Before She Was Mine (8 page)

It was a struggle to find the right words. ‘What Melody didn’t hear won’t hurt her.’

‘Yeah, that’s the last thing I want to do. Just, any day now she’ll be decorating the nursery like it’s the Sistine Chapel, and sticking some four-hundred-quid pram on
her credit card. If I could just somehow be the voice of caution. God, I don’t know. Shut up, Michael. Forget I ever said it. What’s your take, anyway?’

‘On Melody being pregnant? Urgh. Too weird.’

‘More scary change on the way for you.’

‘Bog off.’ I lowered the back of my seat and closed my eyes. Gradually the tension between us lifted.

Michael said, ‘You’ll have a sibling, of sorts, a proper one. Have you thought about that?’

A little sister or brother. Some squirming infant dropped into my arms while I stood petrified I was going to drop it or choke it or let it cry itself into a fit.

‘Like I said, it’s just too bizarre, I can’t picture it at all. And Melody, she’s been
my
mum for twenty-three years. I thought that was it. I thought she’d
finished with babies. Can you imagine her dealing with a nappy, honestly? Her scarves and pendants dangling down in the poo, her velvet clothes with sick on them? And all those bits and pieces in
the house that a baby’ll pull down or swallow or fall over. She’ll have to change. She can’t carry on being Melody.’

‘Does that matter?’

Yes
, I wanted to say,
I need her to stay as she is.
But even through the whirling mess of thoughts and possibilities I realised how selfish it would sound. Melody was never really
my mum; why shouldn’t she move on and mother someone else?

‘You know what? Makes no odds if it’s happening anyway. I mean, change is part of life. You have to go with it.’

‘That’s the spirit, kiddo.’

Something brushed across my scalp and I opened my eyes. Michael, I realised, was attempting to ruffle my hair.

‘Patronising git,’ I said, batting his hand away. ‘I shan’t bother telling you anything in future. Oh, and do you mind telling me what your present was in aid of?
“Hey, Freya, why not bugger off to a war zone for a spell?”’

‘It was only an idea. The guide kind of leaped out at me.’

‘Because . . . ?’

‘I don’t know what it was, except in junior school we used to have this ancient book called
Flight Six: The Holy Land.
I remember sitting in the library looking at the
pictures, and it dawning on me for the first time ever that places you heard about, like in assembly, Bethlehem and that, actually existed and you could go visit them. So when you grew up you could
go anywhere in the world if you wanted to. Maybe it’s that.’

‘Couldn’t you choose somewhere more peaceful, though?’

‘It’s not all fighting round there. There’s people living ordinary lives, a different culture and stuff. Some of it’s very historical.’

‘I’ll give you “historical”. Next year, foist your junk-shop finds on someone else.’

He laid his arms across the steering wheel and rested his chin there, staring out at the far-off orange glow from the bypass. ‘I wonder what it would be like to go out somewhere so
different and far away. I might have it back, your book, and make use of it myself.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘I might.’

‘We’re talking the other side of the world.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You don’t know the language. There are terrorists.’

‘I think I can work out how to use a phrasebook. There are terrorists everywhere these days.’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘What?’

‘You love the garage.’

Michael sighed in exasperation. ‘I don’t “love” it. It’s OK. But there’s other stuff I want to do. It might be nice to travel the world, properly travel, meet
different people who’ve grown up thousands of miles from you and had completely different experiences. All right, maybe not the West Bank, that probably is a bit radical, but
somewhere
. Are you telling me you want to spend your whole life here, in this two-horse town?’

‘What about the people here?’ What about me, I suppose I meant. ‘Aren’t we enough for you?’

I guess I’d not appreciated how much I relied on Michael. He was someone I could always moan at, confide in, laugh with. He’d given me lifts home when I was stranded, bailed me out
of a small financial crisis, helped me find my first proper job. Plus, quite aside from any emotional support, he represented free car maintenance, something which must have saved me a small
fortune over the years. If all of a sudden he wasn’t around, it was going to leave such a hole.

Not that our relationship had always been so positive. When we very first met, I’d developed a small and secret crush on him. This crush evaporated overnight when I came limping back from
uni and he took it upon himself to give me a right telling-off. He actually took me out for a meal to do it: massive great bollocking in the beer garden of the Dusty Miller. ‘For God’s
sake, Freya,’ he’d ranted, ‘I wish I had half your brains. You don’t appreciate what you’re chucking away.’ Oh, he’s changed his tune since then, but at
the time he was furious with me.

For half a year after that we avoided each other. Then I went to his awful, sad wedding and I just felt sorry for him. It’s difficult to stay angry when you discover the bridegroom round
the back of the registry office with his head in his hands.

‘Wouldn’t you miss your friends and family?’ I asked him now. ‘Your workmates, and the pub, Oulton Park? What about all those autojumbles you go to?’

The edges of the fishing lake before us were busy with little silver streaks of movement – coots, moorhens, mallards, or perhaps only the ordinary disturbance of water against reeds. To me
it looked beautiful. And the clouds pearly against the half-moon, and bare tree branches outlined by distant sodium lamps, and every few minutes the twinkle of headlights passing.

Michael spoke without turning his head. Each sentence misted the windscreen faintly. ‘I don’t know, Freya. I don’t know whether it’s enough. I keep thinking lately,
there’s got to be more than this.’

‘At least we’re safe here.’

‘Are we, though?’

I thought of Liv, tried to sound careless. ‘There’s no place like home, Toto.’

‘How would you know unless you ever left it?’ he said.

From Liv’s diary,
1/05

Bad start to the day as Alan H rang to say mink reported on reserve. F in mood at breakfast saying she didn’t know what to wear, everything I suggested wrong. Stress
between us dreadful even though I try not to show reaction.

Arrived M’s house around
10.
When she opened door I thought we’d got her out of bed, but nightie/slip turned out to be a dress. Can’t understand how she
wasn’t frozen.

Hard to see where to sit. Whole space crammed, clutter on every surface, lacy mats & cushions & nick-nacks like an old lady’s house. F thinks it’s trendy. Wonder if M has
a condition.

Met the ‘brother-who-isn’t’, as he calls himself. Seemed sensible & polite, slightly hunted look about him. Very tolerant of M’s teasing. He told me in kitchen
when on our own, ‘Freya is obviously a well-brought-up girl’. Wanted to ask him whether he thought F seeing too much of M, whether healthy, but worried about how I’d sound so
didn’t. F ridiculously giddy throughout visit. Not the daughter I know!

Back home made us scrambled egg & bacon, asked if F wanted to come check mink rafts with me. Said she would, but then Michael rang & she got chatting to him. Not heard her laugh so
much in years.

The trouble is, they are all so
young
.

Under different circumstances it could have been quite a fun half hour.

‘
Woken Nightly by my Haunted Stairlift!
’ read Liv, holding the tatty magazine aloft and showing me the headline for proof.

‘
Jealous Neighbour Fed Me Poisoned Trifle
,’ I countered, flourishing my own mag. ‘
Dr Doom Sold My Kidney
.’

‘
I Used My Giant Boobs to Squash a Burglar
.’

‘
Mum Cooked My Guinea Pig.
’

Other patients in the waiting room frowned and looked away. ‘Sorry,’ said Liv, to no one in particular. The double doors opened and a hospital porter wheeled an empty trolley past
reception. Liv followed it with her eyes till it was out of sight.

‘Can they be true?’ I said, to bring her back to me.

‘The stories? I’ve no idea.’

‘Someone’s been through my magazine and clipped half of them out. Now that’s disturbing.’

We shifted on the hard plastic seats, checked our watches, sighed. Behind the safety of her desk, the receptionist busied herself on the computer. ‘Do you think it’ll be much
longer?’ asked Liv.

‘No. There’s only that couple in the corner who were here before us.’

Her left hand crept up to clasp her right bicep, a habit she’d started over Christmas. I suspected it was a way of covertly feeling the lump, by pressing her wrist above her nipple.
‘The Breast Care Nurse did say to call if I had any more worries,’ she’d confided on Boxing Day. ‘Then do it,’ I’d urged. ‘Ask for another appointment. Get
a scan.’

‘
Locked in the Loo by Evil Burglars!
’ I read out hastily.

‘As though there might be any other kind of burglar,’ said Liv. ‘Do you ever feel as though you’ve led the dullest life?’

When they did finally call her, she wouldn’t let me go in even though I pleaded.

‘Let me do this my own way,’ she said, which left me no room to manoeuvre. Instead I sat among the magazines and read about a teenager who’d given birth in a jammed lift, a
Girl Guide who’d used her uniform to rob pensioners, and a man who kidnapped his old maths teacher. My maths teacher in secondary school had been about a hundred; he’d never have stood
to be bundled into the back of a van and driven around with a pillowcase over his head. Oggy’s daft comments alone nearly gave him a heart attack. Once someone planted a Little Snapper mouse
trap in his desk drawer and he had to have the week off for the shock. And then I remembered Melody standing in our hallway, sliding her hand into Liv’s shoulder bag to retrieve a set of
keys, and her shriek as her fingers touched cold slime. Liv hurrying in, reassuring:
It’s only rotted apple. I keep it to attract the voles.
Melody’s eyes wide and disbelieving
as she took the proffered towel.

The scanning-room door opened and Liv emerged. Her face was so grim I couldn’t help but assume the worst. ‘Well?’ I said as she sat down next to me.

‘I’m not sure they think there’s a problem,’ she said tightly.

‘Oh.’ That I hadn’t been expecting. ‘Did they see it had grown?’

‘Only by half a millimetre, and that’s not significant. They allow a margin of error anyway.’

She hung her head.

‘Let them do this second biopsy,’ I said.

‘I don’t know. We could just go home. Aside from the lump I feel perfectly healthy.’

‘You’re here, though, it’s all set up.’

‘I don’t want to be a bother.’

I stood up. Several patients turned their heads in my direction. ‘
Bother?
What the
hell
are you talking about?’

‘Freya.’

‘Well, for God’s sake, Mum. What are you trying to do to me?’

‘Sit down,’ she hissed. ‘All right, I’ll go. Just don’t make a fuss. It’s bad enough as it is.’

Which made me feel like a kid being told off for having a tantrum. It’s funny, even decent mothers have a way of making you feel like crap sometimes.

Straight after the biopsy they gave Liv a special pager. We were supposed to go for a wander round the hospital, then, when we got the bleep, come back in for the results.

‘Where do you want to go?’ I asked.

‘I’m not sure there’s anywhere
to
go. Walk round the grounds, maybe.’

‘It’s raining. Does that matter?’

‘I think I’d like to be outside, Frey.’

We strolled across two giant car parks, shiny with the wet, and I thought about the opening sequence of
28
Days Later
where nearly everyone in Britain has died of the Rage virus
and the hospital’s been left smashed and deserted. This place felt uncaring in its bustling efficiency, its normal busy-ness.

Round the back of the maternity unit, where it was quieter, Liv found an interesting hedge containing an old blackbird nest, and we watched some finches and siskins fly back and forth between
two maples.

‘This biopsy’s only double-checking,’ I said, pushing back my hood so I could see her better. ‘Everything’s been clear so far. Just get this last hurdle out of the
way and you can put it all behind you.’

Liv’s hand came up again to her bicep, even though I knew she wouldn’t be able to feel anything through her coat.

‘It hurts,’ she said. ‘A surprising amount. It hurts a bit when they scan you because they squash you so hard, but it bloody hurts when they put the needle in.’ She
studied the white sky. ‘I suppose that’s nothing.’

She meant compared with cancer treatment.

I said, ‘Hey, guess what, Melody’s pregnant.’

Her mouth fell open. ‘Melody?’

‘Yup. It’s a secret, though. Don’t say anything.’

‘I can’t believe it. Melody? How many weeks?’

‘Not many. About eight.’

‘Good grief. Was it planned?’

‘I don’t know.’ I hadn’t thought to ask. ‘Not much in Melody’s life is, so I doubt it.’

‘Well!’

‘She’s really pleased. I mean, even if it was an accident, she’s happy, she’s going to keep it.’

‘And her boyfriend? There is someone around, is there?’

‘Some guy called Joe. He’s hot news, apparently. I’m meeting him tonight.’

‘It’s all go, isn’t it?’ said Liv. She walked ahead of me for a few paces, then stopped and looked back at me through the rain. ‘You know, I honestly can’t
get my head round this. How on earth does she think she’ll cope with a new baby at her age?’

‘She’s not that old. In some ways she’s pretty young.’

‘Quite.’

‘She’ll have to change her lifestyle—’

‘Won’t she just?’