The Mother I Could Have Been (ARC) Read online

  I stayed until way too late. Until I had six or seven increasingly concerned text messages from Freddie. Until I had to tell William that I really had to go.

  ‘I’ll walk you back and get a cab from Kassiopi.’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine, honestly.’ Though I did feel nervous about the mile or so of road with no lights. Not quite so devil-may-care as I made out.

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  In the end, I decided he could walk me to the outskirts of Kassiopi and then I’d make an excuse.

  We walked on the road, our feet tapping along in the silence between us. But his hand in mine made words redundant. We’d probably never meet again, but I tried not to let that interfere with the joy of the moment. In fact, I almost started humming Lou Reed’s ‘It’s A Perfect Day’, but it reminded me too much of everyone singing it on Mum’s last birthday, me mouthing the words so Ian and the kids wouldn’t laugh at my out-of-tune voice and underline, yet again, that I didn’t share their genes. A splinter of sadness squeezed in.

  William turned to me. ‘What did you think about just then?’

  ‘Nothing. Why?’

  ‘You loosened your grip as though you’re getting ready to run off.’

  The lights of Kassiopi were very close. ‘I can’t walk into town with you. I hate everyone knowing my business. The expat community is pretty gossipy.’

  William pulled me to him and leaned his forehead against mine. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Little Vick.’

  I drew back. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Took me a while to piece it together, but you work at that bar in the harbour, don’t you? I’ve seen you with the guy who owns it. Your boyfriend, I’m assuming?’

  ‘Sorry. Yes, sort of. It’s complicated.’

  ‘I won’t make any trouble. Just give me your phone a second.’

  I hesitated. ‘You can’t speak to him.’

  ‘Why would I want to speak to him? Trust me.’

  I unlocked my phone. He put in a number and I heard his phone buzz.

  ‘There. You know where I am.’ He put his lips to mine and kissed me so gently I wanted to stay up all night, mapping out his face, his body, under my fingertips, going to places that I hadn’t known existed but could feel hovering within my reach. Instead, he sighed, ‘Go on. Back to your life. Give me a ring if he doesn’t turn out to be what you want.’

  I walked away, combing through a curious mixture of elation and devastation. Every time I turned round to look, he was standing there with a hand raised. Just before I dipped round the corner, he shouted, ‘Call me.’

  2018

  Where does a young woman with no money go? When he asked me for any contacts, any known acquaintances, I realised I didn’t know the names of any of her friends. So when the girl she’d shared with at university turned up, I had a huge surge of hope. Liv. It was her parents who took her off to Corfu after graduation. She was looking for her too. Said she’d got our address by asking a bunch of lads at a bar in Kassiopi where Freddie worked. She mentioned it as though I should know who Freddie was, so I nodded and went along with it. She told me Vicky’d been in touch for a few months after that summer, but she hadn’t heard from her since Christmas 2009. It was as though she’d just dropped off the planet. Even I’d had more recent contact than Liv, who told me she’d tried her mobile, but the number no longer worked.

  As I wrote her details down, I felt the hot shame of judgement radiating from her, standing there in her smart suit, next to her shiny BMW. She seemed flabbergasted that I didn’t know where Vicky was. I didn’t bother to defend the indefensible. There were so many things I should have done differently. Or, better still, not done at all. Looking at the tattered remains today, no one would ever believe I did what I did out of love – I found it hard to accept myself.

  Liv put up a hand to wave goodbye, no doubt re-evaluating and appreciating her own family in light of ours. I wanted to tell her that she could never judge me anywhere near as harshly as I judged myself.

  September 2009

  Vicky

  William consumed my thoughts. I spent my hours at the bar scanning the people milling around the harbour for his face, my heart quickening if I spotted one of his friends, then dropping down again when I realised William wasn’t with them. After a week, I called him. Several furtive meetings later, I made a plan to move in with him. But when it came to telling Freddie I wanted to end things, I dithered. I had no experience of leaving people who were more attached to me than I was to them. In the end, he called it after he’d wanted sex and I couldn’t face it for the third night in a row. Not when every tiny bit of me was aching for William.

  It was ironic that this man who’d provided a lifeline to me, who’d quietly encouraged me to be my bravest self, had made me confident enough to set my hat at someone like William. When I wriggled out of his arms, he raised his head like a dog sensing danger. ‘Not tonight? Or not me?’

  I cried, said I was sorry, I’d leave the following day, that I was grateful to him.

  He pulled on his boxers, and scratching at the stubble on his chin, he said, ‘I wanted you to feel love, not gratitude.’

  I heard the door to the little box room click shut and I lay in Freddie’s bed for ages, frightened about what I was giving up, whether I was – as my mother frequently used to say – ‘leaping from the frying pan into the fire’. I wanted to go through to the other room, to make it right, for him not to think badly of me. I felt an odd sort of disgust for myself, as though, in an effort to find my way in the world, I’d crushed someone who was kinder than me underfoot.

  I packed my rucksack, left my key on the pillow, next to a note saying, ‘Sorry and thank you’ and texted William. Within an hour, I was installed in the villa he was housesitting. Within days, I’d begun to believe my own lie, that Freddie had been fond of me, but in the end I’d been a useful barmaid and a guaranteed summer shag. What I had now, with William, was the sort of love that made me get up early to buy the best tomatoes and fresh oregano at the little market for the sheer joy of hearing him say, ‘This is awesome!’ in that accent that a lot of the posh boys had, slightly Australian, a touch of American, something that suggested surfboards and drive-in movies. I’d tried it out a few times when I worked at the bar, but I couldn’t make it sit naturally in my speech. I was still more Poundland than Prada.

  I spent the autumn discovering the joy of herbs, of peppery basil oil, of cheese direct from the farmer. And with it a growing sensation that I might be brave enough to say I didn’t really want to work my way round Italy or head off to Australia. That I wanted to anchor myself where other people’s time and tide couldn’t destabilise me, where I never had to question whether I belonged.

  Gradually, William’s friends drifted back to the UK, out of money or craving the structure of work rather than the pressure to make their own adventures. Instead of searching out new company, we hunkered down, coasting towards Christmas, with William rejecting calls from his parents to return home for the festivities.

  ‘Have you told them about me?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope. My mother will start pestering me for photos and wanting to know what our “plans” are and I just want to do what I want without having to justify it.’

  And with the days running into each other without deadlines or decisions, it was mid-December before I realised I hadn’t had a period for a while. But I pushed it to the back of my mind, far more interested in making our little Greek Christmas as perfect as possible. So it was after the New Year when I nipped out to the pharmacy for a test kit and discovered I was pregnant.

  I walked down to the beach and sat watching the waves, combing my memory for the last time I had a period. Definitely since I moved in with William because I’d been embarrassed about bleeding on a sheet. I thanked heaven for small mercies. If I had to go home – could I even do that, now? – Ian’s face didn’t bear thinking about if I turned up not only up the duff but with a choice of tw
o fathers. I wracked my brains for dates. End of September? October? A cool wind whipped across the shore, sending me back home, my life teetering on a precipice without knowing which way it would fall when I told William.

  I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to see his fear of being trapped before he arranged his features into something more neutral. I just handed him the test, aiming for a casual, ‘You need to see this’, tagging a little laugh onto the end as though it was no big deal, that I wasn’t expecting anything from him. An image of Mum handing me Joey when I first saw him in hospital flashed through my mind. His delicate fingernails, his squidgy little feet fascinated me. I felt a protective surge of emotion towards the tiny being inside me. With a rush of something that felt like wonder, I realised I was keeping this baby, however William reacted.

  Finally he spoke. ‘Holy shit. How did that happen? We’ve been pretty careful.’ Then I reminded him of the times we’d taken a risk when we’d run out of condoms. He frowned. ‘But I’d always pulled out in time.’

  I sat, frozen, seeing our future crash into a brick wall.

  Slowly, a smile crept across his face. ‘You, me and a little bean. Wow.’

  Those few words were like the dawn breaking across the darkest sky, sending little fingers of orange hope out into the world.

  We lay, arms wrapped around each other, discussing how William would find a new housesitting job to take us over the summer. We congratulated ourselves on ‘the bean’ growing up roaming beaches and poking about in rock pools, rather than fighting over a couple of ride-on cars at a village playgroup. How he or she would be bilingual in English and Greek, how we’d teach our child history not from a textbook but by travelling – to Turkey, to Italy, to Germany.

  But in March, I started to bleed. The doctor couldn’t explain what had caused it.

  William took over. ‘We should go home. We don’t want to be stuck out here with no one to help us if there’s an emergency, and you won’t be allowed to fly soon.’

  So, within a fortnight, we left the crisp blue skies of Corfu behind and landed at a grey Gatwick.

  His father, Derek, was there to greet us, nodding at William as we came through arrivals. They shook hands. It seemed so formal. The sort of thing you’d do with a teacher.

  I stuck out my hand too. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

  ‘Vicky.’

  I waited for him to say something else. ‘How are you?’ maybe, perhaps ask about the baby, make a quip about becoming a grandfather. But nothing, just that glance, tinged with bemusement as though I was nothing like he expected.

  I sat in the back of the black Range Rover while his dad cursed at the traffic on the M25 as we headed towards their home near Guildford, initially chipping in with innocuous parent-pleasing comments about our time in Corfu. Derek barely acknowledged I’d spoken and eventually I sank back into my seat in silence.

  The entrance pillars, the automatic gates and the long tree-lined drive to the house did nothing to reassure me. But I needn’t have worried about a chilly reception from his mother, Barbara. She flung herself on us as soon as we got out of the car. ‘Willy! Lovely to see you, darling. And you must be Vicky.’ Her hand went straight to my stomach and gave it a good pat, which I tried not to mind. ‘Thank goodness you came back. We’ll get you registered at my doctor’s tomorrow and have you checked over. Let’s get you settled in. William, you bring the cases. Vicky is not to carry anything.’

  And from then on, I had no doubt about my place in the world, at least as far as Barbara was concerned. Every time anyone walked through the door, she’d call me down. ‘You must meet Vicky, mother of my future grandchild.’ She knew exactly how many days until my due date at the end of June – ‘Sixty-three days today and you’ll be a mummy!’ ‘Forty-four days today and I’ll be a grandma. Or a granny. Or perhaps a nanna. Not nan, don’t like that.’

  I found her excitement overwhelming especially when, helped by his father, William landed a job at an accountancy firm and was no longer around to deflect her scrutiny of what I was eating, drinking and thinking. As she showed me picture after picture of cots and cribs and mobiles, I wondered if I wasn’t maternal enough because I couldn’t find it within me to care about the Winnie the Pooh mobiles.

  I tried to address it with William. ‘Your mum seems very keen on the prospect of being a grandmother. I worried that your parents might disapprove.’

  ‘She probably thought she’d never get a grandchild from me. Anyway, good job she’s doing all the legwork because I wouldn’t have a clue.’

  I tried not to feel ungrateful, tried not to wish that we were in a little flat, quietly scouring charity shops for everything we needed rather than ambushed by Barbara’s avalanche of enthusiasm.

  ‘Will your mother come when the baby is born? She’s very welcome to stay here. What about your father?’ Barbara asked one evening.

  Having spent the last year making out that I was a wayward child no one cared about, I now felt peculiarly protective towards my mum. ‘I don’t know my dad.’

  Barbara did an ‘Oh’, as though that didn’t quite fit with the heritage she had in mind. ‘But your mother will come, won’t she?’

  ‘I haven’t told her I’m pregnant yet. She’s very busy with my stepbrother and sister and we’ve lost contact a bit since I’ve been in Corfu.’

  I expected Barbara to insist that I gave her a call, but she said, ‘Well, you can tell her in your own time. You’ve got us as family now. We’ll look after you and the baby for as long as you need. William will be a great dad, I know.’

  I nodded, paralysed by the thought of ringing Mum after so long without being in touch and announcing I was pregnant. By someone she didn’t know anything about. Every night I told myself I’d do it in the morning and every morning I convinced myself it was too early, she’d be getting the kids ready for school, then probably with one of her hairdressing clients, school pick-up time, fighting to get Emily to eat her tea, bath time, she’d be too tired now. To assuage my guilt, I focused on the fact that her efforts to contact me had dwindled dramatically; she probably wasn’t that bothered about hearing from me anyway. And so the days passed.

  A few weeks before the baby was due, Barbara asked me if I’d invited my mother to be present at the birth.

  ‘No, I haven’t. I thought I’d keep it to William and me.’

  Her face lit up expectantly. ‘I’m very happy to be on standby. William can get a bit squeamish. When you’re in pain, it’s really good to have someone who’s calm.’

  Of all the birth scenarios I’d imagined, Barbara peering over the midwife’s shoulder to see if the baby was crowning hadn’t featured.

  I asked William if he thought he’d be okay. ‘Yeah, I’m completely chill. I’d better take the head end. I did throw up when the cat had kittens, but I was only about twelve.’

  Over the weeks leading up to the birth, Barbara kept talking about the things that might go wrong. ‘Let’s hope it’s a straightforward birth. When I had William, the woman in the next bed had had an episiotomy. She could barely sit down. Still, not the end of the world. If it does happen, it’s just a tiny snip.’ She made a little scissoring motion with her fingers. ‘I’m sure it will be fine. It’s better to be prepared for the worst and then there are no nasty shocks.’

  It was so alien to me to discuss everything in such detail. Mum’s communication of anything difficult or embarrassing was along the lines of, ‘Do I need to talk to you about periods/sex/contraception?’ At which point, I’d say ‘No’, whether or not I needed the information, and we’d spend a day or two avoiding each other’s eye just from the awkwardness of her saying the words out loud.

  One afternoon when Barbara was putting the breast pump together ‘so you can get some sleep and I can feed baby’, I blurted out that I was thinking about getting in contact with Mum.

  She frowned. ‘Of course you should, but you do want to avoid any upset that might stress the baby at this stage. Why not get i
n touch once everything’s settled down? Once the baby’s here safe and sound. You’ve probably got enough to think about at the moment.’

  And like a frond of seaweed wafted along by the tide, I immediately agreed with her, taking comfort in someone relieving me of the responsibility of decision-making. I had a half-hearted idea that I might call Mum straight after the birth. In the event, towards the end of June, I started to bleed heavily a week before my due date and the consultants bandied about terrifying phrases such as placenta abruption and placenta previa. An emergency Caesarean put paid to my romantic notion of ‘the bean’ being born to the relaxing playlist William and I had picked out together and afterwards I was so exhausted and in so much pain, I could barely manage to sip my tea, let alone face up to a difficult conversation with Mum.

  While William cuddled Dimitrios and Barbara photographed them from every angle, she kept saying, ‘Poor Vicky. I guess it’s just the way you’re made. William, you popped out in a matter of hours, like podding a pea. Must be my child-bearing hips.’

  I was ashamed of not having the right physique for something that should be so simple. But my failure to squeeze a baby out without a drama was nothing compared to the horror of trying to breastfeed.

  ‘Maybe you should think about getting that baby on a bottle. Something so natural should be so much easier, shouldn’t it?’ Barbara said as the nurse came to help, squishing my boob this way and that, trying to get Dimitrios to latch on. I had so much milk, he was practically snorkelling in it. Barbara leaned in, offering advice and repeating, ‘I stuck William on a bottle straightaway, and he’s barely had a day’s illness in his life,’ as though we hadn’t given her enough plaudits the first time she said it.

  ‘What’s his name?’ the nurse asked, giving me a little wink.

  ‘Dimitrios. It’s Greek.’