Walking into the coffee shop, she spotted her mum straight away, the bright yellow uniform setting off her long dark hair and olive skin. Lipsy had always wished she’d been blessed with her mother’s colouring. She had the hair but her own skin was pale – pale and interesting, her grandma said, but that was only to make her feel better about looking like a ghost most of the time. When she’d first met her father a couple of years ago, Lipsy saw that it was him she took after in the looks department. Her mother had never mentioned that.
‘Lipsy, hey!’ Her mum called her over to the counter and she trailed across the room dutifully. ‘This is a nice surprise. Meeting Rosie?’
Lipsy shook her head. ‘No, I’m not.’
‘Not Robert is it?’
‘No, Mum,’ Lipsy said wearily. She decided to let it go for now, as there were bigger issues to discuss. But her mum wouldn’t be able to ignore him forever. Especially not now.
‘Have you come in to see me?’ Her mother laughed as if this was a silly thing to say and then looked ridiculously pleased when Lipsy told her, Yes, she had.
‘Grab that table then and I’ll get us some lattes. I’m due a break soon anyway.’
Lipsy wandered over to a corner table, positioning the chairs so that her mum would be sitting with her back to the counter. This was the least she could do, she thought. Protect her from prying eyes. She was pleased with herself for being so thoughtful.
‘Are you sure it’s OK to have a break?’ Lipsy asked when her mum sat down.
‘God, yes. I deserve one,’ she said, yawning.
They sipped their coffees and stared around the café in a silence that was, if not exactly companionable, at least not too awkward.
‘How are things?’ Lipsy asked. As she’d instigated this meeting she might as well make the first move towards conversation.
‘Not too bad. Not too bad at all, really,’ her mum said, pulling a so-so face and tipping her head from side to side.
‘And how’s the house coming on?’
‘It’s good. Really good. I’m thinking of having a decorating party. You know, everyone comes round in their scruffs and brings a pot of paint and a paintbrush, and then we put some music on and have wine and nibbles. It’ll be a laugh.’
Lipsy looked at her mother doubtfully. ‘But what if they all bring different coloured paint? It will look crap.’
‘Well, obviously it would need a bit of planning.’ Her mother stirred her latte with her finger. ‘It’s just an idea at the moment.’
‘I think it’s a really good one,’ Lipsy said brightly, remembering why she had come and that she needed to get her mother on side.
She racked her brains for how to start – all those carefully prepared words had disappeared the minute she sat down – but then she noticed her mother’s expression. Lipsy hadn’t made a habit of studying her mother’s face lately; they hardly saw each other these days for one thing. But now it was just the two of them, with no distractions and no arguments (not yet, anyway), she couldn’t help but notice that her mum looked sad. Really sad. And tired. And worried. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her look so worried.
‘Are you OK, Mum? If there’s anything you wanted to talk about, you know you could talk to me.’ It felt good to be saying this, it felt grown up and right somehow.
Her mother regarded her seriously for a moment or two. ‘What would you say if I told you I was thinking of going to visit your granddad?’
‘I’d say about bloody time! I heard you and grandma arguing about it the other night. I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ she added when her mother raised her eyebrows, ‘I just overheard, that’s all. And, for what it’s worth, I think you should go.’
‘He’ll be coming out soon, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
The dreaded question. Lipsy never knew how to answer this; often she didn’t feel anything like how other people expected her to feel. ‘I love Granddad,’ she said simply. ‘And I miss him.’
‘Me too, Lipsy. Me too.’ Her mother shifted her gaze off into the distance and Lipsy struggled for a way to bring her back to the present.
‘How’s the house coming on?’ she asked.
‘You’re a good daughter, Lipsy,’ her mother said suddenly. ‘I know we’ve had our differences lately, and I know you blame me for the fire. No, no.’ She waved away Lipsy’s protestations. ‘I know you do, and you’re probably right to. I should have taken better care of things. At the very least I should have made sure the insurance payments were kept up. That was unforgivable. But I’m going to make it up to you, sweetheart, I really am. I’m saving up to buy you all the things you want and I’m going to redecorate your room and make everything perfect again. You’ll come home then, won’t you?’ she asked hopefully.
‘I don’t want you to buy me anything. Those kind of things aren’t really what’s important anyway. Actually, Mum, there’s something I need to tell you. Something a bit difficult.’
But her mum was still digesting her last comment. ‘But you’ll want to replace all the stuff you lost, won’t you? The iPod and the Playstation and the DVDs and clothes and stuff?’
‘Not really. I mean, yeah, I guess so. Eventually. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? It was just stuff. So, anyway, I need to tell you something important.’
‘Of course, go ahead.’ Her mother was shaking her head as if she’d just heard something mind-blowing.
‘Mum!’
‘Sorry.’ She leaned forward on her elbows and offered Lipsy her wide smile. ‘I’m listening. Off you go.’
OK, Lipsy. Don’t blow it, now. Your entire future happiness depends on how well you handle this one conversation. Nice and slowly, like we practised.
‘The thing is,’ Lipsy began.
‘So you’re really not bothered at all about any of the things you lost? You don’t want to go out and replace absolutely everything bigger and better than before?’
‘Mum, for God’s sake, will you just listen? I’m trying to tell you something really important here and you’re going on about iPods and DVDs. It’s stupid, it’s all just stuff. I’ve got bigger things to worry about now. I’m actually pregnant.’
Stunned silence, horrified expression, shaking of head.
‘Yes, Mum.’ Well done, Lipsy – you handled that so well. ‘I’m having a baby. Rob’s baby. And we’re definitely going ahead with it so don’t even try to talk me out of it. OK? Don’t even try.’
***
Don’t even try to talk me out of it, she said. As if I was going to march her down to the abortion clinic right there and then. Did she not realise who she was talking to? That the person sitting in front of her, although pretty old and wrinkly now by her standards, had once been in almost exactly the same situation and had felt exactly the same about it?
I may have had a couple of years on her when I fell pregnant, but I had the very same conversation with my own mother – although maybe it was even worse for me because I also had to face my father at the same time. Their disappointment was the worst thing. I could see it washing over their faces like dirty water – our daughter, our unmarried daughter, our unmarried daughter who is going out with a feckless no-hoper, pregnant at nineteen. Career ruined. Prospects slashed. Future mapped out ahead of her like the plot line of a tacky soap.
They were crushed, both of them. At first, my dad was angry, but it didn’t last long. He wasn’t really angry with me anyway, although I took as much responsibility for the accident as John Dean; actually I took all the responsibility because he refused to take any. When he started to mess me about, not long into the pregnancy, my parents begged me to leave him and move back home. Those were the really big rows, the ones we hadn’t had at the start because they were too shell-shocked, or too kind, to make me feel as bad about it as I maybe should have.
What goes around comes around, hey?
Now here I am, faced with an even younger pregnant daughter with even fewer prospects and even more obstacles to overcome. At least I’d already left home, and I had a modicum of an idea about how to look after myself and someone else. My boyfriend wasn’t old enough to be my father, although with hindsight he may have behaved more responsibly if he had been.
I know Robert isn’t the problem here. The way Lipsy tells it he is being the perfect gentleman about it all, getting down on one knee to ask her to marry him (she laughed a bit too hysterically about this), looking around for a small starter home for the three of them, and putting in for a promotion at work. You have to give him credit for not running a mile – in my experience that is the norm.
No. The problem here is my sincere belief that my daughter is simply too young, physically and emotionally, to cope with having a child of her own. I have to think clearly about this and not panic. I have to be calm and sensible so I can guide her through the minefield which lies ahead. I must not panic.
Pregnant at sixteen.
Oh my God. Her life is completely ruined!
Her future’s mapped out now: by twenty she’ll have three children by three different fathers and be living as a single mother on the Lakes Estate, stealing formula milk from the local Co-op. And probably eking out a meagre living offering phone sex to middle-aged men in the evenings while the kids are in bed.
No. I won’t let that happen.
‘But you’re too young to have a baby!’ I screeched in despair while Lipsy sat serenely taking it all in.
She took my shaking fist in hers. ‘Evidently not, as I am actually having a baby and there really is nothing anybody can do about it.’ She tilted her face and I noticed that her cheekbones had lost some of their hollow, gothic look, and her skin was glowing. She looked radiant. How long was it since I had properly looked at my daughter, I wondered?
‘How pregnant are you, exactly?’
Lipsy sat back in her chair and picked up her coffee, which was quite clearly stone cold. She shrugged.
‘How long,’ I said again, ‘have you been pregnant?’
My daughter met my eye. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, don’t you think we’d better find out?’
‘I guess,’ she answered sulkily.
‘You’re going to have to deal with it a bit more grown-up than that, young lady,’ I snapped back at her.
I cringe now to remember how much I’d sounded like my own mother. I should have handled it better – I was the one who needed to grow up. We all say we won’t turn into our mothers, but of course we do. It’s not that it’s in our genes, it’s just that we grow up hearing all that stuff, all those little sayings and tellings-off and clever come-backs. Then when we find ourselves in similar circumstances it’s all there in our brains, a vocabulary ready to go.
If the day before someone had asked me how I would handle it if my daughter became pregnant, I would have told them that I would sit down with her and discuss it calmly and maturely. I would respect her feelings. I wouldn’t make any jibes or criticisms. I would be, of course, the perfect mother.
‘Did you bother to think about protection at all?’ I asked my daughter bluntly, not flinching when she cringed as though she’d like to disappear into her chair.
‘Well, did you?’
Lipsy sank into herself even more. She looked so small, so frail. I was a pretty strapping teenager myself, although I still provoked this same protective response in my own parents.
‘I’ll take that as a “no” then, shall I?’ I said a little pompously. ‘And this Robert bloke? I don’t suppose you’ve told him yet, have you?’
She became quite animated after I said this, not really defensive, merely practical, going through the options they’d discussed, filling me in on how “amazing” he was being about it. I resisted the urge to tell her so he should be. I resisted the urge to tell her I was actually quite proud of how she was handling it. But I didn’t manage to resist the urge to ask my daughter just what the hell she saw in this man in the first place. At least the master of my downfall had been devastatingly handsome.
Lipsy stared at me like I was a crazy person. ‘But Rob’s gorgeous. Everybody thinks so.’
Well, that told me. But I can’t help but wonder why she chose an older man when my daughter could have had any boy in her year at school – or anyone else’s year for that matter. Why him? I don’t even know how they met.
And then it hits me. How can I have been so blind? I’ve bandied the phrase “father figure” about enough times, but the truth of it hadn’t hit me until now.
How can I have missed such a classic and predictable basis for a relationship? My daughter had needed a father figure for most of her life and in Robert she’d clearly found one – a man with whom she can act out the perfect relationship, who can look after her and repair all the damage inflicted by her own lack of a father. It even explains the baby – she needs to feel needed, needs to have something that relies totally upon her. Maybe there is no question over the contraception issue, maybe this “accident” wasn’t so accidental after all.
Coming to this ground-breaking conclusion does nothing to alter the facts, however. My daughter is still pregnant and she’s still only sixteen. The clock on my mobile phone tells me it’s half past two in the morning. Monday morning. I have to get up for work in a few hours. I have to face Paul after my drunken ramblings the other night, face my job and my life and this wreck of a house I call home, with this new fact inside me.
I would rather crawl under the bed and stay there for a week, or maybe a year.
There is one person I must talk to as soon as possible, not least because I promised Lipsy that I’d be the one to tell him. I want John Dean to know exactly what he’s done and what he’s responsible for, however indirectly. Can I help it if the thought of seeing him – despite the amount of sheer hatred I feel for the man – fills my body with a tiny (but very exciting) electrical charge?
Chapter 15
After work on Monday I visit my mother to let her know Lipsy’s news – another traumatic activity I stupidly agreed to take on. I also plan to tell her that I have in fact decided to go and see my father. I figure that one will take the sting out of the other. I’m half right. She doesn’t seem too angry about Lipsy, or disappointed even. The woman, I am amazed to see, blames herself.