Mothers & Daughters (29 page)

‘I don't know. Could be.'

‘He won't eat, won't play, can't seem to drop off. It's completely fucking knackering.'

‘When exactly did you last speak to Jaz?' I said, dropping to my haunches so I could take a better look.

‘I told you; I haven't talked to her for about, ooh, three years. We kept in touch a bit after she left, but it petered out.'

‘You were her friend?'

‘Sort of. But then—'

Without warning, the child leaned forward and vomited onto the doorstep. Milky drool spattered across the grey stone next to me.

‘Oh, shit,' she said. She took a step forward and I knew she was preparing to draw him inside and close the door on me.

‘Hang on a minute,' I said. I lifted the hair up on his forehead because I thought I'd glimpsed something there. ‘What did the doctor say again?'

‘A virus. Why?'

‘Can we take him inside and get his T-shirt off?'

I must have frightened her, because she didn't hesitate.

The house was tidier than I'd imagined, and the décor modern, plain and light. Even so, the back room was poky and I had to bring him up to the window to see properly. Sam sat
him on the table and peeled off his top while I hunted my reading glasses out of my handbag. You could tell he was poorly because he barely protested.

‘How old is he?' I asked.

‘Two next month. He's had a lot of ear infections, we're always up at the surgery with him. You get so you think, I don't want to bother them again. But then, when it's night time and he's burning up . . .'

I put my palms to the butter-soft skin of his chest. Then I checked under his fringe again. ‘See that?' I said, pointing above his eyebrow.

There was a tiny clear blister marking the fair skin.

‘My God,' she said. ‘What is it?'

‘Chickenpox, I think.'

‘I thought that was red spots?'

The child twisted away from us, and we caught sight of his back. ‘Like those?'

There weren't many, just three or four, like flea bites.

Sam frowned. ‘When I had it, I was absolutely covered. I remember.'

‘It can vary. Jaz had hardly any at all.'

‘Should I try that glass test thing?'

‘You can if you want to.'

She poked one of the spots with her finger experimentally. The redness vanished for a second, then flushed back.

‘So what do you do for chickenpox?'

‘There isn't really anything, other than ride it out. Oh, cut his nails as short as you can so he doesn't scratch himself into a nasty mess. And keep him cool, don't cover him up with thick blankets. Have you any calamine lotion?'

‘No.'

‘Don't worry, you can get it in any chemist. Sudocrem'll do in the meantime.'

‘And the being sick?'

I shrugged. ‘Toddlers do tend to, for no special reason. But if you're at all concerned, get him back to the doctor's. They won't mind. It's better than worrying all night.'

She sat down heavily, then she slid the boy towards her and onto her lap. Both of them looked exhausted. ‘Are you a health visitor or something?'

‘Just a grandma who's seen lots of cases of chickenpox over the years.'

‘Well, if that's all it is . . . Sometimes he seems to go from one infection to another with no pause in between. And there's no one to ask.'

‘Your mum?'

‘Lives in Spain. Too busy having a good time to bother with grandchildren.' Her eyelids closed. ‘I'd make a cup of tea if I had the energy.'

‘Stay there,' I said.

When I came back, she'd laid him out on the sofa, and he looked to be almost asleep. His long lashes quivered against his cheeks, and he kept making long, juddery sighs. Up and down his little chest went, his fingers curled and relaxed. What would she say if I reached down and stroked his hair?

‘You seem like a nice woman,' she said suddenly. ‘I don't know why Jaz always had such a downer on you.'

‘Me neither. Look, Sam, are you absolutely sure you can't help me? I really could do with a lead.'

The boy's breathing seemed to fill the room.

She said, ‘You'd better let me have your story. Then maybe we'll take it from there.'

‘OK, well, I should tell you now,' she said when I'd finished. ‘Jaz and I had a – a fall-out. I was pretty pissed off at the time.
I'm sorry about her marriage. If it's any consolation, though, I think she can look after herself.'

‘Do you?' I wondered what version of Jaz she'd known.

‘God, yeah. She's got a core of steel.'

‘Why did she drop out of the course?'

‘Didn't she tell you?'

‘No.' I felt foolish saying it. ‘We didn't even realise she had dropped out, at first. It's not like school, where the teachers ring the parents and send out letters if anything's wrong.' The whole thing was conducted in private, between the university and Jaz. Data protection, I was told when I phoned the department. She was an adult, it was her business, and nothing to do with me. Unless she wanted to involve me, which she didn't.

‘Didn't she mention my name at all?'

I struggled to remember. ‘I don't think so. I mean, not especially. She used to come at me with a whole list, all funny-sounding nick-names. Slothy was one, and there was another called Meat. She shared a house in the second year with two Zoology students, I do know that, but she was only with them a term.'

Flashback to Jaz that Christmas before she left Leeds, slouching over her plate. I was furious that I'd gone to the trouble of cooking a proper dinner for the two of us, and then she wouldn't eat it.
Nothing I do is ever good enough
, I'd said to her.

‘She was supposed to share with me,' said Sam. ‘Me and Tomasz. We were – friends. It's complicated.'

‘I might have heard her mention Tom.'

‘You would have.'

‘He was her boyfriend?'

Sam's eyes were dark and clouded. ‘He was my boyfriend. Then he was hers, then he was mine again. Although it wasn't as clear as that. It wasn't like anyone drew a line, you know?
Sometimes it was this, sometimes that. Mainly we were friends. That was when it was best. Brilliant, actually.'

‘Sounds complicated.'

‘It wasn't, though, that was the thing. We just hung around together. Went up Majestyks or Heaven and Hell or the Union; best time of my life, really.'

‘Until?'

She looked away. ‘It was tricky to keep the balance going long-term. We dated other people, me and Jaz, but never anyone serious. I think we both really loved Tomasz. I think secretly we were each hoping he'd choose us and that the other one would be OK with it. Like that was ever going to come off. I'm sure he found the whole situation . . . you know. Two women, mad for him.

‘Jaz had a lot of little flings, and there was this one guy, Andy, I went out with a few times. She set us up, then kept pushing us together, even though I wasn't totally sold on the idea. I knew what she was up to. But Andy was too . . . he wasn't Tomasz, basically. I finished with him to get back with Tomasz—'

‘Was Jaz going out with Tomasz then?'

‘Like I said, it was a sort of fluid situation. I suppose they were closer at that point. Well, obviously . . .' She gave a funny sort of laugh.

‘And Jaz was upset?'

‘She was OK with it. It had happened before. What you have to realise is, it was like we were playing some stupid game of tennis, with Tomasz as the ball. I think she assumed she'd get him back, but she wasn't that serious, you know? We were all still going round together. Having a laugh.'

Sam shifted in her chair. A worry line had formed between her brows.

‘This,' she went on, ‘is where it gets tricky. The other guy I'd been seeing, Andy, he came round to the house and gave me
this big speech about love, how we were meant to be together and stuff. He got himself in a total state. Now I look back, I can see he wasn't balanced – he was ill, really, but I didn't pick up on the clues. And then it was coming up to the end of term, and we were supposed to be doing exams, and that's when he killed himself.'

‘Good God,' I said.

Against the ordinariness of this pale, neat living room came scenes I'd caught on television: a figure climbing over a railway bridge; a washbasin spattered with blood; a young man's body sprawled across a bed.

‘An overdose,' she said, cutting into my thoughts. ‘He'd tried it before, when he was in the sixth form. There wasn't a note. Some people are wired that way, it's no one's fault. It wasn't my fault I didn't want to go out with him, was it? Was it?'

‘No.' My mouth was very dry. ‘And Jaz? Was she involved at all?'

Sam ignored me. ‘There was an inquest, obviously. Have you ever been to one of those? Fucking awful. Like a court. Fucking big room. But they said no one was to blame.'

‘Did Jaz go?'

‘No. I had to. I had to stand up in public and tell them what he'd been like. His parents were there – I had to do all that on my own.'

So much of my daughter's life that I knew nothing about. It was as though a huge gong had been struck inside my head and was reverberating, on and on.

‘It must have been awful for you,' I said.

‘Yeah, it fucking was. Talking like this – you think something's in the past and then it all comes back.'

‘I can imagine,' I said carefully, ‘you must feel, even if it's nothing to do with you, a sense of guilt.'

‘It wasn't my fault. They said.'

‘No, it wasn't. But nevertheless, very distressing for everyone involved.'

‘I didn't last much longer than Jaz, you know. One more term and I was back at my mum's. At the time I just wanted to get away. Then I meet someone, get married and find myself here again. There's irony for you.'

‘So do you think that's why Jaz became ill? Do you think she was affected by what happened to this boy?'

Sam raised her head and looked at me directly. A bitter triumph gleamed in her eyes.

‘I reckon that was probably more to do with the abortion,' she said.

CHAPTER 23

Photograph: unnumbered, stuffed down the back of the immersion heater, Sunnybank

Location: Bar Coda, the Student Union, Leeds

Taken by: Tomasz

Subject: Jaz and Sam lean in together, grinning. Sam has her arm round Jaz's neck, and there is a good deal of bare shoulder and décolleté on view. ‘Go on,' urges Tomasz, ‘kiss her.' Which one is he addressing? In practical terms, it doesn't matter. Jaz lays her head against Sam's neck because she doesn't want to snog a girl, even for Tomasz. He says he's drunk, but she's been watching him and she thinks otherwise
.

‘Mmm, my mate,' says Sam, swaying slightly. All at once Jaz is desperate to remove Sam's clammy arm from against her skin. She wants to escape this hot loud room, break out into the panoramic night, and run and run. But that would mean leaving the other two on their own
.

It's not the evening any of them have been hoping for
.

I sat holding Dad's limp hand and told him all about it.

‘How could she not have confided in me? How could I not have known? If she'd come to me, I could have helped, we
could have talked it through. She didn't need to have got rid of the baby; I could have supported her. Surely she didn't think I'd be angry with her.
Would
I have been angry with her?'

Dad blinked.

‘I wouldn't, would I? I might have said she'd been a bit silly, but I wouldn't have gone on about it. If she'd come home and announced, “Mum, I'm pregnant”,' I paused for a moment to construct the scene, trying to imagine myself saying, ‘There there, not to worry, we'll see you through.' How likely would that response have been? To have held my tongue about how hard she'd worked to get to university, or how we'd all struggled to get her through those re-takes, or the cash Phil and I had scraped together to start her off? Would I really have been able to pretend unalloyed delight?

Then I thought of Matty, newborn, and what a rush of love I'd felt when I'd held him. That faint prickle of remembered lactation as I held him against my breasts, the endless marvelling at his miniature perfection. Feeling almost drowned in the weight of pride, responsibility and privilege. All that lost to me, to us both: it was an intolerable thought.

Eh, our little Jaz
, I heard Dad saying, from across time.

‘But I'm speaking from the other side of experience,' I said to him. ‘I know now what it's like to be a grandma. That wouldn't have been the case if she'd come to me when she was only twenty-one. I was just a mother then, and that would have made all the difference. Having a grandchild around puts, I don't know, a layer of tolerance between you somehow. Perhaps it's because you're speaking more on a level with each other. You're both mums, so you've a better understanding. Or she's grown up, or you've understood that she's grown up. I can't pin down exactly why, but it alters things right down to the core. So, obviously, I wouldn't have felt the same about a pregnancy as I do now.'

We were all different people back then, love
, said Dad.

‘See, what counselling did she have, that's what I want to know. Where did she go to have it done? Was he around for her, this Tomasz? God, if he was here now—'

Sam had been infuriatingly short on detail. Yes, the baby was Tomasz's; yes, she thought he might have taken Jaz to the clinic but she didn't know if he'd stayed or not. ‘We'd all kind of fallen out by then,' she said. As though they'd been kids having some stupid spat, instead of adults dealing with a matter of life or death. ‘Have you got his address?' I'd asked her. ‘No,' she said, ‘I've no idea where he is.' ‘Do you think there's any chance Jaz might be with him now?' I said. ‘I wouldn't have thought so,' she'd said. Then she'd turned away from me deliberately and bent over her sleeping boy. She'd done the damage. The discussion was closed.