by Julia Green
‘Isn’t it a lovely day? At last!’ Colleen called out.
Colleen looked stunning in a sea-green sleeveless dress. ‘Charity shop,’ she told Mia. ‘Pure silk. Two quid. Imagine giving it away!’
‘Perhaps they were too fat for it or something. Anyway, good thing they did. You look amazing.’
Mia felt hot and dowdy suddenly in her T-shirt and jeans.
‘I wish now I’d said I’d go to your place, if it’s by the sea. It’s too nice to be in a town today,’ Colleen said.
‘We could still go there if you want. Get the bus.’
‘How much?’
‘One-sixty return.’
Colleen rummaged through her purse, counting up change.
Mia thought guiltily of the money she’d spent on Friday with Becky. Nearly sixty pounds.
‘How will we get the pram on?’ Colleen asked.
‘Doesn’t it fold up?’
They struggled with it, trying to work out how to fold the rusty metal frame. In the end they gave up.
‘I’ll take it back home and swap it for the sling thing I’ve got instead. That’ll be much easier.’
‘I’ll come with you, then I’ll know where you live.’
It was a tall, gloomy house, not far from the college where Becky was going to do her Textiles course in September.
‘I know it’s ugly. It’s all right inside. It’s been divided up into flats,’ Colleen explained. ‘Vicky told us about it, when I needed somewhere to stay when Mum had to move on and I wasn’t well. It’s just temporary, till she can have us again.’
Mia held Isaac for her while she went in with the pram. She sat down on the low wall outside, in the concreted front yard. The baby felt strange in her arms. Smaller, lighter, sort of stiff and unyielding. She hoped he wouldn’t cry.
Colleen reappeared, flourishing a blue corduroy baby sling. It looked like something out of the ark, the sort of sling Mia’s mother might have used way back. But it worked all right, once they’d managed to tie the baby in properly, fasten the long ties round Colleen’s back.
‘It’ll crease your dress up,’ Mia said. ‘But never mind. It’s much better than a pram.’
Colleen looked out of the bus window all the way to Whitecross, noticing things, asking questions. She held Isaac up at the window, too, but he was focused on his mother’s face; he didn’t know yet about looking out.
They stepped off the bus at Whitecross into stillness, heat. The tarmac shimmered.
‘Shall I show you the beach first, or do you want to go straight to the house?’
‘Oh, the beach, yes! Zak can see the sea for the first time!’
‘Zak?’
‘Isaac –. Zak.’
‘Right. I get it. It’s nice, suits him.’
Mia frowned as she bumped her buggy along the pebbles. She had to balance Kai against her shoulder with one hand, drag the buggy behind her with the other. He cried every time she tried to put him down in it. Served her right, didn’t it? Colleen skipped along, her baby lolling in the sling.
It was one of those perfect May days. The early haze over the water had dissolved; now a clear sky stretched, a pale blue dome, over silk-smooth sea. Tiny waves rippled, broke, frothed on to the pebbles, slid back.
Colleen settled herself down on a pile of larger stones, baby on lap, transfixed. ‘So beautiful. So bright!’
Anyone would think she’d never seen the sea before. But, Mia realized, Colleen was seeing everything anew, through Isaac’s eyes. It turned everything into a miracle. Even this tatty strip of pebbles littered with rubbish washed up by the tide.
Mia sat down next to Colleen, lifted her T-shirt so Kai could feed, began to relax. When both babies finally fell asleep, they rigged up shade for them with a blanket draped over the buggy. They scooped out a nest in the pebbles and lined it with another blanket for the babies to lie on.
‘Like those birds,’ Mia said, ‘that lay their eggs right on the pebbles.’
‘Whose name you don’t know,’ Colleen teased.
‘No. Although Will would. Kai’s dad. We might bump into him, even. Then you can ask for yourself.’
It was possible, Mia thought. She wondered what he’d make of Colleen. Wished she was wearing something more exciting. She was much too hot, even with the legs of her jeans rolled up.
Mia took off her trainers, hobbled down to the edge of the water and cooled off in the shallows.
‘I can do this, though, better even than Will.’ Mia showed off, skimming flat stones. Six in a row!
‘Show me how,’ Colleen demanded. She learned fast, was determined. She practised again and again, till she could do it, too. ‘We can teach the babies, when they’re bigger.’
‘You keep saying that. What we can do when they’re bigger.’
‘Well, I like thinking about it. How it’s going to be.’
Mia didn’t want to think about anything in the future. There was just here, now. Her head ached when anyone said something about the future.
‘Doesn’t Kai look pale next to Zak?’ she said instead. ‘Like he needs more sun on him.’
‘He’s bigger, though, already. Even though he’s younger.’
‘That’s because he’s so greedy. He still feeds all the time. Even in the night. Except for last night. He slept all the night, till five thirty.’
‘Lucky you.’
They lay back on the pebbles, eyes shut against the sun. The sea shooshed and sucked and Mia felt her breathing slowing, going in time with the rhythm of the waves. In. Out.
They ate their lunch outside in the garden. Mia made a salad, and heated up some pizza from the night before, and spread a rug out on the grass under the ash tree. Colleen lay on her back, with Zak on her tummy, staring up through the mesh of branches at the sky.
‘Tell me more about Will, then,’ she said.
‘You might meet him,’ Mia said, ‘if we go back along the beach later. I’m surprised he wasn’t there this morning.’
‘I thought you said he was doing exams.’
‘Everyone’s on study leave now, except when they have to go in for the actual exams.’
‘Don’t you mind missing them?’
‘What, exams? No way! I’m glad.’
‘What about later on, though?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, won’t you want to get a job and stuff?’
‘S’pose. I don’t know.’
She didn’t want to think about any of that now. It was enough, just lying in the sunny garden, with both babies asleep. She thought about Will again.
‘I think you’d like him,’ she told Colleen. ‘He’s into music and learning stuff. He’s clever like that. But it’s not boring when he talks about it. Not like teachers, or my dad. You know?’ She thought for a bit and then added, ‘But he’s not so clever about other things.’
‘Like what?’
‘He just seems very young, sometimes. And his mum really overprotects him. She’s dead keen for him to do well at school. He probably will. Go to university and that.’
‘We might be like that, one day, with Zak and Kai,’ Colleen said. ‘What does he look like, anyway, your Will?’
‘Golden. Fair hair, golden skin, blue eyes. Really blue. Gorgeous.’ Mia sighed.
Colleen laughed. ‘You’re still mad about him, aren’t you?’
‘Maybe. Yes. He’s not interested, though. Not any more.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s obvious.’
‘Have you asked him?’
Mia laughed. ‘Of course not! Don’t be daft.’
‘Why’s it daft? Seems sensible to me. Anyway, later on, when Kai’s bigger, and sitting and crawling and walking and talking, he won’t be able to resist him then, will he?’
Maybe, maybe not.
Mia didn’t say anything. How come Colleen was so –. so sort of optimistic and cheerful about everything? And yet Mia herself hadn’t given up hope completely. Still had
the pebble Will had left behind for Kai that early morning in the hospital. Or maybe it had been for her. He’d done that before, last summer: given her a pebble from the beach, smooth and beautiful, like a blackbird’s egg. A sort of promise.
There was still the problem of Ali, of course. She hadn’t told Colleen about that. Didn’t want her to think badly of Will.
‘Tell me about the fair,’ Mia said.
‘What do you want to know?’
‘What it’s like, travelling. You know.’
‘The best thing is being outside so much. And I love our caravan. It’s not big, or posh, like some of the others, but it’s got everything we need. And we have fires outside, sometimes, and people play music. Dance, sometimes. My mum’s always wanted to dance, ever since she was a little girl, and she had a spell working as a dancer, way back. She taught me, too. And to play.’
‘You make it sound really romantic’
‘Well, it’s not. It’s tough, too, always moving on. People don’t like us much. And there aren’t as many children now, travelling. And I didn’t go to school – well, I tried a couple of times, but it was too hard – not knowing anyone, not knowing the same things people of my age did, so I never fitted in. So I helped Mum instead.’
‘Do what?’
‘Candyfloss and hot drinks and doughnuts. She used to do the Ferris wheel with her dad, before. But Health and Safety closed it down.’
‘I might have seen you. We used to go with Dad. August bank holiday. Laura always got sick in that thing that whizzes you upside down.’
‘And it’s hard in the winter, putting the rides up, taking them down, your fingers so cold they stick to the metal bolts, and mud everywhere. The lorry wheels churn up the grass. Exhaust stinks out the place. The generators hum all night. And there’s the people. The abuse.’
Colleen stroked Zak’s feet as he kicked on the rug. He looked like a little frog, his knees bent up. She’d taken off his Babygro so he could get some air to his limbs: the skin in the creases was red and flaky.
Colleen sighed deeply. ‘I’m not sure now, though. I’ve thought about it lots. It’s not the best place for a baby. I’m not sure I want him to be always moving on like I did.’ She looked round the sunny garden, with its high brick wall along one side and the hedge on the other, the grassy lawn and flower borders, the big ash tree in the middle. ‘I want him to have a garden. A safe, quiet place to play. You’re so lucky having this.’
‘Maybe. But it’s different when you’ve always lived somewhere. I’ve been here forever! When Dad goes on about when I was here as a baby, what they did, all that, well, it makes me feel as if I’m trapped in something. You want to stay put; I want to escape. Go somewhere different. Start something new.’
‘Perhaps we should do a swap! Except I’d miss my mum.’
Colleen picked Zak up and hugged him tight. She sang to him, half under her breath. ‘ “Like a ship in the harbour, Like a mother and child…” That’s a lullaby she used to sing to me,’ she told Mia.
‘How come you’ve got to stay at that flat, instead of joining her?’ Mia asked.
‘It’s only till I’m properly better. I’ve got to be near the hospital so they can keep an eye on me. I’ve got one more appointment with the consultant and then, if everything’s OK, I can go.’
Mia felt a twinge of sadness. No one stayed.
*
They dozed and chatted for so long in the garden that there wasn’t time to go back the beach way to the village. Mia went with Colleen to show her the quicker way, straight down Church Lane and on to the main road.
As the bus pulled up, Colleen suddenly threw her arms round Mia. ‘Thank you! It’s been my best day for ages and ages.’
Mia waited while Colleen got on. There was a moment of panic while she searched for the bus ticket, then they remembered Mia still had it in her pocket, luckily. The driver was the same one she’d had the other day, but even his sarcastic comments couldn’t dull Mia’s feeling of happiness today.
‘Come again. Tomorrow, if it’s sunny.’ She mouthed the words through the window at Colleen.
The bus was already pulling away. She craned to see what Colleen was saying through the smeared glass. She was holding her hands out in some gesture. Or was she just waving?
Never mind. The day had gone really well. She was still smiling as she pushed the buggy back up Church Lane.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
‘Dad! That woman’s not coming round again?’
‘I told you yesterday, Mia. Don’t make out you’ve forgotten. And I expect you to be civil.’
‘Well, I hope you’re going out this time. Not staying here.’
‘I told you. I’m taking her for a meal. At the Wheel-wrights’ Arms. We won’t be back till late.’
That we. Mia hated it. We won’t be back till late. Presumably that meant that woman would be staying the night again, then. Angrily, Mia emptied the damp clothes into the washing basket, ready to hang out. They smelled funny: she’d left them in the washing machine all day, forgotten about them. Now they wouldn’t dry till the morning. Even though the evening was fine and sun still filled the garden, you could already see the faint perspiration of dew beading the grass.
It was disgusting, the hold that Miss Blackman had on Dad. Why couldn’t he see through the make-up and the clothes and the gym-trained body? The hours she must spend getting ready. Becky and Mia had discussed it. Miss Julie Blackman probably wore make-up in bed. You could get it now, Becky said, she’d seen it in a magazine. Make-up specially designed to be worn in your nightie. Or without it, more likely.
That was another thing. The thought of Dad having sex. Well, she wasn’t going to think about it. She’d be sick if she did. She untangled the last Babygros and socks from the machine just as a car crunched up the drive. She looked out of the window.
Miss Blackman parked her car and climbed out. She was wearing an immaculate cream sleeveless dress, just above the knee, and gold strappy sandals with heels. Bare, fake-tanned legs. Hair, brushed up to make it look thicker, was a slightly paler shade than two days ago, when she’d last been round. Dad still refused to believe that it wasn’t entirely natural.
‘It’s all the sun we’ve been having these last two weeks,’ he said. ‘Brings out the gold lights in it.’
The sun seemed to have brought something new out in Dad, too. He’d started wearing short-sleeved shirts, crushed linen, and he’d bought new thin cotton trousers, quite nice actually, though she wouldn’t tell him so. He’d been out twice already this week. He had a shower more often than Mia these days.
Through the kitchen window, Mia watched Miss Blackman walk across the garden, flicking her hair behind one ear, letting it flop elegantly the other side, and smoothing her dress over her perfectly flat stomach. She must have sensed someone watching: she looked at the window self-consciously, gave a little wave to Mia, who glared back. She looked slightly less confident now, Mia noticed with pleasure.
She is twenty-nine! Dad is forty-seven. What does she see in him?
Mia kept watching the little scene playing out before her.
Dad went out to greet her. He held Kai in his arms: he must have picked him up from the bouncy chair, where he’d been lying, awake, but contented. Dad is showing off, Mia thought, what a tender, loving grandpa he is. She watched them. No, it gradually dawned on her, that wasn’t it. He was pretending the baby was theirs: his and Julie’s. Ugh! It was disgusting! But perhaps there was nothing more attractive to a woman of nearly thirty than a man who could be good with a baby. Like those black and white posters you see in card shops of some naked, muscle-bound man with a tiny baby cradled in his hands.
Kai, her baby, was a prop in his seduction drama. How dare he!
They kissed, the baby caught between them.
Mia barged out into the garden, letting the door bang behind her. The noise startled Kai, who gave out a cry, and Dad and Julie sprang apart.
‘It’s Kai’s b
edtime,’ Mia announced curtly, although it wasn’t. He didn’t have a bedtime. He slept when he was ready to sleep. It was one of the things Mia and Dad had been arguing about lately.
Mia took Kai from Dad and turned back to the house without speaking to Miss Blackman. Dad would be furious. She didn’t care.
She took Kai upstairs, stood at her bedroom window with him still clutched tight in her arms, shaking slightly. She could hear the murmur of voices from the garden, and then two car doors slammed. She watched Julie drive Dad down Church Lane.
He’d not bothered to say goodbye.
She stood there for ages, till Kai began twisting restlessly in her arms. Perhaps she would try putting him to bed. Then she could have a whole evening to herself. That was what Dad had been going on about the other night. ‘Babies like routine,’ he’d said. ‘It makes them feel safe, knowing where they are.’
‘But he won’t go to sleep till he’s ready. He’ll just cry,’ Mia had said.
‘He’ll get used to it if you put him down at the same time each night. If he knows you mean business.’
Mia had told Colleen about it afterwards and Colleen had laughed. ‘It’s the grown-ups who need the routines,’ she’d said, ‘so they can get some peace and quiet in the evenings. The babies don’t care what time they sleep. And if there’s lots of people around to help it’s fine. When I was little, there were always loads of people wanting to help hold me, play with me. That’s what Mum says.’
A bit like Tasha’s family, Mia thought now. Billie had baby Lily but there were always other people around – Tasha’s mum, and her grandpa, and cousins, and aunties. And life sort of carried on, even with all the children around. They didn’t have to be cleared away so the adults could then have a life.
Because that was what Dad seemed to think. Having her and Kai around got in the way of him and Julie having an evening together at the house. And maybe the real point was, she, Mia, was exhausted. There wasn’t really anyone wanting to help her.
The evening stretched ahead. Too much time. Just her and Kai.
After she’d fed him and changed him into his nighttime Babygro, the yellow velour one which made him look like a little fluffy duckling, Mia laid him down in the Moses basket. He lay for a while, eyes open, staring up at Becky’s mobile of stars dangling from the ceiling. Then he began to whimper.