Etched on Me Read online

  I hugged one of the pillows to my chest. “Just covering your arse?”

  Of course she couldn’t own up to that, but I detected a sly admission in her careful reply. “Well, I do take concerns raised in referrals quite seriously. But in your case?” She smiled. “I’m not overly concerned.”

  I leaned my head back against the wall. Gazed at my harm-free fourth anniversary bouquet on the kitchenette counter. Let out a long puff of breath.

  “Now,” she continued, “I do think it’s a good idea to book some extra sessions with the health visitor. Assuming that’s all right with you?”

  “Course it is,” I said. And there wasn’t any reason for it not to be. Gloria had already explained to me that health visitors were nice ladies who popped round in the early weeks after the baby was born, to make sure everything was going well with the breastfeeding and that you weren’t batty from lack of sleep. She said they’d helped her loads with Curran back in the day, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to take them up on the offer. Besides, I was so grateful not to be facing a tribunal that Francesca could have told me, We’d like you to spend the rest of your pregnancy standing naked on your head, and I’d have replied, Sure, no problem, just give me an hour to get my swollen feet in the air.

  “And if you ever feel like you’re on the verge of a relapse,” she continued, “I want you to ring me or Dr. P. immediately.”

  I nodded. “Got you both on speed dial, still.”

  “Good.” Her own mobile jangled, and she reached into her skirt pocket to retrieve it. “Francesca Fleming-Jones.” Her face went stark. “We do? . . . With a police escort? . . . Right. Be there soon as I can.” She hung up the phone with an efficient snap and stood. “Sorry to dash, Lesley, but I’ve an urgent situation with another client.”

  She didn’t elaborate further, but I could tell from the furrowy, uncomfortable look on her face, and the way her hand jittered as it hoisted her folio bag from the floor, that she was on her way to take a child into emergency custody.

  When I walked her to the door, she gave me a hurried squeeze. “You needn’t fret over this, love,” she said. “I’ll vouch for you.”

  • • •

  That night, Imogen and I went up to Alexandra Palace for Bonfire Night. We were too old for winning giant hammers and goldfish at the funfair, and I didn’t plan to partake in the beer garden on account of my “condition,” but you can’t really call yourself a North Londoner unless you go for the fireworks. I’ve been every year of my life that I can remember, save for the two I spent in hospital.

  When I was tiny, I’d walk around the stalls with Mum and Dad, tucked snugly between, each of them holding one of my mittened hands. Every few feet they’d swing me up off the ground, and I’d giggle. Later on, I’d go with my school friends, compulsively checking my watch to keep an eye on curfew, knowing I’d have closet hell to pay if I got home late.

  My baby wouldn’t get to experience that first kind of Bonfire Night, but it wouldn’t have to experience the second, either. A more-than-decent trade-off, I thought, now that the long-memorized date of my father’s release from prison had just passed.

  I listened to Imogen crunch a toffee apple now as we watched little boys slam their motorized cars into each other on the dodgems.

  “Look at that one,” Im said, pointing to a gap-toothed redhead. “On a flipping mission, he is.”

  I waggled my finger sternly at the bulge under my hoodie. “You,” I said, “are never getting a driving license, ever.”

  “Oh my God,” Immi said, “you’re talking to it already.”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “My book says it’s good for them. Prebirth bonding and all that.”

  “More like bondage.” She licked her fingers with a satisfied smack. “Know what you’re having yet?”

  “A giant squid.”

  Imogen whacked me on the arm. “I meant the baby’s gender, stupid.”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “Well, have you a preference?”

  “Girl,” I said without hesitation, taking a sip of my cocoa.

  “That’ll be cute for a few years,” Imogen said. “Until she hits the teen stage.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “let’s hope the trouble’s not hereditary.”

  Soon as I spoke the words, I felt my chest constrict with a tightness far worse than the usual heartburn, its grip so relentless that, no matter how many times I tried to calm myself by envisioning this scene the same time next year, strolling through the games stalls with a squirmy eight-month-old cuddled up against my chest in a front pack, it wouldn’t let go.

  • • •

  When I didn’t hear back from Francesca for a week, I figured no news was good news, but then I got a letter in the post with social services’ hunter-green-and-lime logo on its envelope. Dear Miss Holloway, it read, we are writing to inform you that your new assigned worker in our ongoing child protection enquiry is Ms Sophie Burnham.

  New worker? Ongoing enquiry? Now I was starting to wonder if Immi was on to something. I rang Francesca countless times, but her mobile went straight to voicemail, so I phoned her office’s main line.

  “Ms. Fleming-Jones is on medical leave at the moment,” the tired-sounding man on the other end said.

  What the fuck? She’d seemed totally healthy. Didn’t look pregnant like me, either. “Any idea when she’ll be back?”

  His voice went downright shaky. “I’m . . . I’m honestly not sure.”

  I looked up her home number, but it was unlisted, no doubt to protect her from stalkers like myself. Found her email on the Children’s Services website (just below the photo of her and me at my graduation, with its caption of Client success story: Lesley Holloway, aged 21, earns degree after an extraordinary journey to recovery), and dashed off a quick Hi, hope you’re feeling better, please ring when you get a sec note. No response.

  And then, just when I was about to give up and leave myself at the mercy of Sophie Burnham, I got a phone call from Francesca’s husband.

  The emergency case she ran off to the day she met with me, he said, had gone without a hitch, but two nights later, after a long day spent working well past suppertime, Francesca was unlocking her door in a near-empty car park when the father of the little girl she’d taken into care—big burly guy with an assault record—came up behind her, grabbed her around the neck, and slammed her head multiple times into a nearby concrete pillar.

  Francesca’s husband relayed all these details in a monotone so numb I knew he was at least halfway up to his own ceiling, but as he went on his voice began to crack. In the ambulance, he said, she’d come to screaming and disoriented, with no idea of who she was or where she was, thrashing so hard the medics had to restrain her.

  At that point, I had to bow my head and press a hand to my mouth so as not to cry.

  “I don’t mean to distress you with all this,” he told me, as if sensing my silent anguish. “I just want you to know that, during her lucid moments in hospital, she talks about you constantly. Can’t even print her own name, my girl, but she’s drawing page after page of scribbles, desperate to finish your assessment.”

  Soon as I heard that, it was all over, my shoulders quaking with quiet sobs.

  “Can—can I visit her?” I whispered.

  “I’d happily let you,” he said, “but she’s so . . . so combative right now, they’re trying to keep the stimulation to a minimum.”

  I thought of her firm arms holding me fast through the years.

  “Then keep her safe, and give her my love,” I said.

  • • •

  A few days later, he rang me again with an update. She’d stabilized enough, he said, to be transferred to a rehabilitation center for people with traumatic brain injuries out in Kent. No visitors other than immediate family till she’d settled in and stopped throwing things, but he’d let me know soon as I’d been issued clearance.

  “Oh, and one other thing,” he said. “For what it’s worth, g
iven her state, Fran told me to tell you you’re in excellent hands with Sophie Burnham.”

  18

  “Eww, that looks like it should be on the conveyor belt at Yo! Sushi,” Imogen whispered to me the following Tuesday, as my sonogram technician—a stocky, cheerful-faced woman whose name tag read Monica—turned a squirt bottle upside down and squeezed out orange-hued jelly onto my bump.

  “Some moral support you are,” I said, shuddering, as the cold goop hit my bare skin.

  “Sorry,” Monica said. “Always comes out chilly.”

  “No worries,” I said, more than willing to take a little discomfort if it meant getting to see the tiny being whom Immi and I now referred to as Squidlet, if it meant proving that everything really was growing—and going—right.

  “Do you care to know the sex?” Monica asked.

  “Yes, please,” I said.

  “She’ll take all the sex she can get, our Lesley,” Imogen said.

  “Shut it, twatwaffle,” I said, and punched her on the arm.

  “Now, now, girls,” Monica said, her voice light but tart, like lemonade without enough sugar. She pulled her cart closer to the padded exam table on which I lounged and snaked a squat plastic wand out from its holder.

  On my other side, Imogen snickered.

  “Oh, save your dirty mind for Mr. Daily Mail,” I muttered, but I couldn’t help giggling with nerves as Monica turned on her little TV-screen-with-superpowers and began tilting the wand to and fro on my belly.

  The screen flickered with dense gray shadows.

  “Arm!” Imogen squealed. “See it, Lesley?”

  “Where?” I asked, squinting, as I lifted my head from the paper-cased pillow to get a better look.

  Monica slid an experienced finger across the screen. “Right there.”

  At first I couldn’t see it, but then, like one of those drawings of faces and vases melded together, the contours of Squidlet’s wiggly limbs dawned on me.

  “Aww, bless,” I said. “Look at that.”

  “She’s waving at you,” Monica said.

  I was about to coo again when I realized which pronoun the tech had just used.

  “She?” I asked. “You said she?”

  Monica nodded.

  “You got your girl!” Imogen said, grinning.

  I eased back onto the pillow. Pressed my quaking palms to my face. Tasted the wet warmth of my own elated tears spilling down my cheeks and past my curved-back lips.

  “I can’t finish my scan unless you stop crying, love,” Monica said, patting my shoulder.

  “You’re dripping snot, Les,” Imogen said. “Here.”

  I wiped my nose with the tissue Immi handed me, and watched as Monica skimmed the wand over my bump again.

  “Is that her face?” I asked, pointing to a hollow-cheeked, angular shape that looked freakishly like a UFO abductee’s sketch of an alien head.

  Monica nodded. “I know it looks peculiar to you, but to my eye everything appears just fine,” she said. “Well done, Mum.”

  “Hear that?” Imogen said. “No more crap high-risk status.”

  “Well, that’s up to your midwife,” Monica said. She punched a button on her console, and it spat out a glossy scrap of paper. “One for your memory book.”

  I lunged greedily for the printout. It was a terrible image, with Squidlet’s body a lit-up blur and her head turned in creepy profile, all bony skull, but to me it was the dearest thing I had ever seen. My little alien, I thought, pressing the photo to my chest as if wrapping my arms around her. My girl.

  • • •

  All the rest of that afternoon, I answered phones with a giddy “Shoresound Studios, how may I direct you?” and emailed back and forth with Immi, debating the merits and flaws of a gendered layette. (Come on, Les, pink is flippin’ adorable!)

  When my mobile rang at three, I assumed it was her calling to entice me out for a shopping spree after work. Still cradling my ultrasound photo in one hand, I reached for my phone with the other and scanned the name on the caller ID.

  S Burnham.

  Once I saw that, I got so nervous all I could do was sit there, dumbfounded and cowardly, waiting for the message. When I checked it, the voice I heard was low and husky, a bit older sounding than Francesca’s. “Miss Holloway, could you please stop by my office to sign a few release forms? I’ll be here till six.”

  • • •

  The forty-ish woman who met me in the lobby was tall and thin and angular, her dark hair cut short in a style equal parts gamine and spiky, her suit jacket host to an array of extraneous zips. Sounds imposing, that Sophie, but I had to say, there was something refreshing about the efficient way she handed me her card, then hustled me up the lift and into her office.

  “Rather awkward being the hand-me-down client, isn’t it?” she said as we sat down.

  “Little bit, yeah,” I said.

  “Well, if it helps, Francesca spoke quite highly of you.” Her face darkened. “Before the, ah . . . Her injury.” She looked down, flipping through a manila folder. “Of course, she never submitted a recommendation, so I’m afraid we’re going to have to play catch-up.”

  “Which means what?” I said slowly.

  “A records review, first off. Both our internal files from when you were in care, and your psychiatrist’s case notes.” She slid a stack of forms across to me. “Which I’ll need your permission to access.”

  Part of me was impressed that she’d actually asked instead of just faxing Dr. P. for the goods, but another wanted to say, Come on, let’s not make this so complicated, just set me up with those extra health visitor drop-ins.

  Of course I never suggested that. Not only because there was no holy grail of documentation that could prove Francesca’s prior confidence in me, but also because, after an adolescence spent banging my head against walls and limitations, I was hungry to be recognized for more than my sullen fury, keen to represent: as a grown-up, humbly collaborative, Show me where the sticky labels are and I’ll sign.

  • • •

  Waterbirth can be a secure, relaxing way in which to deliver, chirped the leaflet I’d chosen for my waiting area reading at my midwife appointment the following afternoon. Given the hours I’d recently spent soaking my achy back and throbbing feet in my own lavender-bath-salt-scented tub, I didn’t doubt it; in fact, I’d a mind to ask Tasmin if, now that my scan had come back normal, I could add a nice big soaking pool in my (as-of-yet-undrawn-up) birth plan. The dowdy-covered pregnancy handbook had made it sound like perilous hippie nonsense, but I reckoned it’d be far better for Squidlet to go from moist warmth to moist warmth rather than to be stuck under bright lights and poked at.

  In what I took to be a harbinger of approval, Tasmin entered the exam room all bustly-brisk-bright. “First off,” she said, opening my chart, “I’d like to thank you for cooperating with the social services referral.”

  “Sure, of course,” I said. “I just want the best for her.”

  “Ah, that’s right,” Tasmin said, with the slightest of smiles. “You’re having a daughter.” She glanced down at what I assumed to be my ultrasound results. “Quite healthy, too, from the looks of your scan.”

  I couldn’t help beaming, but I still aimed to phrase my next question as meekly as I could. “Reckon that might mean I’m low-risk now, yeah?”

  Tasmin chewed her bare lip for a moment before she spoke. “I’m afraid not, Lesley.”

  What the hell? “Wait, but . . . You said at my last visit I was . . .” Eye-water. Lash-blink. Fuck. Don’t even. “Taking excellent care of myself.”

  “Yes, and that’s certainly true, but—”

  “Please,” I said, rubbing a hand over my damp eyes under the guise of pushing my hair back. “I don’t mean to be difficult. I’m just trying to understand how, if she’s healthy and I’m doing all the right things, I can still be—”

  “Lesley, look,” Tasmin said, so patronizingly gentle I itched to slap her, “the status isn�
�t some horrid stigma. Plenty of women are high-risk, for a variety of reasons. They might have diabetes, or high blood pressure, or—”

  A serious case of ex-nutterhood? I wanted to snap, but, true to team-player form, I refrained.

  “Okay,” I said softly, “so what does it mean?”

  “In most situations,” Tasmin said, leaning back in her rolling chair, “high-risk status simply involves keeping certain safeguards in place.”

  Jesus, enough white-paper speak already. “Like what?”

  Lo and behold, I thought I’d stumped her. She tilted her head. Blew out her breath. “Well, in your case,” she said, “I’ll want you closely monitored on the labor ward rather than in our birthing center.”

  “So . . . so no waterbirth option?”

  She shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

  Fucking cow. What was she so afraid of? Me drowning Squidlet? Fists balled, shoulders clenched, I had a mind to jump up and stomp out, shouting tirades about patient rights, but my body spoke for me, all snuffles and hiccups.

  Tasmin leaned forward, elbows on her knees, gaze locked on mine as she handed me a tissue.

  “Lesley,” she said, her voice somber, “our goal here is a thriving child and a stable mother. Not some idealized notion of the perfect birth.”

  Soon as she said that, I felt like a selfish, deluded teenager. Just who did I think I was, stupidly chasing candlelit, lavender-scented bliss? Only candles I ought to have been lighting were ones of gratitude that Tasmin was still willing to manage me instead of passing me off to some male obstetrician who’d have got his hands up my lady bits fast as you could say perinatology consult.

  “You’re right,” I said, nodding vigorously, dabbing my eyes.

  • • •

  By the time I got home, my forcibly-simmered-down indignation had risen to a roiling boil. What the hell did a psychiatric “history” have to do with the kind of birth I could be “allowed”? And what right did she have to talk down to me like that?

  I paced the paltry width of my studio’s floor: three steps one way, then the other. I hadn’t felt this agitated in years, and the freshness of the returned feeling gave it a frightening edge. You are not in crisis, I told myself, looking to the willowy grandeur of my anniversary bouquet as proof, but neither the reminder nor the lush blossoms quelled my jittery compulsion to tread and retread. I tried all my old mindfulness tricks—cataloging every blue object in the room (duvet, dish towel), then every green one ( jacket, teacup) to distract myself; inhaling and exhaling slowly—but nothing worked. The angry thrum of pressure built in my veins. I needed to open, scratch, break.