As if sensing she was in the hands of an expert, India made a little whimper and settled in closely. ‘Auntie Jo brought you lots of nice gifts and things for your mummy so she doesn’t go nuts,’ murmured Joanne.
‘What sort of things did you bring me so I wouldn’t go nuts?’ asked Sam, trying to hide her anxiety. ‘Because unless it’s a very big baby instruction booklet, I can’t imagine what it could possibly be.’
‘I brought in a couple of new comfy T-shirts,’ Jo said, putting a bag down on the bed, ‘and in the car I have some shopping, because that’s what you need when you have a baby: big, non-pregnancy things to wear and food for when you get out of hospital. Later today? Tomorrow morning?’
‘The morning,’ said Sam. ‘You’re a sweetheart, that sounds brilliant.’
Ted looked stricken, ‘I never thought to do shopping,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘Of course you weren’t thinking,’ said Joanne gently. ‘You’ve just become a father. It’s very hard to think and fall desperately in love at the same time. No, I popped into the supermarket and got a load of pre-cooked meals so you’ll be fed. I’ll drop it off at yours on the way home, all ready for tomorrow. And chocolate too!’
‘But I’m breastfeeding,’ said Sam anxiously. ‘I have to eat only really healthy stuff.’
‘There’s good stuff in there: pasta salads, spinach,’ said Joanne, ‘not too much, though, babies don’t like too much spinach in their milk.’
‘Was there a study done?’ Sam asked.
‘No,’ her sister said placidly, ‘it was more of an on-the-ground field study sort of thing. Isabelle hated when I’d eaten spinach. I was so lacking in iron when I had her, but I tried to take in as much of it as I could bear, and Lord, the state of the poor child’s nappies.’
Sam managed a grin. She felt safe having her sister around. Joanne knew stuff. For years, it had been Sam who had known things: all sorts of stuff about politics and finance and what garages to go to get the car fixed where the mechanic didn’t talk to you like you were a complete idiot because you possessed female chromosomes.
But now Joanne was the one who knew it all.
‘You all right?’ asked Joanne, taking in Sam’s suspiciously red eyes.
‘Fine,’ lied Sam. ‘Tired.’
She would not give into her fears: she could do this.
Ted had gone home and the ward was on full noise alert when the social worker came round.
Unlike the lovely nurses on the ward, this woman did not look full of the milk of human kindness. She looked as if she’d found no human kindness anywhere, thank you very much, and she had long since given up looking for it.
She looked at Sam as if she found her lacking.
Sam tried to tell herself that this woman’s job was tough: that she saw the worst in life and might have just come from some horrific case. But four minutes in the woman’s company made her feel that if Ellen, the social worker, was suddenly turned into the Dalai Lama, she’d still be this cranky.
She had a questionnaire to be filled out, she explained, and went through it all, talking about the importance of registering the child’s birth—
‘India,’ interrupted Sam.
Ellen glared at her.
‘Have you ever suffered from any depressive incidents?’ demanded Ellen, changing tack instantly.
‘No,’ said Sam.
‘Any previous pregnancy problems?’
‘No,’ lied Sam. She did not plan to discuss her infertility pain with this woman. Her nerves felt stretched enough as it was.
‘Fine.’
Job done, Ellen gave Sam some leaflets, took her questionnaire and marched off.
Sam didn’t know why, but she felt shaken. She reached out and touched India’s tiny hand with the softest touch.
‘Love you, India,’ she whispered.
Ginger
In her lonely hotel room, Ginger stripped off the hideous bridesmaid’s dress at high speed and pulled on the clothes she’d packed for the morning after, normal clothes. A big sloppy jumper in a charcoal colour, extra-stretch black leggings, long boots and a scarf round her neck that looped over her boobs and sort of hid them. Her camouflage.
The kind of clothes she wore as her casual wear. For work, she had long black jackets that flowed around her and looked businessy. She brightened it all up with geometric jewellery. Nothing feminine, ever.
Next, she stuffed everything into her tiny little suitcase, except for the dress, which she left on the bed, crumpled.
The words she’d heard in the toilet stall ran through her brain like ticker tape in the stock exchange:
‘I love Ginger, but she’s her own worst enemy. Won’t exercise, won’t diet. I’ve spent years trying to help her, Charlene. Years. You and I both know it takes effort to stay thin, but she won’t and then she whines that she can’t get a guy.’
Worse were the comments about how she’d pushed herself at Stephen:
‘Have you seen the way she’s pushing her boobs up at him. It’s embarrassing to watch.’
And then the finale, James saying he’d told Liza’s cousin that Ginger was a virgin and that he could ‘give you what you want’.
Ginger shuddered at the horror of it all.
She left the key on the vanity table and made it down the back stairs within ten minutes. Her room was pre-paid. Nobody at the front desk seemed to notice her go out onto the street where there was no problem picking up a taxi. It was still early: no mad rush after the pubs had closed.
She got into the back, still panting slightly from all the rushing, and gave her address. The taxi driver repeated the address slowly, speaking English as one who had only recently learned it.
‘Yes, that’s it, thank you,’ said Ginger.
She was so glad this lovely driver wasn’t a natural English speaker because then there would be no conversation, no ‘where are you going at this hour of the night with a suitcase?’ or ‘what do you think about the government, life, the universe?’ – the sort of conversations she had all her life.
It wasn’t just taxi drivers, it was people in shops, people on the train, and just about everyone because people talked to Ginger.
‘It’s your face, pet,’ her father said. ‘You’ve got that lovely warm, open face and people feel they need to talk to you, to share their secrets.’
Most of the time, Ginger wished they wouldn’t share their secrets because she got quite enough of that, thank you very much. Tonight, she was spectacularly grateful for a non-chatty taxi driver so she could sit numbly in the back of the cab and watch the people racing around town having fun. People who were going places, doing all the usual things that people did on a Saturday, except for people who had just had their life ripped out from under them by someone they thought was a friend.