A Part of Me

by Anouska Knight

  ‘That bad, huh?’ Lauren asked, soothing Harry over her shoulder. ‘Wowsers. They aren’t cheap up there, are they? You’re going to need that salary.’

  She was right, I could have a three-bed semi here for that, with a garden and parking. I puffed my cheeks out as a feeble mewling sound suggested Harry either agreed with us on the state of house prices or had smelled the Sunday lunch leftovers.

  Lauren planted a kiss on him. ‘Yes, young man. You cry. I want you nice and hungry.’ Harry was onto something and stepped it up a gear.

  ‘Still won’t take the bottle?’ I asked.

  ‘It took me half an hour to express four measly ounces this morning. I bet he won’t have it. He hates it!’ At the sound of his mother’s voice, Harry raised the stakes, breaking into a throaty protestation. ‘Sorry,’ Lauren winced, ‘do you mind having him while I go and warm it up? Guy’s already snoring in the lounge.’

  ‘Sure. I’ve been waiting for a turn,’ I beamed, seizing my chance at a snuggle.

  ‘Hello, little boy! Are you giving your mummy a hard time?’ I grinned. Harry stopped crying, watching me making daft gooey faces at him.

  ‘Oh, crap and sod!’ Lauren groaned. A growing circular damp patch had appeared over each of her breasts.

  ‘Every time he cries, I bloody leak! Are you okay if I go and change, first?’ I nodded, awed by the reaction of Lauren’s body to Harry’s voice alone. My milk had come in a few days after Jacob, but there was no bleating voice calling for it. ‘I don’t know how single parents do all this on their own. I honestly don’t. I want my body back!’ Lauren huffed. I smiled, nuzzling my face into Harry’s downy hair. Outside, Sam was roaring at a butterfly. He caught me watching him and growled back across the garden at us.

  I was going to miss them.

  Somewhere in the distance over Mum’s garden fence, the tinny melody of an ice-cream van was making his approach onto Victoria Street. Sam stood bolt upright in the garden, paralysed as he tried to pinpoint the source of the sound.

  ‘The ice-cream man! THE ICE-CREAM MAN! Nannn-neeeeee!’

  ‘Here you go, Sam!’ I laughed. ‘I’ve got some pennies here!’

  Mum stepped into the conservatory. ‘Did you say you had some cash?’

  I rose from the rattan sofa, pulling a fiver from my back pocket.

  ‘Whoops, you’ve just dropped something, sweetheart.’ Mum bent down to retrieve a small white card. She scanned it, then swapped it swiftly for the five-pound note. ‘Right, come on then, Samuel. Let’s see what they’ve got.

  I turned the card over in my fingers. Anna’s phone number sat scribbled over her social services contact details.

  ‘How have you managed to keep him quiet?’ Lauren asked, Harry’s bottle warming in the jug she held. ‘You’ve got the gift, Amy,’ she said, reaching for him. ‘Hey, maybe you could try him with the bottle?’

  Anna’s card was hot in my hand still. I slipped it back into my pocket. ‘Actually, Lauren, staring at the laptop’s given me a bit of a headache. I’m just going to have ten minutes upstairs,’ I said, passing Harry to her.

  ‘Oh, okay. Can I get you anything?’ Harry’s mood was beginning to freefall. He wasn’t the only one.

  ‘No, thanks,’ I called from the kitchen. ‘I’ll be good in a few minutes.’

  *

  A few minutes turned into twenty, studying the artexed ceiling and Anna’s penmanship. Downstairs was mostly quiet, Guy had stopped snoring, Harry was indisposed with his mother’s milk and Samuel with the frozen counterpart.

  I should’ve been back down there, spending as much time with them all as I could, but a heaviness in my chest had me pinned on my bed. Sadie had popped into my head, the image of her manhandling her bags alone, defiant that she was better off without an unwilling co-parent. I’d never asked Anna to talk me through single-parent applications. I’d dismissed the idea before even giving it a chance. I carried on studying the swirls in the artex, looking for the right path to present itself.

  Outside the front of the house, it sounded as though somebody was moving their recycling bin, the sounds of empty cans rattling against each other along the pavement outside Mum’s laurel bushes. I listened as the sound grew closer, then disappeared further up the road. I’d been looking at Anna’s card long enough that I knew her number by heart now. I tried to think what I could ask her. What I would want her to say. It was too soon. I needed to reassess, like she said. But even I had to admit it, Mum was right. Once I left for York, I’d be putting those dreams to bed.

  The nomadic recycler had doubled back on themselves, the clanging of metal growing louder again back down the street. I listening to this up and down the road twice more before Mum called up to ask if I could see who was making all the racket from my bedroom window. I pushed myself up and slumped over to the bay window, waiting for the noise to return to our part of the street again. I let out my window all the way. His red tee made him completely unmissable as he rode slowly past the mouth of the driveway, a few feet behind him, a bunch of cans strung to the back of his bike danced noisily over the tarmac. If I hadn’t still heard the commotion, I might’ve thought I’d imagined him. A few thudding heartbeats later and he cruised past again, this time kneeling on his seat with his other leg outstretched behind him. A giggle bubbled up in me.

  ‘Amy!’ Guy bellowed upstairs. ‘Your biker buddy—’

  ‘I know!’ I yelped, dancing out onto the hallway. My feet sounded clumsy on the stairs, my breathing suddenly laboured.

  ‘Do you want me to go chase him off?’ Guy teased.

  ‘In your dreams, bro. He’d run rings around you.’ I grinned, nipping out through the front door. When I reached the laurel hedge, I couldn’t see him at first, the rattling cans had stopped. I stepped out, so I could see around the post box, to the heap that was lying in the road. His bike wheel was still spinning, the only motion as I stepped closer.

  I had to admit, he played dead convincingly. It struck me then how foolish Cathy Brown had been to miss her chance.

  ‘You appear to have had an unfortunate accident,’ I said passively, coming to stand beside the spinning wheel. Nothing. I laughed a little and checked the street for cars, for a second considering whether he could have actually fallen for real. The street was quiet, thank goodness, this was my first body in the road.

  ‘Okay, I’m checking your pulse now,’ I declared, crouching beside him. Still nothing. I realised I didn’t actually know how to check a pulse anyway, although that wasn’t the thing most concerning me – Rohan didn’t appear to be breathing. At the risk of being completely suckered again like a total nitwit, I couldn’t help but let the worry bubble up a tiny bit.

  I leant in, to feel for any air over his lips. ‘Rohan? Are you okay?’ A hand wrapped around my wrist and two glorious hazel eyes opened at me. Something fluttered inside my ribs. He didn’t have to reach far, closing the inches between us until I felt the warm welcome press of his mouth on mine. It was like another realm opening out beneath me. Something wonderful and delicious to topple into, where my vertigo left me to happily plummet. Everything else fell away with me. Thoughts of new jobs and old dreams, for one precious minute, freeing me of their binds.

  ‘Are you okay?’ came a breathy voice. I hadn’t realised we’d stopped kissing. ‘You haven’t got a dog, have you?’ He smiled, his face bursting into warmth. I heard tittering coming back from Mum’s drive, Mum, Guy and Lauren all poking their heads around the bushes. Sam burst out, growling, with his claws held up.

  I tried to still the fluttering in my chest before Rohan heard it. ‘No, just the T-rex.’

  Rohan took them all in, completely unfazed by the spectacle of them, or us, here in the street. ‘They’re not the most conventional bunch, are they?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope.’ I smiled. ‘They’re pretty wonderful, though.’

  Warm fingers slipped between mine. ‘Unconventional is good.’ He smiled, still lying there. ‘I hear you’re set on beating yo
ur own path?’

  The heavy feeling was back, the binds finding their way back to me like the reeds in the millpond. It was difficult to look at him then, that softness in his expression I’d seen him reserve for Lily.

  Rohan was studying my expression too. ‘I thought maybe we could try a new path, together?’

  A million what-ifs exploded behind my eyes like fireworks, chased by the sweeter sensation of Rohan’s hand pressing against my back. He pulled me into him, his lips finding mine, and I was freefalling again.

  CHAPTER 40

  TARDINESS WAS NOT a good start. Parking had been a nightmare in a city plagued by roadworks. I’d lost one earring in the foot well of my car, the other deposited in my purse for safekeeping while I honked at the traffic. I’d had three separate offers of lifts to avoid this exact scenario, but no – I was doing my independence bit. That was the whole point, after all, to beat my own path.

  It had only been ten minutes. I’d stopped pacing after five, sitting instead, watching the blossom drifting past the grand lead windows like spring snowfall. A support crew would be great right now, but I needed to do this on my own.

  ‘Miss Alwood? Would you like to come back in?’ Mr Healy was an urban planner by trade. A lofty man with a kindly face who’d already been through our mutual acquaintances in a bid to dejangle any nerves. It had almost worked. I followed him back into the meeting room.

  Anna was sitting in the same position she had been two years ago, her hair longer now, hanging over her shoulder blades. Just as before, she didn’t turn to look at me until I’d taken my seat. The chair, Dr Collins, was herself an adoptive parent of three boys – most likely with a much bigger garden than mine and hired help if she needed it. Despite the softness in her smile, my stomach was already churning.

  ‘Miss Alwood, you’ve been on quite the journey in your efforts to adopt. I don’t believe we’ve ever heard a social worker speak so highly on behalf of an applicant.’ Thud, thud, thud … My heart seemed to think I was in the middle of The Krypton Factor. ‘I have to commend you on your determination, and your integrity.’

  But … I could hear it in the back of her throat. I forced my hand back down from my naked earlobe and slipped it under my thighs.

  Dr Collins looked at her fellow panel members then came back to me. ‘We’d like to offer you our congratulations, Amy. We will be forwarding our recommendation to the Local Authority for their approval. We think you’ll make for a marvellous candidate to parent a sibling group of up to two children under the ages of five years.’

  Thud, thud, thud. I swallowed as I tried to un-jumble what I’d just heard.

  ‘Congratulations!’ came a whisper beside me.

  Anna tried to wipe her face discreetly before pulling my hand from under my leg and squeezing it earnestly. Dr Collins spoke again, but I only caught parts of it in my delirium. Something about being satisfied that Clayton Associates were an accommodating employer, and that my part-time voluntary work at Greenacres Primary had equipped me for most of the hurdles that lay ahead.

  I tried to take it all in. Suddenly I had a better understanding of what it must’ve felt like for each of the birds that had collided with Ro’s bedroom window over the last couple of years. Right now, I couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d have flown nose-first into someone’s double glazing.

  ‘And how lovely that your mother is headmistress at the primary school your children will attend.’

  What I’d just heard was like a bucket of cold water in the face, bringing me round.

  Your children.

  The words punched through the air like a scud missile. That’s what she’d just said to me. My children.

  I managed to hold it together while another of the panel members reminded me that the senior official at the local authority still had to review all of the paperwork including the recommendation of the panel before the absolute decision was made. Dr Collins impressed on me that it wasn’t unheard of for the senior official to go against the panel’s suggestion, but such incidences were very rare.

  But there was no room for fear in me. I was all full up.

  Anna had quickly closed the pleasantries with the panel, ushering me out through the maze of corridors to the huge entrance vestibule of the Town Hall, I think so she could finally free herself of her professional constraints and bear hug me with abandon as we snivelled into one another’s hair.

  ‘I can’t believe it, Anna. I just … it’s happening. It’s really going to happen now.’

  Because no one else was responsible for this, no one could walk out on me or change their mind or let me down, and it have any bearing on my application to be an adoptive mum.

  ‘I told you!’ she squealed. ‘I told you you would do it, Amy! What will you do now? You can’t drive anywhere yet, you’re shaking like a leaf. Will you call Rohan?’ His name still made my tummy flip. I looked at my watch.

  ‘No, he’ll be taking Lily to her after-school swimming lesson now.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anna said forlornly. Rohan had this effect on most women. I couldn’t blame her, I was still trying to manage my own swooning tendencies when he was around. ‘It’s a shame he couldn’t be here,’ she mused.

  A smile broke over me as I remembered him standing completely naked in the tub trying to pull off one of Carter’s more advanced yoga positions this morning. He’d said a morning soak would help relax me. The endorphins after half an hour of belly laughs had definitely helped.

  ‘He wanted to, but Lily’s mum’s away with her boyfriend this weekend so he’s having Lily tonight, and I … well, you know. Didn’t want a fuss if things didn’t go well.’

  ‘Well, it’s still a shame. He was telling me how much he’s looking forward to Lily having a little brother or sister to enjoy the rope swing with. She might get both, now! If you get a sibling group!’

  I smiled with her – the thought was intoxicating – although I didn’t think we’d be trying out the rope swing over the millpond until everyone had their swimming proficiency, Carter included.

  ‘Rohan’s a great guy, Amy. Us social workers have a nose for these things. I could see it by how much he really wanted this to work out for you, even though he says it will mean you won’t move in with him for a while yet.’

  It was the only downside. The only one. But no matter how much pleading Rohan had got Lily to do on his behalf, it was too important that I do this right. That any child I might have to love would feel secure and safe in our home, without the risk of any unsettling changes. I didn’t think Rohan was going anywhere, even Carter had said it, with Lily over for half the week and a rolling contract with Ortho-Ped, Rohan’s foot had finally stopped itching. And me? I knew I wasn’t going anywhere, and so there was no rush. That was the next adventure to look forward to, the next path we would beat together, as an extended, unconventional and, if fate was kind to us, happy family.

  Anna wiped the residual mascara from under her eyes and took a deep satisfying breath. ‘So, can you grab a quick coffee before you shoot off and share your news? I could do with someone to limit the amount of grasshopper pie I keep buying at Gino’s Caffe. I am … eating for two now.’

  I snapped my head around at her, open mouthed. ‘Anna! That’s amazing! Congratulations!’ The tears were there again, erupting in a state of shared happiness. Anna giggled, her emotions getting the better of her, too. ‘I’m so happy for you, Anna, that’s just … What an amazing day,’ I said, wiping the deluge from my face.

  ‘So you’ve got half an hour to share a few rounds of grasshopper pie?’ she asked, laughing.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  We probably looked like two escapee pandas when we pushed through the decorative doors of the Town Hall together. We were both giggling like children as we took the stone steps down onto the small paved square, dotted with planter beds and flurries of white blossoms. Anna was reminding me of the ills of morning sickness when a block of orange caught my eye at the roadside.

  Ca
rter and Phil were haggling with a parking warden, Phil gesticulating over towards the Town Hall while Carter pulled idly at a curly strand of hair. Rohan straightened up from where he’d been leaning against Bertha, Lily still in her school uniform on his hip.

  ‘Looks like someone couldn’t keep away,’ Anna gleamed.

  Lily waved, her blonde plaits just clinging together after a hard day’s play at Greenacres. I could see her leaning to be allowed to run over to us, but Rohan was holding her, unsure. Carter tugged on Phil’s jean pocket and they both forgot about the warden and looked over too.

  I could see the question in Rohan’s eyes as we walked quietly over the square towards them, blossom flittering through the air like paper snow all around us. I must be mad not moving in with him, I could barely stop myself from running across the paving stones and launching myself through the air at him. He set Lily down with a few words whispered in her ear, and ran a hand up the back of his neck.

  I could feel the smile, leaching into my features. He smiled back, those perfect lines of his mouth, the warmth in eyes still waiting for their answer. I nodded softly.

  Rohan’s eyebrows lifted, inviting me to confirm what he thought I’d just told him. My mouth broke into a grin, laughter escaping me as I nodded again and held up two fingers, clearly enough that they could all see it. Anna squeezed my arm, Rohan, Phil and Carter all exploded into rapturous whooping, and Lily burst into tears at the sudden commotion behind her. She ran away from it all, until she’d made it safely to my legs. I lifted her up, into me, burying my new tears in the softness of her blonde plaits.

  ‘It’s okay, sweetie. Everybody is just so excited.’ I laughed, through the escalating efforts of more tears. I seemed to be suddenly made of water. If Mum could have been here with us instead of being stuck preparing for the good, the bad and the ugly of parents’ evening, Carter might’ve needed armbands. Anna stepped away as Rohan fed his arms around us, pressing a kiss onto my lips. I wanted him to squeeze me tighter in his arms, this was my favourite place.