Grace, page 5
‘Yes, I’ll need some tutoring on that,’ said Amelia, getting in her response before Piers could refuse the offer. ‘And bathing? I’m afraid I haven’t looked after a new-born before.’
‘That’s absolutely fine,’ replied Gloria. ‘We’re here to help you.’
Leonora reappeared at that moment bearing a tray. She placed four mugs of tea on a coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘Shall I take baby, so that you can have your tea?’ she asked.
Amelia did not want to surrender her, not at all. But she realised that she was in no position to argue.
‘Of course,’ she said, allowing Leonora to lean down and sweep Grace away with practised ease. She sat down opposite them again, this time with a baby on her lap.
‘Leonora is an old hand at this,’ Gloria said, picking up her tea. ‘How many children have you fostered now, Leo?’
Leonora pondered. ‘I think about thirty now, more or less,’ she replied. ‘Some for short bursts, you know, and some for years. Some became like my own kids.’
‘And Leo does have her own kids, too,’ Gloria added. ‘She has four.’
‘Wow,’ said Amelia. ‘So many! You must love children.’
‘Yes,’ Leonora replied. ‘Most of the time. It’s so hard when the foster kids go, though… That’s the struggle with it.’ She had a funny faraway look in her eye. I wonder what the story is there, Amelia thought. Because everyone had a story, she knew that for certain.
‘Do you have any more questions for any of us?’ Gloria asked.
‘No, I don’t think so,’ replied Piers without pause, sipping his tea. ‘Except – what’s the timeline now? When will the court case be heard? When will she be officially ours?’
There was a brief silence.
‘Did they not explain this to you when you applied to foster to adopt?’ Gloria said. ‘It’s not a foregone conclusion… I mean, it’s highly likely, but…’
‘I know there’s always a small chance it won’t work out,’ Piers interrupted. ‘But we were told it was a very small chance.’
‘Yes, in practice, that’s true,’ Gloria replied. ‘Ninety per cent of our foster to adopt babies are eventually adopted by their foster carers. But I think it’s always best to be prepared, to know that it’s not a given. It’s possible a family member might pop out of the woodwork. The baby has not been surrendered – I mean, the mother has not officially handed over her parental responsibilities. Yet. And Marion here will have to make a recommendation to the court, after she’s conducted all of her research…’
‘No. But the mother… she’s not in a good place, is she? That’s what they said, the other social workers,’ interrupted Amelia, her heart in her mouth.
‘We can’t share too many details with you, I’m afraid,’ she answered. ‘But it’s certainly true that the mother’s home situation wouldn’t be in Grace’s best interests, currently.’
Piers nodded, as if he heard about these sorts of situations all of the time. Amelia admired his composure. She was far from calm. There was just so much to take in. So many human dramas meeting in one place, in one small child.
‘So with that in mind, then – when will the court hearing be?’ Piers asked.
‘There will probably be three more hearings, Mr Howard,’ said Gloria.
‘Please, call me Piers,’ he said, flashing his disarming smile.
‘Okay, then. Piers – there will be three more. There’s a case management hearing in a month, a resolution hearing sometime in January, where we hope to settle things, and if we don’t manage that, there’ll be a full, final hearing after that. The target we work to for it all to be completed is twenty-six weeks,’ she answered. ‘But this judge seems keen to hold the final hearing in February. She does a lot of family court work, and she feels it’s best to have things resolved as quickly as possible.’
So, she may be ours by spring, Amelia thought. Or she may not. She could not, would not believe it was a done deal, until everything was concluded. That was the price of having loved and lost before.
‘Can I hold her again?’ she asked Leonora, putting her mug of tea back down on the table, only half finished. She intended to savour every single minute, while she had the chance.
*
Sweet, shallow breaths… Hands unfurling her fingers… a beating heart…
‘Are you okay, Mrs Howard?’
Amelia refocused her eyes on Julia, her one and only art student.
‘Sorry, sorry, was away with the fairies. I’m fine,’ she said, pushing her hair back behind her ears. ‘Where were we? Yes. Watercolours. Can you show me what you’ve been doing this week?’
Julia was seventeen. She was the daughter of the college’s Classics teacher, but due to her gender, she was not entitled to subsidised education at the school. Instead, she attended the local comprehensive, which was academically excellent, but in which Amelia suspected she was very much at sea. She was a quiet girl, slightly square, impeccably polite and undeniably artistic. Amelia believed that she had every chance of getting into art school, and their lessons, held once a week in the housemaster’s sitting room, were designed to help her get there.
Amelia was happy to help Julia out, but she wasn’t a qualified teacher. She had given up her attempt at a postgraduate teaching diploma – something that had been her father’s idea, not her own – soon after meeting Piers. It had been a lucky alignment of two things: she had been failing the course, and they had both wanted to try for a family straight away. They’d agreed that life as a trainee teacher would not co-exist well with pregnancy.
However, after years of IVF and their eventual heartbreak, Amelia’s unemployment had begun to feel more of a burden than a blessing. She’d had far too much opportunity to let her thoughts roam, which was why she’d leapt at the opportunity to teach Julia when Piers had suggested it. She also loved it because it gave her time to focus exclusively on art. Since becoming a housemaster’s wife, her life hadn’t been her own. She was on show almost all of the time, and even when they were in their flat, the boys’ voices seemed to follow them, echoing through the walls. Art allowed her to escape, and this session at least gave her carte blanche to do so, without guilt.
‘I walked up British Camp,’ said Julia, pulling out her sketchbook, ‘and painted this.’
Her work really was exceptional, thought Amelia. She had captured the former Iron Age hillfort beautifully; each deep, sculpted trench and hill sang, and the reservoir at the hill’s foot shone in the sunlight.
‘This is wonderful,’ she said.
‘I love it up there,’ said Julia. ‘It feels like an escape. There’s something about the Malvern Hills, their age, the fact they’ve been there pretty much forever, that makes me feel better…’
‘Oh, I agree,’ said Amelia. ‘I love running up there. Sometimes I stop to snap a picture that I can paint later.’
Julia smiled at her teacher.
‘Can I see some of your pictures?’ she said.
‘Oh, they aren’t out on display. I think they’re mostly in the loft…’
The truth was, Amelia had previously used the small single bedroom in their apartment as an art room and had hung a few pictures in there just for her own consumption. However, they’d agreed to set it aside for Grace. Piers had spent the past week putting everything she’d had in there into the roof space.
‘I’d like to see them, though. To see what I’m aiming for,’ said Julia.
‘I’ll see what I can dig out,’ said Amelia, hoping that she’d forget by next week. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘This is great, but I think it needs a little more light and shade. Can you set yourself up, and then we’ll work on it together?’
She stood up then, and walked over to the window, giving Julia space to get ready. She could see the house’s front lawn, which was much prized by the Year 11s, who were allowed to sit on it in the summer term.
Piers was out on the lawn erecting several gazebos with the help of their groundsman, Tony. They were preparing for a party to be held after the school’s annual Bonfire Night fireworks display, which was scheduled for Tuesday. If it didn’t pour with rain, the boys were set to enjoy hot dogs and candy floss and a visit from those parents who lived close enough. It was always a pleasant event, full of laughter and fun. She enjoyed seeing the boys so happy.
‘How long have you been married to Mr Howard, Mrs Howard?’ said Julia, having noticed that her attention was elsewhere.
‘Oh, six years, nearly,’ she replied, smiling at her charge.
‘Wow, that’s a long time,’ said Julia. Amelia reflected that Julia’s idea of relationships was probably measured in intense teenage weeks rather than sedate adult years.
Amelia examined her husband. Piers was casually dressed for his task, wearing a fleece top embellished with the school logo and a pair of tracksuit bottoms which he wore for his sporadic attempts at a fitness regime. His light brown hair, usually well-groomed and kept in place with hair wax, had reacted to the damp air and was now sticking up all over the place. But she liked it like that, she thought. He looked strong and capable and motivated, even with just the hint of a middle-aged spread about his girth. He was smiling at something Tony had said; knowing Tony, it was likely to have been a filthy joke. The casual clothing he was wearing today had the effect of smoothing some of his harder edges and she had to fight the urge to sprint outside and run her arms over his broad shoulders. She’d fought the same urge on the first night she’d met him; their physical attraction to each other had been intense.
Amelia felt a surge of warmth towards the man she had married. He was a good-looking man, someone she was proud to be seen with; someone, if she was honest, that she was amazed to find herself married to. What was that phrase – punching above her weight? She had always felt that way about their relationship. She had always been plain and easily missed; he had always been the life and soul of the party, the man in the room everyone noticed.
And yet she now knew that behind that exterior, behind that mask, was a very different man. Their mutual grief over Leila had stripped them both bare for a while. All of their coping mechanisms had failed, hers for far longer than his; but although it had been a brief window, she felt like she’d stared into his soul in those few raw days after the birth, for that period where he couldn’t find the energy to resurrect his force field. She had seen vulnerability, insecurity, sadness and pain. She knew it must take an enormous amount of energy to keep that hidden most of the time. She couldn’t imagine, in fact, how he did it. So she understood now why Piers experienced life as a series of intensely private peaks and troughs. She understood that she was the only one he could expose those troughs to, and that was fine. That was what partners were for. She had also learned, as their relationship had progressed, to cling on during the troughs, because his peaks were so powerful, they swept away the bad.
‘Where did you meet?’
‘Online.’
Piers had been her first and only match on the dating app she had downloaded in a fit of madness and desperation, the result of a long night attempting to dispose of her loneliness via a massive bag of crisps and a whole bottle of Prosecco. She had only uploaded one picture of herself onto the app, one of only a few that she was prepared to share with the world. It had showed her sitting on a bench on the Embankment on a sunny day in spring, her thick brown hair cut into a chic bob, her slender legs crossed. She had been wearing a purple knee-length dress and brown cowboy boots, and beside her sat a large tote bag, stuffed full of paper, pens and books. She had been living in a dream when that picture had been taken, she thought. Which was so terribly, depressingly different from living the dream.
She had nearly stood Piers up on their first date. Imagine that! She had arrived at the windowless wine bar, seen how empty it was, realised how exposed she felt and nearly bolted back out of its oppressive twilight, into the street. But then she’d looked over to the bar and seen a man smiling at her, illuminated by a bare pendant bulb, its spiral filament a flaming helter skelter. She recognised Piers from his profile picture, which had shown him on a beach somewhere hot, sporting an impressive tan and a large, cold glass of lager. His torso hadn’t been on display in the bar, of course, but she could see the same broad smile and shoulders, and his forearms, exposed beneath rolled-up shirtsleeves, flexed as he waved to her. She had spent most of that evening staring at the contours of his arms, examining them as she would if she had been preparing to draw him. Every ridge, dip and dimple on him was like music to her. She had been spellbound. And when he had pulled her towards him later, as the rain had finally begun to fall after weeks of oppressive heat, she had never felt so desired, or so safe. He was strong, successful and handsome, and more than that, much more than that, he seemed to want her. And that particular miracle felt most incredible of all.
‘Did you know he was a teacher here when you first met? I remember Dad saying your father was headmaster of Langland, years ago?’ said Julia.
When she’d found out where Piers worked, it had been like the stars had aligned. And when Amelia had seen the joy in her father’s eyes, she’d realised that Piers had been met with approval – and so, for once, had she by extension. And as she’d been trying and failing to please her father for her whole life, this magical synchronicity had to be seized upon. Piers had offered her a new beginning, an opportunity to put her string of low-ranking, dogsbody jobs in art supply shops and galleries – not to mention her failed attempt at a teaching qualification – behind her. They had been married within months. There had been no reason to wait.
‘No, not initially. But it was pretty lucky,’ she replied. ‘We both feel at home here.’
She watched as Piers and Tony worked together to peg down the wayward gazebo, wooden mallets flying back and forth. Piers was a hard worker, undoubtedly, both in the classroom and out. He was also incredibly ambitious, and she was proud of what he had achieved so far. He’d come to the college after a decade working in a school he hadn’t liked, but he’d certainly found his calling here. He really might get a deputy headship in the next five years, she thought. And that ambition would be assisted, she knew, by their marriage. It helped to be seen as a stable family man. Private education had endured one too many sexual abuse scandals in recent years.
She considered then the anxieties which had kept her awake the previous night. She had been haunted by feelings of inadequacy and fear. Could she really be trusted to look after a baby? But it also seemed ludicrous to be feeling like this now, two years after they’d started the adoption process, and five years after they’d first embarked on their mission to have their own child. She’d had half a decade to think about having a baby, but now that it was incredibly real, and imminent, why was she feeling so afraid?
But was she afraid, really? Even in the dull, damp light of this particular autumn day, she could see that her nocturnal nightmares were ridiculous. For surely these were just ordinary nerves, the sorts of worries every new parent had, and they were also the sort of worries she had spent a lifetime cohabiting with. She must try harder to ignore them, she thought. Because she and Piers were both more than capable, more than ready to become parents. That man out there in the garden, that man who had risen through the junior teacher ranks so quickly at the college, and who had given her so much – he would help her through it. And they had been waiting so long, after all. Yes. Like their mutual grief, they would get through this next chapter together.
She spun around and walked towards where Julia was sitting, a renewed spring in her step.
‘Right,’ she said to her student. ‘Ready? Let’s get going on this. It’s going to be amazing, you know, when it’s finished.’
6
October 17th
Michelle
Nineteen weeks until the final hearing
There was a burning smell coming from the kitchen. Michelle had been slumped on the sofa for quite some time, but the acrid scent of smoke was just enough to penetrate her consciousness. She had lost track of how many minutes she had been there, although certainly for long enough to develop a numbness in her fingers and creeping cold in her toes. The heating wasn’t on, she now realised. She didn’t think they had fed the meter for days.
She stood up, shook her legs to check they were still capable of moving and stumbled into the kitchen. She was greeted by a cloud of smoke so dense she could only just make out their kitchen window. It had no blind and had a streetlamp directly outside, which meant that walking into their kitchen at night was usually like starring in a fly-on-the-wall documentary, exclusively for their neighbourhood. But not today.
‘Rob,’ she yelled. ‘Rob! Come quickly!’
A groan came from a few metres away.
‘Rob? Are you in here?’
‘Urrrggghhhhmmmm.’
‘Fuck,’ she whispered, struggling to speak now above the smoke. She grabbed a mildewed tea towel from the plastic hook on the wall and held it over her mouth. Every breath now tasted of mould. She shuffled forwards and her feet discovered Rob lying on the floor, curled up in a foetal position. She took a huge step over him, found floor underneath her feet and leaned over to the window, groping for the handle. She turned it and pushed it open as far as it would go. Then she turned around and searched for the source of the smoke. It didn’t take long; there was a particularly dense acrid black cloud ahead of her. Smoke was pouring out of the oven. She slammed its door shut, wincing as its heat seared into her fingers. She groped behind her and found a wet dishcloth swimming in a saucepan full of grease. She grabbed it and used it to turn all of the cooker dials to the off position.
Confident that she had the fire under control, she then knelt down on the floor and approached Rob. Some of the smoke was escaping through the open window now, and she could just discern that his eyes were closed, and that he was lying in a pool of his own vomit.
