CHAPTER 2

i

Gillian

20th November, 1989.

Gillian could see the date on the letter, clasped in the curate’s hands, but his thick, strong fingers concealed the rest.

20th November 1989. Two days ago. Another wave of panic seized her. Had she got it wrong? Had she wilfully refused to see the word ‘Rejected’? She read it five, six, seven times and still she was terrified she had it wrong.

But it couldn’t be wrong, could it, or Philip would have said so when he’d read it? Perhaps he was praying that she accept her disappointment with grace. No. She must stop doubting. And she really ought to be listening to the curate, not itching to snatch the letter back, while he was addressing the Almighty. Giving thanks, he said. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

‘Jesus, we thank you for seeing into our hearts and for your care of Gillian through this time of worry, of hopes and fears.’

He was always on such cosy conversational terms with his God. Her God too, she supposed, though she wasn’t sure she believed in Him. This was absurd, celebrating her momentous news with this embarrassing chat with Jesus.

But she’d had to tell someone. As soon as she’d ripped open the envelope and seen the words Adoption Agency, scanned down and read the verdict – Approved – she’d needed someone to tell her that she wasn’t dreaming. But who could she go to? Not her mother, not yet at least. And not Terry, until he came home from the car plant. With the constant threat of redundancies she couldn’t risk phoning him there. But she could tell Philip. He had, after all, been one of her referees for the agency.

‘And we know that you will be with us, always, Jesus, holding us in your hand…’

This was the price for her hypocritical conniving. She had never been a churchgoer. Occasional visits to Sunday School at the corrugated Gospel Hall in Oswald Street maybe, when she was a child, so that Joan could get her brats from under her feet, but she had come away without any religious conviction, just some lurid imagery of lion’s dens, loaves and fishes and flaming heads. She had, of course, dutifully sailed down St. Mark’s aisle to marry Terry in her white polyester and her sprouting chrysanthemum of nylon netting, but she hadn’t been near the church again until adoption had taken over her life. Then she’d started going to St. Mark’s in earnest, even dragging Terry with her sometimes.

It would look good on the application, she had thought shamelessly. But it was plain superstition too. If some all-powerful God really was up there, she wanted Him on her side.

She wasn’t the only newcomer to the congregation. The ugly brick St. Mark’s, in the middle of Marley Farm, had moved in an Evangelical direction under Philip’s enthusiastic guidance. Guitars and dance and drama, and impromptu shouts of ‘Praise Him’, from the congregation, which had tripled in recent years. Out with unctuous solemnity and in with loud born-again certainties.

‘You know, Lord Jesus, what is best for each and every one of us. Give us your grace to believe and to trust. If it is your will that a child should be given into Gillian’s care, we know you will guide all and give wisdom where it is needed, to the mother in her hour of doubt and distress, and to the authorities and to Gillian herself.’

Head bowed, perched on the edge of the sofa, Gillian found herself squirming. This wasn’t what she wanted, to be told that they were all puppets of a God who might, if he chose, wrench a child from its mother for Gillian. She understood that her dream required some other woman to die, or be pushed to breaking point, or have her child snatched away by police and social workers, but just for now, she wanted to see the matter in less specific terms. She wanted to be told that all manner of things would be well. She wanted the mysterious quiet of an old church and a statue of the Virgin, eternal mother, holding out a child to her. Not Philip asking his chum Jesus to sort out the bureaucracy.

She waited for him to finish. ‘…and we put our complete faith in you, Lord Jesus, Amen.’

He was on his feet again, beaming down on her. ‘You know that I don’t encourage child baptisms, but when the time comes, I’ll be delighted to hold a—’

She raised a hand in alarm. Superstition again. Bad luck to speak of it as fixed. ‘Terry and I have just been accepted as potential adopters. It might be months before they match us to a child. It might never happen.’ She forced herself to say it bravely. Merely to be accepted, after all those interviews and visits, all that desperate waiting, was a triumph in itself, but in reality she was still today what she had been yesterday – a childless woman, growing older, year in, year out, with nothing but desperate hope to see her through each day.

‘Of course, Gillian, of course. But I have complete faith in the guiding mercy of Jesus and I know you have too. I’ll pray for you, Gillian, and so will many others. We’ll see you and Terry on Sunday?’

‘Oh, yes. Yes of course.’ There would be a special loud smug prayer for them, she knew, and many ‘hallelujahs’, and she would have to smile and endure. She would have to persuade Terry to come and share the embarrassment.

‘And I’m sure your mother, Mrs Summers, is delighted for you.’

Gillian stared across the room at the cork-board over his desk. Church notices, a calendar, a wax crayon drawing of a camel. Done by one of his kids at the Jesus Club? ‘I haven’t had a chance to tell her yet.’ Thinking: please, please God, give me a child to scribble camels with wax crayons.

And then she pictured Joan. She would have to tell her. Knowing that Joan would skilfully poison all the joy out of the day.

She went with Philip’s blessing. And with the even greater blessing of that letter. Approved, accepted, approved, accepted. She repeated it over and over as she walked. Gillian Wendle had been accepted as a potential adopter. Neither Joan nor the malignant forces of the Marley Farm estate had destroyed her chances. That was the real miracle and she earnestly thanked God. For months now, she had lived in dread of the mistimed visit, the interview when Joan would show her worst, when the estate would erupt with drunken racist yobs and police sirens, or when Terry would walk in to say he’d been made redundant. But divine providence had been with her.

It seemed that the house in Drover’s Way had worked for her, not against. It had been Gillian’s home since the age of three, when Joan Summers, with a crippled husband, two small children and a third imminent, had triumphantly claimed the brand new council house on the muddy building site that was hatching into Marley Farm Estate. Drover’s Way was still extending along the hill, closes and crescents blossoming in the post-war drive to house the nation. Marley Primary Schools were rising from the mire, bright brick and glass and shiny tiles, amidst green playing fields. Parades of shops with maisonettes were springing up along Marley Ring. The sun was rising on a glorious new world.

Twenty-seven years later, when she and Terry moved back in with widowed Joan, to help buy the council house, the Marley estate had sunk into weary hopeless disrepute. Graffiti festooned the unkempt Marley Junior School, with its leaking Portakabins. On the Parade, barred windows protected seedy off-licences and video rental shops. Two houses had gone up in flames in the ’81 wave of rioting. Shady deals were done on every littered corner.

Gillian simmered with quiet resentment about the house. Her wedding had been the most wonderful day of her life, not because she felt so beautiful or because Terry was the Romeo of her dreams, but because it meant escape from Drover’s Way and from Joan. Now she was back, and trapped once more, because they had no choice. Council accommodation was no longer being allotted except to the most desperate, and with their savings all gone and rents rising, helping Joan with the mortgage was the only way they could keep a roof over their heads. If it meant living with Joan, then she’d just have to deal with it. Somehow. It was bad enough that the address would never impress an adoption agency. Joan’s presence was a far worse blight, though Gillian had remorselessly painted it as a blessing, to anyone who’d listen.

She turned off Drover’s Way into Ashley Close. Number 7. Sid Walker’s house. Two cars parked up on the concrete, neither of them roadworthy. Gillian automatically went round the back. Only the police entered through front doors round here.

‘Hello?’ she called, into the cluttered, grease-smeared kitchen.

‘Eh?’ Sid appeared, unshaven and bleary-eyed, in string vest, a copy of the Sun in his hand. ‘Oh, er, Gill, right.’ He leaned back to call up the stairs. ‘Joanie!’

An irritated, gravelly reply.

‘Your girl’s here.’ He turned back to Gillian. ‘Best come in then. She’ll be down. Want a cuppa?’

‘No thanks. I’ve just had one.’ She was parched, but she wasn’t going to sit drinking tea with Sid and her mother among the detritus of last night.

Flop, flop, down the stairs. Joan, hair on end, last night’s heavy make-up smudged, her bony frame wrapped in a flowered dressing gown. ‘Oh. It’s you. Are you going to the shops? Get us some fags, will you?’

‘I came to tell you we’ve had the letter. We’ve been approved.’

‘Approved? Approved for what?’ Joan was busy lighting her last cigarette, coughing over it. Deliberately obtuse.

‘Approved for adoption. Terry and me.’

‘Fucking hell, another bleeding brat around the house.’ Joan opened the fridge and took out a bottle of sour milk. ‘You got the kettle on then, Sid?’ No love, of course, but no outburst of irate complaint either. It was as good as Gillian was going to get.

‘Philip thought you’d be delighted for us.’ When had she learned sarcasm?

‘Oh the God Botherer, tell him before you tell your own mother, do you? But then that’s you all through. Always thinking of yourself first. Must have a baby. Never mind what anyone else wants. It’s Terry I feel sorry for.’

Gillian took a deep breath. All her life she had been taking deep breaths. Gillian the appeaser, holding her tongue, not snarling back.

Joan slopped tea into a mug and shuffled back towards the stairs. ‘Don’t forget the fags.’

Sid scratched his belly. ‘Well, it’s good news, right?’ He was never going to win prizes for charm – or cleaniness or grooming or humour – but he did have a grain of humanity in him. Not the worst of the men Joan had semi-permanently shacked up with since her husband’s death.

Gillian forced a smile. ‘Yes, it is good news. For me and Terry at least. I hope Mum will see it that way.’

‘Oh she’s all right,’ rumbled Sid.

How exactly was she all right? wondered Gillian, walking home. What had Joan Summers ever done that was right?

She had come through the interviews with Claire, came the reply. What miracle had made Joan come across as a good-humoured rough diamond of a granny, offering all the support that Gillian would need? It must have been the hand of God, because it couldn’t possibly have been intentional on Joan’s part.

‘My mother lives with us,’ Gillian had explained, trying to sound positive. ‘That’s not a problem, is it?’

‘It could be a big plus,’ Claire had assured her. ‘She’s in good health?’

‘Oh yes,’ Gillian was able to say, quite truthfully. Not a hope in hell that some kindly plague would carry her mother off.

‘If you were looking after an elderly invalid, someone housebound maybe…’

‘Oh no, she’s fighting fit.’

Claire had beamed. ‘That’s excellent. As long as she’s enthusiastic about an adopted baby arriving in the household, of course.’

‘Oh she is,’ Gillian had rushed in, almost beating Claire about the head with her assurance, as if saying it with enough conviction would make it true.

But Claire had smiled, that official smile that always lurked behind her friendliness. ‘Well, I’ll be able to confirm that for myself when I meet her.’

Gillian’s hopes had plummeted. Had she really thought she could get through all this without Claire meeting Joan? She was doomed.

And then, against all the odds, the worst had been evaded. On the first visit, Joan had just won on the bingo and was in an almost generous mood. A mild mocking of her daughter’s urge to be a mother, no more. The second time, she had merely been silent. Bored probably, waiting for Claire to go. Gillian had spent three hours in advance making the house spotless, hiding the gin bottles and the cigarettes and the dozen ashtrays. Joan had pattered off in search of her fags without Claire noticing. The third…ah, of course, Claire had come with that man, Hugh someone. A man made all the difference to Joan. She had chatted and joked with him in an easy, mischievous sort of way. He’d actually been amused by her flirtation, probably thought she was the humorous spark that would lighten the household.

Well, however it had happened, that stage of the torment was over now. Approved. Not the end. Not nearly the end. But if Gillian could only hold out, if she could only receive a child into her arms, she could prove herself as the perfect, devoted, adoring mother she knew she was destined to be. Surely there was nothing Joan could do now to spoil it?

ii

Heather

Madonna and child. Some old master’s idea of perfect womanhood – smooth serene face, small smile, soft doe eyes fixed on the plump dimpled child on her knee. Heather Norris blew a raspberry at the card and opened it. From the Library. Merry Christmas from all of us, and wishing you a bumper harvest in 1990. Hell, had she remembered to send a card to her old colleagues? She could ransack the bureau, hope there were still one or two charity cards in there somewhere.

The Madonna and child went onto the teak fire surround, between a glittery stagecoach scene, and an inflated cartoon robin. That was closer to the truth, Heather felt, easing herself onto the sofa; a big fat bird. A stuffed turkey. She’d put on weight after Bibs was born, and now she was like a barrage balloon. That serene Virgin had never suffered from swollen ankles and constipation.

‘Brm, brm, brm brm brm.’ Clatter, bang, scratch. Bibs came along the hallway with the plastic car they had bought him to keep his mind off the presents he wasn’t allowed to touch until Christmas Day. How much paintwork had he taken off the skirting board this time?

‘Bibs. Come in here, to Mummy,’ she called, too heavy, too weary to get up and go to him.

Bang. The car hit the living room door, which swung open, sending a pile of magazines to the floor. She didn’t want to have to bend and pick them up.

‘Brm brm brm.’ Tousled fair hair, and a bottom in blue shorts, up in the air.

‘Not on my feet, Bibs!’ Why did her son think it funny to run a toy car over her toes? Giggling, he did it again.

‘I said no, Bibs. Do it again and I’ll take it away.’

He looked up at her, his three-year-old face an open book – clear eyes, pursed lips parted, trying to make head or tail of those complicated adult responses. A little boy now, becoming his own person, no longer the helpless unformed scrap of herself that Bibs the baby had been.

And now she was going back to the start. Like landing on a snake and sliding back to the beginning, but this time without the novelty factor. No excited calls from relatives asking how she was doing, no aunts bombarding her with advice and horror stories, no parcels of hand-knitting. Even the midwife seemed less interested. Or maybe it was just her. She’d been there, done that, bought the t-shirt and now it was just plain boring.

The plastic car was thumping against her toe again. Bibs pushing his luck. He caught her eye, decided against it and swivelled round on the mat, busily motoring off to the window. A very quiet ‘brm brm brm’. Had she quashed him? She didn’t mean to. She loved him, adored him, sometimes she felt something burst inside her when she looked at him. Maybe she had never looked like that picture of the Madonna and child, but she had felt it, when he was born. For nine months she had sailed through the world, so intensely conscious of him within her that she had felt enclosed in a bubble of love. She hadn’t needed him to be born to bond with him. It had happened the second the test showed she was pregnant. Or maybe even before.

Was that why she felt so equivocal this time round, she wondered. Was she feeling sibling rivalry on Bibs’ behalf? Resenting this interloper who was waiting to come between her and her darling boy.

Well, it would sort itself out. It would have to. She hauled herself up and went into the kitchen to make Bibs some lunch. Fish fingers and baked beans. He was going through a faddy phase and she felt she ought to be doing something about it. Give him something bright and imaginative, but weighed down and aching, she didn’t think there was much imagination in her at the moment. Certainly no brightness.

An hour later – the kitchen strewn with the pulverised beans that Bibs had refused to eat, the boy still snivelling after their screaming match, and the living room in gloom because the light bulb had blown – Martin arrived home to find her on the sofa with a wet flannel on her brow.

‘Another of your heads?’

‘Yes.’ She peeled the flannel away and looked at the clock. ‘You’re early. What’s happened? They’re not cutting back again!’

‘No, still got my job.’ Martin looked in through the kitchen door. ‘Shit. Bibs not eating again?’

‘Yesterday he’d only eat beans. Now he won’t touch them.’

‘You being a bad boy then, my son?’ He had Bibs up in the air, and the child was shrieking with delight. ‘Giving your mother a hard time? Yeah!’

Oh yes, make a joke of it. She watched the two of them disappear into the kitchen then called after them, ‘So why are you early?’

Martin was back at the door, his mouth full of fish fingers. ‘Tie i lshiw.’

‘What?’

He swallowed. ‘Time in lieu – for Boxing Day?’

‘I thought… Oh God, is it Christmas Eve tomorrow?’

‘You wanted a last minute shop, remember.’

‘Oh Christ, I don’t want to go shopping. I just want to go to bed.’ This time last year she had actually chosen to go into London for the day for a bout of girly retail therapy – as pleasure! This year the thought of squeezing into the local newsagent’s made her want to lie down.

‘Do we actually need to go?’ Martin was hopeful. ‘Are we desperately out of anything?’

‘Yes of course we are! Vegetables. Milk. Endless stuff.’

‘Okay, so we’d better go then.’ Willing to make the effort and take her, just not willing to do it for her. If he did, he’d get all the wrong things. ‘Den needs stuff, I suppose. Have you got a list for him? How was he this morning?’

‘Knew who I was.’ She struggled up, resentfully. ‘Still hid the housekeeping though. But at least he didn’t flush it away this time.’

Martin chuckled. Her father had senile dementia and he could chuckle about it. But then Den wasn’t his father and he wasn’t the one having to deal with it every day. That was down to Heather, of course. Her mother had died years ago, when she was in her teens. No one to cope with Den’s funny ways except her. Like dealing with Bibs, day in day out. No bloody end to it.

She was snarling as she pulled her coat on. Straining to do it up. What was it she was carrying? A baby elephant? Not that things would be any better in a couple more months when it was out. Weeks of screaming and sleepless nights and frayed nerves and sore tits and mopping up, and Bibs having tantrums and Den having to be rounded up and Martin’s firm hovering on the brink, and Martin being lovely to everyone because he didn’t have to lift a sodding finger. Peace and goodwill on Earth. Christmas spirit? Sod Christmas. Sod the lot of them.

Next, the battle to get Bibs into his seat in the back of the car. Cramming herself into the front, grinding her teeth with irritation knowing that Bibs was trying to kick the back of her chair, even if she could feel nothing because he couldn’t reach. She had been dwelling on her superhuman love for her son a few hours back. Right now, she just wanted to shout.

‘Sainsbury’s then?’ asked Martin, edging the car out of the drive. ‘Don’t need anything in the High Street?’

‘If we do, we can go without.’

Trapped in a car five sizes too small, bracing herself for every speed bump. The Hopcroft was an intricate maze of mini-roundabouts, closes and pedestrian alleys, coiling into itself on what had been farmland little more than ten years before. New-build timber-frames that had not yet warped, picture windows that had not yet let in the draught, compact porches that did not yet leak, clipped shrubs that had not yet died; the aspirational British at their surburban best. Young families, drawn by the sparkling new primary school, the closeness to the new out-of-town supermarkets, and the semi-rural Marsh Wood station for that convenient commute to London. The would-be middle class, first generation professionals and white-collar workers, triumphantly escaping from council housing and greasy overalls. People exactly like her, she supposed. She recognised them as a mass, a type, but she knew none of them.

Her father was her closest connection here, in his so-called sheltered accommodation just across the roundabout from the Hopcroft; but most days he no longer seemed to know her, and when he did he was only interested in talking about the woman two doors down, who was trying to steal his photographs, or his tea caddy, or the pigeons he had ceased to keep twenty years ago. Nothing to say about Heather, but still it was almost the sum total of her social life now – the daily visit to see that Den hadn’t wandered off, left the gas on or the taps running, or set the place on fire.

No one else to talk to. There were a couple of mothers at the nursery that she had chatted to briefly, but her friends were all three miles away, on the other side of Lyford town centre, in the grid of 1930s terraces where she and Martin and Bibs had lived until six months ago. She had thought she couldn’t wait to leave, to move up in the world, to escape from the miserable pensioners, the loud football fans and the corner shop that had been boarded up since the Pakistani owner had been burned out by the National Front. Now she just wanted to be back there, with friends always ready with a cup of tea whenever she dropped in.

They shouldn’t have moved here to Hopcroft. They’d been planning it since before Bibs was born as a distant project, but then, when Martin miraculously walked into a new job after the shock of redundancy, worry exploding into relief had prompted them to take the plunge.

They couldn’t really afford it. Even with Martin’s increased pay, they would be stretched with the mortgage, and just because he had a job today, who knew what would happen tomorrow? House prices were falling now and they were saddled with it, no chance of trading down as easily as they had traded up. In a couple of years, they’d thought, with Bibs safely at school, she could think about going back to the library, part time, earning a little extra to help them eke out the budget, but of course the new baby would put that timetable way back.

They hadn’t planned this second child. One day, yes, but not yet. It was only after they had exchanged contracts and were committed to the move that she’d discovered she was pregnant again. Suspected, dreaded and then finally confirmed on the day when the Marchioness pleasure boat collided with a dredger on the Thames. She’d felt she was part of the disaster, drowning. A month later, the Duchess of York was crowing over the expected arrival of her second child. Heather had always liked the Royals until that day. Now she resented them and their bloody palaces and their nursemaids and their hand-picked gynaecologists. Let Fergie deal with a house move, a mortgage and a new bloody baby without any bloody help!

‘Look on the good side,’ Martin had said. ‘We’re going to be a mile nearer to the hospital.’ It hadn’t helped. He knew, as well as she did, that this second baby had come at the worst possible moment. Why hadn’t they taken more care? She had even toyed with the idea of an abortion but didn’t dare to raise it with anyone. You couldn’t have an abortion just because you were moving house and you were terrified of not being able to pay the bills in a year’s time. Martin hadn’t shared her concerns. After an initial hour of grumbling, he had decided to delight in the idea of another child.

Out of the estate onto the dual carriageway, two more roundabouts and into the tarmac sea of Sainsbury’s. Fairy lights, a luminous Santa, Christmas trees in their stocking wraps still piled up hopefully at the door. The car park was packed. The 23rd of December and everyone was out, spending money because that was what Christmas was all about. Spend, spend, spend. Alcohol that she wasn’t allowed to touch. Food that would sit slowly decaying in an overfilled fridge. Presents that would be glanced at with a show of enthusiasm and then discarded. Toys that required a second mortgage. They couldn’t afford all this. If other people thought they could, they were just insane.

The car park was full. Martin found a space at last, at the end furthest from the store. Heather bustled to get Bibs out. Why did he have to wriggle so much?

‘Just keep still, will you! Hold my hand.’

A long long walk, not what Bibs fancied. He started to drag, leaning back until he was almost sitting on the tarmac. ‘Bibs! Don’t do that! Come on.’

‘I don’t want to!’

‘Come on, old son.’ Martin hoisted him on his shoulders. The easy casual solution as if her irritation was totally unreasonable.

Bibs was installed in the trolley-come-pushchair. This was the bit he always liked, being pushed up and down the aisles, while she plodded on with aching back and ankles. He was quite old enough to walk beside her, but it was safer having him in the trolley. At least she knew where he was.

Up and down the aisles – that was a joke today. Jabbing and squeezing into the first aisle was as much as she could bear. She picked up a bag of tangerines and stopped. Enough.

‘You read the list, I’ll get them,’ said Martin.

‘Bananas, grapes, onions, potatoes, carrots, Brussels.’ Why Brussels? No one liked them. Why waste money on something no one liked and she didn’t want to cook. ‘Oh for God’s sake, can’t we just have beans on toast and have done with it?’

Martin chuckled, as if she were joking. She leaned on the trolley as he dropped a monstrous net bag of Brussels sprouts into it.

Milk, cream, cheddar, brie, Bibs’ yoghurts, bread, biscuits, mince pies… Martin dropped a multipack of crisps into the trolley. Bibs, bored with singing and kicking, started to open it.

‘Not yet, Bibs!’

He ignored her.

‘Not yet!’ Other shoppers, crammed against her, were looking at her. ‘Leave it alone!’ She snatched the bag from him.

Bibs reached for it again. She held it out of his reach, nearly hitting an old lady beside her. Bibs jumped up and down in the trolley, then fished out a packet of biscuits and dropped it on the floor.

‘Bibs! You’re not a bloody baby!’

She wanted to hit him. She never hit him, she didn’t believe in hitting children, but she wanted to hit him now.

People pushed past, no one stopped to help. She wasn’t bending down to retrieve the biscuits; they could bloody well stay there and be trampled.

Triumphant in his victory, Bibs had a packet of eggs. She yanked them from him, feeling one crack inside. ‘Stop it! Do you hear me? Just stop it!’

Was she screaming? Everyone seemed to be looking at her. Then Martin was there, with a pack of beer. ‘Hey, hey, hey. Come on. Bibs, put that down now.’ He removed the eggs to the front of the trolley, out of Bibs’ reach. ‘Be a good boy for your mummy, or she might not give you a little brother or sister.’

‘Don’t want one,’ said Bibs.

‘Of course you do.’

‘I don’t,’ said Bibs. ‘Don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t don’t.’

‘Well, tough,’ hissed Heather, ‘because you’re stuck with it, just like me.’

Martin was still chuckling. ‘Don’t put it like that. You make it sound as if you don’t want it.’

‘I don’t bloody want it! Who ever bothered to ask me if I did? We didn’t plan it and we can’t afford it, and we’re stuck out here, and it’s all very well for you going gooey-eyed over another fucking baby, but I’m the one breaking my back here. I’ll be the one in hospital having my insides ripped apart. I’ll be the one stuck with filthy bloody nappies, day in day out, listening to the bloody thing bawl its head off.’

Was she shouting? Screaming? Shocked faces were staring at her. Martin stood open-mouthed. Look at them all, bloody strangers telling her that she didn’t count, all that mattered was this thing inside her. She didn’t want it. She just wanted to be rid of everything. In a rage she hadn’t realised she was capable of, she thrust the laden trolley from her, sending it charging down the aisle.

Sailing between the parting shoppers, Bibs stared back at her, a whimper already beginning. His chariot collided with a pyramid display, sending jars of mincemeat flying with a sickening shatter of glass.

iii

Lindy

‘Gi’s a kiss then. C’mon,’ he said, unkempt and unwashed, his stubble dark with dirt.

Lindy turned her head to avoid his whisky-soaked breath, and wriggled under his arm, braced against the wall. ‘Geroff me, Tyler.’

‘Aw, c’mon,’ he said to the wall, not realising that she was no longer there. Pissed out of his tiny mind as usual.

Lindy was already climbing the narrow stairs to the first floor landing, and the safety of her own room. The lock was crap, but she could put a chair under the handle if Tyler followed. Time was, she used to bound up these stairs out of his reach, but today she was too weary. And too bulky. She hauled herself up, listening, ready to kick out if he tried to grab her.

Nothing. She looked back. At the bottom of the stairs, Tyler had slid to the floor and was mumbling into his chest. So maybe there’d be a racket and things flying when he woke up, but for now she’d have a bit of peace. No one else in the house was stirring. They didn’t usually emerge until after dark.

She pulled back the curtains. Dark January gloom. She didn’t like to have the lamp on in the day. Or the heating. It was fucking freezing, but the electric fire ate money up, and she only had one 50p left. When she saw him coming, she’d switch it on for a few minutes, but better without for now.

Her coat was good and thick. And voluminous. Wide enough to wrap round an army, which was the point of course. Anyone looking at her would think she was nine months gone with triplets. She unbuttoned it and began to empty the improvised sack beneath. Soup packets. Pot noodles. Biscuits. Three apples. They were healthy, fruit and stuff, she knew that, though she’d picked them because they were easy to slip inside. Like the packet of dishcloths she’d taken, because they had been there and easy.

She had a basket too, tinned stuff and a bottle of milk. You had to buy something if you spent half an hour wandering round a shop, or people would look at you funny when you came out. Fastest way to get stopped, that. So she had bought a tin of beans, a tin of ham and four cans of the cheapest lager. 50p left for the meter. If Gary did come home today, he’d find food in the cupboard, and a beer waiting for him. It made her feel competent, a useful little housewife. Maybe he’d be glad to be home with her again.

No need to think about what he was more likely to feel when he saw her.

She smoothed down the old quilt covering the mattress on the floor. With one of the new dishcloths she wiped down the formica table, the cupboard, and the one-ring Baby Belling. She used the worn brush to thwack the armchair free of dust – not too hard in case it lost more stuffing. She liked housework, this making-a-home game, even if she only had one room to play it in.

All she needed now was for him to arrive. It might not be today; the grapevine might have got it wrong. And he might be going somewhere else first. With a quiver, she thought: he might not choose to come here at all, ever again.

But no, she trusted Gary Bagley to come back to her because there was really no point in thinking anything else. You had to hope, or there was nothing.

Pulling her coat back round her, she dragged one of the vinyl-covered kitchen chairs to the window and huddled down, leaning on the rotten sill and watching the street for any sign of him. Gary Bagley, her man. Her family.

A family was what Lindy Crowe wanted. A nest, safe from the hostile world, with someone she could wrap herself around. There had been a family once, six siblings and Mum and Dad, though she had been too young to remember the drunken screaming and shouting that ended with her father knifing her mother. Maybe she hungered to find a family again because she couldn’t remember. Foster homes hadn’t counted, even when fosterers had meant well. They had just been alien beings who had separated her from her brother Jimmy. He was the next youngest and they’d been real friends, but no one cared about that. The Home was nothing like a family. Staff too busy for anyone, and Wayne Price and his gang doing whatever they liked to the younger kids, especially the girls. Lindy had run away at ten, then at twelve, then fourteen, and had been on her own since, living rough or in squats, getting by with shoplifting and begging and tricks. Then Gary. He hadn’t made everything perfect, but she had never expected that. It was enough that he called her his girl and brought her here, to 128 Nelson Street, to a house that they could pretend was home.

In some distant past, someone had turned it into bedsitters. Someone must still be paying someone rent, because the electricity meters worked, and the water was still connected, though the dozen residents treated it as a squat. She and Gary had this room. They shared the bathroom, though the bath had no plug, and the people in the basement used the bog out back, and Tyler on the ground floor usually just peed in the hall.

It was all Lindy had ever hoped for. Nothing like spending a couple of winter weeks in a shop doorway down Almeida Lane without a penny in your pocket, with a broken heel and a black eye, to teach you that a roof, any roof, a bed, any bed, and something, anything to eat, is the best life has to offer.

Something to eat. She realised she hadn’t eaten since the chocolate bar she’d nicked that morning. Must be the excitement of Gary coming back. She ought to eat. She took a couple of biscuits and one of the apples. Then she returned to her window perch to wait.

Nelson Road in the twilight. Lamps coming on, shifting it into a different dimension. All through the day it rumbled with traffic taking the short cut away from the endless traffic lights on Moreton Road. Hardly any pedestrians, drab old houses silent. Then at night the residents awoke. Where were they during the day, she wondered. Some must have jobs because at night the pavements were blocked with parked cars. Others collected like moths around the laundrette, the betting shop and the two pubs. At night, vans came and went from the yard that was padlocked by day, with Alsatians growling behind the metal gates. At night, figures gathered on the corner with Heighton Street and exchanged money and packets. Lindy knew them by sight if not by name. Gary used to send her with a wad of notes to deal with them for him. He’d let her try stuff with him sometimes, though mostly he only gave her a bit of weed. She didn’t mind. It was just him she wanted.

A figure was coming down the street in the gloom. Hands thrust into pockets, feet kicking at anything within reach. Hood up. Hope, then disappointment. He passed under a street lamp and she could see it wasn’t Gary.

Should she have gone to meet him? Last time she’d seen him, she told him she’d be here waiting for him, and he’d grinned and said, ‘You’d better be.’

An old battered Cortina screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. A bloke climbed out of the back and smacked the top before the car hurtled on down the road.

It was Gary! Gary was home! She was up, leaning against the window, rapping on the glass, pleading for him to look up.

He saw her, raised a finger to tell her to wait, then turned aside to speak to Mick Crier who was passing with his Rottweiler.

He had seen her! She got up, switched on the fire and looked around wondering what else she could do to welcome him. She kept her coat on.

She heard swearing as he passed Tyler, kicking him out of the way. Running up the stairs. Door swinging open.

‘Gary!’ She rushed to him, wrapping her arms round him. He brushed her aside, so he could push into the room. Cropped hair, stocky, less weight on him than when he’d gone inside. The same good looks though. The same cocky confidence in those looks and in his ability to survive. Her man.

‘Gary, I didn’t know if it was today or not. Drake said you was coming out. I would have come to meet you. Oh Gary!’ She wanted to cling to him again, but he held her casually back, grabbing and swigging a lager. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and turned to look round. At her, briefly, with his old grin, then round the room, nodding, accepting that it would do.

‘All right, all right. No need to fuss. Got out this morning. So, you pleased to see me then, girl?’

‘Oh Gary, I been that desperate without you.’ No, he wouldn’t want to hear about her troubles. ‘But you’re home now. I’d have come more but when they moved you I couldn’t afford the fare.’

He laughed. ‘Always were fucking useless on your own. Never mind, eh. Home now. You going to give me a kiss or what?’

She rushed to him, arms thoughtlessly wide, coat swinging open.

She stopped, at his expression.

‘You. Stupid. Bitch.’

‘Gary…’

‘Stupid fucking bitch. Who’ve you been screwing then, while I’ve been inside?’

‘No one, Gary, honest.’

‘Don’t you lie to me. Don’t try and tell me it’s mine.’

‘It is, Gary. I promise. I wasn’t with no one else.’

‘Oh no? How d’you get by then, without me, if you weren’t on the game?’

‘I got a job, Gary. Cleaning offices. Honest. Until I started getting sick and they dumped me. ‘Cos of this.’ She looked down at her swollen belly, pushing out the over-tight sweater.

‘You stupid cow.’ He snarled at her lump. ‘It’s not mine.’ He stared at her with the look he used on customers who wouldn’t pay up.

She didn’t dare reply, just waited.

‘Are you so fucking stupid you didn’t think of getting rid of it?’

‘I didn’t know how, Gary. Didn’t know what to do.’

‘Stupid cow! Well, you can fucking get rid of it now.’

‘I can’t, Gary.’ She was half crying, half pleading, knowing that neither would work with him. He didn’t like whiney women. ‘It’s too late. They won’t do an abortion or nuffin’ now.’

‘I told you, get rid of it, bitch.’ Here it came. She could see the explosion rippling up within him, bursting out at last. ‘Or I’ll get rid of it for you.’

Even in the middle of the night it was never quite dark in the room, because of the street light outside and the thin curtains, but the light was softer tonight in the freezing fog. Lindy shivered under the quilt and tried to get more comfortable on the mattress, rubbing her feet up and down to warm them. No Gary to share his body’s heat. He was out, she didn’t know where. Didn’t know if he was coming back. She’d asked but he was still too mad to reply.

Maybe it would make a difference if she lost the baby. She might. He’d punched her so hard she’d almost passed out. But she hadn’t started bleeding or nothing. Now she didn’t know what to do. There were ways of dealing with babies, other girls had told her, but that was for when you first got pregnant, not for when you were eight months gone. Things she just hadn’t done. Like she hadn’t accepted Carver’s help. What if Gary found out about that? He’d be that mad.

Carver was the bloke upstairs. Top Dog. She was always a bit afraid of him. No, really afraid. Big black guy with eyes like bullets. Nobody messed with Carver, not even Gary. She’d delivered stuff for him now and again, because he’d asked, politely, and she’d pretended it was fine, too terrified to refuse. But mostly she ducked out of sight if she saw him first. Then one day he’d caught her on the stairs, looked her over, and asked her what she was going to do. Like she had choices.

She couldn’t tell Gary that. Couldn’t tell him that Carver had asked her if she wanted to him to fix something up for her. Or that she had shaken her head. Better let Gary believe she’d been just too stupid to know what to do.

Perhaps she was stupid. Lindy couldn’t understand her own impulses. What happened in this world, or at least what happened to her, just happened. No rhyme or reason, no good or bad. So, lying alone on her mattress, she just hoped that Gary would forgive her and accept the baby because it was too late to put right her mistake. She never paused to think that maybe she had said no because she, Lindy Crowe, actually wanted the baby. She had been too useless to get rid of it, but not too useless, in her own small way, to look after herself and the spark of life within her. She’d stopped drinking – couldn’t afford it, could she? Hardly ever smoked. Tried to remember to eat. Had dreams sometimes about holding her baby, cuddling it, having its fingers grab hers. Someone of her very own to offer her the one thing she had ever craved.

It was Gary’s, whatever he said. She hadn’t been sleeping around while he was inside, at least not for the first four months. She hadn’t slept around before, neither, not once she’d moved in with him, though he’d kept telling her his friends would pay good money if she gave them one. She’d hoped she wouldn’t have to do that anymore. She would have done it, for him, in the end, but he was still bullying her about it when he’d got done for demanding money with menaces. Leaving her to cope all alone.

She’d started off well. Got a job, night cleaning. Greg paid her cash in hand and she’d enjoyed it, working through the night hours with old Sal, in brightly lit offices like another world. She was good at it too, sweeping, cleaning, polishing, making things neat and pretty. And even if Greg wasn’t quite legal, it was like Christmas every week, knowing there’d be cash at the end of it. But then she’d starting throwing up and showing and Greg had told her to get lost and she was stuffed, in every possible sense. She was driven back to the inevitable round of prostitution and shoplifting. Not that many men were that keen for a fuck with a pregnant woman. Shoplifting was easier though. No one thought twice about her bulges.

She’d signed on too. She hadn’t dared try before because they’d have just put her back in care. But now she was seventeen, they couldn’t send her back, so a month ago she’d finally made it into the Job Centre, and found herself filling in a load of forms. Did she have a permanent place of residence? Yes! What rent did she pay? None. She shouldn’t have said that. Did she have a partner? Yes, but he was in prison. Name, age, date of birth, National Insurance number… She didn’t know nothing about half of it, all the questions and the boxes and the haranguing woman with big shoulders and steel glasses who looked at her like she was a worm. It was all just another of those processes that happened to Lindy, inflicted by other people, the usual round of meaningless battering. But she had emerged with the promise of a giro and leaflets on maternity welfare. Not bad for all that bother. The money didn’t go far, but it was regular, enough for some food and light and weed, and a bit of heat if she was careful, and with an occasional bit of shoplifting, she got by. Waiting for Gary to come home.

She was stiff on the mattress. Aching. He really had hit her hard. She couldn’t feel the baby moving tonight. Maybe it was dead. The thought left her numb with helpless grief, but there was nothing she could do about it. He was her man and if he chose to kill it, or kill her, or throw her out on the streets again, how could she stop him? She’d never said it, even to herself, but she’d known he would go mad when he found out. That was really why she’d stopped going to visit him in prison. Putting off the moment. She just hoped now he’d come round. Maybe he’d come home flush and feeling generous towards her. Maybe…

She was too cold to sleep, and yet she must have because she woke with a start when the quilt was snatched off her. It was still dark, lit by the glow of the street lamps, strong enough for her to see Gary standing over her. Staring down at her.

She shivered. She couldn’t tell if he was still angry or what.

‘Get us something to eat,’ he ordered.

She struggled up. It was difficult in her state, getting up from a mattress on the floor. As soon as she was off it, he flung himself down in her place, dirty boots raking the quilt as he groped for his cigarettes.

She put the kettle on, opened cans, made tea and beans on toast with ham. Not much you can do with one ring and a grill that half works. She placed the plate on the table, but Gary grunted, so she gave him the plate where he half lay, half sat, on the mattress, and watched him shovelling the food into his mouth.

He wasn’t talking, so she cleaned out the remainder of the beans from the battered saucepan, first with a spoon, then with her finger. The taste reminded her she was famished. She helped herself to another biscuit, then handed him the packet.

He grabbed her wrist, his eyes running over her, head to foot. ‘Too late then, for an abortion.’

‘I’m eight months, Gary. They wouldn’t do it now.’

‘Have you seen a doc?’

She shook her head. The local surgery, busy with old dears and bright mums with pushchairs had been too alien. She didn’t like doctors. Too many memories of unfriendly examinations.

‘Okay.’ Gary nodded. Pleased? ‘That’s good. No one knows, right?’

What did he mean? She knew. He knew. Everyone who took one look at her knew.

‘You listening? You haven’t gone telling doctors you’re pregnant. They haven’t got you booked into hospital or anything like that. Right? So no one knows.’

The woman who fixed up her weekly giro knew. But no need to tell Gary that. Lindy shook her head.

‘Right. So you keep your mouth shut about the baby, and when you’ve had it, we get rid of it.’

She went cold inside, colder than the icy fog. ‘You wouldn’t kill it, Gary.’

He laughed, cruelly, then like he was just laughing it off. ‘We dump it, that’s all. Leave it somewhere. No one need know nothing. Right?’

She wanted to say ‘But I want my baby,’ but she didn’t dare, so she began to cry.

Tears never worked on Gary. ‘Shut up, you stupid bitch. If you’d got rid of it in the first place, there wouldn’t have been no trouble. Your own stupid fucking fault. If you want to stick with me, you dump it. And you want to stick with me, don’t you, girl.’

She sniffed back her tears and nodded.