Picture Perfect

‘You got the money?’ asked her friend and the girl frowned at her bluntness, but then her friend had always been able to separate money and emotion. It was business, she had said to her when she balked at the amount her friend suggested for the baby.

The woman reached into her black leather handbag and handed a yellow envelope to the girl.

Her friend took a sip of Mountain Dew and opened the envelope. ‘I need to count it.’ She set to work, carefully counting the money.

‘It’s all there,’ the woman assured her, tearing her eyes away from the baby for a moment. ‘And the contract for you to sign.’

Her friend looked up from the money with cold eyes. ‘She’ll sign when I’ve counted the money,’ she snapped.

The woman was rocking the baby. The girl looked, and saw the baby’s feet poking out of the pink blanket.

‘She’ll get cold,’ she said and she tucked the blanket more snugly around the baby.

The woman stared at her.

‘You are going to sign the papers, aren’t you?’ she asked, her eyes searching the girl’s face.

Her voice was filled with fear; something the girl knew well.

‘I am,’ she said in a low voice. She went to the drawers by the bed and pulled out an envelope, and held it out to the woman.

‘This is for her, when she’s old enough, just in case something happens…’

The woman tore her eyes from the baby and nodded, her expression kind, as she took the envelope from her.

‘Can I read it?’ she asked politely. The girl knew the woman would read it later, even if she had said no at this moment.

She nodded and the woman struggled to open the envelope with the baby in her arms. She thought about offering to hold her while she read it but she didn’t trust herself to hand the child back.

She’s not yours now, she reminded herself.

The woman started to read.

She knew the words by heart.

Dear Baby Girl,

I am your momma, and I love you, but I don’t have anything a momma needs to look after a little baby.

I promise you I will come back for you when I can. Until then, be happy with this nice lady, who wants to be your momma for a while. She can take care of you and buy you a four-poster bed and good food and lots of clothes and lots of other things I can’t.

One day, when I’m rich, I’ll come and find you again and give you everything else you need.

Until then, know that I will always love you, my precious little girl.

Your Momma

xoxoxo

The woman folded the letter and put it back into its envelope and she saw her eyes wet with tears, but still she refused to cry.

Crying never helped nobody do nothin’, Grammy used to say.

The old woman had been right. Crying wouldn’t make her rich, or magically give her everything she knew the baby needed. She didn’t have enough money for her own food, let alone to raise a child. How would she clothe her? Educate her? Take care of her in a crisis? God knows she had had enough drama in her own short life to know things happened, terrible things that no child should ever go through.

And there was no way she was going to let her go into foster care, not after what she has been through. There was not a time she could remember when she had felt as though her life was turning out okay. Too many foster homes and too many of her grandmother’s broken promises had shattered her trust that the world was a safe place for a young girl to raise a child alone.

There was no point in crying, no point in wishing. The best thing for the child was to be with someone who could make sure she would be safe, and that she would never go hungry. That she would have the opportunity to go to school, that she would have a packed lunch and shoes without holes and that no one would ever call her ‘white trash’ to her face.

Her friend nodded at her that the money was all there. She picked up the pen and, with a shaking hand, she signed the papers on the table.

All those years of practising her signature for when she was able to make her own decisions instead of the welfare department, and this was the first time she got to use it for something grown-up.

With aching breasts and a breaking heart she pushed the papers over to the woman and nodded to her friend.

‘She’s yours now until I can come back,’ she said dully.

‘Would you like to hold her again?’ asked the woman.

She shook her head.

She knew that if she held her baby again, she would never let her go.

‘No, thank you, you’re her momma for now,’ she said, and the woman who at forty-five had nearly given up on being a mother, blinked and nodded.

‘Please. You should hold her again,’ said the woman as she walked over to the girl. ‘It will help you say goodbye.’

But the girl shook her head and picked up the plastic bag that contained her few personal belongings.

‘There’s no goodbye,’ she said. ‘Just take care of her till I can. I’ll be back for her, I promise, and I’ll pay you back the money and take care of her myself.’ She spoke with absolute certainty.

Without a backwards glance, she left the hospital room, her friend following, with a copy of the adoption documents, thirty thousand dollars and a desperate dream that one day she would have everything she ever wanted, including her baby girl.

Chapter 1 (#ue3922b53-1c39-52b3-a21e-b444c5ff5ebd)

Los AngelesMarch 2015

Zoe Greene checked her reflection in the mirror and carefully blotted her neutral-coloured lipstick. Her tawny hair was blow-dried straight, her make-up flawless but subtle. She never liked to take the attention away from her clients but she was a beautiful woman and men noticed her, although she rarely noticed them in return.

Dating an actor was out of the question, she had yet to meet an actor who wasn’t self-obsessed, and the power-players in Hollywood didn’t want a relationship with a woman who might negotiate them out of their last million.

She heard that familiar sniff in the stall behind her and rolled her eyes at the bathroom attendant. The only drug Zoe ever needed was making deals and the annual Vanity Fair Oscars party was the ultimate place to make the deal of a lifetime.

Picking up her Judith Leiber clutch, she left the bathroom, ignoring the attendant’s offer of a spray of bespoke perfume.

She didn’t need a spritz of perfume, she needed a stiff drink, but that would have to come later. First she had the meeting from hell to get through.

‘He’s ready,’ she heard from one of his assistants, who seemed to come out of nowhere to murmur in her ear. Squaring her shoulders, Zoe followed him into the private VIP room, where the truly famous partied together, away from the merely famous.