‘She’s having a baby.’
My heart stills.
Instinctively, I pull Lexi back close because she’s sobbing again and I think that if I had Elisa right here, right now, I would carve her up with some of myultra-lethal kitchen knives to make her understand the damage she is doing to my beautiful daughter. How can I undo this?
My baby in in pain and all because of a woman who clearly can’t have a relationship with anyone except herself. Lexi was so determined to have some sort of rapport or friendship orsomethingwith Elisa, and now Elisa has just destroyed it all.
If only she’d told us this. Let Dan and I tell Lexi: let Lexi be ready for it.
What do I do next? I just don’t know.
And then Mildred speaks up.
What do you mean you don’t know what to do next? You’re a mother, a good mother. Cop on to yourself. You know how to handle this.
It’s slightly startling to have my own inner voice stop bashing me but I realise that Mildred’s voice is giving me courage – Idoknow what to do. Iama good mother. I have raised this beautiful child for twelve years, have given her huge love, care, courage,self-belief – everything I can think of. I have two other wonderful children for whom I’ve done the same, even if Teddy is on the way to breaking me.
Dan and I have built a family.
We manage. And I always know what to do. I sit up a little bit straighter.
‘Now, darling,’ I say, ultra calm as if we are discussing what to have for dinner. ‘That’s lovely for Elisa that she’s going to have a baby ...’
‘But, but, but ...’ sobs Lexi ‘I’m, like I’m her baby.’
She says the words as if she’s been afraid to say them to me before.
I realise that even though I will always be Lexi’s true mother, there is some part of her connected to the woman who actually gave birth to her.
It’s part of life, part of the great tapestry of one woman giving birth and another woman taking care of that child.
I think I always knew this great fact but I was so caught up in rage against Elisa that I forgot it.
I reach into that universal mother lode inside me and come up with the goods:
‘Darling Lexi, when Elisa gave birth to you, she was very young and immature and she wasn’t able to look after you. Giving you to your dad and me was the most selfless thing she has ever done in her whole life, the kindest thing, the best thing she could have done for you.’
‘I know all that but aren’t I special to her? This new baby thing is on Facebook and Instagram and everything, where she talks about this baby as if she’s never had a baby before and ...’
Again I try to choose the most careful words I can.
‘Lexi, sometimes girls in your school get pregnant and sometimes they have lots of support and bring up the babies.’
She nods. Lexi knows that teenagers have babies because her school is very hot on sex education and the reality of what youthful sex really is.
‘When they have those babies very young, they haven’t matured. Do you know, the human brain does not fully develop until you’retwenty-five?’
‘No,’ she looks at me astonished. ‘I thought once, you know, you left school, you were officially agrown-up, and you could go out and vote and do stuff?’
‘You can vote, you can get married, you can drive a car, you can do lots of things,’ I tell her. ‘But until your brain is fully developed, you’re liable to make a few mistakes. We all make mistakes, at all ages,’ I add. ‘Adults make mistakes all the time. But the responsibility of having a child is huge and when Elisa was pregnant with you, she wasn’t ready for that responsibility, because she was very young.
‘Now she is. It doesn’t change the fact thatyouare the first beautiful little baby she gave birth to. But, it might be hard for you to see it that way when she’s telling everyone about this new baby.’
‘She never told anyone aboutme,’ Lexi says in a rush. ‘Me and Aisling talked about it at lunch break. I was nowhere, nowhere on any of her stuff or her posts or her Instagram or anything. It was like she just appeared from Spain and had no children. She lied. Do you know, she says she’sthirty-two.’
‘Really?’ I say, doing my best to sound surprised. ‘Lots of women try and pretend they are younger than they are and in Elisa’s world maybe that’s very important. So how about you show me some of these messages and posts and we can talk about it again, think about it again. Now we have a different prism to see it through. You have me and Dad and Liam and Teddy. You have six grandparents if you think about it: my mum, Dad’s mum, Great Granny Bridget, Great Granddad Eddie, and Granddad Lorcan, though he’s not well. Plus ...’ A brilliant idea occurs to me but I have to plan it.
‘Elisa has a mum and dad too, and brothers, so you have other family.’
