Florence’s 1st Birthday: Anna
The day had a very different feeling for Anna. She stood in the corridor outside the Brunel Suite at the Crawford Hotel in Marylebone. She was shaking and sweating. She’d felt considerably wobbly all morning, anticipating this terrible moment, but this was it, the point of no return. On several occasions throughout the day, she had decided to ignore all her better instincts and let everything just be, the way she was used to. It would be easier like that, to simply ignore all the red flags and let life limp on imperfectly, but something had shifted within her.
It was no coincidence that it was Florence’s birthday today.
Something about the stark reality of that gave her courage. She slipped the plastic key into the slot … and watched the little light above it clunk from red to green. She heard the bolt slide in the door, she pushed it, and it opened into the suite where she knew Julius was inside with his lover.
The whole wretched year and everything awful about it had propelled her to this moment. Her year of guilt. ABOUT EVERYTHING.
Of course, a year ago everyone’s New Year had been interrupted and spoiled, and of course, Anna felt guilty about that. She had told and retold the short story of what had happened as far as she knew it. She heard herself endlessly repeat: ‘They must’ve snuck in when we were asleep …’ And the culpability stung her more each time she said it.
How the hell could anyone be so asleep that they don’t notice someone stealing their new baby? Especially if it was a group of people – the Romanians, which the police had implied was the most likely. How could several people enter that room silently, pick up a silent infant silently and then silently exit with not a soul clocking them? How could Julius have been as fast asleep as she was? She was tired, she deserved to be … she’d just given birth. BUT. YES.
She had been fast asleep.
That’s all she knew.
She was a bad mother, that much was indisputable, as far as she was concerned, however much her family and friends kept reassuring her otherwise. In that very reassurance, she sensed a huge dollop of the judgement she feared and which she so readily heaped upon herself. Especially from her mother.
‘Darling, you did everything a new mummy is supposed to do and then you were exhausted and you slept. You are supposed to sleep, otherwise you will have no strength for what’s ahead, for … motherhood.’
She had been saying stuff, the right sort of stuff. It would APPEAR to have no subtext as she spoke it, she was using motherly, comforting words and tone, yet all Anna heard was: ‘you were exhausted’, which was a massive fail (as she saw it) and ‘you slept’, which was worse. It was Latin for ‘you were negligent’. It wasn’t Latin; it was mumspeak.
The awful thing about knowing your family so well is that you read them and know intuitively when they are faking it. Anna’s ‘Ma’ was half-mother, half-weapon, and Anna’s childhood had been a masterclass in building personal armour in order to protect herself against the constant barrage of judgemental batterings Ma unleashed with little to no warning. The whole family had learnt how to walk on eggshells around her. No attacks were ever physical, all were emotional, and supremely bruising, so even in a rare moment like that, where Ma didn’t seem to be overtly punishing her – in fact, quite the opposite – that’s precisely how it felt to Anna. Ma would never be able to comfort her, because Anna didn’t believe the sympathy was authentic. Ma was the queen of blame. Everything bad that happened was someone else’s fault. Everything good that happened was her doing. It made the rules simple, at least. It was tidy. And terrifying.
It was so sad because Anna couldn’t trust any kindness coming from Ma, and it compounded her already behemoth-sized guilt. That day, the ultimate proof had been when Ma said publicly, ‘Do you need a cuddle?’ It was an Exocet missile of strangeness that exploded inside Anna. It was a performance Ma was giving, and it was impossible to stop it. Even Pa sat quietly behind her, rolling his eyes, knowing he was powerless in the face of her sheer fakery. This was how Ma convinced unfamiliars that she was thoughtful, motherly. She imitated the sweetness of others she’d witnessed, without any real, genuine feelings. She was an emotional chameleon.
The fake sympathy had made Anna cringe. She was weary and had none of her usual filters operating, and zero strength, so in response to her mother’s offer, she found herself saying, ‘Um, I don’t think so, no, not after thirty-five years, ta.’
And that was it. She had lit the fuse. BAM! Pa quickly bundled Ma out and home to Surrey, leaving Julius open-mouthed at Anna’s unusual audacity. They could hear Ma’s irritated burblings as she was being packed into the car outside. Anna closed her eyes and exhaled. That had been a long time coming. Right then, she couldn’t give a flying toss; she didn’t want to handle any further drama. It was already at topple-level, and it was time to speak up.
Anna ordinarily preferred a quiet life. That’s why she’d remained with Julius. She didn’t want the noise of the inevitable rows she would surely have to have if she took issue with all of his many shortcomings. It was easier, quieter, to support him in his career, but keep her own head down. However, when necessary, Anna could stand tall, because Anna most certainly had a backbone. She had had to push on through her shyness and her anxiety this whole year in order to keep the search for
