by Vivien Brown
James had a thin scar too, just a small one, almost faded, to the left of his mouth, one that she liked to touch whenever his face came close enough to kiss. She didn’t know where the scar had come from, but she was sure it was the result of some selfless heroic act. Rescuing a child who’d fallen into the river, or a frightened cat from a tree, perhaps. Yes, she liked the idea of the cat. A man should be kind to animals. It said a lot. The mental image of James that sprang up, his long legs scaling the tree, his strong arms encircling the poor animal as the branches scratched and dug into the skin of his handsome face, etched itself indelibly into her memory as if she’d seen it all happening right in front of her eyes. Ah, James! If only …
She hopped off the bus, pulled her scarf around her ears and walked the last quarter of a mile home, wishing she’d worn a more sensible pair of shoes as she stepped into yet another puddle she hadn’t noticed was there. The house would be empty and, after a quick shower, she would have plenty of time to grab her laptop and start researching training courses and job possibilities before her teatime shift. It would have to be something that paid as she trained, though. She couldn’t expect her dad to fund her studies. Not that he could afford to anyway, with the money he still contributed towards the household bills and the rent on his own flat to pay. She wished, not for the first time, that he hadn’t left. Okay, so it was obvious that things weren’t right between him and Mum, and hadn’t been for a long time. Hardly surprising, considering what had happened, but that was years ago and they’d got by, hadn’t they? For a long time, they’d chugged along, been a family, albeit an unconventional one.
The house felt chilly. October had arrived with a vengeance, violent winds and sheets of driving rain pounding at the windows overnight and wiping out the last of the flowers in the garden. It was calmer now, just the odd fallen branch lying on the lawn and a fence panel swaying precariously between its posts as if it might come flopping down at any minute, but winter was definitely on its way.
At least there was Natalie’s wedding to look forward to. On a whim she ran up the stairs and pulled her bridesmaid’s dress out of the wardrobe. It was pink, but not quite the bold fuchsia pink Beth had been after to match her favourite shoes. Natalie had put her foot down there, although that was probably not quite the right phrase to use in Natalie’s case. But it was her wedding, after all, and with Beth and Jenny finally being asked to be bridesmaids, fighting over colours would probably have been a step too far and could well have made Natalie change her mind again, and neither of them had wanted to take that risk. So, a paler, softer pink it was and, to placate Beth, new shoes to match, courtesy of the lovely Phil and his ever-open wallet.
Jenny stepped out of her work clothes and into the dress, reaching behind her and sliding the zip up to the top. It was not a traditional bridesmaid style, more of a party dress, with its simple lines, knee-length hem and off-the-shoulder neckline, but that was good. It meant it was a dress she could wear again. To have fun in, go clubbing, dancing …
She pulled the shoebox out from under her bed, parted the tissue paper to reveal her new shoes, slipped them on and stepped across the hall, going into Beth’s room so she could look at herself in the full-length mirror. Turning from one side to the other, she was pleased with what she saw. Lifting her arms, she did a little self-conscious twirl, turning full circle, and then did it again, more boldly, laughing to herself, knowing there was nobody there to see. Yes, the dress would be great for dancing. She swayed into the faltering not-quite-right steps of a waltz and closed her eyes, listening to the music only she could hear, her feet moving to the rhythm of a hundred violins, wondering if somewhere in heaven Mr Jenkins might, at this very moment, be dancing with his beloved Vera. Now, if only James were here …
She was so wrapped up in her fantasy world that she didn’t hear the front door opening at first, and wasn’t aware that anyone had come in until the heavy thump of wheels as they rebounded off the hall walls brought her back to reality. Then the front door slammed shut so loudly it sounded like the glass might break.
‘Nat?’ She ran out onto the landing, her heart racing and looked down. ‘Is that you? What’s going on?’
When there was no answer, she kicked her shoes off and ran down the stairs. ‘Nat? Nat, where are you?’
The kitchen door was open and her sister was there, with her back to her, her wheelchair rammed up against the table. She was slumped forward with her arms outstretched on the table and her head down on top of them, great sobs making her shoulders heave up and down.
‘Nat? Oh, my God, whatever’s happened? Are you all right?’
Chapter 25
Kate, 1987–1988
I was still working at the bank, still serving customers at the counter. I’d long since passed up the opportunity to move up the career ladder. It would have meant moving around between different branches, taking exams, taking charge, and it just wasn’t me. I liked the face-to-face stuff, talking to customers, handling the money, getting to go home at regular hours without the worries that a pile of outstanding paperwork or a last-minute staffing crisis can cause. I’d seen the way Dan was and I didn’t want that for me.
Linda was long gone. She’d married, given up work, had a couple of kids in quick succession, as easy as shelling peas, got a big house and a dog. It wouldn’t be totally accurate to say I was jealous, but it had put a strain on our friendship, her having babies so easily while I was struggling, and I didn’t see her often.
Mum and Trevor had married without fuss, just a handful of people gathered together at the register office and a meal at a posh hotel. Of course, Dan and I had been there, but any idea of me standing behind her in a bridesmaid dress had been quietly pushed aside, and I was glad of the chance to sit throughout the ceremony, feeling strangely weepy, without even being allowed a drop of alcohol to put me in the party mood.
‘It’s time to let old grudges go,’ Dan whispered as we waited in line to hug the new Mrs Brookfield and shake the groom’s hand, so I plastered on a smile and tried to do just that. Mum looked happy enough, in a new cream-coloured suit and clutching her bouquet of small pink roses, hanging on to Trevor’s hand in all the photographs, and I wanted things to work out well for her. I really did.
‘I never told you before,’ Dan said later, when we’d slipped away after the dessert and were back at home, my feet up on the sofa and Dan still picking bits of confetti out of my hair. ‘But it’s time you knew. Where the money came from, for the treatment …’
‘But that was your parents, wasn’t it? I assumed …’
‘No, Kate. It wasn’t. He didn’t want me to say, didn’t want you to think he was trying to bribe you or something, or worse still for you to throw it back in his face, but now he’s family, I think you should know. It was Trevor.’
‘Trevor? Trevor loaned us the money for the IVF?’
‘Not loaned, Kate. Gave. He’s a good bloke. Really, he is.’
‘Oh.’ I didn’t know what to say. Trevor? I’d never even tried to hide how I felt about him, always keeping him at arm’s length, hoping he might go away again, the man who had tried and failed to take Dad’s place. Not that anyone could.
‘He sold his own flat when he moved in with your mum. See, he wasn’t just after a roof over his head at all. He already had one but chose to give it up to be with her. Not that you ever asked, or cared, you were so quick to judge. So, not quite the leech you’ve made him out to be.’
‘Oh,’ I said again, feeling confused, and more than a little ashamed.
‘So he’s had the money from the flat sale tucked away for a while. He told me he wanted to put it to good use, and that he knew helping your mum to become a granny would make her happy. And that would make him happy.’
‘But, how …? Dan, I’m amazed you even asked him.’
‘I didn’t have to. He came to me. Wanted it to be our secret. Even your mum doesn’t know. So there’s no need to say anything. This stays between us, okay
? But … well, go easy on him, eh? He desperately wants to be accepted as part of the family, and I think he’s earned that right, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘There’s no suppose about it, Kate. He’s married to your mum now. He’s family, whether you like it or not.’
‘She did look lovely, didn’t she?’
‘She did. But then, maybe that’s what love does for a person, eh?’
‘And do you love me, Dan Campbell?’
‘Of course I do, you daft thing.’ He reached across and pulled my face towards him for a kiss. ‘Come here and let me show you how much. And, by the way, you look lovely too.’
‘But I’m all fat and bloated.’
‘No, Kate. That’s not fat.’ He undid the tiny buttons down the front of my dress and lay his hand on the warm skin of my belly. ‘That’s babies. Our babies. And believe me, you’ve never looked lovelier …’
***
We spent that Christmas down in Somerset, with me being fussed over by Dan’s mum as if I was the most precious, fragile thing. It quite surprised me, with them being farming people and dealing with animal births all the time. I had expected Molly Campbell to be all practical and gung-ho and wreathed in calm, but I guess it’s different when the impending birth is that of your own grandchildren, and being back there, in that house, was probably making all of us remember the way I’d lost the last one.
‘I wonder what we would have called her?’ Dan said, whispering into my hair as we lay spooned as usual in the old lumpy bed. How had he known what I had been thinking about, lying there in the dark?
‘Apart from Baby Blob, you mean? I don’t know. We did have a sort of list, didn’t we? I remember that Amanda was on it.’
‘And I remember how much I hated that name! It’s probably time we started making a list again, isn’t it? And this time we have to choose four names we both like. It won’t be easy!’
‘I still like Amanda …’
‘I’d better hope for boys then. It might be the only way to dissuade you.’
‘God, no! Not all boys, please. I’ll give up the name if you promise me at least one girl.’
‘I can’t promise you anything, sweetheart. I only wish I could.’ He nuzzled his face into the back of my neck, and if it hadn’t been for my feelings of utter exhaustion I would have turned around right then and asked for a whole lot more.
‘But I do quite like Elizabeth,’ he said, clearly oblivious to the tingling feeling running straight down to the places only he knew how to reach. ‘You know, like the Queen.’
‘Oh, Dan, you are so … what’s the word? Traditional? But it’s an okay name, I suppose. Although I’d probably prefer to shorten it. Maybe Beth?’
‘Beth … Yes, I like it. Okay, that’s one down and three to go.’
He ran his hand over my bump and back up to my breast, where it cupped me gently for a while before falling still, his gentle snores drifting into the silence of the room. I think he was as shattered as I was.
We stayed a few days. Kind though Dan’s family were, it didn’t feel like home and I was glad to leave, to get back to my own routine, my own bed, and a kind of normality I knew couldn’t last. My growing girth was making that abundantly clear.
I enjoyed work but, as the weeks passed, I knew I couldn’t keep it up for much longer. It was mainly the tiredness, dragging me down into the depths of the sofa as soon as I got home, and usually into bed before nine. And the winter weather wasn’t helping, with me so afraid I’d slip on an icy pavement at any minute and do myself, or the babies, damage, that I was getting more and more scared to step outside on my own. Yet Dan seemed to have found a new lease of life, a sort of frantic energy that had him painting both spare rooms, scouring second-hand shops for some of the baby things we could never afford new, juggling with columns of figures and making phone calls like there was no tomorrow.
‘Have you ever heard of a company called Goo Goo?’ he asked, rushing in from work one evening with his excited face on.
I hadn’t been long home myself, and was still trying to decide whether to make some dinner or just flop for a while first. ‘Sounds like something a baby would say. Goo goo, ga ga …’
‘Exactly! A contented baby. That’s probably why they chose the name. They’re a baby food company. The one with those TV adverts where a big ginger cat jumps up and steals the food, remember?’
‘Oh, yeah, I know. I always thought that was a stupid ad. What’s a cat got to do with baby food? We don’t have ads with babies helping themselves to a bowl of Whiskas, do we?’
‘No, we don’t. And it’s obvious others must feel the same, because they’re thinking of changing their image. Looking for a new advertising angle. Concentrating on actual babies this time.’
‘And?’
‘And they quite like the idea of using four babies. Our babies …’
‘Really? But they haven’t even been born yet, Dan. And babies don’t start eating baby food for months, do they?’
‘They’re happy to wait. It takes a while to get a campaign together, apparently, and the cat thing still has a while to run. And they say we’re just what they’re looking for. First-time parents, expecting a lot more than we bargained for, everything new and worrying, needing a reliable brand we can feel confident about, to show us how to feed our babies … They want us, Kate. Or they’ve as good as said they do, all bar signing on the dotted line.’
‘Oh. Wow! You really did mean it when you talked about our own little mini set of Waltons and getting them on the telly, didn’t you?’
‘Of course. We have to find ways of financing this whole thing. So we can give them the best life we can. And you haven’t heard the best bit yet.’
‘Which is?’
‘How much they’re willing to pay. And, guess what? If they’re all the same sex, we get a bonus!’
‘I don’t want them all to be the same sex. Especially if it’s boys …’
‘Well, it’s too late to do much about that now, isn’t it? They are what they are. But, Kate, listen, we’re talking thousands here. Thousands! Our family could become the new faces of Goo Goo. You know, on TV, in magazines, maybe even have our picture on the jars. Or the kids’ pictures, anyway. And Goo Goo food is just part of a much bigger company. They’ve got interests in sterilising equipment, feeding bottles, highchairs – you name it. Just think, Kate, if this works out we could get free stuff, all the jars of baby food we’ll ever need. And get paid!’
I gave up on the idea of cooking and opted for the sofa, pulling up my jumper, folding my hands over my balloon-like belly and waiting for the tiny flickers I’d started to feel lately, that meant, despite their limited space, that they were beginning to kick.
‘Hello in there,’ I said, my voice dropping down to a whisper as I rubbed gently over the bump. ‘Did you hear that? You’re going to be famous.’ I looked back up at Dan. ‘That’s not what’s really important, though, is it? All I really want is for them to be healthy. And to be happy.’
‘Of course.’ Dan knelt down on the carpet beside me and placed his hands over mine. ‘But having money helps.’
***
I spent three weeks in bed, in the end. The doctors had warned me it was likely, and as soon as my blood pressure went sky-high, my skin as taut as the surface of a drum, and my ankles couldn’t take the strain any more, they whisked me into hospital and kept me there.
‘It’s really too early, but the ways things are, you could go into labour any day, and you will unless we try to prevent that from happening. The important thing now is that you hang onto them as long as possible,’ I was told. ‘Quads rarely go beyond thirty-one weeks, and that’s if you’re lucky. It could be sooner, but they don’t have a lot of room in there, and their growth is going to start slowing down now. They will be small, we can’t avoid that, but every day inside is another day for them to grow just a little bit bigger and stronger.’
I liked the sound of that, hav
ing bigger, stronger babies, so I did as I was told. No unnecessary strain, no stress, no moving about overdoing things. I ate my meals in bed, read books, slept a lot, made friends with the other patients as they came and went, got up only to go to the toilet or to lie in a warm bath, and just waited.
I felt like a fraud. Not ill. Not incapable. Just lying there, doing nothing, counting off the days, enjoying the calm before the storm. Mum came in, of course. Fussing around me, bringing fruit and magazines, and little knitted bootees, all matching, all white. Sometimes Trevor was there too, hovering behind her, going off to fetch cups of tea, clearly feeling a bit awkward, like a spare part only invited along because he was the one with the car she needed to transport her there and back. I didn’t say it but I was glad he was there, not just for Mum but so he could see the results of his generosity, the day coming ever nearer when he would get to see the children he had helped to create. I felt I should thank him, but Dan had told me to say nothing, so I didn’t. It might take a while for me to change the way I had felt about Trevor for so long, but I was getting there, slowly.
***
We made it to twenty-nine weeks and six days. The babies couldn’t wait any longer. They were ready, but I wasn’t. I’d never been so scared as I was that day, being wheeled along a long white corridor, seeing Dan all gowned up, with just his eyes, big and terrified, showing above his mask.
I’d known all along that it would have to be a Caesarean birth. The easiest, quickest, safest way of getting them out into the world. A team of doctors and nurses and all kinds of specialists gathered around me, waiting to grab each one as soon as it emerged, check it, treat it, whisk it away. I’d looked at the books, seen just how tiny a foetus was at that stage, how underdeveloped it was, knew just how many things could go wrong. And I had four to worry about.
I didn’t feel a thing as they sliced me open. Not in the womb area, anyway. Just sick. Sick with nerves and a chilling, almost paralysing, fear.
Beth came first. Through my groggy half-there state, I managed a watery smile as they pulled her out and held her up, very briefly, all small and slimy, above the barrier built to keep me away from watching the gorier end of the action. I’d wanted at least one girl, and here she was. ‘Three pounds exactly,’ someone said, before she was taken away, before I’d even heard her cry.