Roxy's Baby (6 page)

‘Love her tattoo,' Roxy said sarcastically.

Anne Marie laughed. ‘I think it's supposed to ward off evil or something. Blinking awful, isn't it?' But still she smiled at Sula.

Ward off evil. Well, so far it hadn't brought much luck to Sula, Roxy thought, pregnant and alone in a strange land, and she wondered what her story was. Everyone had a story here, she thought.

‘Hello Sula,' Roxy said.

Sula smiled. ‘I go home.'

Babs turned to Roxy. ‘That's just about the only English she knows. And she says it all the time. “I go home.” She would drive you potty.'

Sula still smiled. She seemed to know there was no real criticism of her in Babs's tone. Babs leaned across
the table and touched her hand. ‘That's right, Sula. I go home.'

Sula smiled even wider. Her teeth were off-white and crooked. ‘I go home,' she repeated.

Anne Marie told Roxy in a soft voice. ‘Sula's an illegal immigrant. She was brought here to work, but she didn't fancy the kind of work she had to do, and luckily for her, the Dyces found her – brought her here. But she's awful homesick. Aren't you, pet?' Anne Marie smiled across to Sula, who was watching them intently, knowing they were talking about her. ‘And now all she wants to do is to go back to her mother. Have her baby at home in Albania. And do you know what!' Anne Marie paused dramatically as if she was daring Roxy to disagree with her. ‘The Dyces arranged that too. They're sending her back home safely. Don't ask me how! Those two could perform miracles if you ask me anything. Sula's going home.'

Going home. Roxy lay in bed that night, watching the moon as it hung in the sky, a full fat moon.

‘No matter where you are in the world,' her dad used to say, ‘when you look up at the moon, just remember I'll be looking at the same moon and thinking of you.' He hadn't known he wouldn't be here long
enough to look at the moon with her tonight. Was her mother looking at the moon tonight? Or Jennifer? Were they thinking about her? Imagining her in some drug-laden den, sleeping rough, alone and homeless?

She snuggled further under the covers and felt quite smug. Bet they'd never in their wildest dreams think she'd be curled up in a cosy bed, after a full meal, with people looking after her.

Too good to be true
. The words were never far from her mind. She pushed them back. Like Anne Marie said, she should just enjoy.

She'd show her mother, and Jennifer. She didn't need them. She could do it on her own. When she saw them again, if she saw them again, she would be completely independent. Looking after herself, and her baby. Her baby. No, she couldn't, wouldn't think of anything real growing inside her. She pushed the thought of a baby far back in her mind.

She closed her eyes. Tired again, so tired. But she couldn't sleep. Something was keeping her from sleeping. Some thought.

There was something missing. Something that should be here – and wasn't.

She had almost drifted off when she realised what it was.

Where were the babies?

Roxy was sick again next morning. Sula heard her in the bathroom and came in and knelt beside her, soothing her brow with her cool hands.

‘Better?' she asked, smiling.

Roxy leaned back against the tiled wall, exhausted. She nodded. ‘When you go home?' Roxy asked her, saying it as simply as she could. Not sure if she could understand even that.

It took Sula a minute to answer her, as if she was turning the words over in her mind, translating them into her own language. She held out her hands. Roxy's eyes were drawn again to that tattoo. When Sula moved it was as if the snake moved too, as if was already winding its way ever closer towards her face. It gave her the creeps.

She was almost sick again looking at it. Sula was counting out the days on her fingers.

‘Eight days,' Roxy said, and held out her fingers in exactly the same gesture. ‘Happy?' she asked, pointing at Sula. ‘You, happy?' She beamed her a smile.

Sula's smile was answer enough. Then, she asked Roxy. ‘You go home?'

Roxy didn't need to think about it. ‘Never,' she said, shaking her head. And she meant it.

Everyone pitched in at breakfast, making their own toast and tea, pouring cereal into bowls, drinking orange juice out of cartons. They sat chatting at the table or wandering out through the French windows into the garden. The morning was already warm, hinting at another scorcher of a day. It was only May, but the weather held the promise of a long hot summer. Roxy took her cereal and went outside. She found Anne Marie sitting on a bench, admiring the view over the gardens. To Roxy, it seemed the view went nowhere, only past the lawn to high grass and trees, and beyond … a mystery.

‘You were up early,' Roxy said to her. Roxy herself had gone back to bed after being sick.

‘Since Aidan came into my life,' Anne Marie patted her stomach, ‘he will not let me have a lie-in.'

Roxy sat beside her. ‘I wish I knew where we were,' she said.

Anne Marie shrugged. ‘South of England somewhere. Does it matter?'

‘Aren't you curious?'

‘Not particularly,' she answered.

‘Won't they tell us if we ask?'

Anne Marie began to laugh. ‘Questions, questions, questions, Roxy. Can't you just enjoy the fact you're safe?'

Anne Marie had been here for weeks, Roxy thought, and nothing had happened to her. Care and attention were all she had received. TLC, tender loving care, she called it. So why should Roxy herself not trust all this?

‘So what's on the cards for today?'

‘After breakfast we'll go and look at the rota, see what chores we've been allocated.' Suddenly, Anne Marie was laughing again. She had a nice laugh, like the warble of a bird. ‘You should see your face, Roxy. Shock! Horror! Don't worry, they're not going to send us down the mines to dig coal. We're only expected to do a bit of light cleaning, washing, ironing, that sort of thing.'

She made Roxy laugh. And she remembered too
what had been bothering her last night. ‘By the way, there don't seem to be any babies here. Why is that?'

‘You know, the very same thing occurred to me when I first came here. I asked Mrs Dyce, and she said that what used to happen after the girls had their babies was that they would keep them here till it was time for them to move on. But that got really distressing for the girls who had decided to have their babies adopted. So now, once you have your baby, you're both whisked away to another house, where all the mothers and babies go.'

Roxy thought about that. ‘They have another place?' She knew she sounded incredulous.

‘Yes, another place. I think it's really wonderful of the Dyces, not wanting to distress any of us. They're wonderful people.'

Too good to be true. The words leapt into her mind unbidden.

It seemed that Anne Marie could read her mind. ‘Too good to be true? Is that what you're thinking? Have you never heard of Mother Teresa? She did the very same thing out in India, and they said she was too good to be true – but she was true, Roxy, and never anyone deserved to be made a saint more … apart from the Dyces, of course.'

Then she gave Roxy a gentle push and they were laughing again. Still laughing when Mrs Dyce came round the side of the house dressed in gardening clothes and behind her, head down and looking surly, was the odd-job man Roxy had seen when she arrived. Stevens. He looked even scruffier today, in a wrinkled shirt and a battered felt hat.

Mrs Dyce stopped to talk to them. ‘How did you sleep, Roxy? Well, I hope. I'll want to have a little chat with you later today. Just filling you in on things here, though I'm sure our Anne Marie's done all that already.'

‘Our Anne Marie,' she always called her. There seemed to be a genuine fondness for the Irish girl, Roxy thought.

‘She's been great,' Roxy said truthfully.

Mrs Dyce touched Anne Marie's cheek. ‘I'm going to miss her.'

Anne Marie patted her bump. ‘Still got a while to go yet, Mrs Dyce.'

Mrs Dyce beckoned the odd-job man with her finger. ‘Come along, Stevens. I'll show you where I want you to put my rhubarb.'

The girls had to stifle their giggles when she said that, but Mrs Dyce didn't seem to notice. She moved off
and Stevens walked after her. But as he passed Roxy he lifted his eyes to look at her. And what he saw seemed to cloud his face with anger. She felt herself drawing back from him. He stopped for a second, staring at her, then he shook his head disapprovingly. He seemed to have to drag his eyes away from her face and she was glad when he moved off and disappeared into the shrubbery with Mrs Dyce.

‘He gives me the creeps,' Roxy said.

‘He gives us all the creeps. Have you noticed his fingers?'

Roxy hadn't.

‘They're like chubby little maggots. They look as if they have a life of their own, as if he'd pulled them up out of the soil and if they touched you they'd eat you up.'

She wiggled her fingers at Roxy, who fell back in a pretend swoon on the bench. ‘I'll keep back from him and his maggoty fingers.'

‘He certainly couldn't keep his eyes off you,' Anne Marie said.

‘Yeah, why was he looking at me like that, as if he hated me?'

‘Probably because you're so young, Roxy, and you
look it. We've never had anyone as young as you here before. He probably thinks you're a bad lot.'

In the afternoon Mrs Dyce came to get Roxy for their ‘little chat'. She led her into the living room to a couple of shabby chairs in a corner. Roxy had expected to go into their office, through the door marked PRIVATE. She had only seen that door open once. Had only time to see a cluttered desk, a swivel chair and a filing cabinet, before the door was pushed closed.

‘Their private apartments,' Anne Marie had told her that morning. ‘Sure they have to have somewhere private they can go to if they want to get away from all of us.'

That door also led to the delivery room, where the girls were taken to have their babies, she had explained.

‘Can I see the delivery room?' Roxy asked Mrs Dyce as they sat down.

‘Time enough for you to see it when you're going to have your baby, Roxy,' Mrs Dyce said softly, but her tone cut off any more questions about it. Roxy. Now it seemed her name was no secret to anyone, thanks to Anne Marie.

‘Now, you're going to need more clothes as you get
bigger. We have plenty for you to choose from. Anne Marie will show you where they're kept. We've got wardrobes full of maternity trousers and skirts and dresses. You're bound to find something to fit you.'

Second-hand clothes. At home she would have died of embarrassment if her mother had tried to get her to wear anyone else's cast-offs.

‘We don't have a lot of rules and regulations here, Roxy. But there are certain …' Mrs Dyce hesitated, searching for the right word, ‘
guidelines
we would like you to abide by. For instance, we would prefer it if you stayed within the grounds. There's nothing nearby, it's all farmland, and you could easily get lost.'

Roxy thought about that. ‘You mean, we can't get outside at all? Not even for a run in the car?'

Mrs Dyce smiled. ‘I think you'll find there are plenty of grounds for you to wander in, and in your condition you won't be able to wander far anyway.'

So far and no further, Roxy was thinking.

‘Where exactly are we anyway?' Roxy asked.

Mrs Dyce smiled again ‘You don't really need to know that, Roxy. If you decide to go home … and you're free to go whenever you choose, it's safer for the other girls if you can't tell exactly where you've been.
You can understand that, can't you?'

Roxy nodded, but she still wasn't satisfied.

‘You'll learn as you go along, Roxy, that everything we do here is for your own good, and the good of the baby.'

Roxy's chores for the day, if they could be called that, were to tidy the living room, and give it a dust and a vacuum. As she worked alone in the living room, the house seemed unnaturally quiet. She could hear some girls laughing upstairs, hear their voices carry into the still, hot air outside. Roxy switched on the television. Perhaps, she thought, there might be some news of her disappearance, though she could hardly bear to think how she would feel if she saw her distraught mother on the screen at some kind of news conference.

Nothing happened.

She pressed every button on the remote control, then did the same thing on the television itself, but no picture appeared. There was only a screen full of snow.

Babs wandered in from upstairs, fanning herself with a tea towel.

‘Babs, the television isn't working.'

‘No, it won't,' Babs said casually. ‘It only works for
videos and DVDs. You can't get any programmes on it.'

‘Can't they get any reception here?'

‘They think that if we heard any news it would only worry us. You know, maybe seeing bombs going off or murders “might harm the little babies”.' Babs did a fair impersonation of Mrs Dyce's husky voice. ‘“And we can't have the little darlings coming to any harm, can we?”' It didn't seem to bother Babs. ‘Who wants to hear the news anyway? Doom and Death, that's all there is. I suppose it's sensible when you think about it. As long as we've got plenty of videos, and lots of CDs, I couldn't care less.'

A little ‘guideline' Mrs Dyce had forgotten to mention.

Yet perhaps it was sensible. Everything they did was thoughtful, for the good of the girls, and their babies.

So why did she still feel that somewhere, deep inside her, a warning bell was ringing?

Yet, as one sultry day followed another, that warning bell grew fainter. Roxy found she was enjoying herself. The morning breakfasts were fun, sitting outside in the sun, with Anne Marie, eating cereal, drinking orange juice, watching planes fly overhead.