I’ve never had a facial before. The creams the beautician is using on my face smell so delicious I could eat them. But for some reason, the whole experience is making me tearful. I think it’s something to do with the darkness, because the lights are dimmed, and the music playing in the background – gentle breeze and trickling water. Maybe it’s regressing me to when I was in my mother’s womb. They say that, don’t they, that some experiences take us back to before we were born.
The warm blanket covering me is removed and I’m asked to turn over onto my front for the massage. There’s a convenient hole cut in the bench for my nose and mouth so that I don’t suffocate. When I filled out the form before my treatments, I had to say what sort of massage I wanted, strong, medium or soft, and I went for soft because I’ve seen those programmes where they pummel you to bits. But it’s not gentle enough. Her fingers are digging into my neck, kneading away tension which isn’t there because, after my facial, I felt totally relaxed for the first time in weeks. Maybe I should tell her, when she asks me if I enjoyed it, that they should have a fourth category, stroking.
I can’t help thinking that my mother might have been a better person if she’d been stroked a bit more as a child. I didn’t really know my grandmother because she went to live in a home when I was five years old, and we only went to see her once a year, out of duty. I think everything my mother has done has been out of duty. I don’t think there’s ever been any real joy in her life. In the photos of what should have been her happiest times – her wedding day and my birth – she looks as grim and unsmiling as ever. And I realise that I can’t remember her ever smiling, except when she greeted our parish priest on the way out of church.
She certainly never smiled around the house but then neither did my father. Were they really that unhappy? She did seem slightly less severe when we looked through bridal magazines together, planning the wedding she and my father would give me when I eventually got married. I still don’t understand, for a woman so austere in every way, why it was so important to her. If she hadn’t made such a big thing about it, I wouldn’t have become so obsessive about having a party.
It’s not as if I wasn’t happy on my wedding day. I’d already moved in with Adam and his parents, and when I woke up that morning, Jeannie – Adam’s mum – brought me breakfast in bed. Adam wasn’t there because he’d gone out with his friends the night before and had stayed over with Nelson, who’d been warned to get him to the pub in time for pre-wedding drinks. Jess had come over to help me get ready – we’d gone shopping together and I’d bought a pretty, pale-yellow knee-length dress, paid for by Jeannie. She’d offered to buy me a proper wedding dress but I knew my parents would be horrified if I dressed like a traditional bride, and anyway, it was only going to be a small wedding.
I knew my parents wouldn’t come to the pub, so there were just the nine of us – me and Adam, Jeannie and Mike, Adam’s sister, Izzy, and her husband Ian, Nelson, Rob and Jess. It had been a happy couple of hours. To Adam’s disgust, Ian played soppy song after soppy song from the jukebox playlist.
‘Can’t we have a bit of Aerosmith or Queen?’ he’d groaned. ‘Bob Dylan, James Brown, even?’
Ian had laughed. ‘How about this?’
‘Unchained Melody’ had come on and Adam and Nelson had covered their ears until Ian pushed Adam and I together and insisted we slow-dance while they all sang along. By the time the song finished I was in tears, not just of laughter but also because Adam had stopped fooling around and as we danced, had held me tight and murmured promises of how he would love me forever. Even though Adam hates it, ‘Unchained Melody’ has become ‘our’ song.
My parents didn’t turn up at the registry office, which brought fresh tears to my eyes. But it struck me recently that I’d never really put myself in my mother’s position. It must have been a huge shock when she realised I was pregnant, and although our lives and experiences are very different, I know now that sometimes, when you’re least expecting it, your children can throw you a massive curveball.
I was at work when the call came through. It was Marnie. She was home from university for the summer holidays, working at Boots to earn some money before leaving for Hong Kong at the end of August.
‘Mum, are you busy?’
‘Well, yes, I’m expecting clients any minute now.’
‘Oh.’
‘Why, what’s wrong?’
‘I don’t feel well.’
‘Are you at work?’
‘No, I didn’t go in. I don’t suppose you could come home, could you?’
‘What, now?’ My meeting wouldn’t take more than an hour and I hoped that Marnie could wait until it was over.
‘Yes. I really don’t feel well, Mum.’
‘Are you being sick?’
‘Yes. No. Mum, could you just come home, please.’ For the first time, I caught the panic in her voice and all sorts of terrible illnesses flew through my mind, from a violent stomach bug right through to meningitis.
‘How bad is it, Marnie?’ I asked, already on my feet. ‘Do you need an ambulance?’ I kept my voice as calm as I could but the word ambulance brought worried looks from my colleagues.
‘No, I’ll be fine until you arrive. Can you leave now?’
I caught Paula’s eye and she paused, watching me. ‘Yes, I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Is that OK?’
‘Yes.’ I heard her voice break. ‘Thanks, Mum.’
In fact, I was home in less than ten minutes because Paula insisted on driving me rather than letting me walk, as I usually did.
‘Promise to let us know how Marnie is,’ she said, as I got out of the car.
‘It’s probably that bug we were talking about. Apparently, it’s pretty nasty.’
I expected to find Marnie lying on the sofa in the sitting room, but her anguished ‘Mum!’ drew me upstairs to the bathroom where I found her sitting on the floor, bleeding heavily. It took me a moment to realise she was having a miscarriage.
Later, at the hospital, once everything was over, there was so much I wanted to ask her – and so much I was beginning to understand. When she’d first been accepted to study in Hong Kong, she was ecstatic. By the time she came home for the Easter holidays, a couple of months later, she was telling us that she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.
‘Why not?’ I’d asked, amazed that she was thinking of giving up such a wonderful opportunity.
‘It’s so far away.’ We were having lunch at the time and she stabbed a potato half-heartedly with her fork. ‘I wouldn’t be able to come home for nine months.’
‘If you were really homesick, we could see about you coming home for Christmas,’ Adam said, and I flinched because I knew tickets at that time of the year would cost over a thousand pounds. He looked back at me, a look that said, Once she’s there, she’ll be fine. For now, she’s got cold feet and needs a safety blanket. ‘But isn’t it too late to back out now?’ he went on.
‘I’m sure there are plenty of students who’d be willing to take my place,’ she said, pushing at the potato.
‘Are you serious, Marnie? Do you really not want to go?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just that I’m enjoying uni so much.’
Even though her head was bent over her plate, I saw her cheeks flush and wondered if she had a new boyfriend. But Marnie had never been shy about introducing boys she was dating to us, so I really did think it was a case of cold feet – until I was sitting next to her in the hospital.
‘How are you feeling?’ I asked.
‘Tired. Sad.’ She looked at me and there was so much pain in her eyes that my throat closed. ‘Relieved,’ she added guiltily.
‘Had you been feeling ill for a while?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I meant relieved because now I don’t have to make a decision. I don’t think I’d have been able to keep the baby.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘I know that’s an awful thing for you to have to hear when you kept Josh. But you had Dad. I wouldn’t have had anyone.’
‘You would have had us, you’ll always have us,’ I told her gently. ‘We would never have tried to persuade you one way or another, just made sure you knew what your options were.’ I hesitated. ‘The father – did he know you were pregnant?’
She nodded, spilling tears from her eyes. ‘Yes. But he made me understand that I wouldn’t be able to keep the baby, that it wasn’t the right time for us.’
‘I’m so sorry, Marnie. How did you feel when he told you that?’
She plucked at the sheet, desperately trying to hold back the tears. ‘Gutted. I didn’t want to have an abortion but I knew he was right in what he said. I know it worked out for you and Dad but it wouldn’t have worked out for us. Not just now, anyway.’
‘Is that why you weren’t sure about going to Hong Kong? Because you didn’t want to leave him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And now?’
‘I think it’s good that I’m going. Our relationship – it’s not healthy.’
‘Is he at university with you?’
‘Please don’t ask me about him, Mum. It’s over now, anyway. If it hadn’t been for this,’ she looked down at herself lying in the hospital bed, ‘you wouldn’t have been any wiser. But thank you, thank you for being here with me.’
We had to wait until she could be discharged and while we waited, she slept. And while she slept I wondered about the father. Her reluctance to tell me anything about him except that their relationship was unhealthy had my brain whirring. The only thing I could think was that she’d become involved with one of her tutors. Marnie was more beautiful than she knew, with her grey eyes, alabaster skin and hair the colour of autumn leaves with a natural wave I would have given anything for. I felt so upset for her, and mad at him for preying on a young girl. How dare he? It was her first year at university, her first year away from home.
Her other comment, that their relationship wouldn’t have worked out – not just now, anyway – made me feel I was on the right track. I built a picture of him in my mind, a thirtysomething year old, married with children, and wanted to kill him. I was dismayed that Marnie had allowed herself to become involved with someone who wasn’t free. I reminded myself that I didn’t know if this was the case; maybe the father of her child was a fellow student. But if that was true, she’d have had no reason not to tell me. It was the little she’d told me that made me uneasy.
I was desperate to speak to Adam but I didn’t want to leave Marnie while she was sleeping. I also wanted to check with her that she was alright with Adam knowing about her miscarriage.
‘No!’ she said forcefully when I asked. ‘I don’t want him to know. Nor Josh. Please don’t tell them, Mum. I don’t want either of them to know.’
I respected her wishes, but it was hard. I hated keeping something so monumental from Adam and it was difficult not being able to confide in him. I kept wondering about the grandchild we might have had if Marnie hadn’t had a miscarriage and had decided to keep the baby. I knew it was a useless exercise, thinking about something that would never have been, but at twelve weeks pregnant Marnie would soon have had to make that decision. And I couldn’t be sure that she’d have gone ahead with an abortion. It wasn’t something I felt I could ask her, so I mourned in secret for the baby that might have been born if things had been different.
Although I hated that I was judging Marnie, part of me was stunned that she’d embarked on a relationship with someone who presumably had a partner, and maybe children. I blamed myself. I’d never actually warned her not to have an affair with someone who wasn’t free, as it didn’t occur to me that she’d ever do such a thing. It was something I thought she’d instinctively know was morally wrong. I felt I’d failed as a mother, that it was my fault she’d had to go through the trauma of a miscarriage.
Over the next few days, I spent hours on the internet, trawling through photos of the faculty at her university, wondering if I’d be able to spot the man who had captured my daughter’s heart, then treated her so casually. There were barely any who looked under thirty; most seemed in their forties, twice Marnie’s age, which supported my feeling that she’d been taken advantage of. I reminded myself that Marnie could be just as much to blame, that she might have chased him. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
I remembered looking at Marnie on her seventeenth birthday, the age I’d been when I became pregnant, and thinking How could they? How could my parents have disowned me? I also remember thinking that Marnie could do anything, anything, and I’d forgive her.
Now, I wonder if Fate decided I was tempting it, and chose to put me to the test.