m really, really sorry.”
“The social worker could quite happily stick me on a blacklist and never even answer my calls again!”
He actually thinks about this for a moment, before saying, in an infuriatingly calm tone, “Ah, well, now you’re just panicking. I mean, that would just be plain unprofessional.”
I clench my fists. “She can be as unprofessional as she likes! She’s the one with all the power …” I can feel my chest starting to heave, and I know I’m going to start crying any minute. “Look, there’s cakes in the kitchen,” I mumble, una
ble to flee to the bedroom without expressing my reflex to be hospitable. “Help yourself to them, and tea. I’m going to have a lie-down.”
“You mean it’s OK for me to stay after all? I mean, I honestly don’t want to tread on any toes …”
“Treading on toes isn’t the problem. Treading on toes is the least I have to worry about, after what you’ve just done.” I wrench the bedroom door open and slam it shut behind me.
Grace
Monday, November 23
I’m meeting Polly for brunch this morning at Café on the Green, and I don’t think I’ve been more pitifully excited about an event since my fifteenth birthday party, when I’d just started Properly Going Out with the gorgeous Jacob Mercer from the sixth form college, and I knew he was going to turn up looking mean and moody and pouty of lip, and turn everyone else green with envy.
And today is even better! Because my excitement is going to culminate in a sophisticated brunch with Polly instead of a bit of a sweaty grope with Jacob. (Gorgeous, yes, but as it turned out, not so hot in the romance department.) I was imagining it all day yesterday (the sophisticated brunch, not the sweaty groping), after Polly and I—finally!—had the chance to have a talk on the phone. Ever since she got back, we’ve not managed to do more than leave each other messages—or “play voice-mail tag,” as Polly put it; I immediately fell in love with this expression and have vowed to use it as often as possible—but last night we actually settled down for a proper Grace-and-Polly chat.
Or rather, it would have been a proper Grace-and-Polly chat if Charlie hadn’t come in after five minutes, demanding to know if I’d ironed him a shirt for the morning and whether I’d put the Sunday Times crossword in the recycling yet or not. Recognizing defeat when I saw it (Charlie has never liked me spending long stretches of time on the phone with Polly), I suggested that we pick up our conversation again in person, in the morning, unencumbered by the ironing and the irritable husband.
There Goes the Bride Page 8