Their version of events was true, in a way. There was a decluttering problem. Ashleigh had a chronic inability to tidy anything up. Each time I visited, the floor of her flat would be littered with empty packs of formula and spilled powder, dirty nappies, damp sheets and fast-food cartons. It was as if she genuinely didn’t notice the chaos around her. Every time I had to point it out for her to become aware of the mess. Then she would make half-hearted attempts to tidy up, but I would end up doing most of the work. My supply of black bin liners, and indeed clean nappies, would be raided every time.
It took me a long time to understand Ashleigh. She was certainly not uncaring – she adored Zak – but she didn’t seem to understand the basic practicalities of care. And what worried me was that if she didn’t get a grip on her life, if she didn’t stop living in self-generated squalor, the council would have her out of the flat in no time. If – heaven forbid – she started on the drugs again, Zak would definitely be taken into care. In that event, the chances of her ever getting him back were pretty slender. The cycle would be perpetuated.
So, the challenge to me was to convert her undoubted love for her son into the form of caring for him properly.
When I arrived at Ashleigh’s that afternoon, she was playing music too loudly. Some version of rap – perhaps the latest subdivision of the genre that I hadn’t caught up with yet (and probably never would). Though I didn’t mention the noise right away – didn’t want to come across too much as the disapproving mother – I knew it was just the kind of thing to generate more complaints from the neighbours. But I think playing music too loud, just like the squalor in which she lived, was something Ashleigh just didn’t think about.
Zak still looked beautiful, through the encrustations of formula and snot on his face, but he was screaming. The causes were a nappy that hadn’t been changed for too long, and sheer hunger. I pointed them out to Ashleigh.
‘Yeah, I know. I’ve just never been very good with time, knowing when things need to be done, you know.’
The easy route would have been for me to change Zak’s nappy and mix his formula – as I had done on earlier visits – but I saw my task as building Ashleigh’s self-reliance. So, I monitored her through the necessary processes. She was far from incompetent. She changed the nappy efficiently, cleaning his little bottom up with baby wipes (my baby wipes). As she did so, I noticed there was a bit of redness about his tiny anus, the beginnings of a rash.
‘You’d better put some cream on that.’
‘Oh.’ Ashleigh looked at me hopelessly. ‘I haven’t got any cream.’
Another thing to add to the list for my next visit. Sudocrem.
The contents of his nappy had leaked on to his Babygro, to join other noxious substances there. I picked it up gingerly. ‘For the washing machine,’ I said.
‘Washing machine’s buggered,’ said Ashleigh.
‘For how long?’ She shrugged. The pile of filthy clothes in front of it suggested at least a week.
‘Have you rung the Housing Association about it?’ I knew the terms of her rental agreement. The washing machine was their responsibility, not hers.
She shrugged.
‘Why not?’
She shrugged again. I made a mental note to call the Housing Association.
Holding Zak on her hip, Ashleigh riffled though the clothes in front of the washing machine and found a Babygro slightly less soiled than the others. She put it on him.
She brought the same efficiency that she had to the nappy to mixing Zak’s formula. While she did it, I was allowed to cuddle him on my lap. Which I knew was a big concession to me. Ashleigh was very wary of letting anyone else touch her baby – something which had raised another problem with health visitors and got the words ‘difficult and uncooperative’ indelibly imprinted on her notes. She was one of those people who always, often unwittingly, managed to get on the wrong side of officialdom.
While she prepared the mixture, she kept giving little, covert looks in my direction. To check I wasn’t doing Zak any harm. When the bottle was ready, she almost snatched him from my arms. She settled down to feed him, holding him close, almost making me feel I was an intruder in this moment of mother/son bonding.
Zak seemed restless, so I suggested gently that the level of music might be putting him off.
‘Oh, I’d forgotten that was still on.’ She sounded as if she really had. Mercifully, she used a zapper to extinguish the sound.
After its changing, Zak’s dirty nappy had just been dropped on the floor and lay next to a Kentucky Fried Chicken box spilling over with gnawed bones. I looked around the small space. ‘Where’re the nappy disposal bags?’
‘Mm?’ asked Ashleigh, unwilling to have the feeding togetherness interrupted.
‘When I last came, I brought you some nappy disposal bags, to put the dirty ones in.’
‘Oh, I think they’re over there.’ She gestured towards a pile of debris by the sink.
I found them. The packet was unopened. The nappies on the floor must have been all the ones used since my last visit. And if Zak had been changed with the frequency that he should have been, there could have been twice as many of them.
Deliberately, I opened the packet of nappy bags, rolled up the nappy Ashleigh had just changed, put it in the bag and tied the handles. ‘That’s what needs to be done with all of these,’ I said.
‘Oh well, if you don’t mind …’
‘I do mind. You clear them all up when you’ve finished feeding him.’
Ashleigh’s face assumed a very put-upon expression, but she didn’t raise any objection. I knew I was using a very mild form of tough love, but I did somehow have to get her to take responsibility for her own life. And Zak’s. It was the only way they were going to survive together.
Reluctantly, Ashleigh handed him over to me again after she’d finished feeding. With a baby wipe I removed the excess from his face, and he snuggled into my chest, comatose. As Zak slowly twitched against me, the inevitable, atavistic memory came back to me of cuddling Juliet (before she became Jools) and Ben in the same way.
I did not have to give Ashleigh any further instructions. She picked up and folded each reeking nappy into a bag and tied it up. She put them in the black bin liner I had provided. Then she picked up all the discarded formula boxes and fast-food containers. They went into the bin bag too. The carpet they revealed was stained and here and there dusted with formula powder.
Finally, she got out a vacuum cleaner and swept over the floor. The room was transformed. The actual cleaning process had taken less than twenty minutes.
That was what was so frustrating about Ashleigh. She knew exactly what she should be doing. It was actually doing it that was the problem.
My next visit was another waste of time. I didn’t recognize the name or address on my Outlook calendar, but that didn’t surprise me. Bookings come at me from all kinds of sources – the SpaceWoman website, phone calls, texts, and sometimes quite a long way ahead. I’m perhaps not as organized as I should be about my diary. I tend to work a week in advance. If there’s a name I don’t recognize, then I can guarantee it’s a first consultation. And quite often those get aborted. People approaching me about their own problem have cold feet. People approaching me about a family member’s problem get worried about the family member’s likely reaction to my appearance. Usually, they contact me to cancel. I never attempt to dissuade them. That’s the decision they’ve made and, fortunately, I don’t have to look for more work.