Before She Was Mine (5 page)

Spoke with Melody and Mrs Brewster for approximately
45
minutes, both women chatty and forthcoming. Melody feels she is recovering well physically from the
birth but is still very tired (appointment with health visitor two days previously, no concerns). She has been seeing friends at home and would like to resume school as soon as possible. She says
she thinks going back to her normal routine will help her in forming her decision about the best course for her baby.

Mrs Brewster agrees that Melody would benefit from returning to her classes. However she would prefer her daughter to have made a firm decision before that date. Mrs Brewster is keen to see
an adoption go ahead, and asked what they had to do to begin the process once the six weeks was up. Melody is as yet unsure how she wants to proceed. Spoke to them both about the timescale
involved.

Melody asked how her baby was settling in with the foster carers and I was able to reassure her all was well there. She particularly wanted to know whether they were musical and if they were
playing the baby music. Mrs Brewster stressed again that she favoured adoption as the way forward.

Melody asked if I could provide her with some sleeping pills and I advised her to contact her GP.

Next visit:
18/11/86

Signed: Diane Kozyra

There’s no getting away from it: under all the tinsel and razz, Christmas is a majorly crap time. As the festive week approaches, there’s always loads on TV and in
the papers about vulnerable groups we need to keep in mind: the poor, the lonely, the bereaved. And obviously that’s right. We should look out for these people.

But there’s another group of people for whom Christmas is a particular trial, a group neglected by the media, invisible to charity campaigners, whose suffering falls beneath
everyone’s radar. I’m talking about those of us in the 13–23 age bracket, that no-man’s-land when you’ve basically disconnected from your family but you haven’t
yet established a territory of your own. We are the dispossessed, the sulky. No one rattles tins on our behalf. We have no proper place, whatever the table settings say.

Everyone else has a clearly defined role to play. Under-twelves have a ball, of course, because
Christmas is all about children, isn’t
it?
Mums and dads are busy creating the
framework of the day, while the elderly just sit back and consume. But what’s our status? Apparently to make everyone else wistful for the days when we were little and cute. ‘Do you
remember,’ Liv says every damn year, ‘when you sat on Santa’s lap and wiped your nose on his beard?’ Ho ho ho.

For the last five Christmases I’ve had the extra joy of balancing both mothers, a situation ripe with stress even when the rest of my life’s been going pretty steadily. This year I
was still feeling the shockwaves of Liv’s lump-scare, still not quite daring to trust the future. That initial trip up to the hospital for the mammogram and biopsy, the nights before and
afterwards I’d sat watching mindless TV till the small hours, the compulsive internet checking, had all drawn me right back close to Liv’s side again. Though her tests had come back
clear, there was this strangeness hanging about the house, the lurking sense of a terrible near-miss that stole over me every so often like a cold draught. In those shivery moments, Melody seemed a
long way away, just a friendly eccentric I’d got tangled with one time and couldn’t shake off. Not her fault. Not mine. Simply a natural ebb, like a tide in a basin; now pulled towards
this shore, now towards that. Since I’ve found her, I’ve grown used to this constant motion back and forth between my mothers.

People who hear the story of how I found my birth mum – via Friends Reunited, and directly against the advice of social services who wanted me to have counselling and follow proper
procedures – often react as if I’d told them a wonderful fairy tale. Genetic order restored. How marvellous that it didn’t end in a Jeremy Kyle-type punch-up. And yes, when you
think of all the tensions involved, it has gone incredibly well.

I suppose the first stroke of luck was that Melody turned out to be so wrapped up in herself, my re-appearance hardly shook her at all. I’d expected tears and hand-wringing; what I got was
a ninety-minute monologue on her life so far. I don’t think she stopped for breath. But it was OK. Melody is what she is: sparky, generous, sunny, and almost completely self-obsessed. Once
you appreciate that, the relationship becomes a lot easier.

Obviously I asked pretty early on about my biological dad, but it turned out the night I was conceived Melody had been at a stranger’s party and got herself drunk. Couldn’t remember
a thing about the incident, bar the fact they had very loud wallpaper in the bathroom, and gatecrashers had broken the fridge door off its hinges.

So there being no father for me to fret about, this left, family-wise, just Melody’s mother, Abby, and Michael. Abby sent a vague welcome from Ireland but made it clear she didn’t
want to be involved in any reunion. Michael, who’s hardly related to me at all, turned out to be brilliant. He was twenty-five then, and about to get engaged to a bunny-boiler, but he still
took the time to listen to my history and ask me what I wanted out of my new family. I told him I wanted more of a sense of who I was, and he nodded as though he understood.

So I was bloody fortunate the way it worked out, because all I’d really pictured when I thought about meeting my birth mum was a pair of figures embracing. Her and me, end of story. It
honestly didn’t register there might be wider effects. ‘Which is why,’ said the social worker afterwards, ‘we advise talking the process through at every stage. It can be an
overwhelming amount to take on board, especially for someone at your stage of life.’ The trouble with being eighteen is you’re in such a hurry about everything.

The other big miscalculation I made was that, when they met, Liv and Melody would either love or hate each other straightforwardly. I could imagine them being jealous, competing for my
affection. Or alternatively (went my fantasy), it was possible their bond through me might make them extra-special friends, and we’d make a new tight unit of three with me in prime position
at the centre, like jewels set in a ring. This was the scenario I liked the best.

Back in 2004 I’d exited Crewe Station with my brand-new mum Melody, crossed the road to the car park, and seen Liv standing by her Volvo estate, waiting to give me a lift home. Melody came
over with me and they shook hands awkwardly, and I climbed into the passenger seat expecting to go. I was exhausted. I had lots to think about. But Liv took Melody’s arm and led her a way
off, and they talked for about fifteen minutes. I’d have given worlds to know what was being said. It looked friendly, from a distance, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to be involved.
I mean, it was my day, I was the connection. Just as I was about to open the door and join them, Melody leaned forward and hugged Liv round her neck very quickly. Then she stepped back. I saw Liv
nod, laugh, shake her head, turn to me and smile. I remember thinking, ‘It’s going to be OK.’

Neat scenes like that are never the end, though, are they?

The next occasion they came together, Liv had invited Melody round for a meal. By then I’d seen the house in Love Lane – the extensive wardrobe, pristine kitchen – and I began
to view our place as if through Melody’s eyes. While Liv moved around clearing spaces between equipment, I registered her clogs, her cargo pants, dip-dyed T-shirt, wild hair. Our hallway was
full of bat box kits, the dining table covered with a wall chart showing the processes in the formation of a peat bog.

Worst, though, was when Melody first breezed through to our kitchen with her bunch of freesias to find four plates of half-mashed barn-owl pellets and two dishes of tiny bones laid out along the
worktop. It must have looked as if she’d interrupted a really nasty party game.
Are those the forks we’ll be using to eat?
said the expression on her face. Liv was unabashed.
‘We’re monitoring small mammal distribution along the Prees Branch Canal,’ she explained. ‘These are wood-mouse skulls, and these are shrew, see the red-tipped teeth.’
She tapped the dishes one after the other. I think I said something warning like, ‘Not everyone shares your passion for rodents, Mum,’ and she stared at me, amazed. I thought perhaps
I’d got through, but she went, ‘Shrews aren’t rodents, Frey. You know that!’ I suppose Melody was wondering who the hell she’d given her baby to. Then, whilst Liv was
assembling ingredients for the meal, Geraint turned up and washed one of the jawbones down the plughole before she’d had a chance to identify which species of shrew it belonged to. Michael
told me afterwards that Melody thought Liv was mad.

When the time came for a return visit, it was the level of consumption Liv found impossible to deal with. ‘So much
stuff
!’ she said as soon as we got in the car. ‘You
could barely move. And I bet she’s a stranger to FairTrade.’ As soon as we got home she pulled up this website where you can calculate how much more of the planet’s resources
you’re using than you should. According to the stats, Melody was taking 2.7 earths just to fund her clothes habit.

So there was a spot of rockiness at the start. I tried to reassure each of them. I said to Liv, ‘I didn’t go looking for my birth mum because you aren’t good enough.’ To
Melody I said, ‘Finding you makes me feel kind of complete.’ To anyone who’d listen I said, ‘It’s not a competition, I’m not trying to find the best mum or
anything.’

I soon realised, though, that any tension was straightforward dislike based on the fact they are two very different people, and the whole shared daughter thing didn’t have much to do with
it. The idea I’d had at the back of my mind, that having two mothers would feel like snuggling down under a double layer of duvet, turned out to be wrong. Trying to stitch together two
ill-matched squares of blanket would have been nearer the mark.

And yet we
were
a family. Melody had become part of our Christmas, alongside other traditions like painting fir cones, hanging up a star for Colin and making a giant fat-and-seed cake for
the birds. She got into the habit of dropping by early afternoon, before the big meal. ‘What’s your Christmas Day routine?’ I remember asking her that first, critical year.

She’d laughed. ‘Routine? Me?’

‘Don’t you have any little rituals?’

‘I make sure I’m pickled by five,’ she said. But she hadn’t got drunk in the hour she stayed with us, and she’d left not only a present for me but some perfume for
Liv as well, which caused panic as Liv had nothing to give her in return. ‘Putting herself on the moral high ground,’ said Liv, holding up the bottle of
Poison
critically.
‘When would I wear scent, anyway? It attracts wasps and it interferes with the tracking pads.’

Thus started another tradition: the unsuitable gift exchange. So far Melody’s received, among other things, a ladybird overwintering house, an energy-saving plug and a mug showing which
areas of the earth will be devastated by global warming. To Liv she’s given a massive pair of spangly dangly earrings, a voucher for a manicure and a DVD called
Make Mine Mink.
These
may have all been chosen with a pure and innocent heart, but I doubt it.

This troubled year my birth mother turned up slightly later than usual, in a long, belted Victorian nightie, burgundy knee boots and a green suede coat.

‘I declare, it’s Wee Willie Winkie,’ muttered Liv as we watched Melody tug her sack of presents off the back seat of the car. But as usual, it was air-kissing and smiley-smiley
as soon as she was in the hall.

‘Have you re-decorated? The place looks bigger.’

‘We shifted a couple of moth traps,’ said Liv. ‘Come through.’

Geraint was watching TV but he looked up when Melody came in. It’s difficult to read what he’s thinking. His small eyes squinted, taking in her whole length. Sensibly she ignored
him.

‘The house looks nice,’ she said, nodding at the home-made paper chains and modest tree. The tree’s one of Liv’s few festive concessions – real, but locally sourced
off the edge of the Moss, and always recycled via the council chipper afterwards. We decorate it with strings of popcorn that can be hung out for the birds, and with teasels and physalis and dried
orange slices. The colours may be subdued but it does smell nice.

‘This is your present,’ said Liv. She settled herself next to Melody on the couch, and handed over a small, slim envelope. I was surprised. Surely Liv wasn’t giving cash?

Melody’s perfect nails slit open the flap and drew out the card. ‘Oh,’ she said after a beat, ‘chickens! You bought me chickens.’ She began to laugh. ‘Welcome
to my smallholding.’

‘Where’s she going to keep chickens?’ I asked.

‘Melody doesn’t get them, they go to a family in Haiti,’ said Liv. ‘Oxfam have this scheme. I could have bought you half a goat, or an eighth of a cow.’

‘Chickens!’ said Melody.

‘I got you jewellery,’ I said hastily, in case she thought I was in on the poultry deal. She wiped her eyes, put the envelope down and started on my present.

‘Oh, that’s beautiful, hun.’ She lifted up the peacock brooch to admire. Then she fastened it straight onto her nightdress and blew me a kiss.

‘More birds for you,’ I said.

Beside her, Liv was picking at her own parcel, her fingers short-nailed, freckled, calloused, saggy about the knuckle. What she finally unwrapped was a box of Booja Booja ethical truffles,
packaged in renewable cedar wood, dairy-, wheat-, gluten- and GMO-free. Her face was a picture and I almost hooted out loud. Ha! Wrong-footed this time, Liv. Cunning Melody, switching the
rules.

‘Well, now. They’re lovely,’ said Liv.

‘Organic,’ said Melody.

‘So I see,’ said Liv.

‘Yum yum.’

Was that a wink or just a bit of eyelash-fluttering? Now Melody handed me two presents: a smart gold affair the size of a shoebox and a smaller one which looked as though it had been wrapped in
wallpaper lining by someone wearing a blindfold. I attacked the scruffy one first. ‘That’s from Michael,’ she told me.