‘She has news,’ says Giselle, suddenly busying herself with the cat.
‘What?’
‘She’s pregnant.’ There’s a pause. ‘It’s twins.’
‘Wow,’ I say, catching myself and trying not to sound shocked or envious or any of those other emotions that might betray how I feel. I’m not sure how I truly feel, but I do know I’m not ready to feel it now.
‘Tony’s thrilled but Rowena is delirious,’ my mother says to my back as I fill the teapot with boiling water from the stove.
‘Course she is,’ I say, putting a smile in my voice. ‘What mother wouldn’t want grandchildren?’
As soon as the words are out, I wish I could put them back in the bottle.
My mother: kind, loving, one of nature’s born magnets for children and small animals.
‘Yes,’ she says, and I can hear the pain in her voice.
It’s primeval, that pain: it comes from wanting love and happiness and family for your own children.
She tries to hide it but she can’t. I’m very good at hiding my emotions now but my mother never learned.
I can’t tell her I never want to bring children into this world because how could I protect them? I won’t do it. It’s all I can do to protect myself.
I could never tell her what happened, kept away from home for weeks afterwards – the shame stopped me telling, shame that I had done something wrong, coupled with the fear of what it would do to her. Shame reminds me of those pictures of beautiful sea birds covered in oil after an oil spill: it sticks to them, blackly, dangerously, stopping everything. Their wings cannot move, they cannot breathe and only if they are helped is there some hope for their survival. But if the shame goes unnoticed or if people do not recognise the wounded, utterly broken look in the birds’ eyes, then they lie down in the shame of the oil and let it encompass them.
My mother tried so hard to take care of me all my childhood and it was all ruined in an instant. I can never tell her the truth now. It would devastate her, truly. She’d tried to protect me and it had gone wrong. I would never break her heart with the truth, that it was all my fault.
A stamping of boots announces Stefan’s arrival in the kitchen.
Even in his socked feet he’s incredibly tall but has the gentle empathy that a woman like my mother needs. He can sense the tension between us and, in a moment, he goes over to my mother and kisses her against her temple, his long arms encircling her. I see her lean against him, just briefly, their love almost tangible.
Then he comes to me, bends, kisses me on the forehead, before gently putting his arms around me, as if I am something very precious and fragile. It requires no effort to see why Stefan has changed all our lives for the better. He is the most gloriously kind man. My mother, fey, wild at heart, has blossomed with him in her life.
Today, with thoughts of shame in my head and Finn creeping daily into my heart, I wonder if I could ever have what my mother and Stefan have? Love, happiness, the simplicity of a life well lived?
Tea inside us, I stir the cake with my mother assisting, and when it’s neatly in the oven in its sheath of baking tin, brown paper and string, I help Stefan with dinner while Giselle drives down to the train station to pick up Vilma who’s also home for the weekend.
She comes every few weekends, the way I used to in the early days, apart from that first six weeks when I wastwenty-two, when I didn’t come home once.
Giselle rang me, Stefan rang me, Vilma rang me and I did a pretty good job of saying I was really busy and the new job was fabulous and the little apartment I was sharing with three girls was just so full of fun, that I couldn’t leave but I’d be down soon.
Because I couldn’t see them, or I’d have broken down.
Staying away was the only option. I was so wounded and covered in the vicious oil of shame. I could not have pretended to them, the people I loved. I felt complicit, as if I had done something wrong, because I must have, mustn’t I? The shame went that deep.
So I stayed in my tiny apartment and drank neat vodka, which I had never done before, because I had to numb the pain and it seemed like the only way. I didn’t cry. I merely made myself numb. I could not think of what had happened without wanting to make the cut in my wrists that would end it all.
As if some deity is helping me emerge from my dark thoughts, Stefan puts on music, Nina Simone at her happiest, singing ‘I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl’ and I grin.
Finn, I think: he could be the sugar in my bowl...
I’m smiling as I slowly heat up the smoky goulash Giselle made earlier, a recipe she had picked up from some of their travels around Europe, while Stefan’s in charge of the kibinai, tiny little curded cheese pastries we’re going to have as a starter. Stefan has brought so many glorious Lithuanian foods into the house. Although we had to stop getting him to make fried bread because, Vilma said, exactly around the time when she started doing nutrition in Home Economics, it was bad for us.
‘It’s not bad for you,’ Stefan had said, laughing, ‘but it’s probably not good for you either. Still, we enjoy the simple things in life while we can.’
Which sums up Stefan’s motto.
We assemble dinner companionably, with him asking me questions about work and my friends. He’s much better than my mother at getting information out of me, but I’m wise to his ways. No matter how much Stefan loves me and wants me to be happy, I don’t want anyone looking at my life and seeing what they perceive to be wrong.
