The Sisterhood (14 page)

Billy was somewhere in the hospital, shut away in a smoky room with the rest of the fathers. Mary was being tended by a midwife who frowned when she screamed, and a doctor who came in from time to time, and who wanted to be somewhere else. Her legs were in stirrups. She had been shaved on arrival. She knew that there were plenty of ideas around, that you could stand up and walk around, get up off your back, squat during labour, but when she tried these, it turned out she was not allowed. All the same, she kept trying to get up, to ease the pain by shifting positions. The midwife just pushed her back down. They gave her gas and air but it made her vomit everywhere.

During each contraction, she stared at the clock on the wall, and watched as time speeded up and slowed down. The labour rooms were on the thirteenth floor, and she could see the street lights coming on all over Brighton. Afternoon became evening, and night, then the sun rose and she felt sure she was no further on than when she had arrived. When she craned round, she could see the sea from the window, but the midwife didn't like that. She wanted her to concentrate. The street lights went off. Rain began to fall, and then the sky cleared. It was a watery blue by the time the woman shouted at her to push. It was a stupid thing to shout: nothing Mary could have done would have stopped her body pushing. The pain was better like this. Every ounce of her strength went into the primal business of ejecting her offspring. In between, she panted and waited. Suddenly, on one push, the midwife announced that she could see the head. The doctor appeared. They both told her to push. She swore at them, loudly, and felt the exquisite relief of a body slipping out of her.

'It's a girl,' the doctor told her, with a vague smile. 'Congratulations, Mrs Greene.'

A girl. Poor cow.

When the baby was handed to her, cleaned up and wrapped in a pink blanket, Mary looked at its little face, crumpled and cross. She wondered, in a detached way, at the fact that it had grown inside her, with its angry fists bunched up ready for a fight, its eyebrows knitted together, its toes and everything. It had all been put together by her own body, and she had never even meant to do it. She waited, hopelessly and cynically, for the rush of love. It didn't come. She had known it wouldn't. This creature, she felt, had nothing to do with her.

'Sorry, baby,' she whispered. 'Mummy doesn't love you. Try Daddy.'

The midwife smiled. 'Now, shall we put Baby to the breast?' she asked.

Mary pulled her gown around her. 'No,' she said firmly. 'Let it have a bottle.'

Billy said they had to name it after the Queen, because that was what his parents expected. Once, Mary might have fought for a more interesting name, fought against the attitudes betrayed by Billy's statement, but by this stage she didn't care. And so it was that Elizabeth Greene arrived in the world: small, red, cross, and loved, perhaps, by her father.

6 February

I went for the scan on my own, because I had no one to go with me. I had to take an afternoon off school, and this provoked Kathy into silent fury.

The hospital was functional, but grim. Paint was peeling, and I got hopelessly lost on my way to the scanning room.

The midwife had told me to drink plenty of water before the scan, but when, finally, I was called in, the sonographer touched my abdomen and sent me away to the loo, with a roll of her eyes. She smeared me with some cold gel, and set to work.

The room was dark. I stared at the screen. At first it looked like nothing. Then I heard the sound of the baby's heart, and the swooshing of its home. Grey pixels moved around. The sonographer pushed the scanner hard into my belly, and I was suddenly afraid for the baby. Even though I could hear its heart, I was afraid it had died.

'See?' she said. She looked at me, and pointed to the screen. 'Here it is.'

I stared. Suddenly, what I was looking at fell into place. There was a huge head. There was a tiny body. The body had limbs, which were flailing around. It actually looked like a baby. I was looking at my baby.

She was busy taking measurements. 'All looks all right so far,' she said cheerfully. I couldn't take my eyes off it.

'So, how many weeks pregnant am I?' I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. I willed her to say 'eighteen'. If she said eighteen, it was Steve's baby. If she said fourteen, it was Rosa's.

She took her time before she answered. She was squinting at the screen.

'Oh,' she said, apparently registering what I had said. 'Oh, fourteen weeks exactly. Giving you a due date of August the seventh. Is that what you thought?'

I left with three photographs of my strange little embryo. I felt, although I shouldn't, as if my life raft had been taken away. Rosa had got me pregnant. I sobbed all the way to the Tube. This was Rosa's baby. I was well and truly on my own.

9 February

I sat on the uncomfortable chair and frowned at the screen in front of me. I was trying hard to block out everything else. I could only write to Liz if I was in character, and, under the circumstances, getting into character was not easy.

'Hi there!' I wrote. 'Liz, I am so sorry to hear about what went on at your dad's. I was hoping that telling them might be going to make your life easier. But it doesn't seem that way at the moment! Don't worry, though. It will all work out, and just because your stepbrother and his wife are having a baby too, that doesn't mean anything. There's nothing to stop Sue helping you both out. Glad the scan went well.'

I sighed. Once I got going, it was easy to be jaunty and upbeat on email. It was easy to give mindless and obvious advice off the top of my head. It was going to be far harder to convince her face to face.

I only ventured out of the hotel room to do this. So far, I had spent most of my time in London trying to avoid people. My room was horrible, but it comprised the few square feet of London that I could call my own. The bed was lumpy. The walls were stained yellow with nicotine, and pockmarked, I thought, with cigarette burns. There were brown watery outlines all over the ceiling. The carpet needed replacing. I wondered how people lived like this.

When I pushed aside the dirty net curtains, I had a view of a brick wall, very close to my window. There was almost no natural light. All the same, light seeped in at night and kept me awake. Somehow, street lights and car headlights invaded my sleep.

I hated my room, but the rest of London was worse. It was awful out there — big and dirty and frightening. I cowered indoors, feeling that I was in a war zone. I simply did not dare to go out. Girls who had seemed nice and friendly had stolen my money, so I dreaded to think what everyone else wanted to do to me.

When I forced myself outside, there were people who stared at me, even though this was a big city and no one was supposed to be interested. I looked fearfully at them, but as soon as our eyes met, I stared down at the pavement in front of me, at the wide slabs of concrete. I went out when I had to, to buy expensive, tasteless fruit and, more importantly, to use the internet. The rest of the time I hid in my horrible room.

So far, the project was a disaster. I tried and tried to psych myself up to get out and see the city properly. For days, I stayed indoors. Strange sounds came from other parts of the hotel. I tried to ignore them. From time to time, a smell would find its way to me. It would creep under the door and assail me. Sometimes it was a cooking smell; at other times it made me think of mould, drains or bodily functions. I became horribly familiar with the patches on the ceiling, as I lay on the bed and stared upwards, trying to convince myself that they weren't shifting.

I hated being on my own. I could not bear to be so far from Tom. I was pretty sure that Liz was my sister, but she didn't know it, and the whole plan seemed ridiculous. It would be far more grown up if I were just to tell her the truth. That way, it would be up to her to decide if and when she wanted to meet the rest of the family. Tom had been right. But now that I was here, I had to try.

If I told her the truth, she wouldn't want to come to France to meet the woman who abandoned her. She wouldn't want anything to do with any of us. That was certain. That was why I had to take her back myself. If I did manage to take her home with me for a 'holiday', we would, eventually, have a reconciliation. That was why I was here. That was why I could not do the thing I was longing to do, and go home.

The internet shop was a small, dark room with thin squares of brown carpet on the floor. I came here because I knew that I had to. The men who worked here looked at me. When I came in, they said, 'How are you doing?' and I nodded at them but couldn't say anything in return. I saw them talking about me sometimes, but as I was relentlessly boring and unfriendly, they were starting to leave me to it. One of them came in now.

'Morning,' he said. I looked round.

'Hi,' I muttered.

'How are you?'

'Fine.'

I frowned at the screen to show him that I wasn't talking, and he started chatting to his friend, talking about United and Chelsea and the Champions' League.

'Perhaps you should talk to Julie,' I improvised, on my email. 'It doesn't sound as if you really know her, but could she perhaps turn into a friend, if you're both having babies?'

I sat there and dispensed random advice for a little while longer. It was surprising how easy it was to sort out somebody else's life when you weren't involved. I could tell Liz what to do all day long, if I let myself.

Tom never bothered to write. Beyond an occasional, formal message in French, from Papa, Liz was my sole correspondent. I had, in the past, had other email friends, people I had met on various websites. The friendships always fizzled out. They had all ended either with me accidentally saying something that made my correspondent cut off all contact, or with whoever I was writing to suggesting I send a photo of myself topless. I had done it once, had taken a photograph of myself in the mirror with the camera and flash obscuring my face, just to gain a life experience and alleviate the dullness. My 'friend', who until then had been masquerading as a woman, revealed himself to be a man living in somewhere called Blissfield, Ohio, and immediately demanded a bottomless shot too. At that point I felt obliged to drop him, especially because Tom read his mail. That was uncomfortable, but at least I had someone on hand to talk sense, and to tell me I was gross. He was disgusted with me, as I was with myself.

The tragic thing was, sending that photograph was the closest thing I had ever had to a sexual experience.

Five days later, I woke up manic. This was the day when everything was going to change. It would be a cornerstone in my life, one of the most important days I would ever have. Liz and I were going to meet for coffee at half past ten. I had barely slept, going through imaginary conversations in my head all night long.

Liz was vulnerable, and the last person she needed in her life was the real me. She needed someone happy, strong, and capable. She needed good advice and unquestioning support. Somehow, I had to become the person she wanted me to be, even though I was somebody else entirely.

She had asked whether I would mind meeting her in north London. I had agreed readily, even though I had yet to brave the Metro system. Today, I was going to leave the Norfolk Square area for the first time. I was going to go to Kentish Town.

I dressed carefully. Yesterday had been a big day: I went clothes shopping, and I got my hair cut and dyed. Even though I bought clothes all the time in Bordeaux, in London it was different. I had clothes, but this city made me look like a loser, however hard I tried. This was causing me some despair, until I happened to pick up a magazine that someone left in the internet shop.

It was called
Heat,
and it was actually open on a page about clothes. When I looked closer, I saw that the page was called 'Steal her style', and that the woman in the picture was wearing an outfit that I thought I could buy. In fact, it was idiot-proof. Every item had a cheap version listed next to it, and the name of a shop. Even a moron like me could copy it.

I steeled myself, and ran over to a cab that was dropping someone off.

'Can you take me somewhere where I can find Top Shop, H&M and Office?' I asked shyly.

'Sounds to me like you want Oxford Circus,' the driver suggested, though he didn't sound particularly interested.

I managed to buy every part of the outfit surprisingly easily, even though English sizes were difficult for me. No one gave me a second glance because everywhere was so busy. I started to do some gawping myself, at a woman standing at the traffic lights yelling into a megaphone about God. She saw me looking and stopped and smiled. I had to walk quickly away.

After that I walked into a random hairdresser's, and handed them the magazine. 'Can you make my hair look like this?' I asked.

The woman looked at the picture and nodded. 'You want to look like Fearne Cotton?' she checked, with a small giggle. I nodded, clueless. 'Well, I think you could do a bit better than that,' she told me. 'I think you could do Nicole Kidman.' Two hours and one hundred and fifty pounds later, I barely recognised myself. My hair was blond, properly blond, like Marilyn Monroe's. It was still long, but there was a shape to it. When I shook my head, it swung around. I looked like somebody different.

I tied my hair in a scarf last night, because I vaguely hoped this would stop it going scruffy again as I slept. My fear was that the bleach would have made it fall out, overnight, every strand of it.

My outfit for the big day comprised a pair of skin-tight black trousers, a 'peasant style' blouse with small blue flowers all over it, a huge wide belt, and pale blue cardigan. When all of that was on, I ceremoniously removed the scarf from my head, and checked the mirror.

It was the first time I had seen myself in the ensemble. I was unrecognisable. The girl who looked back at me was the woman I wanted to be. She looked smart and confident and ready for anything. She looked like someone who had friends, someone you could talk to. I put on my new 'cowboy' boots, and I loaded purse, room key, the copy of
Heat,
and printouts of all of Liz's emails into my new black bag. It was a big bag (apparently bags were 'big this season'). I would never fill it up.