I like to find out stuff. It’s a curse of mine. The internet should be banned for people like me.
The day after my talk with Robin, I’m out doing circuits of the estate, just to clear my head, though I keep tabs on the number of steps. I spent far too long looking at stories about adoption. I read about girls like me, who got pregnant by accident and had their babies adopted. Some of them seem all right, good even, say they made the right choice. But there are others too. Ones who feel like something huge was ripped away from them and now they’re left with nothing but a great, aching hole, made up of guilt and longing and all the things they’ve missed and will never find again. Even the older ones who got back in contact with their kids, once the kids were old enough, are sort of messed up. But maybe I’m just reading the wrong stories.
I tried switching to stories written by children who were adopted, but that wasn’t much better. They stuck in my mind, like porridge scrapings on the side of a bowl, gluey and rough. I’ve sat in front of a few cold bowls of porridge in my time. On one memorable day, dinner showed up when I was still making my way through the morning’s snack. Fun times.
Now I’ve read them though, I can’t pull them back out of my head. I really want one of those things that can wipe out memories, like in this film Molly showed me once, Eternal Sunshine something-something – I can’t remember the full title. Clearly I only have a good memory for the crappy stuff.
I do another circuit of the estate. It’s almost time to start walking up to the clinic for my appointment with Felicity – I’m actually going, so things must be dire – when I see her coming up the road on the opposite side. I call her the Walking Woman.
I almost cross over, to say hello or something, but chicken out at the last minute. Doesn’t stop me wondering, as always, about who she is.
This is what I think about her:
I see her circling the roads on the estate. Maybe in her seventies, but I don’t know. Dandelion hair. Slacks that hang, well, slackly, on sticks. Or thick tights bunched under a straight skirt. She hunches forward, back humped, walking with her chin leading, like a chicken pecking, stiff-legged. Sometimes she has carrier bags dangling from her minuscule arms. I imagine them containing tinned tomatoes and spam and laxatives.
She’s there in all weathers, just walking.
I noticed her not long after I moved to the Yewlings and, since I have, she’s everywhere. Her eyes are focused on something inside, intent, determined. Impossible to break through.
But I know who she is. She’s Nia. Perhaps she’s been Nia forever. The thought horrifies me, even as I marvel at those legs which are too small to hold her up and admire her determination.
One day, I think the Walking Woman will die, right there on the side of the road. Her heart will falter and stop. Nothing else will break her.
I see her, in dreams, always walking.
Sometimes I think she might be me.
* * *
So, yeah. Kind of gloomy thoughts, I suppose. I’m almost at the unit now anyway, so I try and tear my brain away from the Walking Woman and focus on what I’m going to say to Felicity. She’s running late, as usual, but I don’t mind. If I’m lucky it means less time for me.
I put my head down as I go past the inpatient part of the unit. There are a couple of girls outside smoking, their fingers all bone. I don’t know them, and the thought sends my heart fluttering. I’m moving away from unit life, out here in the cold, looking in.
I itch for a fag suddenly, but I’m not giving in to that. This baby’s got enough to contend with without being addicted to nicotine from birth into the bargain.
I let Felicity weigh me. I’ve put on, she tells me, sounding surprised. I fight conflicting urges to smile smugly and say, ‘See?’ and to wrench the chart out of her hand so I can get a look at the number. I’m obviously keeping an eye on things, but the unit scales are the ‘proper’ scales.
Felicity finishes writing in the notes and swivels to face me. ‘So … how are you?’
‘OK,’ I say, and I know from the way it comes out that this is going to be one of those sessions.
Felicity senses it too; her face tightens around the lips and she fights her eyebrows back up into neutral position.
A couple of minutes go by.
‘You know what, screw it,’ I say. ‘I’m not OK. I think … I think I’ve messed up. Like, more than normal, I mean.’
Felicity makes an encouraging noise and tries not to look as surprised as I feel that I’m breaking the Rules and actually talking rather than my usual tricks of staring into the distance as she waits with varying degrees of patience or talking about stupid things, deflecting all her careful questions and insights. And sometimes – OK, maybe more than sometimes – I shout. Hurl whatever I can think of that might insult her. Try to make her hate me.
I never said anything about being a good person.
Today, though, I’m giving it straight and for some reason I can’t seem to stop.
‘I’ve been reading all these stories about adoption and I guess it’s like … the shock’s worn off, right? And now I’m starting to realise that … that …’ Bloody hell, I’m welling up here.
This must be the first time Felicity has had to use the ever-present box of tissues with me. She hands them over slowly, like I’m a bird she’s trying not to scare away.
I blow my nose and continue in a flatter voice, trying to keep it all controlled, but I have this unbearable urge to talk for once, to get the thoughts out of my head. ‘I realised I’ve done something … what’s that word? Irrevocable. Not just for me, but for … you know.’ I nod down at my bump, which is now starting to put some strain on the hoodie. ‘Like, there’s someone else affected by all this now and I feel … I guess I feel guilty.’
‘Mmm …’ A Felicity Silence ensues.
I’m not saying any more.
Except, somehow, I am.
‘I went and saw Mum, told her the news. And she was furious. She called me selfish. And she said something about –’ I break off and try to remember what Mum said.
Felicity leans forward in her chair.
‘That was it – something about it never being just me that this affected. And I know that’s true. I knew it before – I really did. But now I guess I’m feeling it.’
Felicity opens her mouth and there’s this light in her eyes I haven’t seen before. It’s a mixture of excitement and hope and, for a second, I feel like bony fingers are digging into my heart, because she thinks we’re having some sort of Breakthrough or at least A Moment.
I’ve said too much.
I give a forced laugh. ‘Must be those pregnancy hormones. Or maybe the baby is like in that film – what was its name? – where because the baby can feel stuff, so can I, you know? Like a personal fuzzy-feeling factory. I’m not saying I’m worried. Once it’s out …’ Now I really do need to shut up.
Felicity stares at me, then sits back suddenly. ‘Normal service will be resumed, I suppose?’ I’ve never heard her sound so icy.
‘Something like that.’ It’s supposed to come out defiant, but I’m flushing.
‘Mmm.’
More silence. This time, I’m the one who’s uncomfortable. Felicity watches me watch the clock tick down the last few minutes of our session, getting myself back under control.
When it’s time to go, I give as bright a smile as I can muster and say, ‘See you next week!’
I stand up and walk out before she can say anything more, but somehow it doesn’t feel like the victory it usually does.
And on the way home, Molly is at my shoulder, keeping me company.
Crap Things about the Unit, Number Eight:
Your Best Friend Dying in Front of You
Molly. After the first day in Group when she swore and we laughed, we spent pretty much all the free time we had together, which in hospital is quite a lot. Meals and school and Group take up only so many hours in the day, even for those of us who know how to spin out a bowl of soup.
Molly was bulimic. The worst kind. I might have learned quite a few food disposal tricks from her, looking back.
The thing is, though, hospital wasn’t always crappy. It’s never as straightforward as that. Molly was bulimic and messed up, sure, but she also had the most brilliant laugh I’ve ever heard and could do amazing impressions of people. Mainly the staff – the consultants loved that. I’m lying – they didn’t, obviously – but we all did.
And she could play the saxophone, like she should have been a professional jazz player, and she had a ridiculously flamboyant fashion sense, all layers and even hats. I know that makes her sound deeply weird, but it worked on Molly. She was just herself, gave exactly no craps what anyone thought. You wouldn’t have known anything was wrong with her unless you knew where to look. Her make-up was always perfect, and if she was pale – well, we all were. Her pale was the interesting rather than the yellowy grey variety.
Molly made the list for me not that long before she died. Sometimes I wonder whether she knew what was coming. She was strange like that, even if she did take the mick out of the hippie staff – the ones who liked to waft crystals and mindfulness about along with their positive affirmations. I don’t really believe in spirits or whatever, but I swear this is true – she’d make stuff happen. In the evenings, when we played board games (seriously, we did – Scrabble being a particular favourite), if there was a dice she’d whisper the number she wanted out loud before she rolled and nine times out of ten she got what she wanted.
Maybe it was coincidence. Probably it was. Or that thing where you only notice the stuff that proves your theory – confirmation bias, according to Google. But I’m not convinced. She had an air about her, like she wasn’t quite in this world, is all I’m saying. Plus she always, always kicked my butt at Snakes and Ladders.
Anyway, we’d been talking one night, standing together looking out of the window at the moon, and she’d come up with the idea of a list. And I didn’t realise what she was trying to say.
She had a heart attack and died in the bathroom with the rest of us watching as the nurses tried to revive her.
I found the list under my pillow later the same day.