Little Disasters

by Sarah Vaughan

  ‘Look, I’ll dial it now.’ She picks up the landline and does so. ‘Now you just need to press redial.’ She shows him. ‘And you’re not to open the door to anyone at all.’

  He nods but he’s not listening. It doesn’t matter. He knows all this: don’t answer the door to anyone; don’t talk to strangers; keep away from the road. She has been reciting this list of warnings since he was tiny. If he just stays here in the kitchen with Betsey, they will be fine.

  She’s in a hurry to leave now. Excitement builds at the thought of leaving the room with its tang of disappointment, of unwanted dinner and tear-streaked children and constant reminders of her inadequacy as a mum.

  ‘Just stay here, OK?’ she says. ‘Just play with her and don’t lift her up.’

  ‘OK, Mummy.’ Frankie nods, rocking back on his heels then zooming in towards Betsey to make her smile. He doesn’t look up; wants to be rid of her as soon as possible.

  ‘Right. Well, I’ll just be five minutes.’ And she is still repeating herself, still calling reassurances, as she slips from the door.

  *

  The night is cold. The temperature is meant to drop to minus two later but the crisp air is welcome: something to freeze her cheeks, and distract her from her thoughts. She walks briskly, but when she gets to the down-at-heel newsagents, she hesitates. She never normally uses this shop: the windows are grimy and she always imagines rats scurrying down the aisles. A dishevelled man shuffles out with his Tennents four-pack, and this decides her. She’ll use the mini supermarket further down the road, as usual. If she runs, it should only take about three minutes more.

  She scurries along, trying to avoid the puddles pooling after the intermittent downpours. But the shop is nearly an extra five minutes, by foot: far further than she thought. At the door, she hovers, heart hop-scotching out of synch. She checks her phone, again. 6.19. She’s already been away too long. But she must get the milk, and she craves a word from the shopkeeper, who always asks how she is and looks as if he’s genuinely interested – though she will cry if he asks her now.

  ‘Are you going in?’ A man in a suit is irritated with her dithering and forces her to make a decision: she ducks her head as she slips through the automatic doors. She moves quickly, picking up some organic full-fat milk and a bottle of wine Ed likes that’s on special offer, then joins the small queue. Too late, she realises that the woman two in front lives three doors down: Penny, a divorcee whose children have left home, and who has too much time on her hands. Exactly the sort of person she doesn’t want to see.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ says Penny.

  ‘Hello,’ she mumbles.

  ‘How are the children and you – all good?’

  She nods and gestures towards the checkout, focusing on looking busy, furious at risking being seen. Penny hovers, perhaps surprised by her brusqueness. But Jess puts her basket down and scrabbles in her bag. ‘Just forgotten something,’ she whispers, hoping to convey, with her tilted head, that she’s far too preoccupied to chat. The customer in front of her shuffles forward and Jess moves ahead, picking up her basket to place it on the counter. Penny, looking somewhat disgruntled, takes the hint and moves off.

  Though she’s clearly in a hurry, the shopkeeper tries to involve her in the chat she thought she’d wanted.

  ‘Your children not with you today?’ he asks with an amiable nod. ‘Husband home early?’

  Does he know that I’ve left them? She reads judgement in the most innocuous of lines.

  ‘Yes. Friday night. He’s with them now.’ The lie slips from her as she holds her hand out for the change.

  ‘Well, have a lovely evening.’

  She nods, and hurries away.

  But as she leaves, she notices a girl in her early twenties, leaning over a buggy and playing peek-a-boo. The baby is barely older than Bets, but there’s something about the delight in her eyes and the utter trust she places in this young woman – an au pair? No, her mother – which pierces Jess’s heart. Betsey never looks at her with that unquestioning love, and Jess, with her need to be constantly vigilant, has never managed to be so unselfconscious and playful. The young woman, who bends and touches the baby’s nose with her lips, is only a few years past childhood; must remember how to play and laugh herself. Has Jess ever experienced that? Yes, long ago, with her siblings; moments of bright sunshine, away from the shadows her father’s volatility cast.

  She smiles at the young mother and rushes from the shop, head down to hide the tears that are welling. It’s raining. Her feet scuff through puddles, her boots grow wet. A car drenches her with spray and blasts its horn, indignant. How long has she been out? Thirteen minutes, she realises, glancing at her phone. There’s a missed call: ‘Home’. The place she rushed to avoid and yet the word drives her forward. She presses the number but it rings out: Frankie must be too scared to answer, or perhaps something’s gone horribly wrong?

  She starts running: feet pounding the pavement, the bottles, in her tote bag, thudding heavily against her shoulder. Her breath is caught in her chest: fluttering high. She slips but manages to right herself before smacking down on the pavement. You’re a bad, bad mother. The thought threads through her mind until the fear of why he might have rung thrusts all other thoughts away.

  ED

  Tuesday 23 January, 7 p.m.

  Twenty-one

  It strikes Ed that the other football dads might be keeping their distance when he and Kit turn up for the evening training session. He’s not the sort to be paranoid but they seem to be huddling together and he’s not sure he can blame the bitter cold.

  It doesn’t matter. He tends to chat with Charlotte. George is nifty with a ball; has recently been scouted for a trial with an academy – but Andrew is uninterested in his son’s footballing prowess and it’s usually his wife who brings him to the sessions. At least once a week they find themselves chatting on the touchline.

  To Ed’s surprise, Charlotte loves it, cheering effusively when George heads a goal into the top but resisting screaming advice like the dads who act like would-be Gareth Southgates. ‘They’re so frustrated,’ she once whispered when Tom and Louis’s dads were particularly vociferous, and it was so unexpected he had had to laugh. ‘All that pent-up desire just waiting to spill out,’ she continued sotto voce, and he’d been reminded of the old, irreverent Charlotte from his student days. ‘Go on,’ she’d said, and there’d been a frisson of something he wasn’t quite sure how to handle. ‘Tell me I’m wrong.’

  Now, though, he is intensely relieved to see her.

  ‘Hello,’ she says softly, and her quiet sympathy is deeply comforting. Jess thinks she’s spiky but he has always found her clear-sighted, empathetic and warm. Perhaps he could confide in her now? He needs to talk to someone. Perturbed by Jess’s call earlier that day and the laptop discovery, he wants to discuss the former (he can hardly discuss the latter) with someone who knows his wife well. He’s recently mentioned Jess’s anxiety and Charlotte seemed reluctant to chat, but maybe she was being loyal. Things have moved on since then. Perhaps she will be more open to talking about it now.

  Tacitly, they move sufficiently far from the other parents not to be overheard.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, touching his forearm. ‘How are you? It must be horrific.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ It is such a relief to admit it. ‘It’s a bit of a nightmare, to be frank.’

  ‘Jess being under suspicion – and having to consider, impossible though it seems, that she could have done this,’ Charlotte carries on.

  He freezes. He didn’t mean that. He was referring to the fact that Betsey is in hospital, and more generally the police investigation. He wasn’t acknowledging that he might suspect his wife of doing this to her, and yet Charlotte is assuming he would think the worst.

  ‘I’m not considering that she’s done it. I don’t think she could have done this,’ he says, sounding more unequivocal than he feels. Perhaps he would have inched towards the idea if Charlotte
had not assumed it so categorically but he never likes being told what he thinks.

  ‘Oh, OK.’ He can hear the confusion in her voice; knows he’s being unfair, turning on her like this. ‘I just thought . . . because you’d mentioned you were worried about her before . . .’

  ‘There’s a big leap between worrying about her and suspecting that she’s hurt Betsey,’ he says, his voice quiet and low. ‘I’m not allowing for the possibility, I can’t allow for the possibility, that Jess could have done this to our little girl.’

  She is silent. Kit scores a goal from the cross bar: a spectacular shot and he knows he should cheer but he lets the other dads do it for him, their cries ripping through the night air. His son looks over in his direction and he gives him a thumbs-up, face spliced in a rictus grin. He can’t carry on like this: so concerned for his baby girl that he can’t feel joy on behalf of his older kids; snapping at a friend, who is only trying to be well meaning, whose support he has sought and who he values. He can’t afford to be frosty, particularly when they might need their friends.

  ‘God, I’m sorry,’ he says.

  She gives him a small, sad smile. ‘No, I am. I didn’t mean to jump to conclusions. But no one would judge you, you know, if you found yourself thinking what the police, and other people, might think.’

  He focuses on Kit, pushing up the pitch, a long pass to George who dribbles past three players before crossing to Ben.

  ‘Is that what you think?’ His throat is tight but he makes himself look at her.

  ‘I don’t want to consider that she could have done this. Of course I don’t. Jess is my friend and she’s a wonderful mother. But the police, and Liz, clearly have some concerns. I’m just saying it would be perfectly normal if you felt some disquiet, some doubt, and if you do, however disloyal that seems, you mustn’t beat yourself up about it.’

  He turns back to the game, incapable of formulating a response.

  ‘Wonder if we should go and be a bit more sociable?’ he manages, eventually, and she nods in an admission they should drop the subject. They edge back towards the other parents where he chats about the team’s position in the local youth league and gives the impression of being enthused about their prospects at next Saturday’s game. One of the would-be managers discusses the weakness in their defence, and Ed makes a lame joke that everyone laughs at a little too heartily. Throughout, Charlotte remains silent and detached, a little to one side.

  ‘So sorry your little un’s poorly,’ Jake’s dad says, almost as an aside as the boys start to leave the pitch. There are a couple of gruff nods from the other dads that move him more than he’d imagined. No one mentions the involvement of social services or the police.

  But he realises, from Charlotte’s assumption, that he cannot express even the slightest equivocation. To mention any concern would amount to a betrayal. It was foolish of him to let Charlotte get close, and his fury simmers, with himself and with her for her disloyalty. But perhaps this was a good reminder that he mustn’t let anything slip that might somehow implicate Jess.

  *

  It’s an important lesson. When he gets home, the social worker is there to discuss Jess’s unauthorised appearance at the hospital.

  He listens bleakly. Jess hadn’t mentioned that she’d done this and he finds himself wondering what else she is keeping secret, how little he knows his wife.

  Lucy chats away, trying to build up a picture of the family as she does on her daily visits.

  ‘Could Jess have talked to anyone about this? Does she have a good support network?’ she asks, as she did at the start, and he repeats that Martha moved in without a quibble, and mentions Mel and Charlotte.

  ‘And what about you? How does she find it with your working such long hours?’

  He takes a deep breath and concentrates on not sounding defensive. Once, he might have quipped that Jess knew that was the deal: it’s the payoff for his fat salary and for her not working. Instead, he mutters: ‘She’s very understanding,’ and wonders if it is an adequate response.

  He is walking a tightrope, editing each thought; trying to ensure he says nothing that’s not supportive. But this means he can’t be honest about his fears. He can’t tell Lucy about the laptop. He’d considered skirting around the issue of Jess’s anxiety – maybe admitting she has found this third baby hard; even that she’s seemed a bit low. After his experience with Charlotte, there’s no way he can imply this.

  Now, he runs his hands over his head, fingers lightly scanning his brain as if for the right answers. Lucy watches him intently, as she chats away.

  ‘Does Jess go to baby groups and see other mums?’ she asks, leaning forwards, hands clasped together, and he looks at her, bemused.

  ‘Um, baby swimming, I think.’ She used to do that with Kit. ‘A music class, perhaps?’ That sounds wrong: Betsey’s too little. ‘I don’t know, I’m afraid,’ he concludes. His baby is in hospital with a skull fracture that is causing her to fit and Lucy’s interested in her social life? How ludicrous that sounds.

  ‘How did you meet?’ the social worker continues, in her warm, conversational tone, and he wants to tell her he is too tired for this; that he doesn’t want to talk. But of course he doesn’t.

  ‘A smoky cellar bar off the Embankment. Not particularly original or romantic, I’m afraid.’

  And yet it had been to him. He was twenty-six; Jess, twenty-three, and working in events after graduating, like so many girls he seemed to know. But she was different: someone who listened after asking you a question, and who had this surprisingly sexy laugh that hinted at an earthiness you’d never have guessed from her slightly standoffish exterior. He was captivated. Completely infatuated from that first meeting. He can’t remember when she last laughed like that.

  Nor can he remember the last time when she properly relaxed so that her shoulders weren’t hunched and she didn’t vibrate with tension. When she last got tipsy or was spontaneous; when she wasn’t preoccupied with everything being calm and controlled, or focused on the kids. He wants the old Jess back. Of course he wants a wife who doesn’t consider harming their child – Christ! It doesn’t get any easier the more he contemplates that Google search – but he also wants one who doesn’t worry all the time.

  Because she hasn’t seemed happy for quite a while. Certainly not since she’s had Betsey, the baby they’d created in a moment of romantic spontaneity. And perhaps she hasn’t been herself for even longer, because Frankie’s hard work, and though Jess parents him brilliantly, it drags her down. And, OK, he’s not exactly bursting with happiness himself, but he’d persuaded her to have a third baby to try to recapture that excitement, that sheer joy, of early parenting. How fucking stupid. He’s only made things worse.

  Of course some of Jess’s anxiety is inevitable – Betsey’s birth had been horrific. But Jess was only in hospital a couple of days afterwards; had got her figure back within a fortnight; and Betsey was thriving – or so it seemed.

  It has only been in the last month that he’s started to realise that Jess might have been more affected by the birth than she claimed. He’d been fumbling towards an understanding, but he only realised quite how miserable she had become when they argued, on Thursday night.

  ED

  Thursday 18 January, 6.30 p.m.

  Twenty-two

  It is the pile of neatly folded vests that triggers their row, or rather, the contrast between this and their tear-streaked baby.

  Ed has never seen such an ordered stack of clean washing, or known that it might exist. Bone white cotton bodies are folded and piled on top of one another like shirts in a Jermyn Street tailors. Then there’s a second pile of Babygros, folded to the same height and width, another space and a third pile of tops folded in the exact same way.

  Ed doesn’t deal with the children’s washing. (To be honest, he doesn’t deal with any washing.) He vaguely knows where he might find a clean item of clothing for the children but he couldn’t say in which particular drawer.
And so it’s a revelation, discovering these piles. He pulls out the second drawer: the same, this time for tiny dresses; and the third, for leggings. In the bottom drawer, there are stacks of disposable nappies, and on the top of the chest, a white wicker basket filled with cotton wool pads, neatly tessellated.

  The irony is: he wouldn’t have been aware of this extreme neatness had he not been trying to make life easier for Jess. Conscious of quite how little he’s been around, he’d been aiming to get home for bedtime all week, finally managing it on Thursday night.

  ‘Darling, I’m home,’ he calls, as he walks through the door at 6.30 p.m., and, though he knows it’s unrealistic, he hopes she’ll run out to kiss him. There’s no response apart from the ragged anguish of Betsey’s cries. His sons, curled up in the snug, are focused on their gadgets. ‘Hi, boys,’ he tries. Frankie blanks him, thumbs jabbing away at the control on the Xbox, because part of him always needs to be fiddling, to be doing something; Kit looks up and gives him a brief smile.

  In the kitchen, Jess doesn’t acknowledge his presence: is too busy wiping down the fronts of the kitchen cupboards and the surfaces, which are spotless with no sign that she’s recently prepared whatever’s in the oven, or the children’s tea.

  ‘Betsey sounds upset,’ he says.

  ‘She doesn’t want to sleep.’ Her eyes are fixed on the floor, which she’s scanning for any rogue crumbs that have escaped her notice.

  ‘Well, shall I get her up? She doesn’t need to be in bed this early, does she?’

  ‘I put her down because it’s easier that way. It means I can get this sorted.’ Jess bends to brush a pile of dirt into a dustpan; gives him a mirthless smile as she tips the dirt into the bin.

  He feels deflated. He was so eager to help: had been quite excited at the thought of giving Betsey a bath and proving to Jess that he could be a more hands-on father.

  ‘She sounds like something’s wrong,’ he ventures because Bets doesn’t sound close to dozing off. She sounds desperate.