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There’s something wrong with Poppy.
Not quite with Poppy. More like around Poppy. Sometimes Belinda catches herself, when she’s in the park watching Poppy clamber into the model train, wondering why she’s there. She’ll rise to leave, feel disgusted with herself for hanging around kids like a creep. Then she’ll remember.
Once, she was halfway out of the gate before a man grabbed her by the shoulder and told her she’d forgotten something. His face was screwed up tight with anger and he wouldn’t stop digging his fingers into her skin. She wanted to wrench his hand off her and punch him for good measure, but she submitted. He was right. Right about her failure. Perhaps right to remind her of her place.
Also, Poppy is always with her. She always needs her. She’s cheeky with a brilliant smile, she’s curious, she loves stories and working out how everything fits together. She’s wonderful. She’s Belinda’s. She made this beautiful, bright girl from her body and she’s all hers. Why does she have to remind herself of that so often?
It's a muggy day in September when she can’t ignore it anymore. Poppy doesn’t have daycare on Thursdays and Amma usually babysits, but she’s busy so Belinda had to swap a shift. It’s okay. She shouldn’t resent it. More time with Poppy, which is what she wishes for more than anything. That wish sometimes feels physical, like a lump grafted onto her heart, a lump which controls when it beats, when her blood flows, and when it could all be over.
That’s what being a mother is, isn’t it? Knowing your child has your heart in their hands?
Poppy is usually a quiet, amenable child, but today she’s grizzling. Belinda abandons her plan to take her to a toddler discovery playgroup at the museum, knowing she’ll never hear the end of it if Amma finds out, and takes her to a café instead. It’s the right choice. Poppy settles in her pushchair so well that Belinda keeps walking past her original destination, a steady rhythmic pace to her feet. Ambling through the streets, pale clouds pulled close over their heads, she doesn’t understand that she has somewhere else in mind until she finds it. It’s a different café, one she hasn’t been to with Poppy. She used to study for exams here, before Poppy was born. One of the baristas, liked her, an energetic flirtation which they both enjoyed but would never act on. Just after she turned thirty, he gave–
No. By the time she was thirty, she’d had Poppy. And she hadn’t been here with Poppy, she knew. The paths she walked with Poppy were smooth and worn, and the places from before Poppy were cracks she only slipped into when she wasn’t paying attention. Children were like that. They remade your world. That’s how it was supposed to be.
She went inside, the rush of nostalgia as strong as the smell of freshly ground coffee. The barista – Adam, she remembered, too late to matter – wasn’t there, but the rest of it was achingly familiar, like she’d visited only last week. She parked Poppy up in the corner beside an old navy sofa and flopped into it. It was rare to have time to herself these days. Maybe she would read? There was probably a forgotten book in one of the many bags she toted around.
‘Belinda?’ A small voice asked.
A blonde girl wearing an oversized leather jacket waved at her from the counter. The girl waved by only moving her wrist, a tentative movement to match her small voice. Her shoulders rounded as she picked up her coffee, curling into herself.
Seeing her made Belinda violent with anger. Anger drew up within herself like water from within a well, a deep, vast reservoir of anger previously undisturbed and now necessary. She knew she had to get this woman away and preferably ensure she was too broken to ever come back.
She blinked and it dissipated, falling back into the well. How inappropriate. How unkind. What an example it would have been to Poppy, to lash out at this poor stranger.
‘Belinda, are you alright?’
The girl was standing in front of them now, worrying at her lip with her teeth. Belinda instinctively lay her arm over Poppy. The girl scrunched her eyebrows and too late, embarrassingly late, it clicked.
‘Ruby,’ Belinda said.
She didn’t move her arm away from Poppy.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Belinda smiled self-effacingly, ‘I must’ve been totally spaced out, I didn’t sleep well. Poppy was grizzly this morning.’ She stroked Poppy’s hair gently.
‘Oh, no worries. It’s been a while and, you know, emotions were running high that day. I wouldn’t blame you if it was all scrambled.’ Ruby smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. ‘Do you – you can say no, and sorry if I’m overstepping, but – could I sit with you?’
‘Of course,’ Belinda said, trying not to grind her teeth with the effort of it.
Ruby put her coffee down on the table. ‘Sorry, I didn’t give you the time to – let me buy you something. What’s your order?’
‘A flat white.’
Ruby scurried to get it, stepping lightly on the floor. It softened something in Belinda, to see her walk like that. A long time ago, she had learned to walk like that, learned how to roll her foot so it absorbed the sound, how to stay light, barely grounded. She was grateful to herself that, in the end, she’d learned to walk away. Although had she walked away? It was hazy, that ending with Al. Just another part of her life she couldn’t look too closely at.
‘Here you go.’ Ruby placed the mug on the table precisely, ensuring nothing spilled.
‘Thank you,’ Belinda offered her a real smile.
Ruby smiled back as she sat in the overstuffed chair, carefully smoothing her skirt underneath her as she did.
‘How are you?’ Belinda asked. They were stuck together until she finished the coffee, after all.
‘Um.’ Ruby shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Surviving? Kate put me in touch with a therapist and that’s…’ she trailed off and glanced out of the window.
‘Helping?’ Belinda finished.
‘Sure.’
Ruby took a sip from her coffee as a police car raced past, sirens blaring. She winced, clenching the cup until her fingers went white.
‘Are you working?’ Belinda continued. ‘Or seeing anyone?’
Ruby put her coffee down and laced her fingers together in her lap. ‘I’m working in a restaurant for now. Waitressing, but sometimes they let me make the ice cream too.’
‘Do you like it?’ Belinda took a big gulp of her coffee. Halfway gone.
‘It’s alright. Kate offered me a job at UNIT, but I don’t think I can go back there. It’s…I mean you know how it is. It’s too much of the Doctor. I want to do something else.’ She played around with her hair, distracted again. ‘Who knows what, though,’ she muttered.
Belinda took another swig. One more question should do it. ‘And you have a partner?’
‘Oh.’ Ruby stilled, her hands poised mid-tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Yes. Someone from work.’
Belinda struggled not to roll her eyes. God, this girl was obtuse. ‘What’s he like?’
‘Um.’ Ruby curled her hand into a fist and brought it back down into her lap. ‘We’ve been out before, actually. We broke up and now we’re giving it another go.’ She bit her lip, looking down. ‘He’s familiar. He’s different to how he used to be, he’s happier now but, he’s familiar. And that’s – that’s what I need.’ She picked at a thread on her skirt.
Something half-remembered tugged at the back of Belinda’s mind. She didn’t know Ruby that well, but this nervous, twitching girl with a stumbling voice didn’t seem right.
‘Ruby.’ She took one of Ruby’s hands very gently, the same care she would give to any frail patient. With her other hand, she tapped once under Ruby’s chin, to get her to look at her. All her annoyance dropped away as she looked properly into Ruby’s eyes and saw her fear at being handled even in this careful way. ‘Listen to me. I don’t pretend to know what’s going on in your life. But I need you to remember – no man is worth your safety. Your safety, your security, your autonomy, your body – that’s all yours, and only yours. And no one gets to take it away.’ Her throat caught as she reached the end of that sentence.
Ruby withdrew her hand from Belinda’s slowly, like you did with patients who were unstable. ‘You’re crying,’ she whispered.
Belinda snatched her hand back. ‘No I’m not.’
But she was. A tear dripped onto her upper lip. Ruby’s face was full of unearned pity.
She was saved by Poppy stirring, beginning to bang her fists on her thigh.
‘I have to go.’ Belinda stood, grabbing the pram.
Ruby stepped in between her and the café door. ‘Wait–’
‘Don’t do that.’ She knew she was being unacceptably rude, but she had to get away. Discomfort was crawling up from her stomach through her throat and soon it would overwhelm her. She gathered some strength and rustled in the bag under the pram for a pen.
‘Look.’ She scrawled her number on the back of Ruby’s hand. ‘You can call me, okay. If you want. Talk about the Doctor, or the guy, maybe. But I am leaving, right now.’
She didn’t look back as she went.
*
Three weeks later, Belinda was pacing next to her front door, waiting for Ruby to show up. In the living room, Poppy played silently with her dolls, visible on the edge of Belinda’s periphery. Poppy always played quietly. She didn’t have doll tea parties, her stuffed toy dog never barked and her lion never roared. It unnerved Belinda, until she felt guilty for being unnerved by her sweet little girl.
The doorbell rang and Belinda yanked the door open immediately.
Ruby recoiled. She was clutching a bunch of stocks that quivered with the movement. ‘Oh. Hi.’
‘Sorry,’ Belinda said. ‘I was waiting for you. Come in.’
She bustled into the kitchen. Having spent the last half hour preparing herself to see Ruby, she now couldn’t bear the thought of actually looking at her. Her sad, shining eyes.
‘Tea?’ She asked, already setting out two mugs.
Ruby didn’t respond. Belinda let the kettle fill the silence, the sharp whistle cutting through the awkward atmosphere.
When the tea was finally ready, there was nothing Belinda could do to put off interacting with Ruby. Ruby was still wearing her shoes and her denim jacket, flowers in her fist, standing stock-still in the spot where Belinda had left her. She was staring at Poppy.
‘You can say hello, she doesn’t bite.’
Ruby startled. ‘Oh, my god, sorry. I zoned out.’
Belinda didn’t even pretend to believe that. ‘Take off your shoes, won’t you? And then you can see where the coffee table is, you can put the flowers there, with the teas.’
Poppy continued playing silently, showing no interest in Ruby whatsoever. She was moving two of her dolls through the air, their arms extended horizontally, like they were flying.
Once Ruby had settled, Belinda went in. ‘Are you still seeing the guy?’
Ruby gulped. ‘Yes.’
‘Come on, what are you–’
‘Please don’t tell me what to do,’ she said, with a firmness that Belinda respected. ‘Okay? It’s probably a mistake, or it’ll become a mistake, but it’s what I need.’ She balled her fists in her lap. ‘Because without him, I’m just waiting for the Doctor. And I know the Doctor’s not coming back, I can feel it, like a fist in the split of my ribs squeezing my heart. He got into his TARDIS to find Poppy and he never said goodbye, and now Poppy’s here and she’s safe but I know, I know he’s not coming back.’ Ruby wiped her hands quickly over her eyes.
Belinda took a long sip of tea, trying to find the words for what to say next. ‘He came to see me. Well, he came to see Poppy. To check she was alright.’
‘To say goodbye.’ Ruby was staring at Poppy again, and this time Belinda couldn’t begrudge it.
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so.’ Ruby nodded, like she was convincing herself. ‘I didn’t think he would leave her, though. You were going to show her the stars.’ She raked a hand through her hair. ‘Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.’
Belinda changed her mind back on the staring. It was getting strange. ‘Why would he take her on the TARDIS?’
Ruby frowned, a cute, childish crinkle forming between her eyebrows. ‘Because she was created to be his daughter. In the Wish World.’
The same impulse that drove her out of the café made her want to slap Ruby now. Instead, she gripped the edge of the sofa as hard as she could. ‘What are you talking about?’
Now Ruby stopped staring at Poppy. Now she looked her dead in the eyes and that was worse, that was much worse. She thought the sofa cushion might split under her hands.
‘You can feel it, can’t you,’ Ruby said very softly. ‘A layer of a different life under your memories of this one, something you keep falling into that you can’t quite explain. And Poppy wasn’t there. She wasn’t there before, in the life you led.’
‘Of course,’ Belinda scoffed. ‘She’s only three. I had a whole life before her, that’s how it works.’
‘No,’ Ruby shook her head, slowly, like the swinging pendulum of a master hypnotist. ‘That’s not it. I’m sorry, but you know that’s not it.’
Clusters of white spots at the edge of Belinda’s vision. She screwed her eyes shut and flinched away from them, but those little white spots poked holes in the black veil of her mind. She reached for memories of her on-and-off thing with Ritchie and found nothing solid to hold onto from recent years. Co-parenting, drop-offs and pick-ups, shared holidays all vanished, leaving only their six-month relationship at uni, a final kiss at a train station, a bittersweet end as they each parted ways for brighter ambitions. House share after house share, her thirtieth birthday in the emergency department, coming home to Greg’s cat throwing up on the floor. Thirty-two and still living with people who let the milk go bad in the fridge and she was no better because she still drank it until it went properly chunky. That same milk, that same slightly-expired milk, exploding on the floor as a rocket full of robots landed in her garden.
She stood, a sudden jolt like a hypnic jerk. Ruby was holding her hand, but she wrenched it away and stepped back.
‘Get off me. Don’t touch me unless I ask you to or I say it’s okay.’ She was aware she was being too intense, her gaze boring into Ruby like it was pinning her to the ground, and she didn’t fucking care.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ruby replied, but Belinda wasn’t listening.
Because she could feel the tugging at the edge of her periphery. That same tug that made her walk right up to that rocket.
She looked at Poppy.
Nausea overwhelmed her, sinking through her throat and into her stomach. Her hands spasmed, her knees almost buckled, every vertebrae in her spine twitched, one by one by one in quick succession and each twitch sparked the signal to her brain: WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG–
This sweet little girl. The abomination.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Ruby said again. Belinda could feel her coming up behind her, her too-light step.
‘Where did she come from?’ Belinda’s voice shook. ‘I didn’t…’ But she wasn’t sure. Some part of her remembered, a flimsy memory of a white hospital room, a midwife, a pain that split her body sliced her body in half all the way through her heart. An experience that felt real, wrapped in a package that could have come straight from TV.
‘I don’t know.’ Ruby said. ‘The Doctor and I saw her on a spaceship. She existed before the Wish World, she’s real. But she’s also the Doctor’s daughter, somehow.’
Poppy put her dolls down. She shuffled along the carpet to the train set Belinda hadn’t bothered to clear away yet and ran one back and forth across the same straight set of track.
‘She’s not.’ Belinda said. ‘He scanned her.’ Another wave of nausea, another violation, the memory of seeing her face beamed up on the TARDIS wall, sobbing in a warzone. ‘She’s human. She’s Ritchie’s.’
It was thinking of Ritchie that sent tears rolling down her face. Did he know something was wrong? Was he ever trying to fall asleep, or waiting for a bus, or spooning instant coffee into a mug, and realise, for a second, that something had happened to him he couldn’t control?
Ruby said nothing. Poppy continued to play.
Belinda couldn’t look at her anymore. She buried her face into Ruby’s jacket and bawled, sounding younger than she knew she could.
*
She woke up on the sofa. The light through the windows was softer, but not much time could have passed. She had never been one for naps, had always struggled to snatch sleep in the short breaks they had at work. It didn’t feel like she’d slept. It felt like anaesthetic.
Ruby was sitting on the carpet, watching Poppy move her trains. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she whispered, which confused Belinda until she saw Ruby’s phone in her hand. ‘I don’t know,’ she continued. ‘An hour? Maybe less. I’ll text you when I leave.’ She scratched her knee. ‘Mm-hm. I love you too.’
When she hung up, her whole body deflated. She fiddled with one of Poppy’s dolls, the one with long blond hair.
‘You’re saying I love you?’ Belinda asked.
To her credit, Ruby didn’t startle. Maybe she had more steel in her than Belinda had thought. ‘Yes.’
‘I still think you should leave him.’
‘You’re probably right.’ She stood, brushing dust off her skirt. ‘Are you feeling better? Do you want tea?’
‘No.’ Belinda rubbed her forehead. ‘It’s okay, you can go. Thanks for watching Poppy.’
It was all normal, as she said that. She almost reached for her purse, like Ruby was a babysitter. But all too soon she was waking up to the world, settling over her like a cold second skin.
‘There’s nothing I can do with her, is there?’ She said. ‘She’s my responsibility. I never really thought about children. I didn’t have anything against them, but when I thought about my life, they never figured.’
‘Do you want to give her up?’ Ruby was clearly trying to put tact in her voice, but it wasn’t working.
‘She’s my responsibility.’ Belinda sat up, swung her legs around and made a solid connection with the floor.
Ruby folded her arms over herself. ‘I thought you should know. You seemed like you didn’t know. But it was eating at you.’
‘You were right.’
Ruby waited for her to say more, the silence stretching, a thick ribbon of it filling the house.
Ruby broke first. ‘You can call me. Anytime. I know it’s hard, when other people don’t understand. But if you need support, I’ll be there.’ Something in Belinda’s face must have betrayed her, because Ruby continued, ‘I know you wouldn’t have chosen me. But I’m here anyway.’
She was right. She wouldn’t have chosen her.
‘Thank you,’ Belinda said, managing to mean it.
When she’d ushered Ruby out of the door, she was left alone with Poppy. She hadn’t looked at her since she’d passed out on the sofa. It was probably time to start the nighttime routine – dinner, bath, book, bed. She couldn’t remember what she’d fed Poppy for lunch, or how long ago that was.
She took a short, sharp breath to steady herself and walked over to Poppy. She picked her up, this solid little lump of girl.
‘Mama,’ Poppy smiled, lightly batting at Belinda’s face.
Her voice unnerved Belinda. Everything about her unnerved her now, although the blaring alarm of wrongness had settled into unease, a low swirling dread in her gut. It was unfair. She was just a little girl who needed love and care. Belinda would find it in herself to give it to her. She would have to. She wouldn’t fail her. She didn’t ask for this any more than Belinda had.
But it struck her as Poppy continued to pat her face, fresh waves of understanding with every touch. As long as either of them was alive, Poppy would be her responsibility. She wasn’t a patient she could care for until she recovered. This was terminal and the term in question was hers. For the rest of her life it would be bath, bed, book, then school plays and sports days and exam prep and birthday parties and paying for her driving lessons and moving her to uni and heartbreaks and mortgage advice and–
She choked, a wet cough in her throat. She was so thirsty. There couldn’t have been much left to cry.
‘Mama,’ Poppy said again, thumbing Belinda’s wet cheeks.
‘I’m here,’ Belinda whispered. She stroked Poppy’s hair. ‘I’ll be here.’
They headed upstairs for bath time.