Page 27 of The Mother-in-Law

‘The baby was healthy,’ Matron said, and that was the last time I heard her say the word ‘baby’ at Orchard House.

After news of Mary’s birth, the impersonations stopped. It was as though we’d forgotten what we were doing there and suddenly we’d all remembered. Pamela became quiet again, rarely speaking at all. At least, she rarely spoke during the day. At night, when we lay in bed, she sometimes said a few words. Something vulnerable happened to you at night, I’d come to realise in my few weeks at Orchard House. You took off your clothes, you took off your armour.

‘I think I’m having a girl,’ she whispered one night as we lay in bed. ‘What do you think you’re having?’

I stared at her, making out the faint outline of her head against the stark white bed linen. ‘I . . . It doesn’t matter, I suppose. It won’t be my baby.’

‘But what would you call it?’ she insisted. ‘If you were keeping it?’

I blinked into the darkness. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I’d call my girl Jane,’ she said. ‘Jane Pamela. It’s pretty, don’t you think?’

A streak of moonlight crossed her bed, and for a moment I saw the hope in her face. A lump filled my throat, preventing me from responding. All at once I felt pinned by the weight of what was coming. It stole my breath.

‘Diana?’ Pamela said after a moment.

‘Mmm?’ I managed.

‘My friends call me Pammy.’

I inhaled sharply, swallowed hard.

‘Diana? Did you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I heard you, Pammy.’

As our due dates drew closer, Pammy shared a few details about her life. Her mother was a housekeeper at a big house in Kew. Her dad was a roof tiler who fell off a ladder and died when she was two. She had three older brothers and she was the youngest, the only girl.

The father of her baby, she said, was a wealthy man name Christopher, a doctor. He had paid for her to come to Orchard House because he didn’t want her to have to lift a finger while she was with child, that’s how much he loved her, Pammy said. She told me that Christopher had a wife but she was just obsessed with his money. Money ruined people, Pammy said. It fractured families and made people mean. It made Christopher’s wife mean, she told me.

I wondered if it was money that made Christopher mean.

After that, my story about David and the Falcon felt very uninteresting. The truth was, I had no wish for a future with David. But I was surprised by the feelings I had for my baby. Apparently we wouldn’t be allowed to hold our babies after they were born, and yet my urge to hold my baby was overwhelming. At night, when I felt it kick and move, I cradled it and talked to it inside my head.

At night, when we spoke, Pammy started referring to her baby as Jane.

‘I wonder if Jane will look like me or Christopher.’

‘I bet Jane will be smart, like Christopher. Smarter than me anyway.’

‘Oh look, Jane is kicking me. She’s a feisty one!’

‘I do have a name,’ I told Pammy, one night. ‘For a boy, that is. Oliver.’

‘What a lovely posh name,’ Pammy said approvingly. ‘Lovely and posh, like you.’

Despite my hurt, despitemyself, in the darkness I laughed out loud.

*

One evening, as I sat in the communal area, I realised I hadn’t seen Pammy all day.

‘Matron?’ I said when she came to tell us it was ten minutes until lights out. ‘Has Pammy gone to have her baby?’

Matron’s lips thinned. ‘Pamela has been moved.’

‘Moved where?’