‘I’m not sure why she did that,’ Frances sighed. She was annoyed with the doctor, and felt let down.
‘It has a brain doesn’t it, and a heart and lungs.’
‘Yes.’
‘It would die if I got rid of it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then.’
‘Kate, there’s your life too.’
‘I could have the baby adopted. There’s thousands of people want little babies and there’s only big kids with problems or disabled and that for adoption now. I saw a programme on telly about it.’
I wish, Frances thought, as she drew her car up outside the house, I wasn’t having this nightmarish conversation. It’s mad, I must be mad, or Kate is.
‘Let’s talk about it later.’ She switched off the car engine. ‘The first thing, if you’ve definitely made up your mind, is to call the surgery to confirm you want ante-natal care. You’ll have to be booked into the hospital here.’
‘I don’t want to go into hospital,’ Kate said, mutinous, as she opened the car door. ‘I want to have the baby at home. My Mum will help me. She’s a nurse.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Frances cried before she could help herself. ‘You’re fifteen, it’s your first baby, and no-one knows where your bloody mother is!’
Kate stopped, rigid with shock. Frances saw the fright in her eyes and was flooded with remorse, at the end of her tether, yes, but ashamed because so was Kate and she should never have let her own feelings show.
‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what got into me. You are only fifteen, I should remember that. I suppose I’m stressed – it’s a shock for me too.’
‘Forget it,’ Kate said. She got out of the car and went into the house by the unlocked front door, which was never secured unless they were away overnight.
We live in a safe place, Frances thought, sitting on in the car, but nothing is safe.
When she went indoors there was no sign of Kate. The telephone was ringing. Frances picked it up not caring how weary she sounded, ‘Yes?’
‘Mum? Hi, it’s me.’
‘What is it, Andrew?’
‘I just – I thought you might want to know I was all right.’
‘What?’
‘Mum? What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing. How’s Aberdeen?’
‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘I definitely want to come here. The pubs are great.’
‘I’m not sure that’s what your decision should be based on, actually.’
‘The uni is fine too, Jack says, and I’m not gonna go anywhere there’s not good clubs and that, am I?’
‘How’s Jack?’
‘I dunno. He might be in bed, still.’
‘It’s nearly five o’clock!’
‘Is it? Well, we had kind of a late night. Mental.’
‘As long as you’re both all right.’
‘We’re goin to Glasgow tomorrow for a concert. We’ll stay with Rory – remember Rory Mackay that was in Jack’s year?’
‘Anne and Dougie’s youngest? How long will you be in Glasgow? You have to be back here on Saturday.’
‘It’s Ok, I’ll come straight up on Saturday morning. Will you pick me up from the bus station?’
When she had hung up Frances went in search of Kate. She was in her room lying on the bed. With a shock, Frances took in the swell of stomach that still showed when the girl lay on her back. It is real, she thought, as if up to now the baby had been imaginary, a problem but not a presence.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kate whispered.
‘What for? I’m the one who should apologise.’
‘No, I mean it.’ Kate sat up. ‘I’m in the way here, amn’t I? I should really go home. You’ve got Andrew and your job and you’re really busy, you don’t want me having a baby here. I’ll go home.’
Frances sat on the bed near the foot where the tabby cat was lying already, curling over by way of greeting, waiting to be petted. Kate tickled her with one foot, toes rubbing the cat’s fur the wrong way.
‘She likes sleeping here,’ she said.
‘Mm. Likes a soft bed.’
They watched the cat for a moment as she showed off to them, luxurious on the soft duvet.
‘You don’t have to go away anywhere,’ Frances said. ‘There’s absolutely no need.’
‘I’m a big enough embarrassment to Andy already.’
‘Boys are easily embarrassed.’
‘This is kind of more than usual, eh?’
Frances smiled. ‘I suppose it is. Well, we’ll have to tell him. No way to hide it now.’
Kate let out a breath like a sigh. ‘I don’t have to have an abortion then?’
‘Have to? Oh Kate, what do you take me for? It’s your body, your decision. What I don’t want is to see you go off to Newcastle, with Alec working all hours, and you on your own. I want you to stay here.’
Kate flopped back on the bed. ‘Till my Mum gets back.’
‘Yes. Then it’s her problem, she can deal with it.’ She got up. ‘I really came to ask what you’d like for supper?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How’s the sickness?’
‘The doctor said it could just, like, stop. Do you think it will?’
‘Mine did. I didn’t ever vomit, but I felt sick with both the boys, especially Andrew.’
‘How long did it go on?’
‘Till about the stage you are now, I suppose.’
‘Good.’ Kate smoothed her hands over her stomach, feeling the slight and hardening swell of flesh. ‘I feel different,’ she said, surprised. ‘I feel different even just since we went to the doctor.’
Frances, trying to recall her own young, pregnant self, understood that. A doctor saying yes, and how many weeks it was, and writing everything down so that there were notes on you, a file: all those things made you somehow much more pregnant by the time you walked out of the surgery. She had been so pleased and excited with a wonderful pure joy. With a surge of pity and tenderness for Kate, she wished for that excitement for her too. The time, the circumstances, the way it had happened were all utterly wrong, but it was her first baby and someone must help her to be happy about it, someone must make everything all right.
‘What about plain pasta with butter and a little bit of cheese?’
‘Not cheese. Yuck.’
‘What then – tuna?’
‘Double yuck. No, just pasta with nothing. The kind like shells.’
‘That’s what I’ll make.’
At the door, Frances said, ‘We’ll talk about it later. Don’t fret on your own – you can ask me anything you want to, anything at all.’
‘I will.’ Kate lay back, one arm stretched out for her i-pod.
While Kate was still upstairs, Frances looked up Alec’s home number and dialled. She thought he would be at the restaurant, and meant to leave a message, but Alec himself picked up the phone.
‘Frances!’ He sounded pleased to hear from her. ‘How are you? How’s Kate?’
‘She’s fine, we’re all fine. But there’s something I need to discuss with you.’
‘Oh yes?’ He sounded interested and still pleased. ‘Hang on – I poured myself a glass of wine. I’ll just get it.’
‘No, wait – it’s not something I can really say on the phone. I know you were up only a week ago, but is there any chance you could you come here? We’d give you a bed. No need for a guest house or anything.’
Before he spoke she knew he was going to misinterpret the invitation but could not think how to prevent that without telling him the truth. Why not after all say it now on the phone, so that when he arrived, as he surely would, he would not be under any illusion about Frances herself. Kate might then be spared the first shock of it.
‘I’d love to come, I’m all yours,’ he said, and her heart sank. ‘As it happens I’m free to come and go now.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Sold my
share in the business. I’m free, unencumbered. Even got some money in the bank, or I will soon. Bloody great relief, I can tell you.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Do?’ He seemed surprised at the question. ‘I’ve no intention of doing anything in a hurry. I need to take stock first, look around. When do you want me?’
‘If you’re as free as that,’ Frances said, trying to keep the note of irony from her voice, ‘then before Andrew comes home on Saturday would be best.’
‘Give me tomorrow morning to sort myself out. I’ll be with you by ten or eleven at night?’
‘That’s fine.’
‘I’ll look forward to it.’
He had not asked what this was about, and although she knew he was making assumptions she wanted to discourage, somehow the moment for making herself clear had slipped past.
‘Alec – ’
‘Yes?’
‘Never mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Kate had pasta with nothing; Frances had hers with mushrooms and black olives.
‘I feel better,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t feel as if I want to throw up, like I usually do.’
‘That’s something, I suppose.’ Frances took Kate’s empty plate and stacked it with her own. ‘I called Alec,’ she said. ‘He’s coming up tomorrow.’
‘That’s quick.’
‘It seems he’s sold the restaurant, or sold his half of it.’
‘That’s good,’ Kate nodded. ‘It means he’ll be at home more.’ She went to pour herself another glass of water, saying as she let the cold tap run, ‘Mum hated him being at work all the time.’
‘Kate?’
‘What?’ Kate leaned against the sink, sipping water.
‘You don’t have any idea where your mother might have gone?’
Kate dipped her head to the glass. ‘You never asked me that before.’
‘I assumed you didn’t know, and I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ Kate said, setting the glass down carefully on the draining board, ‘but I could be totally off the wall.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you say?’
Kate shrugged. ‘Like I said, it’s off the wall. I just thought if she’s, like, Ok, safe and all, I reckon she could be there.’
‘Alec checked the Retreat – the sort of Buddhist place.’
‘Not that,’ Kate scoffed. ‘Those weirdos. Na – a different place.’ She lit up, her face glowing. ‘We could look, right? You and me.’
‘Why have you never said anything before?’
‘I only just thought of it the other day, if you want to know.’ She slumped suddenly, only fifteen, drooping. Then she came back to the table and sat down. ‘See,’ she said, explaining slowly as if to someone of lesser intelligence. ‘I had this dream, and it made me remember me and Mum being there. I was a little kid, but I remember it – it was a really nice place.’
‘Right,’ Frances said, trying to be patient, trying to hold herself, Kate, this whole impossible conversation in place, so that they would get somewhere at last. ‘Where is it?’
‘It’s called Amble,’ Kate said. ‘There’s a beach, and there was this dolphin. He’s gone now, they think he got killed, he disappeared one day, but anyhow it’s a beach, and this little, like, harbour. We had fish and chips, when we went there, it was when Mum was in a good mood, feeling happy, you know. Fish and chips in the paper it came in,’ she repeated, as if this memory was strongest of all.
‘I know it,’ Frances said. ‘I know Amble.’
When the telephone rang again and it was Kenny, she told him she would call him back.
‘Later,’ she said. ‘Look, things are a bit fraught – can I leave it a day or two? How are you?’
‘I’m very well indeed, Frances, A Ghraidh. Don’t let me keep you from the latest crisis.’
‘No need to be sarcastic. What’s up?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Oh Kenny, come on, give me a couple of days. Friday?’
‘Friday.’ He seemed to consider this. ‘Why not?’
‘Friday evening, then.’
She was uneasy for a moment saying goodbye, but her mind was not really on him or their conversation. Her mind was somewhere else, far back and a long way off.
3
What Kate did not know was what the doctor had asked Frances, in their few minutes alone together.
‘I’d like a word with your aunt – would you wait for her in reception?’ Dr Geddes asked, having established that Kate did not want to speak on her own. Frances worried about the ethics of this. She had known Dr Geddes a long time and found her altogether wise and trustworthy. Frances, though, was a model patient: respectable, sensible, and rarely ill. She and Dr Geddes had never once had to confront each other over anything more controversial than Andrew’s whooping cough or Jack’s hay fever.
Dr Geddes wanted to know whether Kate had been raped, though she did not put it quite like that. Was there someone who should be prosecuted? The girl had been – was still – a minor. Frances, with some surprise, found herself on Kate’s side rather than the doctor’s when it came to discussing this.
‘It was some boy in Newcastle, that’s all I can tell you. Her own age, I think.’ Frances picked up her bag, preparing to leave immediately, but added dryly as she did so, ‘Someone she wishes could be eaten by piranhas. No anguished relationship there.’
As if wrong-footed the doctor rose too, spectacles in one hand, the other hovering over the papers on her desk, the new file on Kate.
‘Call the surgery and say you want her to be registered for ante-natal care, as soon as you know she’ll be having the baby here.’ She shook her head. ‘This must be quite a worry for you. These girls – you never know how they’ll take it. It’s always the innocents who get caught, in my experience.’
Frances did not relay this conversation to Kate, who did not ask her about it.
In Aberdeen, Grace had taken the same view as Dr Geddes, defending the girl in Miss Gibson’s house to her husband.
‘It’s the nice girls who get caught with babies,’ she said, but he only grunted behind his Telegraph. He took a national paper to give him, he said, a broader perspective than the Press and Journal, but Grace could not understand how anyone managed to read two newspapers in a day, even in retirement. She preferred a library book herself and was just setting out to change the three she had.
‘You want me to run you down there?’ He flicked the newspaper aside, looking up at her.
‘It’s a fine day, I’ll enjoy the walk. I might take the bus back up the hill.’
‘You could have a look on your way past,’ he suggested. ‘See if that nice girl has got any of her pals visiting.’
She saw no need to answer this. There had been cars coming and going but rarely any more loud music. Perhaps one of the other neighbours had complained.
When she had gone out, Jim got up from his chair and went to the window. He caught the last of her, in her camel jacket and tweed skirt, as she rounded the curve of the crescent and disappeared beyond the bushes in Miss Gibson’s front garden, overgrown and hanging over the low wall. He went on standing there, brooding.
He knew what she was getting at with her ‘nice girls’. It was Susan she meant. She was always too soft with Susan, who had needed firm handling. The girls had grown up in the period when he was busiest at work, with responsibilities which kept him in the office late every night and on Saturday mornings too. Saturday afternoons were for golf, Sunday for church and family. One afternoon a week, he realised too late, was not enough to shape your children’s characters. That had been left to Grace.
They all turned out so different, he came to believe character was innate, not created in childhood or adolescence. He had expected to have sons and was at a loss with girls. After the first surprise he had not minded Frances being a girl. From the start she had the demeanour of an older sister: she rarely cried and was easy-going and sensible, a m
odel daughter. Then Susan, though difficult, was pretty and delicate, a charmer. After Gillian was born, tiny and dark like her mother so that he fell in love again, unable to help himself, Grace said firmly that she thought three was a nice size for a family, and he knew there never would be any sons.
He was not a man who dwelt on disappointment. He was convinced his daughters would, in their different ways, bring him credit. Three Douglas girls, all expected to do well.
No complaints about Frances. He took his newspaper back to the armchair and sat down. Pity she hadn’t gone in for secondary teaching though. She could have been head of a big city comprehensive by now, earning good money, someone significant. Not that she wasn’t respected where she was, he could see that, but it was a wee place, buried in the country and Frances was capable of much more. Still, she had brought up her boys well. No trouble there. She had the sons. Sometimes Grace murmured vague hopes that Frances would marry again. She would have liked all her daughters married, so that she could boast of her sons-in-law as he knew other women did. There was that fellow – Ken? – but it would never come to anything. An ageing hippy, a folk singer, Frances had teased, her guard down for once, and from the Western Isles too, a Gaelic speaker. Jim had been in Stornoway shortly after the war and thought the place backward, hopeless. It probably still was. Frances would never marry him.
He went on thinking about Frances so that he would not think about Susan. Skip to Gillian, less satisfactory but not, as Grace kept telling him, in any way a disappointment. ‘You don’t appreciate how well she’s done. Her lovely flat, and a very good job.’
‘Why’s she never married then, if she’s such a catch?’ he had demanded.
‘Still looking for the right man.’
Unbidden, Susan drifted into his memories: Susan at twenty five, saying it was over with Adam, he was leaving, could she come and stay at home for a while? He had never thought much of Adam, for all his good looks and easy manners, indeed perhaps because of those things. Soon after that Susan confessed to Grace she was expecting a baby, and her mother, choosing her moment, leaving it as long as she dared, told him. His first reaction was that they must bring Adam back from Canada so that there could at least be a wedding. It was this he and Susan quarrelled over most bitterly, not the pregnancy, a row that reached its terrible peak when she told them Adam was in any case still married to someone else. His reaction was to ignore the pregnancy, refusing to speak of it.
Tell Me Where You Are Page 19