Blast Jaimie to hell. Obviously, he’d used the conversation with Clare as an opportunity to get his own back. But I wasn’t going to let him and his girls—or anybody else, for that matter—destroy my chances of adopting. I could be a good mother if I got the chance. I just needed to be given that chance.
So I leant forward in my chair, holding Clare’s gaze. “It’s true, I did tell Jaimie that. And it’s true that I do—did—have feelings for somebody else. But nothing came of it. Will ever come of it. And . . . everything else I told you about why Jaimie and I split up was true. We wanted different things from life. I didn’t love him as much as he deserved to be loved. Look, right now, my focus isn’t on a relationship. It’s 100 percent on becoming an adoptive parent. I’ll do whatever I need to do to make that happen. I’ve already arranged to volunteer at the youth centre, and I’ll ask my boss if I can change my shifts so I can volunteer at a school too. I want to get as much experience with children as possible.”
Clare looked at me. I thought I saw a gleam of approval in her eyes at my fighting spirit. “That sounds very helpful,” she said. “And if you like, I can put you in touch with another single adopter so you can have a frank conversation about the challenges she’s faced.” She smiled. “And the joys, of course.”
I smiled back, feeling suddenly hopeful that Jaimie’s negativity hadn’t blown my chances of adopting after all. “Yes, please, that would be great.”
Clare was as good as her word, emailing the contact details of a single adopter—Marie—to me the very next day.
When I first called Marie, she asked me to call back because she was dealing with an all-out tantrum. Actually, she didn’t need to tell me that, because I could hear the screaming over the phone. When I tried again, Marie told me these tantrums were fairly frequent. That they came out of the blue and probably amounted to her little boy testing her to see if she would stick around, even when he was naughty.
“The social workers say it’s a phase, and you have to believe that, don’t you? Otherwise, you’d go crazy. And he’s a little cuddly bunny most of the time. Except for when he’s not.”
Then she added, “I can’t deny all this would be easier if I had a partner. Someone to share my woes and my triumphs with. But then, I suppose all single parents might say the same thing.”
Marie’s adoptive son was six years old—she’d adopted him when he was five. When I asked her if she’d have liked to have adopted a younger child, she said, “Yes, of course. But it was always made clear to me that since the demand for babies and toddlers is high, younger children almost always go to a couple. Hasn’t your social worker told you that?”
My heart sank. “No,” I said, “she hasn’t. Not in so many words, anyway.”
“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.