She’s beautiful. Her hair, already shoulder length, is thick and shiny, not dark like mine, but almost identical to her father’s dirty blonde tone. There is no doubt in my mind that this is Kayla.
I think of Claire, of all the hours I spent sitting across from her while she let me talk and say whatever I wanted or needed to, how she helped me see that I can be the mother Kayla deserves. And now I’m here, seeing my daughter for the first time since I had to walk away.
The woman she’s with is holding her hand as they cross the road, and Kayla gazes up at her, smiling as they walk together. They are clearly both comfortable with each other.
It stands to reason that Aiden will have needed childcare. He’s an architect and runs his own small business, so there is no way he could have left his job to be a stay-at-home father. The last I knew, his parents lived in Edinburgh, and were years away from retirement, so I doubt they would have moved back here, even though I’m sure they will have wanted to help out.
I have had just over two years to build myself up to this moment, but I’m still not prepared for the surge of grief that overwhelms me. Today was just meant to be about seeing her, even just catching the briefest sight of her, and I wasn’t prepared to feel so bereft. Helpless. Guilty.
Then there is the email. It’s all about to catch up with me and I can’t let that happen.
Kayla is nearly two and a half now, and I know nothing about her, except what she was like in those early newborn weeks. What’s her favourite colour? I like to imagine she likes royal blue, as I do, but looking at her now it’s clear she loves pink. My absence will have shaped her, turned her into a child she might not have been had I not left.
Even though there’s no chance either of them will know who I am, I keep my distance. I almost feel as if there is an invisible barrier stopping me getting too close. As if we live in two different worlds and will never be capable of connecting to each other’s.
Being here, watching her like this, makes me feel like a criminal. Yet here I stay because there’s no way I’m turning back.
Aiden won’t have shown Kayla any photos of me, I’m sure of that. Once he’d come to terms with what I did, although probably never able to accept it, he would have tried to bury all thoughts of me and the life we had together. That’s the kind of person he was; he dealt with things by pushing them aside, pretending they didn’t exist and, instead, focusing on the here and now. Perhaps he had it right. Maybe things would be different if I hadn’t been so terrified of the future and I’d instead learned to live in the moment.
The woman and my daughter reach the other side of the road – heading to the park, I’m sure – and just as they step onto the pavement, Kayla stumbles and falls to the ground. The woman struggles to maintain the grip on her tiny hand. Instinctively I rush forward, but quickly stop myself. She is fine, and the woman is lifting her up and hugging her tightly, opening her mouth to utter words of reassurance. Sharp pains shoot through my abdomen, threatening to bring me to my knees. That should be me comforting her. I fight the urge to run to her and grab her.
After a few moments, Kayla begins to laugh. I can’t hear it, but the joy on my daughter’s face is too painful to witness. Turning away, I head back to East Putney Tube station.
Now I know more than ever what I have to do. It might cost me everything, but I’m doing this for my daughter.
‘She’s not having a good day today,’ Jo, one of the carers, tells me.
Most evenings I come here, sitting with Mum for hours until she wants to go to bed, and every time I wait for them to tell me that today she’s been happy, that they actually saw her laugh, or even produced a hint of a smile. It’s probably too much to hope that she will have taken part in one of the activities the staff arrange on a daily basis.
This is a decent place. I wanted Mum to be somewhere close to my flat in Southgate, and it was a brand-new building that even now, two years after being opened, still somehow looks clean and fresh. There’s no denying the unmistakable smell here that speaks of illness and loss of bodily functions, mingled with lavender and all the other fragrances that are used to mask everything else, but I’m so used to it that I no longer notice. All the staff I’ve come across are friendly, and I know Mum’s well looked after here. No, it’s more than that – the staff actually really like her, I can tell. But still, I never wanted this for her.
‘She had an argument with Matilda and accused her of stealing from her,’ Jo is telling me as she puts some towels away in the store cupboard.
I raise my eyebrows, wondering if it’s possible that Matilda might have actually taken something. That this time Mum isn’t mistaken and knows what she’s talking about. I mention this to Jo.
She shakes her head. ‘I wish that were true but Matilda’s been in bed all day with a cold.’
Jo knows me well now; she’s been here from the beginning, and I’m here three times a week, four if I can manage it around tutoring. I’m grateful that sometimes she’ll sit with Mum and me, keeping us both company until she’s needed elsewhere.
‘Okay, thanks for telling me. I’ll go and make sure she’s okay.’
I rush along the corridor to Mum’s room but hesitate outside her door because I never know what to expect. Usually she’s happy to see me but not always. There have been occasions when she’s screamed at me to leave her alone, as if I’m a stranger, right before begging me to unlock the door of the hotel so she can get the bus home. It’s right across the road, she always insists, even though Pine View is nowhere near a bus stop.
‘Hi Mum, it’s Eve,’ I say, pushing through the door. The smell of her perfume wafts across to me, mingled with the smell of cleaning products. Chanel N˚5. Mum might often forget who people are, or what things do, but she never forgets to put on her perfume every morning.
I try to leave everything behind when I come here – all the baggage that weighs me down – and focus only on her. As hard as it is being here, seeing her like this, in some ways it’s also an escape for me.
She’s sitting by the window today, staring out of it with an open book on her lap. At first I’m surprised – she gave up reading long ago – until I realise it’s her photo album.
‘Eve, I’m so glad you’re here. They’ve… they’ve locked me in again and I can’t get out. I keep telling them I’ll miss the bus if they don’t open the doors, but they won’t listen! Just what kind of hotel is this?’ She turns back to the window. ‘And it’s raining, have you seen my umbrella? The red one with the yellow stripes?’
I head over and put my arm around her. She’s describing the umbrella she had when I was a little girl, one I don’t remember seeing as I got older.
‘Don’t worry, Mum, I’m here now and everything will be okay.’
Her shoulders are scrawny, as though there’s barely a millimetre of flesh separating her skin from the bones underneath.
‘You’ll help me get to the bus stop?’ Her eyes are large circles, pleading with me, and I can barely keep my tears from falling. I need to be strong for her. I’m the only security she has in this unfamiliar world. ‘It’s just across the road, you know. I really need to get home. I’ll need my umbrella, though. Now, where could it be?’
‘Yes, Mum. I’ll help you get to the bus stop, and we’ll look for your umbrella, but why don’t we have a cup of tea first? I can tell you all about my day.’
She loves to hear my stories, even though she won’t remember a thing I’ve said once I walk out of here. There is never anything exciting to tell her, so maybe it’s just the lull of my voice she likes to hear.
There’s no kettle to make hot drinks in Mum’s room – it wouldn’t be safe – so I head to the communal small lounge to make us both a tea, focusing on each step of the process so that anxiety doesn’t cripple me. I’ve read all about mindfulness, how good it is for healing, but it’s easier said than done actually practising it. Making tea for Mum anywhere other than her own house will always feel strange. She’s been here for just over a year now, and every day I’m riddled with guilt that I couldn’t continue to look after her myself. It was the third time a stranger found her wandering around by the busy main road that forced me to realise I had to do this.
When I get back and hand her a cup of tea, she thanks me and places it on the side table. She’ll forget it’s there now unless I keep reminding her to drink.
‘You’ve been looking at the photo album.’
She nods. ‘Yes, would you like to see it?’
I tell her I would, and don’t mention that I could describe every photo in there and the order they follow, including the clothes everyone is wearing.
‘Here, look!’ she says, flipping the pages until she spots one.
I glance at the photo she’s pointing to. It’s the one of her holding me as a baby, where I’m wearing what looks like a christening gown, even though Mum insists it was just one of my usual outfits.
‘Beautiful. Look at that face,’ she continues.
And as I’ve expected, I feel the inevitable stab through my heart, because it’s not me I see but Kayla. We were almost identical as babies. Quickly I turn the page because I don’t want to think of it now, or picture her in the park with her nanny. Most of all, I don’t want to remember my lie.
Thankfully, Mum doesn’t seem to mind, and she’s happy for me to flip through the rest of the album. All the other photos are harmless. My dad. Grandparents. Me as a young girl, much older than Kayla.
When we’ve finished, I read to her and then it’s time to leave so Mum can have dinner with the other residents. There are only five of them on this level, which I’m thankful for. Mum has not enjoyed the few occasions when they’ve had all the residents eating together in the large dining room downstairs.
I stand and pick up our mugs of tea; both have been barely touched today.
‘Where is she?’ Mum suddenly asks while I’m pouring the tea down the bathroom sink.
‘Who, Mum?’ I’m used to this kind of question and wonder to whom she’s referring this time. An old friend or colleague? It will be someone she has only just remembered, a memory that’s formed suddenly.
‘Your baby,’ she says. ‘Where’s your baby? What have you done with her?’
And the mug I’m holding drops to the floor, smashing to pieces.
Jamie is waiting outside my flat when I get home, and my heart sinks. It shouldn’t, but of course it does given the day I’ve had. My instinct always tells me that he’s a decent man, but company is the last thing I need right now. And sometimes – a lot of the time – I can’t bear to be touched.
‘Maybe it’s time I had a key?’ he asks with a smile. ‘Your neighbours will think I’m a stalker or something!’
I live on the top floor of a converted Victorian property on a fairly busy road, but no one pays any attention to anyone in London. There are faded Neighbourhood Watch stickers on lampposts, but I’ve lived here for two years and nobody has ever held a meeting or introduced themselves as running the scheme. ‘I don’t even know them,’ I tell him.
Jamie’s smile disappears. ‘I was only joking, Eve.’
I try to offer him some reassurance, but my attempt falls short. I can’t stop thinking about Kayla, and my pregnant student, and how badly I handled Mum’s mention of my baby. She hasn’t brought Kayla up for months now, and I thought I was safe from further questions. In the beginning when she’d ask, I’d simply tell her that Kayla was with Aiden, that I’d bring her next time, and soon enough Mum stopped asking.
‘Do you mean me when I was a baby?’ I’d asked when I’d recovered from the shock of her question. Despicable. Haven’t I done enough harm to people without adding more lies?
‘No. No! The baby,’ she’d insisted. ‘My baby. Your baby.’ And she’d begun to get agitated, standing up and cradling her bony arms.
‘Where’s the baby?’ she’d repeated, ignoring my attempts to comfort her.
And then I’d sat there and told her that I’d had no choice but to walk out on my baby and husband – that staying would have been the worst thing I could have done – because I couldn’t bear keeping it from her any more. Or was it because I knew she wouldn’t remember what I’d said the next time I saw her? I really hope it’s the former.
She’d stared at me for agonising minutes, and I prepared myself for an attack. When she finally did speak, it was to ask me if I had the latest bus timetable.
‘Are you okay?’ Jamie forces me back to the present. I still haven’t opened the front door.
‘Just exhausted.’ I offer a smile.
‘Well, we could get a takeaway – save either of us cooking?’ He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. ‘Look, I know we hadn’t made plans to see each other tonight, and you’ve probably got a ton of work to do, but… well, I missed you. Ah, look, I’ve said it now. I missed you. And I bloody like you. A lot. What’s the point in playing games and pretending I don’t?’
I stare at him for a few seconds, unable to form a response. And he returns my stare, searching my face for a sign of anything positive, I’m sure.
‘Okay, then. I see I’ve made a mistake,’ he says when I can’t speak, and he turns away, brushing past me as he walks off.
I should go after him; he doesn’t deserve this. All he wants is a nice evening with me, so why can’t I just give that to him?
Because you need to go now. Go and get your daughter back before it’s too late.