by Voss, Louise
‘You’re not alone. You’ve got me.’
Vicky’s eyes welled with tears and she looked away.
‘I mean it, Vicky, of course I’ll be there for you, whenever you need some extra help with the kids, or anything.’
‘I don’t think Ken’d be too happy if you were to move in here twenty four hours a day, because that’s what I need.’
Ken probably wouldn’t even notice, I thought, remembering my mosaic-making experience of the day before with a sudden secret flash of glee, followed instantly by shame—why did I feel gleeful about having a secret? I rubbed the rough blistered skin on my right thumb, my badge of achievement. Despite the wobbly moment with Pregnant Paula’s comment, and my subsequent hasty departure, I had already begun to see the mural project through rose-tinted glasses, and planned to go down to Gillingsbury again the following day. Perhaps this time Max might be there, I thought. I couldn’t sit around moping about Holly and Dad for ever.
I had an urge to invite Vicky to come with me—maybe I could pretend that I’d just been aimlessly driving around and had spotted the sign and gone in? Or maybe not… The thought of Crystal in the car with us for over an hour, and then charging round Moose Hall with Spike and his cronies, was not a particularly enticing one. I felt guilty for thinking it, but sometimes I did wish that cuddly, pliant Pat was my godchild instead of bristly Crystal. Much as I really did love her, she was living up to her name at the moment—brittle and precious; nice to look at but not very practical. Hopefully it was just a phase.
Besides, Vicky didn’t do anything on an impromptu basis anymore; the children had eradicated all her former spontaneity as briskly as a pulled clean Etch-a-Sketch. I missed the old Vicky, I thought, with a pang. I missed having a laugh with her. She was a brilliant mimic, and we used to conduct endless conversations in different accents, switching fluidly between Norwegian and Polish, Pakistani and Russian. But she never did her accents these days, or told me funny stories, or made up mad personas to try and fool drunk men in bars; pretending that she was a divorced millionairess looking for a new husband, or a former Miss World (a pretence she could pull off with no difficulty, back in the day), or a lady mud-wrestler. Although her arms were too spindly to get away with that one, even when she professed to be bantam-weight.
When had she got so serious? Still, I supposed, I was hardly a bundle of laughs anymore myself. We’d grown up, that was all. But it still felt like a loss. And at least she had Crystal and Pat to show for all that seriousness, which was more than I had. I just wished she enjoyed them a bit more. I was sure that, however tough having kids was, I’d find so much joy in being a mother. It made me sad that Vicky found it such a struggle.
Now she’d have a third. Envy bubbled and churned inside me like the rumble and pinch of indigestion, and I had to swallow hard before I spoke again.
‘I’m really pleased for you though, Vic. Didn’t you always want a big family?’
She snorted. ‘Yeah. That was before anyone told me how bloody difficult it was.’
I opened my mouth to gush forth platitudes: it would be fine, she’d manage, how lovely to have another child, it would all be worth it once they were all out of nappies, and so forth; but she shot me such a forbidding look of warning that I didn’t say a word.
‘I don’t want another baby,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t want to need a double buggy, and five seats if we ever went anywhere on an aeroplane, and another six years before I can even begin to get any time to myself. I don’t want to get more stretch marks and cellulite and wrinkles.’
‘You don’t have stretch marks, not that I’ve ever seen. You look great in a bikini, and after two kids that’s no mean feat.’
Vicky sighed irritably. ‘The straw that broke the camel’s back, that’s what it’ll be. And this camel’s on its knees already.’
‘Why don’t you get a nanny?’
‘Where would we put a nanny? We can hardly have all three children sleeping in the same room, can we?’
I shrugged. ‘Why not? Lots of kids share rooms.’
‘Not Crystal, though. She’d never stand for having Pat in her Barbie bedroom.’
‘You don’t have to have a live-in nanny, you could just get one during the day.’
‘Anna, do you have any idea how much a nanny costs? You have to go through an agency, of course, and round here it’s over a thousand pounds just to register! And then you have to pay them sick pay and holidays and whenever your own kids are sick. Katriona has this woman three days a week, and it costs her £1300 a month! That’s not much less than Peter earns.’
Secretly, I was pretty horrified at that - it did seem outrageously expensive -
but I ploughed on: ‘OK then, what about an au-pair? They’re cheap, and they do the cleaning too.’
Vicky rolled her eyes. ‘And where would she sleep? In the garden shed? Plus, I wouldn’t leave a new baby, or Pat for that matter, with some non-English speaking Eastern European with a dodgy reference.’
It just wasn’t worth trying to argue about the speciousness of that comment so I gave up, and instead rescued Pat from where he had wrapped himself in the floor-length dining room curtains until he was almost completely cocooned, and wailing to be rescued.
‘Shall we go and find your sister, Pat? Let’s see where she’s hiding,’ I crooned in his tiny velvety ear, and was rewarded with a huge smile. Pat’s two miniature front teeth were growing uncertainly down out of the soft gums as if they were worried they weren’t supposed to be there yet. I clasped him to my chest, cradling his small sturdy back in my palm. When he was a baby his whole back had fitted in the curve of my hand. I thought again of Adam’s hands shaping wet clay, and then of Ken’s handshake.
I didn’t know what else to say to Vicky. Of course she had every right not to be ecstatic about having another baby, but still, a life was a life, and even she admitted that she would be glad she’d had all her children so close together, once they were more grown up. She was so bloody lucky to even have the choice.
I carried Pat up the stairs and called Crystal’s name. Instantly I heard a squeal, and the metallic jangle and crash of coat-hangers being knocked off a rail, and Crystal scrambled out of her parents’ bedroom looking red faced and dishevelled. ‘Auntie Anna! I didn’t know you was here,’ she said, grabbing my leg and hugging it.
‘Hello darling,’ I said, crouching down to kiss the top of her head, feeling her thick auburn hair against my lips. ‘How are you?’
‘Not too good, I’m afraid,’ she replied gravely, taking my hand and pulling me towards her room. ‘Come on, and I’ll tell you all about it.’
I put Pat down on the carpet and gave him a Spot board book to chew, which Crystal immediately substituted for another, seemingly identical one. ‘We don’t give that book to Pat. Only this one,’ she said authoritatively. Then she patted the duvet next to her. ‘Sit,’ she said, like a mini Margaret Thatcher, and I sat, half waiting for her to announce that the lady was not for turning.
‘So, what’s up, then?’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I fell over this morning and—look! - it really, really hurt.’ I squinted at the teeny red spot on the back of her hand, barely visible to the naked eye. ‘Hmm. Doesn’t look too serious to me, Crystal. Did Mummy call the doctor?’
Wrong thing to say. Crystal’s lower lip began to tremble.
‘No, she didn’t. I kept tolding her that she must, but she didn’t, and I wasn’t even allowed a plaster.’ She paused for dramatic effect. ‘I don’t think Mummy LOVES me anymore!’
She crumpled into my side like a bereaved soap opera character, her shoulders heaving although no actual tears were forthcoming. Still, I hugged her back.
‘Of course Mummy loves you. She adores you! She’s just not feeling very well at the moment so you must try to be extra-nice and extra-helpful, OK?’
‘I’m always extra-nice and extra-helpful,’ Crystal replied, the little Pollyanna.
‘I’m sure
you are. Now why don’t we all go downstairs and tell Mummy how much we love her?’
I hefted Pat and the chewed book, took Crystal’s hand, and our little caravan made its way back downstairs. Vicky had moved from the wicker chair, and when I looked around for her I spotted her lying flat out on the small sofa in their conservatory, fast asleep. She always had had an enviable ability to crash out with no notice whatsoever, something which, I thought, must surely help in her current sleep-deprived circumstances. Our first college production had been Alice In Wonderland, and one of the parts she’d played was the Dormouse, so whenever I saw her asleep, it always reminded me of her in that furry brown mouse suit. I was about to try and distract Crystal by telling her about Mummy once being dunked in a big pretend teapot, but it was too late.
‘I REALLY LOVE YOU, MUMMY,’ she bellowed in Vicky’s ear, shaking her vigorously by the left breast until she was awake again.
Very calmly, Vicky sat up and pushed Crystal gently to one side. She swung her legs down from the sofa onto the floor, and led me by the hand into the living room. Ignoring the protests of both children, she closed the door behind them and took a deep breath.
‘I know you won’t approve, but I’m not asking for your approval, just for your support.’
‘You’re not - ’
She nodded. ‘I am. I’m going to have an abortion. I can’t cope.’
‘But you can. You will!’ I looked at the enlarged photograph of a seagull in soaring flight above Vicky and Peter’s mantlepiece, the deep, free blue of its sky, the white liberation of wings. I understood why Vicky liked it so much. I thought I was going to cry.
‘Please don’t,’ I said, still holding Vicky’s hand, but thinking of Holly’s tiny creased fingers.
Vicky snatched her hand away and turned her back on me, wheeling around so fast it was like a punch. ‘No, you please don’t!’ she snapped. ‘This is not about you, Anna. It’s about me, and what’s best for my family. I could have chosen not to tell you but I have. Don’t let me down when I need you.’
I couldn’t think of what to say, not when my overweening emotion was one of horror, bordering on—and I hated to admit it—disgust.
Crystal was hammering on the sitting room door - it had a slippery round ceramic doorknob that she couldn’t quite negotiate - and Pat was crying.
‘Why don’t I take the kids for a walk?’ I said, not meeting her eyes. ‘I’ll take them over to Lil’s. She was saying the other day that she hasn’t seen them for such a long time. You could go and have a bath or something.’ I wanted to say ‘you could go and think about what you’re proposing to do,’ but it sounded too headmistressy: go and reflect upon the error of your ways. But that was what it surely would be: an error. She couldn’t just get rid of her baby. She couldn’t.
Vicky shrugged. ‘Whatever.’ Then she clutched my arm, too hard. ‘But you are not to tell Lil about this, any of it. Do you promise, on your life?’
‘Why not?’
The expression of anger on her face made me wonder, for a second, if she was going to hit me. ‘Because I’m asking you, that’s why not! It’s my business, I don’t want you two sitting there tutting about what an awful person I am. I wish I’d never bloody told you now.’
I hugged her, but my reluctance must have showed, because it felt awkward, all elbow and breast and rib; hard and soft, defensive and weak. ‘Sorry. I promise I won’t tell her.’
‘Or anybody else. Ken. Peter.’
‘You aren’t even going to tell Peter?’ This got worse and worse.
‘Going to tell Daddy what?’ yelled Crystal through the keyhole, frantically rattling the door handle until Vicky took pity on her—or, more likely, decided to end the conversation right there - and opened the door.
‘Auntie Anna’s taking you both out,’ she said. ‘Let’s get ready.’ She turned to me and hissed in my ear: ‘Or anybody else— promise.’
‘I promise,’ I hissed back, reluctantly. At that moment, for the first time in the fifteen years I’d known her, I thought I hated her. We’d had our ups and downs before, silly rows over sillier things: a few days’ bad feeling that time when she got a part in an Ayckbourn at Wimbledon Theatre that I’d been after as well; or when she got in a strop with me because I couldn’t think what to buy Crystal for her third birthday, and suggested giving Vicky money to get her something instead. But they’d always blown over. This was the first time that I thought possibly it might not have done.
With an atmosphere thick enough to slice, we managed between us to stuff the children’s small arms in their small jackets, strap Pat into the pushchair and plonk Crystal onto the buggy board attached to the back of it. Vicky packed Pat’s changing bag and hung it on one of the pushchair’s handlebars, as if she didn’t want to hand it to me directly.
The three of us set off, Crystal coasting on the board like a surfer dude catching a wave and Pat’s finger in his mouth, in pre-nap mode. At the end of the garden path I turned to look back, but Vicky had already shut the door.
Chapter 13
I was back on the M3 again the next morning, with a full tank of petrol, tapping my wedding ring percussively against the knob of the gear stick in time to Run DMC’s Greatest Hits on my car stereo. Late-August rain slanted heavy splashes against the windscreen, and the frenetic thwack-thwack of the wipers helped distract me from the butterflies of anticipation dancing in my stomach. The rain was so heavy that I had to turn the volume of the CD up to eight.
It was all Lil’s fault. I’d told her about my trip to Gillingsbury, and she’d encouraged me to go to back there again, even after I told her that Max was staying with his grandparents and probably wouldn’t be around. I’d just about managed not to blurt out what had happened at Vicky’s not fifteen minutes before my arrival on her doorstep, but the effort had nearly killed me. So in order to keep off the subject I’d gone into tedious amounts of detail about my previous trip to Wiltshire, and how much I’d enjoyed participating in the mosaic project. After a while, even with Crystal and Pat present as reminders, I found myself managing to put some distance between me and the row with Vicky. Lil was such a good listener.
Having the chance to actually talk to her was an added bonus to our impromptu visit - Crystal had been as good as gold, and spent the whole time playing with a miniature cooking range that Lil produced from somewhere; a metal dollhouse Aga complete with inch-square gingham tea-towels, and teeny little pots and pans. She was silent for at least half an hour, lying on her stomach on Lil’s floral patterned carpet, engrossed in making dry raisin stew and baking slivers of digestive biscuit into loaves, occasionally muttering to herself about what time Barbie would be round for dinner. It amazed me, how little Vicky’s obvious tension and stress seemed to have rubbed off on her—in fact, she was noticeably calmer now that she was away from home.
‘I don’t want to have to lie to anybody,’ I’d said, watching as she cradled the sleeping Pat in her arms.
‘Why would you need to lie?’ Lil replied, glancing up at me from where she’d been concentrating on stroking Pat’s eyebrow (an old midwife’s trick, apparently, to help babies go to sleep: stroke their eyebrows and they automatically close their eyes. Not that she’d needed to do it with Pat—he’d been sparko before we even arrived) ‘Tell Ken, if you feel the need to tell him anything, that you’re doing a mosaic project for the community.’
‘What if he asks where?’
She put another biscuit into Crystal’s outstretched hand, which Crystal neatly trimmed down to the size of a penny by nibbling around the edges before slotting it into her oven. ‘Tell him it’s a local community college project.’
‘I don’t know. It seems—underhand.’
‘Well then, if it bothers you, tell him the truth. Tell him it’s in Gillingsbury.’
I gave her a dark look. ‘He’d think I’d finally lost the plot! Unless I then fed him some other cock and bull story about getting involved in it via some imaginary friend down t
here—which would be another lie - that he’s never heard me mention, and that all of a sudden I’m on some community mural-making project with? It’s mad.’
I knew what she was going to say next, and jumped in before she’d even opened her mouth. ‘No, I still don’t want to tell him about Max.’
She shrugged, causing Pat to list a little on her bony lap. He flailed briefly, and lay still again. For a moment I closed my eyes and imagined that these two children were Lil’s great-great-niece and nephew, on their weekly visit to her. Poor Lil—she’d been so excited when I finally passed the supposed danger weeks of my pregnancy, and we announced it. Now it was looking increasingly unlikely that she’d ever have any great-great nephews or nieces, given that my brother Olly wouldn’t touch a woman with a ten foot bargepole.
‘Well, I suppose you can’t tell him that you were in Gillingsbury at all then,’ Lil had said, contemplatively.
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Really though, he’s not all that likely to ask. You’re not doing anything wrong. And you are going back there, aren’t you, so you’d better get it straight in your own mind.’
I hadn’t been sure if I was going back, up to that point. But Lil said it as a statement, which, coming from her, turned it into an endorsement. I instantly forgot about Vicky’s pregnancy and even, briefly, my own childlessness, and began to look forward to it, as if her words were a licence to overlook the nascent deception already tiptoeing out of my conscience. ‘Yes. Tomorrow.’
Why not? I deserved a change of scene. And the sullen, closed-down expression on Vicky’s face, when I’d delivered her children back home again, made the idea of putting a hundred miles between us even more appealing.
By the time I reached the outskirts of Gillingsbury, negotiating the complex one-way system with a great deal more aplomb than on my first visit, I was glad to have arrived. My back felt stiff from hunching over the wheel, my eyes ached from the blur and wash of water in front of them, and I was fed up with Run DMC. Plus, I was hungry, and, for some reason, far more nervous than I’d been three days earlier. That last visit could have been a one-off, an experiment. This one was a premeditated conscious decision.