Etched on Me Page 21

Shufflings. Mutters.

  “Look, I know I screwed things up, but—”

  Scuff, scuff, coming closer. I could see her now, in her pearl-buttoned wisteria cardigan, still wearing my rose pin. Framed photos of her and me—not a single one of him—arranged artfully above the same couch where we used to have our cuddles while watching Christmas specials. Oh, Lesley-lovely, she would say, mouth widening in amazement, arms reaching out to enfold me. It’s been so long. Too long.

  I put my hand on the doorknob, like I was reaching for her. My voice softer now. “Mum?”

  Silence.

  “Mummy?”

  Scuff, scuff, retreat.

  I pounded on the door. “Please, Mummy. Don’t go, Mummy. I’m scared.”

  The neighbor across the hall poked his head out. “Miss, is there a problem?”

  Careful. Wouldn’t want to harm your precious appeal prospects, now, would you?

  “No,” I whispered, hand pressed to my mouth. “I was just leaving.”

  • • •

  After that, I walked round the borough for what felt like ages, fists in my pockets, gaze dislocated and soft as it fell: on the Upper Street pedestrian walkway, full of chattering teenagers and yummy mummies; on the Spanish cantina, its fairy lights strung like luminous baby’s breath.

  Don’t even bother turning onto Theberton, Smack-Talker Brain scoffed. Your new family won’t let you in, either.

  I thought of my mobile still at home, no doubt full of panicked voicemails.

  Head back. Get cozy under the covers. You don’t have to swallow the whole bottle, just enough tablets to—

  Shut up shut up shut up.

  They’ll take you to Clare. You know they will. Picture it, Lesley-lovely: The three of you nestled in together. Her mouth on your belly, her nimble fingers . . .

  Breathe.

  You stay here, you lose.

  I turned onto Theberton Street.

  • • •

  It was Curran who answered the door. “Oh, good,” he said. “Mum’s been ringing you for—”

  He stopped. Peered into my face. “Les?”

  I tried to speak, but couldn’t.

  He took me by the arm and led me into the foyer. “Don’t move, okay? I’ll go get her.”

  I didn’t move. Well, anywhere except the ceiling.

  “Lesley.” Firm hands on my shoulders.

  I dropped down. My lips trembled as I stared foggily into Gloria’s gentle-but-alert face.

  “Hey, you,” she said softly.

  My eyes welled up again.

  “What’s going on?” She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, just as Sophie had. “Hmm?”

  Rough gag. Hard swallow.

  “Talk to me, honey.”

  Lip-purse. Breath-huff.

  “Not,” I managed. “Not safe.”

  “Okay.” She stepped nearer. Held my shoulders tighter. “Did you do anything?”

  Furious head-shake.

  “Attagirl. Call Dr. P.?”

  I shook my head again.

  “Well, then, let’s get on that.” She put her arm around me and led me towards the kitchen. “I’m guessing you haven’t eaten yet, eith—”

  “Auntie Lesley, Auntie Lesley!” Sveta shrieked, tearing down the stairs in her pajamas, Jascha following behind.

  “Svetlana,” he said, soon as he saw me, “go finish getting ready for bed.”

  “But I want to—”

  “Now, pazhalsta.”

  I knew I should smile at her when she stuck her tongue out at him, knew I ought to chuckle as she stomped back up, but all my emotional wires were snipped.

  “Here, Leslyochka.” Vera pushed a plate of leftover potato dumplings across the kitchen table to me.

  I stared straight ahead. Thank you, I wanted to say, but my words had evaporated again.

  Ungrateful bitch. Tribunal was right. You’re just a—

  “Yeah, hi, Dr. Patel. Lesley’s in pretty rough shape at the moment, and . . .”

  At my feet, Molly and Leopold whimpered for scraps and attention. I pictured them cuddled up next to me as the tablet haze took over. Silky fur, nuzzly noses. I knew where the medicine cupboard was. I could sneak a water glass. Dead doable. Dead, doable.

  “Gloria,” I said, my voice tinier than Squidlet’s toes. “I think I need to go to A and E.”

  • • •

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as they slipped the plastic bracelet on my wrist.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered as they escorted me to the stripped-down psychiatric cubicle.

  “Don’t be,” the nurse said. “We’d much rather have you walk in a little embarrassed than roll in a lot unconscious. Wouldn’t we, Mum?”

  “Damn straight,” Gloria said.

  After the nurse left, I turned out the lights and lay down. “You didn’t correct her,” I murmured to Gloria as she covered me with a stack of thin blankets.

  “Would you rather I had?”

  On her final tuck-in, I tunneled out of the waffle-weave pile and clasped her hand. “No.”

  • • •

  This time on the inpatient unit, there were no strip searches, no ogling men—in fact, no men at all. Apparently staff had got the memo that female patients weren’t sex toys and made the wards single-gender.

  What a flipping relief. Not just to know that, but to stay there, sheltered from the twin tyrannies of Your Miraculous Pregnancy and hunter-green-and-lime letterhead. Sure, the blinky-eyed camera still blinked, but even that felt like a plus. If I lingered under its watch long enough, I reckoned, maybe the grainy black-and-white evidence would accrue in my favor.

  Smack-Talker Brain of course snickered at such a pipe dream, but then the ward psychiatrist upped my (preggo-safe; I checked) meds dosage, and it shut its trap right quick. By the second day, I stopped pacing; by the third, I could feel Squidlet kick without the urge to slice my wrist.

  I had so many visitors I filled up the dayroom. They came bearing mandala coloring books and fuzzy slippers, Vera’s pastries and my guitar. Imogen trumped me in a game of dirty Pictionary; Gloria entertained me writing snarky captions inside the unit’s collection of celebrity magazines. (Doughnuts are for eating, not regurgitating. P.S. The ’80s phoned; they want your Lurex leggings back.)

  Best visit by far, though, was Sophie’s. Not for the surprise factor or her touching contriteness, but because she walked in with a plan.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” she said, sitting down across from Gloria and me at the dayroom’s most intimate table. “The proposal calls for your daughter to be placed with an approved foster carer, but it doesn’t specify whom.” She gave Gloria a tiny, sly smile.

  “Sophie,” I whispered. “That’s genius.” I turned to Gloria. “I mean, assuming you’re up for—”

  “Jesus, how doped are you?” She leaned over, smoothed my messy hair. “Of course I am.” Her voice somber now. “Of course I am.”

  She turned back to Sophie. “Give me the consent paperwork. Let’s do it.”

  “Not that straightforward, I’m afraid.”

  “Even though I’m preapproved? We still have the certificate from when we adopted Sveta.”

  “How long has it been since your last homestudy?”

  “Three . . .” She paused. “Almost four years.”

  Sophie grimaced. “Olivia will push for a new one, but I’ll work on her.”

  • • •

  Two days later, she came back with an update that was more like a litany of refusals:

  We don’t place newborns with couples over forty-five.

  Even if we did, you’ve got too many caretaking responsibilities already.

  Even if you didn’t, the reapproval process would take longer than the five weeks your surrogate daughter has left.

  Therefore, it is with great regret, Mr. and Mrs. Kremsky, that we inform you that you are not an appropriate fostering placement.

  “How?” I sobbed. “How can the people who love m
e and put up with me and stick with me when no one else gives a fuck, how can they possibly be ina—”

  “Yeah, I see how this works,” Imogen huffed. “It’s okay if Mr. and Mrs. K. want some scruffy teenage girl or an orphan from Russia, but Squidlet? She’s a hot commodity. Adoption fast-track.”

  “God,” Gloria murmured. “I never should have gotten into it with the big boss. Stupid, stupid.”

  And Sophie, once again, all earnest cold comfort: “I tried, Lesley. I tried.”

  • • •

  On my discharge date, she picked me up and we drove out to see Francesca, who’d finally grown stable enough for visitors.

  Her rehab center looked like a dead ringer for Claymoor Lodge. Inside, we found bulletin boards proclaiming TODAY IS SATURDAY, 3rd FEBRUARY, and a middle-aged man in the corridor who kept asking every woman who walked by if she wanted to suck him off. (“Please don’t take it personally,” his nurse said. “Many of our patients have issues with impulse control.”)

  I felt bad for the poor guy, but was still relieved to edge past and head for the dining area where we were supposed to meet Francesca after one of her physical therapy sessions.

  Her husband had warned us that the head injury had caused major changes, in both her personality and her motor skills, but actually seeing what that meant was so sobering I wanted to cry. She sat in a wheelchair, hunched over a bowl of soup, a napkin so big it was more like a bib tucked into her T-shirt. Her hands shook as she fought to bring the spoon to her mouth.

  “Shit!” As the broth splashed down her front, she slammed the spoon against her bowl with an enraged clatter.

  “It’s all right,” her nurse said. “Just give it another go when you’re— Oh!” She turned to face us. “Look who’s here to see you.”

  Francesca sat up, her mouth trembling with shame. “Les. Soph.” Our names slurred into an excited blur as she reached out her better arm to receive our hugs.

  “Soon,” she said when my bump bumped her.

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  “Sorry ’bout . . . manners. Broken brain.”

  “Oh, please, like you need to apologize for that around me.”

  She gave a lopsided grin. “Olivia still a bitch?”

  “You didn’t hear this, Lesley,” Sophie said, leaning down to whisper in Francesca’s ear. “Yes.”

  Francesca let out a phlegmy chortle, then quieted. “Lily Bridger.” That was the little girl whose dad had attacked her in the car park. “Still okay?”

  “Better than. Gets on smashing with her foster siblings, has good contact with her biological mum.”

  Francesca gave her a thumbs-up. “Sveta?”

  I gave her a thumbs-up in return.

  “And our Lesley, how’s she?”

  Soon as we told her about the case conference, she exploded. “Those fuckers!” With one fist-swipe, her soup cascaded to the floor.

  “Francesca, you need to calm down.” Matter-of-fact as the Claymoor Lodge staff, her nurse bent down to retrieve the bowl.

  “Bullshit! Need to fight.” She pointed a quaking finger at Sophie and me. “Both of you.”

  “I think she’s reached her limit, ladies. Perhaps you can come back another—”

  “Wait, not finished!” Finger-jab towards the nurse, followed by a flail back at me. “Get Brad . . . Brad . . . Bradford Kamen. Best children’s law sol . . . What’s the goddamn word? No, don’t tell me. Solicitor. Get him. You want him.”

  • • •

  We had barely pulled out the clinic drive when I turned to Sophie and said, “I want to go to Margate.”

  She bit her lip. “In February?”

  “Yeah.” Candyfloss, ridden shoulders. Don’t make me explain.

  We walked the boarded-up high street and pink-painted arcades till her hands froze and my back ached. Arms linked in an awkward clutch, we picked our way down the sands and up to the rock shelter where T. S. Eliot sat and connected nothing to nothing back in the day.

  “There’s an amusement park somewhere around here, innit?” I said.

  “Used to be,” Sophie said. “They closed it a few years back. Right after my husband and I last came here on holiday.”

  I pictured her in summer sandals, hand draped loosely in his. Fresh off a really good hotel-room shag and relishing her freedom, but still shyly eying the toddlers buckled on the carousel ponies.

  “You’d think I’d remember what the place was called, wouldn’t you,” she went on, “but—”

  The name leapt from my mouth, quicker than Squidlet’s acrobatics. “Dreamland.”

  22

  Francesca wasn’t kidding about Bradford Kamen being my man. Soon as he sat me down in his glass-and-chrome office, he laid it all out. “What they’re proposing to do to you and your daughter is a human rights violation. Plain and simple.”

  “Then how can—”

  “Expert testimony holds a ridiculous amount of sway, I’m afraid. Particularly when there’s been public outcry over a child’s death.”

  “So an appeal won’t help at all.”

  “Generally, no, because the allowable grounds for one are so limited. We can’t argue, for instance, that there’s zero evidence to back up their decision, because you do have a history of mental health difficulties. But what we can assert is that your case was grossly mishandled.”

  “Because they ignored all those statements from Dr. Patel?”

  “That, and the fact that their hired gun spent a grand total of fifteen minutes assessing you.”

  Rational Mind for the win. “Reckon that’s enough to change their minds, innit?”

  “Well, we’ve certainly a solid argument. As well as a compelling story.” He smiled at me. “I don’t normally suggest this, but you might want to consider giving media interviews.”

  I pictured the crap headlines: MAD MUM VERSUS THE SS; PREGNANT CUTTER PLEADS FOR A CHANCE. My stomach turned.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve had enough scrutiny.”

  “Court of public opinion swings both ways.” He looked down. “Sorry. Not the best choice of words.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “You really think it would—”

  “Lesley,” he said, leaning forward, “you’re the most articulate client I’ve worked with in twenty-five years. If there’s any disenfranchised parent who can bring this travesty to light, it’s you.”

  • • •

  No pressure there. I tried to hustle myself along with tough love (You want her that badly? Well, then, suck it up!), but every time I pictured myself on a chat show or in print, my panic pushed aside all I had at stake.

  In the end, it was Imogen who broke through the static buzzing in my scared skull.

  “Look, twatwaffle,” she said. “This isn’t just about you. It’s about every girl who’s been in care, every girl who used to harm. Think about Team Six Percent. Think of Sveta.”

  Remember Clare.

  • • •

  A week later, I was backstage getting femmed up by a TV studio makeup artist whose purple nails and chiseled face harkened back to Tatiana’s. Once she’d finished inflicting mascara and eyeliner on me, a show assistant ushered me into the green room, where, to my shock, I found Sophie sitting on the guest couch.

  “What—what are you doing here?” I spluttered.

  “Speaking out.”

  “They’re letting you?”

  “I don’t need anyone’s permission, Lesley. I resigned.”

  Holy shit. I lowered myself down next to her, amazed.

  “You did that,” I said. “Gave up your salary, your fertility fund, because of me?”

  She nodded. “Once I saw the response to Gloria’s fostering application, that was just . . . That was it. I couldn’t, in good conscience, work on our—their—team anymore.”

  I shook my head slowly. “And now, going on telly . . . You’re probably killing your chances of another job in—”

  “Oh, I’ll find another. Maybe not in child p
rotection, but it . . . It doesn’t matter.” She reached over to pour herself a cup of water from the glass pitcher on the table. “What matters is that someone in social work owns up. All these bloody campaigners and pundits keep shrieking”—she put on a hideous, grating voice—“ ‘No worker ever comes forward! They’re all complicit!’ ” She took a long sip, then clinked her glass back down. “Well, not this one.”

  I was so staggered I could barely rasp. “Th-thank you.”

  “Here.” She passed me another full cup. “Got to keep your voice intact.”

  “What, and ruin my lipstick?”

  “Never thought I’d hear those words from you.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ve got this.”

  • • •

  Hot lights. Stupefied squint. The questions justified but intense.

  “As someone who’s survived abuse, how do you feel about being accused of it yourself?”

  “What will you do if your appeal fails?”

  “Do you think social workers are truly incompetent?”

  “You recently spent time in hospital, didn’t you?”

  “If you had another relapse whilst you were caring for your daughter, how would you handle that?”

  “What about the baby’s father?”

  “Is it true you were a young offender and spent time on a criminal psychiatric unit?”

  “Are you still in contact with your family?”

  “How are you supporting yourself financially through all this?”

  “Is there anything you’d like to tell our viewers who might be skeptical about whether you’re truly stable?”

  Breathe. Let your gaze soften. Breathe.

  “I’m not arguing that social services are evil,” I said. “And I won’t claim that I’ve not made mistakes, ’cause I’ve made plenty. I’m just asking for a . . .” My voice shook. “An opportunity to prove to everyone that those mistakes aren’t . . .” Spit it out. “Aren’t etched on me.”

  • • •

  After that, I had heaps of “sympathizers” ringing and emailing: Scientologists and conspiracy theorists, family rights renegades and Lib-Dem MPs. They each talked a good game, offering “connections” and outrage and well-wishes, but I knew all they were really after was an opportunity to make me their pet agendas’ poster girl.

  I thanked them, of course, but in the end my greyhound won out over my golden retriever. Did that stubbornness doom me? Hard to tell, and no sense guessing now, but at least I can look back and say I never sold myself out in anybody’s political hall closet.