by Thorne Moore
While Kelly had grown from baby to toddler to happy curious child under their guidance, Roz had grown too, moulded by her surrogate parents so that, one day, mother and daughter could step out into the world together and survive.
What would have happened if Roger and Mandy had not been there for them? ‘We owe you,’ she said. ‘Big time. Really. I do know it.’
Roger chuckled. ‘As long as you’re both happy, that’s all that counts. Now, tell me about this Ben. You could talk about nothing else at dinner.’
‘So he’s going to come this weekend and you’ll love him, I know you will.’
‘Of course I will, if you do,’ said Roz.
‘He’s twenty-five and he comes from Coventry but he works in London—’
‘Yes.’ Roz laid a hand on Kelly’s arm to redirect her attention to the road. ‘You told me.’ At least thirty times. She wasn’t puzzled by her daughter meeting a man from Coventry who worked in London. All sorts turned up in Pembrokeshire in summer.
‘I should have taken a photo. Why didn’t I?’ Kelly wasn’t one for photographs. She looked with her own eyes, at the here and now.
‘I don’t need a photo,’ said Roz. ‘He’s—’ She laid a hand on top of her head. ‘About this tall. Brownish hair, hazelish eyes, quirky smile—’
‘All right.’ Kelly laughed. ‘But that doesn’t do him justice, you know. He’s altogether lovely, and I can’t stop thinking about him and I think I’m going to die without him.’ She paused for breath.
Roz gazed at Kelly and smiled. Could she really be feeling such excitement and intensity? Roz tried to equate it with what she had felt, for husband and lovers. There had been something overwhelming when she had been young, but had it really been love? Need. That was all. Clinging to any arm that offered to hold her up. She’d fulfilled some sort of fantasy by marrying Luke Sheldon, but that wasn’t the same, nothing like the love Kelly had for this Ben. She had wanted someone, anyone, and when Luke had shown such a clear, flattering liking for her, she had stuck to him like a limpet. Until the tide of his drunken violence had touched Kelly, and washed them both off the rock. The occasional lovers that had followed had been friendships, brief touches in moments of loneliness. Her need had gone, quenched by the only love that really mattered to her, love for her child. Mutual dependence that would last forever.
Why hadn’t she known that one day love might steal her daughter away? ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him.’
Kelly pictured it with an inner glow. Her mother and Ben together in Carregwen. Ben walking with Kelly on the hills, feeding the sheep with her, retreating to her beautifully eccentric bedroom with her.
Ben, with his smart suit and his perfectly cut hair. Ben with his well-paid graduate job, and his gleaming new car and his place near Heathrow. Kelly felt a twinge of panic. He was far away and the gulf between them was so very vast. Their worlds were so alien, so incompatible. How could it possibly work?
It would be enough to see him again. Just bring the threads together and hope they would weave themselves into something manageable.
A junction ahead.
‘Where are we?’ she asked. No Sat Nav now. They were back in the Astra, so smooth and soft-spoken that it no longer felt like their car, but the garage had not fitted Sat Nav and Kelly was really going to have to concentrate. Get her mother home, that was the first step. Then check on the animals, get in some groceries, and only then think about Ben.
After she had thanked Joe for his help.
Ah. She had forgotten about Joe.
‘No, it’s been great,’ Joe assured her. ‘Everything’s fine, like, you know. Cool. Except I’ve been missing you.’
Kelly hugged him. That was all right, she owed him that. And he’d understand. Or at least he wouldn’t be too badly hurt. They were friends, never really more than that. Not lovers in any meaningful sense, she could see now she knew what love really was. He’d move on, no trouble. But maybe she’d explain tomorrow. She didn’t want to be dishonest about it, but it wasn’t really fair to leave him looking after her farm for her for more than a week, then come home and tell him it was all over between them.
‘Are you coming up the Mill tonight, then?’ he asked.
‘Not tonight. I need to sort Mum out. But tomorrow. I’ll come round to your place tomorrow.’
‘Great! Black Amber on in Swansea, this weekend. I got tickets when you said you were coming home.’
‘That sounds – great. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll talk.’ She kissed him on the cheek. Couldn’t he tell? No, not Joe. She watched him mount his motorbike and rumble away down the rutted track. Then she went inside to clear up his beer bottles. Clearing up a stage of her life that was gone for good.
ii
Vicky
Gillian looked at the lime green mini, tucked up against the wall of the house. Vicky had only driven it a couple of times. Preferred to walk or cycle. Never mind. Exercise was good for her. Gillian, washing the windows, gave the windscreen a quick wipe over. Might as well keep it sparkling for the girl.
She tipped the dirty water down the drain, and went back in, wiping her hands on her apron as she took it off. How was Vicky? She wished she knew. Gillian was living on broken glass. Vicky was a whirlwind inside, driven by some inner obsession, but burning herself up in her determination not to show it. She had always been like that.
Hadn’t she?
Gillian pictured Vicky walking to Junior School, her hand in her mother’s. Yes, she had been quiet, no running and shouting, no naughtiness, but she had not seemed unhappy back then. Not defensive, determined to keep Gillian out.
Adolescence made such a misery of lives. Was that it? The angry self-assertive teenage years turning a quiet happy child into a sullen unhappy woman? Unhappiness made worse by Gillian’s stupid silence about the adoption, but surely not caused by it? Exacerbated by Joan, of course. That went without saying. Gillian could remember her own teen years, the endless fights and tussles. Joan would make anyone sulk and storm.
Maybe every family went through this. Every mother left yearning for the time when her child had been young and dependent and cocooned in her nest. Gillian made herself a cup of tea and sat down, pulling the old photograph albums out. Vicky as a baby, gurgling contentedly in Gillian’s arms, rolling on a rug in the garden. Vicky’s school photographs, the little shy smile gradually becoming more confident, the soft round baby features altering year by year into the future woman. Vicky smiling broadly at the camera, looking pleased, almost cocky. In the back garden. Cosmos and scarlet runner beans. Gillian could remember that shot. It had been the summer after her GCSE exams. She had just had the results, she’d done so well, everyone had been so proud. Only Joan had scoffed, but Joan would.
Vicky on her seventeenth birthday, surrounded by cards and holding up the car keys triumphantly. The more controlled smile of a teenager, who didn’t want to be so uncool as to whoop like a baby, but still a smile, still genuine. And then…
Gillian flicked through pages, first with a pang, then with alarm. So few pictures of Vicky, as if she were determined not to be photographed. And when she was caught, she was looking away, or head down, or her long hair shaken to conceal her face. No more smiles, happy or haughty. Just blank eyes.
What had happened? Gillian was holding in her hands evidence that all her daughter’s happiness had vanished in a puff of smoke. It was there, on the page for anyone to see, so obvious, yet she had lived with Vicky every day and she’d noticed nothing. She’d been irritated by the increasing antagonism and isolation, yes, but she’d never noticed that it had all begun then. Just like that.
What was it she had missed? God, how terrible a mother had she been? So desperate to adopt and an utter failure. Frogmarching a child into a career far beyond the dreams of anyone else on the Marley estate – was that really successful motherhood?
A rattle and thud at the door. The paperboy. Automatically, she went to the door, picked up the Lyford He
rald and unfolded it without reading a word. She could only think about Vicky and her own failure.
Back to the photographs. She went through them again. It was so screamingly obvious. What had happened? Vicky had been at Sixth Form, taking A levels. She had worked hard, aiming for medical college – and that was all her life had been. Up, to school, home, upstairs to study. At weekends, breakfast, upstairs to study, down for dinner, back to her room.
‘So responsible, so dedicated,’ Gillian had said. But it hadn’t been dedication, had it? Vicky had been turning herself into a recluse, and Gillian had stood by and let it happen.
Was it the illness? After she’d discovered that she had a condition she could never cure? It would be understandable. But no. It hadn’t been diagnosed until Vicky had started university. And she had taken it well. She had almost seemed to welcome having something that she could take charge of and control. So not the diabetes then.
A boy? It must have been. Puppy love and then cruel disappointment. Had that sad little claim to sexual experience been Vicky falling for some spotty youth, being spurned, breaking her heart? Why couldn’t she have talked to her mother? Gillian could have helped. She could remember what teenage infatuation felt like. All joy one moment and the end of the world the next.
Gillian sighed and closed the albums, putting them back on the shelf. Tidied the room, plumped up the cushions. Picked up the Lyford Herald again. Began to read.
Missing Daughter Quest: Hospital Rapped.
The typical Herald tabloid style. She looked at it with just curiosity at first, until the details began to blare at Gillian. Kelly Sheldon…her mother Rosalind who suffers from a form of diabetes known as MODY, Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young…trying to find her mother’s lost baby…March 1990… There was someting about a mix-up at the hospital, but that must just be a cover story. Her heart was thumping so loudly, she didn’t hear the footsteps on the stairs at first. She rolled the paper up, thrusting it behind a cushion on the sofa.
‘Vicky!’ she said, flustered. ‘Finished up there? I’ll make some tea.’
‘You okay?’ Polite, guarded.
Was she concerned for Gillian? It was Vicky who mattered, not Gillian, and not this Kelly Sheldon person. ‘I’m all right. But how about you?’
‘Me? I’m okay. Why?’
‘If you had a problem, you could talk to me, couldn’t you?’
‘What?’ Vicky’s face twisted. ‘Talk?’
‘If anything happened, if you were upset—’
‘We don’t talk. Like you not telling me I was adopted for twenty-two years.’
It was never-ending. Every day. Like some scab she had to pick.
‘Anyway.’ Vicky opened the bureau drawer, searching for an envelope. ‘I’ve got a letter to post.’
‘No, don’t take it yet. It can wait a moment. Sit down. I want to us to talk now.’ That touch of firmness that might have made her a good teacher. The mother daughter ties were still there. The girl sighed and sat down, folding her arms.
Gillian pulled out one of the old albums. Not to open, just as a prop. She perched on the sofa and stroked the closed book. ‘I’ve been looking at our old family photographs.’
‘Family.’
Gillian ignored the jibe. ‘Looking at pictures of my little girl. You were a happy child, Vicky…’
A bitter smile.
Gillian went on. ‘I know we had upsets and sulks and tears, sometimes with good reason.’ Mostly the days when Joan was around. ‘But you were happy. You knew how to smile.’
No smile now, just a closed book.
‘And then you weren’t happy. You were doing your A levels and you stopped being happy.’
‘You wanted me to work, didn’t you? You made that clear often enough.’
‘I nagged you, I know. I wanted you to do well and I pushed too hard. I’m sorry. But that doesn’t explain it.’ She drew breath. ‘Was it a boy, maybe?’
Vicky’s lip curled.
‘Did you fall for someone and he didn’t want you? Was that it? And you never told me?’
‘For Christ’s sake, no, I didn’t fall for anyone.’
‘You can tell me, Vicky. You could have told me then. I know it would have been – not easy, bringing a friend here, with Gran—’
Vicky laughed. A harsh burst of outrage. ‘Joan!’
‘I know she’d have said something – Was that it? Did she say something cruel? Did she make you feel no one would want you?’
‘Listen, will you? It isn’t a question of whether some silly boy or some slimy man wants me, it’s whether I want them, all right? I’ve had enough of that, and that bitch Joan can play her games with someone else!’
Gillian turned cold inside. Joan. ‘Vicky, what games did Joan play? What did she do that made you so miserable?’
‘I am not miserable!’
‘You’re not happy.’
‘Happy? How do you want me to show I’m happy? You’d feel better if I dropped my studies and went out whoring each night, is that it? That’s what happiness is?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Oh really? Because I thought that was exactly what everyone wanted. Well, don’t worry, I’ve tried it. Joan saw to that. And…’ She stopped.
‘What? For God’s sake, Vicky, what are you talking about?’
‘You really don’t know, do you?’
‘No!’ Appalled, Gillian braced herself for what was coming.
Vicky, trying to be disdainful, was going to talk, it seemed she couldn’t help herself anymore.
‘That time, just after my seventeenth birthday, when Granny Wendle was ill?’
‘Yes, I remember. Terry and I went…’ She and Terry had gone to see his mother who was dying in Romford. Stayed over a couple of days until she’d passed away. They hadn’t taken Vicky. She had her studies and she was old enough now. It wasn’t like leaving a baby with Joan. A seventeen-year-old girl would be safe enough, surely?
How could she have been so stupid?
‘What happened?’
‘What do you think? Joan thought it was time I had some fun and she’d better arrange it. She called Dana round and Gemma and Jade.’
Joan’s willing lieutenants, Sandra’s youngest daughter Dana, and her granddaughters by Sharon. Hard bitten, hard biting girls, as unlike Vicky as it was possible to be.
‘She told them to take me out,’ Vicky continued. ‘Show me “a good time”. That’s what she kept calling it. Gemma and Jade made me put on all this stupid make-up and some of their clothes, and I could see Joan and Dana laughing in the mirror. Except that I couldn’t see much because they took my glasses away. I thought, “Okay, put up with it, go out for one night and maybe they’ll shut up and leave me alone.” So when they’d got me all tarted up, they took me out. Joan was on the doorstep, winking at them, saying, “You make sure she has a good time, eh. Poor kid doesn’t know nothing. You show her what it’s all about.”’
Gillian covered her face with her hands.
‘They took me to a pub, kept trying to get me to drink but I didn’t want to. I expect they put something in my Coke though. They were laughing as if they had, so I didn’t drink that either.’
Vicky had started her account in an almost conversational tone, treating the episode with contempt. But she couldn’t keep it up. The underlying hysteria was welling up, and she spoke now in staccato bursts, on the verge of hyperventilating. This was it, Gillian knew. It would all come out. Nothing could stop it now.
‘They produced this boy. They kept telling me he liked me. Pushing me at him. He was laughing, in on the joke with them, pulling faces at me. Making obscene gestures. It was disgusting. I ran. Locked myself in the toilet. Jade came to get me out and I said I was going home, so she said, “Yes, all right, we’ll all go home with you.” But he came too. Craig.’
‘Craig Adams?’ breathed Gillian. She knew him, him and his leering mates, the estate’s future pimps, if they weren’t already.
Vicky shook the question off. ‘When we got home, Joan pretended she couldn’t see anything was wrong. Said she could tell everyone was having a great time. I tried to go to my room, but they wouldn’t let me in. Kept saying how mean I was. To poor Craig. They pushed me into Joan’s room with him and held the door shut. Joan watched telly. They locked me in with him so he could show me what was what.’
Gillian could feel her knees buckling. That drumming in her ears again. She was dreaming this. She must be dreaming. ‘He raped you.’
‘Oh no. We were having a good time.’
‘He raped you!’
‘No!’ Vicky leapt to her feet. ‘No! He didn’t have a gun or a knife. I decided to go along with it. It wasn’t rape.’
‘It was! It was rape.’
‘No, I am not a rape victim!’ Vicky pressed her hands to her chest, flinching from the word.
‘And Joan knew?’
‘Of course she knew. It was her little birthday treat. Make a woman of me.’ Tears now, burning on Vicky’s cheeks. Gillian could see them through the blur of her own.
‘Oh God, oh God.’ She couldn’t stop shaking. She wanted to vomit. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ She reached out, but Vicky turned her back.
The girl had been raped and hadn’t said a word and Gillian had noticed nothing. She thought back, trying to recall. Her mother-in-law’s funeral. Vicky had been silent, moody, but Gillian had been preoccupied, stressed with the arrangements and upset about the death of old Nora. She had put Vicky’s sullenness down to teenage stroppiness and maybe the trauma of the first funeral she’d attended. But it hadn’t been that at all. It had been the worst thing a mother could contemplate, barring the actual death of a child, and Gillian had done nothing. She had snapped at the girl.
And now, how was she to make up for it? She had wanted to put things right, but not this. Nothing could mend this.
She swallowed hard, took a deep shuddering breath and crossed to her daughter. ‘Vicky. I didn’t know, I didn’t know.’ Again she put her arms out to hug her.