After a cup of tea and two slices of toast and jam, the drowsiness from the long sleep subsided. I had a quick, freezing shower, dried my hair and got dressed in jeans, a jumper and trainers.
Before I reached Peggy at the shop, I had something to do.
I picked up the phone, making a mental note of apologizing to Peggy for using it without her permission, and I dialled my parents’ number. My mum answered immediately. I felt a pang of guilt thinking that Tom had probably told them of my disappearance the night before and that she must have been so worried.
‘Eilidh! Where are you?’
‘Hi Mum. In Glen Avich with Aunt Peggy. I’m fine. I left Tom.’
‘I know, he told me. I asked him why and he didn’t answer. I think I can imagine it, his silence sounded guilty. We are furious. My poor wee girl …’ Mum’s Scottish accent and expressions always come back when she is upset or emotional and override the Southport one. ‘Are you sure you are ok? Do you want us to come and get you? Or at least can we come and see you?’
‘Please don’t. I need some time by myself. Some time to think.’
A short silence followed.
‘You won’t do anything stupid?’ she said in a small voice. Poor Mum, what I must be putting her through.
‘Absolutely not. No way.’ I meant it. I am not saying that for about three weeks after the miscarriage I hadn’t thought that ending it all would have been preferable to all that pain, but then I had come to my senses. Probably my aforementioned stubbornness. I wasn’t going to give up.
‘Ok. Ok. Keep in touch … If you need anything …’
‘Thank you.’ My eyes welled up. ‘Thank you.’
‘Give Peggy a hug from me. Oh, Eilidh, we didn’t sleep a wink here. I am so relieved you are home.’
Home. I smiled to myself. Scotland is not a country you can ever tear out of your heart. My mum had spent the last thirty-five years in England, apart from the short while she had separated from my dad, but she still called Scotland home. I put the phone down and took a deep breath, drying my eyes.
I threw on my jacket and scarf and I stepped out of the house. I started walking to the shop that Flora and Peggy had minded since they were young women. It sells just about everything: food, newspapers, toys, bits and pieces of camping and hill-walking equipment, souvenirs for tourists. It even sells babies’ clothes, knitted locally by the now eighty-years-old Boyle sisters.
The shop had suffered since more and more people could drive to the small supermarket in Kinnear, and especially since the big Tesco had opened on the outskirts of Aberdeen, forty-five minutes away. But it still did good business. It’s not only a place to shop, it’s a place to catch up on everybody’s lives. Flora and Peggy loved a good blether and people knew that they could rely on them for a daily chat. But they didn’t allow any nasty gossip, only good-natured conversation, and they especially took great pleasure in following the young ones’ love lives. Having both been happily married, they loved matchmaking, and I know for sure that they had played a role in a few marriages in the small community of Glen Avich.
Neither of them thought that Tom was right for me. They were too delicate to say it to my face, but I knew. I suppose they were right.
I walked down the street and across the tiny play park where I had so often played as a child. I turned onto the main street, past the chemist, past the church, past the tiny hairdresser’s and up to the shop.
I stopped at the window. It looked lovely, clean and well kept. Peggy was nearly seventy now but she was still working very hard.
‘Oh, hello Eilidh, did you sleep well?’ Her face lit up when she saw me. She was neatly dressed, as ever, with a light blue shirt, a navy cardigan and a brown woollen skirt. Her dark grey hair was short and tidy, and her eyes a clear, light, startling blue, like Flora’s, like mine.
‘I did, thank you. Thank you for letting me stay. And for breakfast. I phoned my mum, I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all. How is she?’
We were skirting around the edges. It was a formal dance before I’d have to give her an explanation of my turning up there alone and quite in a state.
‘She’s ok. She was worried for me. But she was happy to hear I’m here with you.’
‘Did she not know, pet? Did she not know you were coming here?’
Pet. How I had missed being called that. I felt my eyes well up again. Oh no, here we go, the tears again. I’d had nothing but crying for the last three months.
‘Oh, Eilidh, come on, come on dear, come through …’
She led me behind the counter and through the tiny storeroom into the room at the back, which they used as a kitchen. It was just like I remembered, warm and cosy with the gas range, the table and chairs and the cooker in the corner. Here, Peggy and Flora would have their meals and endless cups of tea. They also used it as some sort of informal counselling centre, as anyone in need of a chat would be taken there for tea and sympathy. If those walls could talk …
‘There, there. Let me put the kettle on. Have a good cry, you’ll feel better.’
A lot of tears and a cup of tea later, I was ready to tell Peggy everything. Some things she knew already, my mum had told them bits and pieces through the years. She had certainly suspected there was something seriously wrong, as every time I’d been up, including the time of Flora’s funeral, I’d been a little bit thinner and a little more miserable.
I told her about the baby I lost. And about Tom’s girlfriend, or lover, whatever you want to call her. I told her that there was nothing left to keep me in Southport, that I needed a fresh start. She knew that the relationship with my parents and my sister was strained.
‘Poor you, poor wee lassie. What a cross to bear. You can stay with me as long as you need, as long as you want.’
‘Thank you. But I don’t want to be a burden. I really want to pay rent. I mean, help you out. For the few weeks I’m here. I’ve got some savings …’
‘Don’t be silly, dear, I’ve got enough for both of us.’
‘But Peggy, the extra bills and food. I can’t let you support me. I know it’s only for a few weeks, but …’
‘You are very thoughtful, Eilidh. You have always been. But honestly, it’s fine.’
‘As soon as I’m better I’ll find a job, and …’ I sighed. ‘It all seems so complicated.’
‘Don’t think about it now. You are exhausted and you can’t think straight. Stay here as long as you like and have a good rest. You need to get back on your feet first.’
‘I can help. In the shop, I mean. I can keep house for you and help you here.’
‘Actually, I would be so grateful. You won’t believe this, Eilidh, it’s like a sign! A few days before you came, Mary Jamieson, remember Mary? She went off to New Zealand to see her sister. She was helping me in the shop, because you know, I’m just too old now, the deliveries and everything, it’s too much for me. Did she not go and win a scratchcard, one of those lottery things we sell … and well, she hadn’t seen her sister in years, and she was off like a shot! I couldn’t find anyone else, had it been in the summer, but now … her nephew Paul is taking a year off to work before going to university in Glasgow, but he found something at the factory. And then you appeared.’ She laughed. ‘What a stroke of luck!’
‘Of course I’ll help. That’s brilliant, thank you.’
What a coincidence. Someone was looking after me. I had a place to stay, for a while at least, and a temporary job. All I had to do was find the will to live again.
One thing is certain. What’s ahead of me is a life without babies, which is heartbreaking, and most definitely a life without a man to hurt me and deceive me.
It’s just me now. Nobody, nobody, is ever going to break my heart again.
A FAMILY OF TWO
So this is our life now. It’s Maisie and me.
It’s a balancing act. I work long hours but save time to be with her as much as I can. Every morning I take her to school, every night I go and collect her at Mary’s, a cousin of mine who has no children and dotes on her. Maisie used to go to my mum’s after school, but since she passed away, Mary has helped no end.
Maisie was only two when my mum died. Everybody rallied round, Shona stayed for a few weeks and I took three months off – I just couldn’t bear to be parted from Maisie after all that happened – and we muddled through. In spite of the sadness of that time, I still smile when I remember the well-meaning women, coming to the house thinking they’d find chaos, and instead finding a clean, tidy place, Maisie nicely dressed and playing away and dinner in the oven. I felt I owed it to her, and to my mum, to keep everything ticking.
I didn’t need their covered dishes or for them to do the housework but I certainly needed company. Those first few weeks it dawned on me – it was only Maisie and me left in the village, with Shona back in Aberdeen. It was so good, so consoling, to have people spending their evenings with me, sitting up to watch TV or chat in front of the fire. By the time they left, I was so tired after the day with Maisie – she used to wake up at five in the morning and have boundless energy all day long – that I’d just go straight to sleep.
That is how I survived the grief and loneliness until the sharp edge of the pain went away and I could see a new life, a life without my mum in it, but still a life.
Maisie started to spend her days at Mary’s while I worked. When she turned three, that October, she started going to the local nursery for three hours a day, from half-past twelve to half-past three. Mary would normally take her in and collect her but sometimes I would walk up from the workshop so that I could take her myself. I loved walking with her wee hand in mine, her head bobbing up and down as she skipped happily, her long blonde hair in a ponytail, her pink waterproof jacket with flowers on it that her aunt had bought for her. I would peg her jacket up, put her sand shoes on and help her to sign her name. She would run up to her friends, without a care in the world, a joyful, lively child whom everybody loved. And when I could take time to collect her, she would run to me and hug my legs, and I would lift her up and look into her face and not see Janet, in spite of the resemblance, just see Maisie, my daughter, my family.
She’s now in school, Glen Avich Primary. I take her in the mornings and watch from the school gates as she runs in with her wee uniform on: a grey pinafore, navy cardigan, navy tights and black shoes with little pink flowers on the side. Shona and her daughters, who are ten, eight and six, took her shopping in Aberdeen before school started. I went with them but didn’t do much really, just sat in changing rooms surrounded by shopping bags, looking vaguely around, the way men do when dragged to the shops. My nieces seem to be really in the loop when it comes to girls’ fashion, thank goodness, because I wouldn’t have a clue. We went to Marks and Spencer, Next, Debenhams and all those places that frankly make me lose the will to live but they seem to enjoy to no end. Maisie got spoiled rotten. Dresses and tights and shirts, and the black ballerinas with the pink flowers, which she loves so much, she can’t be parted from, and a pair of pink wellies. A navy duffel coat and a scarf, hat and mittens set, which I chose – all pink, that much I know. And a flurry of accessories – assorted hairpins and hair bands. She needs her hair away from her face in school or it’ll fall all over her jotter, Kirsty explained, being a veteran of school herself – a big Primary Two. I treated everybody to lunch and Shona and I watched the girls giggling and chatting, like four sparrows.
When we parted at the train station, I couldn’t say how grateful I was. I hugged my nieces tight and then Shona, and looked into her kind face. I wanted to say, ‘Thank you,’ but it didn’t come out. Well, not in words – she could read it in my eyes.
I still get
that
look from the local mums – the one that Shona calls ‘the
aaaaawww
look’. They seem to think it’s incredibly endearing to see a single dad looking after his daughter. It’s just my life, really. I don’t particularly care if it’s
cute
. All I want is for Maisie to be happy, loved and secure. Even if her mum left and then, unwillingly, her granny, I want her to feel that the world is a safe place, that the ground we walk on is steady and can’t rumble and shake under our feet until we fall and can’t get up again. She has plenty of time to find that out when she grows up.
For now, I want her to know that whatever happens, our home will always be safe and warm and lovely, that I will always tuck her in at night and wake her in the morning, that she’ll always be loved and cherished. That she’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
I hardly ever think of Janet but when I do, I realise that, in a weird way, I actually miss her. Strange, isn’t it. She clearly didn’t want to be with me, had she not got pregnant she probably wouldn’t have even come back. When she was here, she was mostly miserable. And then she disappeared. Still, I miss her because she’s the only woman I have ever loved.
A few months after she left, she phoned me. I felt my knees giving way, for fear she was phoning to say she wanted Maisie. But no. She told me she didn’t want to explain or justify herself. She said she couldn’t be a mother, she wasn’t the type. She just wanted to leave the details of a bank account where she’d make regular payments for Maisie. She said if I needed anything, I could draw from it.