The Baby Group (53 page)

‘You’re asking me on a date?’ I said, just to confirm it, because the whole thing seemed so absurd that I had to say it out loud to test I’d got it right. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you coming?’

‘OK,’ I said. It had all seemed so perfectly plausible to him: him and me, ten years between us, going out on a date. ‘Why not?’

That was the first time I noticed him looking at me, looking at me with this sort of mingled heat and joy that I instantly felt mirrored inside me, like my body was answering his call in a way that my conscious mind had no control over. Yes, ever since then I’ve felt his looks long before I’ve seen them. I feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, and a sense of anticipation washing over me in one long delicious shudder, because I know that soon after he looks at me, he will be touching me, kissing me.

Now I feel his hand on my shoulder and I lean my cheek against his fingers.

‘You’re crying,’ he says.

‘I’m chopping onions,’ I say, putting down the knife and turning round to face him. ‘You know that all Esther will eat is Mummy’s homemade lasagne? Here, you should watch me make it, so you know the recipe. First, chop the onions . . .’

‘Claire . . .’ Greg stops me from picking up the knife again, and turns me towards him. ‘Claire, we have to talk about it, don’t we?’

He looks so uncertain, so lost and so reluctant, that I want to say no – no, we don’t have to talk about it, we can just pretend that today is like yesterday, and all the days before that when we didn’t know any better. We can pretend not to know, and who knows how long we might be able to go on like this, so happy, so perfect?

‘She likes a lot of tomato purée in the sauce,’ I say. ‘And also a really big slug of ketchup . . .’

‘I don’t know what to do or say,’ Greg says, his voice breaking on an inward breath. ‘I’m not sure how to be.’

‘And then, just at the end, add a teaspoon of Marmite.’

‘Claire,’ he says with a sob, and draws me into his arms. And I stand there in his embrace with my eyes closed, breathing in his scent, my arms at my side, feeling my heart pounding in my chest. ‘Claire, how are we going to tell the children?’

This is the bracelet they gave you in the hospital – pink because you are a girl. It says: ‘Baby Armstrong.’ They put it on your ankle, and it kept slipping off because you were so tiny, a whole month early, to the day. You were supposed to be an April baby. I had imagined daffodils and blue skies and April showers, but you decided to be born one month early on a cold wet Friday, Friday 13th, no less, not that we were worried about that. If anyone was ever born to overcome bad omens it was you, and you knew it, greeting the world with an almighty shout – not a cry or a wail, but a roar of intent, I thought. A declaration of war.

There wasn’t anybody there with us for a long time. Because you were early, and Gran lived far away. So for about the first six hours it was just you and me. You smelled sweet, like a cake, and you felt so warm and . . . exactly right. We were at the end of the ward and we kept the curtain closed around us. I could hear the other mums talking, visitors coming and going, babies crying and fussing, but I didn’t want to be part of it. I didn’t want to be part of anything ever again except for you and me. I held you, so tiny and scrunched up like a new bud waiting to flower, and I just looked at you, slumbering against my breast, a deep frown on your tiny face, and I told you it was all going to be fine, because you and I were together: we were the whole universe, and that was all that mattered.

I’ve just got to get away from my mother: she is driving me mad, which would be funny if I wasn’t already that way inclined. No, I’m not mad, that’s not right. Although I feel pretty angry.

It was the look on her face when we came out of the hospital appointment; the look she had all the way home. Stoical, stalwart, strong but bleak. She didn’t say the words, but I could hear them buzzing around in her head: ‘This is so typically Claire. To ruin everything just when it’s getting good.’

‘I’ll move in,’ she says, even though she blatantly already has, silently secreting herself in the spare bedroom, like I wouldn’t notice her, arranging her personal items on the shelf in the bathroom. I knew she would come when she found out. I knew she would and I wanted her to, I suppose; but I wanted to ask her, or for her to ask me. Instead she simply arrived, all hushed tones and sorrowful glances. ‘I’ll move into the spare room.’

‘No, you won’t.’ I turn to look at her as she drives. She is a very careful driver, slow and exacting. I am not allowed to drive any more, not since I killed that post-box, which carried a far more expensive fine than you would perhaps imagine, because it belongs to Her Majesty. It must be the same if you run over a corgi: if you run over a corgi, you probably get sent to the Tower. My mother is such a careful driver, and yet she never looks in the rear-view mirror when she’s reversing. It’s like she feels that, in that one aspect, it’s safer simply to close her eyes and hope for the best. I used to love driving; I loved the freedom and the independence and knowing that, if I felt like it, I could go anywhere I fancied. I don’t like that my car keys have disappeared, gone without me being allowed even to kiss them goodbye, hidden away in a place where I will never find them. I know because I’ve tried. I could still drive, I think. As long as no one put anything in my way.

‘It’s not come to you moving in yet,’ I insist, although we both know she has already moved in. ‘There’s still lots of time left when I won’t need any help at all. I mean, listen to me. I can still talk and think about . . .’ I wave my arm, causing her to duck and look under my hand, which I tuck apologetically back in my lap. ‘Things.’

‘Claire, this isn’t something you can stick your head in the sand about. Trust me, I know.’

Of course she knows: she’s lived through this before, and now, thanks to me, or strictly speaking thanks to my father and his rogue DNA, she has to live through it again. And it’s not as if I’ll do anything sensible like dying nice and neatly with all my faculties intact, holding her hand and thanking her, with a serene look on my face as I impart words of wisdom to live by to my children. No, my annoyingly quite young, reasonably fit body will linger on long after I’ve checked out of my mushy little brain, right up until the moment when I forget how to breathe in and out and in again. I know that’s what she is thinking. I know the last thing in the world she wants is to watch her daughter fade away and shrivel up, just like her husband did. I know it’s breaking her heart and that she’s doing her best to be brave, and stand by me, and yet . . . It makes me so angry. Her goodness makes me angry. All my life I’ve been trying to prove that I can grow up enough to not need her to rescue me all the time. All my life I’ve been wrong.

‘Actually, Mum, I
am
the one who can stick my head in the sand,’ I say, staring out of the window. ‘I
am
the one who can completely ignore what is happening to me, because most of the time I won’t even notice.’

It’s funny: I say the words out loud, and feel the fear, there in the pit of my stomach, but it’s like it isn’t part of me. It really is like it’s happening to someone else, this terror.

‘You don’t mean that, Claire,’ Mum says crossly, as if she really thinks that I mean I don’t care, and not that I’m just saying it to annoy her. ‘What about your daughters?’

I say nothing because my mouth is suddenly thick with words that won’t form properly or mean anything like what I need them to mean. So I stay quiet, looking out of the window, at the houses slipping past, one by one. It’s almost dark already; living-room lamps are switched on, TVs flicker behind curtains. Of course I care. Of course I’ll miss it, this life. Steam-filled kitchens on winter evenings, cooking for my daughters, watching them grow: these are the things I will never experience. I’ll never know whether Esther will always eat her peas one by one, and if she will always be blonde. If Caitlin will travel across Central America, like she plans to, or whether she’ll do something completely different that she hasn’t even dreamed of yet. I won’t ever know what that undreamed wish will be. They’ll never lie to me about where they are going, or come to me with their problems. These are the things I’ll miss, because I’ll be somewhere else and I won’t even know what I’m missing. Of course I bloody care.

‘I suppose they’ll have Greg.’ My mum sounds sceptical as she ploughs on, determined to discuss what the world will be like after I’m no longer in it, even though it shows a quite spectacular lack of tact. ‘That’s if he can hold it together.’

‘He will,’ I say. ‘He will. He’s a brilliant father.’

I am not sure if that is true, though. I’m not sure if he can take what is happening, and I don’t know how to help him. He is such a good man, and a kind one. But lately, ever since the diagnosis, he is becoming a stranger to me day by day. Every time I look at him he is standing further away. It’s not his fault. I can tell he wants to be there, to be stalwart and strong for me, but I think perhaps the enormity of it all, of all this happening when really we’ve only just started out on our life together, is chipping away at him. Soon I won’t recognise him at all; I know I already find it hard to recognise the way I feel about him. I know he is the last great love of my life, but I don’t feel it any more. Somehow Greg is the first thing I am losing. I remember it, our love affair, but it’s as though I’ve dreamed it, like Alice through the looking glass.

‘You, of all people.’ Mum cannot help lecturing me, telling me off for being in possession of the family’s dark secret, like I brought it on myself by being so damned naughty. ‘You, who knew what it was like to grow up without a father. We need to make plans for them, Claire. Your girls are losing their mother and you need to make sure they will be OK when you aren’t capable of looking after them any more!’

She brakes suddenly at a zebra crossing, causing a chorus of horns to sound behind her, as a little girl who looks far too young to be out on her own hurries across the road, huddled against the rain. In the glare of Mum’s headlights I can see she’s carrying a thin blue plastic bag with what looks like four pints of milk inside, bumping against her skinny legs. I hear the break in Mum’s voice, hovering just below the frustration and anger. I hear the hurt.

‘I do know that,’ I say, suddenly exhausted. ‘I do know that I have to make plans, but I was waiting, I was hoping. Hoping I might get to enjoy being married to Greg and grow old with him, hoping that the drugs might slow things down for me. Now I know that . . . well, now that I know there is no hope, I’ll get a lot more organised, I promise. Make a wall chart, keep a rota.’

‘You can’t hide from this, Claire.’ She insists on repeating herself.

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ I shout. Why does she always do that? Why does she always push me until I shout at her, as if she isn’t satisfied I’m really listening until she has made me lose my temper? It’s always been that way between us: love and anger mixed up in almost every moment we have together. ‘Do you think I don’t know what I have done, giving them this shitty life?’

Mum pulls into the drive in front of a house – my house, I realise a second too late – and I feel the tears coming against my will. Slamming out of the car, I don’t go into the house, but instead walk into the rain, dragging the edges of my cardigan around me, heading defiantly up the street.

‘Claire!’ Mum shouts after me. ‘You can’t do this any more!’

‘Watch me,’ I say, but not to her, just into the rain, feeling the tiny droplets on my lips and tongue.

‘Claire, please!’ I just about hear her, but I keep walking. I’ll show her; I’ll show them all, especially the people that won’t let me drive. I can still walk; I can still bloody walk! I haven’t forgotten how to do that yet. I’ll just go to the end of the road, where the other one crosses over it, and then turn back. I’ll be like Hansel following a trail of breadcrumbs. I won’t go far. I just need to do this one thing. Go to the end of the road, turn around and come back. Although it is getting darker now, and the houses round here all look the same: neat, squat 1930s semis. And the end of the road isn’t as near as I thought it was.

I stop for a moment, feeling the rain driving into my head, tiny cold needles of icy water. I turn around. My mum isn’t behind me: she hasn’t followed me. I thought she might, but she hasn’t. The street is empty. Did I reach the end of the road and turn around already? I am not sure. Which direction was I walking in? Am I going to or from, and to where? The houses on either side of the road look exactly the same.I stand very still. I left my home less than two minutes ago, and now I am not sure where it is. A car drives past me, spraying freezing water on to my legs. I didn’t bring my phone, and anyway I can’t always remember how to use it any more. I’ve lost numbers. Although I look at them and know they are numbers, I’ve forgotten which ones are which, and which order they come in. But I can still walk, so I begin to walk in the direction that the car that soaked me was going. Perhaps it’s a sign. I will know my house when I see it because the curtains are bright-red silk and the light shining through them makes them glow. Remember that: I have red glowing curtains at the front of my house that one of my neighbours said made me look ‘loose’. I will remember the red glowing curtains. I’ll be home really soon. Everything will be fine.

The appointment at the hospital hadn’t exactly gone well. Greg had wanted to come but I told him to go and finish the conservatory he was building. I told him that nothing the doctor said would make our mortgage need to be paid any the less, or mean that we don’t have to keep feeding the children. It hurt him that I hadn’t wanted him there, but he didn’t realise that I couldn’t cope with trying to guess what the look on his face meant at the same time as guessing what I felt myself. I knew if I took Mum she would just say everything in her head, which is better. It’s better than hearing really terrible news and wondering if your husband is sorry that he ever set eyes on you, that of all the people in the world he could have chosen, he chose you. So I wasn’t in the best frame of mind – pun intended – when the doctor sat me down to go through the next round of test results. The tests they had given me because everything was happening much faster than they’d thought it would.