Part Four: The Woman Who Fell to Earth
This book is for Helen Shaw – the Greatest of all the Gingers!
Dear Zoe,
I don’t know why I’m writing this – a sudden fit of the black dog, I suppose. It’s one of the unexpected side effects of motherhood that nobody warns you about, the way your imagination can take hold of you like a Jack Russell terrier, swinging your mind about like a rag doll and leaving you in a crumpled heap of paranoia.
For some reason, tonight, I started worrying about what would happen to Martha if I wasn’t around. Well, I say ‘some reason’ – I actually know exactly what the reason was. Princess Di. I was up late doing some marking, and got sucked into this documentary – ten years since she died and all that.
It was seeing those boys at the funeral that probably did it – little Wills and Harry, trying to be all brave and grown-up and just looking like little lost souls wondering where their mum was. All I could think about was wanting to give them a big hug. I’m not exactly a raving royalist, but this is nothing to do with money or class, is it? Losing your mum – a mum who loves you to bits, like Diana obviously did with her babies – is a terrible thing.
Between that and the wine and the lateness, I just ended up in a bit of a mess. You should have seen me, babe – I was just a great big pile of tear-stained mush, hugging the cushions and shaking with grief for a woman I never met, and her motherless little boys. Weirdo.
After that, I lay awake for hours thinking about it all – and about you, and Martha, and what songs I wanted played at my funeral. I never did decide – I know it should be something dignified, but … well, we’re not that dignified are we, you and me? Never have been. I keep imagining it being something ridiculous like the Venga Boys, and everyone dancing to Boom Boom Boom as the coffin is wheeled out. Or maybe a bit of Pulp, so you could do Disco 2000 with all the actions.
Anyway. In the end, I decided to get up, and write this instead. Tomorrow, I’m going to package it up with some other paperwork, and go and see a solicitor and make a will. Not cheerful, but I think it’ll put my mind at rest. It’s the responsible, grown-up thing to do – not my specialist subject, but it needs to be done.
The main thing, of course, is Martha. Her dad’s on the other side of the world and she’s never even met him. My parents are uptight control freaks. The only person who loves her and knows her as well as I do is you, Zoe. I don’t know the legalities of it all, and whether you can leave someone a child in your will, like you would an antique ring or a complete set of Charles Dickens first editions. I’ll have to ask those questions, I suppose.
But whatever the answers are, I know, in my heart – my squished up, Wills-and-Harry-sodden heart – that she needs to be with you. You’re her second mum. I know you’d
