The Sisterhood (23 page)

She smiled. 'Good. I hoped you would. She's a meek little thing, but she's nice, in her way.'

'But Sue, are they really going to live with you? With the baby? Is it a good idea? I think you need to have a word with Roberto.'

She turned to me. Her eyebrows, which were always elegantly plucked, rose. 'Roberto? Why?' She was instantly defensive and suspicious.

I spoke quickly. 'I'm only saying this because I don't want things to go wrong. But I'm afraid that he's going to lose Julie if he doesn't get his act together. Julie wants her own home. You must understand that. You wouldn't have moved in with Dad's parents, would you?'

'But we're nicer than them. Not meaning to speak ill of your grandparents.'

'Oh, speak ill. Go ahead, be my guest. You know what I'm talking about, all the same. If Julie left, she would take the baby. Sue, you and Dad
have
to kick them out.' I looked at her face, and carried on quickly. 'You know I love Bobby. He's my brother, to all intents and purposes. I want him to be happy. But that means Julie being happy too. And that means you have to make him set his family up away from you and Dad. It's too easy for him, being with you.'

Sue shook her head emphatically. 'No, Lizzy. You're projecting. You wouldn't want to live with Steve's family, that's all.'

I glared. 'Steve is not the father.'

'Oh yes, of course. Sorry.' I hated the fact that no one believed me. 'But anyway, they like being with us. And we like having them. We're like one of those family units in African villages, all piled in together, all mucking in, looking out for each other.'

'But you're
not
,' I said. 'You don't live in an African village. You live in Haywards Heath, in a terraced house. Roberto needs to get off his fat arse, and he needs to move into a family home for him and Julie and their baby. Even if it's a tiny rented apartment. They can still be close to you. Think of it as their hut, still a part of the circle. Bobby loves being with you. Julie loves you all too, but she needs her own place.'

Sue looked at me. I saw her ferocious side.

'What has she been saying?' she demanded.

'Nothing bad,' I said hastily. 'She just doesn't want to feel like a guest for the rest of her life. She's only thirty-one. Seriously, she's heading for an ultimatum. And she thinks he's going to choose you.'

Sue looked pleased for a moment. 'Yes, I see that there is that danger.'

'I know you love him. But can you try to tell him to build a new hut? For his own sake?'

She opened her mouth to argue. As she spoke, I turned away. Suddenly, I could not hear a word she was saying. There was someone on the other side of the road, walking in my direction. As she got closer, I became more and more certain that it was her. I stared. I felt the blood pounding around my body. I was terrified, and excited.

'Hold on a second,' I managed to say to Sue.

'No,' she said, sharply. 'I haven't finished.'

I crossed the road. The woman stopped, and looked me up and down as I approached. I reached out to touch her arm, then withdrew my hand.

'Rosa?' I asked, even though I knew it was her.

April 1970

Once she had bought the ticket, she felt wonderful. She was an evil, unnatural woman. She would be condemned by everyone. She was cutting herself off both from her birth family (there was no chance of her mother and father speaking to her again, not after this) and from her new family. She was losing her parents, her husband and her daughter, all in one go. Nothing she had ever done had brought her anywhere close to this exhilaration.

She planned it meticulously. She could not possibly mess this up. It was her only chance, and she was going to take it.

The grey days, the tunnel, had finally become too much. Her life — bottle-feeding the alien creature, devoting herself to housework, lurking inside this house that she hated — was over. The little trips to the shops by herself were never going to be enough. They gave her a tantalising glimpse of what freedom would be like, but they were not freedom. Often, nowadays, the baby was crying when she got home, which made her guilty. She thought the neighbours were going to work out what she was doing. She was going to do it properly now. She had a seat on a bus, and it was going to leave from Victoria, and she was going to go east, and east, and east.

It was hard for her to quantify exactly why she was desperate. She had never tried, had never spoken to another person about it. She had not stopped to analyse it herself, not until now. The baby was nearly six months old. This, in the eyes of the world, meant that Mary had to be out and about. By now, she should be used to motherhood. The baby was supposed to be sleeping through the night, so Mary had no more excuses for not being the perfect mother. She ought to be down at the shops, chatting to other young mothers. She should be going to coffee mornings and Tupperware parties, comparing babies with new friends and sitting by the beach talking to her daughter, waiting for a gurgled response.

Instead, she lurked indoors. She barely felt able to put one foot in front of the other, and she had stopped making an effort, had stopped even bothering to get dressed, unless it was to go out alone. She answered the door to the milkman, to the religious callers, to the neighbours, in her nightdress, even in the afternoon. People were talking, tutting and muttering about her. She watched the women walking past, pausing in front of the house, inclining their heads and judging her, sotto voce. She stood behind the net curtains and stared back, wondering whether or not they could see her.

Now, she was going to give them something to talk about.

The bag was packed. It was a small bag, because, on her own, she was hardly going to need a thing. She had taken her toothbrush, toothpaste and cold cream. A couple of changes of underwear and one spare outfit were all the clothes she would need. She had her ticket. She was going to be at Victoria station tomorrow, at ten in the morning. She'd saved all her housekeeping money for two months, and Billy had noticed (she had asked him for shopping money several times) but had never tackled her about it. That money was going to buy her a new life. When she thought about it, she felt she was growing wings.

The baby stared at her. She stared back. It smiled. Mary could see, objectively, that Beth was sweet. She had fat red cheeks, and had grown a head of soft yellow curls. Her eyes were bright blue, and everybody said she was adorable. It was all Mary could do to change her nappies. Then she had to wash them. Then she needed to hang them out on the line, or drape them around the house if it was raining, which it generally was. Often they never quite dried, and that meant she ended up ironing one dry, while the baby lay, bare bottomed and cold, on its changing mat, and kicked its legs crossly, and tried to roll over, and then yelled. When that happened, Mary looked at the iron in her hand, and looked at the baby, and ran out of the room.

She checked the time. It was ten past five. Billy was almost always back before seven. She was nervous about this part of the plan. She had practised and practised for it, walking out on her baby even before she realised what she was doing. But now she faced reality, and she knew that Billy might be stuck at work in some flukish meeting until nine or later. It seemed that, after all, she could not leave this baby on its own. It would be scared and it would cry and cry and no one would go to it.

Something inside her was pleased. She might not be absolutely inhuman, after all.

Half an hour later, Mary knocked on her neighbour's door. The woman answered it, and looked surprised.

'Oh, hello,' she said, peering at Mary and smiling slightly. 'Nice to see you out and about.'

Mary nodded.

'And this is your lovely little girl. Hello, Betty.'

'Beth.'

The woman leaned forward and took Elizabeth's hand. 'Hello, little Beth!' she said, in the voice that women inexplicably used for speaking to babies. Mary had never tried to copy it, because she knew she wouldn't be able to do it. 'Well, aren't you a precious cherub!' She looked at Mary. 'It's nice to see you, Mary. Make the most of her, won't you? They grow up so fast. My boys are nine and eleven now. Nine and eleven! Would you like to come in?'

Mary spoke quickly. 'I'd love to another time. I'm really sorry but I wondered if I could ask you a favour? I've just had a call from my father, and my mother's ill, and it sounds quite serious.' She checked the woman's face. She had already composed her features into an 'oh, I'm sorry' expression, and Mary could see that this was going to work. 'She needs me to go at once, and I'm not allowed to take Beth to the hospital. My husband will be home in an hour or so. Would you mind the baby? She's had her bottle, and she's got a clean nappy on. I'm so sorry — I know we don't even know each other very well. I'm afraid I've been a bit too wrapped up in motherhood to be a good neighbour.'

The woman held out her arms for the baby. She was beaming. 'Oh, I'd be happy to, dear. You just run along and look after your poor mother.' She looked at the baby. 'Bethy will be perfectly safe with me. For as long as you need.'

Mary gave the baby a quick kiss on the top of its head, and retreated.

She had already left Billy his note. She hadn't taken a lot of time over it. It said 'Billy — sorry. I just can't do this any more. Beth is next door. Don't look for me. Look after her. Mary.'

Now, she carried her bag stiffly as she hurried down the hill to the station. This was the danger point: if he came home early, this was where they would meet. But they didn't. Mary bought a ticket to London, and boarded a train, placed her small bag of worldly goods in the luggage rack, and found herself a corner seat. She heard the whistle blow, and looked up, to the hill to her right, knowing that she was closer to her daughter now than she might ever be again.

The train pulled out of the station. As the platform slid away, Mary wanted to jump for joy. The fog lifted. She was on her own, and this time she was going to stay that way. She didn't care what they were going to say about her, because she wasn't going to hear any of it. She was going to have an adventure, and it was going to last for the rest of her life. She was going to Kathmandu.

She was free.

8 May

Rosa looked at me. She looked down at my stomach. She looked uncertain, then suddenly smiled. Her eyes weren't smiling: she was wary of me.

'Hey,' she said, a hand on my shoulder. 'Hello, Liz. Look at you!'

She looked different. She was dressed in jeans which emphasised her slim legs, a burgundy blouse, and a silk scarf. I realised that when we met before, she had been terrified at everything that lay ahead of her. Now she seemed to have relaxed.

The sight of her affected me more than I wanted it to. I recoiled, and swallowed, then made myself smile. This was the encounter I had been seeking. I would rather have been anywhere else in the world.

I wondered how drunk I must have been not to have noticed, when I first met her. The structure of her face was masculine, but her long hair hid the sides of it. She was not particularly tall, and she was slim. I could see that her body shape had changed. I thought about how brave she must be, to be doing all this, making herself this vulnerable. I liked Rosa. The last thing she needed at the moment was the thing I was about to throw at her.

'You look great,' I said.

She looked scared, but she tried to brazen it out.

'So do
you
,' she said, with a smile. She put a hand on my stomach and rubbed it. 'Could this be the same woman who was bemoaning the fact that Prince Charming had buggered off? So to speak. With a boy? The girl who confidently predicted that motherhood was never going to beckon?'

I looked down. 'Well...' Her hand was still on my bump. We are a family, I thought. Here we are, together. It was a weird thought. Rosa was a stranger, but I had a closer link to her than I did to anyone.

'So I'm assuming he came back,' she said, talking quickly. 'I had an inkling that he might. Decided not to be gay after all? Got it out of his system? Gave you the baby to force you to forgive him? Seen it all before.'

I was chewing my thumbnail. When I glanced over the road, I saw that Dad, Sue and Julie had stopped and were waiting for me. I thought they were out of earshot, but wanted to be certain.

'Guys?' I called to them. 'Why don't you go to the café? Matt's place, on the corner? We can get a coffee. I'll be there in a few minutes.' Then I looked back to Rosa. Her eyes were wide, begging me to agree with her hypothesis.

I steeled myself. It would be far too easy to agree that Steve was back. This was the only opportunity I was going to get.

'Actually,' I told her, 'I've been trying to track you down.' My heart thumped. I clenched my fists.

We looked at each other. I opened my mouth to spell it out. She put up her hands to stop me. She took a step back and her face was suddenly contorted. I realised, in that second, that Rosa was both vulnerable and strong. I was afraid.

'You're lying,' she whispered.

'Why would I lie?'

'I don't know why. But it isn't true. It can't be.'

'What can I say? The baby's due on August the seventh. You do the maths.'

She drew herself up. I tried to remind myself that I hadn't done anything wrong. She looked as though she would either cry or hit me.

'I don't want to do any maths,' she said, staring into my face so hard that I put a hand up to shield myself.

'And I don't want to fight,' I said, as levelly as I could. 'I'm not going to. I've been looking for you for months. I didn't do this on purpose. Neither did you. It happened. You have the right to know. I wanted to tell you the facts, as a courtesy.'

'Matt said you were after me.' She took two steps back. 'That is exactly why I haven't been into his establishment lately. He didn't mention your condition.'

'That's unusual. So you just didn't want to see me?'