Page 86 of Days You Were Mine

‘Not this baby,mybaby.’

‘Your, er, child, to have the best chance. And so we’ve asked Mrs Taylor Murphy from the adoption agency to meet us here. Just for a chat, a preliminary chat, you understand, so that you have options.’

‘Fuck off. I’m not giving my baby up.’

This time he ignores the swearing (I never used to swear, it’s been a surprise for us both), though I see the purple flooding his face, the violence in his gaze.

‘But have you thought about how you’ll manage without your … er … boyfriend to support you? And as your mother said, we’re very sorry about all that. Alice, you’ll have nowhere to live and no money. Please be sensible. Don’t throw your life away. You could have a summer at home with us to recover and then go back to college in the autumn, and it will be as if none of this ever happened.’

‘Get. Him. Out.’

No one reacts. My father sits in his chair, regarding me with his high colour and his popping-out eyes; my mother gazes out of the window with her practised mask of a face. Her life like one long uninterrupted meditation.

Into this scene of joy trips Mrs Taylor Murphy, dressed as if for a garden party, with a voice to match.

‘Alice, my dear, what you have been through. I do hope you don’t mind me popping in?’

She exclaims at the vision that is my sleeping child – ‘Isn’t he a beauty?’ – and asks my parents if she can have some time alone with me.

‘Is that all right with you, Alice?’

‘It would be better if they didn’t come back at all.’

Despite the floral dress, the perfume – too strong, too sweet now that she is standing next to me – the dark red lips and the patent heels, I like the woman instantly.

The moment my parents have left the ward, she pulls the curtain around my bed.

‘Let’s have us a bit of privacy,’ she says.

She sits in the chair just vacated by my father and observes me with her head tilted fractionally to the side.

‘How on earth are you coping? Motherhood and grief all rolled into one, you poor darling.’

I allow her to take my hand while I sob, and she tells me, ‘Let it all out now, that’s the only way. You’ll feel better if you have a good cry.’

She doesn’t speak but continues to hold my hand, and I like her for that. What is there to say? What words of comfort can she possibly offer?

After a while, I begin to tell her things.

‘He was so excited about the baby,’ I say, while Mrs Taylor Murphy nods and listens. ‘We used to sit up in bed every night choosing names – Charlie was the one we both liked, for a girl or a boy. We would chat about our future, how we’d manage with my art and his music. How I’d finish my degree. How I’d cope when he was away on tour. We had it all worked out.’

‘I’m sure you did.’

‘He didn’t mean to kill himself. I know he didn’t. He just didn’t want to go to the hospital. It was an impulse thing. What he wanted was to be there for me and the baby, it was one of the last things he said to me.’

‘It’s such a tragedy. I cannot imagine what you must be going through.’

‘I don’t want to give Charlie up. He’s all I have left.’

‘I can understand you feeling like that. I know I would feel exactly the same. I will tell you something though about babies, Alice. They soak up their environment like a sponge and this acute grief you’re experiencing, it’s going to affect him. I wonder if you can step outside of your own situation for a moment and imagine these two choices that Charlie has and see which one you think is better. He could grow up with you, his natural mother, who would love him with all her heart and who would struggle and fight, I’m sure, to provide him with a good life. But it would be hard, for you and for him. Hard to find enough work to support yourself. Hard to get back to your career as an artist. Hard to find anywhere decent to live. I think I’m right in saying your parents don’t support your choice to keep the baby?’

‘My parents are shits.’

‘And then,’ Mrs Taylor Murphy carries on regardless, ‘Charlie could grow up with two parents who are desperate for a child, particularly a little boy, and have plenty of money to give him the best possible education, and a beautiful house in Yorkshire with acres of land and a swimming pool and a tennis court.’

‘I don’t care about money. It’s my child’s life we’re talking about.’

‘Exactly. You do see, Alice, don’t you, how different those lives would be for Charlie?’

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