Hidden Cottage (7 page)
By rights she should have hated him. But she didn’t. She didn’t have that kind of energy to waste on him – she was too mired in shock and shame. Even then, 1982, girls of her class and background didn’t end up pregnant: they were meant to be smarter than that. There was a moment when she really did think that the only answer was to do as Jeff had said: get rid of the baby. But an abortion? How did one go about it? She knew nothing of such things. So, as absurd as it now sounds, she tried the cliché of sitting in a hot bath while drinking lots and lots of gin. All that happened was that she was violently sick and nearly passed out.
Still very much pregnant, she went home to Basingstoke and broke the news to her parents. It was her mother who led the charge in their combined anger and disappointment with her and declared she never wanted to set eyes on Mia again. Unless she had an abortion. In an instant Mia felt fiercely protective of the child she was carrying. No one was going to make her kill it. This was her baby. It was hers and she was going to give it the right to live.
Refusing her mother’s demand point-blank, and believing her parents would come round, that they would eventually calm down and do all they could to help, she stood firm. But they didn’t come round and the shock of their adamant rejection hit her more than Jeff’s abandonment. Parents, weren’t they supposed to be there for you, no matter what? Wasn’t their love supposed to be unconditional?
Not in this case. And so she returned to Bristol in a state of shocked denial. This really wasn’t happening to her, was it? Somehow she managed to continue fooling herself, along with everyone else, until finally one of her tutors took her aside and asked outright if she was pregnant. Things happened very quickly after that. She was given the opportunity to defer her place, to return after the baby was born and initially Mia was tempted to say yes, but then she thought how trivial it all seemed. She was about to become a mother; the luxury of study was no longer an option for her. She had to find a way to support herself and the baby.
She moved out of her halls of residence and, using the local paper, she looked for somewhere to live in Bristol. She ended up renting a room from a woman called Mrs Frost, whose manner was as cold as her name might suggest. She was a gorgon of a landlady, but Mia was determined to make it work, if only because the rent was so reasonable. Her parents had cut her off without a penny but at least Jeff remained true to his word and regularly sent her money. Other than that, she didn’t hear from him. She had an address for him, but she had promised herself the only time she would contact him would be to let him know she’d had the baby.
When the time came she wrote telling him that he had a son and she’d called him Jensen, after his car. His response was to send her more money, and as regular as clockwork, every month, a payment was made into her bank account.
She didn’t see him again until Jensen was nearly four years old and had been admitted to hospital.
Back from her sleepover at Lauren’s, Madison unpacked her overnight bag.
When she had put everything away, she smoothed the duvet on her bed and placed a large round cake tin on it. She then sat at the desk JC had bought for her. Squeezed in between the chest of drawers and the door, it was her favourite thing in her bedroom, that and her electronic piano keyboard and the pretty shell Lauren had brought back from her holiday in the Caribbean. It was a conch shell and when Lauren had given it to her she had explained that she’d bought it from a man selling them on the beach in front of the hotel where she and her family had been staying. Originally Madison had kept the shell on her bedside table, but now she had it on her desk.
JC had surprised her with the desk on her ninth birthday three weeks ago. Even Mum had been amazed and had thought it might be too big for her tiny bedroom. JC had said he wasn’t stupid and that he’d checked the measurements before he’d bought it at Ikea.
So now she had her very own desk with a drawer where she kept her diary. The diary now open in front of her, she selected the pen she wanted to use – it was Saturday, which meant it had to be the pen with the sparkly gold ink; she had a different colour for each day of the week. She placed the cap on the top of the pen and tapped it against her teeth wondering how to start and thinking that maybe if she didn’t actually write what Lauren had told her, it might not be true, or might not happen. But that was silly thinking. It
was
true. And it
was
going to happen. Lauren and her family were moving away and Madison was going to lose her best friend. Her
only
friend.
Last night Lauren had told her that her parents had decided to move out of London to a place Madison had never heard of. She had said it had been a big secret, but now the new house was theirs and even though Lauren hadn’t even seen it, she was dead excited about it. It had a big garden and they were going to keep chickens and Lauren was going to look after them and her brother was going to be allowed to have a dog. ‘We’ll still be best friends,’ Lauren had said. ‘We’ll send emails to each other all the time. And I’ll learn how to use Skype.’ Madison already used Skype on Mum’s computer; she used it to chat with her grandparents in America, but doing it with Lauren wouldn’t be the same. Nothing was going to be the same once Lauren left. School would be horrible again. There’d be no one to eat lunch with. No one to sit next to in class. No one to play with during break-time. It would be like it was before Lauren came to the school.
And who was going to give her piano lessons? Lauren’s mum had been teaching her and even she said Madison was way better than Lauren now, that she was a natural and had perfect pitch and could play by ear, something Lauren couldn’t do. But then Lauren was brilliant at other things. She could do ballet and make her arms look as light as feathers. Madison would never be able to do that. She wasn’t built the same way. Lauren was like a fairy, whereas Madison was tall with what Grandma Barb called big bones. Grandma Barb said they were Family Bones and that Mum had them too. But Madison didn’t think that was true. Mum was beautiful. No one would ever say that about Madison. She was big and ugly and stuck with wearing glasses. Mum said that she would be able to wear contact lenses when she was older, but that didn’t help her now when she was called Specky Eyes at school. She was also called Freak because she was so tall. They had all sorts of names for her. Some were cruel, but mostly they were dumb. If she wanted to, she could come up with names for them that were a lot cleverer than the ones they used. She didn’t see the point, though. Why waste her thoughts on something so stupid? She would much rather read a book or play the piano.
She thought of her lessons at Lauren’s and felt sad. Heather – Lauren’s mum – gave her the lessons for free. Mum had offered to pay, but Heather had said that since Madison was always round at their house, it was no trouble giving her lessons or letting her practice on the upright piano they had in their dining room. Sometimes Madison and Lauren played little duets together, and that was fun. Other times, Madison would try and play something that Lauren could dance to. But that was quite hard to do.
With not a word written, she replaced the cap on the pen and put it down on the desk. Why did Lauren’s parents want to move? And why did things have to keep changing? Grown-ups did that all the time. Just as you got used to something, they went and changed it. Mum was the same. It was why they were living here in London. She had said she wanted Madison to experience something more than small-town America. ‘There’s a whole world out there for us to discover,’ Mum was always saying.
Madison worried when Mum said that; it made her anxious that they might move again. Although right now, that didn’t seem such a bad idea. Especially if she could convince Mum they should live wherever it was Lauren was going to be.
But would that mean they would have to leave JC behind? That would be a shame. She liked JC. He was easily the nicest boyfriend Mum had ever had, not that she’d had that many. JC knew everything about computers and liked to play chess with Madison, and he didn’t let her beat him; he played to win, just as she did. Before JC, she had played chess on the computer; she much preferred having a real person to play with.
Recently, on days when Mum was working or when Lauren had her ballet or speech and drama lessons, JC had started picking her up from school. The first time he’d come for her, after Mum had told her teacher to look out for him, everyone had stared at him. With his golden-brown hair, his sunglasses and his black jeans and hoodie top, and his odd shoes – he had a thing about wearing different coloured Converse trainers on each foot – he looked way cooler than any of the other dads who came to the gate. Lauren had met him a few times and said he looked like he could be famous, like he played in a cool rock band.
As a proper dad, JC would be totally cool. One of the things she liked about him was that he didn’t do that boring thing grown-ups usually did – talk to her as if she was an idiot and then lose interest when she was in the middle of telling him something. He always listened properly. She liked it when he stayed for what Mum called a JC sleepover, because he made them nice breakfasts in the morning. Porridge was her favourite, with golden syrup. She’d never had it before; no way could Mum, who was the worst cook in the world, be trusted to make it.
That was why Madison had offered to make a birthday cake for JC, because Mum couldn’t make one to save her life. She had made it early this morning at Lauren’s, with only a bit of help from Heather. It was the piping that had been the difficult bit, that and writing Happy Birthday JC on the cake. She hoped he liked it. Mum had said that they would give him his presents this afternoon and then surprise him with the cake. It would have been nicer to celebrate his birthday yesterday, on the actual day, but he had taken Mum to meet his family last night. Madison had asked if she could go as well and JC had said, ‘Yeah, why not?’ but Mum had said there was plenty of time for all that.
‘All what?’ Madison had asked.
‘Never you mind, missy.’
In the car coming back from Lauren’s earlier, Madison had asked if they’d enjoyed themselves last night. Mum had looked at Jensen and said, ‘It was a blast. Hey, you’ll never guess what I saw in Mr and Mrs Channing’s garden: a peacock. A real peacock. Imagine that. And you know what, it just wanders round the village wherever it wants to go, doing whatever it wants to do.’
‘Can I come with you the next time you go?’ Madison had asked. ‘Can I see the peacock?’
‘We’ll see, hon. We’ll see. So what did you and Lauren get up to?’
She hadn’t said anything about Lauren moving away; she had wanted to put it in her diary first. Her diary was sort of like a friend to her – it was where she shared anything important. Good things. Bad things. Losing Lauren would be a very,
very
bad thing.
The blank page of her diary stared back at her. This was the first time she hadn’t been able to put into words how she felt about something. And that made her feel so upset she suddenly wanted to cry. She took off her glasses and squeezed her eyes shut to try and stop the tears coming, but it didn’t work and the first tear rolled down her cheek, followed quickly by another. She slumped over the desk and cried and cried.
A knock at the door made her jump. ‘Yes,’ she said, sitting bolt upright and wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.
JC came in. ‘Your mum’s just gone to the shop for some milk and I wondered if you wanted to have a game of . . . Are you OK?’
She nodded, sniffed and fumbled to get her glasses back on.
He stared at her and came right into the room. ‘Are you sure?’
She swallowed and nodded again, wishing he’d go away, but at the same time wanting him to stay. She didn’t want to be alone. She saw his gaze flicker towards her diary still open on the desk. She quickly shut it, even though there was nothing to see.
He crouched down beside her. ‘Madison, you know I’d never
ever
read your diary.’
When she didn’t respond, he said, ‘You’re not bothered about last night, are you, about not coming with us?’
She pressed her lips tightly shut and shook her head.
‘What then?’ He put a hand on her arm. ‘Did you and Lauren have a bust-up?’
He was being so nice to her and his voice was so soft and gentle she should have felt better, but hearing Lauren’s name was too much and she couldn’t stop herself from flinging her arms around him and blurting it all out.
Originally Eliza was going to go up to Cloverdale Farm on her own to fetch the eggs Mum needed for lunch, but then her sister had said she’d come as she fancied a walk.
Given Daisy’s childhood history of seismic tantrums and door slamming, nobody would have been surprised if she’d left with Jensen and Tattie in a tearful strop last night, but no, she’d stayed, and Eliza could only presume she’d done so in the hope of bringing Dad round.
Just before she’d gone up to bed last night, Eliza had overheard Daisy asking their father if she could talk to him, seeing as they’d both calmed down. ‘I really don’t know what to say to you right now,’ he’d said. ‘I think it would be better if we talked in the morning.’ Eliza couldn’t recall him ever sounding so cold with Daisy as she did then; it must have upset her enormously.
At breakfast this morning, with Dad not around – he’d been up early to go and play golf – Daisy had spoken in more detail to Mum and Eliza about why she wanted to go to Australia, how Scott was absolutely convinced she could make a good life for herself there. ‘I feel like I’m stuck in the rut of doom here,’ she’d complained, ‘and I’m only twenty-three. There’s got to be more to life than the brain-numbing nine-to-five boredom I currently have to cope with. I want more than that. Is that so wrong?’
Her sister’s words had resonated with Eliza in a way she would never have expected. There was nothing boring or nine-to-five about her job with Merchant Swift, far from it, but since she’d met Greg, she had begun to think that a fulfilling life outside of work was something she would like to have.