Читать книгу Taken: Part 2 of 3 - Rosie Lewis - Страница 8

The next day, when Emily was in her room, I sat beside Jamie on the sofa and asked him to pause the online football game he was playing so that we could have a chat. ‘What’s up?’ he asked, one eyebrow half-cocked.

‘Did you mean what you said about Megan? You’re not just saying it because you think it’s what I want to hear?’

When it was just the two of us he often dropped the cool teenage persona and morphed into someone younger. He leaned into me, bestowing the most affectionate hug he was able to give while clutching his gaming handset. ‘Course not. I love Megan,’ he said simply. ‘I’ve always wanted more brothers and sisters.’

‘You’re sure? You wouldn’t just say that?’

‘Nah,’ he answered, but he already sounded vague. I studied him for a few seconds, the new angles to his chin, the leanness of his cheeks. Time passed so quickly.

‘Because if you’re trying to please me …’ I started up again. His eyes drifted from me to the TV screen and slowly, reluctantly, back again. ‘Or Emily, or you think it might sound mean to say you’d rather not keep her –’

‘Mum,’ he cut in, resting the handset on his lap with a long-suffering sigh. ‘I’m not being rude, but can you stop talking now? Cos I didn’t get to play FIFA at all yesterday and every second we deliberate over this is another second I lag behind Ben. And if that happens my game plan is wrecked.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘D’you really want that on your conscience?’

Thrilled by their reaction, I called my mum later that day to see what she thought. ‘But you’re on your own,’ she said, sounding a little scandalised, although I sensed a frisson of excitement there too.

Soon after I separated from Gary I dug up the small garden in our first rented house with the intention of installing a lobster farm to make ends meet. Standing in a boggy mess after three days of digging, my fingers dotted with blisters, I found my enthusiasm waning. Ever since then Mum seemed to hold the view that I was wild and flighty. She still had kittens whenever I told her of one of my plans and seemed to feel the need to rein me in, playing devil’s advocate to make sure I’d thought through all the many ways good ideas can turn sour.

‘That doesn’t matter apparently.’

There was a pause. ‘No, I suppose it doesn’t. There’s nothing to stop anyone doing anything nowadays,’ she said, with a trace of disappointment. ‘If they’re going to let transvestites and what have you adopt I don’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed. They do, you know,’ she stated insistently, as if I’d argued the point. ‘I saw it on a recruitment poster on the back of a bus the other day.’ A traditionalist and loyal reader of the Daily Mail, Mum was still struggling to come to terms with the installation of self-service checkouts in supermarkets. And the arrival of a gay couple in the maisonette above hers very nearly blew her mind. ‘They’re civilly partnershipped, you know,’ she told her every visitor with a sort of confused pride, as if she were the first person in England to be able to make such a claim.

‘Not that I’m against it,’ she said now. ‘Your grandmother would turn in her grave, but I’m not one to judge, you know me.’

I couldn’t suppress a snort at that.

‘What?’ she demanded, sounding injured. ‘Each to their own. What people do in the privacy of their own home isn’t any of my business. I just think it must a bit confusing, that’s all. Coming home from school and finding Daddy on the sofa, wearing a dress. Imagine!’ She gave a little titter. ‘You wouldn’t know whether you were coming or going, you really wouldn’t.’

‘So, anyway, Mum, what do you think about Megan?’

‘Oh goodness, someone else to worry about? Another mouth to feed? I love the little dot to pieces but haven’t you got enough on your plate?’

And so it was decided. I sent Peggy an email that evening and told her that I’d love to be considered to adopt Megan. She responded enthusiastically, saying that she was thrilled for all of us. I knew several foster carers who had been flatly refused when they asked to be considered as adopters for the children they were looking after, so I was heartened by her reaction. A few months earlier a fostering friend of mine, Jenny, made an application to keep Billy, a four-year-old boy who had lived with her for over a year. The local authority, fearing that Jenny might abscond with the child, had hurriedly arranged another placement for him.

‘Don’t tell me, I know,’ Mum said with mock exasperation when I called her the next morning. ‘Honest to goodness, I can’t keep up with it all,’ she added, but I could tell she was pleased.

The possibility of keeping Megan began to seem all the more real.