Cat Step, page 23
I collected Emily from a place they called the contact centre. It was a room in the social services offices with some chairs and children’s toys. I waited alone in the room. I heard a gentle voice, saw a woman step inside and hold open the door then say, ‘On you go.’ Emily came in. She looked clean. She wore clothes I’d never seen and clutched a teddy I’d never seen. Somebody had brushed her hair and Emily had let whoever it was plait it neatly. It suited her.
‘Hi darling,’ I said.
Neither of us moved.
I held out my arms but Emily stayed where she was, by the door.
‘Emily—’ I said, but I didn’t finish my sentence because I didn’t know what else to say.
She looked around her at the toys in the room and she held her teddy by its arm. ‘She gave me this one because I left mine at home.’
‘It’s nice. Does it have a name?’
‘No.’
The woman at the door said, ‘How about you come through into the room.’
Emily stepped inside and the woman closed the door. ‘There,’ she said.
‘Have you got a hug for me, Emily?’
She came to me and I put my arms around her but she kept her arms at her sides. I couldn’t reach my lips to her face so I had to kiss her hair. That was good enough for me.
‘I got a sticker,’ she said and turned in my arms to show me a yellow sticker that said Great Work.
‘Who gave you that?’
‘I can’t remember.’
‘Was it the lady you stayed with?’
‘No.’
‘Was it from nursery?’
‘I got it from my school,’ Emily said.
‘Oh yes.’ I remembered her visit to the primary school. There was a pain in my throat from trying not to cry.
‘Where have you been?’ Emily said.
‘I had to go somewhere very suddenly. I’m sorry,’ I said.
That wasn’t a good enough answer but Emily accepted it. ‘When are we going home?’ she said.
I looked up at the woman and said, ‘Now, I think.’ The woman nodded and I stood up. But Emily seemed confused. She held tight to her teddy. I didn’t know what the matter was, but the woman seemed to understand.
‘You can take your teddy with you,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to leave it behind.’
That cheered Emily. She showed me the red jumper it wore and asked me to take it off for her. Then she asked me to put it on again. So I did.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘I have a surprise for you. Your granny’s here.’
‘Is she coming to stay?’
No. She was coming to take us away.
17.
First we had to go to her concert at the nursery. It would have been too much to take her away without letting her sing the songs she’d hummed to herself when she played or walked or ate. So we stayed longer than I wanted.
She also had a cardiology appointment. My mum and I took Emily into Glasgow to the hospital. I drove this time, not wanting to relive the bus journey and the bus station or be reminded of June’s son. There must have been something written in Emily’s notes about my behaviour because they spoke slowly and treated me carefully and spent a lot of time talking to my mum to make sure she understood too. The doctor told us unequivocally that Emily’s heart was no different to any other child’s heart, but to be safe, they said, and given her father’s death, she would need checks throughout her life. They told me they would write to Emily’s GP. How we will ever see that letter or pass it on to a new GP in London I don’t know. I should have asked for something in writing there and then. I’m annoyed I didn’t because this is important.
Ruth accompanied me to say goodbye to my dancers in the sheltered housing. She sat at another table and did her paperwork. Senga and Agnes came to the lounge wearing their ballet shoes and I had to tell them that there was no class.
‘We’ve got a new teacher next week,’ Eve said, because she had asked a friend if she knew of a dancer and her friend had recommended a young woman, recently graduated from college, who was looking for experience. So that was that. Their lessons would continue.
They were all there – Charlie, John, Alice, Agnes, Senga, Eve – apart from June. They wished me luck and told me they were sad to see me go, that the classes wouldn’t be the same no matter how good this new girl was.
‘We’ll miss your little dancing displays,’ Eve said, and although I laughed, remembering the times I’d dropped to splits or tap danced across the floor for a laugh, I hoped they wouldn’t ask me to do anything then. They didn’t.
‘I’m sorry about my other display,’ I said, ‘the other day.’
‘The interrogation?’ John asked.
‘I was a bit much, wasn’t I? Especially with Alice. I’m sorry Alice.’
‘Don’t worry, she’ll have forgotten it already,’ said Eve.
We looked at Alice who wagged a chastising finger at Eve but let us laugh. ‘Losing yourself is devastating,’ she said.
‘We know, pet,’ Eve said. ‘I’m sorry. We know.’
I hugged them goodbye while Ruth watched me from her paperwork. I didn’t go up to June’s door and now I wish I had. Perhaps I’ll write. Perhaps I’ll see her when I go to court.
Emily chose a favourite dress and asked me to give her a cruise face. I put glitter on her cheeks and eyelids and brushed her hair. The rasping sound was satisfying as I mothered her curls into bunches.
‘Sit at the front, Mummy,’ she said. ‘Don’t be late.’
‘I won’t be.’
‘Please don’t be late because you’re sometimes late.’
‘I won’t be late.’
I wasn’t late because my mum was with me and we stayed out after dropping Emily at nursery. We were first in the queue. The children sat in a semi-circle on the carpet. I spotted Emily and she greeted me with waving hands. I gave her two slow thumbs up and she put her hands to her mouth and giggled. The headteacher welcomed us and then the children sang their songs. ‘Five Speckled Frogs’, ‘Allyballybee’, ‘Three Craws’, ‘Five Currant Buns in a Baker’s Shop’. One of the teachers put a tabard with a number two around Emily’s neck and she acted the part of a currant bun who was taken away and eaten.
My kid is tough, I thought. She can learn songs and actions and perform them to strangers. She can sit cross-legged for thirty minutes and fidget no more and no less than the other kids. She can seek out my eyes and be reassured because I’m there. She can sing. It’s not her voice shouting louder than any other child but I can see her lips moving and I know she’s singing. She’s enjoying it. My kid gets up and eats her breakfast and goes to nursery every morning and plays with other kids I don’t know and talks with nursery staff I don’t know and then she waits for me to pick her up to take her to a home she has made her home because I say it’s home. As long as I’m there she’s happy. She doesn’t need much or want much but she needs me. She likes me. She believes me. My kid is tough. She has love and rage and sadness and a mother who is adrift with her loss.
I was thinking all this as I watched her concert. When it was over I clapped and clapped and then lifted her up and made sure I hugged her for as long as she wanted to be hugged. That was her last day of nursery. On the way out, I told her we would find another nursery in London and we would find another school. She cried.
I wanted us to see the Campsies for one last time so with my mum on a bus to Glasgow and our car packed with all our stuff I took her there. The wind battered our jackets as we crossed the car park. The recent rain had muddied the path up the hillside. Emily trod through puddles. We slipped at times and stopped when we found some grass we liked the look of.
‘We’ll do what daddy used to do when he was a little boy,’ I said.
I didn’t have a clue what he did as a boy. Robbie said he hated Lennoxtown, but I liked it. I liked the Campsie Fells and so did Emily. Even on damp and cloudy days the view was restless and striking.
I made something up. I said Robbie used to collect stones and pebbles and make nature pictures out of them. Emily had a happy time collecting stones and finding feathers, grass, flowers and twigs to put by her picture.
‘There. Daddy would like your sculpture,’ I said.
‘My daddy was a fast runner,’ she said.
‘He was.’
‘And this is a picture of him running. That’s his legs, that’s his arms, that’s his feet.’ She was pleased with her work.
I’d brought a candle and tried to light it but the flame went out.
‘Bloody breeze,’ I said. The grass around us turned circles in the wind’s gusts.
I tried again but we were too exposed.
‘Bloody breeze,’ Emily said.
‘Don’t copy me.’
I put the candle and matches in my pocket.
‘Did he die because of me, Mummy?’ Her question took me by surprise.
‘No, he didn’t die because of you, Emily. Not at all. Not at all. No. He died because his heart got tired all of a sudden. It had ticked all its ticks. Nothing to do with you. Nothing, to do with you.’
I kneeled next to her and squeezed her tight to me.
‘I love you, Mummy,’ she said.
‘I love you. We love you.’
The wind pushed our hair from our foreheads and necks.
‘Why do you think it was because of you?’ I said.
‘Because I came and then Daddy had to go.’
‘Sometimes bad things happen. Life is like that.’
‘I wish I had a dad.’
‘You do have a dad.’
‘One who is alive.’
‘What would you do with him?’
‘Go roller skating. He was good at roller skating.’
He’d never spoken of roller skating. I’d never spoken of it. She must have added that to whatever image she’d made of him in her mind.
We hadn’t talked about her night away from me and I wanted to say something. ‘I’m sorry about the time you spent in that house with that lady. You must have wondered where I’d gone. I didn’t stop thinking about you. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay, Mummy.’
‘It’s not okay. I did a bad thing,’ I said.
‘Like smoking?’
‘Yes, like smoking.’
She looked horrified so I had to backtrack and say maybe not as bad as smoking. We are breeding a generation of zealots, I thought, but I also thought that Robbie would be pleased, he who had never smoked in his life, who drank in moderation, who advised me to cut down on the drink almost as soon as he met me.
‘I thought you weren’t coming back,’ Emily said.
‘Did you?’
‘I cried.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay.’
I stood up and hoisted her onto my shoulders and we stood for a while, staring out at the flat light on the fields and the grey sky, until she waggled her legs and I felt her heels against my chest.
‘Let’s go, Mummy,’ she said.
‘Bye, Campsies,’ I said.
‘My picture. Will it be here when we come back?’
‘It might be. Possibly. Probably.’
Sometimes it’s okay to lie.
I called it a road trip and we drove south, away from Lennoxtown. My mum used her return train ticket and said she would get home before us to put some tea in the oven.
Robbie liked me for my spirit and my flair. He liked me for my hard side, the brittle bit of me that could tell a person to fuck off or stand up to strangers. Robbie liked me for my guts and the way I practised and practised and got myself through the auditions and onto the cruise ships. He liked me for what I could have been. He liked me because I didn’t mess about when I found him. It takes guts to do that. He liked me because we made Emily.
I don’t know what he’d think of me now. I don’t know what he’d say about me and Emily and how, five years in, we’re still stumbling along, making mistakes and making up. I can only imagine. I don’t know what he’d say if I confronted him about his past and the trouble he was in and the trouble he caused. Because I would have confronted him. Damn right I would. But there’s no way of getting to him now. He’s gone. He’s a flash of silver on a seagull’s belly. He’s the yellow on the Campsie Fells. They really are yellow. I just wish the sun would shine on them more. When it does, they light up in gold as if they are made from the very sun itself, from the very essence of him, from the very essence of love.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people and organisations for their help with research: Catherine Armstrong, Tim Baker, Cove Park, Dance Factory, Helen Griffin, Maxine Hobson, Laurence Nicolson, Ronnie Mackintosh, Claricia Parinussa Kruithof, Carol Sallows, Anna Williams, and the staff and residents of Whitehill Court in Kirkintilloch including Margaret, Isabel, Joan and Ronald.
Thank you to my fellow writers for reading and commenting on extracts: Ailsa Crum, Emma Lennox, David Manderson, Emily Munro, Maureen Myant, Bert Thomson and Les Wood. Thanks also to the Campsie Writers’ Group, especially Muriel Connell and Marion Donnachie.
Thank you to Amelia Collingwood, Nathan Connolly, and Jordan Taylor-Jones at Dead Ink Books. And thank you, of course, to Millie Hoskins.
Respect and thanks to the friends who have looked after my kids or helped me out at the school gates: Andrew, Clair, Gayle, Lynne, Lesley, Louise, Lucianne, Marissa, Peter and Sharon.
Love and thanks to Vic and Jan Irvine, Claire Hamilton, Alex Irvine, Jane Havemann, Vicky McCarthy, Gill Woods and Linda and Laurence Byrne. Even more love and thanks to Eddie, Arlene, Isla and Sadie Burns.
About the Author
Alison Irvine was born in London to Antipodean parents. She gained a distinction in her Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University and her first novel, This Road is Red, was shortlisted for the 2011 Saltire First Book of the Year Award. In addition to her fiction work, she writes creative non-fiction as part of the artist collective Recollective. She lives in Glasgow with her husband and three daughters.
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Alison Irvine, Cat Step
