I looked at the steering wheel blankly, any recollection of how to drive vanishing as my hand fell uselessly from the keys onto my lap. I shouldn't be driving, not least because I hadn't slept properly in days. I read somewhere you weren't mean to drive when you were due to expel a small human being from your birth canal. I probably shouldn't have been doing anything much, let alone trying to fasten a seat belt over the whale inside my stomach.
I wondered why I was so filled with dread this time, it was hardly the first time I had driven to see someone in prison. This time my feet were glued to the floor and refused to touch the pedals.
"Stupid," I told myself. "Idiot." My self-motivation didn't do much. I just didn't want to go. Back up the dingy stairs that stank of Victorian piss and woodworm killer my bed was clean and warm, the temptation to return to it and hide beneath the duvet was as strong as the kick that was persistently liquefying my liver. I wanted to curl up but couldn't physically manage it. I didn't have time either. Visiting hours were short.
Finally, with a dull silver Ford waiting impatiently behind me I put the car in gear and pulled out to let them have my space. I stalled after ten seconds, my foot going down on the clutch too hard as I got another kick.
"You're going to be fun when you arrive," I told my stomach. Things changed in nine months, going from about as happy as we'd ever been to the pile of shit that currently made up my life. Nine months ago even the bad stuff had been an adventure, we got hit and we just got back up. We didn't get back up so much anymore, what with me being a human turtle and all.
I didn't go in for philosophical thoughts as I drove for two hours, with an added half an hour of toilet stops and stretches thanks to the whale affliction.
The car park was full of visitors, glum faced wives clutching brats who could have taught me new swear words. The scum, as we called them when I was younger. We'd look at them, the brutes and the wet rags and laugh. My brother recited long lists of insults, my sister threw stones. We were heartless little shits. We're less heartless now, and even bigger shits. Next to the washed out wives and their gaol fodder were the more respectable folk, who's partners or sons were inside for petty crimes they had been coerced into by those foul people at work or at the pub and it really wasn't their fault.
Then there was me. I wasn't the only one pregnant, I wasn't the only wife, I didn't even have the nicest car there. All I had was the name I was going to give when asked at the desk. That name made the wardens tense up when they saw me coming. That name parted one group as if it were a knife through soft flesh, making me skip the queue.
"Fulley," I said a little louder than was needed for the man at the desk to hear.
Behind me someone was making a fuss, pushing forward, angry that I took precedence. One of the respectables, who was expecting life to treat her fairly, for the system to work. A new girl.
"How can that be acceptable? We've been waiting here for ages. You can't just walk in, there's a queue." I turned to her. Half a foot taller than me, dyed blonde hair, a jacket and smart jeans. She'd dressed up for the occasion.
"Not for me." The only queue I ever faced was the inheritance line, down which I still came unsatisfactorily low.
"Look, I don't know who you think you are-"
"He will." The guard opened the first door and I went through. Her man, be he brother, father or husband would know, when she asked. It was a small world, prison, he would know.
I received only the most cautious pat down and was shown into the visitation room.
Like everywhere it was made out of concrete with a low ceiling and stank of stale air and sweat. Two dozen or so tables with three chairs were arranged in rows, badly aligned. Before the lack of symmetry would have annoyed me, I used to like things just so. Now I didn't care, sitting off to one side as the inmates filed out.
Some were fat. A surprisingly low number were bald. The tattoos were often tasteful. If I didn't have to deal with their wives I could grow fond of the scum. Most weren't bad men, life just dealt them a bad hand. Some were foul but I still had enough faith in my protectors to not be too afraid of them. Murderers didn't faze me, they generally only went for friends or family. I had a shield against scum like them, all but the completely random ones.
He came out and didn't smile. His hair kept getting longer, if he took a little more care he would look rather dashing, like a cartoon Prince Charming. I pulled myself out of my seat to hug him. The whale kicked me in all the excitement. We kissed but it was over too soon and he sat down, helping me into the chair again. We couldn't look too desperate in front of the scum.
"Are you alright?" he asked immediately. "He's not playing up too much, is he?"
"My liver is pâté and my feet are swelling." He smiled slightly, so thinly I almost missed it.
"But you're both okay?" His voice was softer than it had been on the outside, whispering to me as if we were alone.
"Everything's healthy. I don't know why you think it's a boy."
"Mathematical odds. Plus, I want another girl so I'm trying to use reverse psychology." I smiled. He already had two.
"I don't think it works like that." The buzz of the room around us grew louder, a woman was sobbing a few tables over. It was mildly disconcerting.
"How are the girls?"
"Zara was given a badge for her English homework at school. Aaron's looking after them both for me. Lilly asked me to bring a little pipe cleaner stick figure she made but-" I trailed off and we shrugged in sync. I couldn't bring things like that in, drawings were allowed but Lilly was going through a sculpture phase. Out of the terrible threes she was still an uncooperative little madam.
"Four months." I blinked the tear that threatened away. "It's not too bad. The new guy in our room talks to himself in Spanish in his sleep and plays chess constantly. He's rubbish but it's something to do."
"You'll pick up bad habits," I murmured. "I'll crush you the second you get home." He had seen it in a film and decided it was a cute couple thing to do. We had both tried to outsmart the other by going to relatives for teaching. His brother and my uncle were hardly grandmasters and we were more or less even.
"Don't get cocky," he warned me. We were smiling but it didn't reach our eyes. I missed my bed where I could pretend everything was alright. "Don't."
"I'm not." I wasn't crying, I could wait to get to the car before I did that. "Your dad called."
"What does he want?" He tensed slightly, worried that we had managed to kill each other whilst he was away.
"Just to see the girls and ask after Baby. He might hate me but I've got his grandchild pulverising my internal organs."
"He came last month." I knew that. Theodore would go to visit his son but he wouldn't willingly communicate with me. I just heard things in our little world.
"Well?" Pleasantries aside, the normal visit conversation over he stared at me anxiously. I couldn’t waste a moment in silence, hesitating before I had to say what I had come to tell him.
"They're trying him." For a second he reached out instinctively then remembered where he was.
"With what exactly?"
"Possession of class A, trafficking, criminal conspiracy and-" I took a deep breath. "Use." I couldn't look him in the eye, I knew he would be trying to hide the shock.
"What's he pleading?"
"Not guilty." I was in an impossible situation. I couldn't stand by my own father in case he was found guilty nor could I believe he was actually capable of what he was charged with. We did bad things, all of us but we never sold drugs. Those were Theodore's rules. No drugs, no prostitutes and no killing. I had been dreading telling him, as if it was my name on the court letters not my father's. Overnight I had lost all standing I could have had compared to his family. I was nothing. My father had ruined me.
"What do I do?" I asked him quietly. "I've got two unstable men and two little kids, almost three to look after. I can't give your family anything anymore, I'm not a key to anything." Once I had been their link to my birth family's business, to my uncle and my father. Now I had nothing.
"You're smart and you've built up more than you give yourself credit for. Besides, Dad can't get rid of you. You're my wife and mother to his grandchildren. His only grandchildren."
"Nice to know I'm valued for my uterus." It wasn't my favourite organ at that moment.
"That's not what-" He seemed tired but I didn't really sympathise. "Dad's only got you and Matt left." The 'and Matt' came after a pause. Theodore would have ready access to the skills of his son and son-in-law if he could get his homophobic head out of his arse for long enough to make use of his one remaining free child.
"Somehow, despite his entire family now consisting of a daughter-in-law he hates, a son in prison, a son he threw out along with his husband and a brother he refuses to mention, I don't have much sympathy for him."
"You're smart. He needs you or everything will go under. People answer to you. Fuck it, for some reason people actually like you." Neither of us had any idea why. "He's made mistakes. Just give him a second chance to be civil and maybe he'll surprise you?"
"Are you going to ask Matt to give him a second chance too?" I half spat.
"Hell no. Matt's justified in never speaking to him again." It was nice to know that the arsehole gene hadn't been entirely passed on from father to son. "But you're not. You decided you didn't like him and you stuck by that. Please, for me?"
For him I'd do anything. I was going to give birth without him next to me because I understood why he had to give in just the once and find things out inside.
"For you." Not for Theodore. For myself as well, since without any standing of my own I risked losing my daughters. Theodore could take them away with a single order if he so wished. Against the world I didn't stand a chance. I needed his name and his protection.
Under the table a foot tapped mine and I smiled. It was brief, before anyone saw but it was something. He smiled back, thin and fleeting. He needed his family in one piece when he came out, his wife and children reconciled with his father. He needed us all alive.
"So I was thinking Edmund?" I paused, with everything else naming the whale hadn't occupied much of my thought space. Obviously he had a lot more time on his hands than I did.
"Edmund," I said slowly. I was thinking of something a little less traditional. His family went in for the older names: Theodore, Oscar, Matthew, Henry. Mine chose the weirdest mixture of Russian and sounds that weren't actually names. "I was thinking something a little less... Anglo-Saxon?"
"Oh. Well, it was just a thought. William?"
"Less historical. Erin?" I was navigating towards naming the whale after someone. Lilly had been after a great aunt of mine and I was named after my grandmother. "Or Erica." He narrowed his eyes at that. Apparently Eric wasn't someone he wanted me to commemorate.
"Skye? Or Lewis?"
"I'll think about them." The chances were I wouldn't see him again until after I delivered the whale.
"Yann, please. They’re going to ask you straight away.” Once everyone was satisfied I was alive and well, the nurses or even whoever had the misfortune of being with me at the time would ask me to name the whale.
“I’ll just call it Baby until you call.” We had five minutes before I would be made to leave. It wasn’t enough time, not when we had been discussing it for months. He rang every three days
“Yann.”
“I’m not calling it Yann. Although it is gender neutral. I’ve had a lifetime of no one being sure how to spell it or if it’s short for something. Baby is having a name idiots can spell.”
“Orion.” I stared at him. Edmund, Skye, Lewis, all of those were vaguely heard of. “Because I don’t think I’d get away with any other star names.” Orion.
“There are already two Mr O. Fulley’s in the family. You want another?” Orion. It had a nice ring to it. It was odd enough to fit with my folks and it had a meaning. Orion was the only constellation I could find in the sky, compared to his avid love of astronomy. “Orion.”
“You like it?” This was the name he wanted most, Edmund had been a preliminary since I was more likely to opt for more considered ones.
“I like it.” I wasn’t sure the whale’s name should be decided quite so quickly. “Let me sleep on it and I’ll tell you when you ring.” The bell went and we had to stand up.
“You’ll be okay?” he was whispering to me as he hugged me goodbye, kissing my forehead. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I won’t be there. You’ll both be fine.”
“I know, I’ve done it before. Aaron will be there, and Matt. The girls will be outside and next month I’ll bring you your new baby.” It occurred to me suddenly we didn’t have a girl’s name. It may have been a star but Orion sounded like a boy to me, call me out on it if you will. “Erin.”
“Hera?” He smiled but I had to leave. “I love you.” He mouthed something else, I’m sorry probably. I couldn’t really lip read.
In the car I drove three blocks then pulled into a petrol station, locked myself in the toilet and cried.
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