The Name I Call Myself (21 page)

I tried on Rosa's dress. The top half was covered in Nottingham Lace, the bottom plain silk. I felt like a movie star from the 1940s. Understated elegance, my curves an asset not a liability, to be celebrated rather than hidden. I felt beautiful. And unlike in the lovely dresses from the bridal shop, I felt like me.

“Do you see the flowers?”

It was hard to find them through my blurry vision, but I did find three rows of daisies winding along the bottom of the hem, in keeping with the embroidery on the bridesmaids' dresses.

“My favourite flowers.”

“Yes. I heard you telling Melody. And, see, each row is different.”

They were. On the top row, the flowers were in bud, the second row were partly open, and the third in full bloom. And in amongst the flowers were tiny butterflies, shells, and starfish.

“You open up, Faith, like a flower. I even see you smile now, sometimes. Once or twice shoulders relaxing. Your face – how you say” – she hastily consulted her dictionary – “
peep
out from behind your stone wall. This dress tell your story. Like Marilyn's dress tell her story – change from fat caterpillar to butterfly. Natasha like pretty shell – nice outside protect squishy inside, to stop heart get broken again.”

“What?” Natasha splurted out a mouthful of coffee.

“Catherine's dress tell her story. You chop off starfish arm, it grow back again. Catherine had difficult things happen, take away part of her that mattered most. Still Catherine, but new Catherine. More careful now, wiser, and watching what really happening. Still a star.”

Catherine began to cry.

“Wowzers,” Marilyn said. “Are you one of those mentalists?”

“Those what-ists?” Rosa frowned.

“She's wondering how you knew.” Was it my imagination, or did I
sound
more lovely and elegant in this dress?

“Aha!” Rosa smirked. “You think I'm brain reader? Tell what going to happen by looking at your hand?” She laughed. “I call your house, your mothers answer. They very happy telling me why their pretty girls not got a man yet. You need to move out, get some privacy.”

I tried on the Ghost Web, standing on the other side of my living room from the mirror. Nobody said anything. It felt like a funeral. The dress fit, and the rips had vanished. Marilyn, back in her leggings and tunic, narrowed her eyes at me, the cup of coffee in her hand twitching.

“Don't even think about it.” I pointed at the coffee.

“Oh, I will. I will think about it. But I'm not going to slay the
ghost until you give the order. It's your decision, Faith. You have to make it. But, when you do, I'm going to enjoy ripping that ghoul to shreds.”

“Or neatly packing it away and returning it to its owner.”

“Yeah. Or that.”

The first Saturday in March, the Grace Choir assembled in the chapel car park, boarding the minibus in a gaggle of breathless excitement and bad jokes. Our black choir dresses, this time accessorized with a rainbow of coloured belts and shoes from red to violet, lay in sheets of plastic across the back row.

We were ten minutes late. We were waiting for Polly.

Thirty-eight weeks pregnant, we had hoped (and prayed, literally, after every rehearsal and on Sunday mornings) that Polly's baby would wait until after the competition. Increasingly pale, and worryingly thin except for her beach-ball bump, Polly had shrunk more inside herself as the weeks went by. She gave up trying to smile or pretending to be okay, making no more than the barest attempt at conversation. Despite us both being altos, and supposed to know each other's ups and downs, dreams, secrets, and knicker size, Polly had barely spoken to me since the Christmas carol service. And only then, I knew, because to ignore me completely would confirm I'd been right about her situation.

She insisted she was simply tired, worn down from backache, permanent indigestion, and being kicked in the ribs.

I prayed the baby was the only one kicking Polly. I prayed with fervour, and tears, and a swollen heart.

We were half an hour late. We had to go. Hester was vibrating like an overheated washing machine.

Where was Polly?

We rang the phone number she gave when joining the choir.
I'm sorry,
we were told,
that line is not in service.

“I'll go and get her,” said Marilyn, our non-essential choir member. “Does anyone know where she lives?”

After much discussion it turned out that none of us had ever been to Polly's house, dropped her off, picked her up, or even heard her talk about where she lived. Eventually, Janice reminded Millie that her daughter's husband's secretary had been at school with Polly, and they used to be friends once. A load more phone calls, including a five-minute heated discussion with a local plumber, the force of which threatened to blast Hester's helmet into orbit, resulted in a village, a probable street, and a definite description of a red front door, an eight-foot-high leylandii hedge, and gateposts with two lions sitting on the top.

“Hokeycokey. I'm on it. You go, and we'll catch you up.”

Marilyn sprinted over to her car (more proof of Anton's amazing fitness powers) and started the engine. Roaring out of the car park, she sped down the road, before screeching to a stop, reversing at about fifty miles an hour back to the chapel, and winding down her window.

“Where's the competition again? Is it Leicester, or Lincoln?”

I shook my head. “Hang on. I'm coming with you.”

There were roars of protest from the choir. Polly and I were both singing second alto. Without us, the whole sound would be off-kilter.

Hester looked at me, steadily, as everyone quietened down to see what she would say. I placed my hand on my stomach, across the hidden slash-scar, and Hester's head nodded, the tiniest fraction of an inch. “Well, what are you waiting for? You're blocking the drive. Get! Get! Get!”

We got, got, got to Polly's house.

Sort of. After about four wrong turns, three times up and down the high street, and having to stop and ask a man walking his dog for directions to the house with the lion gateposts.

With or without the lions, the eight-foot hedge, and the red front door, I would have known we had the right place.

The house was immaculate. Every stalk of grass pointing straight up, not one piece of gravel out of place on the driveway. Regimental rows of early flowers – snowdrops, crocuses, purple anemones – lined up along the front wall of the house. Every window was shrouded in drapes. The house looked frozen. Lifeless. It looked like Polly.

We rang the bell, knocked, peered through the windows. No answer.

“What do we do?” Marilyn tried jumping to see over the side gate.

“There's no car. Maybe she's late, so Tony's giving her a lift. Or she's gone into labour and is at the hospital,” I said.

“I can't imagine any other reason Polly'd miss the East Midlands heat of the International Community Choir Sing-Off.”

Oh boy. I could imagine several reasons. They wriggled in my guts. I hoped those choir girls were praying.

I folded my arms. “We can't leave without making sure she's not inside.”

Marilyn squinted at me. “I'd high five that decision, but I'm too worried about Polly. What's the plan?”

“I have no idea. Credit card to pick the lock? Kick the door down? Maybe they've got a key hidden under a plant pot.”

While Marilyn hunted for a spare key, I sized up our other options. While I pressed my face against the window, hoping for a clue, a faint moan drifted through the glass.

“I heard something!” I ran over to the front door, pushing my fingers through the bristly letterbox to try to make a peephole. “We're here, Polly. We're coming to help you.”

“Should we phone the police?” Marilyn asked, squeezing up behind me on the doorstep.

“We can't call the police because someone isn't answering the front door. Argh. Think, Faith, think.” I sprinted over to the side gate, trying to gauge if I could scale it with a boost from Marilyn. “Maybe if we get around the back, we can find a window open, or something.”

Crash!

I turned back to see a saucer-sized hole in the front door pane. Marilyn tossed the rock she'd used to one side, wrapped her cardigan round her wrist, and shoved her hand through the hole.

She frowned. “There's no key in the lock.”

“Can you see one hanging up anywhere?”

Pulling her hand out, she stuck her eye up to the opening.

“No.” She picked up the rock again. “I'm going to smash enough of the glass for you to climb through. What do you think?”

“I think I'm glad you're here. I think I hope Polly isn't inside calling the police. I think I'm going to wet my pants if Tony comes home and finds us here. I think you should be quick about it. And please be careful.”

About six minutes later, I stood carefully amidst the shards of glass on Polly's hall carpet. Leaving Marilyn to make her own way inside, I started searching the house.

In the perfectly decorated, tastefully furnished, spotlessly tidy master bedroom I found her. Kneeling on the floor, leaning her shoulders on the bed, one hand clutching at the silk bedspread for dear life. She buried her face into the mattress and released a deep, primal groan.

Forget the blackened eye, the split and swollen lip, the purple palm print decorating her forearm for now. This woman was having a baby.

Like, now.

I gripped the door frame, shook the buzzing out of my head, and yelled for Marilyn.

An hour later, the paramedics tenderly loaded Polly and her tiny pink baby girl into the ambulance. The midwife had arrived just in time, while the person on the end of the phone gave me instructions to relay to Marilyn, playing interim midwife due to her having actually given birth before.

“It looks a lot different from this end!” she panted, squeezing Polly's hand as another contraction wracked her poor, smashed-up body.

To our shuddering relief, everything had gone smoothly. Polly was too dazed to ask questions. She cradled her baby girl while slow, silent tears spilled out of her puffed-up eyes.

Marilyn and I cleared up the mess while the midwife did her stuff.

“Usually, we'd give Mum a cup of tea and some toast, followed by a shower. Given the situation…” She stopped and cleared her throat. “Given the situation, we're admitting her straight away.”

“Can we come too?”

“You can follow behind. We're taking her to City Hospital. Perhaps you can bring her a bag of things?”

Nobody mentioned a possible father, despite the numerous photographs of Polly and Tony hung up around the house. Nobody expressed the slightest concern for the broken window, despite the light rain now falling. There were questions to be asked, and authorities to be contacted, but right now, all anyone cared about was getting Polly and her baby out of that house.

The paramedics, both men, shut the ambulance door and made one last scan of the horizon. Shoulders flexing, jaws locked, they appeared to be half hoping Tony would come zooming up in his testosterone-powered, midlife-crisis machine, so they could show him what they thought of men who beat up pregnant women.

I did not half hope it. I wholly hoped it. And for that, I am finding it really hard to be repentant.

“I can't believe it,” Marilyn hiccupped, as we sat in her car, about to drive off. “There was a whole new person. There wasn't a person, and then there was. A. Whole. New. Person. Bam!”

“Bam?” I laughed through my tears. “More like aaaarrgh! Grrrr! Hhhnnnnn!
Then
a whole new person. And when you did it, there were two new people!”

“Yeah, but watching someone else do it is totally different. A new person. Out of nowhere. A teensy-tiny, perfect, rosy, sweet-smelling, yawning person.”

“You forgot pooping.”

“I didn't forget. My skirt is ruined. I just didn't want to lower the tone. Why would you lower the tone, Faith? That was a hooten tooten, bona fide miracle.”

“I'm sorry. I don't want to lower the tone.” My voice hitched. “But I'm so, so scared for them. She's so small, and helpless, and beautiful. The thought of that precious baby living with that terrible man. It can't happen. I won't let it happen.”

“Shall we burn the house to the ground?” Marilyn started the car.

“He'd take them somewhere we can't find them.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, as she pulled away.

“I don't know.” I glanced in the wing mirror, making one last check for Tony.

“Surely she won't go back? She's a mother now. That changes everything.”

I thought of my mother, the faint scent of lavender, the tickle of her soft, auburn hair on my cheek as she bent to kiss me. Her gentle voice singing me to sleep.

I shook my head, watched the tears plopping onto my lap. “I just don't know.”

I called Hester. The choir were at the concert hall, about to go onstage.

“I'm so sorry. All that work, and now you're two short,” I commiserated.

“Not important! A baby has been born! Why are you talking to me instead of taking care of Polly?”

“We're on our way to the hospital now.”

“Good. Make sure you tell that girl what's what. After telling her how much we love her. And that we are all going to stand with her, and do whatever it takes. And take some pictures on your phone. Send them over.”

Someone interrupted. It sounded like April. “Hester! We need to go.”

“Well, what are you waiting for then?” she huffed. “Go and be spectacular.”

I called out my best wishes, and have a fantastic time, and knock 'em dead, but they'd gone.

“Are you gutted to be missing it?” Marilyn asked, as she snuck through a light just as it turned red.

“Remember the whole new person? How could anyone be gutted about that? Besides, we have a job to do. I've got a feeling things might get ugly before all this is over.”

Things got ugly about seven that night. Ugly, as in a curled-up lip, bulging veins, and hairy, flaring nostrils.

We were choosing a drink from the vending machine in the hospital reception when Tony strode in. The woman on reception, no doubt used to stressed-out men swinging their weight around, patted her silver bob and repeated the question.

“Who are you here to see?”

“My wife. She's been here all day, and no one even bothered to call me. Don't you have rules about informing next of kin?”

“I presume your wife has a name?”

“Polly Malone.”

“One moment please.” She narrowed her eyes. “Sir.”

“Uh-oh.” Marilyn and I sidled across to stand behind a nearby pillar. I faced the reception desk, with Marilyn as my shield, and peeked out to see what would happen.

“I'm afraid I can't help you.” The receptionist pursed her lips.

“What are you talking about? I know she's here. My neighbour told me.”

The woman's eyebrow rose a millimetre, clearly indicating what she thought Polly not telling him herself implied.

“If we did have a woman here of that name, it would be her choice whether she wanted to see you or not.”

He laughed, but it sounded uneasy. “She's my wife. Of course she wants to see me.”

“I'm afraid not.” Her face set in an instant, like quick-drying cement, as she glanced over Tony's twitching shoulder. “But
they
would like a word.”

During the few short minutes the police attempted to restrain the husband of Polly Malone, witness reports confirmed his deliberately aggressive and violent behaviour resulted in his face smashing into a pillar, breaking his nose.

Nobody, and especially not the two witnesses, cheered under their breath, clapped, did a little jig, or saluted the receptionist when she muttered, after the scuffle had moved into the car park, “You had a girl, by the way. I hope she never has to meet you.”

Harsh? No harsher than Polly's hammered – yes,
hammered
with an actual hammer – fingers, cracked eye socket, and broken teeth.

We broke the news to Polly during visiting hours in her private room. She said nothing, gazing at the warm, sweet bundle of new life in her arms and nodding softly when we asked if she wanted us to fetch her things and move them to a safe place.

By ten o'clock, we were at Marilyn's house, drinking hot chocolate and waiting for the buzz of adrenaline to subside so we could stop shaking and go to bed. A suitcase and a laundry basket full of Polly's meagre possessions waited in Marilyn's spare room. We'd left most of the baby paraphernalia behind. Polly needed a new start, and with all of the twins' kit still strewn around the cottage of chaos, there was plenty to go around.

“It's a bit different from Polly's house.” Marilyn winced.

“Her house wasn't a home. She'll probably love the noise, and the company. And the cake.”

“She needs some cake in her.”

“She needs a lot of things. It's good of you to let her stay.”

Marilyn chewed on her lip. “To be honest, with James gone I could do with the company too.”

The doorbell rang, making us both jump.

“Police?” Marilyn asked.

“No. The police wouldn't call at this time unless it couldn't wait.”

“Right. I suppose we'd better answer it then.”

The bell rang again, swiftly followed by several loud knocks.

She frowned. “Sounds like it can't wait.”

Well, how could the runners-up of the East Midlands heat of the International Community Choir Sing-Off possibly wait to crack open the bubbly, coo over the photos of Polly's baby (not of Polly, we kept her bruises quiet), and describe everything that happened – the lights, the applause, the moment Janice tripped up and her wig slipped off? Quite obviously, they couldn't.

Once everyone had piled in like dwarves in a hobbit hole, eating nearly as much and singing twice as loud (waking Nancy, but not Pete, who would sleep through the battle of five armies), we toasted the choir, the judges, Hester, the NHS, new beginnings for Polly and her daughter, awesome women everywhere who find the courage to tell scumbag men they can't visit them in hospital, the handsome driver, Dylan (who looked totally at home sitting up against the
wall with one leg stretched out, surrounded by overexcited women), brawny policemen, tight-lipped receptionists, Hester again, and the choir again. Then the champagne ran out.

Somewhere around two I heaved myself up from a beanbag covered in dinosaurs and stumbled to the door. “I give in. I can cope with breaking and entering
or
delivering a baby, no problem. But not both in one day. I'm pooped. See you all soon.”

I slipped on my shoes, and started walking down the path towards home. It was a cold night, the stars were out, and the world was draped in moonlight. I huddled into my coat, thoughts turning back to Polly, safe for now, but alone and afraid, facing life with scars I knew would take a long, long time to heal.

The slam of Marilyn's door echoed through the night as someone else left the party. Looking back I saw Dylan jogging up behind me, shrugging into his leather jacket.

“I'm walking you home.”

“You don't have to do that.”

He moved alongside me, the village path so narrow he had to walk on the street. “Well, my job description was to see all the choir members home at the end of the competition, so actually, I do.”

“Ah, just doing your job.” I smiled, and glanced over at him, grateful for the distance he'd placed between us, lessening the intimacy of the darkness.

“Yes. But when I ask how you're doing, that's as a friend. Not part of my job.”

We walked in silence while I thought about it. After our conversation on New Year's Day, I wanted to take the opportunity to answer honestly. I'd be an idiot if I pretended today hadn't triggered some deep, nasty memories.

“I'm okay. At the moment. Seeing Polly was pretty horrendous. But if we hadn't got there – hadn't found where she lived, or managed to get there in time? There are so many what ifs my head spins when I think about it. But we did get there, and she's made
the right decision, for now. I feel grateful for that. And grateful I made the right decision, too, when it was my turn.”

I pressed my hand against my stomach slash-scar. “I'll have nightmares tonight. And probably for the rest of the week. But I'm okay. At least the nightmare stops when I wake up these days.”

We were quiet for a minute or so, before Dylan started telling me more about the day. How Hester had dedicated the performance to Polly and her daughter. How the women had thrummed with pride when they got a standing ovation. How he shamelessly cried when Rowan sang her solo.

We reached my little front path, and I let out a long sigh.

“Sorry.” Dylan grimaced. “I'm rubbing it in.”

“No. I want to hear. I'm so darn proud of us all. And I'll be there for the second round. Someone else can take care of any emergencies next time.”

He grinned. “They'd struggle to do as good a job as you.”

“You didn't hear me squeal when her waters broke.” I pulled out my key and unlocked the door.

“Thanks for walking me home, Dylan.”

“You're welcome.” Turning sideways, hands tucked tightly in his pockets, he nudged my arm with one elbow. “Don't have nightmares. Please.”

He strode off into the night, and I quickly closed the door behind him. Leaning back against the frame, my heart thumping, I held my breath, reluctant to exhale the scent of battered leather. I think my arm might have been on fire. I think my whole body was in danger of bursting into flames.

What was I doing? Was this really what a crush felt like?

I had to stay away from Dylan.

My phone beeped with a text:

Just got back from the conference. How'd it go? Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow. I love you xxx

I did have nightmares that night, but not about what I expected.

I dreamed about a wedding, and the Ghost Web, and running
through the blazing corridors of HCC, choking on billowing smoke as I searched for the fire escape.

Good gracious. I had to stay away from that man.