The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2364 by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

June was here, no longer a favourite month since Gloria decided to go to glory a year before. Had I really had little Lizzie a whole year? I’ll never understand how she could calmly ask me to hold on to her baby while minutes later she wrapped a bandage round her neck and jumped off a landing. She had sounded so plausible, she wanted to talk things through with Neal, so she’d said and it could take a couple or so days. I told her to carry on we’d look after Lizzie for as long as it took. They were both in hospital, he having recently tried to kill himself by hanging and then she went and did the same stupid thing. She’d never see her baby grow up or anything else. That struck me as incredibly sad. She wasn’t a bad mother though it was suspected she was suffering from post natal depression which can make young women do all sorts of things, including end their own lives.

Neal was now in a private clinic having had some form of breakdown following Gloria’s final act. I was probably the last person to speak with her before she calmly walked out of the ward and killed herself by hanging—how horrible. Neal seemed unwilling or unable to pull himself out of his mire and if anything appeared to my uncultured eye, to be worse. The bank was paying for his treatment but so far it looked to be a far from positive result, but Henry agreed to foot the bill because Neal was Phoebe’s brother and I’d informally adopted her. Because she was his next of kin, social services didn’t pursue things very hard and we were allowed to keep the baby until he was fit and well enough to take care of her. His appearance the last time I’d seen him suggested that could be months if not years to happen. He looked dreadful and acted the same way. The blue light seemed unable or unwilling to help effect a cure for him.

I used to take Phoebe and the baby with me until she, Phoebe, that is, decided it was too distressing to watch and the clinic suggested they couldn’t be responsible for the baby’s health if Neal threw another wobbley. I thought it unlikely but who knows? I still visit him on a regular but infrequent basis. My visits aren’t particularly enjoyable for either of us, he sits there crying or telling me he wished I’d let him die the day Phoebe and I rescued him when he tried to hang himself. Perhaps he’s right.

It confused me that Gloria had told me Neal had fancied me more than her and had only married her after I wed Simon. I never had any feelings for him beyond that of a valued colleague which considering I was fostering his sister struck me as confusing.

We were all coming up to a year older since the Allen’s tragedy had happened,
Lizzie was now aged one and a few weeks, and while I’d tried not to get too fond of her because I’d always planned on giving her back to Neal, she was calling me ‘Ma ma,’ because I was the closest thing she had to a mother. I fed her, clothed her and was responsible for her. I had applied and received a fostering order for her—social services seemed at last to appreciate that I was reasonable as a foster mother and I even got a monthly amount for doing it, which went into a deposit account for her later, perhaps if she went to university. Although money wasn’t in short supply I tried to set up some provision for each of the children so they’d have some sort of start in life when they thought about fleeing the nest.

Sunday had lived up to its eponym and the sun shone giving us a false sense of a possible ‘flaming June’. Those of us who believed the epithet were brought back to earth on the Monday when we returned to drizzle and cooler temperatures. Three weeks hence and the solstice would be here from which it was all downhill and the days shortened and we slid into winter again, sometimes the thought of living somewhere that was warm all the year round had its attractions. Then I’d remember no dormice and I’d decide to stay here and continue doing what I could to conserve my favourite mammals as well as my family.

I also realised that Simon would never leave the bank, so even if I went abroad to live he’d only visit occasionally and it’s bad enough now when he gets stuck in town and I don’t see him at all for a few days. He phones me at night but you can’t cuddle a phone or have it hold you. As much as I grumble at or about him, I still miss him when he’s away—I must love him after all.

Occasionally I do wonder if the world is trying to tell me something. I have Cate and Lizzie because of parental suicides, Livvie because of a murder and subsequent suicide and the others for various reasons including death by illness of Phoebe’s mother, and abandonment by the parents of the other older children including Jacquie who suffered the most horrendous abuse in a secure unit being punished for a crime she didn’t commit. If I allowed myself to, I could get quite angry on her behalf I feel so strongly about it. She’s a good kid—hark at me, about ten years older—and she’s finally finishing her access course—to go to university. Because of what happened before with her going away, she’s decided to enrol at Portsmouth university and study from home—so she can continue to help me at home or with the children. What she doesn’t know is that Simon has agreed to pay her fees if she gets accepted—she’d better.

My mother was right, I do have lots of children but I don’t want any more, I am replete or complete or whatever they say. I doubt I could cope with any further children, no matter how many there were awaiting adoptive parents or foster ones. I’m stretched to the limit.

At least the girls are back in school, so half term is officially over, so no more nagging, challenging or brow-beating questions from Trish, we pay a group of nuns to do that—accept her challenging questions—some of which are simplistic for disguising her intellect and others which make the hapless nuns want to throw themselves on to their rosaries. No one forgets meeting Trish, no one.