by Stella Duffy
“Yeah, and you’re a liar.”
“Well, she’s very lovely when she’s asleep.”
“True, but you don’t even have a tiny hankering to take on some new work?”
“No, not yet. When Molly goes back to the hospital, I’ll be prime carer. That’s plenty for now.”
“She’d never let you work now anyway, she’s so bloody careful of you, always has been, it’s why she’s so snippy with me. Scared I might hurt you again. Or worse … ” Carrie pouted … “not hurt you?”
Saz laughed. “God, Carrie, I might just need more than five hours sleep a night for your suggestive leer to excite anything in me ever again.”
“Right. So you’re still not shagging?”
“Piss off. It’s none of your business. And anyway, Moll’s grieving, it’s been incredibly hard for her. For me too.”
“Of course it has. Her father’s dead, she had a bloody hard time with you being hurt, now she wants to share her baby with someone who’s not here any more. It’s fucking horrible.” Carrie knelt, picked up her bag, planted a careful kiss on Matilda’s head and a less gentle one on Saz’s lips, “And you’re still not shagging.”
“We are!”
Carrie just looked. And grinned.
Saz corrected herself, “Occasionally.”
“Yes, darling, you join in the new parents chorus and I’ll rush off home. Because while I may not have the current must-have accessory for today’s lesbian about town … ”
“What’s that?”
“A baby, Saz.”
“Cynic. That is no way to talk about your beloved goddaughter.”
“Guard-daughter. Don’t do God. Anyway, I may be baby-free, but I am at least getting a shag with fine regularity. So I’ll just go home and get my share. And maybe yours while I’m at it.”
Carrie left without divulging any further details of her latest conquest – “at least until I see if it’s going to last the week” – and Saz moved inside. Baby food, bath, lullabies, and cup of tea. Perfectly content.
FIVE
When the fall happened, when the last push allowed the fall to happen, I wasn’t able to speak then. Couldn’t say a word. I didn’t know who I could tell anyway. Who’d believe me?
But now those words want to be spoken, they are ready to be heard – and I’m ready to let them out. I’m so ready.
Are you?
SIX
Four months after the funeral, Molly was nearing the end of her maternity leave, happy to be at home with Saz and Matilda, excited by their changing life, and growing into who she might be as a mother. And every now and then she was wrenched back to a place where Asmita packed picnic baskets and Ian skipped a shift so they could take the pre-school Molly out for lunch and silly songs by the river. Picnic treats and river songs she wanted to offer her own daughter in time but wasn’t sure she knew the recipe, songs she wanted to teach Matilda, songs she was scared she didn’t know all the words for and now could never ask. Every good picture, welcome picture, intercut with Ian lying waxy in the coffin.
Another month and Molly went back to work. Three days a week at first, building to fulltime after a fortnight. On the first day she cried all the way to the hospital, cared for other people’s children, soothed panicking parents and felt like the worst mother in the world. She rushed home and was appalled that Matilda hadn’t seemed to notice her absence. Talking to the others at work she found they all felt the same. And not just the mothers. The fathers, the carers, the brothers and sisters, lovers and alone, everyone walking around with a head full of the problems of work, and simultaneously eaten up with the possibilities of home. All these people, in love, grieving, worrying over unpaid bills, dreaming of holidays to come – it was astonishing they could function at all, let alone behave as if they actually deserved the status the white coat and blue uniforms seemed to allow them. And yet they all did. Molly would too.
Molly went to visit Asmita on the last of her long weekends before starting full time, to be with her mother, and to scatter the ashes of her father. Just the two of them, at Asmita’s request. And while Molly wanted Saz with her for support, Saz thought she understood Asmita’s reasoning.
“Come on, I’ll make you coffee.”
“Piss off, if it’s going to be a lecture I’ll have wine, thanks.”
They walked into the kitchen, Saz leading, pulling her partner on, Molly’s arms around Saz’s waist, one foot, two foot, forward. Saz poured the wine, emptied a bag of tortilla chips into a bowl, pulled the remains of a tub of hummus from the back of the fridge.
“Is this all right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Sniff it.”
Saz did. “It’ll do.”
They ate and drank and then Saz went on, “Perhaps having all of us there just rubs it in for your ma, we spend the day together, visit their friends, and then the three of us go to bed, and Asmita has to go to her bedroom alone. There is a chance we make her feel worse as well as better.”
Molly drank down half her glass of wine, poured more. “Oh God, I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You don’t have to. You’re dealing with your own feelings. But it’s bad for her too, maybe worse for her.” Molly was quiet then, holding her glass, swirling the deep red liquid, Saz scared she’d said too much. “Babe? I’m sorry, I … ”
“No. I’m sure you’re right, of course it’s harder for her.”
“Well, it’s different anyway. And it might be really good for the two of you to have some time to yourselves.”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure I even know how to be with her by myself. Dad was always there. I know he told her everything, but I mostly told him first. He was my mate.”
Saz thought of her own parents, the constant presence since their retirement of one with the other, how much of her experience with both parents was mediated through her older sister Cassie. “I suppose it’s like a new relationship between you and Asmita. I’m sorry it’s so hard, Moll.”
“Me too. Is there another bottle?”
Saz looked at the clock; they’d had a busy day with visiting dads and a long walk in the park, Matilda’s afternoon sleep had been sketchy at best. If they were lucky and her current pattern held fast for another night she would give them a good solid break until six or even seven the next morning. “Yeah. There is.”
A while later they got up from the kitchen table, not a little drunk, Molly resolved to make every effort with her mother, allow Asmita to have her own grief, allow herself her own grief. She was easier now, calmed after a good ten minutes alternating laughter and shock at Saz’s new story about Carrie’s latest non-monogamous girlfriend and a minor celebrity from Eastenders. At the door Saz pulled Molly back and they kissed against the wall, kissed with eager mouths and ready hands and twisting legs. Kissed, bodies pressed tight together, pushing out the pain and tiredness and letting in some of the desire that the difficulties of the last few months had kept at bay. Saz’s hands inside Molly’s clothes, fingers on skin, blood pulsing faster, eager mouths pushing and biting. Then Matilda began to wail from her boxroom at the end of the hall and Saz burst out laughing. “That child has perfect timing.”
When Matilda was pacified and they were standing beside her cot in the tiny room, Saz whispered, “What do you think when you look at her?”
Molly shook her head. “Everything. How I want to protect her, how I never want her to get bullied for her skin colour or her lezz mothers or because she has sticky-out ears.”
“She doesn’t have sticky-out ears.”
“Not yet, who knows what she’ll look like in six months time? But you know what I mean. I got such a hard time when I was little, being the only brown kid where we lived. I never want that for her.”
“She’ll get a hard time for some reason. Everyone does.”
“I know. I just want to save her from it.”
“Me too.”
“And I feel guilty that I’m not here with her all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, often. But I’m also really proud to be providing for you and her, taking care. I still find it incredible that she came from us. I take it for granted for a day or so and then catch myself looking at her and realise all over again how amazing it is, that we really did make her together.”
“With Chris.”
“Sure, the three of us. Fifteen years ago that would have been unheard of. All those statistics and failures and it might never have worked.”
“It mostly doesn’t.”
“Exactly. But it did for us. We got what we wanted.”
“We’re lucky.”
“Sometimes.”
Quiet then, the sound of Matilda in her cot, the soft regular in and out of her sleeping breath, they left the room, walked down the dark hall, arms round each other.
“I love you, Moll.”
“That’s good.”
“But it doesn’t make it better, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
Saz fell asleep after Molly. Carrie was right, they weren’t having sex. Not much anyway. Baby tiredness combined with grief-exhaustion had made it hard, sleep the easier option once they were close to their sheets. But she didn’t know that it mattered really, maybe later, maybe after a while. For now there was Matilda snuffling in her room down the hall and Molly’s warm naked body beside her and Saz was aware of how precarious the balance was. Hugely grateful she had her perfect little family, a small thing like a spasmodic sex life was the last thing she intended to worry about, not yet, anyway. Besides that, she was fairly fucking knackered herself.
SEVEN
Of course it wasn’t just her they picked on, that easy-girl, their victim-girl. It never was simply a case of finding an outsider to harass. There were always internecine cracks as well, in-group pain. Daniel once told Will he thought it was how they knew they were a group that really worked, because they checked out their tactics from the inside first. This was after they’d spent the evening mocking Sally for some stupid thing she’d said, some late-night German movie she hadn’t understood. Sally didn’t always get the things the guys were into, neither did Andrea, but Andrea wasn’t stupid enough to say so. Nor was Sally a second time.
Sally realised something was up when she came into the room. The other four were already there. Will was sitting on the brown leather sofa, Andrea seated on his lap, her thin legs twisted around his. He was holding her around the waist, one long-fingered hand spilling down her jeans, down inside the front of her jeans. Will Gallagher and Andrea Browne were the king and queen of fucking, and they liked to make sure that everyone knew it. Sally walked into the room and noted the look of just-made decision on the faces smiling back at her. In Daniel’s case it was more of a smirk than a smile, but then his skin was so bad at the moment Sally wondered if he could smile without it hurting. She started to say something along those lines and then thought better of it. She was late, best she shut her mouth. Ewan leaned against the door frame, stepped aside to let her in and then moved back, pushing the door closed. This was an ordinary Saturday afternoon, his father getting on with some paperwork, his mother making cheese scones in the kitchen, and Ewan well knew that noise travelled fastest when his mother’s ears were forced to listen hard. Daniel was sitting on the thick-carpeted floor, his back to Sally and to the door, his erupting face now turned up to Andrea and Will.
It was nearly Sally’s sixteenth birthday. This week, Thursday. She knew what they must have been talking about, knew the question she had missed, but not its answer. She had meant to be here on time, had intended to be part of the conversation from the beginning, but there had been an argument at home and her sister was being a bloody bitch yet-a-fucking-gain and then her Dad had thrown down his paper and yelled at them both and it had taken ages to get here, waiting for a bus in grey spring drizzle, and now, pissed off and damp, she had arrived. Red-faced and late. Too late.
There was an air in the room, she knew it. They all knew it. Ewan’s scone-baking mother knew it too and turned down the kitchen radio to its lowest level, but too late for the closed door. Excitement and a little fear churned into the mix in the sitting room, waiting room.
“I’m sorry I’m late.”
“Doesn’t matter … ”
“My sister is such a fucking pig.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“No, but I wanted to be here.”
“You were meant to be here.”
“I know, that’s why I’m saying sorry, all right?”
“Sure.”
“I did mean to be here for the talk.”
“The talk?”
“Yeah, you know … you said, Will said … about me … ”
“Oooh,” Andrea mocking, high tone, wounded little girl voice, exaggerated version of the London-edges accent Sally always tried to tone down around Andrea, Ewan’s mother, all those other women who spoke low and slow and posh. “About me, Will said you were going to talk about me, don’t you all want to talk about me? Isn’t everyone interested in talking about me? Let’s all talk about Sally, can we just talk about Sally for another little bit? Please? Daniel? Will? Ewan? Don’t you all want to talk about Sally?”
This was not new. Sally knew how to take this, be here, listen to Andrea. She was not the victim girl, their victim girl. Not usually anyway, not for years now, not since she’d made her choice plain and clear, to be their friend. Though maybe she was today, maybe now with Andrea having a go. Shit bloody day already and not even lunchtime yet. First her sister and then Andrea bloody Browne, fucking typical. Sally knew exactly what their usual victim did to reinforce this behaviour, they all understood the pattern. It was her passivity that encouraged them, she knew it, had seen it, so now she did the opposite, Sally bit back, hit out.
“Fuck off, Andy. My sister has been enough of a cunt today, you don’t need to add to it.” Talking with more mouth than she felt. Saw it was working. Daniel turned his head to face the group, a grin at the corner of his cold-sore mouth. Will nodded approval from the settee, his fingers still further down the front of Andrea’s jeans.
Sally continued with her late-arrival explanation, “I’m only saying sorry that I wasn’t here sooner. We said we’d talk about my birthday. And somehow,” turning then to Ewan behind her, pointing a finger at his hand on the doorknob, “judging by where Ewan’s standing, the way he clearly doesn’t want his mum to hear what we’re saying, I’m guessing you’ve already decided on my birthday treat without me, OK, Andrea? So you have been talking about me, am I right?”
Andrea scowled, removed Will’s prying hand with a sigh and slid off his lap, Ewan left the door and joined Daniel on the floor. Daniel picked the scab on his lip, the drying cold sore he could not leave alone. He always picked at it when he wanted to be the one talking and Will was holding court. The scab stayed weeping and unhealed.
Will smiled, pushed Andrea away to the other end of the settee and patted the cushion beside him. “Yes, we have. Now stop being so rude to the lovely Andy and come and listen to my story.”
Sally crossed to sit between them, picked over the boys on the floor and squeezed into the too-small space left for her on the settee, Andrea seething to her left, Will expansive to her right. Her stomach was tight and tense and Sally thought she might throw up. Would throw up, but she hadn’t eaten since last night, yesterday afternoon actually, thinner in the morning if she didn’t eat after five, thinner for their usual Saturday morning at Ewan place’s if she didn’t eat at all. Never as thin as Andrea Browne though, never quite perfect-girl thin, with her narrow hips and long legs and yet those astonishing still-rounded breasts. Sally sighed inside, brought herself back here and now. This was not the time, yet again, to compare her own body unfavourably with Andrea Browne’s. Andrea was no doubt more than ready to do that all by herself.
Will put his arm around Sally’s shoulder and whispering, so that the others had to strain to hear, he began to explain the plan.
&nb
sp; EIGHT
Saz’s few days alone with Matilda were easy. The little girl was on good form, laughing and playing and pulling herself forward in a one-legged crawl – catalogue daughter designed to make the child-free yearn for their own, and the already-parenting wonder if now wasn’t the perfect time to make yet another. Catalogue mother kidding herself the sleepless nights were all in the past and there were no more to come. Not even when Matilda reached sweet suffering sixteen. Or nine, if the pseudo-It-Girl behaviour of her middle niece was anything to go by.
Saz spent the Saturday afternoon and night at her own parents’ house, being spoiled and waited on. With four other grandchildren well beyond the cute baby stage, Saz’s parents were delighted to welcome another small one into their home, take her out to the park, laugh with her for half an hour at a time. Delighted to welcome, and not a little relieved when Saz and Matilda left them in peace, and the prized ornaments and sharp corners could be restored to their rightful places. Despite their best efforts, it had always been obvious that Patrick and Hazel were more than content with each other for company. Enjoying the silence in the lounge, the cooking shuffle coming from the kitchen, breathing in the scent of roasting lamb, Saz’s father flicked through the Sunday papers to the weekend’s hot story of yet another famous actor and his third young wife having a new baby in the actor’s early seventies. He shook his head in horror at the thought of a full-time baby in his own life, checked the clock and wondered if there wasn’t time for them to pop out for a quick drink
before lunch. Pint of bitter, brandy and lemonade, packet of salt and vinegar to share. He put down the paper and went to get Hazel’s coat.
Saz took Matilda to lunch with Chris and Marc, where the little girl was indulged by her fathers, and Saz was given a pretty good time too. Then, late afternoon, full of food and just-within-the-limit wine, mother and baby drove home across north London, Matilda as ever soothed and sleeping with the motion of the car. Saz enjoyed the time to herself, the flat for just her and Matilda. Molly had always worked long hours, Ute often shift work, ever since they first met, and Saz recognised a growing sense of loss at never having their flat to herself any more. Not that she’d ever tell Molly. Or Matilda. Even now, like her own parents, she was setting limits on the truths she’d tell her child. By the time the early autumn sun was setting, with Matilda skilfully removed from her car seat in one swift and only slightly-grizzling movement and now fast asleep in her own cot, it was almost like the old days, Saz’s own time, and just herself to please. Which she did by settling down for a night in front of the TV with takeaway pizza and a bottle of diet coke.