When Nina swept in, almost late again, she looked at the tarts as if they were foreign and blinked. She was so slim, she must never eat pastry. I highly doubted if Anita or Monica did either, but maybe the point was not to eat the thing. It was to make other people eat the thing.
Today we were learning baby first aid, which I was glad about, but which also made me anxious, thinking of all the things that could go wrong. Things we didn’t even know to be afraid of when I was a kid. Grapes. Blind pulls. Cots. Nina had a baby doll with an unsettling blue gaze, and she placed it on a mat in the centre of our circle. I noticed that Kelly’s partner wasn’t here again today, and nor was Jeremy. ‘Work crisis,’ explained Anita with her nervy little laugh that made me grit my teeth. The kind of woman who was afraid to take up space in the world. I knew Jeremy was a lecturer, an academic, and wondered what constituted an emergency in that world.
Nina held the baby up, turning it round so it looked at each of us with its merciless glare. ‘Imagine the scene. You leave your baby alone for a second while you answer the door. In its high chair, maybe, or on the floor.’ Monica tutted, as if she would never do such a thing. ‘You come back, he’s turning blue. Jax. What do you do?’
I started. Why me? ‘Um . . .’
‘Quick! Your baby is dying!’ I knew it was just role playing, and my baby was safe inside me, but those weren’t the kind of words you wanted to hear when you were pregnant, all the same. I got up, shaky, and knelt down with difficulty on the mat where Nina had deposited the baby. It was the same colour as before – a sort of waxy beige – but I imagined it blue, choking, staring up at me. Save me, Mummy. Oh God. What did I do? I knew nothing about baby first aid, that was why I was here. Tentatively, I put my hands on its chest. It felt rubbery, nothing like a real baby.
‘Full CPR can kill a child,’ said Nina crisply. ‘Their ribs can’t take the pressure.’
‘Then what . . .’
‘Try two fingers. Gentle.’ I massaged the fake baby, feeling both stupid and like a murderer. ‘That’s better. Unfortunately, your baby didn’t need CPR – it was choking on a grape.’
‘Who’d give a baby a grape?’ exclaimed Monica. Me, apparently, the baby dunce. I’d killed him. My baby was dead.
‘Would anyone else like to try?’ Nina took the fake, dead baby, who could apparently come back to life, and held it out. ‘Rahul?’
He came forward, took the baby and immediately held it upside down under his arm. He mimed putting a finger in its mouth. ‘You feel inside, see if you can pull out the thing that’s stuck, then if not slap their back gently like this.’ He showed us. The fake baby juddered.
Nina angled her head. ‘Very good. You’ve had training?’
‘I’m a paramedic,’ he said shyly, as everyone clapped. ‘Kind of cheating.’
‘That’s very lucky.’ She cast a glance at me, as if to say, and good luck to your baby, Jax. ‘It’s so important that parents know these things. A child can choke to death in seconds, drown in an inch of bathwater. We have to be vigilant. We have to be watching all the time. That’s what becoming a parent means – from now on, you’re responsible.’
Beside me, Aaron was taking notes on a little pad he’d bought in WH Smith. Why didn’t I know these things? How did I get to almost forty without knowing how to save the life of another human being? Surely there was nothing more important.
We went round the circle, practising the move Rahul had done so smoothly, and everyone had a go. Kelly held the baby as if it were a bomb that might go off. Monica slapped it so enthusiastically it would probably die of shaken-baby syndrome. Hazel, who it turned out was a personal trainer, also knew how to do CPR, though Cathy was less sure. Aisha did it in a quietly competent way – she was a physiotherapist, she said, and I wondered if she’d met Rahul at the hospital. Aaron was good too – he’d either been watching closely, or he’d learned some first aid before, maybe when working at the bar, maybe in the homes. How did I not even know this about him?
Nina did not give me another chance, and I was too embarrassed to ask. ‘Very good,’ she said to everyone else, and I cravenly wanted her to say it to me too. I told myself it wasn’t a competition, that I was here to learn so I could be the best mum possible, but all the same I felt like I was failing already.
Alison
‘Obviously, we didn’t expect Kelly to turn up to the barbecue.’
Alison was sitting in the kitchen of Hazel Jones and Cathy Hargreaves. Their little boy, Arthur, was strapped to Cathy’s chest in a complicated fabric sling as she made herbal tea. ‘We’re a caffeine-free household,’ Hazel had informed her firmly, and Alison had reluctantly agreed to a mint tea. She and Diana were working apart that day, with Diana chasing up forensics from the body and the crime scene. Monica would be furious at all the activity on her balcony, no doubt. Alison had to admit she felt more at ease without the other woman watching her interviews, judging her probably. Making her feel old and past it. ‘Why did you not expect Kelly?’ she asked.
Hazel widened her eyes, a gesture she had that seemed to indicate incredulity at someone else’s stupidity. In this case, Alison’s. ‘Didn’t you know? Kelly lost her baby. Stillborn at eight months.’
‘It was so awful,’ said Cathy, sounding genuinely distressed. ‘Poor Kelly, she’s so young, and that boyfriend of hers was no help at all. They’ve split up now, I think.’
‘If you ask me, she’s better off.’
‘Hazel!’ Cathy looked shocked.
‘Well, she is. Think how he was at the group, that day, kicking off. Now she’s not tied to that twat for the rest of her life. She can study, make something of herself. Plenty of time to have children later.’
‘Do they know what caused her loss?’ Alison would of course be talking to Kelly herself, but she’d like to go in armed with knowledge, so she didn’t put her foot in it. She filed away the reference to an incident that had happened at the group – that could be relevant.
‘I’m not sure. An infection of some kind, maybe.’ Cathy set their cups on the table, and Alison caught a glimpse of Arthur’s soft baby head between her breasts. Was he comfortable like that? Could he breathe? Was it like an adult having their face stuck in the pantry all day?
‘So, what, she stopped coming to the group after that?’
‘Well, of course she did.’ Hazel reached over Alison to take a mug, blew on it aggressively. ‘All those smug mums. Wouldn’t you?’ It jolted Alison, the exact thing she’d been thinking, coming from this woman she’d assumed she’d have nothing in common with. Then Hazel ruined it by waving her cup and saying, ‘We make our own teabags, you see. We’re a zero-waste household.’
‘Not even nappies?’
Hazel opened her eyes wide again. ‘Especially not nappies. Landfills are absolutely choked with them! We’re doing terry cloth and washing them.’
‘I’m washing them,’ said Cathy, sitting down. She hadn’t made tea for herself. She looked exhausted. ‘Hazel’s not found much time to do it.’
A brief moment of tension went between them, their eyes locked in some kind of silent argument. ‘I’m working,’ Hazel said, looking at Cathy still.
Alison felt she had to step in. ‘You didn’t get maternity leave, Hazel?’
‘No I didn’t – how discriminatory is that? I might sue.’
‘You’re self-employed,’ said Cathy, in a quiet voice. Hazel glared at her.
Alison took a sip of her drink – mint-flavoured hot water. What was the point? She eyed the couple over the rim of the cup, which was lumpy and looked handmade. She was here to examine these two, run her fingers over their lives searching for bumps or cracks. Hazel was toned, fit, tattoos on bare wiry arms in a vest. Her hair had been shaved up into an undercut, in a way that Alison had to admit looked tough and sexy. She moved all the time with restless energy, tapping her fingers and eyeing the room as if looking for something to improve. She was a personal trainer, she’d said, staring at Alison’s dough
y middle.
Cathy was younger – eight years younger. All the same, her long brown hair was greying at the roots, and she seemed slow and tired. Understandable when she’d just had a baby. She winced when she sat down, hinting at unknown horrors in the undercarriage department. She worked for the council that ran the leisure centre Hazel trained at; this was how they’d met. Alison said, ‘I’m sorry I have to ask this, but you used a donor? I mean, what kind of donor?’ Of course they’d used a donor, duh. They’d hardly done it themselves. Tom would have ribbed her mercilessly for that. ‘I just need to check everyone’s . . . associations.’
‘Overseas,’ said Hazel, even as Cathy was opening her mouth to answer. ‘Denmark, that’s where most of it comes from in the UK.’
‘And . . . was it IVF or . . .’ She was trying not to say the words turkey baster.
‘Home insemination. Cathy popped up to the bathroom and did it.’ Hazel did not seem remotely embarrassed, and why should she be? Alison would have to get over her own qualms if she and Tom were going to embark on fertility treatment, which seemed to involve talking to total strangers about the state of your cervix on a regular basis. ‘Lucky for us it worked first time.’
‘And you chose Cathy to be pregnant because . . . ?’
The eyes went wide again. ‘I’m older, obviously. And I had some . . . issues.’
‘Hazel has PCOS,’ said Cathy, speaking for the first time in several minutes. ‘Polycystic ovaries. She tried with a previous partner, but it didn’t work.’ Hazel looked annoyed.
Hastily, Alison nodded. ‘Right, right. So the donor . . . there’s no contact with him, nothing like that?’
‘No contact. We don’t even know his name.’ It was Hazel speaking, of course, but Alison watched Cathy. She didn’t look up, just fiddled with the sling around the baby’s head. He appeared to be fast asleep.
‘And your previous partner, Hazel . . . ?’ She felt she was grasping at straws here. So far, she hadn’t heard anything to suggest the fall wasn’t just an accident, except for the insistent feeling in her gut. Police intuition. Although, as Colette had told her tartly the day before, the budget did not stretch to cover feelings.
‘Oh no, we’re all good friends. Her new partner is pregnant too, actually.’
Very amicable. ‘And how did you hear about the group?’ Alison was still intrigued about the make-up of this group, how different they all were. Maybe all antenatal groups were like this. She wouldn’t know.
They looked at each other vaguely. ‘In the library, I think it was,’ said Hazel. ‘Seemed affordable, so we thought, why not.’
‘I see.’
Cathy leaned forward. ‘DS Hegarty – how come you’re asking all this? I mean, it was just an accident, wasn’t it? A fall.’
‘We haven’t ruled anything out yet. It would help if you could tell me your exact movements leading up to the . . . incident.’
They exchanged glances. Getting their stories straight? Cathy said, ‘I was changing Arthur in the downstairs loo. It was a messy one, so I was in there a while, and when I came out people were screaming and it – it had already happened.’ Alison tried to recall the layout of Monica’s house – the downstairs bathroom was under the stairs. ‘Did you see who’d been up there?’
Cathy bit her lip. ‘I don’t know. People had come running to see what was going on, you know.’
‘And you, Hazel?’
Hazel furrowed her brow. ‘I’m trying to remember. It all happened so fast. I was in the garden, I think, doing the barbecue. Ed, that’s Monica’s husband, didn’t have the faintest idea how to get it going, everyone was starving.’ That did not surprise Alison in the slightest, either Ed’s failure or that Hazel had taken over. ‘Aisha and Rahul, they were nearby. When it happened, I went inside to see what was going on, check on Cathy and Arthur. I think I passed Ed and Monica in the kitchen.’
‘So you saw it happen?’
‘Not really. I was poking the coals. Then there was this kind of – a shadow, I guess, a shadow went over the garden. There was a scream. Then the noise.’ For the first time, she looked unsure. ‘It was the most terrible noise when it – happened. The rockery.’
‘Did you see anyone on the balcony? Anyone else, I mean?’
‘No. I was looking at the barbecue. I didn’t see anything.’
‘And how was your relationship with the deceased?’
Hazel shrugged. ‘We only knew people from the group really. Just those eight sessions.’
‘And was there any conflict within the group?’
A pause. This time Cathy spoke, jiggling the baby. ‘It was all very friendly,’ she said, and Alison couldn’t read her tone. ‘A really nice group, though we were all quite different. Very supportive.’
This time Hazel was looking away, drinking her vile tea.
‘What about Kelly’s partner? You mentioned an incident at the group.’
‘Oh, no, that was nothing really. We hardly saw him except for that one time. He wasn’t even at the barbecue, I think they’ve split up.’
Alison sighed. ‘Alright. Thank you for your time.’ It was the same thing she’d got from Monica and Ed Dunwood – they maintained they’d been in the kitchen when it happened, trying to save some kind of dessert that was melting because someone had left the fridge open. They hadn’t seen it happen, and neither apparently had Cathy and Hazel, despite Cathy being right downstairs and Hazel in the garden in eye-shot of the balcony. How could it be that there were so many people in one house, and yet nobody had seen a thing?
The day of – Cathy
1.23 p.m.
Kelly had come. No one could believe Kelly had come. Cathy and Hazel had arrived just before her, somewhat late because Hazel had come back from the shops that morning with the wrong kind of flowers. ‘What does it matter?’ she’d asked, brow furrowed in annoyance.
It would matter a lot to someone like Monica. They had to be the kind from a florist, wrapped in brown paper and tied up with twine, not supermarket daisies covered in plastic. Hazel was grouchy because she’d had to get up at eight – the weekends were the only time she didn’t have to start work at six – but since Cathy had slept for maybe forty-five minutes all night, she wasn’t very sympathetic. She’d never known tiredness like it. It wasn’t just yawning, spacing out, drooping eyes, jerking awake on the sofa realising you’d fallen asleep with your head lolling forward. It was more like a kind of madness. As she walked the dim rooms at night, Arthur a heavy weight in her arms, sniffling and huffing, she wondered what might happen if she never slept again. Like, ever. How quickly would you lose it? Go insane?
Sometimes, she took Arthur into the bedroom and held him close to Hazel’s face as he cried. She never woke up.
That day when they finally arrived, Monica swept them in, casting an eye over the flowers Cathy had brought. She nodded her approval. ‘Lovely. From the nice place on the high street?’ Cathy felt her shoulders relax. Why was she so worried what these mothers thought of her? Maybe it was just a symptom of a larger worry, the anxiety that had engulfed her ever since she’d seen the line on the pregnancy test and done a little creative accounting with her cycle.
‘Oh dear, you look exhausted. Arthur giving you a bad time? Isabella sleeps right through, it’s amazing! We’re so lucky.’ Monica didn’t look tired at all. Her skin was radiant, eyes clear, and she wore a white sundress. White! At a party for babies! At a barbecue, with ketchup on every surface! Cathy drank it in, humbled, knowing she could never be as perfect.
Monica had just said, ‘I think that’s everyone now, you’re the last but you’ve made it eventually,’ when the doorbell rang. She frowned. ‘I don’t know who that can be.’
Cathy peered into the sunlit hallway, through the sunburst windows on either side of the door. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, dismayed. ‘It’s Kelly.’
‘Kelly?’
‘Did you invite her?’ said Hazel, coming back in from the garden, a beer already in hand.
‘No, well, I mean not specifically, I just sent a reminder to the email group.’
‘You didn’t take her off the list?’ Hazel’s tone was judgemental.
Monica answered, snippily, ‘Well, no, I don’t have the time to trawl through taking people off willy-nilly, do I.’
‘Oh my God. Has she been getting all our messages about the births?’ Cathy winced. Kelly had, understandably, gone quiet since the terrible news about her baby. The little boy had died inside her, his heart stopped. Cathy couldn’t bear to think of it, literally couldn’t bear it. Her stomach would clench and her palms sweat and her breath narrow. How could you survive such a thing, carrying a baby inside you for months only to lose it anyway? Kelly would’ve had to give birth to the poor little thing, this far along. And she was so young, just twenty-two.
Monica rolled her eyes. ‘She hasn’t brought that awful Ryan, I hope.’
‘No, it’s just her.’ Oh yes, Ryan. Cathy still had horrible flashbacks to that day at group, the violence suddenly exploding in their midst, the fear of realising she could not protect herself if something happened, could not protect her baby. She didn’t imagine Ryan would be around much longer, if he hadn’t already gone. Poor Kelly.
Hazel and Monica just stood there. Hazel took another gulp of her beer. Cathy said, ‘Well, shall I let her in?’
Monica pursed her lips. ‘I suppose we’ll have to. I do hope there’ll be enough salad.’
Salad! Bloody salad. She wished she didn’t admire Monica despite her awfulness, didn’t long for her approval. Imagine being that sure of yourself. Cathy moved to the door. Through the glass, Kelly was tiny and hunched. When the door opened, there she was. Cathy tried not to react to how awful she looked – bruised dark eyes, green-grey skin, shivering despite the heat. She wore a denim jacket and tracksuit bottoms. ‘Oh, Kel. I’m so sorry,’ she said, feeling the inadequacy of the words.
The Push Page 5
