I put my key in the door and immediately I knew something was going on. I could hear this sort of cooing noise, like a pair of pigeons being patronizing. And another sound that immediately unsettled me – like someone trying to talk – but too . . . young . . .
I walked into the living room and stopped still. Susie was sitting on the sofa, as usual. But there were another two people there – both of whom I’d met, but neither of them I could say I really knew. One of them was Catherine Wood, my husband’s mother.
And the other was my daughter.
22
I stared at her, sitting there on the floor – a beautiful baby girl of eighteen months, with big brown eyes, caramel skin and straight, shiny hair; the darkest that brown hair can be without being black.
She stared at me – a giant red chilli pepper with blood and mascara staining its face in equal measure.
And she screamed, very loudly, and stood up on her lovely little legs and wobbled over to the sofa, burying her face in Catherine’s lap and howling, ‘Go ’way – GO ’WAY! NO, DAPPY – PANDA OFF! BUBBA CWY!’
Mum and Cathy stared at me indignantly.
‘What?’ I exclaimed. I edged towards my baby. ‘Hello . . . Ren.’ I held out my arms. ‘Got a hug for . . . Mummy?’
She looked up, took in the giant bloodied vegetable looming over her and screamed at the top of her voice ‘GO ’WAY, BAD PANDA!’
‘She’s scared of pandas,’ Cathy explained.
‘Do I look like an effing panda!’ I spat, which of course started her off again.
‘I’ll take her outside for a bit,’ Cathy said, scooping the screaming tot up. ‘Show her the view from the balcony.’
‘Leave the door on the latch, Cath,’ Mum called. Then she turned to me. ‘Well! Isn’t this nice!’
‘You’re calling her Cath already!’ I said accusingly. ‘Since when were you so matey with my bastard ex’s mum?! How long has this been going on?!’
At least she had the grace to look slightly ashamed of herself. ‘We’ve been chatting on the phone for a couple of weeks. A month maybe. At the most.’
I just couldn’t take it in; I lit a fag. To my amazement Mum grabbed it from my hand and chucked it out the window! ‘What the fuck—’
‘Language!’ she tutted. ‘There’ll be no more of that, for a start. That and smoking. And . . . dressing up like a panda and frightening Ren.’
I tried to keep calm. ‘Mum. I’m a fucking chilli pepper.’
‘Well, she thinks you’re a panda.’
‘Whatever. The point is, she’s got to get used to it.’ I sat down wearily. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Mark’s been chucked in jail. In Saudi Arabia. Apparently he was handing out Bibles like they were sweets.’
I couldn’t help laughing. You had to hand it to the boy I married, he was certainly something different. Couldn’t go to jail for GBH like a normal person, no! ‘And what am I supposed to do about it? You saw what she was like – she fucking hates me!’
‘Well, you do look a bit frightening right now,’ Susie conceded. ‘But it’s nothing that a bath and a bit of blusher won’t put right. And if you’re not a panda—’
‘For crying out loud – I’m a chilli! They’re nothing like!’
‘Ren was scared by a panda on the telly recently, Cathy says – she calls everything she doesn’t like “panda”.’
Just as Susie spoke the last word, Cathy put her head round the door, Ren calmer in her arms. All it took was that one word – PANDA – and she was off again, screeching like a police siren.
‘I think we’ll be off now,’ Cathy yelled over the racket, ‘and try to make a fresh start tomorrow!’
‘I DON’T S’POSE MARK MENTIONED MY IPOD, DID HE?’ I yelled back. ‘ONLY I’VE REALLY MISSED IT!’
‘OK, Cath!’ Mum yelled back. ‘Come by around twelve and we’ll go out and leave them to it!’
The door slammed and I stared at Susie in absolute astonishment. ‘Please tell me I was hearing things then. TOMORROW?!’
‘They’re staying at a B & B. To give you two time to . . . bond. Reconnect. Have some one-on-one family time.’
‘You’ve been watching too much
Trisha
, Mum.’ I stood up. ‘And from what I’ve just seen, it’d take a truckful of superglue to bond her with me!’ I stomped out, slamming the door. Well, one of us had to be the grown-up, and Susie was obviously living in never-never land!
I woke up early next morning with a weird sort of Christmassy feeling; when I realized I was excited about seeing Ren, I was so freaked out I couldn’t get back to sleep. I went into the kitchen; She-Ra, Evil-Lyn and even JJ, which made me feel annoyingly tearsome, were sitting at the table making these really crap cards with TOO OUR NEECE written on.
‘You’ve spelled that wrong, for a start,’ I commented over JJ’s shoulder. ‘It should be A-R-E – OUR.’ The clown only rubbed it out and started again! I turned to Susie. ‘D’you think Ren’s gonna get the Sweet brains, poor little cow? Not that the Wood ones are anything to write home about, judging from the situation Mark’s landed himself in. Bibles in Saudi! – the pigs don’t even allow the letter X there, cos it’s too much like the cross.’
Susie looked at me amazed. ‘How d’you know that, love?’
I didn’t really feel like telling her about Asif right now. ‘Never you mind.’ I looked at her sternly and held the door open. ‘Outside. Now.’
We went into the sitting room, and immediately she launched into a justification of the farce – albeit a rather exciting one – about to be played out. ‘Ria love, I was only thinking of you – you said you wanted to get her back. You were gonna get that private detective, remember? Well, she’s here now, love, and . . .’
I was about to launch into one about how I never said I wanted her back. In fact she only had to check with Asif (not that she’d met him) to find out I’d been pretty damn vocal on that point. But then I remembered I had kind of agreed to find Ren, just to shut Susie up, back when she was going on about the need to hold another baby in her arms and all that crap. And I’d never bothered to set her straight that the only baby girl I’d given much serious thought to tracking down was Kizza.
Susie was looking all wounded-puppy-dog eyes at me now. ‘It wasn’t easy, Ria, you know, getting Cathy to agree to this day-out idea. She was all, “No disrespect to your daughter, Mrs Sweet, but are you sure she’s capable of looking after Ren by herself? Ren’s been through such a lot with her dad being taken away, and I couldn’t stand her to suffer any more.” Took me a while to persuade her that that was exactly why Ren should be with her mum. I mean a baby needs to be—’
I’d stopped listening a couple of sentences back – so that sanctimonious cow, who had aided and abetted my ex to run off with both my baby and my iPod, thought I was incapable of looking after my own daughter, did she! ‘Susie, it’s fine, no worries. Course I wanna spend the day with her – can’t wait. It’ll be sweet – loads of catching up, loads to do. Quality together time . . .’
I clocked the stunned look on Susie’s face as I buzzed out the door, back to my room to get ready. I’d show them. I sat there on the unmade bed, shaking and slugging away at my stash of voddy until I felt my heartbeat get back to something like normal and my hands stop trembling. Yeah, I know, if the thought of being left alone with Ren for a day spun me out so much why hadn’t I just told them where they could shove it? Or easier still, just agreed to it all then buggered off outta there till the whole thing had blown over. They didn’t expect me to be any good at it, so why bother trying? But that was the whole point, Mark’s patronizing mum with her, ‘No disrespect, Mrs Sweet.’ – bitch! But course what she meant was no respect as in she had none at all for
me
– and for some reason that made me want to show the old cow she was wrong. For one thing, if she was such a shining example of good parenting, how come her pride and joy had walked out on his darling wife, breaking up their family and depriving his baby daughter of a mother’s love and then, just to make sure he really screwed things up, gone and got himself banged up in some foreign jail? I might not have been mother of the year, but at least I wasn’t pretending to be.
And in the last few weeks I’d been disrespected by just about everyone, from a couple of child-molesters to a sodding gherkin, and I wasn’t about to let my bastard ex’s mum join the list. I finished the vodka, stood up and held my head up high. I’d never won a prize in my life – but I was ready to win my daughter.
I’d like to report that I was wrong, for once, and that Ren threw her arms around me and clung with all her little might when she and Cathy came calling. I showered, slapped on a bit of fake tan, flowery scent and pink lippy and sallied forth to charm my daughter. But as luck would have it, I also pulled on my favourite monochrome shift dress – black and white striped, with black opaques and white shoes. As I opened the door with the broadest and most welcoming of motherly smiles, I realized that I could be mistaken – if only by an easily excited eighteenth-month-old child – for a –
‘PANDA!’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’
‘LANGUAGE!’ tutted Mum and Cathy as one, as I huffed off and changed into Susie’s second-best dress so Ren could put her sticky hands all over me without me having an epi. See, I was a natural at this mother stuff! Didn’t seem to make much difference though: the minute Ren reset eyes on me, her little face crumpled up and turned bright red, and she was wailing into Catherine’s neck before I even opened my mouth.
Cathy prised her off and held the bawling little bundle out for me to take. She was only wearing a sort of grey smock frock with a picture of a gurning teddy bear on it! – what’s a panda if it’s not a bear in its PJs, I ask you! And she had a really filthy bit of blanket in her hand, which obviously she’d been using as a hanky or something. It was totally rank and I felt smug that Mark’s mum obviously wasn’t as perfect a mother-substitute as she liked to make out.
‘Here you are, Maria. And this bag has her things in it . . . Ren, love, Mummy’s going to look after you today . . .’
‘PANDA OFF!’ She kicked her legs, hitting me in the mouth.
‘Fuck off!’ I exclaimed instinctively.
She stopped kicking and stared at me with her big hot-toddy eyes. Then smiled hesitantly. ‘Panda off?’
‘Off!’ I agreed, nodding like a nutter. ‘Off,
off
,
OFF
!’ It was a small thing, but sadly all we seemed to have in common for now.
Cathy saw her chance. ‘OK, Maria, we’ll be back around six. See if you can get her to sleep by then, but if you can’t, no worries.’
‘Bye, love – don’t forget to take the twins’ old buggy out!’ called Susie as Cathy pulled her away.
Ren stared wide-eyed at this betrayal, from me to where her grandma had stood and back again. For a moment I thought I had her – and then the door closed. Between glass-shattering screams the poor panda-hating little scrap called for her daddy, her granny – anyone but her mum – and as I stood there holding my squirming, crying daughter in my arms, I felt as lost and scared and abandoned as she did.
23
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. What do kiddies like? – telly! I carried her into the living room, singing the theme from that
Tots TV
show that the twins had loved at the top of my voice –
‘I’m a Tot
Je suis une Tot!
Tilly, Tom and Tiny
We’re the Tots on Tots TV
One, two, three – boo!’
She seemed to like this; at least, it stopped her howling. And it had French in it too, which’d be useful when it was time for her to chat up language students like her mother before her. It’s good to be bilingual – and no cracks about me and Kim, thank you; this is a little kiddy we’re talking about!
As this bit had gone down a treat, I racked my brains for another song from the show and came up with ‘Tom’s Trumpet’ –
‘Follow Donkey all the way home,
He knows where we’re going.
Follow Donkey all the way home,
He knows where we’re going.
We got lost all on our own,
Now home is where we’re going.’
But, pathetically, I felt a lump in my throat at the ‘We got lost all on our own’ bit, and it must have communicated itself to Ren, because she started crying her little heart out twice as bad as before.
What else did kids like? – softies and snacks! One thing about Susie, she always has the fridge crammed with tasty and nutritious scran. I juggled Ren on one hip, feeling like an Italian earth mother out of a pasta ad or something, and bent down to investigate. Of course, the first thing Ren saw was a bottle of the Panda Pops cola the twins threw back like water, and the crying gave way to wild screams of ‘PANDA OFF!’ once more. I slammed the door shut, but not before grabbing a packet of Cheestrings; kids couldn’t get enough of these, in my experience. And cheese was just milk that had learned to stand on its own two feet anyway, so naturally it was good for babies.
Where should I sit her while she had her snack? – she’d fall straight off the chair. Then I saw the twin buggy that Mum had held on to in the hope she’d get lumbered again. I sat her down in it, strapped her in before she knew what was happening, unzipped the Cheestrings and handed them to her. She looked astonished but not sad, so I took advantage.
‘That’s it! – clever Ren! Now, darling, you sit there like a good girl and eat your nice lunch while Mummy puts a nice DVD on.’ I scooted into the front room; luckily there were loads of old tot-orientated ones that the twins had long outgrown but Susie didn’t have the heart to get rid of. Best vet them first to make sure none of them had a bloody panda in; I selected a
Postman Pat
and dodged back into the kitchen to fetch Ren.
Bless; she’d got the Cheestrings and, instead of eating them, hung them all over her little head. Some hung from her ears like manky earrings; some hung down over her eyes like a really badly peroxided fringe. She smiled angelically at me, and what was left of my heart seemed to melt like a Cheestring left on a radiator.
‘There’s a clever girl!’ I clucked, running up to her and grinning like a loon; I was really good at the ‘unconditional love’ thing too, it seemed. ‘Shall we go and see Postman Pat?’ I wheeled her into the living room, pushed the buggy right up against the screen and pressed play. The familiar theme song started up, then just when I was congratulating myself at the length of time I’d managed to keep her happy – must’ve been at least five minutes since she last had the abdabs! – the wail went up –