Bad Mothers United (26 page)
Read Bad Mothers United Online
Authors: Kate Long
I said, ‘Funny, I used to come here with my dad sometimes and look for mussel shells. When I was a kid, you know.’
‘Aye?’
‘He was the best. He died when I was a teenager and it was awful. Everyone thought the world of him. Only, he wasn’t technically my dad. Like my mum wasn’t technically my mum.
I was adopted. I didn’t discover that till a few years ago and it was a hell of a shock.’
‘My God, I bet it was. Does your daughter know?’
‘Uh huh. Not that she’s especially interested.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘Mum let it slip one time when she wasn’t herself; she didn’t mean to. Initially I didn’t believe her, but then I wrote off for my birth certificate and that proved
it.’
‘Were you upset? Is that what’s bothering you?’
I hesitated for a moment, trying to answer truthfully. ‘Not the being adopted itself, no. Though I’ll admit, first off I was very, very shaken. Something like that knocks you totally
off-kilter because your basic assumptions about who you are, your roots, turn out to be wrong, and you’re left going, Who am I, then? Where do I actually come from? It goes to your core. And
I was angry that I hadn’t been told, because it was my life, I should have had that information. I felt it wasn’t right to keep it from me. I couldn’t believe Mum had done that.
But then once the news had sunk in, I became excited. I thought I could go and meet this other mother and maybe – I know how this sounds but I’m trying to stick to the truth here
– maybe claim a better life for myself. I suppose you could say I had ideas above my station.’
‘She was wealthy then, your birth mother?’
‘I didn’t know anything about her except she’d moved to London. From where I was, though, that seemed quite glamorous. I was thinking Harrods, and people in suits, Carnaby
Street. I know it’s not all like that, but I just had this – instinct – she might have made something of herself. That turned out to be so wrong.’ I looked down at the
wheels of yellow frilly lichen decorating the wall next to us, wondering whether to carry on, tell him everything. ‘Listen, Eric, no one knows this next bit. Not even Charlotte. Especially
not Charlotte. She has to be protected from what happened. You have to promise me, promise you’ll never breathe a word. Can I trust you?’
‘Of course. I promise.’
‘Never tell anyone. Ever.’
‘I promise!’
His expression was so earnest. I longed for the relief of confession at last.
‘OK. Well. I did go and track her down.’
‘I see. And?’
Again I hesitated. ‘Like I said, I’ve not told a soul. Actually, I don’t know if I can tell you.’
He nodded, then slid off the wall so he was standing in front of me. ‘Come on, let’s walk.’ And he held out his hand.
The shore was uneven with loose stones and patches of soft sand, tussocks of grass. The water level was low and some of the rocks we walked over were green with dried-out weed. His fingers felt
hot in mine.
I said, ‘To cut a long story short, it didn’t work out. I found my birth mother and she wasn’t a nice woman. She didn’t want me and I didn’t want her. So I came
home. I thought that was it and I’d be able to get on with my life. I tried to make up for – for my disloyalty – by appreciating Mum more. I thought, She doesn’t know where
I’ve been, I haven’t hurt her, it’ll be all right. But I didn’t realise what damage I’d done to myself. See, Mum had given me such a secure childhood, and effectively
what I’d done was throw it back in her face. That’s what it felt like to me, anyway. Like I betrayed my mother, and I got punished for it.’
Some of the gulls over our heads were crying, a seaside sound. Days out in Blackpool and Formby, that sound meant, novelty rock and the thick sliced nougat that Mum always called
‘nugget’. Dad winking at me over his potted shrimp.
‘Ach, come on,’ said Eric. ‘There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to know about your roots. I mean, that’s human nature, needing a mystery solved, y’ken? Who
wouldna want to hear about their own past? God,
I
never think about it, I take it for granted because I’ve always known – the house I grew up in, my mum and dad’s
marriage, my grandparents. All the family stories, where, when, who. If I didna know this stuff, you can bet I’d be hoaching to find out. It would really bother me. You did nothing wrong,
Karen. You just asked the question ninety-nine per cent of us would have done.’
‘You think?’
‘I do. Did you ever hear from this woman again?’
I swallowed. ‘Sometimes she sends me these cards. I throw them away.’
‘Are you worried she’ll come after you? Is it that?’
‘She wouldn’t dare. I could – I could cause a lot of trouble for her. She knows that. I’m safe as long as I don’t reply. Only, seeing the handwriting brings it all
back and churns me up for days after.’
‘Must have been some meeting between you.’
I had meant to leave the story there, he’d heard enough to understand, but now the rest came pouring out, unstoppable.
‘You’ve no idea. No idea. She was
so
cruel. Not just to me, because you could understand that – the shock of me turning up out the blue might make her defensive.
Aggressive even. It wasn’t that. It was a lot worse. I saw this social worker-type person while I was down there who told me . . . there was something she did. Basically that she hurt someone
and was sent to prison for it. More than hurt. Somebody died because of her.’
And here it came, forming before my eyes: a head-and-shoulders shot of a little girl in a check dress and cardigan, smiling for the camera. How many times had I called up her image after I came
back from London? Hundreds? Thousands? So many it drove me nearly mad and I had to train myself to stop. Now, when she shimmered at the edge of my consciousness, I pushed her away. Stood up, walked
about, pinched myself on the arm, sang out loud. Anything to block the memory. Some knowledge is just unbearable.
‘It was – I’m sorry, it’s too horrible to think about. I have to keep blotting out the detail.’
‘Jeez.’ Eric’s voice sounded a long way away.
‘So I knew what sort of a woman she was, but I went to her house anyway. I thought there might be some kind of explanation for what she’d done, I thought – I don’t know
what I thought. And I got there and she opened the door and screamed at me to go. The whole visit was a nightmare, from start to finish. I don’t think about it now any more than I have to.
It’s boxed up in my head, shut away. If I do start to remember, then I immediately make myself concentrate on something else. Mostly it works. Except for the sense of guilt, and
Mum.’
‘Karen. That’s terrible.’
‘Yes.’
His hand was still round mine, his thumb stroking and soothing. We carried on along the shore, crunching shingle.
After a while he said, ‘But look, what your birth mother got up to’s no’ your fault. And as for your mum, your adopted mum, did you love her before you went to
London?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘And when you came back, did you love her any less?’
I laughed bleakly. ‘No! I loved her more, because I appreciated what a lucky escape I’d had. I realised how Mum had been keeping the past a secret to protect me. And I saw how much
she’d done for me while I was growing up, the trouble she took just in ordinary ways. I became a lot more patient with her, and grateful for what I had. With Charlotte too, and Will. It was
as if we’d begun again. A proper fresh start.’
‘Well, then.’
‘Yeah, but I keep coming back to
How would she have felt if she knew I’d been to London?
’
‘Don’t you think she’d have forgiven you?
‘Yes, yes, I think she would. She definitely would. But—’
I couldn’t meet his eyes, so I fixed my gaze on a patch of sky above his head and a cloud shaped like a stretched-out rabbit. The cloud thinned, the rabbit’s head and ears broke off
and became a beak. Mum up a stepladder sweeping a broom round the picture rail; me on the bottom step sucking a stick of black Spanish. Happy kids don’t realise how blessed they are, they
just assume happiness is their right. Which is as it should be. I felt as though I was shifting with the shapes I watched, changing form. Memories broke apart, dissolved, reformed.
‘Then don’t you think it’s about time you forgave yourself, Karen?’ he said.
I left the boys to their activities and ran upstairs for clean trousers. I brought them down, persuaded Will into them, and switched the TV back on. Then I went outside to
fetch the trousers Mum threw away.
To my relief, as soon as I opened the bin lid I could see an embroidered giraffe motif. I remembered how touched I’d been by the gift, that Gemma had even thought of Will, let alone
spent her own money on him. ‘I saw them in a window and just thought they were so sweet,’ she’d said.
I took hold of the tiny section of material on show and attempted to drag out the rest from under the rubbish. Sod’s law, though, the waistband caught on a piece of plastic packaging,
and in tugging I dislodged a stack of vegetable peelings and mouldy fruit that showered onto my feet. A gust of wind nearly blew the lid shut on me; I flung it back angrily. Something horrid flew
off and splashed in my eye. In the past I’ve laughed at Mum for believing inanimate objects gang up on her, but right now I could have kicked that bin to within an inch of its life.
Finally the trousers came free and I shook them, turning them this way and that. They were pretty caked; Mum had been right, damn her. But nothing a hot wash wouldn’t put right.
I’d show her.
I was about to drop the lid back in place when a picture caught my eye: a glossy picture of a baby, Photoshopped so its face was at the centre of a giant sunflower. I’d seen the image
before on greetings cards, there’s a whole range of them. Babies dressed in ladybird suits, babies peeping out of flowerpots and seed pods. I think they’re yuk but Mum thinks
they’re cute. I couldn’t imagine why she’d throw such a card away and not have it out on the sideboard. Idle curiosity made me reach down and ease it free.
It was soggy, of course. Our junkmail always is. Mum drops it in the sink to soak for half an hour before slinging it, then that way no one can steal our identities, though what poor bugger
would want to be any of us I can’t fathom. But there was more than water damage here. Now I looked properly, the card had been ripped almost in two across the middle of the sunflower. The
crown of the baby’s head had been removed.
I laid the trousers on the ground and concentrated as best I could on peeling the ruined card open.
What I saw inside made my mouth fall open.
Jessie
it said at the bottom, and a wiggly arrow pointing to
New Address
in London. The biro handwriting was rounded, a bit
childish; above it was the end of the printed greeting, something about Sunny Days. There’d been a message at the top of the left-hand side too, but that section looked to have been added
in felt tip and was now too blurred to decipher.
I stood there for half a minute, squinting at the ghosts of words. I knew who Jessie was. The last time I’d seen that name was on my mum’s birth certificate, uncovered three years
ago when I accidentally broke Nan’s kitten picture. I remembered the certificate falling out from between the frame and the glass, then Paul Bentham and me unfolding the yellowing strip of
paper and trying to make sense of it. The shock as the penny dropped. Mum not who she thought she was, Nan not my nan. Jessie Pilkington my grandma, wherever she was. Then: did it matter? Did I
care? Did it change anything, day to day? What about Mum, how would she cope if I told her? Hugging the knowledge to myself for weeks, and then it turning out Mum knew she was adopted anyway
because Nan had apparently blurted it out in a moment of confusion. Other more immediate events – Will’s arrival, Nan’s stroke – overtaking us so the discovery shrank
pretty much to nothing. For me anyway. For Mum too, I’d thought. She never said much on the topic, even when I asked her. I’d assumed she’d turned her back on that avenue. Now
to find out Jessie was writing . . .
The back door banged shut, nearly giving me a heart attack. Mum must have come in the front and created a through draught. For a moment I stood and dithered, then I slid what was left of the
card into my pocket to examine later, and picked up the smelly trousers between my thumb and index finger.
When I got in, the bathroom was occupied so I was forced to rinse the trousers in the kitchen sink. What damned lie had I texted to Roz that morning?
Being a mum is fun!!!
I slung
them in the washing machine, scrubbed my hands again and went through to check on the boys.
It was sitting on its side on the lino, propped against the skirting, waiting for me. I bent down and picked it up with trembling hands. ‘Mum?’ I said.
Both kids were back on the sofa. The (empty) potty was upside down and Will had draped the towel over his head. Pens lay scattered across the floor.
‘Just waiting to say cheerio to your mum,’ said Eric from the doorway, making me jump.
I nodded, and went to right the potty.
‘She had something in her eye, she’s gone to wash it out.’
Busting for a pee, more like, I thought. The mysteries we women have to preserve.
I said, ‘Kenzie’s done a lovely picture. He’ll want to take it home with him.’
‘Aye?’
I thought Eric wasn’t going to even bother looking, but after a few seconds he seemed to change his mind, stepping forward to glance at the orange-haired, stick-fingered figure. The
reaction was not what I was expecting. ‘Jeez,’ I heard him say under his breath.
Oh, give the kid a break, I thought. It’s not bad for four.
The next moment he’d snatched up the paper and folded it roughly. ‘Hoy, you, come on,’ he barked at Kenzie. ‘Home.’
‘Are you not waiting for my mum?’
He shook his head and took hold of Kenzie’s arm. The lad wriggled off the sofa obediently. I heard the toilet flush.
‘So I’ll tell her you said goodbye then, shall I?’
‘Aye.’ In four stiff strides he was out of the room. Weirdo son, weirdo dad.
Will flopped backwards into the empty space left by Kenzie and I went to the window to watch them. Eric’s free hand was working in his pocket as if he was mashing up the folded paper
there.
‘Oh, has he gone?’ Mum’s voice sounded disappointed, but when I turned to look it was worse than that. Her mouth was twisted and her eyes wide, maddish. She looked like
someone who’s had a terrible shock.
‘Bloody hell, Mum, what’s up? What’s he done to you?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with Eric.’
‘You come home from a date with him, straight away lock yourself in the loo, and then emerge all upset? Give me some credit.’
‘I’m not upset.’
‘Could have fooled me.’
‘You wouldn’t understand. You never understand.’
‘Try me.’
‘This. See.’
She held out a photo to me, one I’d not seen before. It was obviously old, the black and white fading to sepia, and it featured a wedding group where the bride wore a hat rather than a
veil, and a dress with long, tight-cuffed sleeves.
‘Is it Nan?’ I asked, knowing it was even as the words came out. Her rounded young face was aglow, while the groom on her arm smiled modestly. Making up the party was an awkward
teenage girl in round spectacles and ankle socks, a very tall bridesmaid, a laddish best man, and two fierce-looking old biddies in long, funereal coats.
Mum blinked a few times. ‘It was in the bathroom when I went in just now. Just under the sink. You didn’t put it there for me, did you?’
‘Nope.’
‘My God, then.’
‘
What?
’
‘If you didn’t put it there . . .’
‘No big mystery. It’ll have fallen out the airing cupboard. You probably pulled it down with those towels you cleared.’ She was that freaked, I was trying to be helpful.
The moan that escaped from her was like something collapsing. She shifted her bulk round the corner of the sofa and sat down heavily by Will.
‘
Why
, Charlotte? Why? Why do you always have to be so mean?’
Honestly, it was just a photo. It had been lost and now it had turned up. That should have been a nice thing. She could stick it in her history book. What was wrong with the woman?
I started to gather pens and lids, while on TV a cartoon owl asked over and over, ‘Where’s my mummy?’ I felt useless, as though everything I said and ever had said and ever
would say was poisoned.
On the seat next to her, Will went quiet and a dark stain spread out across the cushion beneath him.