Cat Step, page 11
We visited Robbie’s gran in Lennoxtown and had our final – and only – holiday together. I liked his gran. She had Robbie’s throaty laugh. I liked Robbie better. Almost every day of our holiday he ran somewhere. He was the fittest he’d ever been. He took me to the sides of lochs and the bottom of Munros and I’d watch him spring away from me. He confessed he was frightened one day. In a B&B in Oban he pushed his breakfast plate away and leaned on his elbows, hitting his head softly with his fists. For two reasons, he told me. One, he was worried about money. He would work full time eventually; the NHS would take him on as a physio, he’d choose a specialism, he would enjoy his work when it came. Two, he was worried about me and my dancing. ‘You’ve stopped in your prime,’ he told me. ‘You should be in Paris right now. I’m worried you won’t be yourself without your dancing.’
‘Not a lot we can do about that now,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about it, babe. Life will work itself out.’ I wasn’t worried. Not at all. I was becoming more and more like him. He was good for me.
Emily was born with difficulty. They kept her in special care for days. We didn’t know any differently so we just went with it. When we got her home we managed. We did. We found some kind of crazy routine, albeit under siege with her colic and my hormones, but my mum helped, and when Robbie went back to university after a week I managed to get her over the doorstep in her pram, out into the glare of each day.
I told Robbie I missed him in the days after Emily’s birth, days that to me felt hot and thunderous, containing nothing of the soft contentedness I had imagined. He said, ‘I’m still here, you know,’ but he knew what I meant. And I felt no searing, binding love that books and relatives had told me I would feel for Emily. It crept in, later, in a way, not in a way to knock me over or anything but it was there, it really was, I’m sure it was. Is.
Then in the hours between feeds early one morning in April Robbie’s heart stopped beating. He died. I found him in the morning lying still next to me. Before I realised, I told him to get Emily. ‘I’ve just fed her,’ I said. ‘She can’t be hungry. What time is it? Can you get her? Let me sleep.’ But Emily’s mewls turned urgent and my breasts were full and tingling so I got her myself and was feeding her and grumbling at him when I realised he was too still. The baby screamed on her back while I tried to do CPR. The noise, the stillness. The paramedics came but there was nothing they could do. At hospital they said it was sudden death syndrome. It happens to athletes and footballers, perfectly fit men who suddenly die. To think, we had been terrified of Emily dying in her sleep yet Robbie was the one I should have worried about. Emily was three weeks and three days old. I was broken. Destroyed. Utterly undone.
I had counselling. I fed and clothed and kept Emily safe from harm but I felt harmful. I was a danger then. It was a dangerous time. I found it hard to sleep and hard to wake and I drank and took pills. My mum helped. She said she knew grief too.
Four years on I wanted to come off my tablets. Was I better? No. But I’d carried on. When Aidan telephoned to tell me he needed my help I decided that Emily and I could do with an adventure, one her daddy would have approved of. A new start. A chance for us to return to where Robbie was born and to say goodbye. To be near him, as well, of course.
Un grand jeté, the biggest of leaps. We packed our bags and drove to Lennoxtown, against my mum’s advice. She said I should leave Emily with her, but a bit of me worried that if I left her I’d never want her back, and my mum needed a break from both of us, honestly, she was just too stubborn to say.
I told June most of this as I watched Emily kick the driver’s seat and lick chocolate off her Freddo wrapper. She had chocolate around her mouth. I wanted to open the door and wipe it off her.
‘That’s some story.’ June stood with her arms crossed over her body.
‘On days like this, especially on days like this, I feel so bad for him that he’s not here. He misses it. I need him. She needs him. And he misses it all.’
I looked at Emily who licked her finger and drew shapes on the window.
‘It’s not fair.’
‘No, it’s not fair,’ June said.
‘I can’t get over him. It’s too big.’
‘Thank God you’ve got Emily.’
I wiped a rogue tear. ‘I don’t usually feel sorry for myself. I just get on with things.’
‘I can tell you do.’
Emily tapped on the window and showed me her licked-clean wrapper. I heard her muffled voice. ‘Can I have another one?’
I opened the door and wiped the chocolate off her face with my thumb. I gave her another Freddo because what was the harm, she was alive and she wanted another Freddo.
‘That woman who was in the news, who wanted to use her dead husband’s sperm, I get that,’ I said when I shut the door. ‘She wanted a part of him back, a part of them back. But she was wrong. The child won’t be him. It will be unlike him and unlike her and all she’ll want to do is hide in her grief but the child will demand her, this child that doesn’t even know the man she can’t live without. Can you imagine that, Emily doesn’t even know Robbie.’ I swiped at another tear and shut my mouth.
‘You’ve had one of life’s worst shocks,’ June said.
I thought of Robbie holding my hand, making my tea, sitting at our table and eating next to me, cleaning his teeth, kissing my mouth, throwing socks into the washing basket, washing his face, clipping his nails, kissing my mouth, running up the sides of Munros, kissing my mouth, dead in bed beside me.
‘You’d have liked him,’ I said to June. ‘Everybody did.’
She nodded.
I looked at the clouds. ‘I’m not sure I’m doing right by Emily,’ I said.
‘Of course you are.’ She swatted away my self-pity. ‘Have you told your mother any of this? That you miss him this much? Because you should.’
‘She knows but I’m not sure she understands. She met someone else soon after my dad died. I don’t think she felt this kind of grief.’
June removed her gloves and put them in her pocket.
‘I’m sure she did. In her way.’
We watched Emily through the window. She looked at us as she licked her second Freddo wrapper and I could see a sugary glint in her eyes.
June said nothing more. She turned away and looked up the hill. ‘They have to keep coming back to fix this path. So many people come stomping up and down here. Look at them, still coming.’
It was true. As if all of Glasgow had come out of the rain-soaked streets on this one half-sunny day and got out to walk in single file up the rocky path and down again. They should have noticed the gathering clouds.
‘Come on, let’s go home,’ I said.
June took a tissue from a pack of hankies, gave it to me and blew her nose with another. ‘I don’t want you to drive out of your way,’ she said.
‘I’m already in trouble for abandoning my child, I can’t abandon you—’
‘—A helpless old lady.’
‘That’s not how I’d describe you, no.’
I found a pop music station for Emily, turned the volume up and drove us down the Crow Road, and I was glad I had June in the car because rain came on suddenly and the wipers worked hard to keep the downpour from the windscreen.
I felt a release as strong and sudden as the rain. Telling someone about Robbie, about my connection to Lennoxtown, made me feel a part of the place in a strange kind of way.
‘Did you know him?’ I dared to ask.
She tilted her chin. ‘Ah, I knew all the weans in this village, if not by name then by sight.’
‘I thought you’d know him. What was he like as a boy?’
‘Oh, I have stories for all the weans in Campsie.’
She said no more and that irked me, slightly, but we drove on, through the now diminishing rain.
‘Don’t get out,’ June said when we pulled into the sheltered housing. ‘The bairn’s sleeping.’
She was. Mouth open and head leaning against her booster seat, one hand on her leg, the other hand curled around the stick I didn’t know she’d smuggled into the car and, hanging from the smuggled stick, gently writhing, her worm.
Part Two
1.
We took the bus as June suggested, early in the morning, with the sky full of pastels and Emily so tired she was placid. We three sat quietly on our two seats, June and I in our fine denier hosiery and Emily on my lap, tapping her heels against my shins. The bus joined the motorway’s slow lit parade towards Glasgow. We barely moved, for a mile at least, and Emily fidgeted, breathing on the window and drawing faces in the condensation. From the bus station we walked downhill, past shuttered shops, crossing roads, crossing the river and I thought we were bound to be late. I tugged on Emily’s arm to keep her from walking too slowly. Finally, when the pastel was gone from the morning and the traffic was inelegant and unlit, June said, ‘There it is across there. It’s not changed.’
The concrete court loomed and we took its steps quickly. Inside, staff scanned our bodies and our bags. Emily opened up her fabric bag sombrely and showed the security guard her Peppa Pig colouring book and felt tip pens.
‘Children aren’t allowed in court,’ an official said.
‘She’ll be with me,’ June said. ‘We’re accompanying her.’ She nodded towards me.
‘Children aren’t allowed in the witness waiting rooms.’
I looked at June, helpless.
‘I need a wee,’ Emily said.
‘She must be allowed in the toilets,’ June said, and we followed the wave of the official’s arm. ‘There’s a cafeteria in the basement,’ the official called after us.
I went in the cubicle with Emily and helped with her leggings and pants. ‘What’s that?’ she asked and pointed to the sanitary bin.
‘It’s for ladies. For rubbish. Don’t touch,’ I said, just as she was about to open the lid.
‘What’s that?’ She pointed to a sign about domestic abuse.
‘It’s for women who need help.’
‘Help for what?’
‘Sometimes life gets difficult. Are you done?’ I passed her the toilet roll and she wiped herself but stayed on the toilet.
‘Are you done, Emily?’
She said nothing and I watched her face redden. I leaned against the wall of the cubicle and waited for her to poo. She sat forwards on the toilet seat, gripping the sides of the bowl with her hands. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to the toilet roll dispenser and her voice was so strained with effort that she made me laugh. She laughed because I laughed.
‘What’s that?’ she said again with the same strain in her voice.
‘I’ll wait for you in the foyer,’ June called over the blast of the hand dryer.
‘Bye, June!’ Emily said in her new voice.
I was aware of a shade of shared hysteria.
We agreed that June would take Emily to the cafeteria and I would wait in the witness room. If they were going for a walk, June would text me and I would text her when I was finished in the court.
‘I hope she behaves for you,’ I said.
‘You will, won’t you?’
Emily’s face was tired and trusting. I kissed her forehead. June held her hand.
‘Why aren’t you coming with us?’ Emily said.
‘I can’t. I have to stand up and say something serious.’
‘Where? What about?’
‘Grown ups’ things.’
‘He’s already in custody isn’t he? He’ll be done first,’ said June.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Your mummy won’t be long.’ June patted Emily’s clasped fingers with her spare hand. ‘I know how courts work,’ she said to me and she was as tough as I’d ever seen her.
‘I wish you were coming with me,’ I said.
‘It’s no big deal. This is about him, not you. Just answer their questions and we’ll get a hot chocolate when it’s over.’
‘Can I get a hot chocolate?’
‘Yes. Say goodbye to your mummy. And don’t let anyone upset you,’ she said to me with a point of her finger.
I found the crowded witness waiting room which is where I saw the three from the car park. We forgot ourselves and smiled a hello and in the way that humans do, or humans like me do, I found myself walking towards them. I sat down. The man wore a suit and a tie and told me there was a soft drinks vending machine in the waiting room but I’d have to get a tea or coffee from the cafeteria downstairs. The women held paper cups into which they blew.
‘Where’s your daughter?’ one of the women asked.
‘Outside in the car,’ I said, and laughed, I couldn’t help myself – but they didn’t laugh so I stood up and got a Coke.
‘How is your daughter? That’s what I meant,’ the woman said when I came back. ‘Not where is your daughter.’
‘She’s fine, thank you,’ I said. ‘A friend is looking after her.’
‘Oh.’
The women sipped their drinks. The man looked hard at me. ‘We shouldn’t have too long to wait. They do the custody cases first.’
‘Yes. My friend said that.’
I listened to the sounds of footsteps from outside the door and wondered how Emily and June were. Other witnesses texted or talked or popped out, smelling of smoke or fresh air when they returned and giving us something new to hang our thoughts on. Several witnesses were let go by officials in suits and told they would be sent another date to return to court. They looked at us as they left as if we were the lucky ones because we got to stay and get it over with.
‘Does anyone want my paper?’ the man asked and held it out to me. I took it. He leaned in. ‘We’re not supposed to confer,’ he said. ‘But I’ll tell you this. Just watch out, he’s a slippery bastard.’
I nodded. I turned the pages of the man’s Metro.
‘Are you settling in to Campsie?’ one of the women asked – the one who’d told the police about Emily.
I looked at her mild face with her soft scarf about her neck and truly didn’t know how to answer.
‘We were trying to work out who you were,’ the man said to me. I closed the paper.
‘Oh yes.’
‘You’ve never been in court before?’
‘Never.’
‘My husband thinks you might be related to Audrey Watt,’ the woman with the scarf said. ‘She was our friend.’
‘I’m living in her flat.’
‘We know. Why is that then?’
‘Leave her be,’ the other woman said.
‘I’m doing a favour for Aidan.’
‘Her grandson. Why? Do you know him?’
‘Leave her be.’
‘Robbie,’ I said. ‘I knew Robbie.’
The man raised his chin. ‘Ah.’
At that moment the door to the waiting room opened and a court official appeared. We fell silent. The official left. We stayed silent.
Robbie was never silent while waiting for my antenatal appointments, watching midwives approach with paperwork and calling for other women and not me. He needed to fling his energy somewhere and the waiting room was too hot, too cramped, too boring. The barely audible chat from the television on the wall pissed him off. Waiting pissed him off. If I was having a scan there was nothing he could do but if he was accompanying me to my injection for my rhesus negative blood, he became frustrated. ‘All you need is a jag in your arse, I’ll do it for you,’ he said. Twice. Because I needed two injections on two separate occasions to stop my daughter’s blood from antagonising mine.
Cooped up in the packed waiting rooms with toddlers making demands of their big-bellied mothers he liked to make up quizzes, challenges, things to occupy him. ‘Ask me anything about any team in the Scottish Premiership,’ he would say. And I would say I knew nothing about any team in the Scottish Premiership.
‘You must have heard of Celtic? You must have heard of Rangers.’
‘I’ve heard of them.’
‘How many teams in the Scottish leagues can you name beginning with A?’
‘I can’t name any.’
‘Yes you can. I’ll help you. Aber…’
‘Aberdeen,’ I would say.
‘Aye, that’s one. Well done. Here’s another. Albion Rovers. Can you think of any?’
‘No.’
‘Okay, my go. Auchinleck Talbot.’
‘Why do they all have two word names?’
‘Annan. That doesn’t. That’s junior league. Alloa Athletic.’
‘That’s two words.’
‘That’s where I had my—’
‘That’s where you had your first trial.’ I gripped his thigh.
‘There’s another one. There must be another one.’
Even his eyelashes were restless. He was vital, vibrant, topped up. So much better, so much more than me.
‘Ayr United!’
It passed the time.
It was nearly half past eleven before the court official came to get me. The woman with the scarf tried to pat my arm as I stood up. I grabbed my coat and bag.
‘The procurator fiscal will ask you questions first,’ the official said as he walked me to the courtroom. I felt suddenly sick with nerves. I thought of Emily leaning forwards holding on to the sides of the toilet. I hoped she’d washed her hands thoroughly.
‘The defence lawyer may want to question you too.’
‘What will I do with my bag?’
‘Take it in with you.’
‘When do I go in?’
‘You’re going in right now.’ He was young. Red hair. Chapped lips.
