to walk in your best red weekend wedges
you picked me up
magic-kissed it better
kissed the hurt arm
and the hurt pride
told them to stop laughing
you knew that was my worst hurt
told them i was an extraordinary ray
didn’t obey the ordinary laws of refraction
shone in my own unique way
i was a style pioneer
artists like me should be encouraged
to go our own way
to wear a mum’s best red weekend wedges
takes skill
balance
dash
better to fall off ’em
than never to wear ’em
you put me back in ’em
i did a whole circuit of that front room
left them all eatin’ my badass stylish shit
please let me be even half the mother
you are
because you are A LOT
you are EVERYTHING
Suddenly, Minnie felt a sharp pain in her chest.
Deep down in there, where her heart was hurting the most, it was starting to give up. Literally. Minnie’s heart couldn’t take any more. Of anything. The engine was too knackered to cope.
‘Lee!’ she called out.
He came running.
‘Yes, bae?’
‘I don’t feel right.’
‘OK, sit tight, I’ll get some water …’
‘No, Lee, get the ambulance. Please. Quick.’
As she spoke, she dropped the notebook and collapsed into his arms.
The letter to her darlin’ mum Hope, in custody, would have to be finished later.
Back Then: Hope
Hope looked up at the flat for the last time. She was feeling nostalgic. It’d been a big part of her London life, and the place where Minnie was made. She had pushed past the stoner downstairs’ annoying bike for the last time, she’d strapped Minnie into her car seat in Isaac’s old car that he’d left behind, and she was heading home to Bristol.
Hope had very little to take with her. Her bed and sofa and TV had gone ahead in a van driven by one of her uncles. Even Minnie herself didn’t involve much actual ‘stuff’. A Moses basket and a bag with all her bottles, nappies and a change of Babygro for the journey. She was just over a month old now and still very tiny, but she was a hungry baby so Hope was feeding her half formula, half breast.
There had been a couple of moments when Hope wished she’d been able to get advice from a neonatal or a paediatric nurse, but of course, she couldn’t. Minnie had a temperature but Hope calmly dealt with it. Minnie had a strange rash on her neck: Hope dealt with it. Minnie was waking up hungry in the night: Hope dealt with it by substituting formula for some feeds. It was going relatively well despite zero support, but Hope knew that, in the long term, the answer was to return to Bristol. She needed her wider family wrapped around her if she was going to raise Minnie right. Hope had missed her little sister Glory when they were apart. So that was the first call she made when she decided to go.
‘Hi, G. So. Sitting down? I’m coming home! Yeah, yay, right! Me ’n’ the baby. No. He’s … er … gone. I’ll tell you when I see you. And I can meet the gorgeous Ky at last, check him out, see if he’s suitable BF material. He’s got to pass the sista test. That’s who you are, girl. My sista. I’ve missed you so much. Get yer arms ready for incoming love …’
Glory had been the hardest to leave; she was only sixteen when Hope headed up to London, leaving her at home to cope with Doris and Zak and all the nonsense of their debilitating using habits; but Hope had taught her well. Shown her by example how to withdraw when the two of them were in a state, how to wait until their many melancholic, substance-induced storms had passed, before stepping in to care for them in the quieter calms afterwards. Hope sent some of her wages home, to an account only Glory could access, to make sure they all had some nutritious food and warm clothes, etc. Between the two sisters, they cared very well for their beloved, flawed parents. Yet however much Hope knew Glory had coped, she still always felt the nagging guilt that, as the older sister, she had abandoned her. In that way this was a good day. Hope was going to be back in town to take charge.
She’d given her notice at work. No one was that surprised; they knew she’d suffered a tragic stillbirth. She did it all on the phone and apologized for not going in personally to say her goodbyes, but they all understood.
Hope went to register the stillbirth. It wasn’t easy.
First of all, she had no one to look after Minnie. She couldn’t ask anyone. How could she, without alerting the wrong folk? She even considered, for one mad moment, asking Mr Downstairs Stoner to have her for an hour while she dashed to the registrar’s office, but she couldn’t do it. He was off his face most of the time, which was very useful for not noticing a baby upstairs, but not good for looking after one.
Eventually, Hope knew she had to take a huge risk, one she never would otherwise. She drove to the registrar’s office at just the right time in the early afternoon, when she knew Minnie would fall asleep, replete and drowsy after her lunchtime feed. She put Minnie in her Moses basket in the back seat and lightly covered her over with a blanket and a coat on top. She propped it all up so that nothing could fall directly on to her, and she locked the doors quietly. It hurt her heart to do it, but she had no option. She thought about asking another mother to keep an eye on her, but knew it would arouse suspicion – why would anyone do that rather than taking their baby into the room with them … unless something was amiss? No, she couldn’t do that.
And what if the registrar saw her with a baby?
And what if the
