by Louise Voss
The midwife smiled at me. She was an Indian lady, large and soft with arms like hams, flabby with love and determinedly forgiving. Just how a midwife should be, I thought. ‘I think she’s had it already – was she the one who came in from the swimming pool? Yes? No, she has. A little girl, fifteen minutes ago. Very quick labour.’
‘Oh! Are they both all right?’
‘Baby’s quite premature, and she has a touch of jaundice. We’re going to incubate her for a while, keep an eye on her. Would you like to see Mum?’
‘Sure, if she’s up to visitors. I’ve got some stuff of hers here. What time is it, anyway?’ I realised I’d left my watch in my bag, and began vaguely to fish about for it among the damp costume and towel.
‘It’s ten o’clock.’
Blimey, I thought, feeling like Cinderella. Better hie me back to my guesthouse pronto, before I’m locked out all night. I decided to stay just long enough to congratulate Ruth, and leave her stuff, and then I’d get a taxi back to the pool and pick up the car.
Ruth was just tottering gingerly, bandy-legged, back from the shower as I was being shown into her room. The air around us smelled earthy, viscous, and it seemed terribly sad that the baby wasn’t there in person, the live trophy from Ruth’s elemental struggle. I loved babies. It would be such a disappointment to leave without seeing it first.
‘Hi. Me again,’ I said, helping Ruth into bed. She smiled at me, her lips trembling with weariness.
‘I can’t believe you’re still here. It’s so good of you, really, I –‘ Her eyes suddenly flooded with tears, which trickled exhaustedly down the sides of her face and onto her pillow.
‘Hey – don’t – please. It’s all going to be fine. Congratulations, by the way. I hear you’ve got a daughter.’
‘Thanks.’ Ruth sniffed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not a crier, normally. I’m just so….knackered.’
‘Was it awful?’ I couldn’t help asking.
‘Hideous. I am never, never going to have sex again. Ever. The pain was unbelievable. I’d have had an epidural only there wasn’t time.’
I made a face. ‘Well, I won’t keep you. You look like you need a sleep. I just wanted to make sure you were OK, and that you got your stuff back.’ I gestured towards her clothes and bag, which I’d left by the door.
‘Stay for a bit, please. I don’t want to be on my own.’ Ruth’s lips were quivering again, but this time I could see that it was born of the humiliation of having to admit weakness, of the need to ask for company. My heart went out to her.
I sat down on the end of the bed, feeling the texture of the white cotton blankets rough under the palms of my hands.
‘So what are you going to call your baby?’
‘I don’t know. What’s your name? Oh, I remember, it’s Emma, isn’t it - oh, sorry, no. I can’t call her Emma. I had a great aunt called Emma; I hated her. She had a moustache and she smelled of wee.’
I laughed. ‘Don’t worry. I’m flattered at the thought, though.’
‘What’s your middle name?’
‘Imogen – but I hate that name. Besides, don’t feel that you – ‘
‘Imogen. Do you know, I like that. Maybe I’ll call her Imogen.’
I looked away, embarrassed and flattered. The conversation petered out.
‘She’s really gorgeous, though. I thought babies came out all squashed and purple, but she didn’t. She looks beautiful already.’
‘I wish I could see her.’
‘Yeah. Well, leave me your address, and, if you fancy it, maybe we could meet up for a coffee or something, once I’m back on my feet?’
I sighed a sigh, which turned into a jaw-splitting yawn. ‘I’d love that. But I don’t live in Nottingham. I live in London.’
Ruth looked askance at me. ‘Don’t tell me you came all this way to go to Marty’s aqua aerobics class.’
‘Actually…. no. But I did come all this way to see Ann Paramor.’
‘Who?’
‘Ann, you know, Ann Paramor who normally takes the class.’
‘Oh – right. I didn’t know that was her surname. Why? If you don’t mind me being nosy, of course.’
I hesitated, then thought, sod it, why not.
‘This might sound kind of weird, but there are five Ann Paramors in the country, and one of them is probably my mother. I was adopted. I found out her name a while ago, and now I’m trying to track her down. I’m staying at a B&B in Lenton Sands, and since she wasn’t at the pool tonight, I’m planning to go to her flat tomorrow. I’ve got her address.’
Ruth looked at me with sympathetic awe. She bit her lip, as if wanting to tell me something, and I immediately knew that I’d hit another brick wall. This wasn’t going to be the right Ann after all.
‘It’s not her, is it?’
Ruth shook her head. ‘I very much doubt it. She looks about twenty-two, and she’s black. Jamaica, I think she’s from. I’m sorry.’
I suddenly felt very, very tired, not least at the thought of how much I still had to do that night before I could collapse into a warm bed with a Jilly Cooper novel. I half felt like asking Ruth if I could kip on the daybed in the corner of her delivery room.
‘Oh well. That’s why I’m doing this – I can rule out another one now.’
Ruth’s eyes were beginning to drift and flutter shut, so I slid off her bed.
‘I really think I’d better go, though. They lock the door of my B&B at eleven. Can I take your address? Even if I don’t live up here, I’d love to keep in touch, and maybe see your baby at some point.’
She nodded. ‘Yeah…me too. Are you on email? We could email each other…’
I rooted around in my bag to find a biro and an old dry-cleaning receipt, on which I wrote down the details Ruth wearily dictated, as well as my own addresses, email and postal, which I tore off the bottom of the receipt and tucked into Ruth’s handbag.
‘So,’ I said, smiling shyly at her. ‘It was a real pleasure to meet you. I’m sorry we didn’t meet sooner.’
‘Selfishly, I’m not,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without you tonight, honestly. I can’t thank you enough for looking after me.’
I made self-effacing blustery noises, and flapped my hand dismissively, feeling ridiculously over-emotional. ‘Bye, then. I hope you’ll be OK. I’m sure you will. If you’re ever in London, look me up, won’t you?’
‘Definitely. Bye, Emma. Thanks again.’
‘Bye.’
I turned at the door to look back, but Ruth was already asleep, cut off from me and her new baby and, mercifully, all the fatigue and stress and anxieties that she still had ahead of her.
Chapter 31
The weirdnesses of the day were far from over. After an uneventful journey by minicab back to my car - which was, thankfully, untampered with - and then another easy drive back to the B&B, I was crunching the Golf’s wheels on the gravel driveway towards the front door with precisely four minutes to spare.
Another car, a smart silver Audi, swept in immediately behind me, but I was too tired to worry about whether I was taking someone else’s parking space. I just switched off the engine and the lights, pulled on the handbrake, and hauled myself and my bag of wet things – including the towel I’d rented from the swimming pool and forgotten to return – out of the car.
‘Hello again,’ said a man’s voice by my right ear as I fumbled with the door.
Oh bugger, I thought. It’s the gorgeous Mr. Tilt. And I probably look as if I’ve been dragged through a bush backwards.
‘Hello.’ I turned and looked up at him properly. He was devastatingly sexy, with skin like melting milk chocolate, and those big calf’s eyes.
‘Been out on the town?’
I laughed, self-consciously. If only he knew. ‘No, not exactly. In fact, not at all. It’s been a very – strange – night.’ I wasn’t sure if it was fatigue or attraction making my words staccato.
He opened the door for me and suddenly we were
standing in the hall, close together, in a soft pool of light from a small table lamp nearby. The dark and quiet of the rest of the house made our presence far too intimate, and I felt nervous energy zing around my stomach.
‘So Mr. Thingy – Gil – presumably hasn’t locked up, then,’ I said, looking around me in an exaggerated movement, as if to say, ‘don’t try anything, buster. The guvnor’ll be along in a minute.’
‘Oh, Mr. Thingy’s usually late.’ The man grinned, as if I’d said something funny. ‘I’ll lock up. There isn’t anybody else coming in tonight. I’m Robert, by the way.’
‘Emma’, I said, thinking, he’s got a nerve. Locking up someone else’s guesthouse. And how did he know there were no more guests coming?
‘So, Emma, I was going to make some hot chocolate and toast. Would you like to join me and tell me about your weird evening?’
I was about to say no and head for the stairs at a crawl, but what I’d mistaken for nervous energy in my stomach gave a long, low, growl, and I realised that I was absolutely ravenous.
‘Yes, please. I’m starving.’
Robert moved down the hallway, casually switching on lights as if he owned the place, before ushering me into a large, pristine kitchen and pointing at a ladder-back chair by a big pine table. ‘Have a seat.’
Salivating at the thought of hot buttered toast, I watched him bustling about, pulling out saucepans and cartons of milk, peeling slices of bread off a loaf in the bread bin, clicking the gas into purple-blue life to heat the milk.
‘You stay here a lot, then.’
‘I’m living here at the moment, until my flat’s ready to move into.’
I almost said ‘wow, that must be expensive’, but stopped myself. It was so rude to comment on other people’s financial arrangements. Instead, I watched with admiration as he strode around the kitchen, unloading the dishwasher and setting out plates and knives. His body looked as if it was constructed of pure muscle, and it made me shiver. Then I thought of Gavin’s lanky, puny frame, and that made me shiver too.
‘So I understand you’re in titanium. What does that mean?’
Spooning hot chocolate into two mugs, Robert stopped mid-scoop. ‘Titanium? As in, the metal titanium? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a TV agent.’
‘Oh. Right.’ Janet must have been mistaken. Cool job, though. “In television” sounded much more glamorous than “in titanium”.
‘What do you do, Emma?’
‘I’m an aromatherapist.’
‘Really? How interesting – do you know, I’ve always wanted to learn massage. It seems like it would be so rewarding. I had regular acupuncture when I had a dodgy back, and that was brilliant too.’
No jokes about massage parlours or Miss Whiplash outfits. No snickers or lewd expressions. Just interest and admiration in his voice. Robert handed me a plate of toast, nutty, brown, and delicious-smelling, a personification of himself.
‘Jam or marmite?’
‘Marmite, thanks.’
The marmite and butter marbled together in an intoxicating swirl of oil and brown, and the toast became slightly damp to the touch. I bit into it, and a drip of melted butter slid sensuously down my chin. Robert saw, and I had an overwhelming urge to beckon him over to lick it off me. I was shocked at how attracted to him I was, but decided it was probably to do with having had sex so recently. Amid long arid spells of celibacy, I hardly gave sex a thought, but the more I had, the more I wanted. I wondered what Gavin was up to tonight.
‘This,’ I said, chewing and wiping the drip off with my finger instead, ‘is absolutely, completely delicious.’
Robert poured milk into the two mugs and stirred it round, releasing chocolatey vapours into the air of the cold night kitchen, twining us together with its warmth and scent.
He came and sat opposite me, pushing a mug in my direction and began to butter his own toast. I noticed his hands, brown, strong, with bitten nails and exaggerated wrinkles at the joints of his fingers. A cricketer’s hands.
‘Do you play cricket?’ I blurted.
‘Well, no, not anymore. Not since school, anyway. Footie’s my game, and squash. Why do you ask?’
I was mortified. ‘You, um, I mean, when I first saw you this morning, I thought you looked like a cricketer.’ How racist did that sound? You’re slightly dark-skinned so I assumed you batted for the West Indies…..oh God.
But Robert just laughed. ‘Yes, I thought that chinos and a cream jumper looked a bit stupid in the middle of winter, too, but by then I was out the door and it was too late to change.’
‘Oh no, I didn’t think you looked stupid, just, you know….’ I was floundering badly, but worse was to come. I took too big a mouthful of hot chocolate, and hiccuped, at top volume.
‘Sorry,’ I said, hiccuping again. ‘Hot drinks often do this to – hic – me.’ I covered my mouth with my hand in embarrassment.
Just then, the kitchen door opened and Janet came in, with her hair in rollers, wearing a dazzlingly white towelling bathrobe and matching slippers, as if she was at a health farm.
‘Ah, it’s you two. Good, you’re both in. I can lock up, then.’
‘All done already,’ said Robert. ‘You can go to bed now. Don’t worry, I’ll clean up in here first.’ To my astonishment he stood up, walked over to Janet, and put his arms around her waist, kissing her lavishly on the side of the neck. She giggled girlishly and pushed him away. ‘Oh, Robbie, you daft ha’porth,’ she said.
I shut my mouth hastily, aware that I was gaping like a moomintroll, and then hiccuped again. Oh please, I thought, don’t tell me I’ve stumbled into some kind of upmarket wife-swapping set-up. He’s her toy-boy. Did Gil know? What if Gil wanted me to…. The prospect of a tryst with Robert was, frankly, very appealing, but I’d never met Gil, and he was, presumably, Janet’s age. I was so busy panicking at the possibility of being propositioned by a sixty-year old B&B proprietor, and hiccuping, that I nearly didn’t hear Robert’s reply as Janet came over and kissed him goodnight.
‘Night then, Mum. Sleep well.’ He looked at me, my dripping toast suspended halfway to my mouth. ‘You thought that I was just a lodger here, didn’t you?’
I nodded, mutely, before we both burst out laughing. ‘I thought you were Mr. Tilt from Birmingham. He’s – hic - in titanium, apparently.’
‘Oh, him! He’s about forty-five, buck teeth, bald as a coot. You wouldn’t fancy him.’
I raised my eyebrows so far that they felt they would slide over the back of my head. The inference was unmistakably ‘but you fancy me, though, don’t you?’ and I didn’t quite know how to take it.
Then I thought, who cared if it was obvious? Yes, I did fancy him. He was utterly gorgeous, and the fact that he seemed to be interested in me too was hugely flattering, even with my chlorine-stringy hair, the ghosts of day-old mascara lurking shadowy beneath my tired eyes, and the involuntary explosions coming from my mouth at regular intervals. Despite all that, I saluted my return to life as a sexual, sensuous being…. well, in a manner of speaking.
Robert evidently realised what he’d said too, and took a long slurp of his hot chocolate to cover his confusion. I stared shamelessly at him, hiccuping. Despite yesterday’s events, it was the first time in years that Gavin hadn’t come into the equation.
‘Right,’ said Robert assertively. ‘Time to get rid of those hiccups. I’ll get you a glass of water and then you have to follow my instructions.’
‘Oh good – hic. I’m really bored of them now. But drinking out of the wrong side of the glass has never done it for me before.’
‘No, it’s not that. This is a much better hiccup cure.’ He handed me a glass of tap water. ‘I’m going to ask you three questions, and no matter what the questions are, you have to reply “yes, Daddy,” and then take a sip of water. OK?’
I frowned at him. ‘Yes Daddy? Well, OK, if you say so. Hic.’
‘Ready? First question; let’s see… Am I the short stop for t
he West Indian cricket team?’
‘Yes, Daddy,’ I said obediently, taking a sip of water. No hiccup.
‘Did you think, for a minute there, that there was something very fishy going on between me and the proprietress of this guesthouse?’
I gave him a hard stare. ‘Yes, Daddy,’ I said reluctantly. Another sip. I could feel an absence in my throat which signified that my hiccups had gone already, but I kept quiet in case I was imagining it.
There was something very odd about addressing somebody as Daddy again after so many years. I closed my eyes briefly and imagined that it really was Dad sitting there trying to cure my hiccups, and the feeling took my breath away.
‘Last question: are you really sorry that you ever set foot in this guest house and do you wish that you were staying in that lovely hotel down the road instead?’
I laughed. ‘Oh yes, Daddy. You have no idea how sorry.’ A third sip of water.
‘Well?’ said Robert, raising his eyebrows. ‘Are they gone?’
I swallowed tentatively, to make sure. ‘Yes. I think they went after the first question. That’s amazing! Does it work every time?’
‘Ninety percent of the time, yes. I think it’s something to do with having to concentrate on answering ‘yes’ to ‘no’ questions, and then taking the sips of water.’
I smiled at him. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
We sat in warm silence for a few minutes, until something occurred to me.
‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but….are you adopted? Being a different colour to your mum, and all.’ I winced, thinking that just bringing it up had made me sound even more of a racist.
‘No, I’m not adopted. You obviously haven’t met my dad yet, then?’
I shook my head.
‘He’s Trinidadian. So’s mum, but as you can see, she’s white. I was born there, but we all moved to England when I was seven.’
‘Oh, right. Sorry, that sounded so nosy, didn’t it? I only asked because I am – adopted, as well as nosy – and other people’s families kind of intrigue me. That’s why I’m here, actually. I’m looking for my birthmother, and I thought she might live around the corner. But it turns out it’s not her after all.’