The Bad Mother's Handbook (6 page)

‘Did you get that picture sorted?’ Paul asked, his eyes
roving round the room. We were getting better at the
post-coital business. ‘The one you broke that time.’

‘The one you broke, you mean? While we were scaling
the heights of passion? No. Although I did get as far
as buying a new frame. I couldn’t get the old one off so I
gave up.’

‘Bloody feeble girly. Do you want me to have a go?
Give it here.’

I fished about in the bedside cabinet under the magazines
and brought it out.

‘Couldn’t get it off? What is it, super-glued or
summat?’

‘Just you have a look.’

He turned the frame over in his hands and examined
the back. ‘Jesus. I see what you mean.’

Wires criss-crossed the thick cardboard; they had
been stapled into the frame at irregular intervals. Blobs of ancient brown glue bulged from the corners. ‘I took
off another layer of card and Sellotape to get to that.
I thought I’d damage the picture if I went any further.
Does it need a screwdriver or something to lever the
staples out? We have got one but I don’t know where.’

‘Nah, a penknife should do it. Pass us my jeans.’

He set to work, absorbed. I watched him and thought
about my little ghost.

Finally the sections eased apart. ‘There you go. Just
needed the masculine touch.’ I took the pieces in my
hands and laid them on the covers. ‘If you bung us the
new frame I’ll put that on for you an’ all.’

‘Hang on a minute.’ I was taking off the layers of card.
‘There’s something in here. My God, look at that, it’s a
letter.’ I unfolded two sheets of thin yellowing paper. ‘It
looks like . . . Shit, listen to this.’ And I started to read.

Dear Miss Robinson,

Re Sharon Pilkington.

Thank you for your letter informing me that the Adoption
Committee have accepted this little girl for a direct
placing adoption. I am as certain as it is possible to be in
these cases that the mother is quite definite about the
adoption. She will not change her mind.

Yours sincerely,

P Davis

‘Sharon Pilkington? Who’s she when she’s at home?
Somebody’s cut the top off so you can’t see the address or
date.’ I turned the paper over but it was blank. ‘Let’s have
a see what’s on the other.’

Notes for the Information of the Case Committee

Name of child: Sharon Anne Pilkington
Weight at birth: 7lbs 2oz
Date of birth: 13.4.63
Present weight: 9lbs (at 3 weeks)
Child of: Miss Jessie Pilkington

Whose occupation is:
Recommended by: Mrs P Davis
The Child is at present: with mother at
Mother and Baby Home, Hope Lodge, 46 Walls Road,
London N4

General Remarks

Jessie Pilkington is unable to keep and support her baby,
she is only 16 and has several young sisters and brothers
at home. She feels that it would be unfair on her parents
and particularly her mother to bring up another young
child. She is unwilling, or unable, to supply the identity of
the father, so there is no possibility of support from that
quarter. Therefore Jessie feels it is in the child’s best
interests to be adopted and have the chance of being
brought up in a happy family atmosphere.

She has asked that the baby be placed with an
acquaintance of hers, a Mrs Nancy Hesketh, who is
unable to have children of her own. Jessie feels sure that
she has made the right decision to give her baby up and
will not go back on it.

Particulars of Mother

Character: good character and reputation

Appearance: good complexion, 5ft 7ins, grey eyes

Health: a strong and healthy family

Particulars of baby

Mrs Davis has seen this baby and she says she is a nice
little baby with light brown hair and grey eyes. Her skin is
very slightly dry in parts. She has a tendency to colic but a
lovely smile.

Additional notes

No history of mental illness, nervousness, alcoholism,
bad temper, brutality, delinquency, history of crime in the
mother’s family.

‘So what do you reckon to all that, then?’ Paul was
busy fanning out all the blades on his penknife and admiring
them. ‘Charlie? Y’ all right?’

I didn’t know what to say for a minute so I read
the pages again. ‘Oh, Paul . . . I don’t believe this . . .’
I went back up to the date of birth at the top and my
throat went tight. ‘Paul, stop a minute. I think this is
my mum.’

‘Who?’

‘This Sharon Pilkington. Because, because Nancy
Hesketh is Nan, and it’s the right birthday, let me just
count on . . . 63, 73, 83, 93, 97, yeah. And, oh God, it all
makes sense, Nan was really old when she supposedly had
my mum and everyone said it was a miracle because she’d
tried for years. That’s the word Nan used to use herself,
a miracle.’ I’d put the letter down on the bed and was
holding my head between my hands. ‘I can’t take it in. She
doesn’t know, surely? My mum, I mean. Oh, Jesus, Paul, this is just amazing. It means Nan’s not my nan. It’s this
Jessie woman. Whoever she is. Wherever she is.’

Paul shrugged. ‘Well,’ he said closing up his penknife
with a click. ‘There’s summat your psychic didn’t mention.’

*

‘T
HERE
’
S BLOOD
in your shoe.’ I spotted the smear on
Nan’s tights as she knelt to pick up half a Rich Tea she’d
spotted under the table. Her joints really are amazing
for the age, the doctor at the hospital couldn’t believe it.
Wouldn’t believe me either when I told him how mad she
gets, because Sod’s law, she was on top form and completely
coherent, chatting away as if she’d known him
all her life. Even flirted with him. ‘I feel champion today.
Are you courtin’?’ she asked him. ‘You’re a bonny lad.
Have you a car?’ He thought it was sweet; I thought it
was monstrous. I wanted to hit her over the head with a
bedpan, only that would probably have got me admitted
instead. Maybe that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea.

I spotted the blood in the morning as I was opening the
post. Sylv reckoned – I know I said I’d never tell her anything
again but she’s got this
way
– Sylv reckoned I could
just write off for a copy of my birth certificate and that
would tell me who my mother was. So I’d been running to
pick up the letters from off the mat ever since.

‘Have you hurt yourself?’

‘No. Where?’ She turned her head this way and that,
trying to see down her own body.

‘Your leg, your ankle. Sit down a minute. Leave the
biscuit. Sit, Mother.’

She sank down and pulled at her tights. ‘Where? I can’t
see owt.’

Then I saw her heel was filled with blood.

‘Oh, God, lift your foot up.’ I squatted down and
gently eased off the shoe.

‘That’s not my blood,’ she said immediately.

‘Well, who the hell’s is it?’ I didn’t mean to shout so
loudly.

‘Eeh, you’re nowt. I know what’s up wi’ you. What you
want is another baby.’

‘Jesus, Mum. You are so wrong. What would I want
with a baby when I’ve got you, eh?’

In the end it was only a scab she’d knocked on her
ankle and nothing like as bad as it first looked. But pulling
her shoe on again I thought, Why am I doing this for you?
Who are you, anyway? And when I went back to the
post, there it was; my birth certificate. And she was right.
I’m not her daughter. I’m Sharon Anne Pilkington, from
London, from limbo.

So my mother – real mother, birth mother, whatever
you call it – is from round here. What I was doing popping
out in London, God only knows. She must have run away.
I can understand that. Only it’s funny I ended up back in
the north. Perhaps it was policy then. Maybe they thought
babies with northern genes needed weaning on cow heel
and parkin. Or maybe they didn’t want me polluting
southern stock.

I’d like to say I still can’t believe it, except that’s not
true. It kind of confirms a feeling I’ve always had, that
I never fitted in. When I was little and Dad was still alive,
on winter evenings we used to draw the curtains and all
sit round watching rubbish:
Wheeltappers and Shunters
, or
Bullseye
(super-smashing-great!). Mum’s favourite was
The Golden Shot
. I’d have a bottle of pop and a big bag
of toffees to pass round, and there’d be this crackly telephone
voice droning on:
left, left, stop, right a bit, down, stop,
up a bit, up a bit, fire!
Silence, groans or the rattle of coins
and cheers. Once Dad dropped his coconut mushrooms in
the excitement and there were white flakes in the rug for
weeks.

Happy times, sort of, but even then I used to feel I
didn’t really belong. Somewhere out there was a Beatrix
Potter sort of a childhood that wasn’t like mine, dandelion
and burdock and Jim Bowen. I can remember thinking,
Is this all there is? So perhaps I should have stayed in
London. With my
mother
.

I imagine her looking like Julie Christie, swinging her
bag and wearing a short belted mac and black eyeliner.
I bet she sat in cafes and looked soulful when she was
pregnant, with the rain lashing down outside and people hurrying past. Everyone’s always in a hurry in London.
Or maybe that’s just an image from some film I’ve seen. It
seems like a real memory, now I know the truth. Can you
do that, tune into other people’s memories?

The next step, apparently is to contact the Adoption
Register. It’s a list of people who want to trace each other,
so if Jessie Pilkington wants to find me, she can.

I’m sure she’ll want to. I can hardly wait.

*

People were moving
as if they were under water,
ponderously. The air was thick and warm, you could tell
it had just been in someone else’s lungs. The beat of the
music pummelled your chest, and then the strobe started
up making everything look jerkily surreal. I closed my
eyes but the light cut straight through the lids.

Fifty-five minutes to go till closing.

I was in Krystal’s Nite Club in Wigan, and it was one
of those times where you think, I should have stayed in.

Gilly Banks’ birthday and at least half the lower sixth
were there, maybe all of us; I hadn’t exchanged two words
with her since the beginning of term and
I’d
got an invite,
so she wasn’t being particularly discriminating with her
guest list. ‘+
friend
’ it had said on the gold-coloured
card, but I was on my own because I’d had a row with
mine.

‘Do you think we ought to try summat different?’ Paul
had said after the last session. When his hair’s all ruffled
from sex he looks almost too pretty, like something out
of a Boy Band. That day, though, it was irritating, not
cute.

‘What, you mean like actually going out somewhere?
Or talking to each other? That would be a novelty.’ I’d
been in a temper all week, what with the burden of the
Nan revelation and the next History module coming up,
and feeling sort of generally not myself. He’d also
managed to locate the only Valentine card in the universe
which didn’t have the word Love on it.

‘All right, there’s no need to take my head off. We’ll go
to t’ pictures if you’re that bothered, bloody hell. I just
meant we could try some new positions, I’ve been reading
up on it.’ He pulled out a magazine from under his bed
and began to flick through. ‘There’s this one where you
get on top but face my feet.’

‘Sounds charming, what a view.’

‘No, come on, don’t be like that. It’s supposed to mean
you can, er, Control your own Pleasure. Or summat.
I can’t remember exactly. Oh, forget it.’ He flung the
magazine across the room and began feigning interest in a
ragged fingernail. ‘I just thought . . .’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘It’s this orgasm thing again, isn’t it?’ I reached for my
knickers so I could argue with more dignity. ‘Why do you
keep going on about it? What’s the big deal? It’s not
an issue. But I’m beginning to feel like there’s something
wrong with me.’

He opened his mouth and the words dropped out.
‘Well, you could nip down the doctors and get yourself
checked over. Check there’s nothing . . .
amiss
.’

(‘YOU OK?’ shouted Gilly over the racket. ‘HAVING
A GOOD TIME?’ She was breezing past on her way to the bar, birthday girl, in combats and a little vest, bra
strap showing. She’s one of those people who doesn’t give
a toss. I bet she has loads of orgasms.

‘OH, YES. EXCELLENT. NICE ONE.’ I raised my
glass through the smoke and smiled at her and Paul’s
voice said again in my ear, ‘Get yourself checked over.’
Bastard.)

‘Bastard!’ I’d shouted at him, before pulling on the
rest of my clothes in a frenzy. ‘I can’t believe what you
just said! What the hell are you suggesting? That I’m
abnormal
?’