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Girl in the Family
by Alison Hale
‘Excuse me a moment,’ Constance managed, and hurried
into the kitchen, still clutching her cup and saucer. She was being ridiculous,
getting upset over David’s innocent comment. ‘There’s
never been any girls in the family.’ Fifty years ago, she’d
refused to let herself cry when they took her Lizzy-May.
She sat herself at the kitchen table, and blew her nose. The door creaked,
and she turned to snap at David that she was an old lady entitled to a
few minutes peace, without her son coming and nagging to see if she was
all right.
But it wasn’t David. It was the adopted girl. Her jeans, oversized
t-shirt and haystack like hair still annoyed Constance. Couldn’t
David and Rebecca have made an effort to tidy her up, bringing her to
meet her new grandmother for the first time? And why name a girl Charlie
– even though the ugly, boyish name suited her.
‘You do not,’ Constance said, a muscle in her cheek twitching
furiously, ‘come into my kitchen without permission!’
The girl tilted her head, and locked eyes. ‘May I have permission,
then?’
This child was courageous, Constance had to admit. ‘Yes.’
Charlie sat cross-legged on the floor. Constance had mopped it earlier
that morning – though her knees were getting too old for the task.
‘Don’t you want a chair?’
‘No.’
‘You should say no, thank you.’ The correction was automatic.
‘Why should I say “thank you” when I wasn’t given
anything?’
Constance said, sharply, so there was no doubt who was in charge: ‘Get
up and sit in a chair, I’m not having guests in this house sit on
the floor like animals.’ She made herself stop.
Charlie stood up, and stayed by the door, looking curiously around the
kitchen.
A few years ago, Constance had been certain there would finally be a baby
girl in the family to replace Lizzy-May. She even started knitting. She
couldn’t mention her own disappointment when Rebecca miscarried.
Her teacup and saucer rattled and she dragged her attention back to today.
‘Well, you’d better tell me about yourself.’
‘I’m Charlie, I’m eight, and my favourite colour is
red.’ It sounded rehearsed.
‘What do you like?’
There was a pause, before Charlie said, ‘Rebecca and David?’
‘They’re your parents now, it’s rude to use first names.
You should call them mum and dad.’
‘They said I didn’t have to. What do you want me to call you?’
the girl asked.
‘Just Grandma.’ Constance knew how odd it would sound, from
the lips of this strange child.
‘Grandma.’ She spoke it carefully, experimentally, as though
enunciating a new word in a French lesson, then she smiled. ‘I’ve
never had a grandma before.’
‘I’ve never had a granddaughter.’ There was an unexpected
lump in Constance’s throat.
‘Are you crying?’ Charlie joined her at the table. ‘I
haven’t cried once since I got my family. It’s what I always
wanted.’
‘I have always wanted a little girl. David was quite right.’
‘You want the sort of girl who likes dolls and pink things,’
Charlie said, perfectly matter-of-fact.
Constance realised that had been precisely what she’d envisaged.
A little girl who’d sit demurely learning to sew, who could be dressed
in pretty skirts and cardigans. ‘What sort of things do you enjoy
then?’
‘Playgrounds and collecting dinosaurs, playing rounders …
chocolate biscuits.’ Charlie’s sharp eyes had spotted the
tin on the side.
Constance brought it over. ‘Go on, then, if you won’t spoil
your lunch.’
‘Thank you.’ Charlie took one and, after a pause to consider,
so did Constance. She didn’t often indulge in biscuits, but she
felt that a morning like this warranted one.
Charlie nibbled her biscuit very slowly, scraping the chocolate delicately
off the top. Constance wondered – but could hardly ask – what
life had been like for this child. Had her birth parents neglected her?
Mistreated her? It seemed unlikely her mother had been in the position
Constance once had – seventeen, pregnant so far out of wedlock that
her parents didn’t even know she was courting, terrified but secretly
delighted about the baby on its way. And of course it was all different
nowadays: teenage pregnancies in the paper every morning. Reading about
them always made Constance’s heart twist.
‘Do you still see your real parents?’ she asked. It was a
question she might not have allowed herself to ask a more diffident child,
but Charlie seemed robust.
Charlie shook her head. Constance noticed a leaf in her hair. She reached
out to pull it free of a tangled knot.
‘No!’ Charlie jerked her head backwards, so abruptly that
Constance’s chest clenched – she was certain the child was
about to topple backwards onto the hard floor.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she snapped, as her heart-rate
slowly began to return to normal. ‘Your hair is in a horrible state.
When did you last brush it?’
Charlie shrugged, and stared at the table. It was the first question she’d
refused to answer since setting foot in Constance’s house.
‘Does Rebecca brush it for you?’ Constance asked, even though
she knew that her mousy, quiet daughter-in-law would never be able to
stand up to the whims of this girl.
‘No.’ The biscuit finally disappeared, the last of it licked
from Charlie’s fingers. ‘I don’t like my hair being
touched.’
‘Why?’
Silence again. The toe of Charlie’s trainer bumped back and forth
against a chair leg.
Constance almost told her stop that, but bit back the words. Perhaps part
of having grandchildren was learning to curb her sharp tongue. ‘Is
it a secret?’
This time, the scruffy head nodded, three times.
Constance had finished her tea. She pushed the cup aside and – quite
in disregard for the manners she’d been brought up with –
set her elbows on the table, to lean forwards slightly. ‘Well, perhaps
you’ll tell me if I share a secret with you?’ Even the thought
of doing so made her throat tighten, objectionably.
‘Okay,’ Charlie said, at last. ‘But you have to go first.’
Constance needed to speak, before her tongue clogged in her mouth again,
before she could lose the courage that the girl’s boldness had somehow
imparted to her.
‘This is a secret,’ she said, ‘that I have not told
anyone, for more than fifty years. And I trust you not to say a word to
anyone. Can you do that?’
Charlie nodded. ‘I promise.’
‘When I was seventeen – which I expect seems quite grown-up
to you now, but which seems ridiculously young to me – I had a baby
girl. I named her Lizzy-May. But I wasn’t … the man who was
her father …’ How could she phrase this?
‘He was a bad guy?’ Charlie asked.
Constance felt a smile tug at her wrinkled cheeks, despite the lump in
her throat. Bad guy – no doubt that would be the phrase used on
the cartoons. ‘I suppose he was. We weren’t married, and when
he found out that I was pregnant, he … ran away. You must understand,
it was a very long time ago. It was a great scandal to have a baby if
you weren’t married.’
‘David doesn’t know this secret, does he? He said there’d
never been any girls in the family. What happened to your baby?’
‘No, he doesn’t.’ Constance found herself unable to
meet Charlie’s steady deep brown eyes. ‘My baby was adopted,
and I never saw her again.’
A soft hand rested on top of hers. ‘That’s really sad.’
All Constance could say was ‘Yes,’ then, after a couple of
minutes when she was sure she could speak without her voice shaking, ‘Now,
it’s your turn to tell a secret.’
Charlie’s hand squeezed hers gently, as though seeking reassurance
herself. ‘Mum’s new boyfriend was a bad guy. He hurt Mum –
with the things she used to straighten her hair. He burned her face with
them. Then she took a lot of pills and I phoned the ambulance.’
Constance found that she’d put her hand over her mouth. No wonder
the girl hated having her hair touched.
‘That’s not my secret though,’ Charlie said, ‘This
is. I was only six so I didn’t know better. I told my teacher what
happened.’
‘That was a very good thing to do,’ Constance said, putting
her hands on Charlie’s shoulders.
Charlie just said, ‘After that, they took me into the Home.’
‘It was still the right thing to do. Maybe you saved your mother’s
life.’
Charlie shrugged again.
‘Do you think, now you’ve told me the secret, it would be
so bad if I brushed your hair?’
This time, Charlie only flinched back slightly. ‘Maybe not.’
‘Come upstairs. I’ve got some beautiful ribbons in the cupboard.’
She’d bought them years ago, to save for a girl in the family. ‘You
can always say no if you change your mind.’
They went upstairs together, and Constance opened the Big Cupboard on
the landing that had always been used as an attic-like storage space.
When she lifted the little wooden chest, her heart jumped one, skipped
one. On top of the ribbons inside were the pink and pearl baby clothes,
in softest wool. Constance held a tiny cardigan to her face, felt it brush
warmth against her cheek.
She was aware of Charlie watching curiously, and put them away again,
and handed Charlie the ribbons. ‘What do you think?’
Charlie looked at them, ran her fingers over them, and looked up with
a wide smile. ‘Please can I have the red one?’
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