The Right Thing (22 page)

‘I just wondered. Did you . . . did you get picked on?'

‘God no. It wasn't cool to be sporty. Or not to be.' She shrugged. ‘You could just be yourself, nobody cared.'

‘Oh well, that's lucky.'

Madeleine was looking at her as if she was mad. ‘Is it? I thought it was like that for everyone.'

‘Not always. Listen, tell me what you've already got for this baby then we'll know what not to bother looking at.'

‘Nothing.'

Kitty stopped walking. They were outside Marks and Spencer next to a busking trio of singing girls who were putting lots of effort into ‘Three Little Maids from School'.

‘You've got nothing at all? At eight months?' Madeleine stuffed her hands in her jacket pockets and looked sulky. ‘Maybe it's only seven months, or even less. Does it matter?'

‘Where are you going to have it? The baby?' The girl was frighteningly vague. ‘Edinburgh' had been the only information volunteered about where Madeleine had been since she'd discovered she was pregnant. She hadn't been home, she'd said, since it had started to show, so her mother didn't know. Her mother thought she was still working in a gallery and failing to phone home. Kitty didn't push it. She had no right to information at all, no right to ask for or expect any. Madeleine had said that the baby's father was American and he'd gone home to Denver. He didn't seem to be expected back.

Madeleine pushed open the door of Mothercare and looked back with a casual smile. ‘I don't know where it'll be born. When the time comes I thought I'd just call an ambulance and trust them to know where to go.' Kitty felt appalled and her face must have shown it. ‘Don't hassle.' This sounded more like a shaking-off than reassurance. ‘I'm OK. It's not an illness.'

Kitty had absolutely no success in trying not to indulge in fantasy as she and Madeleine walked around the shop picking out packs of tiny clothes. In her mind she'd turned her studio into a nursery for Madeleine and the baby. She imagined a pale wooden cot where her easel now stood. She would paint a mobile of brightly coloured fish to hang from the sloping ceiling and the baby would lie batting its little arms up and down on its quilt with excitement as the wind made the fish spin. In her imaginings the rest of the family didn't seem to have a place, at least they certainly didn't raise any objections to the addition of numbers. She could take over one of the barn rooms for her work. In her head she could hear Glyn's sensible teacher voice warning her: only disappointment would come of it. ‘We've got a huge amount of stuff here.' Madeleine looked at the pile of baby suits and vests and blankets and the pretty wicker Moses basket that they'd assembled by the checkout. She picked up a tiny blue and white fleecy hooded jacket and stroked it thoughtfully as the assistant started ringing up the prices.

‘I really am going to have a baby,' she said. ‘Till now I've just thought of it as something that made me get bigger and bigger but now it's real. A whole human person.' She didn't look very thrilled, Kitty thought. Perhaps this outing hadn't been such a great idea. The mother who'd brought her up should be doing this, and now Kitty was going to be punished for taking over and trying to push this relationship into a shape that it wasn't ever supposed to have.

‘Why don't we collect this lot later and go and have some lunch?' Kitty suggested. Madeleine nodded, her face still sullen, and followed her out of the store into the sharp sunlight. The paved walkway swarmed with people and Madeleine moved gawkily, weaving about to avoid contact with strange bodies. ‘It's like they know there's something in me and they're trying to crash into me,' she grumbled. Kitty took her arm and steered her to the edge of the buildings where it was calmer. ‘I hate crowds,' Madeleine growled and Kitty was reminded of the sight of her hurling the stone at Lily's cat. Out here she might lash out with a foot, viciously trip up a careless stranger who'd dawdled too close. She didn't know this girl at all. This, on the relevant bits of paper, was her own daughter and there'd only been those few baby days of shared history together.

‘Let's go in here and you can cool down a bit.' Kitty led Madeleine round past the post office and into the cathedral.

‘Oh God, we're not going to pray are we? Is that your thing?' Madeleine slumped down into a chair on the back row and slipped her shoes off. The nail polish on her toes was now the bright candy pink of old-fashioned seaside rock: Lily's toenails were the same shade. Kitty had heard them giggling and gossiping up in their room and imagined them with their feet up, painting each other's nails and being careless with the liquid. There were often drops of it on Lily's duvet covers, impossible to wash off. When Madeleine had gone (as she surely would) Kitty would think of her when she did the laundry and saw this colour.

‘I'm not particularly religious actually,' Kitty volunteered. ‘Blind allegiance to one faith or another seems to cause an awful lot of the world's troubles.'

‘That's just the formal trappings of religion you're talking about though,' Madeleine said. ‘If there's a God he or she can't be held responsible for the stupid dumb superstition rituals we all set up. I just believe in nature. You can
see
nature's for real, stuff growing and that. Glyn must know what I'm talking about, communing with all those vegetables.'

‘Tell me about your life.' The words that had been waiting came out before Kitty could stop them. She'd been so careful, not asking, just waiting for little fragments of information to escape from Madeleine. The girl wasn't particularly secretive, just not desperately forthcoming, as if she'd made herself comfortable with a lifetime of quietness. Really she only ever seemed properly relaxed when she was with Lily. Perhaps Lily had found it easy, natural, to say ‘Tell me about your life.' and been just as easily and naturally told.

‘There's not that much to tell.' Kitty kept very still. ‘No really, there isn't,' Madeleine went on as if she'd felt disappointment transmitted on the cool musty cathedral air. A woman at the end of their row was busy, clattering about as she topped up the supply of votive candles and wafted wax-scented air towards them. Kitty wished she'd go and bustle somewhere else – this should be just her and Madeleine. ‘I've had an ordinary, quite nice time. I know it's not much to go on – I really can't tell you that being adopted meant I never quite “fitted” or that I was always looking for something else, if that's what you want to hear. I've lived in Brighton most of my life in a house where soft furnishings have far too much importance.' She laughed, the bright sound echoing. An old man a few rows in front of them turned and glared. ‘Mum likes squishy beige carpets and everyone had to take their shoes off at the front door. She had, still
has
, a special little rack for visitors' shoes. Like a mosque. Trouble is she also likes sewing, curtains and cushion covers and stuff so there's always pins hidden in the pile. I was always treading on them.'

‘Were you . . . this might sound mad,' Kitty hesitated. ‘Were you a My Little Pony girl, or a Flower Fairies one or, I suppose you were too old for Cabbage Patch dolls . . . ?'

‘I was technical Lego and before that, Tiny Tears. Does that help?'

‘Yes it does. It all does. What about school?'

‘Glyn asked that. I should have written up a CV for you. I've got nine GCSEs, all good grades, three A levels, English, Art and Media Studies and the degree from Warwick University.' She said it as if ticking off a check-list. She wasn't volunteering whether she was the kind of student who'd sat up all night smoking spliffs or playing poker or if she'd worked diligently and occasionally stopped to sip camomile tea. Maybe later, if there was a later, these things would emerge, make a detailed picture.

‘Boyfriends?' Kitty held her breath though the question was light enough, or perhaps would have been if there wasn't the small matter of this pregnancy. There had to come a moment when Madeleine just clammed up and said no more. Each question risked that moment, though this wasn't it. There was too much to know. It was impossible to think of a definitive list of what to ask that could give even the slightest overview of another person's childhood.

‘Virginity lost at a friend's house at seventeen. His parents were supposed to be away but they came back and caught us – we were sure it was on purpose. They told my mother I was a slag and Mum . . .' Kitty waited. Madeleine swallowed and looked down at her hands, fiddling with a loose button on the awful cream jacket. ‘Mum sort of agreed. She said I'd end up bringing trouble home like . . . well . . .'

‘Like me?'

Madeleine laughed again. ‘Yeah, like you.' She patted her stomach. ‘And now I'm going to, so she wasn't wrong was she?'

‘You know, you should tell her about your baby. She'll want to know. I'd want to know if it was Lily.' Sensible though this sounded, it was hard for Kitty to say. Selfishly, greedily, she'd cherished this so-important piece of knowledge that Madeleine's mother just didn't have.

Madeleine shrugged. ‘I do phone her sometimes, so she knows I'm OK. Just not lately, that's all. She likes me being independent. She says that's when you know you've got it right as a parent, when your kids don't need you.' Kitty wondered if it had been meant quite as literally as Madeleine seemed to be interpreting.

‘Yes but, well she'll have to know, won't she, if you're keeping it.'

‘Of course I'm keeping it!' Madeleine stood up and started pacing. ‘I'll tell her soon. When I tell, her about you.' Kitty didn't push it. She was in no hurry to share Madeleine with anyone – not after twenty-four missed years. It was down to Madeleine now.

As they were leaving Kitty went to the rack of candles, put a pound in the box and thought of her father as she lit the tiny flame. He'd missed out, so had her mother, on this first grandchild. For the first time, she actually felt quite sorry for her parents – in their eyes they'd only been doing their best for her.

George Moorfield was in the cathedral doorway as the two of them were leaving. His shaggy lion-head and broad shoulders were silhouetted against the stark light of the day outside, making him look like a square-shaped door-guarding ogre that had to be sidled past carefully to get out to safety. It reminded Kitty of when she was small, feeling trapped inside the church after the end of every Sunday service, gasping to escape into the fresh air while her father lorded it in the porch, hand-shaking and small-talking with the congregation. ‘You can't just rush out ahead of everyone else,
we
have to wait,' her mother used to tell her, gripping her upper arm tight to pull her back into the front pew when she'd fidgeted to leave the second the final blessing was over. Life and light could be glimpsed outside, inside was only an atmosphere of stale petty sins and a gloomy sense of unforgiveness. They had to be the last to leave and Kitty used to fight waves of panic that a devil-spirit was lurking in the empty church, waiting for her mother to slip through the door ahead of her so that it could trap her, pin down her limbs and lift her up to drown her in the font.

‘I've just been in here for a look-see. Great windows,' George said as they came out. ‘I saw you sitting there and thought I'd wait for you, see if you fancied lunch.' Kitty looked at Madeleine, trying to read her expression. George's suggestion seemed like a good one, something light and cheering after that life-probing session in the cathedral.

‘OK. Can we go to a pub?' Madeleine sounded eager. ‘When you're pregnant you spend half your time avoiding the smell of fags and booze and the rest of the time craving it. Today I'm on craving.'

The pub was as perfectly smoky, aromatic and paint-peeled as Madeleine could have wanted. It wasn't a venue for pastel-cardiganed tourists in search of a children's room, chintzy decor or fancy pasta-strewn menu. After they'd ordered ploughman's lunches all round, George and Madeleine made for a corner table next to a guffawing sprawl of men in paint-spattered overalls facing a collection of empty glasses. Kitty followed, pleased that Madeleine was now looking more animated. She was probably hungry, Kitty thought, sliding along the bench seat next to George. Madeleine sipped her lager and stared at the men on the next table as if memorizing them for something later, a piece of writing or a painting maybe. It crossed Kitty's mind, as she was hit by another sign that she didn't really know her, that the girl might just have a weakness for tough-muscled builders.

‘So what's it like then, meeting your real mother for the first time?' George asked. Kitty laughed, delighted at his lack of reserve. It seemed such a blessed relief after Glyn's put-out pussyfooting and Rita's fake-witchy know-it-all irritating smiles of conspiracy.

‘It's all right.' Madeleine sounded positive rather than cautious but then added, ‘It's, like, well like finding there's one extra person in the world you can take advantage of.'

‘And is that what you're doing?' George's eyes were full of amusement. Kitty felt like kicking him under the table, warning him not to take the piss – his glass was still more or less full, but might instantly be more or less emptied onto his head if Madeleine thought there was genuine mockery in him.

Madeleine grinned at him. ‘Yeah, course I am. I'm still at the house aren't I, contributing nothing? Kitty's just bought a million lovely things for this baby, all with no guarantees that I'll be anywhere near her when it wears them, and I'm taking up more than my proper share of Lily's room.' Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a hard look. ‘I don't expect to read about this in your next steamy-slimy book.'