Mummyfesto, The

by Green, Linda

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. My balloon had burst, but there was at least a tiny bit of air left in it. A week was indeed a long time in politics.

  It was only about ten minutes after they’d left when Rob shouted down to me. I knew straightaway that something was wrong. Very wrong. I ran upstairs. Rob had the ventilator mask over Oscar’s face.

  ‘He started wheezing, he was struggling to breathe,’ he said. ‘We need to call an ambulance. Now.’

  I ran into our bedroom and dialled 999. I could barely get out the word ‘ambulance’ to the operator. I got myself together enough to give our address when they put me through.

  ‘Our son’s got spinal muscular atrophy type 2,’ I told them. ‘He’s got a cold and he’s just started struggling to breathe. We’ve got a ventilator on, but we need to get him to hospital.’

  I phoned my mum straight afterwards. ‘Can you come round to look after Zach,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to take Oscar to hospital, he’s struggling with his breathing.’

  ‘Oh Sam. I’ll be straight round.’ I heard something in her voice which I recognised. It was fear. Fear that had finally been realised.

  I put the phone down and turned around. Zach was standing in the doorway in his pyjamas. His eyes far too knowing for someone of his age. ‘Oscar’s going to hospital, isn’t he?’

  I bent down and gathered him up in my arms, feeling him crumple against me. ‘Yes, sweetheart. He’s finding it tricky to breathe right now because of his cold. The doctors will help him. They have all the best equipment for him at hospital.’

  Zach nodded, his jaw set. He was trying so hard not to cry.

  ‘Grandma’s whizzing straight round to look after you,’ I said. ‘She’ll get you to school in the morning if we’re not back.’

  ‘I want to go with Oscar,’ he said. ‘I want to go to the hospital with him.’

  ‘I know, love, but the doctors and nurses are going to be really busy and we won’t be able to look after you properly because we’ll be with Oscar. We’ll phone Grandma to let you know how he’s doing. I promise.’

  Zach nodded some more. I wished he wouldn’t be so brave. I wished he would just cry. ‘You get yourself tucked back up in bed,’ I said. ‘I’ll get Grandma to come straight in to see you as soon as she gets here, OK?’

  I kissed him on the forehead. He wouldn’t get much sleep tonight. I knew that. He could worry for England. And I knew full well where he got it from.

  I whizzed around our bedroom throwing things into an overnight bag. It was something I’d rehearsed so many times in my head and yet now it was here I had no idea what to take, what I needed, even how to feel.

  I went back in to Oscar. Knelt down beside the bed next to him and held his hand. His face looked grey, his eyes startled.

  ‘It’s OK, sweetheart. We’re going to get you to hospital. They’ll be able to help you there.’ His little hand gripped mine. I stroked his forehead with my other hand. It felt clammy. I glanced across at Rob. He nodded. He was thinking exactly what I was thinking.

  There was a knock on the door. Rob ran down to let the paramedics in. I heard him talking to them as they came up the stairs. Filling them in on Oscar’s condition. Telling them what they needed to do. They practically ran into the room.

  ‘Hello, little man,’ one of them said to Oscar, as he knelt down beside him. ‘I’m going to quickly check you over, we’ll put you on our nice big ventilator and then you’re going to get a ride in an ambulance. We’ll even get the siren going and the lights flashing. How about that?’

  I smiled at him gratefully. He had kids, I was sure of it. Only parents could work out a way to make something bad sound like huge fun to children. I watched as he ran through the tests, relieved it wasn’t up to us any more. That we didn’t have to worry about whether we were doing the right thing.

  ‘Right, he’s OK, but his oxygen levels are a bit low. We’re going to get him on our ventilator.’

  I held Oscar’s hand while they took off the mask and quickly secured the new one. It made him look unfamiliar. He didn’t look like our Oscar any longer. He looked like a little boy who was very poorly.

  ‘OK,’ the paramedic said. ‘If one of you can carry him downstairs, I’ll carry the machine and then we’ll get him on to the stretcher.’

  I looked up and realised Zach was standing in the doorway, tears streaming down his face.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, hurrying over to hold him. ‘It’s all right. They’re going to help Oscar now. They’re going to try to get him better.’

  A few moments later I felt a hand on my shoulder and mum’s voice in my ear. I hadn’t even heard her come up the stairs.

  ‘I’ll take him now, love. I’ll sit with him until he gets to sleep.’

  I nodded, I had never been more grateful to see her. ‘Thank you,’ I whispered, delivering Zach into her arms. ‘We’ll ring Grandma as soon as we can,’ I told him. ‘Love you lots.’

  I picked up the overnight bags and nodded to Rob, who bent to gently lift Oscar.

  ‘Don’t forget his chair,’ said Zach. ‘He’ll need his chair for when he comes home.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, of course.’

  I held Oscar’s hand all the way in the ambulance. I wished he was still attached to me by his umbilical cord. Wished I could pump oxygen into him and take all the bad stuff away.

  Rob followed behind in the car. He’d put Oscar’s chair in it just as Zach had asked. I imagined Rob trying not to look in his mirror to avoid seeing it empty and playing his Stone Roses CD very loudly to cover up the fact that Oscar wasn’t there to provide the usual running commentary.

  We must have met up in the hospital car park though I didn’t even register it happening at the time. All I knew was that Rob and I arrived at A & E together with Oscar.

  Everything went into overdrive. People in white coats were running. I tried to tell a nurse that Oscar had SMA. She wasn’t listening to me. I started to go after her.

  Rob took hold of my arm. ‘It’s OK, they know,’ he said. ‘They all know. It’s on his notes.’

  I nodded and swallowed hard. Rob ran his fingers down my arm and took hold of my hand.

  ‘I feel so bloody helpless,’ I said.

  ‘Me too.’

  We stood at the end of Oscar’s trolley. I took hold of his foot. It was about the only part of his body I could get to. I kept craning my head to see through the doctors and nurses, trying to make eye contact with him. To let him know we were still here.

  When the bodies finally parted enough for me to see him, he was hooked up to a drip. Oscar. Our Oscar.

  Before I could say anything a doctor took us to one side. ‘We’re going to take him straight down to intensive care. We’re getting some antibiotics into him. We won’t know for certain until the test results come back, but I’m afraid we’re pretty certain it’s pneumonia.’

  His mouth continued opening and closing, but I didn’t hear the rest of the words. I’d heard the only one that mattered. The one we’d dreaded ever since he’d been diagnosed. And which neither of us had dared speak.

  23

  JACKIE

  It was the time of the month. Not that time. The other time. The time when we should be ‘trying’. It was a horrible word. Our failure to conceive suggested that we weren’t ‘trying’ hard enough. But I also knew Paul thought we were ‘trying’ too hard. And that maybe there was no point ‘trying’ at all, as it simply wasn’t going to happen.

  But still I couldn’t let the window of opportunity pass without, well, trying. Which explained why I had put on a camisole and some French knickers and was attempting to slither between the sheets in something approach a seductive manner when, to be honest, I felt more like sticking on my pyjamas, taking a hot-water bottle to bed with me, curling up in a ball and going into hibernation in the hope that when I woke up in a few months time everything would be looking considerably brighter.

  Paul slid his arm around my shoulders. He knew. He was l
ike a male animal who waited for the female of his species to perform some colourful, elaborate mating ritual to alert him to the fact that the time was right. Only in my case it was simply sticking on something black and slinky instead of my pyjamas.

  It was all pre-programmed from here on in. He’d slip one of the spaghetti straps of my camisole off my shoulder, give me a little nuzzle. I’d kiss him on the mouth, run my foot up and down his leg. And so it went on. One thing I’d learnt about spontaneity – it doesn’t sit comfortably with menstrual calendars.

  Paul slipped one of the spaghetti straps of my camisole off my shoulder. I tried. I tried really hard to get everything out of my head. To clear out the jumble of emotions which appeared to have taken up residence there. But I’d told Paul often enough over the years; if I was troubled or tired or fretting about something, it was pointless, absolutely pointless, trying anything. Because if my head was elsewhere, the rest of me was, to all intents and purposes, absent too. And at that moment it really wouldn’t have mattered if George Clooney had been lying there next to me. Because I was so not up for it.

  A big fat tear plopped off the end of my nose on to Paul’s chest.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, lifting up my chin with his finger. ‘Come here.’ And that was it, the floodgates opened and Paul was nearly washed away downstream. Some women cried beautifully. I knew, I’d seen them, it wasn’t just in films. I didn’t. I did big, bawl-your-eyes out crying. The sort that left you puffy-eyed and red-nosed.

  It was a long time before I was able to say anything. I needed to empty myself first. And whenever I thought I had, when I tried to draw a breath in order to speak, another snivel came instead. So I waited. Waited while the gaps between the sobs grew longer and longer. Until finally there were words there when I opened my mouth.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t. It’s nothing to do with you, it’s all this crap going on in my head. I feel such a cow about pulling out of the election and I hate what I just did to Sam. I know I had to do it but now I have, I still don’t know if I can look after Mum properly and I don’t know what the hell to do about putting her into a home and I feel so bad because I can’t remember the last time I spent a day with Alice, just with Alice, with nothing else getting in the way. And now I feel bad because I know we should be trying and it’s not fair on you to put you through all this and then not be up for it myself, but I can’t. I just can’t.’

  I managed to snort some snot over Paul’s shoulder. Not something that’s really encouraged in the ‘How to drive your man crazy with desire’ articles in Cosmo. He wiped it off with a corner of the duvet. That’s what I liked about Yorkshire men. They were practical to the end.

  ‘You need to stop apologising,’ said Paul. ‘I’m surprised you’re still capable of speech, let alone owt else, after all you’ve been through.’

  ‘I feel so pathetic,’ I said. ‘Sam’s managing to cope with Oscar being poorly and all the stuff that goes with looking after him and yet Mum goes walkabout once and I’m in pieces.’

  ‘It’s not about that, though is it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s this whole business with your sister. That’s what it’s all brought up.’

  I was quiet for a moment. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I hadn’t really talked about Deborah to Paul. It was all too painful. As far as he was concerned she was simply the girl next to me in the pictures in the photo album. The girl who disappeared from the pages when I was seven, leaving only a shadow behind. A shadow which was sometimes visible, sometimes not, but was always there.

  ‘It were my fault,’ I said.

  ‘How can it have been your fault?’

  ‘I wanted to go to sweet shop,’ I said. ‘That’s why we crossed over main road. There were no need to cross it, Mum were always telling us that. That’s why she let Deborah walk me home from school. Because there were only a couple of little roads to cross. Only on that particular day, greedy guts here decided she wanted to get some sweets on way home. If it hadn’t been for me …’

  ‘You can’t say that. The guy were twice over limit. He’s one what knocked her down.’

  ‘You don’t think like that when you’re seven years old, though,’ I said, ‘and when you’re growing up without a sister you loved more than anyone in world.’

  The tears came again. Slow, silent ones this time, scoring a path down my cheeks. Paul pulled me to him, stroking my hair, kissing the top of my head. Doing his best to do what he always tried to do – to take the pain away. Only this pain ran so deep, I had no idea if it were possible even to reach it.

  ‘I know you’re hurting, love, but you can’t let this ruin your entire life. You need to put it to rest.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s why you’re so desperate for another baby, isn’t it? You’re trying to give Alice the sibling you had taken away.’

  ‘No, it’s not about that at all,’ I said, pulling away from him slightly.

  ‘I’m not saying it as a criticism,’ he said, stroking my hair again. ‘It’s perfectly understandable, given what you went through. But the thing is, love, you don’t miss what you’ve never had. It didn’t happen to Alice. It happened to you. And you can’t make it better by giving her a brother or sister. Because she’s not the one who’s hurting.’

  And as he said it, I knew it was true. That every time I looked at Alice I saw myself. And that all these years, I’d been fighting to prevent something that wasn’t going to happen to her. Because she wasn’t me.

  The tears came again. Dredged up from somewhere I had never dared to go. Tears so old I could practically taste my seven-year-old self on them.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I whispered to her. ‘You can let go now.’

  Paul held me and stroked my hair for a long time. Until I was ready to speak again.

  ‘Alice is so precious,’ I said. ‘It scares the hell out of me sometimes.’

  ‘I know. Me too.’

  ‘What if something happened to her?’ I said. ‘We’d be left with nothing. I’m not sure I could cope. Mum always used to say I was the thing that kept her going afterwards. That she had to cope because she had me to look after.’

  ‘Nothing’s going to happen to Alice,’ said Paul, taking my head in his hands.

  ‘Me and you and Alice are just fine together. We’re a family. And as much as I’d love another child too, if it doesn’t happen it’s not going to stop us being a family. It can’t take away what we already have. Not unless you let it.’

  I nodded and wiped my nose on the pillowcase. Paul smiled. I smiled back. The heaviness inside my head lifted for a second. Enough for me to be able to take residence inside my body again. It was OK. My skin fitted. It was forty-years old and scored with stretch marks and cellulite, but for the first time in years it felt comfortable. It felt like I could live in it. I kissed Paul on the lips. A little kiss. Followed by a bigger one. Wrapping my arms around him. Drinking him in. Easing myself on top of him. He looked at me with one eyebrow raised slightly.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘This isn’t trying. This is something entirely different. Something I’m doing because I want to. Because I want you.’

  It was only when I switched my mobile on the next morning that I got Sam’s text: ‘At hospital with Oscar. He’s got pneumonia.’

  I screwed my eyes up. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to know. But when I opened them the message was still there. I called Sam. It went straight to answer phone. I opened my mouth to say something, but realised I couldn’t think of anything anywhere near adequate. I called back and tried again.

  ‘Sam, it’s Jackie. I’m so sorry. If there’s anything I can do. Absolutely anything, please let me know. Or just if you need to talk. I’m here. We’re thinking of you all and sending a great big hug to Oscar.’

  I went out to the landing and stuck my head around Alice’s door, which she always insisted on leaving open a little at night-time. She was still fast asleep,
her fingers curled tightly around the Peter Rabbit Mum had given her soon after she was born. I felt very, very lucky.

  Will was waiting outside in the corridor for me as I came out of the drama studio at break-time. He looked a bit awkward, peering out at me from under his mass of thick dark hair. I realised that he hadn’t seen me since all the stuff had been in the papers and that he might be worried I was going to lay into him like everyone else had.

  ‘Hi. Good to see you,’ I said. ‘How’s tricks, or shouldn’t I ask?’

  ‘Been better,’ he said, managing a hint of a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. It might have stopped me from behaving like such a dickhead.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Parents and teachers are there to be ignored,’ I said. ‘It’s part of our job description. But what’s more important is that when people make mistakes we help them pick themselves up and move on.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, visibly brightening. ‘Because that’s why I’ve come to see you. I want to do something about bullying. Put on a play for the whole school, something like, raw and hard-hitting. Something they won’t easily forget. I need you to help me though.’

  His face was serious, as serious as I’d ever seen it. If I didn’t know better I’d say there was a hint of humility there as well. He was clearly feeling this every bit as much as Anna.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘That’s a great idea. Fancy helping me put it together, you and some of the other Year Elevens doing some improv?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Come down here at 12.30 then. Bring some of your mates and we’ll see what we can come up with.’

  ‘What about Freeman?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘He might not let us do it.’

  ‘He might not have any choice,’ I said with a smile.

  24

  ANNA