I kept you very sweet in those days after our big contretemps. I made all the right noises about Poppy coming to live with you, pretended I was “giving it some thought,” said that I could “see the advantages.” But all the while I was painstakingly planning our escape.
It was your turn to have her overnight and I’d packed all our bags ready for our journey to Dublin, filled the car with petrol so we wouldn’t have to stop. My mother was expecting us on the 9 a.m. ferry the following day. I thought I was so clever, I really did.
But I’d underestimated you. You’d worked out what was going on. Poppy wasn’t there when I came for her that evening. You’d taken her to stay at someone’s house. You were ready for me.
“Come in,” you said, “please. We need to talk.”
Were there ever four more terrifying words in the English language?
You sat me down in the kitchen. I sat in the same chair I’d used that perfect day when I first brought Poppy to meet you. I remembered how your kitchen had swallowed me up like a womb then. But that afternoon, your kitchen broke my heart. I knew what you were going to say. I knew it.
“I’ve been thinking,” you said, “about Poppy. About arrangements. Going forward. And it can’t go on like this. And to be horribly, horribly frank with you, Noelle, I fear for her, living with you. I think . . .”
Here it came. Here it came. “I think you’re toxic.” Toxic.
Dear Jesus.
“And this is about much more than home-schooling, Noelle. This is about everything. Did you know that Poppy hates you? She’s told me that. Not just once. Not just when she’s cross with you. But often. She’s scared of you. She
doesn’t . . .” You looked up at me, eyes full of cool guilt. “She doesn’t like the way you smell. She’s said that to me. And that . . . that’s not normal, Noelle. A child should not be able to differentiate between their own smell and the smell of their mother at this stage. That, to me, suggests a terrible, fundamental disconnect between you both; it suggests a failure to bond. And I’ve been talking to a social worker about what my options are and she said that I should take Poppy out of the picture for now, just while we thrash this out, so she’s gone to stay with a friend. Just for a few days . . .”
“Friend?” I said cynically. “What friend? You don’t have any friends.”
“It doesn’t matter what friend. But we really need to reach an agreement on this, civilly, before Poppy comes home. So I’m asking you, Noelle, as Poppy’s mother, could you . . .”
You struggled for the words here, I recall.
“Could you let her go? Please? You could still see her. Of course you could. But it would have to be under supervision. It would have to be here. And it would have to fit in with Poppy’s education.”
I struggled for words then, too. It wasn’t so much what you were saying— though that was bad enough—as the tone in which you were saying it. There was no oh, I’m terribly sorry, Noelle, but I’ve passed your child onto strangers and now I want you to fuck off away from us. There was no sense in the tone of your voice that what you were saying was anything other than entirely reasonable.
Finally I said, “No. No, Floyd. I won’t allow it. I want my child back. And I want her back right now. You have no right. No right whatsoever. She’s my child and—”
You put your hand up then. You said, “Yes. I know that. But, Noelle, you have to accept the fact that you’re not strong enough to be a parent. The way you’re raising her, the junk food and the TV on all day and the lack of physical affection. Not to mention leaving her alone in the house, Noelle. It’s verging on abuse, and that’s exactly how a team of social workers would see it. Poppy’s teeth are appalling. She has nits half the time that you simply don’t deal with. You’re not well. In the head, Noelle. You’re not well. And you’re not fit to be a parent.”
And there. There it was. The defining moment of all the defining moments.
Everything in my head splintered. I saw that girl’s bones laid out in front of me on a dark road in Dover, my headlights shining over the bumps of them, my
foot against the gas pedal. I thought of what I’d allowed myself to become, for you. I never wanted that bloody child. I only wanted you. And I looked at you then, so calm and reasonable, and I knew you hated me and you wanted me gone and I wanted to hurt you, I wanted to really hurt you so I said to you, “What makes you so sure she’s your child, Floyd? Did you never wonder why she looks so little like either of us?”
Your face was worth the horror of me showing myself to you, it really was. “She doesn’t belong to either of us, Floyd,” I said, feeling the twist of my
words into your heart. “I made her for you, with another woman’s womb and another man’s sperm.”
The words were falling from me uncontrollably. I’d nothing left to lose. “She’s a Frankenstein’s monster, Floyd, that child you so adore. She’s barely human, in fact.”
“Noelle, I don’t—”
I spoke over you, desperate to answer your questions before you asked them, desperate to take control. “A girl called Ellie had that baby for me. I was never pregnant, you dumb idiot. How could you have thought I was, you with your big, brilliant brain? Ellie had that baby. She was the mother. And the father was some stranger on the Internet selling his sperm for fifty pounds a shot.”
Oh come on now, Floyd. You didn’t honestly think that child could be yours, did you? That glorious golden thing? That she could be formed from your tired old genes? Really? Didn’t you wonder? Didn’t you think? No, Floyd. Poppy’s father was a young, young man, a PhD student. The website I bought his sperm from said he was under thirty, that he was six foot one with green eyes and dark hair. I pictured Ellie’s boyfriend when I picked him out. I pictured Theo. And then I came to you in my satin shirt and high heels and seduced you in a way that you’d be sure to remember. The whole thing was a total scam, Floyd. And you fell for it, you feckless, bollockless, soulless shit. You totally fell for it.
“Well, you can keep her, you scumbag. Keep her and pay for her and know for the rest of your life every time you look at her that she’s nothing but a big bag of cells and other people’s DNA. Good luck to you both.”
I had my handbag by its strap. I was done. It was over. The splinters in my head were spinning so fast and so wildly I could barely remember my own name. But I felt euphoric.
And then I watched your face turn to stormy skies, saw your skin color change from gray to seething purple. You leaped to your feet; then you threw yourself bodily across the table at me. You had your hands at my throat and my chair tumbled backward with me still in it; my head hit the floor and by God I thought you meant to kill me, by God, I really, really did.
