The Baby Group (41 page)

Nobody knew Natalie better than she knew herself, and she was well aware that she was prone to backing out of things that were likely to be difficult and require effort.

She had improved a lot since Freddie had come along, that was for sure. Because there was no way you could tell your midwife eight hours into labour, ‘Actually, I don't really like this very much any more. Can I change my mind and have a cup of tea instead?'

And tempting though it might be to leave your caterwauling baby on the neighbour's doorstep in a basket with a note pinned to his Babygro saying ‘Sorry, have discovered I prefer sleeping to motherhood', the evolutionary impulse to protect your child, even if they are breaching the rules of the Geneva Convention by keeping you up for twenty hours straight, always outweighs the desire to give them away.

Freddie had been fed and changed at Meg's. He was happily asleep in his buggy and it was quite a warm afternoon. She
could
go now.

But for some reason, as she looked up at the dark windows of her house, she felt she ought to go in and say hello to her mother. It was a similar sort of evolutionary impulse, Natalie supposed, as she let herself in and parked the buggy in the hallway, to the one that kept her loving Freddie no matter how difficult he was being. As much as she wanted to pretend she was not related to her mother and that the woman had not single-handedly messed her up almost completely, she still couldn't quite stop worrying about her. But unlike her maternal instinct, her daughterly one had no practical application at all and it was also most inconvenient.

The house was silent.

‘Mother!' Natalie called out. ‘Mother, are you out?'

She looked around the hallway. This time her mother's heeled boots were at the foot of the stairs. Her bag was on the telephone table and her coat on the end of the banister, despite Natalie telling her repeatedly that she should hang it in the closet in the hall.

So if Sandy had gone out she'd done so without any proper footwear, money or her coat. But then again if she had been drinking, anything was possible.

Natalie looked at Freddie, sleeping so peacefully in his buggy, and decided to leave him there for a moment rather than risk waking him.

Her mother was not in the kitchen, although there were two cigarette butts ground hard into the patio outside the kitchen window and another stubbed out in her window box. There was a full cold cup of tea, slick with that gooey lipgloss she insisted on wearing, and – surprise, surprise – an empty tumbler, still reeking of whisky.

Natalie sighed and sat down for a moment on a stool to consider the evidence. Her mum had always been a bit of a lush. She had always been fond of a drink, always had a G & T in hand when Natalie got home from school, telling her she just need a little something to ‘take the edge off'.

But Natalie was fairly sure Sandy had never drunk
quite
this much. She hadn't been drunk all the time she had been here, admittedly. She had been totally sober when Natalie had left her with Freddie, Natalie was sure of it, because apart from anything else she was a different person then. A person who listened and seemed to care.

It was true, though, that almost as soon as Natalie got back Sandy had cracked open another bottle. Didn't real alcoholics drink constantly? They didn't stop for a few hours to be responsible, did they? So she couldn't be a real alcoholic, could she?

Natalie didn't like the direction her thoughts were going.

Should she worry about it she wondered. Making an active decision to worry about her mother was difficult. She knew Sandy would not be remotely grateful that Natalie was worrying about her, and if anything she would behave even worse just to irritate her. Whenever Natalie had tried to intervene in the past, Sandy had always accused her daughter of being ashamed of her, of thinking she was better than her mother and of trying to bully her into being a person she was not.

Of course, all these things were true, but that didn't mean Natalie wanted to invite the endless hassle that was inevitable if she tried once again to sort Sandy out. Sandy always told her she didn't need sorting out. It would be so much easier just to believe her. After all, it wasn't as if Natalie didn't have a few tricky situations of her own to sort out right now.

She looked up at the ceiling. Her mother was probably sleeping off her afternoon session in the guest bedroom. She decided that she'd better go and check on her and then think about going to see Jack. Or possibly vacuuming the stairs. The stairs really needed vacuuming. She hadn't done it since 2004.

Sandy was not in her bedroom. There was evidence that she had been there though. A whisky bottle with the cap off sat on the dressing table, and the bed was crumpled, the pillows stained with make-up. With a huff of irritation Natalie went to check her own bedroom, sure that her mother, like an aged Goldilocks, had decided to try all of the beds for size.

But Sandy was not in there either.

And then Natalie thought of the one place she had yet to look.

She pushed open the bathroom door. Sandy was lying awkwardly, twisted like a broken doll, by the toilet.

Natalie stood for a second, frozen, as she stared at her mother's pale face in the gathering twilight. She caught her breath and for a heartbeat she thought that Sandy was dead. And then the body on the floor groaned.

‘Oh, Natalie, good. Need water, feel sick. Tummy bug.'

Carefully, Natalie hopped over her mother's haunches and emptied out the toothbrush mug to fill it with water from the tap. Crouching, she hauled Sandy up into a sitting position and propping her against the wall, handed her the mug. Sandy took a sip of water and pulled a face, like a child drinking alcohol for the first time.

‘Ohhhh,' she groaned rubbing at her eyes with her knuckles. ‘I must have eaten something bad.'

She looked so frail, old and small. Natalie wanted to hate her because it was so much easier than caring, but for now at least, her sense of anxiety was greater than her anger.

‘You didn't eat
anything
,' she chided her mother. ‘That was part of the problem. That and the almost half-bottle of whisky that you drank.'

‘Eggs,' Sandy said, holding her head as tenderly as if it were one. ‘I ate eggs I think. Oh God, I feel bad.'

Natalie got up and sat on the edge of the bath.

‘Drink that water,' she said. ‘If it stays down I'll put you to bed.'

‘Thanks for looking after me, darling,' Sandy said, belching out the last word on a whisky-sour breath.

‘Mum . . .' Natalie hesitated. Saying something would make her involved. Did she really want to be involved? Then again, did she really have any choice? She couldn't pretend that this wasn't happening, because it wasn't as if Sandy was safely tucked away in Spain, out of sight and mostly out of mind. She was here paralytic on Natalie's bathroom floor, leaving her no option but to get involved.

‘What, love?' Sandy replied, keeping her eyes tightly shut.

‘You've been drinking a lot since you got here.' Natalie tried to sound casual, as if she was merely passing comment. ‘A bit more than normal. Do you drink this much in Spain?'

Sandy opened one eye and directed it at Natalie.

‘I like drinking,' she said. ‘It takes the edge off.'

It wasn't the answer that Natalie was hoping for.

‘Mum, you're going to kill yourself,' she said, unable to skirt around the issue any longer because that would take patience, and where Sandy was concerned Natalie had none.

‘I'll be dead soon enough anyway.' Sandy's voice sounded hoarse and sore. ‘I'm over the hill now, past it. And what have I got? I haven't got anything. You hate me. Freddie won't remember me.' She waved her hand in front of her face as if swatting away an invisible fly. ‘I like drinking, and I don't care if I die a few years earlier because of it.'

‘
I
care,' Natalie said. ‘I don't want you to die a drunk, Mum. I want you to sober up and die the nasty old witch that I know and love.'

Sandy made an odd noise in her throat which Natalie thought might have been laughter.

‘But that's exactly it, don't you see?' she said. ‘You don't love me, do you? What's the point when your own child doesn't love you?'

Natalie didn't speak for a second. The last thing she wanted was for this conversation to turn into a shouting match, an argument about who loved who the least and who was the hardest done by. It was essential that she got Sandy just to think about what was happening to her.

‘Look,' Natalie began. ‘It's not about how much I love you. There's no excuse to turn yourself into . . .' She gestured at the pile of woman in front of her. ‘This mess. One thing about you, Mum, was that you always had style. Where's the style in lying drunk on the bathroom floor at four o'clock in the afternoon? And anyway I do quite love you sometimes.'

‘I never did anything right,' Sandy said flatly, tipping her head back against the wall and looking out of the window. ‘Not in my whole life, not one thing right. I left home too young. If I hadn't I could have got some qualifications and a good job maybe, I was always very good at school. But I couldn't stand my father. I couldn't wait to get away from him, the old bastard.' She took a sip of the water and Natalie thought she'd forgotten it wasn't alcohol.

‘If I'd got a job maybe I would have met a nice decent man, to have a proper family with. But I was too pretty. I was so lovely then, Natalie. There was no one to touch me. All the men wanted me and I wanted them to want me.' Sandy sighed as her chin flopped forward onto her chest again. ‘It didn't last, though. I was already fading when your father got me pregnant. He didn't want me, he didn't want me at all. He already had a wife who was younger and prettier than me. I loved him though, your dad. I think he was the only man I ever loved and at least he gave me you.'

Natalie thought about her three-minute meeting with her father all those years ago and decided that he was not a man who was worthy of anybody's love. But she had never told Sandy about her trip to find her father, and now was certainly not the time.

‘I had to work hard for you, Natalie,' Sandy went on when Natalie didn't reply. ‘Hard to keep a roof over our heads, you in clothes and shoes – you were always growing and I always wanted you to look nice. I wasn't going to have anyone say that my child didn't look as good as the next. I'm sorry we moved around a lot. I kept on messing things up and having to move on. But I always tried to do the best for you. I got that wrong too, didn't I?' Sandy became tearful. ‘A whole life based on what? So-called friends who come and go when things get tough, no real home, love, and a daughter who “quite loves me sometimes”.'

‘Maybe that was a bit harsh,' Natalie offered. ‘Let's say I always love you but often find you annoying. Mildly annoying. You have to admit that to come home to all of this
is
mildly annoying.'

Sandy drained the last of the water out of the toothbrush mug.

‘Can I go to bed now?' she asked Natalie.

Without speaking Natalie put her hands under Sandy's arms and hauled her up, guiding her out of the bathroom as carefully as she could. Once in Sandy's room, she dropped her fully clothed onto the bed and pulled the quilt over her.

‘Mum, there's no point in talking any more right now. You're still drunk and you're all maudlin. But we need to discuss this properly tomorrow. I'm not having an alcoholic as my son's grandmother. We'll sort something out, get you some proper help, get you back on your ridiculous high heels, OK?'

But Sandy was already snoring.

Chapter Twenty-six

Meg woke at just after seven that evening. She knew that her body needed hours and hours more sleep but as soon as she had opened her eyes her mind began to go over and over everything that had happened to her in the last few days, trying and largely failing to find a solution to it all. She remembered that she had asked Frances to tell Robert to bring the children back after tea, and a wave of anticipation and dread ran through her almost simultaneously.

Well, she still had some time to get herself together before he came, Meg thought. She didn't want him to see what a mess she was. She could have a shower and get changed, at least.

As she dried herself Meg looked around her bedroom. Her and Robert's bedroom. Nothing had really changed in here and yet everything had. There was still his jacket on the back of the chair. His forgotten watch, his last birthday present from her, was still on the dressing table. And there was still the impression left by his head in the pillow on his side of the bed that had remained unmade for several days now.

Meg wound her bath towel around her and picking up the pillow shook the lingering memory of Robert's shape out of it entirely, before replacing it. She sat down at the dressing table and began to brush the tangles out of her hair. It was still mainly auburn, but with a sprinkling of grey that was gradually becoming more and more dominant. Robert was always on at her to have it tinted, but she liked the silver interspersed amongst the red curls, and she felt that like the fine lines around her eyes they were part of the story of her life, a story that had always been happy until now. Perhaps it was because she didn't dye her hair that Robert had looked elsewhere.

Suddenly there was a movement behind her, and clutching her hand to her chest Meg whirled round.

Robert was standing in the door frame. He looked at her in her towel and then looked away again, as if he couldn't bear the sight of her. Meg forced herself to sit up straight.

‘I'm sorry,' Robert said. ‘Frances said that she'd bring the kids in an hour, that as they were all settled I should come and see you alone. She said we needed to talk and I thought she was right.'