Motherlove (23 page)

What was he doing? She knew what he was doing; he had told her half an hour ago. He was in a meeting. What was he saying? How was he looking? Was he concentrating on his presentation or thinking about her?

Stop! A car slowed in front of her and she was nearly up its exhaust pipe before she noticed. Leave it. Put Ben on hold, until she was at the Padstows, with her mother, telling Roz all about him.

She turned into their lane at last, crunched to a halt on the gravel outside the house. Roger strolled over to greet her as she opened the door.

‘Hi, Roger.'

‘Hello, Kelly. You're looking extraordinarily bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.'

‘I'm in love.'

‘Ah. That would explain it.'

‘She's been good,' said Roger. They were standing, after dinner, on the banks of the river. Slow drifting water, paling in the evening light. ‘A bit of a crisis the second day, when you'd gone, but other than that, just fine. Eating well, getting plenty of exercise, keeping her spirits up. I think she'll come through it, don't you?'

‘She had you taking care of her.'

‘And you'll do just as good a job, I've no doubt of that, as always.'

‘I hope so.' It had been her mission since she was ten, taking care of her mother. Of course a grown woman, not yet forty, should be able to take care of herself, but most grown women were not like Roz. Few had Roz's ability to block out problems. Left to manage alone, could Roz be trusted to pay the rent, remember her appointments, take her pills? Or would she think that everything could be solved by an hour of yoga and meditation?

For the first time it crossed Kelly's mind that being a caring daughter might be incompatible with being a lover. She had a foot in two worlds, and suddenly her balance was precarious.

‘Could be a bit of a hindrance with the great love affair?' suggested Roger.

‘Oh, don't say that!'

He laughed and put an arm round her. ‘I do understand. It's never easy. I can see it from both viewpoints. Your mother needs you and you need your life.'

‘Yes but…' Kelly took a deep breath, furious with the confusion fate had thrown at her. ‘They can go together, can't they?'

‘Why not?' he agreed.

‘He has a mother too; he has to sort things out with her.'

‘A caring sort.'

‘Yes. Trying to be.'

Roger hugged her, reassuringly. ‘It will work out all right, don't worry. You deserve it, you and Roz. It's an order. Neither of you are to be unhappy.'

‘Yes, Boss.'

‘You're our mission, you know that. Our daughters almost. We have a vested interest in seeing you both come good.'

She nearly said, ‘Daughter and granddaughter, you mean.' Then she realised how right he was. It wasn't a mother and daughter that Roger and Mandy and the others had offered a refuge to, twenty-two years ago, but two children, equally vulnerable, equally in need.

She had a memory, so distant it was almost formless, of the warm oil-lamp glow in the half-ruined farmhouse, of being in a nest of cushions between Roz and Mandy, as they shared a book, Mandy's finger following the words as she read aloud, hieroglyphs that Kelly could not yet understand. Roz's head bent over to follow the finger just as Kelly's was, her hair tickling Kelly's cheek. Roz learning to read.

While Kelly had grown from baby to toddler to happy curious child under their guidance, Roz had grown too, moulded by her surrogate parents so that, one day, mother and daughter could step out into the world together and survive.

What would have happened if Roger and Mandy had not been there for them? ‘We owe you,' she said. ‘Big time. Really. I do know it.'

Roger chuckled. ‘As long as you're both happy, that's all that counts. Now, tell me about this Ben. You could talk about nothing else at dinner.'

‘So he's going to come this weekend and you'll love him, I know you will.'

‘Of course I will, if you do,' said Roz.

‘He's twenty-five and he comes from Coventry but he works in London—'

‘Yes.' Roz laid a hand on Kelly's arm to redirect her attention to the road. ‘You told me.' At least thirty times. She wasn't puzzled by her daughter meeting a man from Coventry who worked in London. All sorts turned up in Pembrokeshire in summer.

‘I should have taken a photo. Why didn't I?' Kelly wasn't one for photographs. She looked with her own eyes, at the here and now.

‘I don't need a photo,' said Roz. ‘He's—' She laid a hand on top of her head. ‘About this tall. Brownish hair, hazelish eyes, quirky smile—'

‘All right.' Kelly laughed. ‘But that doesn't do him justice, you know. He's altogether lovely, and I can't stop thinking about him and I think I'm going to die without him.' She paused for breath.

Roz gazed at Kelly and smiled. Could she really be feeling such excitement and intensity? Roz tried to equate it with what she had felt, for husband and lovers. There had been something overwhelming when she had been young, but had it really been love? Need. That was all. Clinging to any arm that offered to hold her up. She'd fulfilled some sort of fantasy by marrying Luke Sheldon, but that wasn't the same, nothing like the love Kelly had for this Ben. She had wanted someone, anyone, and when Luke had shown such a clear, flattering liking for her, she had stuck to him like a limpet. Until the tide of his drunken violence had touched Kelly, and washed them both off the rock. The occasional lovers that had followed had been friendships, brief touches in moments of loneliness. Her need had gone, quenched by the only love that really mattered to her, love for her child. Mutual dependence that would last forever.

Why hadn't she known that one day love might steal her daughter away? ‘I'm looking forward to meeting him.'

Kelly pictured it with an inner glow. Her mother and Ben together in Carregwen. Ben walking with Kelly on the hills, feeding the sheep with her, retreating to her beautifully eccentric bedroom with her.

Ben, with his smart suit and his perfectly cut hair. Ben with his well-paid graduate job, and his gleaming new car and his place near Heathrow. Kelly felt a twinge of panic. He was far away and the gulf between them was so very vast. Their worlds were so alien, so incompatible. How could it possibly work?

It would be enough to see him again. Just bring the threads together and hope they would weave themselves into something manageable.

A junction ahead.

‘Where are we?' she asked. No Sat Nav now. They were back in the Astra, so smooth and soft-spoken that it no longer felt like their car, but the garage had not fitted Sat Nav and Kelly was really going to have to concentrate. Get her mother home, that was the first step. Then check on the animals, get in some groceries, and only then think about Ben.

After she had thanked Joe for his help.

Ah. She had forgotten about Joe.

‘No, it's been great,' Joe assured her. ‘Everything's fine, like, you know. Cool. Except I've been missing you.'

Kelly hugged him. That was all right, she owed him that. And he'd understand. Or at least he wouldn't be too badly hurt. They were friends, never really more than that. Not lovers in any meaningful sense, she could see now she knew what love really was. He'd move on, no trouble. But maybe she'd explain tomorrow. She didn't want to be dishonest about it, but it wasn't really fair to leave him looking after her farm for her for more than a week, then come home and tell him it was all over between them.

‘Are you coming up the Mill tonight, then?' he asked.

‘Not tonight. I need to sort Mum out. But tomorrow. I'll come round to your place tomorrow.'

‘Great! Black Amber on in Swansea, this weekend. I got tickets when you said you were coming home.'

‘That sounds – great. I'll see you tomorrow, and we'll talk.' She kissed him on the cheek. Couldn't he tell? No, not Joe. She watched him mount his motorbike and rumble away down the rutted track. Then she went inside to clear up his beer bottles. Clearing up a stage of her life that was gone for good.

ii

Vicky

Gillian looked at the lime green mini, tucked up against the wall of the house. Vicky had only driven it a couple of times. Preferred to walk or cycle. Never mind. Exercise was good for her. Gillian, washing the windows, gave the windscreen a quick wipe over. Might as well keep it sparkling for the girl.

She tipped the dirty water down the drain, and went back in, wiping her hands on her apron as she took it off. How was Vicky? She wished she knew. Gillian was living on broken glass. Vicky was a whirlwind inside, driven by some inner obsession, but burning herself up in her determination not to show it. She had always been like that.

Hadn't she?

Gillian pictured Vicky walking to Junior School, her hand in her mother's. Yes, she had been quiet, no running and shouting, no naughtiness, but she had not seemed unhappy back then. Not defensive, determined to keep Gillian out.

Adolescence made such a misery of lives. Was that it? The angry self-assertive teenage years turning a quiet happy child into a sullen unhappy woman? Unhappiness made worse by Gillian's stupid silence about the adoption, but surely not caused by it? Exacerbated by Joan, of course. That went without saying. Gillian could remember her own teen years, the endless fights and tussles. Joan would make anyone sulk and storm.

Maybe every family went through this. Every mother left yearning for the time when her child had been young and dependent and cocooned in her nest. Gillian made herself a cup of tea and sat down, pulling the old photograph albums out. Vicky as a baby, gurgling contentedly in Gillian's arms, rolling on a rug in the garden. Vicky's school photographs, the little shy smile gradually becoming more confident, the soft round baby features altering year by year into the future woman. Vicky smiling broadly at the camera, looking pleased, almost cocky. In the back garden. Cosmos and scarlet runner beans. Gillian could remember that shot. It had been the summer after her GCSE exams. She had just had the results, she'd done so well, everyone had been so proud. Only Joan had scoffed, but Joan would.

Vicky on her seventeenth birthday, surrounded by cards and holding up the car keys triumphantly. The more controlled smile of a teenager, who didn't want to be so uncool as to whoop like a baby, but still a smile, still genuine. And then…

Gillian flicked through pages, first with a pang, then with alarm. So few pictures of Vicky, as if she were determined not to be photographed. And when she was caught, she was looking away, or head down, or her long hair shaken to conceal her face. No more smiles, happy or haughty. Just blank eyes.

What had happened? Gillian was holding in her hands evidence that all her daughter's happiness had vanished in a puff of smoke. It was there, on the page for anyone to see, so obvious, yet she had lived with Vicky every day and she'd noticed nothing. She'd been irritated by the increasing antagonism and isolation, yes, but she'd never noticed that it had all begun then. Just like that.

What was it she had missed? God, how terrible a mother had she been? So desperate to adopt and an utter failure. Frogmarching a child into a career far beyond the dreams of anyone else on the Marley estate – was that really successful motherhood?

A rattle and thud at the door. The paperboy. Automatically, she went to the door, picked up the
Lyford Herald
and unfolded it without reading a word. She could only think about Vicky and her own failure.

Back to the photographs. She went through them again. It was so screamingly obvious. What had happened? Vicky had been at Sixth Form, taking A levels. She had worked hard, aiming for medical college – and that was all her life had been. Up, to school, home, upstairs to study. At weekends, breakfast, upstairs to study, down for dinner, back to her room.

‘So responsible, so dedicated,' Gillian had said. But it hadn't been dedication, had it? Vicky had been turning herself into a recluse, and Gillian had stood by and let it happen.

Was it the illness? After she'd discovered that she had a condition she could never cure? It would be understandable. But no. It hadn't been diagnosed until Vicky had started university. And she had taken it well. She had almost seemed to welcome having something that she could take charge of and control. So not the diabetes then.

A boy? It must have been. Puppy love and then cruel disappointment. Had that sad little claim to sexual experience been Vicky falling for some spotty youth, being spurned, breaking her heart? Why couldn't she have talked to her mother? Gillian could have helped. She could remember what teenage infatuation felt like. All joy one moment and the end of the world the next.

Gillian sighed and closed the albums, putting them back on the shelf. Tidied the room, plumped up the cushions. Picked up the
Lyford Herald
again. Began to read.

Missing Daughter Quest: Hospital Rapped.

The typical
Herald
tabloid style. She looked at it with just curiosity at first, until the details began to blare at Gillian.
Kelly Sheldon
…
her mother Rosalind who suffers from a form of diabetes known as MODY, Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young
…
trying to find her mother's lost baby
…
March 1990
…
There was someting about a mix-up at the hospital, but that must just be a cover story.
Her heart was thumping so loudly, she didn't hear the footsteps on the stairs at first. She rolled the paper up, thrusting it behind a cushion on the sofa.