Forever yours, p.1
Forever Yours, page 1
Praise for Debbie Johnson
‘Emotional, beautiful, wonderful. Debbie Johnson at her finest’
Milly Johnson
‘Romantic, heartbreaking and packed with Debbie’s trademark warmth and wisdom’
Catherine Isaac
‘A rollercoaster of emotions. Absolutely brilliant and beautiful’
Alex Brown
‘A very special, hugely affecting novel that you’ll return to time after time. A future classic’
Miranda Dickinson
‘A beautiful story with emotional twists that pulled at my heartstrings’
Jessica Ryn
‘Utterly spell-binding, it sent shock waves through my heart’
Cathy Bramley
‘This book is a triumph’
Woman’s Own
To Milly Johnson, for just being you.
Contents
Praise for Debbie Johnson
Dedication
Title Page
1: Then
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
2: Now
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
Credits
About the Author
Copyright
I
Then
Chapter 1
October, eighteen years ago
‘You’re doing great,’ the midwife says, glancing up at me from between my trembling, sweat-sheened knees. ‘Keep going, my love, just keep going.’
She is trying to be encouraging, trying to be kind, trying to help me through this. I know that none of this is her fault but, still, I kind of want to punch her in the face.
I ignore her and concentrate on counting my breaths, counting the precious moments of calm between waves of agony.
At my side, Geoff with a G is murmuring words of encouragement, while pointedly averting his gaze from the war zone that is my lower half.
‘Brilliant, Gemma,’ he mutters, eyes skittering, his skin pale and waxy. He looks as though he’s in so much distress that you’d think he was the one doing this.
None of this is his fault either, but I want to punch him in the face as well.
I grunt and screw up my eyes, and push so hard when I am told to that I feel as though I might pass out from lack of oxygen. My fists are scrunched around creased hospital sheets, my hair is stuck to my forehead in damp clumps, and I can taste salt on my otherwise dry lips. I push, and I pant and I want to give up. Actually, I don’t just want to give up, I think I might want to die.
In the background, the music is doing nothing to help. I’d put together some songs, back when I thought listening to them might make a difference, but now that just seems silly. As if Robbie Williams singing about angels could help with this. It’s definitely not Robbie’s fault, but if he was in the room, and I had the spare energy, his face wouldn’t be safe either.
Mainly, I want to punch myself in the face – because this is my fault. And it is so much harder than I thought, than I could ever have imagined, it would be. It is nothing like it is on television – but then again, neither was the act that started it all. There was nothing magical about any of it, nothing beautiful or perfect. Just pain, and worry, and a weird sense of loneliness.
Your first love and motherhood come with such loaded expectations. They are the moments that are supposed to mean something. To connect you to something bigger than yourself. To make you feel special.
That’s all bullshit, I reckon. If losing your virginity and having a baby were sold the way they really are, nobody would ever do either of those things, and the human race would die out. If they were billed as ‘pain and worry and a weird sense of loneliness’, nobody would be in such a rush to do either, would they? We’ve all been conned.
Life isn’t rainbows and unicorns. It’s sludge-grey drizzle and feral rats. Then, again, I am not in the best of moods.
I am sixteen and I am having a baby. I am pushing a real life human being out of my lady parts, and it hurts. It hurts a lot, and I left ‘tired’ behind about twelve hours ago – now I am well into ‘so exhausted I may never leave this minging bed’.
I knew it would be painful, but I wasn’t prepared for the exhaustion, the sense of defeat, the feeling of failure – the suspicion that I might not be able to do what millions of women have done for millennia, squatting in deserts and on bathroom floors and in the backs of taxis. I am too crap to even give birth properly.
I want to cry, for so many reasons – but I am too wrung out to spare the tears. I feel another wave of pain, and get yelled at to push, and I try, I really do, but I have nothing left to give. All of me has floated away, in a cloud of despair and sheer knackered-ness.
‘I can’t do this!’ I scream. ‘Please, just make it stop! Make it stop!’ I bite my lip hard, three times, feeling blood on my tongue.
Geoff with a G looks even more queasy, but he takes hold of one of my hands, squeezes my fingers, and says: ‘You’re OK, Gemma. You can do this. You know you can.’
He doesn’t sound very convinced, but it is something to cling on to. Kind words, a kind touch. A kind man. It calms me enough so that I take in more air, gulping it in greedily.
‘Gemma, you’re nearly there, love!’ says the midwife. I’ve forgotten her name. Something Irish, I think, even though her accent is pure East London. This is my third midwife – I have gone through a few shift changes now.
‘You said that hours ago!’ I scream at her. ‘You were lying! You’re a bloody liar!’
The midwife actually laughs out loud at this accusation. It is a strange sound to hear floating up to my ears, a tinkling of amusement as she roots around, as she inspects, as she probes.
‘Gemma, I can see her head!’ she adds. ‘And I’m not lying – I can see her head, and she has lovely red hair like you, and she is so ready to come and meet you – come on now, one last big push for me!’
Red hair. Huh. I’ve always hated mine, but for some reason I feel weirdly pleased that she has it too. Like it’s a connection we will always have, no matter what else we lose. A twine of ginger reaching down through the ages.
I grip hold of Geoff’s hand, tighter than any sane human being would appreciate, and I push, growling out a long stream of air, forcing myself to find that last shred of strength that I need. I lean forward as I do it, squashed up and folded and as concertinaed as my malformed body can get.
I hear Geoff and the midwife speaking words that don’t register; I feel a flickering sensation behind my eyes, a high-pitched ringing in my ears, the world around me a blanked-out buzzing void: nothing exists but me and this moment and doing this one thing. The most important thing I have ever done.
I am sixteen and I am having a baby. A baby girl, with red hair.
I let out one scream, put all my energy into helping her into the world, and know that I am spent. That I have nothing more to give. If this is not enough, then this is not happening.
It is enough. And it is happening. Head, shoulders, tiny body, slithering into this small room in this busy hospital, like she’s in a rush now. She’s rushing out of me and into her own life – into a world that I hope treats her well.
I feel disconnected from my own body as she arrives, burdened with a sense of physical relief and emotional dread. I stare at the curtains, at the stripes, repeated patterns of three different shades of green. I read somewhere once that green is supposed to be calming. It is not – at least not in this situation.
I blink rapidly as the midwife pulls my baby up and into her solid hands. I wonder how many babies she has delivered with those hands, how many women she has helped. I find that I don’t really care, about that or about anything. I am done, I am trembling, I am slick with sweat. It has even caught in my eyelashes, is dripping from my brows. The skin of my face feels sore and stretched over my bones.
I look at the clock on the off-white wall. It is just past midnight on 3 October. It is her birthday.
She took her sweet time, and arrived ten days after she was scheduled to. But she is here, this brand-new thing, this fresh creature, this tiny human. This life waiting to unfold. She is here, and she has been born to the sound of Kelis singing about her milkshake. That doesn’t seem right, somehow – but it is done, and I can only hope that she hasn’t absorbed it. That she won’t grow up to have a weird yearning to lie on tables in diners.
The midwife – she’s called Siobhan, I suddenly remember – is cooing and chatting as she cuts the cord, starts to check the baby over. It only takes minutes, but it is enough time for me to lose whatever magic was keeping me upright and present.
I collapse backwards, my head banging against the steel of the bed frame. I don’t even feel it. I am suddenly bone-deep cold, shivering, in shock. If I’d just finished a marathon, someone would wrap me in a foil sheet and give me a Mars Bar.
‘Here she is – absolutely perfect! eight pounds, two ounces, and a lovely length – she’s going to be a tall one!’ says Siobhan, bringing the tiny form, wrapped in a blanket, towards me. I see one pale, pudgy arm sticking out, fist clenched in bright red fury. Like she’s already angry at the world.
‘I don’t want to hold her!’ I say quickly, holding my hands up to ward them away, wishing I could run – not even a marathon, just out of this room. Away from here, away from now.
I cannot run, though. I cannot move. I am trapped, my body still pulsating, my mind spiralling as she approaches.
‘It’s OK, Gemma,’ says Geoff with a G. He has stood up, is peering into that blanket, smiling at what he sees. ‘You should see her. You should hold her. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’
I glare at him, filled with anger – with a bright red fury of my own. I have so many regrets already, what harm could one more possibly do me?
I don’t have the energy to argue, though, and I accept the bundle that is passed to me. Part of me knows that he is right. That even if this hurts, I must do it, or wake up every single day for the rest of my life wishing I’d been brave enough.
I have held babies before. Some of my foster families also took in tiny ones like this. I have changed nappies and warmed bottles, and wondered what all the fuss is about. Babies are noisy and messy and not very good conversationalists and I never understood why people are so keen on them.
This, though, is different. This is my baby. This is a baby that has lived inside my body for more than nine months. This is a little girl with red hair and a red face and she is at once a stranger and someone I have known for all of eternity. She is new and she is old and she is everything all at the same time.
She nestles into me, her face turning sideways, rooting and snuffling, one finger flipping up as though she was born knowing how to be rude. She has a bad attitude, I decide, as I peel back the covers and gaze at her face. I like people with a bad attitude.
‘Perfect, Gemma,’ says Siobhan, hovering by my side. ‘Look at that. Look at what you did, you brave girl. Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes.’
The midwife is patronising me, which I can’t blame her for. It’s hard to argue a case for your maturity and wisdom when you’ve just given birth to a baby you conceived while you were still at school.
But she is also mistaken, at least about one of those things. The baby might be perfect, but I am not brave. I am not brave at all. I ignore her, lost now in more important things. Like counting those ten tiny fingers, those ten tiny toes, and drinking in that angry red face.
I stroke my baby’s hair, damp and gooey still, and she blinks her eyes open and stares up at me. Her eyes are wide, and a dark shade that could be either blue or grey, but I know they’ll probably change anyway, over the next few months. I saw it in one of the books Geoff gave me.
I won’t be in her life by then. It is strange to think that I will not be around to see what colour eyes she has. It is one of the many things that I will never know.
The way she looks at me, though, is enough for now. The way she looks at me, it feels like she understands it all. Like she knows all the stuff, the good and the bad and the boring. It is the stare of someone who sees right through you, who cuts through the bullshit, who knows everything that has ever happened in the universe ever. Minutes old and already the wisest being I’ve met.
Geoff is wittering. Siobhan is chattering. Kelis has been replaced by Christina Aguilera. None of it matters. It is all surplus to requirements. All that matters is me and my baby – this beautiful-ugly, young-old scrap of a person lying on my chest.
It is me and her and it is the magic. It is the rainbows and the unicorns and the perfect. It is the everything – the anti-lonely, the anti-weird, the anti-fear. It is the best I have ever felt in my life, and it is the worst I have ever felt in my life.
She is perfect, the most beautiful human I have ever seen. I cannot believe that she came from me. She is perfect, and now I am going to give her away. I am going to let her be taken out of my arms, out of this room, passed on to strangers. Her real life starts as soon as she is away from me, in a better reality. One where she will be loved and cherished and well fed and well cared for. Where she will have a good home, and people who love her, and an education, and opportunity.
Where she won’t have me.
I kiss her red face, and smell her red hair, and try to imprint every detail of this moment, of this creation, into my memory.
‘I love you, Baby,’ I murmur. I don’t want to give her a name. That is for her new family to do. The family that Geoff with a G found and vetted and worked with. The family that will give her the life that I can’t. The family that will give her the awesome world she deserves. To me, she will always just be Baby.
‘It’s not too late, you know,’ says Geoff, quietly. ‘Nothing is settled, nothing is definite. You have weeks to decide before anything gets signed. You could keep her until then, see how you feel. We can find ways to help you – you don’t have to rush into this.’
I don’t meet his eyes – my eyes are on my baby, soaking in her wondrousness – but I manage a smile for him. He means well, and I no longer wish to damage his face.
He means well, but he and I both know what that help would look like. I might find a foster family that would take in a teenager and a newborn. I might find a place in an independent living unit. I might even be able to find my own place, if I was very special and very lucky and the Gods of Forgotten Children smiled upon me. There would be assessments and key workers and reports and visits and a grinding sense of benign scrutiny. Every move, every mistake, every choice I made, would be watched.
I’ve lived in and out of this system for a lot of my life, and I know how it feels to always be watched. Sometimes the system works – I have met good people, had foster parents who helped me, found some stability. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and the less said about that the better. But none of it is what I want for this little girl – she shouldn’t have to settle for second best, for anything less than perfect.
I don’t want her growing up with a mum who is still too young to look after her properly. A mum who can barely make a Pot Noodle without scalding herself. I don’t want her growing up with the smell of damp in cheap rooms, or picking up on the second-hand anxiety that I’d be bound to share on endless walks with a pram on endless aimless days, worried about money and safety and what will become of us.
There isn’t a smiling grandma with abundant patience, there isn’t a long-lost auntie who will take us in. There is just me and well-meaning strangers, and that is not good enough for her. I want to give her the world – but all I can give her is this. The knowledge that I am not ready. That I am not capable, right now, of being what she needs. What she deserves.
Her new family – her real family – are more than ready. They have wanted her for years. They have her nursery painted in yellow and cream, they have tiny sleepsuits all soft and clean, and they have a baby-shaped hole in their hearts that she will fill.
I could love her, but I couldn’t give her that world. I love her, so I am giving her away.
I drag my gaze away from hers, and look up at Geoff. He looks a bit teary-eyed and I wonder if he is cut out for this job – for being a social worker. He shouldn’t even be here, really – he is doing more than his job demands. Going above and beyond, and risking broken finger bones to be here with me.
‘It’s OK,’ I say firmly. ‘I’ve made my mind up. I’ve thought about it all, Geoff. It’s what is best for her. And probably me. You can take her.’
Siobhan is silent for once, nodding when she sees my resolve, silently taking my newborn into her arms.
‘They are lovely, Gemma,’ Geoff replies. ‘She couldn’t ask for better parents. They’re so excited about meeting her.’
I nod, and close my eyes. I am sad and tired and don’t want to be conscious anymore. There is a possibility that I may never want to be conscious again.
‘Have you got the letter?’ I ask.
‘I have, and I’ll make sure they get it.’
‘Could I have it back? Just for a minute. And a pen. I need a pen.’
Geoff fumbles in the satchel bag he carries everywhere with him, big enough to contain the files that summarise his clients’ lives. He pulls out a brown envelope, removes the letter inside it, then rummages some more.
