Lottie could never forget the look of horror and disgust on her mother-in-law’s face as she stared at the mess on the floor. Her cries had disturbed Craig, who stood next to his mother not knowing what was going on. Mrs Heaton did nothing. She told Craig to call for an ambulance, but she refused go to the hospital with them.
When they discharged Lottie the following afternoon, it was Craig who was waiting for her. ‘We don’t have a baby then, do we?’
Lottie glanced at his pitiful face. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened so she nodded. He placed his arm around her and they started walking towards the hospital doors. ‘Got married for nothing, then, did we?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lottie, tears crowding her eyes. ‘I suppose that’s up to us.’
Mrs Heaton wanted nothing to do with them. Craig put on his pinny to make some tea. The following morning, his mother announced she was off to stay with her sister for a week or so. ‘Violet’s invited me, and I do like to go. It’s nothing personal. I think it’s better if I’m out of the way for you to sort yourself out. Goodbye, Lottie.’ Her words sounded final. Lottie knew Mrs Heaton didn’t expect to find her in the house on her return.
Lottie hated herself for failing. Whenever she did anything, she needed to see it through to the end. She’d been trying to work out how best the surgeons could operate on Joan. That was all.
From the moment she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d wanted to be the best mother possible. Suddenly all that seemed out of reach. To begin with, Craig had never been part of her plans. Yes, he was the father, but Lottie didn’t see a role for him. Yet pushed into living with the Heaton’s and marrying Craig, she had started to understand why the best upbringing for a child was with a father and a mother. Separated from his braying pack of acne-covered mates, he was a different person.
She saw his genuine concern at the loss of his baby. His emptiness was as great as hers. He made her meals. He took her for short walks to the end of the path and back. He held her hand when it all became too much and the tears came. He learned sometimes that words weren’t enough and that his silence was the best gift he could offer. Slowly they became closer.
A week later the front door opened and Mrs Heaton stepped back into their lives. If her painted eyebrows could have risen any higher, they would have left her face. She made her feelings clear. ‘We gave you home for a reason, because you were the mother of Craig’s child. If there’s no child, there’s no need for you to be here, is there? It’s about time you packed your bags.’
‘Where would you like me to go?’
‘You can get back to that shithole of a place we had to rescue you from. That’d be a start.’
Craig stepped in front of Lottie. ‘Lottie’s not going anywhere. She’s my wife. And whether we got a child or not, she stays here. If you don’t like it, why don’t you find somewhere else?’
Mrs Heaton’s upper lip curled and the lower side of her right eye twitched. She fought to hold in her reaction, then turned to pick up a bottle of gin from the sideboard and disappeared into her bedroom. It was the last time they saw her for two days.
***
Lottie snapped out of her reverie and watched the red car pull up outside the house and Mrs Heaton climb out a little unsteadily. She was back from another supposed visit to her sister’s, the excuse Mrs Heaton used to leave them for days at a time. Lottie watched her pick her way up the front path and heard the key make several attempts to find the lock. Lottie had no desire to step out of the room and greet her mother-in-law.
She looked at the cot in the corner and smiled at her child. Mrs Heaton kept a distance from the baby when possible. She had brought Craig up as a single mother and, although she’d been keen to take in Lottie and keep the young family together, she had no wish to be part of it. Most evenings she went out and returned the worse for wear. Lottie and Craig had space to themselves to watch television, Craig playing games of Snake on his phone and lifting his eyes every so often to catch up with the programme, Lottie half-listening to the presenter and half-listening to the baby monitor plugged into the wall next to her.
It would take most of the evening to change and feed the baby and then settle him back. Loneliness seeped into the cracks of her life so easily.
When she had lost the baby, it had brought them together. Craig had changed. He had barely left Lottie’s side, making meals for her and running errands, almost as though he had something to make up for. Lottie had felt stranded. Living in their home without a purpose, married to a man she had never fallen in love with, and yet she felt her best option was to give him a chance.
Once he’d left school Craig had got a job at Marks & Spencer. ‘Good promotion prospects there, love,’ slurred Mrs Heaton. ‘You’ll be a manager by the time you’re twenty-three. He’s got a wonderful sense of organisation our Craig, hasn’t he, Lottie?’
Lottie smiled and nodded. She wondered how different her life would have been if Craig had been able to organise a condom.
‘He’s a diamond in the rough, is our Craig.’
Lottie knew what she meant, but she saw Craig through new eyes. To her, he had simply become a diamond. Their world could be as rough and unpredictable as the choppiest of seas, but it never seemed to affect him. She saw him shine with an inner beauty that had never been there in the schoolboy, and that was what had won her over. Lottie loved his sparkle. Suddenly the poser on the fence from school seemed to have turned into a man who adored her. And one evening, while Mrs Heaton was out in search of gin and company, she rewarded his adoration.
Craig played the role of father to be to perfection. When the time came, he held Lottie’s hand and burst into tears of relief and joy at the sight of the baby. Through her exhaustion, Lottie smiled at him then looked at the baby laying on her bare skin. She cried the sweetest tears, knowing this was the happiest moment of her life.
On their arrival back home, Craig’s mother kept her distance from both of them. Lottie realised that Mrs Heaton didn’t expect the couple to spoil her life for much longer. Within weeks of the birth, she started reading aloud ads for flats in the local paper and often commented about having ‘looked in the newsagent’s window’ for nice cheap accommodation.
One Tuesday afternoon she returned triumphant. ‘I’ve found you somewhere to live. A lovely studio flat. Its got its own little entrance. I think you’ll like it. If you’re careful, with Craig’s wage and your child benefit you should manage just fine.’
Lottie wasn’t sure what to say. Although occasionally she’d dreamed of having her own home with Craig, at least there was her mother-in-law to interfere. In their own flat she’d be on her own with the baby for the entire day while Craig was away at work. Not for the first time, Lottie felt a little sick at the thought of the solitude.
‘And then as soon as he goes to nursery, Lottie, you could get a couple of hours work at a supermarket or something.’ Mrs Heaton had booked a viewing to see the flat that afternoon.
The studio flat was a bedsit in all but name, one sizeable room at the back of a Victorian house with its own front door at the end of an overgrown path to the side of the house. Opening the door, Lottie’s heart sank. Painted magnolia and sparsely furnished, the room had a large double bed shoved into one corner. A battered chest of drawers was propping up a wardrobe that looked as if it might collapse as soon as they hung anything in it. A sofa with an odour of wet dog stood against one wall and, in front of it, a small scratched dining table and three chairs. There was an enormous bay window that overlooked the rear garden of the house; it made the place feel exposed to the ragged unkempt lawn and forbidding hedgerow of trees.
In the far corner of the room was a recess with a compact kitchen. A huge old American fridge stood in the corner of the living area. Off the hallway was a bathroom with a toilet, sink and a shower and some sort of pink mould on the tiles. The only thing in the place’s favour was its price.
***
Lottie scrubbed the flat from top to bottom. She put the baby’s cot in the bay window. As cash was scarce, she visited local charity shops and found two mismatching curtains, some cushions and a rug. Mrs Heaton gave them a few pieces of crockery which didn’t match, and a belated wedding present of a second-hand microwave.
It was a brief walk from their new flat to a parade of shops which had a small convenience store, a chemist’s and a newsagent’s. Often that was as far as Lottie felt like going. When the baby needed to sleep, Lottie felt like sleeping too, but often this was the only time she had to do her cooking and cleaning.
Craig became less and less involved in the family. He was trying to do his best in his job, but Lottie wished he had a little more time for his child. Sex was perfunctory, both of them seemingly having lost the desire for it. Afterwards Lottie would lie still and let loneliness wash over her while Craig showered. She would cry for her misfortune, for the things that had brought her here. She felt as if concrete were drying in her chest, but she forced herself up from the bed to attend to the baby or put something on a plate in the microwave for Craig’s dinner.
One day she woke up feeling calm after the reboot of sleep. Craig had left early and her day stretched ahead with possibilities. After she’d done her jobs, she longed to get out of the flat for a long walk. She bundled up the baby and pushed the pram past the shops and up the hill into town. After a while, she realised she would pass the home where she had spent so much time with Little Girl.
She stood on the opposite side of the road and looked at the house, remembering how large it had seemed when she’d first arrived all those years ago. A cool wind blew and she pulled her coat around her. A chill of memory. The passing time had made the place look smaller and much less daunting. Here she was, a mother with a child, no longer a helpless girl climbing into a car and trying not to look back.
She pictured Little Girl standing on the steps and felt a sudden rip of sadness. There was no joy inside her and she wanted to walk away and leave the past behind. Something in her stomach told her she had done wrong.
Taking a deep breath, she pushed the pram up the steps and rang the doorbell. An unfamiliar motherly figure in a green overall came to the door. ‘Can I help you?’
‘I was wondering …’ She asked for Little Girl by name.
‘Nobody here by that name. But then I’ve only been here two months, love. You wait a minute.’ She disappeared.
Lottie gripped the handle of the pushchair. If Little Girl was here, would the sight of Lottie’s baby heal the rift that had torn their friendship apart? Could she say sorry? Should she?
The woman returned. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. I know who you mean now. I’ve checked the records. She’s no longer with us, not been here for a long time now.’
The disappointment welled up in Lottie’s throat. She nodded and drew the pram handle towards her.
‘But we do know what happened to her. Nothing nasty.’ The woman beamed with pride. ‘She was one of our success stories. A lovely couple came to meet her and fostered her. Special people. She went to live in Dubai.’