The Family Trap Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Acknowledgements

  Praise for Can’t Live Without

  “If you’re looking for something with more substance than chick lit, something thoughtful, funny and very well written, try CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT.” Linda Gillard, author of House of Silence.

  “I love that Phillips creates in Stella, a character in her late 30s with many flaws, but ultimately the heart of an angel, someone all readers will rally around ... CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT is all about finding out what really matters in life.” Cindy Roesel, Chick Lit Central

  “Joanne Phillips has an incredibly wonderful easy to read writing style. I absolutely did not want the book to end. I’m sure that Joanne Phillips will be giving some of the big names in the chick lit world a run for their money.” Kim the Bookworm

  The Family Trap

  by

  JOANNE PHILLIPS

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Mirrorball Books

  An imprint of Bostock Publishing

  Whixall, Shropshire SY13 2RN

  www.bostockpublishing.co.uk

  Kindle Edition 2013

  Copyright © Joanne Phillips 2013

  Joanne Phillips asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved in all media. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author and/or publisher.

  Cover design by Blondesign

  For Louisa-May Phillips

  Chapter 1

  ‘Get it out of me. Get. It. Out.’

  My daughter is only sixteen, but today is possibly the best and the worst day of her life. Even though she’s still my baby – will always be my baby – right now she’s trying to squeeze out her own baby into the waiting arms of a red-faced midwife. While discovering the hard way that some young bodies just aren’t designed for childbirth.

  Her gasps of pain bring back the memory of her own birth with a force I hadn’t expected, and I almost find myself reaching for the gas and air in sympathy. They say you eventually forget the torture of giving birth – why else would any woman go on to have more than one child? We’re brave, not masochists. Well, I only had one, and I can tell you right now: a woman never forgets.

  They also say nothing is more painful than giving birth. Wrong again. Watching your own child in labour is far more painful. Right now I wish it were me lying there on the bed and not her.

  What is it they also say? Be careful what you wish for?

  Sometimes I wish they would just shut up.

  I’m standing away from the business end, holding my daughter’s hand and mopping ineffectually at her forehead while she screams and swears at the midwife. My feelings aren’t important right now, are they? This is about her, and that little life fighting its way down her underdeveloped tubes, every beat of its heart monitored carefully, every movement another stab of agony for my girl.

  I push away the tiny, ashamed-to-show-its-face part of me that is also thinking: See? You didn’t listen, did you, when I told you how awful it would be? You weren’t careful, you didn’t take precautions, and now look at us. A slip of a girl, high on Pethidine, showing off an astonishingly varied vocabulary, attended by her own single mum who still hasn’t gotten used to the fact that any minute now she will become a grandmother.

  A grandmother! At thirty-eight. There is so much wrong with this picture I don’t know where to start.

  Here comes Robert with fresh supplies of ice and chocolate, his face showing the strain of watching Lipsy suffer. Robert is one of those people who seem to be all one colour: his fine hair is the same pale biscuit shade as his skin; even his clothes are beige. He looks young for thirty-one, but his hairline tells of problems to come.

  That my daughter chose to fall in love with a man nearly twice her age tops off the craziness just perfectly, in my opinion.

  ‘Stella?’ says Robert, handing me the ice wrapped in a flannel. He’s only just stopped calling me Mrs Hill, despite the fact that I’ve never been a Mrs in my life. This is about to change in two weeks’ time, of course, but I won’t be Mrs Hill.

  I take the flannel and apply it to the back of Lipsy’s neck. She’s on all fours now, panting like a marathon runner, her white T-shirt stuck to her back. Her long dark hair is matted at the crown like a fallen-out beehive, her lips vivid against her fair skin.

  I know why I’m angry, why I’m blaming Lipsy and dragging up all the stuff I thought I’d buried months ago. It’s because I’m scared. No, terrified.

  If I allow my mind to process what’s happening in front of my eyes – if I let the fear in for a second – I’ll be no use to my daughter at all. So I huff when she asks me for a glass of water, and I tut when Robert tenderly places a square of Bourneville in her swollen mouth.

  ‘I need the toilet,’ Lipsy croaks, her voice hoarse from shouting.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ is my response. It’s how I’m dealing with it. Don’t shoot me.

  We shuffle her off the bed and move as one towards the toilet cubicle in the corner of the room – all of us, including Robert and the midwife, who has to drag the heart rate monitor and the drip stand across the floor. Somehow we manoeuvre this circus into the cubicle without anyone tripping up or pulling the line out of Lipsy’s arm.

  ‘Piss off then,’ my daughter says. We stare at her, mouths open.

  ‘I’m not doing a poo with you lot all watching me,’ she tells us defiantly. ‘Aren’t I allowed any privacy?’

  It’s right then, in that precise moment, that all the love I’ve ever felt for my little girl, and possibly all the love I ever will feel, hits me with the force of ten hurricanes. She is a separate individual. She’s about to become a mother. She’s not my baby anymore – she hasn’t been my baby for some time, in fact.

  And I’m bizarrely proud of her for telling the woman who’s been looking up her nether region for the last four hours to give her some privacy. It’s ridiculous, it’s completely pointless, and it’s very, very Lipsy.

  Robert is allowed to stay after some hissed negotiations – ‘You might fall over,’ he points out, ‘and you can’t actually sit down or stand up again without help’ – so the midwife and I shuffle backwards out of the toilet and take up our former positions.

  ‘She’s a feisty one,’ she says. I notice her silver name badge reads Maggie. I smile to myself: Maggie is my mother’s name. I take this as a good omen.

  ‘Yes, she is. I think she takes after me.’

  Maggie rolls her eyes. ‘It’s a shame she hasn’t inherited your child-bearing hips though, eh?’

  Suddenly I don�
�t like this midwife very much at all.

  *

  Lipsy’s baby is born in the toilet. Well, of course it is – nothing ever turns out the way it should in this family. Bearing down with all her strength, thinking herself mightily constipated, Lipsy finally managed what the midwife had been trying to achieve for hours. Thankfully Robert realised what was going on pretty quickly, and Maggie managed to dive in and ... well, I’ll leave it there, shall I? There is such a thing as too much information. The first I heard about it was when Robert shouted, ‘It’s a boy’, and ran out of the cubicle to hug me, before promptly collapsing at my feet.

  ‘Hi, Mum.’ Lipsy smiles at me weakly as I peer around the cubicle door. She’s propped up against the far wall, surrounded by blankets.

  ‘It’s a boy,’ she says, gazing down at the bundle in her arms, mesmerised. All I can see is one tiny pink fist, clenched as if in triumph. When Lipsy looks up at me again she is crying, the tears mingling with the sweat on her cheeks. Her face is swollen from all the fluids they’ve pumped into her and her skin is blotchy with broken veins. There’s nothing beautiful about childbirth, that’s for sure. But the sight of her hopeful expression breaks through my defences and I sink down by her side.

  ‘I thought it was going to be a girl,’ she says. ‘I was going to call her Estelle.’

  ‘Really?’ Estelle is my name, although I’ve always preferred Stella. I tear my eyes from Lipsy’s face to look for the first time at my not-to-be namesake.

  And instantly I’m being dragged back through time – same hospital, same maternity ward, different midwife and very different circumstances, but this baby is surely the identical twin of the one I gave birth to nearly seventeen years ago. Same big blue eyes, same spiky, matted black hair, same rosebud mouth with a slightly larger top lip. And the exact same soppy expression on my face, no doubt. Love and wonder, and complete devotion.

  I hadn’t expected this either. I hadn’t expected to fall in love with Lipsy’s baby the way mothers fall in love with their own. Maybe it’s my hormones. Maybe it’s the uncanny resemblance. But whatever it is, I just lost my heart to my grandchild. Despite everything I’ve said, I just know I’ll be a very proud lady the first time someone calls me Grandma.

  ‘So what do you think, Grandma?’ asks Lipsy.

  Or maybe not.

  OK, I’m not loving the Grandma label. But I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.

  ‘He’s absolutely beautiful,’ I tell her sincerely. ‘And so are you,’ I add, not quite so sincerely as she looks a complete fright, but the poor child doesn’t need to know that right now.

  Lipsy hasn’t always been so bothered about her appearance – no more than any normal teenage girl, anyway. But oh boy, once she started to grow a bump she became obsessed with her looks. I’ve tried telling her she’ll get her figure back in no time, and that everyone’s skin tone changes when they’re pregnant, and that looks don’t matter anyway – Robert loves her just the way she is – but generally she just glares at me like I’m offering up a future of unthinkable torture, then returns to her beauty magazines.

  There’ll be no beauty magazines now, I think, as I haul up off the floor to help the midwife move mother and baby back to the relative comfort of the hospital bed. It’ll be all parenting magazines and mumsnet and NCT groups. Unfortunately, I won’t be there to suffer it along with her. In two weeks’ time I’m changing my name to Mrs Paul Smart and moving to deepest darkest Derbyshire with the love of my life.

  Which is really quite the worst timing I can think of. But, as Paul keeps reminding me, it’s only a three hour round trip, not the other side of the world.

  Anyway, I’ve got other problems to dwell on right now. While Lipsy and Robert pose for the photo the midwife insists on taking (Lipsy will make me burn that later, I just know it), I finger the slim box in my pocket. Soon I’ll head off to do my designated duty and let the rest of the family know that all is well. Paul will be waiting by the phone, and my mum and dad are probably on their way here right now, unable to bear it any longer. And once I’ve worked my way down the list, then it will be time. I wanted to wait. Finding out beforehand didn’t seem right, somehow.

  ‘Mum,’ calls Lipsy, ‘come over here. We want to introduce you properly.’

  I join them by the bed, where Robert is leaning over my daughter and looking very proud of himself. Not that he actually did anything ... Well, maybe that’s a bit unfair. But only a bit.

  ‘Have you thought of a name already?’ I ask, smiling. They’ve got dippy looks on their faces, the pair of them, and Lipsy looks fit to burst with excitement. The midwife is still in the toilet, hopefully clearing up the devastation.

  ‘Yes,’ Lipsy says with a grin. ‘And you’ll love it.’

  ‘Well?’ I look from Lipsy to Robert and back again. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Mum, we’d like you to officially meet ... Phoenix.’

  For about ten seconds I cannot speak. It’s a long time – count it. Here in the maternity suite, surrounded by bleeping instruments and bloody sheets, ten seconds feels like a lifetime. And then I hear a cough and a suppressed chortle coming from the toilet.

  That woman has a nerve. First she insults my hips, then she laughs at my grandson’s name. Outrageous.

  ‘Phoenix! How wonderful!’ I exclaim, plastering a smile on my face and making my voice joyous. As I’m very, very tired I probably only manage happy, but that’s enough for Lipsy.

  ‘You like it? Oh, I’m so relieved. I thought you’d hate it. You know how you’ve always said symbolic names are really naff. But we thought it was cool because he was conceived on the night of the fire – and the whole phoenix rising from the ashes thing?’ She smiles up at Robert, and then at me. ‘Thanks, Mum. And thanks for being here for this. You were a star.’

  Murmuring that it was nothing, really, I look down at baby Phoenix. Oh, the poor child. Yes, I have often said that symbolic names are naff. Because – they are! Rising from the ashes? Is the girl insane? A house fire caused by a faulty washing machine – a disaster compounded by zero house insurance – is hardly an event you’d want to mark by naming your child after it. Or maybe that’s just me.

  Phoenix turns his head slightly and appears to look directly into my eyes. I say appears to because it’s a well-known fact that babies can’t focus on anything so soon. Or maybe the scientists have got it wrong. Because as baby Phoenix looks up at me, I’m absolutely certain I see him roll his eyes just a little. Oh great, he seems to say. And this pair are my parents? That’s just wonderful.

  *

  It’s nearly time for us to leave the maternity suite and head up to the ward. Visiting hours are relaxed for new fathers but not for new grandmothers, and I want to see Lipsy settled before I go home. But first, there is something important I must do. It’s a task I’ve been putting off for weeks, but it can’t wait any longer.

  I stroll nonchalantly over to the toilet cubicle, now mercifully spotless thanks to the hospital’s crack cleaning detail, and carefully lock the door. Then I take the slim box out of my pocket, pull out the white pen-shaped stick, and do the necessary. I don’t need to read the instructions, I’ve already committed them to memory. Blue line means no baby, blue cross means shit hitting fan at one hundred miles an hour. And so I wait, perched on the loo like a teenager waiting to have her future mapped out. The way my own teenager must have waited all those months ago.

  If it comes to it, I just hope she’s as understanding of my news as I was of hers.

  As I watch, every cell in my body wishing for a blue line, the little window very clearly – and you could say proudly – starts to show a clearly defined, bright blue cross.

  There is a loud cry from outside the cubicle – baby Phoenix trying out his new and perfectly formed lungs. And inside there is a helpless whimper. That’s me. Today – the day I’ve become a grandmother for the first time and an expectant mum for the second time – is possibly the best and the worst day of my life. />
  Chapter 2

  I really can’t take it in. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, I guess. Haven’t I been noticing the signs for weeks now? Sore boobs, that extraordinary tiredness like someone’s sucked all the strength out of your bones, and of course the missed period. Or maybe two missed periods – they haven’t been regular for a while now so it’s hard to tell. Which was, I had tried to convince myself, the first sign of the menopause. Wishful thinking, I’m afraid. Surely accidentally getting pregnant at thirty-eight is worse than being menopausal?

  I tuck the little white stick into my pocket, bury the empty box deep in the waste bin, and finally emerge from the cubicle, unnoticed by Lipsy and Robert who are deep in thrall to baby Phoenix. As I turn to close the door behind me, I wonder if ever a toilet has seen so much drama in one day.

  ‘You’ve got a few sleepless nights ahead of you,’ the midwife says, parking a wheelchair inches from my feet. For a moment I’m confused. Is the wheelchair for me? I might be pregnant but I’m not ill. And how can she tell about the baby just by looking at me? Is this some kind of secret midwife skill?

  But then I realise she’s talking about Lipsy, about Lipsy and Robert and the baby and me all living together under one roof, and that the wheelchair is for my daughter, not me. Well, duh! I’m not thinking straight, is all. It’s my hormones.

  ‘I think Paul’s here,’ Lipsy says, noticing me hovering in the corner. ‘Aren’t you going to go out and say hello?’

  Oh, hell on a stick. Paul. Less than an hour ago I phoned and asked him to come to the hospital. Now I’m wishing I hadn’t been so hasty.

  Since Paul and I got together last year – after almost two decades of pretending we didn’t have feelings for each other – things have been just peachy. He’s a wonderful boyfriend, soon to be a wonderful husband. Caring, thoughtful, funny – and damned sexy too. But the one thing we have never discussed is having children. I guess we just assumed at our age there wasn’t much point.