A Last Kiss for Mummy: A teenage mum, a tiny infant, a desperate decision

She stomped off then, slamming the door behind her for good measure, which made me flinch, expecting Roman to wake with a start and begin wailing, but he was obviously used to noise. He barely stirred.

Emma was still upstairs when Hannah arrived on the doorstep fifteen minutes later, looking a picture of smiling efficiency.

‘Morning, Casey,’ she said cheerfully as I ushered her over the threshold. ‘Goodness, it’s warm in here after the nip in the air out there. Had to ramp the heating up for our little man, I suppose?’

She shrugged her parka off as she went in, and cast around, looking for him.

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Not ideal for a woman at my time of life, it must be said, but needs must, eh? Cup of coffee?’

‘That would be lovely. Ah! There you are – look at you, all snug in your lovely basket!’ She plucked Roman from his bed and turned back to me in one smooth movement. ‘And where’s our little madam today?’ she asked.

It was nothing personal, but I didn’t really like the way she called Emma ‘our little madam’. It was the sort of term a mother might use affectionately for her own teenager, and, though it wasn’t for me to say, in this context it just felt slightly inappropriate – as if she was already encouraging her to play that kind of role, despite Emma being a mother herself. It also riled me that Hannah was only young too and, though she was possibly the best social worker since the invention of sliced bread, had no personal experience of being a mum herself. (I’d checked.) Which didn’t mean she couldn’t do a brilliant job for Roman – some of the best midwives out there were childless, after all – but did mean it sat uneasily with me that she should slightly patronise Emma in that way. So I lied. I just didn’t want to give her further fuel to think of Emma like that.

‘She’s upstairs sorting out the baby’s laundry, I think,’ I mumbled. ‘I’ll pop the kettle on then I’ll nip up and tell her you’re here.’

‘Excellent,’ said Hannah. ‘Now, little fellow,’ she said, turning back to Roman, ‘how are you?’

Once I’d chivvied Emma down (having first, of course, briefed her) I left her and Hannah to it, and got on with doing a bit of laundry myself. I was out in the conservatory – a welcome addition Mike had made to the house not long after we’d moved in – hanging it on my airer when I heard the door go, and by the time I returned to the living room Emma was back in position on the sofa, Roman in the crook of one arm, remote in the other hand, TV on.

She glanced up. ‘She said she’ll see you Thursday,’ she told me. ‘And maybe phone you. Prob’ly to bitch about something else I’m doing wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ I asked. ‘What did she say you were doing wrong?’

Emma pouted, seemingly lost for an answer. ‘Nothing,’ she admittedly finally. ‘But she doesn’t have to. I can just tell. She thinks I’m useless. “You should do this that way, you should do that this way. You should hold him like that, not like that –” She never stops.’

‘Emma, that’s not true.’ I went and perched on the edge of the sofa. ‘Sweetheart, honestly, that’s not true. She just wants to help you learn how to look after him the best you can. That’s what she’s there for …’

‘No she’s not. She just wants to see how bad I am. So I don’t know why she gets all uppity when I prove it to her – she should be pleased!’

‘Love, that’s not the case at all. Look, you really need to try and get along with Hannah. I know you don’t like it, this whole assessment thing, but you have to take it seriously. It’s not a game, you know. It is serious. So whatever you think about Hannah, you have to take it seriously.’

Emma’s eyes glittered. ‘Why?’ she said angrily. ‘What’s the point? What difference is it going to make to anything? It’s obvious they want him.’ Her eyes flicked down to Roman. ‘So you really think anything I do is going to make a difference?’ She looked disgusted. ‘They’re short of babies, aren’t they? You should know that. They’ve probably got some poor, sad, childless couple already lined up to have him. I know how it works. And if you don’t you don’t know anything!’ She’d swung her legs around now, and was rising from the sofa, Roman in her arms still. ‘Trust me, Casey, I know how it works. They’re just waiting for me to fuck up enough for them to be able to whip him away.’ She stomped to the door. Then spun round again. ‘I’m not stupid!’

I left her alone. Left her alone for a good twenty minutes. I tidied the living room, gathering Roman’s bits and bobs into one corner. Funny, I mused as I did so, how babies tended to spread. That was the start of a childhood, right there, the gradual tentacles of ‘stuff’ that reached all corners. Then, just as your house felt like it was full to bursting, there was this change – things started disappearing again, toys put away, stocks of plastic crockery dwindling. Childish presences became less and less, bedrooms became havens. And then, next, they’d be gone, the nest flown.

I folded the blanket Emma had discarded when she’d gone up to her bedroom. Was that what she really thought? And, more to the point, why was she so sure of it? Who’d planted that seed of mistrust in her mind and made her so sure of this conspiracy? Someone must have, for sure.

I went up quietly, suspecting that both mother and baby might be sleeping, but when I reached the top of the stairs I could hear a low sound. I hovered on the landing then, to catch what the noise was, and it was Emma. She was speaking and crying – I could tell because her voice had that unmistakable gulping quality. And what she was saying broke my heart.

‘I wish,’ she was whispering, ‘I was a proper mummy, baby. I wish I was a proper mummy and that your daddy wasn’t in jail. I wish I had a proper job like proper mummies do, friends who had babies so you had little friends to play with as well. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want us to be alone.’ I could hear her soothing him, going ‘shhh, baby, shhh go to sleep now’. Then she spoke again, and this time it was almost inaudible. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I’m useless, and I don’t know what to do.’

So I would have to. I tiptoed back downstairs again.

Chapter 6 (#ue08631e8-9c75-5078-8ab0-66ef782a8cdf)

Kieron, my son, had recently qualified as a teaching assistant at our local primary school. He and his girlfriend, Lauren, had moved out of her parents’ house and were now living in a small, rented flat, not far from our house. Whilst Lauren still had two jobs – splitting her time between working at a beauty salon and teaching dance to children – Kieron was now enjoying working full time in his new job in the learning support department.

I remembered him telling me only a few days ago about a mother and toddler group that one of his co-workers had set up in a local church. After hearing the sadness in Emma’s voice as she had spoken to her baby, I decided I’d make some enquiries on her behalf. Mixing with other new mums might be just what she needed.

I was well aware that Emma was dreadfully lonely, and I knew that she regularly wrote to her boyfriend, Tarim. Almost every day she went out to post letters using stamps and stationery bought with money out of her allowance that was actually meant for Roman. This was another thing I had neglected to inform Hannah about. Emma received benefits to help her pay for baby formula, nappies and baby clothes, etc., but inevitably each Monday – she referred to this as ‘pay day’ – she would return from shopping with a new CD or magazine or a top for herself. I also had a suspicion that she was sending money in her letters to Tarim. I was determined, however, that she realise the importance of showing social services that she had her priorities right and I decided that I’d start accompanying her on her shopping days.

‘Here,’ I had said to her, just a few days earlier. I’d passed her a baby blue, padded jacket. ‘Why don’t you buy this for Roman? He’ll look gorgeous in it and Hannah will be pleased to see it, I’m sure.’

I pushed it in front of Emma as she casually browsed through a rail of T-shirts in her size, and she gave it a quick glance.

‘Nah,’ she replied. ‘Auntie Casey can buy it, though, if she wants.’

‘Um, Auntie Casey has bought him quite enough, Emma,’ I said in a huff. ‘Perhaps if you spent less on flipping postage stamps, and more on Roman, you wouldn’t moan so much about how he looked when you dressed him.’ I glanced down at the pram, which I was pushing, and suddenly found myself getting annoyed as Emma just grinned back at me.

‘Actually,’ I said as I angled the pram handles in her direction, ‘here, you take him for a while; I have some errands to run. I’ll meet you back here at 12.30 and we’ll go for some lunch.’

‘Oh, Casey! You know how stressed I get lugging this bloody pram around. Can’t you take him so I get a bit of “me” time?’

I was actually lost for words. I simply snorted and zipped up my coat. ‘I’m off, love. I have things to do. I’ll see you in an hour or so.’ And with that I stomped out of the shop. ‘Me’ time indeed! I’d almost forgotten in such a short time what that felt like!

Now, though, after hearing her sobbing, I felt guilty. I phoned the mother and toddler group and asked for more information. They met twice a week and apparently the Thursday session had lots of very young mothers and babies. It sounded ideal for Emma. I listened as the woman who organised it all, Gemma, told me more. ‘If you come along with her to the first session, you can sit and have a coffee with me while she settles in.’

‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a chat with Emma then, and see if she’s up for it. So you say Thursdays would be better?’

‘Yes,’ Gemma replied and then hesitated before explaining. ‘It seems that by Thursday the girls tend to have no money left, so it’s not completely altruistic of them. They get free milk, juice and snacks for the babies, and also as much tea, coffee and toast, etc., as they’d like for themselves. We also have a toy-borrowing system on a Thursday. The girls can pick up two or three toys to take home, and then return and swap them the following week.’

‘Sounds great. I’ll speak with her then, and hopefully we’ll see you on Thursday.’

Feeling a lot better now that I was armed with good news, I went upstairs to tell Emma all about it. I smiled as I walked into her room. She had Roman laid on a blanket on the floor, and she was kneeling at his side blowing raspberries onto his stomach. Roman was shrieking with laughter each time he saw his mummy lean forward to get him again. Emma was laughing too, so I was pleased she had cheered up. ‘Hey, you two. You look like you’re having fun.’