Page 3 of Statistically Speaking
I don’t want her growing up with a mum who is still too young to look after her properly. A mum who can barely make a Pot Noodle without scalding herself. I don’t want her growing up with the smell of mold in cheap rooms, or picking up on the secondhand anxiety that I’d be bound to share on endless walks with a pram on endless aimless days, worried about money and safety and what will become of us.
There isn’t a smiling grandma with abundant patience; there isn’t a long-lost auntie who will take us in. There is just me and well-meaning strangers, and that is not good enough for her. I want to give her the world—but all I can give her is this. The knowledge that I am not ready. That I am not capable, right now, of being what she needs. What she deserves.
Her new family—her real family—is more than ready. They have wanted her for years. They have her nursery painted in yellow and cream, they have tiny sleepsuits all soft and clean, and they have a baby-shaped hole in their hearts that she will fill.
I could love her, but I couldn’t give her that world. I love her, so I am giving her away.
I drag my gaze away from hers and look up at Geoff. He looks a bit teary-eyed and I wonder if he is cut out for this job—for being a social worker. He shouldn’t even be here, really—he is doing more than his job demands. Going above and beyond, and risking broken finger bones to be here with me.
“It’s okay,” I say firmly. “I’ve made up my mind. I’ve thought about it all, Geoff. It’s what is best for her. And probably me. You can take her.”
Siobhan is silent for once, nodding when she sees my resolve, silently taking my newborn into her arms.
“They are lovely, Gemma,” Geoff replies. “She couldn’t ask for better parents. They’re so excited about meeting her.”
I nod and close my eyes. I am sad and tired and don’t want to be conscious anymore. There is a possibility that I may never want to be conscious again.
“Have you got the letter?” I ask.
“I have, and I’ll make sure they get it.”
“Could I have it back? Just for a minute. And a pen. I need a pen.”
Geoff fumbles in the satchel bag he carries everywhere with him, big enough to contain the files that summarize his clients’ lives. He pulls out a brown envelope, removes the letter inside it, then rummages some more. I hear him muttering something about how he can never find a bloody pen, and he is saved by Siobhan. She passes one over to him, and he nods gratefully before he brings them both to me.
I wriggle as upright as I can, and feel like my body might split in two. I wince, and Geoff gives me a book to lean on. It is a hardback Tom Clancy novel, which almost makes melaugh—Geoff is the least macho man I have ever met. Perhaps it belongs to his wife.
I screw up my eyes, folding the letter over to the blank bit at the end. I already know there are 1,615 words. Probably too many, maybe not enough—if this is going to be all of me that she has, how could it ever be enough? I wrote that letter over and over, so many times, the floor around me scattered with balled-up sheets and my fingers aching and stained from cheap, leaking pens.
Still, I need to write more. I need to say more. I need to tell her about this moment in time, this perfect, wonderful, terrible moment.
I scrawl a hurried PS. My writing is wrecked, and I am scared of blotting the pages with sweat, but eventually it is done. I pass it over to Geoff, and I fall back onto the bed and back into the cold, numb place that I know will help me survive this. A place I am all too familiar with. Geoff puts the letter back into the envelope and into his bag. He smiles at me and looks as though he is about to speak.
“Don’t,” I preempt. “There isn’t anything else to be said.”
He nods decisively, and Siobhan passes him the baby, legs kicking and fists still waving. He accepts this precious bundle and leaves the room. He takes the perfect and the rainbow and the unicorn with him. I am left there with a midwife and a placenta, and the knowledge that doing the right thing doesn’t always feel right.
I imagine my own mother, sixteen years ago, in a room like this, riddled with mind-worms and drugs and a life that was swallowing her whole. I wonder if she saw me, a tiny thing with bright red hair, and felt all that pain and glory and potential.
It is too much. It is too hard. I am deflated and empty in every way. I feel my mind fracturing into a million pieces, falling into a dark place that I might never escape from.
I console myself with remembering. With counting. With ten tiny fingers and ten tiny toes.
Chapter 2
1,656 Words and Way Too Many Feelings
Dear Baby,
This is a weird one to write, and probably a weird one to read. This is, like, version fifty, and I’ve decided it’s the final version, because I’m never going to get it entirely right and because I’ve got blisters on my pen-holding finger now.
Anyway, your real parents have promised they will give this to you when they think you’re old enough. That might mean when you’re ten or when you’re fifty, who knows? I’ve suggested they give it to you when you’re sixteen, which is how old I am now.
So—this is me. Your biological mother. As I write this you are still inside me, which is odd, but I think I’ll miss it. I’ll miss you, and I’ll miss knowing that you’re safe and well and protected. I can’t imagine putting my hand on my tummy and you not being there.
If you’re reading this, you know that you were adopted, and I hope you have a really good life and that your mum and dad tell you off plenty and set loads of rules for you. It might not feel like it, but that’s a good thing, honest—it means they’re bothered. So maybe try not to hate them for it, likeI see all my mates do—they’re always moaning about being controlled and stuff.
That’s it, by the way—the sum of my life wisdom.
