The Widow

Chapter 38

Thursday, 13 July 2006

The Mother

DAWN ELLIOTT LIKED going out. She loved the ritual of a deep, perfumed bath, conditioning her hair and blow-drying it in front of the mirror. Putting on thick mascara with party music playing loudly. The final look in the full-length mirror on the wardrobe door and then clip-clopping to the taxi in high heels, the fizz of excitement rising in her chest. Going out felt like being seventeen forever.

Bella had stopped all that for a while. It had been bloody stupid getting pregnant, but it was her own fault. Too eager to please. He was so sexy – dancing to be close to her that first time they set eyes on each other. He’d taken her hand and twirled her round until she was dizzy and laughing. They’d taken their drinks outside with the smokers, to get some air. His name was Matt and he was already taken, but she didn’t care. He only visited Southampton once a month for work, but he phoned and texted every day in the beginning, when his wife thought he was fetching something from the car or taking the dog for a walk.

It had lasted six months; until he told her his office had moved him from the south coast to the north-east. Their last encounter had been so intense, she felt drunk on the experience afterwards. He’d begged her to have sex without a condom – ‘It’ll be more special, Dawn.’ And it was, she supposed, but he didn’t hang around to hear the result. ‘Married men don’t,’ her mother had told her, despairing of her naivety. ‘They’ve got wives and children, Dawn. They just want sex with stupid girls like you. What are you going to do about the baby?’

She didn’t know at first, putting off any decision in case Matt reappeared like a knight on a white horse to whisk her away to a new life. And when he didn’t, she read glossy baby magazines and sleepwalked into motherhood.

She didn’t regret going ahead with the pregnancy – well, not often – only when Bella woke up every hour from 3 a.m. or was teething and screaming, or filling a nappy. The baby years turned out not to be as advertised in the magazines, but they had survived them together and things got better as Bella became a person and a bit of company for Dawn.

She’d tell her daughter all her secrets and thoughts, safe in the knowledge that Bella wouldn’t judge her. The little girl laughed along with her when she was happy and cuddled into her lap when Dawn cried.

But hours spent watching CBeebies and playing video games on her phone didn’t fill her life. Dawn was lonely. She was only twenty-six. She shouldn’t be on her own, but who would be interested in a single mum?

She was attracted to married men – she’d read somewhere that the older man represented a father figure and the excitement of forbidden fruit. She hadn’t got the biblical allusion but understood the mixture of danger and safety all too well. She wanted to find another Matt, but couldn’t afford babysitters and her mum disapproved of her going out until late.

‘What are you doing? Night clubs? For goodness’ sake, Dawn, look where that got you last time. You are a mother now. Why don’t you go out for a meal with one of your friends?’

So she did. Sharing a Hawaiian pizza with Carole, an old school friend, was nice, but she didn’t return home buzzing with music and vodka shots.

She found the chat room through a magazine in the doctor’s waiting room. Bella had a temperature and a rash and Dawn knew that Dr John, as he liked to be known, would chat to her, give her some attention – fancies me a bit, she told herself, deciding to put on make-up at the last minute. She needed to be fancied. Every woman did.

Flipping through the pages of a teen mag, grimy from dozens of fingers and thumbs, she had read about the new dating scene online. She was so engrossed she missed her number being called. The receptionist had to shout her name and she got up quickly, grabbing Bella from the Lego pit and stuffing the magazine in her bag for later.

Her laptop was old and battered, not helped by the fact that she kept it on top of the wardrobe, away from Bella’s sticky fingers. A bloke at work had given it to her when he got a new one. She’d used it at first, but when the charger stopped working and she didn’t have the money to get another one, she’d lost interest.

On the way home from the doctor’s, she used her emergency credit card to buy a new charger.

The chat room was brilliant. She basked in the attention of her new friends: the men who wanted to know all about her, who asked about her life and her dreams, and wanted her photo, who weren’t put off by her having a child. Some even wanted to know about her little girl.

She didn’t tell anyone else. No one outside the laptop. This was her thing.