The Family Trap

by Joanne Phillips

  I start running across the park, holding the pram in front of me like a trophy. I call out when I get close enough, and they look up, as one. I’m still running, and I’m watching their eyes take me in, then move to the pram, then back again. They turn to look at each other, and the one called Serena raises her eyebrows and pulls a disgusted face. I’m slowing down now, confused, another greeting dying on my lips. But before I can reach them, they stand up, grab their bags, and hurry away in the opposite direction.

  I could tell my daughter more about watching life move on without you than I hope she will ever have to know. But I could also tell her how fiercely protective it makes you, how you turn into someone who will sacrifice anything to keep your baby safe and happy.

  Instead I pull her to me and hold her tight. I can’t tell her anything; she has to figure it out for herself.

  ‘Will you talk to Rob?’ she asks, her tone half challenging, half pleading. I shake my head.

  ‘No, sweetheart. That’s for you to do.’

  But she mistakes my hands-off approach for not caring and pushes me away.

  ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. You didn’t go back to work for years after having me. How could you possibly know how I feel. Just forget it, Mum. Just don’t bother.’

  I turn away from her, my eyes tearing up. But I’m not crying for myself; I’ve a tougher skin than that. I’m crying for her, for my strong-willed, fiery daughter, who will one day hate herself for hurting her mother the way I hate myself for being so hard on my dad.

  And I’m crying for parents everywhere, who still feel they have to try so hard to get their children’s approval.

  *

  The Twilight Retirement Home is a converted manor house in Bletchley, right at the very south of Milton Keynes’ city limits. When I took the job last summer I didn’t know I’d be leaving come February. If not for Paul’s decision to embark on a new adventure in the wilds of Derbyshire, I’d probably end up working at Twilight for the rest of my days.

  Which wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if it wasn’t for Velma.

  Velma Manley has one aim in life, and it isn’t – as it should be – to keep the residents healthy, happy and comfortable. Velma’s aim is to make me miserable. And as she’s my boss, her situation is one that suits her very well indeed.

  ‘Evening, Stella,’ she says when I turn up on Saturday afternoon at five minutes past two. She’s trying to be funny. Everyone in reception looks up at the clock. Velma smirks and tells me I’ll have to stay late to make up the time.

  Five minutes! She’s the devil incarnate.

  ‘How’s Lipsy?’ Jean, head of Twilight’s cleaning team, rushes to my side as soon as Velma is out of the way.

  ‘Do you have any photos?’ asks Martha, leaning over the reception desk and resting her enormous bust on top of it.

  I smile and pull out my phone. As there are about a hundred photos of Phoenix on there, this takes quite a bit of time, and I don’t get away from their questions until two thirty. Now I really am late, so I run up the stairs to the staffroom, panting all the way, and change into my overall while looking longingly at the coffee machine.

  Lipsy was mortified the first time she saw me in my pale blue tabard. ‘What the bloody hell are you wearing?’ were her exact words. In her eyes I could see I’d reached an all-time low – but at least, she said, it suited me better than the canary-yellow, midriff-exposing shirt I’d donned for my shifts at Cafe Crème.

  ‘I’ve always worked hard for this family,’ I reminded her somewhat huffily. ‘I wasn’t too proud to take a second job after the fire, and I’m not too proud to wear a uniform now.’

  ‘You only had to take the second job because you forgot to renew the house insurance,’ Lipsy reminded me right back, ‘and you’re only doing this job because you are too proud to ask Paul for your old one back.’

  Quite. Isn’t it wonderful how our children get right to the heart of the matter? And then cheerfully stick a knife into it.

  If Paul was surprised or dismayed to find his new girlfriend suddenly working as a care assistant in a run-down retirement home on the fringes of the city, he kept it to himself. But maybe it’s no coincidence that not long after I met him for lunch still wearing the tabard, he proposed and suggested I gave up my job.

  I’m only a quarter of the way through my rounds when I hear someone hissing my name from the bottom of the main stairs.

  ‘It’s Lipsy,’ Martha whispers. Her whisper could shatter glass, and I look around to make sure Velma isn’t in earshot.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘She didn’t say. Just said you need to phone her right away. Grandma,’ Martha adds with a wink and a hefty nudge when I reach the bottom step.

  I speed over to the reception desk, breaking rules number one and two in the process: no personal calls and absolutely no running. Lipsy answers on the first ring.

  ‘Mum, you have to come home.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong? Is it Phoenix?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with him, Mum. He won’t stop crying.’

  I can hear him in the background, exercising his lungs. ‘Have you fed him?’

  ‘Of course I’ve fed him, I’m not retarded. I’ve fed him, changed him, taken him around the block for a walk. He must be ill. You need to come home right now.’

  ‘I only left an hour ago and he was fine,’ I hiss, trying to quell my rising alarm. Phoenix’s cries reach mammoth proportions and Lipsy lets out a sob.

  ‘Where’s Robert?’

  ‘Gone out,’ she says. ‘He’s sulking about our row.’

  For goodness sake. What’s the point of getting together with an older man if he ends up acting like a child?

  I bite my tongue. Something you get very good at when you have a daughter like Lipsy.

  ‘I’ll be fifteen minutes, OK? Keep him warm, but not too warm, and give him lots of fluids, and …’ What else should you do with a sick baby? My mind’s gone blank. And what if he really is sick? ‘I’m on my way,’ I screech into the phone.

  Martha looks stricken as I wrench off my tabard and race for the staffroom.

  ‘What am I going to tell Velma?’ she shouts two minutes later as I run back past her, handbag and keys in hand.

  ‘The truth, of course,’ I tell her. ‘My grandson is ill.’

  Surely even Velma won’t have a problem with that?

  *

  As soon as I enter the house I can tell something is wrong. There’s no crying baby, for one thing. The house is eerily silent. I stand in the hall for a couple of seconds, catching my breath. All the way here, driving like a lunatic up the A5, I could hear Phoenix’s cries in my head. I have the route to the hospital planned out, and I’ve rushed in ready to grab the car seat and go. The lack of panic alarms me more than anything I could have imagined.

  ‘Lipsy,’ I cry. ‘Lipsy, where are you?’

  Maybe they’ve got a taxi and gone without me. Maybe Lipsy called Robert and he got here quicker than I could. I search the kitchen worktops for a note, check the pin board, and then head back to the hall in case I missed one there.

  Nothing.

  I’ve just started up the stairs to check the bedrooms when I see Lipsy’s legs descending.

  ‘Where’s Phoenix?’ I say, backing down again.

  She puts her finger to her mouth and shushes me.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  I let her pull me into the lounge and shut the door behind us.

  ‘He’s fine,’ she says, laughing and shaking her head. ‘I think it was wind.’ Her face is calm, showing more than a hint of pride. My heart is still hammering in my chest. ‘Mum, I was brilliant. I put him up on my shoulder, like this, and walked him all around. Then he just suddenly stopped crying, gave a massive burp, and went to sleep. It was amazing.’

  All the life drains from my legs and I flop onto the sofa.

  ‘So,’ I say with a long sigh, ‘it was just wind.’

  ‘Yu
p.’ Lipsy gives a little roll of her eyes, as if to say: What was all that fuss about?

  What indeed.

  She sits down beside me and starts to inspect her nails.

  ‘So you dragged me all the way across the city, pulled me out of work, because he had wind.’

  ‘I didn’t know it was wind when I phoned you, did I? And you didn’t know what it was, either,’ she adds accusingly.

  ‘How was I supposed to know your baby had wind from listening to him cry down the phone?’

  ‘Grandma did.’

  ‘What?’

  Lipsy has this look sometimes: sullen and defiant at the same time. I guess teenagers the world over have the same look nailed to perfection.

  ‘Grandma knew instantly what it was when I called her. She listened to him and said, “Have you tried winding him”, so I did and he was fine.’

  ‘And you called her when, exactly?’

  ‘Right after I called you.’

  ‘So, within a few minutes of calling me – and begging me to leave work and come home immediately – Phoenix was fine and you knew you didn’t need me anymore. But you didn’t phone me back to let me know?’

  My daughter has another look, and this is one she employs when she knows she’s in the wrong. It’s kind of hard to describe, but it’s a mixture of hurt and outrage, with a little bit of disgust thrown in for good measure.

  ‘I can’t believe you,’ she says, jumping to her feet. ‘You should be glad that Phoenix isn’t sick, not having a go at me for dragging you out of your stupid job.’

  ‘You know what Velma’s like,’ I say, standing too and towering over her. ‘I could get fired for this.’

  Silence follows. We stare at each other. I notice that Lipsy has somehow had time to redo her make-up, and that her hair is washed and straightened to within an inch of its life. When I was a new mum, I struggled to clean my teeth each day. I sure as hell hope I’m as together as her when my baby comes along.

  Or maybe that’s just one of the benefits of youth.

  ‘Mum,’ Lipsy says to me, speaking as if to someone very, very stupid, ‘you can’t get fired. You’ve already handed in your notice and you leave on Monday.’

  There really is nothing worse than a know-it-all daughter. I sincerely hope next time I have a son.

  Chapter 6

  By Monday morning I’m fit to burst with anxiety about seeing Paul. I’m on the late shift at work – my last ever shift – so he’s coming over at ten for breakfast.

  This is my first real chance to tell him about the baby. He’ll be full of his holiday, and not a little sheepish about the Sharon debacle, so I’m banking on a good reaction. Scratch that: I’m hoping for a great reaction. After all, this is fantastic news.

  There’s nothing to worry about. I keep telling myself this over and over. There’s a Johnny Cash song on the radio, and his voice sounds like a warning, penetrating my calm. I get up and turn it off.

  Phoenix is the only thing that can soothe me. He’s lying in his bassinet, fists flung out to the sides, his feet treading against the white blanket as though he’s dreaming of running. Do babies dream? Maybe their dreams are like memories: milk and warm arms and a mother’s heartbeat.

  Yes, I’m babysitting. Again. Phoenix is just over a week old, and so far I’ve looked after him for at least three hours a day. Often more. This is on top of my own job, and packing, and tying up all the loose ends before the move. And on top of the last minute details for the reception on Saturday, which is going to be pretty low-key but still needs organising. Lipsy is getting on with her life, as she tells me every time I complain I could do with a little help around here. I don’t blame her, but I do worry how she’s going to manage when next Monday rolls around and Paul and I set off into the sunset together.

  ‘That’s the understatement of the year,’ I whisper to Phoenix. He stirs but doesn’t wake.

  I’m more than worried about next Monday – I’m terrified at the thought of leaving Lipsy and Robert and the baby all alone. In theory, it seemed like a fine plan; in reality, not so. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t going to miss Phoenix. He’s a part of me now, like some of his essence has been grafted onto my soul, and I know the best moments to come for me will be those Friday night journeys down the motorway to be by his side again.

  Paul will reassure me. This was all his idea, after all, and he’s pushed through my fears and anxieties so far. But I can’t get rid of this niggling sense that all is not well in my world. I fry up some bacon and pop bread in the toaster, and I set the kitchen table. And all the while the knot in my stomach gets tighter and tighter.

  When Paul arrives I’m a wreck, and his kisses don’t transport me back to happiness the way they should.

  ‘What’s wrong, baby?’ he says, pulling me down onto his lap and regarding me with serious eyes. ‘It’s not the Sharon thing, is it? Because I can assure you, you have nothing to worry about there. I think after six nights in the freezing cold in the middle of South Wales, Sharon is regretting inviting herself on that trip as much as I am.’

  I smile and shake my head. Sod Sharon.

  ‘It’s Lipsy,’ I say, stalling. ‘She’s talking about going back to work in a matter of weeks. And she’s found this so-called friend of hers who wants to be a childminder, but she’s a complete nightmare, Paul. I wouldn’t leave her in charge of my dog let alone my baby.’

  ‘You don’t have a dog,’ he reminds me.

  No. But I do have a baby.

  Paul listens patiently while I prattle on a little longer, then he takes my hand and presses it between his palms.

  ‘Stella, Lipsy will be fine. She’s a big girl now, she’s got Robert, and your mum and dad nearby. Even if we weren’t going to Derby, you wouldn’t be living here, would you, after the wedding? She’d have to get used to you not being around all the time anyway.’

  ‘But she’s hardly looked after Phoenix on her own at all. She phones me every day, or she phones my mum. I just don’t know how she’ll cope.’

  Paul shuts me up with a kiss. ‘She’s doing all that because she can, Stella. Because you’re here. And she’ll still have your mum, won’t she? And she’ll still have you on the end of the phone. We’ll be ninety minutes away. It’s not the other side of the world.’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ I tell him. He laughs.

  ‘So all this is coming from you? Lipsy’s not pressuring you to stay, it’s just in your head?’

  Just because it’s in my head doesn’t make it any less important, I don’t say. Instead I confess how much I’m going to miss Phoenix, and Paul comforts me the only way he can.

  When I come up for air, I realise this is the perfect lead-in to my news. The time has come, but there is a little paving of the way to be done first.

  ‘So, anyway, I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘Argh,’ he says in mock horror. ‘Not thinking! You know what happened the last time you did that.’

  ‘Funny.’ I give him a little punch on the shoulder, coming off worse because his shoulders seem to be made of iron. ‘Have you been working out?’ I ask, massaging the muscles under his jumper eagerly. He gives me a sexy smile, full of promise.

  ‘Down, girl. Can’t you wait a few more days until I’m officially yours.’

  Officially mine.

  What’s yours is mine. And what’s in my tummy right now is yours.

  I take a deep, preparatory breath. Go on, Stella. You can do it.

  ‘Paul, how would you feel if I told you I’ve been thinking I’d like us to have a baby together?’

  There are moments in life that define you – moments from which entire futures are carved out, where you can practically see the universe split into two. This is one such moment. I hold my breath, and wait for Paul to answer.

  In one universe, he takes my hand, gazes deep into my eyes and says, ‘I would be honoured to have a child with you, Stella Hill-soon-to-be-Smart. Shall we head on upstairs to make a start on that
right now?’

  In the universe I unfortunately inhabit, he drops my hand and rolls about on the sofa laughing.

  ‘Oh, you kill me,’ he says, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

  I might yet, if you carry on laughing at me.

  ‘What,’ I demand, ‘is so funny about you and me having a child together?’

  ‘Oh, you are so brilliant, Stella.’ He’s still smiling. He hasn’t clocked my expression yet. ‘You always know how to cheer me up. What?’

  Now he’s noticed.

  ‘You’re not …’ Paul sits up straighter and leans back for a better look. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Perfectly. And I fail to see why it’s so hysterically funny. We’re about to get married, we’re both in our prime. Why shouldn’t we talk about starting a family? It’s what couples do.’

  ‘Young couples starting out, maybe. But not us. We don’t need to start a family, we already have one. I’ve got Hannah, and you’ve got Lipsy, and now you’ve got Phoenix too. Ah, I see.’ He purses his lips into a knowing smile.

  ‘What? What exactly do you see?’

  ‘Phoenix. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’

  He walks over to where Phoenix is sleeping in his bassinet. I’ve yet to introduce them properly, but my grandson, peaceful and angelic on an embroidered white blanket, is perhaps the best ally I could have right now.

  With my eyes I tell Paul to go on. I don’t trust myself to speak.

  ‘You’ve spent a week looking after a baby, and now you want one too.’ He laughs, and turns back to me. When he speaks again I hear relief in his voice. ‘Well, that makes perfect sense. Women are made that way, and Phoenix is your flesh and blood after all. But the thing you have to remember, Stella, is that you’re a grandmother now. You’ve moved up a stage. You don’t need to worry about sleepless nights and changing nappies and filling your house with bits of plastic. We’re free of all that. You can still enjoy the baby, we can even have him for sleepovers when he’s a bit older, and you’ve already promised Lipsy you’ll come back every weekend.’ Another laugh makes me wonder if he’s taken this weekend plan seriously at all.