Five Winters(81)

“Well,” advised Marie, “I would mention it next time you see her, if I were you.”

I did.

And after I’d asked the question, Clare gave me one of her full-on piercing stares. “While it’s not written down in black and white that couples should have priority where babies and toddlers are concerned, in reality, it does often turn out that way, yes. We have far more older children waiting to be adopted, and it’s much easier to look after a baby or a toddler if there are two of you.”

I nodded, trying not to be sucked down into a despondent vortex at the thought of never having a baby to care for.

“Is that a problem for you, Beth?”

“No,” I said, sick with disappointment. “It’s not a problem.” What else could I say? If I said it was, if I told her that the thought of not caring for a baby or a young child was totally gutting, then I was pretty much drawing a line under my application, wasn’t I?

So I told myself I would get over my disappointment. That it was an adjustment I had to make, that was all. That adopting an older child was such a worthwhile thing to do, I would come round to the idea in no time. Better an older child than no child, right?

And I threw myself into my volunteer work at a local school after I had made this pact with myself. I pictured the things I would do with my child—reading, making dens, going to local parks, baking. It would be rewarding, it really would.

Only then Naomi signed Bembe up for a toddler gym class on Saturday mornings. Tony worked weekend shifts sometimes, so I offered to take care of Precious when he was working. That way, Bembe wouldn’t miss out. However, as soon as I started taking care of Precious, my attempts to convince myself I’d be fulfilled by adopting an older child were blown right out of the water.

Precious was at the age where she was crawling everywhere at a hundred miles an hour and laughing her cheeky little laugh when she wasn’t smiling. I would build towers with her large plastic building blocks for her to knock over. Help her complete her wooden puzzles. Once, I even set up a huge sheet of plastic on the kitchen floor and “painted” with her. In short, the two hours Naomi and Bembe were away were an absolute frenetic joy.

Around eleven thirty, I’d put Precious in her high chair, wipe her hands, and give her a snack and a drink. Afterwards, we would sit in the squashy armchair together, and I would read to her. Normally, Precious bashed the book with her chubby hands and made sounds along with me, her face filled with delight when she heard the sound of her mother and her big brother arriving home. But occasionally, when our play had been particularly full on, she fell asleep against my chest, the way she sometimes had when she was a young baby.

And I held her close to my heart, a feeling of complete bliss sinking right into my bones.

Naomi came home and found us that way one day. Bembe had fallen asleep in his buggy, so she left him there in the hallway and crept in to find her daughter asleep in my arms. And me with tears running down my face.

“Hey,” she said, concerned. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

I smiled a watery smile, swiping at my eyes with my free hand. “Nothing,” I said. “Everything’s perfect.”

Naomi unbuttoned her coat, taking it all in. “You were born to look after babies,” she told me. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Don’t,” I begged her, the tears starting up all over again. “Please don’t.”

She lifted her hands. “Look, all I’m saying is, you could pause your adoption application for a while. For all you know, your perfect man might be living two streets away, and you just haven’t met him yet. This time next year, you could be married with a baby on the way.”

“What’s Clare going to think about me as a potential adopter if she finds out I’ve paused my application to shag around? She’s hardly going to be impressed, is she?”

Naomi shrugged. “You don’t have to shag around. Just go on some dates. You don’t even need to tell her about it. Say you’re going to take four or five months to get lots of experience with children. She’ll approve of that, won’t she? Go on, mate, give it a chance. What have you got to lose? If it doesn’t work out, you can always restart the adoption process.”

Naomi had planted a seed in my head that morning—a seed which germinated after I’d spoken to Marie again to hear that her little boy was in trouble at school for constantly hitting other children. Coinciding as this did with Jake having to temporarily ban Logan and another boy from attending the centre for a while after they got into a fight, I began to wonder whether Naomi was right. Try as I might to convince myself that adopting an older child would be right for me, I couldn’t seem to shake off my longing to have a baby.

Had I been too hasty? I was thirty-eight now. There was still time for me to conceive. Just.

So I spoke to Clare, as Naomi had suggested. And just as Naomi had told me she would, Clare approved of my plans. We put my application on hold for six months.

Then I got busy creating a Tinder profile.





30


My foray into the world of internet dating wasn’t exactly successful. At least my string of disastrous dates kept Rosie entertained for hours on end when we met up—the no-shows, the guys who’d posted outdated profile photos, the guys who couldn’t stop speaking about their exes.