On Your Doorstep: Perfect for those who loved Close to Home

Last week in Dublin, I saw her in Brown Thomas with her husband. At least I assume that’s who it was. He stays out of her limelight but she held his arm in a way that suggested he was her rock. They were looking at baby clothes. I followed them from the department store and up to the top of Grafton Street. The flower sellers were busy. Birds of paradise flamed against white chrysanthemums and tightly coiled rosebuds jutted like spears from overflowing buckets. She bought the roses and continued onwards. I lost sight of them when they entered the Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre. I probably could have found her. She’s tall and distinctive enough to stand out from the crowd but I was too weak to move any further. I sat down in a coffee bar and asked for a glass of water. The waitress had the experienced eyes of an older woman counting months. She brought the water sharply and asked if I’d like her to call a taxi.

‘You think it’ll never end,’ she said. ‘Especially the last months. But it does and then you’ll know all about it.’

She spoke with relish, they all do, warning of impending chaos and tiny impetuous demands that will turn my life upside down.

The taxi came shortly afterwards. I caught a last glimpse of Carla Kelly and her husband as I was leaving. They were laughing at something one had said to the other. Her head was thrown back, her hand covering her mouth, as if her laughter was a wild thing she must contain. It’s a long time since I laughed that way. Had I ever? I must have, especially in the early days with David. Now I laugh on cue. It sounds natural, spontaneous, even contagious. In public relations, where it’s necessary to flatter and admire, I have acquired certain skills. I lean on them now but, from time to time, they slip. Then all I have to do is touch my stomach. Small gestures create an easily translatable language that gives me leave to be tired, anxious, irritable, uncomfortable and, occasionally, irrational.

Was it irrational to follow Carla Kelly that day? Of course it was. I realise that now but she is the face of Anticipation, taunting, flaunting; telling us it’s easy, so easy and natural to carry a baby in the womb for nine dangerous months.

I too used to keep a diary. I made the last entry when I was sixteen years old. Hard to believe that’s twenty-three years ago. I was pregnant then, eight months gone, on the final stretch, so to speak. And on the verge of becoming a teenage statistic. I lost my boy in March, gone before he had time to draw breath. Lots of blank pages afterwards. The world had become a greyer place, not worth recording. Nothing left for me except my scans and a whisper of what might have been.

‘You’ve had a lucky escape,’ my father said when I was discharged from hospital. ‘Best thing you can do is get on with your life and forget it ever happened.’ He’d taken care of everything and discouraged me from visiting the Angels’ plot in Glasnevin Cemetery. It’s such a poignant place to visit – that treasured, communal space where the tiny ones rest together.

‘It’s a new beginning for all of us,’ he said. ‘No looking back.’ My mother was dead by then and he was about to be married again. He’d changed from the grim, dead-eyed man I used to know. His face was plumper and he laughed easily, joyously. I would look at Tessa and wonder how such a small, insignificant woman with rimless glasses and a slight stammer when she was nervous had wrought such a change in him.

I didn’t blame him for not wanting to begin his married life with a troubled teenager and her baby. I just wished he hadn’t looked so relieved, so determined to obliterate my experience. But it never was obliterated, just lightly buried…like my boy. I held on to my diary, kept it safe each time I moved, but I never had any inclination to read it until after that night in the cottage. Funny experience…rediscovering the young me. I was on a wild carousal all right, and heading in only one direction.

Now I’m filling those blank pages. Dates don’t matter. Time is suspended. Writing about it helps. Otherwise my mind is frantic, thoughts running like ants beneath an upturned stone. How did I work through that wall of pain? There has to be a reason…has to be. Three months have passed since then yet the memory clings to my senses. I hear the clunk and clank of a spade, smell the dank, uncovered earth. I see a small bundle resting in that narrow cleft. I feel the clay beneath my nails, the briars tearing my legs, the polka-dot sting of nettles on my skin. And the taste that remains with me is bile, bitter gall.

It’s time to close my diary and try to sleep. Close it now and silence the whisperers. Close these musty pages and trap the future as it waits in anticipation.

Chapter Three (#ulink_502286b5-70b6-5d44-b5c5-52b7d7b7d8c1)

Carla

October 1993

Carla Kelly held her hands upwards to receive the wedding dress. Ivory silk overlaid with lace billowed across her shoulders before settling over the defined bump of her stomach. A beautician moved forward to brush blusher across her cheeks and sweep mascara over her eyelashes. One of the dressers briskly corseted Lizzy Carr into the black Goth wedding dress. Her feet were already booted in aggressive spiky heels. A slash of black lipstick emphasised her masklike white face. In contrast, Carla’s make-up was a delicate blending of peach and gold.

She bowed her head as a hairstylist switched off the hairdryer and rippled his hands through her hair, working it with his fingers until it tumbled in dishevelled strands to her shoulders. He clipped an ivory wisp of feathers into place and stood back to check the effect.

Lizzy was handed a bouquet of black roses with one red rose in the centre. Her heavy eye make-up emphasised her emaciated appearance while Carla, carrying a bouquet of orchids sprigged with lily of the valley, looked dewy, fecund, feminine. The backstage photographers clicked around them until Raine signalled at the models to prepare for their entrance.

Lizzy strutted forward into the light and headed towards the foot of the catwalk. She paused, waited for Carla’s entrance. The audience gasped, then laughed and applauded as Carla, sexy and pregnant, opened herself to the vibrating music, the piercing strobes, the lens of the cameras stripping her layer by layer as she glided towards the photographers. They called her name. This way, Carla! That way! The other way! At the foot of the catwalk, she stood with Lizzy and allowed the audience to absorb the contrast. Then they separated, each move choreographed, each inch of space worked to full advantage. Carla smiled and turned. From behind, she looked like the other models. No weight on her bottom, ankles still slender. The fashion journalists scribbled, the flash of cameras dazzled. This was Raine’s most ambitious designer collection to date – and the introduction of the Anticipation wedding dress. Tomorrow the dress would feature on the front pages of the newspapers and Raine, delighted with the publicity, would laugh when the inevitable calls were made to talk radio complaining about pregnant brides glamorising carnal knowledge.

The wedding dress swirled around Carla as the music quickened and the fashion show built to a finale. The other models emerged from behind the screens to sashay down the catwalk and form a guard of honour. They clapped Raine forward to meet her audience. The applause increased as she bowed, grinned self-consciously, longing to be backstage again, organising everything and everyone.

Carla changed into a pair of Anticipation stretch jeans and a midnight-blue top. She had enjoyed her time as the face, or – to be more accurate – the belly of Anticipation, but she was growing tired of the constant publicity.

The baby moved, a gentle jog of heel and elbow that never failed to delight her. She did not know if she carried a boy or a girl, preferring, like Robert, to wait. Life was a series of changes, of adjustments, and the biggest adjustment would take place in three weeks’ time. Outside in the auditorium, chair seats snapped back. Voices faded as the audience departed. She emerged from a side door and walked down the empty catwalk. The cleaners had moved in and were removing discarded programmes and press releases. The sound engineer grinned across at her as he packed his equipment and wished her goodnight.

In the ladies’ she breathed in the scent of potpourri and tried to imagine a time when she would not feel the constant pressure on her bladder. A woman, heavily pregnant and wearing a distinctive Anticipation top, emerged from one of the cubicles.

‘Good show.’ She smiled through the mirror at Carla. ‘I particularly liked the wedding dress.’

‘So did the photographers.’ Carla laughed and held her hands under the tap. ‘I’m still hallucinating from the flashes.’

The woman ran a comb through her short, spiky hair. Studded earrings glistened on her earlobes. ‘It’s been a long time, Carla,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

Startled, Carla paused as she was about to dry her hands. ‘Do we know each other?’

‘I’m Sue Sheehan,’ she replied. ‘At least, I was before I married. I used to work for Edward Carter.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t recognise you.’ The scent of potpourri breathed sweetly into the space between them. Carla swallowed a hot rush of nausea. Since her pregnancy, her sense of smell always seemed more acute at night.

‘Like I said, a long time ago. Ten years at least.’ Sue Sheehan tilted her chin, as if checking for any sag underneath. Despite her advanced pregnancy, she had a slim face, her features emphasised by her boyish haircut. Her complexion was smooth, almost waxy, and Carla was suddenly reminded of a doll, an asexual doll with a blue unflinching gaze. Sue blinked and the impression was immediately dispelled. Carla struggled to separate her from the brashly confident team of women who had surrounded Edward Carter in those days. They all had that look, tight haircuts and sharp shoulders, their rippling blouses and pert breasts defining their femininity. She must be in her mid-thirties now, Carla speculated, or even older, if she had been one of the senior executives in Carter and Kay Public Relations.

‘Do you still work in public relations?’ Carla removed a tube of lipstick from her bag. Her hand remained steady as she applied it to her lips.

‘Not since my marriage,’ Sue replied. ‘I work in the craft industry now. Marketing.’

‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Yes, indeed it is. Do you ever see Edward these days?’

‘No.’ Carla snapped her handbag closed and placed it under her arm. ‘Apart from on the television, of course. Impossible to miss him.’

‘Yes…he always had a way with words. When is your baby due?’

‘Mid-November, or thereabouts. My gynaey says it’s common to go over time on the first though. What about you?’

‘Around the same time. Like you say, hard to tell with the first.’ Sue glanced at her watch. ‘My step-mother’s waiting for me in the bar. It’s been nice meeting you again.’

‘You too, Sue. Good luck with the birth.’

‘Yes. I can’t wait until all this is over.’ She leaned against the counter, as if her weight was suddenly too heavy to carry.

‘Are you all right?’ Concerned, Carla leaned forward but Sue straightened, moved out of reach.

‘I’m just tired. It’s been a long day.’

They walked together to the bar where Raine was waiting for Carla.

‘Well done,’ Raine said as Carla tried to perch on a high stool beside her with as much dignity as possible. ‘I’ve already been interviewed by three journalists and asked if my wedding dress is meant to endorse sex before marriage.’

‘Mmmm…sounds like you’ll have the moral majority on your back tomorrow.’

Raine laughed. ‘Bring them on,’ she said. ‘Are you coming to Sheen’s?’

Carla shook her head. ‘Do you mind if I take a rain check and head straight home? I’m whacked.’

‘Not at all. I’m tired myself but I need to sweet-talk the buyers. Is my bro skulking in dark corners tonight?’

‘He should be home by now. How’s Gillian?’

Raine’s smile faded. ‘She’s good. Not much energy though. That last chemo session was tough.’

‘Tell her I’ll drop in tomorrow.’