JEAN

The Wednesday after Susan had told her us that she was pregnant Mick came home from work and said, ‘Let’s go for a drink tonight.’ It took me by surprise a bit because we never went out together during the week. He sometimes went out on his own but I couldn’t remember that last time he’d suggested we both go.

‘You okay?’ I asked, as I put his tea in front of him.

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I just think we could both do with it.’

He wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

I hadn’t been sure about leaving Susan on her own, but she’d seemed a lot more settled that day, like she had come round to the idea of going to Scarborough. When we left she was watching television.

‘Hello, Jean,’ Gerry the barman, said when we walked in. ‘We don’t see you in here much on a week night. Special occasion is it?’

‘Something like that,’ I said.

‘We are doing the right thing aren’t we?’ Mick said after we’d been sitting for a bit.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Course we are.’ And we were, I was sure of it. What else could we do? Let her have the baby at home, you’re probably thinking; if only it was that simple. I didn’t want her to end up like me, trapped just because of a simple mistake. I know that Mick and me had been happy enough in our own way but, if I had been given my chance again, I’m not sure he would have been the one I’d choose to spend the rest of my life with. And no matter what people said about times being different, they weren’t really; you still brought shame on yourself and your family when you found yourself pregnant without a ring on your finger. People talked about you, pointed fingers at you, and they weren’t going to do that to my daughter. I realised that she didn’t want to give her baby up but one day, when she was married to a nice bloke, living in a nice house, she’d thank me. There’d be other children and she’d be grateful that she hadn’t thrown everything away. I’d had no choice; I’d had nowhere to go. I’d had to marry Mick and lie in the bed that I had made, but it could be different for Susan and I was going to make sure that it was.

We stayed in the pub for a couple of hours during which time Mick had had four pints and I’d had more than enough brandy and lemonade. I was glad that Mick had suggested going to the pub because for the first time in days, I felt relaxed. We stopped off at the chip shop on the way home and shared a bag of chips. We bought a bag for Susan. She deserved a treat. For the first time in years Mick and I were doing something together and I was almost happy. That soon changed when we got home.

The door was locked, which was a bit odd, and all the lights were off too so, at first, it just looked like Susan had gone to bed early. In the dark I stood on something, something hard, and after I’d put the light on I looked down to see what it was. When I saw the key – her key – on the floor, I knew something was wrong.

Mick said something like, ‘Susan’s dropped her key’ and he picked up the heart-shaped key-ring that I had stood on. But I knew she hadn’t dropped it and if it had fallen from the window sill where it usually sat it would have been on the floor beneath it, not behind the door directly underneath the letter box.

‘She must be in bed,’ Mick said and I told him that I’d go and check.

I felt sick when I saw that her bed was empty and before I knew it I was on the floor looking under the bed for the bag she’d had for the school trip to Wales. I almost didn’t dare to look in her wardrobe. I opened the door slowly and found that some of her clothes were gone – not many, but enough. I washed, ironed and put her clothes away so I knew what should be in there. I knew I wasn’t imagining it.

‘Mick,’ I shouted at the top of my lungs and he came running up the stairs like he was going to find that his baby had topped herself and was lying dead on the bed. ‘She’s gone,’ I said and could see the relief wash over his face. ‘She’s gone,’ I said and I dropped down onto her bed.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

All I could do was laugh. ‘What do you think I mean? She’s gone. She’s packed some clothes and she’s gone.’

I opened the drawer of the bedside cabinet and rummaged through it. She kept her bank book in there and I went through everything three times before I had to accept that it wasn’t there. I tried to remember how much had been in there the last time I’d looked but I wasn’t sure of the exact amount. I didn’t think it had been a lot. She’d got some money for Christmas but I knew that she’d spent some of that on records so she couldn’t have much left. But where had she gone? And why? We had a plan; we were going to sort things out. She had no reason to run away. Where the hell could she have gone?

Julie’s. She had to have gone to Julie’s.

Mick was standing in the doorway just looking around the room as though he was hoping to see her hiding in a corner and I had to virtually push him out of the way to get out of the room. I ran downstairs and picked up the phone. When Julie answered, she sounded sleepy. I looked at the clock and realised that I had probably woken her up.

‘Is Susan there?’ I asked

‘No. Why would she be?’ I could hear her yawning.

‘Because she’s not here,’ I told her.

‘What?’ That had woken her up.

‘Me and your dad went out for a drink,’ I told her, ‘and when we came back we found her key on the floor. Your dad thought she must have locked the door and gone to bed but when I checked, her bed was still made, her bag is gone and so are some of her clothes.’

‘Where could she have gone?’

‘You tell me,’ I snapped

‘How should I know?’ Julie snapped back.

‘I thought she might have gone to you or at least told you where she was going. I mean you were as thick as thieves the other afternoon.’

‘We’re sisters and she was in trouble,’ Julie said defiantly.

Yeah, well, she is now, I thought, or at least she would be when we found her.

Neither of us said anything else for a bit and all I could hear was breathing on the other end of the line. I heard what sounded like a big sigh from Julie’s end of the phone and I could imagine her blowing the air out her cheeks: she’d done it all her life.

‘You don’t think she’ll have gone to Helen’s, do you?’ I asked and I was horrified just thinking she might have.

Julie asked why on earth Susan would have gone to Helen, but I needed to be sure so I rang Helen’s anyway. By this time Mick had come downstairs and he stood in the doorway watching me. The phone rang about half a dozen times before it was picked up.

‘No,’ Helen said in answer to my question. ‘Why would Susan be here?’

Bugger. What was I going to tell her? I hadn’t thought it through. I’d been so fixed on finding out where Susan was that I hadn’t thought about what I would say if Helen said she wasn’t.

‘Mum,’ Helen said slowly, ‘why are you ringing me at this time of night to ask if Susan’s here?’

I could hear Robert’s voice in the background, not what he was saying, just his voice. His mother would have a field day with this when word got out. A right snob she was.

‘Mum?’ Helen said again.

There was nothing for it, I took a deep breath and said, ‘We had a bit of a row earlier.’

‘What about?’ It was a natural enough question but I wasn’t going to answer it just then.

‘Nothing, really,’ I lied, ‘but Susan must have got a nark on about it because she’s packed a bag and disappeared while we were out.’

‘Out? It’s not like you to go out on a Wednesday.’

‘Yes, well, we did tonight.’

‘She’s probably shacked up with a mate somewhere.’ Helen yawned as she spoke, then she gave a little cough before she said. ‘Can’t believe it of Susan, though. I didn’t know she had it in her.’

Neither did I.

‘Anyway, Mum, I’m going to have to go,’ Helen said, ‘the baby’s crying.’

‘Sorry I woke you. Goodnight.’

‘They don’t know where she is,’ I said.

And before I had chance to say anything else Mick asked, ‘You did tell her didn’t you?’

‘Tell her what?’

‘Don’t give me that, Jean, because I know you too well. You know fine well what I’m talking about.’ He stared at me but I couldn’t look at him. ‘You didn’t tell her, did you?’

I could hear the anger in his voice. Every word was a bit louder than the one before it.

‘You didn’t tell her that she wouldn’t have to give her baby up did you.’

My mouth was opening, I know it was, but nothing came out.

‘For fuck’s sake, Jean,’ he grabbed his coat from where he had thrown it and pushed his arms into it. ‘We said that she wouldn’t have to give it up, not if she didn’t want to.’ Mick didn’t swear, not in front of me anyway. I had only ever heard him use that word once before and that was the day that I’d told him I was expecting Helen. There was something in his eyes as he looked at me and I can only describe it as dark. ‘I let you talk me into sending her away but we could have come up with a way of letting her keep it.’

‘How?’ I finally bit back. ‘How could we? Do you really want her being the talk of the place? Do you really think that her life would be anything but ruined if she kept it?’

‘Is that what your life was?’ his hand was on the door handle.

‘Times were different then,’ I said. ‘You got pregnant, you either went to that old witch at the bottom of Hagg Lane or you got married, simple as that.’ I stood up to go to him but the look on his face and that rising temper of his stopped me. ‘I was happy to marry you, Mick, but do you really want her hooked up to that Preston lad for the rest of her life? Mick,’ I pleaded, ‘I was only thinking of what was best for her.’

‘You were thinking of what the neighbours would think Jean Bradley,’ he was spitting the words at me. ‘That’s always been the thing with you, getting one up on the neighbours, being better than them. I just never thought that you’d put that before your own daughter.’ He shook his head, opened the door and walked through it.

‘I’ll stay here in case she comes back,’ I said but the door had closed before I’d even finished speaking.

His words had hit me hard and I could feel tears starting to rise up. I wasn’t sure then, and I’m still not sure now, which of his words hurt me the most. Was it what he’d said about me putting what the neighbours might think before the needs of my own daughter or was it the fact that he called me Jean Bradley? Why had he done that? At that point we’d been married the best part of thirty years. He was hurting and he knew exactly what to say to make me hurt too.

He was wrong about one thing though. Whether he liked it or not my name was Thompson, Jean Thompson. As for putting what the neighbours thought before my daughter, maybe I had but in my book appearances were everything. And I hadn’t put them first, I just hadn’t wanted them to see our dirty laundry.

What was wrong with him? He had a good name on this estate, people always said what a good bloke he was or what a nice house and family he had and most of that was down to me. What the neighbours thought or said was important to everyone and anyone who denied that was living in cloud cuckoo land.

There was nothing else to do but put the kettle on and drink endless cups of tea while I sat at the kitchen table and waited. I racked my brains to try and come up with some idea of where she might be. Helen had said that she’d be at a friend’s but I didn’t think that was very likely; Susan didn’t have many friends. I mean, there had been that lass that she’d been to a couple of parties with a while back but I didn’t even know what she was called. It might have been Margaret, or was it Maureen? It could have been Martha for all I knew. It was just someone she knew from school and anyway I was sure I’d heard Susan say that they’d moved to Scotland or somewhere. Something about her dad getting a job on the oil rigs. I don’t think I’d ever heard her mention anyone else. I kicked myself for not paying more attention when she’d been telling me stuff.

Where had she gone the silly girl? And why had she done it? Well, I suppose I knew the answer to that one. Mick was right; it was the adoption thing. She’d had the notion in her head that she would be able to have her baby and bring it up herself and life would be just wonderful. She had no idea.

Yes, she could have the baby. Yes, she could bring it up herself but she would forever be known as ‘that lass that fell wrong’ and I didn’t want that for her. If she was honest she wouldn’t want it for herself. I was giving her a way out. I was giving her a chance at having the life that she really wanted for herself. Why could she not see that?

‘Why, Susan?’ I shouted.

An unwanted pregnancy I could cover up, I’d seen plenty of others do it, but this? I had no idea what to do with this.

I watched the door and the clock in equal measures; watched the minutes tick by and waited for the door to open. One time, my eyes were drawn to the bag of chips that we’d bought for Susan. They were sitting on the bench where I had left them before I ran up the stairs. I couldn’t even be bothered to get up and throw them in the bin, so I went back to watching the clock and the door.

I felt sick – actually, physically sick – and I prayed to God that Mick would find her.

***

When he came through the door just after midnight, I knew that my prayers hadn’t been answered. He walked in alone and closed the door.

‘Any sign of her?’ I asked, more in hope than expectation.

‘No,’ he said. His head was down and his chin almost touched his chest. I thought I heard him make a sound. I think it was a sob. I felt so sorry for him.

When he lifted his head up he had that darkness in his eyes again. ‘You got your wish,’ he said. ‘She’s gone away and who knows if she’s ever coming back? You can tell the neighbours what you want, but you’d better tell Sally that I won’t be there on Sunday.’

I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

‘Yeah, why not? That’ll make everything all right.’ He fell onto one of the kitchen chairs and rested his elbows on the table so that he could put his head in his hands.

I filled the kettle, washed the teapot out and got two fresh mugs out of the cupboard. I had just filled the teapot with the boiling water and was about to pick it up when it was as if the teapot had suddenly become too heavy for me to pick up because although I grabbed the handle I couldn’t lift it. I suddenly felt faint and had to put both hands on the bench to support myself. A thought had just occurred to me.

‘She won’t have gone to him, will she?’

When I turned around, Mick still had his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know where she’s gone,’ he said.

I managed to pour the tea and put one of the mugs in front of Mick. I put the other one on the opposite side of the table and sat down. We didn’t say a lot and we didn’t drink much tea either. Eventually I asked Mick where he had looked and he just said, ‘Around.’ I wanted to ask him where exactly but his answers were vague. I put that down to his head being all over the place.

Just before two I said, ‘Come on, Mick. Let’s go to bed. You look knackered.’ And I got up from my chair and went to lock the door.

‘Leave it,’ he said and I put the key that had been in my hand back down. ‘Susan hasn’t got her key,’ he said as he pushed his chair back and it made a scraping sound along the floor.

We went to bed but neither of us slept. As I lay awake and watched a different clock tick off the minutes till morning all I could think about was Susan and where she might be. Where was she sleeping? Was she sleeping at all? She’d certainly made sure that I wasn’t.

I’d always thought that I knew my daughters and that nothing they could do would surprise me because I was always one step ahead of them but, good God, Susan surprised me that night. I hadn’t seen this coming. She had never done anything like it before in her life. She had never defied me before. That girl could pick her bloody moments.

I wished that I hadn’t gone out that night. I’d never have thought of doing it if Mick hadn’t suggested it. He mustn’t have seen it coming either.

I must have dozed off at some point because when the alarm went off it startled me and I didn’t feel any better for the little sleep I’d had. I heard the sound of the toilet flush being pulled and for a second I thought that I’d woken up from a bad dream and that Susan had been at home all the time. But when I turned over and saw Mick walking back into the bedroom, I could tell from the look on his face that we were still living the nightmare.

***

Mick had just gone to work when the phone rang and my heart was in my mouth as I ran to the hallway to pick it up. Was it Susan? Was it the hospital or maybe even the police saying that she had done something stupid? All of this was going through my head in the five seconds that it took me to get to the phone. I looked at it for two more rings because I was scared to pick it up, scared of who it was and what they might say. In my head, I can still see my hand shaking as I picked the receiver up.

It was Julie wanting to know if Susan had come home.

‘No,’ I said, ‘she hasn’t. I don’t know what she thinks she’s playing at.’

We spent a couple of minutes sparring which was all me and Julie ever seemed to do in those days. She wanted to know what we had said to Susan, what support we had offered her.

‘You did let her know that everything was going to be all right, didn’t you?’ Julie said. ‘I mean, I know she’d have to give up her exams but it wasn’t going to be the end of the world.’

Julie would be thinking like that though. I knew that she and Chris were trying for a baby so being pregnant wouldn’t be the end of the world for her. But Susan wasn’t her. I didn’t think that was the time to tell Julie about the plan to send Susan to Sally’s until she’d had the baby, and I certainly wasn’t going to say anything about adoption.

‘Hopefully she’ll be home soon,’ was the last thing that Julie said, but I was starting to have my doubts.

On any other Thursday morning I would have been cleaning the windows but that day I sat at the table and prayed. Though I’d been raised Catholic, and I’d had all the girls baptised, I’d not been much of a one for church in recent years but I didn’t know what else to do. I’m not exactly sure what it was that I was praying for, maybe it was that Susan would come back so that at least we could control the situation, but more likely it was to go back to a time when there was no situation to control. And that was when the thought came to me. Maybe Susan had gone to make the situation disappear. I don’t really hold with abortion, and I’d always said that, so maybe Susan had gone somewhere she could get an abortion without me knowing. Was she trying to make the situation disappear? To my shame now, I hoped she was and I think in my heart that, for a second at least, that was what I was praying for: that there’d be no hiding and explaining and she could come back and carry on as normal. She could put the whole thing behind her and pretend it had never happened.

It didn’t take me more than a few seconds to work out that she couldn’t have done that. I mean, she didn’t want to give it away so there was no way she’d let anyone kill it and I hated myself for even thinking that she might do something like that. She just wouldn’t. I prayed some more, repeating the words that I’d been taught as a child and thought I’d forgotten.

Just before eleven the phone rang again and once more my legs shook as I walked the few yards to the hallway. I hoped that it would be Susan but, judging by the time, I thought it would most probably be Mick, on his break, checking to see if she had come home. I got the shock of my life when a woman said, ‘Hello, is that Mrs Thompson?’

Oh my God! Was it the hospital or the police? It had to be one of them.

‘Yes?’ I managed to whisper.

‘Oh, hello Mrs Thompson. I’m sorry to bother you, but this is Miss Ford, Susan’s form teacher. I just wondered if Susan would be in school this afternoon.’

I think I said ‘Sorry’ or ‘Excuse me’ or something like that because the next thing Miss Ford was saying was, ‘It’s just that, as you know Mrs Thompson, Susan is in the middle of her exams. Now I know that they’re called mock exams but that doesn’t mean that they’re not important…’

I remembered Miss Ford – not much more than a kid herself. When we’d met her at the last parents’ evening both me and Mick had agreed that she didn’t look old enough to be a teacher.

‘…So can you tell me if Susan will be in?’

She’d caught me on the hop. ‘No Miss Ford. She won’t. Susan’s not feeling very well today.’

She started to say something else but I cut her off. ‘I’m really sorry Miss Ford,’ I said, ‘but I’m going to have to go.’

‘But will Susan be in tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure. Goodbye,’ and I put the phone down. I don’t know what she must have thought of me but she had caught me unprepared. I kicked myself for being so stupid. Why had I not remembered Susan’s exams and thought to ring the school to say that she wouldn’t be in?

They had a policy now of checking on kids that didn’t turn up at school. There’d been a letter come home about it. It was something about cutting down on the number of truancy days. Now, thanks to me forgetting to ring them, they’d had to ring me and that would be a mark against Susan’s name.

‘Not feeling very well.’ Was that the best I could come up with? I know you’re probably wondering why it mattered about Susan getting a mark against her name, because she wasn’t going back to school anyway, and maybe it wouldn’t matter to some, but it did to me. My kids were never in detention and they didn’t get marks against their names at school. Some kids stayed home from school at the fist sign of a sniff, but not mine. My girls always had good attendance records. I knew that I would have to deal with the school again but right at that moment I couldn’t think about that.

For the first time in all our married life, Mick came home to his tea not being on the table that night. It wasn’t my fault really because he’d knocked off work an hour early. I commented on it when he came in.

‘You’re early,’ I said, ‘your tea’s not on yet.’

‘It’s all right,’ he said walking straight through the kitchen to the stairs. ‘I’m not hungry.’

That told me everything that I needed to know about how he was feeling because Mick was always hungry. Even after he’d just eaten a big meal he’d be hungry again within the hour. I’d never known him not be hungry but, more than that, I’d never known him finish work early.

He’d not been back long when the lasses turned up mob-handed with their men.

‘Is she back?’ Julie asked before she was even through the door. She only had to look at our faces to see the answer. Helen, hot on her heels, asked the same question and reached the same conclusion.

Julie gave a nod of her head which sent Chris and Robert off to the living room while she and Helen sat at the table with us.

‘What’s going on?’ Helen said. ‘What aren’t you telling us?’

Julie couldn’t keep her mouth shut. ‘Susan’s pregnant.’

‘What? Whose is it?’ Helen looked at me first, then her dad and finally Julie who wasted no time in telling her who the father was.

‘Oh.’ The noise sort of popped out of Helen’s mouth. My eyes were cast down looking at the table but I could feel Helen looking at me. It was like her eyes were burning holes into the top of my head. After a few seconds I looked up at her.

‘But why would she run away?’ Helen asked. ‘Where is she?’

‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘Your dad went out looking for her as soon as we found out she was missing but he couldn’t find her.’

‘Where did you look, Dad?’ she asked and I was glad that she’d turned her attention somewhere else. I saw a different side to Helen that night. She was demanding answers and that was something she had never done before. She had never been that sort of girl, not where her dad was concerned anyway.

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Just around really. I walked up the back for a bit and down towards the bus station, but there was no sign of her.’

We all knew why he had gone where he said he had.

‘Was she there?’ Julie asked. ‘Has he seen her?’

Mick pushed himself away from the table and stood up. He walked to the sink and poured himself a glass of water. We all watched him take a large gulp and put the glass down. ‘I saw Tim Preston with his hand inside Lisa Donnelly’s blouse,’ Mick said, and we could all hear the pain in his voice. He was probably imagining that low-life doing a similar thing to Susan and that wasn’t a picture any of us wanted in our heads.

‘Does he know?’ Helen asked me, almost under her breath.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head. I was talking to her but I was looking at Mick. I didn’t like his colour and I hoped that he wasn’t going to have a heart attack.

‘He wasn’t acting like he knew,’ Mick said, as he leaned heavily against the sink and took a couple of deep breaths.

I walked over to Mick and tried to look into his eyes. ‘You all right, love?’ I asked. He didn’t say whether he was or he wasn’t but he straightened himself up, turned around and faced the girls who were looking just as worried about him as I was.

‘She hasn’t been to his,’ I said. ‘She was on about telling him, but I don’t think she has because if she had we’d have had his mother round here by now.’

They all knew that I was right. I was glad when Mick sat down again. I still didn’t like the way he looked and I was scared that he might fall down if he stayed on his feet. We sat around the table for a while and talked, though it felt more like an interrogation than a conversation. I didn’t know where all this sisterly concern had come from because Helen had barely looked at Susan when she lived at home. Now she was banging on about being concerned for her baby sister. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so serious.

They stayed for about an hour and then the four of them disappeared to the pub. Robert’s mum was babysitting so they were going to make the most of it. We didn’t bother much after the girls had gone. The tea that I had been going to cook wasn’t made so we had a sandwich and a cup of tea and went to bed early, though God knows why because it would be another sleepless night.

***

A couple of nights after Susan had gone, Julie turned up again just after I’d washed up. She walked into the kitchen and Chris followed her, closing the door behind him. He tried to force a smile in my direction and I tried to force one back. We both failed miserably. He was a good lad Chris. I hadn’t been so sure about him when Julie first brought him home but he’d turned out all right.

I could see that Julie had something in her hand. ‘Where’s Dad?’ she asked.

Before I had a chance to say that he was in the living room he appeared at the doorway. He must have heard the sound of voices and come to see who was there. He couldn’t hide his disappointment when he realised that it wasn’t the daughter that he wanted to see.

‘Hello, love,’ he said, but his heart wasn’t really in it.

‘This came today,’ she said as she gave what she’d been holding to her dad.

I could see now that it was an envelope, one of the small white ones, not the type that official stuff comes in but the type that you can get in any newsagent. I saw the little colour he had drain from his face as he looked at it. His hands were shaking as he slowly took the letter out of the envelope and read it. Once he had, he handed it to me. I immediately recognised Susan’s handwriting. I will never forget the words that were written on that piece of paper.

Dear Julie, it said, I am so sorry that I left without saying goodbye. Thank you for everything but I can’t let them take my baby away so if that means leaving without telling anyone where I’m going, that’s what I’ve got to do. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine. I have a plan and I know what I’m doing. Please tell them not to look for me because I don’t want to be found. Look after yourself Julie, and them too. There were three x’s at the end.

When I’d read the letter twice more I looked up to see that Julie and Mick were both watching at me. Chris had disappeared and the three of us stood together in the kitchen just looking at each other.

***

About a week after Susan had gone Julie was waiting for me on the doorstep when I got home with the groceries. She was talking to Ida Watson from over the road. They stopped talking as I got closer.

‘All right, Jean?’ Ida said. ‘I was just saying to your Julie that I haven’t seen Susan for a bit. Is she okay? Not poorly is she?’

I hoped that the horror that I was feeling didn’t show in my face.

‘No,’ I said, ‘not poorly. She’s just gone away for a bit.’

‘On holiday?’

The words were out of my mouth before I knew it. ‘Not a holiday, as such,’ I said. ‘Mick has an aunt in Scarborough and Susan’s gone to stay with her for a bit. She hasn’t been well, so Susan’s gone to look after her.’

I could see Ida’s mind ticking over as she thought about what I had just told her. ‘But wasn’t she doing her exams soon?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but you know how it is, Ida; she can always take them another time. Family comes first.’

‘That’s very good of her,’ Ida said as she started to walk away. ‘Tell her I said hello next time you talk to her. Nice talking to you, Julie.’

I was kidding myself if I thought that Ida had believed me. It’d take her no time at all to work out the truth because she’d used the same excuse herself. Her middle daughter had once gone to ‘look after her grandma’ for the best part of a year. If Ida knew, it wouldn’t be long before the whole street knew. And it wasn’t; it took just a couple of days.

I knew that they knew and they knew that I knew that they knew, if you know what I mean. Nobody mentioned it directly but we all knew what was gong on. It was like a game that we all played. It wasn’t the first time that we had played it and I was sure that it wouldn’t be the last.

Except it was a slightly different game we were playing this time, because Susan wasn’t hiding away at a relative’s house until her baby was born; we had no idea where she was.

***

I had an aunt who used to say that when you were going through a hard time you just had to breath through it until it passed so that’s what I did. The trouble was that it didn’t seem to be passing. Me and Mick were barely talking; I knew he blamed me for what had happened and, to be honest, I could see why he would. None of this would be Susan’s fault. Nothing was ever Susan’s fault.

Helen was too wrapped up in her own life to pay too much attention to what was happening in ours. So much for her concern for her baby sister. She wanted to distance herself from our embarrassment I suppose. She had Robert’s mother to consider. Robert’s mother hadn’t been that keen on us as a family to start with; she’d always thought Helen wasn’t good enough for her precious son and this would be all the proof that she would need. What a mess.

Julie at least did show some concern. ‘Have you called the police?’ she asked one day when she had popped in on her way home from work. We hadn’t. ‘Do you not think that you should?’

‘Your dad won’t hear of it,’ I said.

‘What? Why? I’d have thought he’d want them out day and night looking for her.’

I’d thought the same myself but Mick had been adamant. ‘What’s the point?’ he’d said. ‘We know why she’s run away and she’s written us a note saying that she doesn’t want to be found. They won’t be able to force her to come home so I can’t see them breaking their necks to find her.’

I told Julie what her dad had said.

‘He’s got a point I suppose,’ Julie said, and I agreed with her. But I hadn’t really understood Mick’s reaction and I think she probably felt the same.

‘She’ll be all right you know, Mum,’ Julie said, with more compassion than I’d ever heard in her voice before.

In my heart I agreed with her. Susan would be all right because, for a stupid girl, she was sensible. She was certainly the most sensible daughter I had.

***

I kept breathing and time kept passing. Days became weeks and then gradually turned into months.

We didn’t hear from Susan or at least me and her dad didn’t. Julie said she hadn’t, but who knew? If Susan had asked Julie not to tell us she wouldn’t. I hoped that the girls were in contact with each other. Like I think I told you, they had become close recently and Julie was taking Susan’s disappearance very badly.

‘Shouldn’t we at least look for her,’ she said one Sunday when she and Chris came round for their dinner.

We’d been eating in silence all the way through the roast beef and Yorkshire puddings and Julie brought the subject up while I was dishing up rhubarb crumble. I kept my head down and carried on putting food on plates.

‘I mean,’ Julie pressed the point when nobody answered her, ‘Susan’s been gone for months.’

I couldn’t hide by the cooker all day so I slowly carried the four bowls of steaming crumble and custard to the table and put them down. Chris dealt with what was going on like he did most things involving the Susan situation; he let us get on with it. He picked his spoon up and started tucking in. Mick picked his up too but just stirred his food, while Julie held her spoon like a weapon.

‘She said she doesn’t want to be found,’ Mick said, as he carried on stirring.

I could see a rage building behind Julie’s eyes. She was frustrated and when she was frustrated she got angry. I knew that and so did Chris. I saw him give her a sideways glance but he must have decided she was okay because he carried on eating and his wife carried on staring at her father.

‘She might have changed her mind.’ Julie said.

‘Then she can come home.’ Mick finally started to eat his food.

‘How?’ Julie asked flinging her spoon onto the table in her temper.

‘Same way she left.’ Mick’s voice was flat, emotionless.

‘She won’t,’ Julie pushed the chair away from the table. ‘She won’t and you know it. And do you know why?’ She had grabbed her coat from the back of the chair and started putting it on. ‘She won’t because she’s ashamed.’ She was fastening her coat up all wrong but she didn’t care, she was in full flow. ‘She’s ashamed that you’re ashamed of her. Because I’m willing to bet that’s what you told her, wasn’t it?’

She directed the question at me. I didn’t deny it.

‘Well she has,’ I said.

‘What? We’re not living in the Dark Ages, Mam,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t brought shame on us, but you have. You’ve brought shame on us by forcing her to run away. Don’t you get her? Susan is clever…’

‘She wasn’t very clever when she got pregnant.’

Julie stared at me defiantly. ‘She’s not the first … Is she?’ She took a deep breath, gave Chris the nod and waited for him to get his own coat. ‘As I was saying, Susan is clever and she is kind. She didn’t want to be pregnant, but she was and she was willing to face up to her responsibilities. She wouldn’t have wanted you to make it go away; she would have wanted you to help her.’

‘Help her? What do you think we were trying to do?’ My own temper was starting to rise now.

‘You wanted her to give her baby away.’ Chris had his coat on by that point and was by the door. Julie was beside him. ‘She couldn’t even give her dolls away, Mam, so how the hell did you expect her to give her baby up?’

And then they were gone.

‘She’s right, you know,’ Mick had given up all pretence of eating the crumble and had pushed the bowl away. ‘Susan would never have given her baby away.’

I looked down at my own, untouched food.

‘You left her with no choice.’

I tried to open my mouth to defend myself but I didn’t get the chance.

‘You forced her away, Jean. You forced her to do what she did. You didn’t tell her that she didn’t have to give her baby away and she felt like she had no choice but to leave.’

His voice had been low and flat before but it grew louder and angrier. I wanted to tell him to keep his voice down because the whole street would be able to hear him but I didn’t get the chance before he was at me again.

‘Why the hell did I ever let you talk me in to ringing Sally? Why didn’t we just hold her and tell her that everything was going to be all right? Why didn’t you tell her that she didn’t have to give the baby up if she didn’t want to?’ Then, just as Julie had before him, he scraped his chair back from the table and stood up. Though Julie certainly had his temper, hers was just a baby version. I was about to be on the end of Mick’s full fury.

‘But do you know the question I ask the most Jean?’ he was taking deep breaths and I couldn’t bear to look at the rage on his face. ‘Do you? Do you?’

I shook my head as I sat trembling in the chair.

‘I ask myself why the hell I ever married you,’ he yelled.

‘Because you got me pregnant,’ I yelled back. That stopped him in his tracks.

‘So that you didn’t have to give your baby way.’

‘And is that what you want for Susan?’ I tried to control my voice. ‘Things were different then.’

‘And they could have been different for her.’ His voice was calmer too but it didn’t scare me any less. He moved to the living room door and stood there with his back to me. ‘I saw her you know,’ he said.

‘Saw her? What do you mean you saw her? When did you see her?’

‘The night she ran away. I saw her the night she ran away.’

I got up from my chair, grabbed hold of his arm and forced him to look at me. ‘What do you mean? Where did you see her? Why didn’t you bring her back?’

‘Bring her back?’ There were tears rolling down Mick’s cheeks, something I had never seen before. He looked down at me. ‘Why would I bring her back here’ he said slowly, ‘to you?’ As he shook his head the tears fell off the end of his chin. ‘I didn’t bring her back; I didn’t even speak to her. I just gave her my blessing and walked away.’

Then he walked away from me too.

I sat for a long time in the kitchen thinking about what Mick had said. I knew he was telling the truth when he said that he’d seen Susan. It explained everything, why he was so vague about where he had been when he went to look for her, why he didn’t want to go to the police. I’d known that there was something he wasn’t telling me and now I knew what it was. He’d as much as said that Susan would be better off without me. He’d let his Susan disappear just so that she could get away from me. What did he think I was? A monster? I wasn’t a monster. I loved Susan, in my own way. I know some might find that hard to believe, but it’s true. She was my baby as much as his.

But she was gone now. Like me and her dad, Susan was lying in the bed that she had made and I hoped that she was happy with it.

***

We found a way to live with each other. If he’d been honest about it – which he wasn’t – Mick was just as bothered about keeping up appearances as I was. There had never been a divorce in either of our families and we weren’t going to be the first, so we had to make the best of it. It wasn’t easy at first – well, not later on either – but we found a way.

Julie was a bit harder to deal with but it wasn’t long before she had something else to worry about. She was pregnant. At last, she was having a baby herself.

We were all happy for her, of course, but that night – the night she told us – I’m willing to bet that I wasn’t the only one who was thinking about Susan, wondering where she was and how she was doing. How far along would she have been by then? Six months, seven maybe?

When I was out and about, the odd person would ask about Susan; you know, was she still in Scarborough, when was she coming home, that sort of thing.

‘Oh she’s fine, thank you,’ I used to say. ‘Loves it. In fact, she’s talking about moving there.’

Well, if she wasn’t coming back I had to tell them something.

I had ticked the weeks off in my head and I knew that Susan, wherever she was, would be coming close to her time. I wasn’t sure exactly when she was due but when she’d been gone for eight months I knew that her time had passed. She would have her baby by now.