‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’ll make a note of your concerns, confidentially of course.’
I lower the vehicle and replace the hubcap. ‘All done,’ I say through a wide smile, before tapping the side of my head. ‘It’s easy when you know how.’
Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.
The house is silent, still, as if holding its breath. I lean into the hallway wall, claustrophobia closing in all around me. Carol left twenty minutes ago, her heavy leather satchel swung over her shoulder, no doubt containing a referral to social services recommending that Cory be removed from my care. I know what she thinks of me; that I’m a useless mother, a blundering wreck incapable of caring for her newborn child. I can’t say I blame her, not really. After all, the house is an absolute pigsty and Cory’s in such a poor routine he’s practically feral. She called him ‘a poor mite’, didn’t she? My son, my precious little miracle, reduced to a hungry, wailing ‘mite’. Tears burn the back of my throat as I roll her comments round and round inside my mind, embarrassment giving way to fear.
She didn’t mention my past though… perhaps she doesn’t know?
James attempted to call me back just after she left but I didn’t answer. I don’t want to speak to him – not yet, not until I know what exactly it is I’m dealing with. I hold the card in my hand, still sheathed in its glossy envelope. Why did it have to arrive today? Why did it have to arrive at all? Over the past two weeks I have almost convinced myself that the card at the hospital was innocent, a well-wisher who’d forgotten to sign their name, maybe even a member of the church congregation who attend Mass across the road on a Sunday morning. Now I know, even before I open it, that I was stupid to ever believe I could live Happily Ever After.
I don’t want to open the card but I know I will. ‘Breathe, Louisa. One thing you can see, one thing you can touch, one thing you can hear.’ My counsellor’s words bounce back to me, or ex-counsellor I should say. When I fell pregnant with Cory I stopped going to see her, believing everything was going to be all right, that the panic attacks would cease to exist once I became a mother. I look down again at the light-blue envelope, the sweat from my fingertips leaving inky fingerprints around its edges. I see the scrawled red handwriting on the front, like a doctor’s penned prescription, my name slanting so far to the left that I fear it may topple down.
As I begin to peel open the fold, blood thunders in my ears, the sound deafening. I slide the card out of the envelope, the embossed lettering on the front like a thousand wasp stings underneath my fingertips. ‘You don’t have to look.’ But yet, even as I whisper the platitude to myself, my eyes are already seeing.
The stork stares up at me like an old friend, his sharp orange bill piercing through a baby-blue blanket. A small infant with hair redder than fire grips tightly hold of it as if he’s about to fall.
I open up the card, the familiar words bleeding together on the page. A Bible quote, the same quote which turned my stomach the day I gave birth to my son.
The day I gave birth to our son.
‘For this is my child, with him I am well pleased.’ Matthew 3: 17
CHAPTER EIGHT
Louisa
Then
Mummy once said that a stork delivered me on Christmas Day. She said she didn’t mind much because Dad had pissed the Christmas dinner up the wall and there was nowt on telly. I said I didn’t think you could piss out a turkey and she laughed until her eyes burst.
When Mummy got dead I wondered if the stork might come back for me but he never did. I suppose he was too busy opening his presents off Santa or maybe there just wasn’t any other mummies who wanted me.
‘Come on, lovely, out of the car.’
The strange lady pokes her head through a small gap between the driver’s seat and the back window, so our noses are almost touching. She has short brown hair and a funny accent, making the word car sound like the middle of an apple. She told me her name is Beverley, but the policeman, who looked after me yesterday and gave me a candy cane, said her name was Mrs Budd, so I think she might be telling me porky pies. Mummy used to say that a liar’s pants would go on fire, but it’s snowing so I think Beverley might be okay. Even though she’s a liar she’s pretty to look at. Her face is kind and her smile looks like it’s been painted on with permanent marker.
‘Come on, sweetie. It’s getting chilly.’ Beverly squats down by the car as she speaks to me, but this time she doesn’t stick her head back through the gap, which I’m glad about because she smells too flowery. ‘This is just until we find you a forever family.’ I am confused now, and wonder why I am being sent into a place called The Foster Home, which isn’t my house, and where I have to stay until somebody called social services finds me a forever family. I don’t want a forever family, I just want them to fix Mummy. I want them to rub away the Ribena stain from around her neck and blow air back into her, like she used to do to my armbands when we went swimming on a Sunday lunchtime.
I want them to draw a smile on Mummy’s face… with permanent marker just like Beverley’s
Beverley is telling the truth about one thing though. It is really cold in the back of the car. I decide I will go into The Foster Home, just to warm up, even though it doesn’t look like a real house. It’s very big and doesn’t even have any bricks on it! The front, the bit where the windows and doors go, looks like icing, a bit like the birthday cake Mummy made me a long time ago when she was having a Tigger day. Mummy’s Tigger days were mostly fun but sometimes a little scary. She’d dance and sing and twirl me around, sometimes until I was sick. She’d wake me up in the middle of the night with a plate full of cookies she’d baked and tell me how she’d thought of an idea to make us rich. She’d talk so fast I couldn’t really understand her, like when you keep your finger down on a cassette’s fast-forward button. When Mummy was being Tigger she couldn’t sleep and when she was Eeyore she couldn’t wake up. I always just wished she could be Winnie the Pooh.
The garden in The Foster Home is humongous, with pink and purple flowers dotted around the edges. It reminds me of Oz, the part where Dorothy, Tinman, Scarecrow and Lion skip along on their journey to see the Wizard. But the flowers in Oz are poisonous and I’m worried that these flowers are poisonous too. I cover my mouth and don’t breathe as we walk up the path, just in case.
The door to The Foster Home creaks open, even though Beverley hasn’t knocked on the huge knocker which looks like a horseshoe. A lady answers the door. Her hair is long and black, making her green eyes almost pop out of her face. Her nose is really pointy and she looks thin enough to snap. I squeeze Beverley’s hand really hard. I want to tell her that I don’t like The Foster Home, that I want to go back to my real house. I know Mummy is in the sky now but I want to tell Beverley that she doesn’t need to worry about me because I can make toast and tea. I am a big girl now and I looked after Mummy well during her Eeyore days. It is while I am saying all of these things in my head that the lady at the door bends down, so our eyelashes are almost touching. My eyelashes aren’t long and dark like hers are; they are short and fair, the colour of Garfield.
‘Hello, Louisa, sweetie. I’m Esther.’