Cat Step, page 22
‘Do it now then. Instead of talking to me. Go and do your job.’
‘Liz, sit down please.’
I didn’t sit down. I stood by the wall and looked at the door and Sara at the table and realised that the world had closed in on me. We were detained, Emily and I.
‘Where will she go?’ This was ridiculous. I was her mother.
‘She’ll stay with a temporary foster carer.’
‘Who?’
‘We have a bank of very good foster carers. She’ll be safe and well looked after.’
‘Where?’
She wouldn’t tell me and she was right not to because I would have gone straight there when I got out, without a doubt. I would have barged down the door or smashed the windows all over again.
‘Is it likely,’ I asked, ‘is it likely they will keep Emily? Look at me. I’m not a risk. I won’t stay. I’ll go back to my mum’s in London. We’ll leave here and never come back. I’ll go on my medication. I’ve not been myself.’
Even when Robbie was alive it was hard to find the immense love people had told me about. I think I may have had post-natal depression before he died. Maybe they would have got to it eventually but in the weeks and months after his death any depression I had merged with grief and I carried on like that. I do remember thinking one morning as I lifted her from her cot that if she did die in the night, I would feel her loss. So I must love her. I must. My feelings were messed up, I know that. I did not dare speak of them to the bereavement counsellor. I did not dare admit I possessed them before Robbie’s heart gave out. I could not reveal them to the social worker in front of me. I think feelings are confusing. What was this I was feeling now? Was it love? Pain? Fear? Whatever it was, it hurt.
I tried one more time. ‘Look at me,’ I said. ‘Please, look at me. Emily’s okay with me. You needn’t worry. Can you help me get out of here please?’
The look she gave me seemed genuine. She promised to work as quickly as she could and told me to be prepared for a meeting. ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ she said. ‘We’ll sort this out.’
‘Will I be able to speak to her?’
‘I’ll try to make that happen.’
‘Can I get her back tomorrow?’
‘I want you to be reunited as soon as possible. Let’s deal with tomorrow tomorrow.’
After she’d gone, the police told me a lawyer was available to talk to me. A man named Graham whose wristwatch clicked on the table when he leaned forward to speak. He told me I would stay overnight in the cell and be taken to court in Glasgow the next day. ‘Is there anyone you want me to call?’ I gave him my mum’s number. ‘Ask her to come to Lennoxtown,’ I said. ‘Tell her Emily is in care. Temporarily. She’ll take it badly. Make sure she understands she has to come.’ I imagined the lawyer in his rolled-up shirt sleeves repeating my message while my mum gasped out her shock and assailed him with questions.
I waited in the cell. Gold suffused the sky, as if the day was on the brink of tears, and the room brightened. The toilet and tiles shone and dust motes were gold when I moved my blanket. Then dullness came and there was nothing else to look at or do. I put the blanket over my shoulders. Despite my anguish I was bored. At one audition I spent six hours in a studio with dozens of girls and drank diet coke and eked out rice cakes so I wasn’t too full that I couldn’t dance but wasn’t too weak either. During the endless day I promised myself if I got the job I would be a better person. I would be kinder to my mum and my dad too because he was alive then. I would give some of my wages to charity. I would be selfless. Funny how we cheat to get what we want. In the cell I made a selfish prayer to Emily. I will play with you whenever you want, I will take a bath with you whenever you want. I will listen, I will read, I will dance, I will treasure you if you come back. I never got the audition. The sky darkened. I lay on my blue mattress under my blanket, fucking starving, thinking of Emily, wiping my streaming eyes and nose with toilet roll, waiting for morning.
It came, along with breakfast. After that, the police took me to the Sheriff Court in Glasgow for a custody appearance. I knew the way. The court steps were occupied by other families, groups of two or three people smoking. No children. Emily would be awake now.
I waited in a cell with a woman who didn’t speak. I was glad of the company however silent it was. A few minutes later another woman joined us. She wore a summer dress and sandals. We spoke briefly and then settled to quiet, looking up from time to time when one of us moved or coughed.
‘I need a cigarette,’ the new woman said. ‘Jesus, I could murder a cigarette.’
The other woman sat with her head in her hands, her long ponytail nearly touching the floor, and complained that she needed to go to the toilet. ‘I am actually going to wet myself,’ she said. ‘My bladder’s fucked since having kids.’ She stood up and banged on the door shouting with an urgency that was truthful. ‘Come on to fuck; I’m bursting here!’
They finally let her go and she came back happier, redoing her ponytail. She smiled at me as she sat at her space on the bench.
‘My pelvic floor’s shot too,’ I said and she looked at me as if she didn’t know why I would say such a thing. ‘Since having children,’ I said. ‘How old are yours?’
‘Grown up now,’ the woman said. ‘Twenty-one and twenty-three. My youngest is at university. My oldest doesn’t speak to me.’ She stood up, took her hair out of its ponytail again and combed it with her fingers.
‘That’s my biggest fear,’ the other woman said. She’d taken off her sandals. Her toenails were painted pink.
‘What?’
‘That my kids won’t speak to me.’
We both stared at the woman. ‘They live with their dad.’
The other woman dived in. ‘Your choice or social work’s?’
‘Bit of both.’
‘Do you see them?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘I get them from school once a week and they have their tea with me. But they don’t stay with me. They live with their dad and his mum.’
The woman with the ponytail held her jeans by the waistband and pulled them up, walking her legs on the spot. ‘Bloody things are falling down.’ She was thin. ‘I wish they’d let me have a smoke.’ She paced up and down the room and I watched her feet as she walked.
We were quiet. I expect the women heard the roaring of motorbikes from outside on the street because I did. I expect they heard footsteps and voices too.
‘My daughter’s in temporary foster care,’ I said, not sure what I would say next, if anything, but I felt like telling these women. It seemed appropriate.
‘Since when?’ the woman with the sandals asked.
‘Since yesterday. She spent the night somewhere else.’
‘Is this your first time detained?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll be fine.’
I nodded. They didn’t ask me why I was detained and I didn’t ask them.
‘Have yours ever…?’
‘Been in foster care?’
The women shook their heads.
‘It was a threat. But I always had someone who could watch them for me. I tell my daughter it could have been worse, she could have been taken off me, but she still wants nothing to do with me.’
‘Have you not got anyone?’ the woman with the sandals asked me.
‘No.’
‘Where’s her dad?’
‘Dead.’
‘Where’s your mum?’
‘London.’
The woman with the ponytail smiled at me as if to say, ‘Chin up,’ and we waited again, in silence. And then the other woman nudged her sandals with her toes and spoke as if we’d never stopped talking, louder this time, more confident. ‘It’s easier to be a mother when I don’t have them all the time.’
‘Of course it is.’ The woman with the ponytail hitched up her jeans.
‘I’m serious. It actually suits me. I can do the nice stuff. I don’t get so stressed out. They never behaved for me when I had them every day.’
‘That’s what they don’t see. Especially my eldest. It was hard work bringing them up on my own. I tried my best.’
‘Some people are better at being parents than others.’ The woman nudged her sandals again.
‘Some people are natural born mothers. Others aren’t.’
‘I’m not a natural born mother,’ I said. ‘I wish I was.’
The women shook their heads and seemed to dismiss my complaint.
‘They’re my life though. I don’t know what I’d do without them.’ The woman wiped dirt from the soles of her feet then bent to buckle her sandals.
‘Same.’ The other woman stopped her walking and leaned against the wall.
I wondered if I would be better without Emily and if she would be better without me. I really did consider it deeply. I concluded then that I wanted her. That doesn’t mean she was better with me. But I wanted her. I said my selfish prayer again.
‘Don’t you find it hard to be on the straight and narrow now?’ the woman with the ponytail said. ‘When my kids were young and living with me that was the time in my life I tried my hardest to sort myself out. For them.’
‘The hardest time for me was when I had them all day every day,’ the other woman said. ‘I was beside myself.’
‘Whatever works,’ the woman with the ponytail said, and she reminded me a little of me as she did a dance move to some absent music, a shake of the hips, a bounce of the knees, a click of the fingers, holding on to her jeans with one hand. Then she sat down and we waited. After an hour I was called from the cell and told I would be released on report. My court appearance would come another day. Today I was free to find my way back through the rain to Lennoxtown and to Emily.
15.
It was a relief to be outside in the fresh air and rain. Cars had their headlights on despite the daylight. A boy walked along the courtroom steps, holding a woman’s hand. The woman looked like Caroline, my first friend from the library, but it wasn’t her. And then I saw June. She stood on the steps wearing wellington boots and she held an umbrella. We didn’t hug or anything like that.
‘I was just on my way in to find you,’ she said.
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘Ruth.’
‘They released me.’
‘Good.’
We walked towards the road.
‘Where’s your son?’
‘I don’t think we should talk about Michael.’
‘Is he still in Glasgow?’
‘We shouldn’t talk about him.’
She was right; we shouldn’t talk about him. I would never want to hear of any good she’d found in Michael in that cafe or any new defence of him. To me, he did a wrong to Robbie, an appalling wrong, and it was best to say no more.
At the roadside June hailed a black cab, opened the door and shook rain from her umbrella.
‘What are you doing?’ I said.
‘Getting you home.’
‘It’s too expensive.’
‘Not today.’
I watched the numbers rise on the meter all the way to Lennoxtown.
‘Are you hungry?’ June said as we came along Main Street.
‘Yes.’
‘Wait here please, driver.’
We bought a poke of chips each from the fish and chip shop. I held mine gently in the crook of my arm as the taxi took us to Robbie’s gran’s flat.
My car was parked outside. Paul must have driven it and posted the keys and my phone through the letter box because they were there on the floor when I opened the door. I had a voice message on my phone from a letting agent about a request I’d made to view a flat. There was a text message from Paul, sent the day before, saying Holly will be OK. No stitches. Small graze. I’ll see if I can convince G to drop the charges. Only because you’re not in your right mind. But we’re done. No contact please. Good luck, pal.
I called Sara who told me she was due to discuss my case with colleagues. Emily would stay another night in care but the temporary order would most likely be lifted and I could have her back. There would be a thorough assessment to come – this wasn’t over – but living with my mum would be seen as a good and necessary step. June took my chips from me and told me to take off my wet coat and shoes. She put the television on and we ate our chips on our laps in the living room.
‘I’ll need to pack,’ I said. ‘We’re not staying.’
‘Eat your chips first. Get your strength up.’
Sitting side by side she said she remembered eating chips out of newspaper in that very room over fifty years ago. ‘Same old shite in the news now as there was then, I expect,’ she said. After we’d eaten she helped me pack some of our things and said it felt fitting to be doing this in reverse so many years later. She put Emily’s books into a plastic bag and said, ‘I do regret dragging you into all this.’
‘I wish you hadn’t.’
‘For what it’s worth I know that boy would have turned out all right. He did turn out all right, didn’t he?’ She turned to face me. ‘Did he ever talk about me? Robbie?’
I could have lied. It was like me to lie. But she’d have asked me what he said and I’d have had to make up more lies. So I told her no, he never did.
‘Well, that’s a surprise. Because he knew me well. And because he saw us once. Aye, he’s always known. I knocked on the door when I knew Audrey was away. Robbie was coming along the street, swinging his boot bag. And his granda, him, opened the front door. He put his arms around me and held me tight. I think he was consoling me. I like to think he felt as much as I still did but I think it was just consolation he was giving me. You can’t get over anything. You think you can. But you are who you are. He gave me a hankie and that just about broke me. After I’d wiped my eyes I saw your Robbie staring at me. At us. His wee schoolboy eyes. He’d seen everything and nothing. I said bye-bye to his granda and patted Robbie on the arm as I went by, and that was me. So Robbie knew and never said a word. I have no doubt. Which made what Michael did to him especially cruel.’
Yes.
‘June, do I seem mentally unwell to you?’ I asked her.
I caught her frown before she changed her face. She shook her head. ‘They’ll just be checking you won’t harm the lassie. Which you won’t.’
‘They charged me with assault. I accidently hurt a child.’
I heard June’s intake of breath. ‘Ruth said.’
My lawyer had told me that the Crown could prosecute me even if Georgia dropped the charges. Which I knew she wouldn’t.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt her. I really didn’t.’ I thought of Paul and Georgia wiping blood from Holly’s forehead, giving hot milk and treats and comfort and feeling violent towards me. I thought of Emily spending two nights in a stranger’s house.
‘Do you think she slept? Will she be missing me? They’ll have given her a toothbrush, won’t they?’
‘They take good care of the kids,’ June said.
I cried into a pile of Emily’s dirty clothes, felt June’s hand on my back and remembered what a consolation it was to be soothed. I made my prayer again and told Emily I would soothe and cuddle and comfort whenever she wanted and whatever she did, however busy I was, however crazy I was. Then, because I knew it was the right thing to do, I asked June to leave. She need not burden me with her impenetrable sadness when my loss was in some corner of Lennoxtown in some room in a house where they changed the sheets whenever one child left and a new child arrived.
‘It was nice knowing you, June.’
‘It was nice knowing you too.’
‘You were good to me.’
‘I was. I hustled all those folk to your dance class.’
‘I know it was you who made them come.’
‘Goodbye, Liz.’
In the new silence, I heard Emily’s voice loud in my head, crying like the seagulls so far from the coast.
At a few minutes past four in the afternoon my mum rang the bell. I took her suitcase from her and offered her chips, cold, but they could be microwaved.
‘I’ll take some. It’s quite a journey.’ She looked around her. ‘So this is where you’ve been.’
The microwave pinged and we stood in the kitchen while she ate the chips and I made tea. I’d forgotten how tall she was. Like me.
‘You look well,’ I said.
‘Thank you.’
‘You don’t need to say I look well. I know I don’t.’
She appraised me like she’s always done and I saw a bit of pity and a bit of love.
She said, ‘I’ve made up your room for you. I can’t give Emily her own room straight away but I expect she’ll want to be in with you anyway.’
Emily.
‘Has Alan moved in?’
‘He put his guitars in the spare room. I don’t know why I agreed to it. So now I have an excuse to tell him to put them in his son’s garage or up in the loft. But Emily will get her room back. He knew what he was taking on.’
‘We won’t be there for long.’
‘Be as long as you like.’
I shook my head. My mum raised her voice. ‘Liz, I don’t have the words you have and I haven’t had the life you’ve had, but I mean it when I say I’ll look after you.’
I thought about not saying it but I said it anyway: ‘You were hard on me after Dad died.’
‘Your dad had just died.’
‘You got over him too quickly.’
‘Well I think you’re taking too long to get over Robbie.’
We stood in silence.
My mum took another chip then said, ‘Come on, let’s get you packed.’
16.
They said Emily could come home to me because my mum had promised to let us live with her. They were happy with that. They would speak to social services in London and if I didn’t abide by what the London social services said, by God, I would be clamped down upon. The date of my court case would be sent to my mum’s and I’d have to return for that, but finally my days in Lennoxtown were ending.
