by Camilla Way
* * *
—
Despite how nice she was, it was still unusual for someone like me to strike up a friendship with someone like Rose. Even though we weren’t very far apart in age, we were poles apart in terms of class and education. But in fact, six months after that meeting in Sainsbury’s, we did become friends, because of a series of events that led us to forming an unusual sort of bond. I suppose it was a case of luck, of being in the right place at the right time—or so it felt back then. Looking back, of course, I’m not sure how “lucky” our friendship really was, when you think about what went on to happen.
* * *
—
It began because I was temporarily placed on the maternity ward, due to a staff shortage. Of course, as a pediatric nurse I was well used to working among children, had learned to shut my private longing away in a little box inside myself when dealing with my young patients. But the maternity ward was a different matter. The placement coincided with a brief but unsuccessful pregnancy that had ended in miscarriage. It was the first time I’d actually managed to get pregnant, and so much excitement and relief and hope was wrapped up in that positive test result. Doug and I could barely contain ourselves, walking around with our hearts in our mouths, almost too nervous to breathe, praying that finally, finally, everything was going to be okay.
But just a few weeks later I felt the first cramping pains. I tried to persuade myself that it was nothing sinister, but then the headaches came, the faintness, and finally, as I knew it would, the spots of blood that grew heavier and heavier until there was no doubt that my baby was seeping away from me before it had barely had a chance to begin. I was devastated, absolutely inconsolable. Doug tried to keep positive: it was good news that I could at least get pregnant, he said—perhaps next time it would “stick.” He held me for hours as I sobbed, but it didn’t really help—nothing did.
And then, by the cruelest twist of fate imaginable, there I was, two days later, placed on the maternity ward. I had to witness baby after baby being born into the world, had to continue as though the sight of each one didn’t feel like a knife to my heart, but there was one in particular that completely crushed me. Candice, she was called, a teenage drug addict, whose baby, like the two she’d had before it (or so I’d heard), was whisked away into care by social workers as soon as it was born, the mother stony-faced, unblinking—indifferent, it seemed to me then—though I suppose now, looking back, that she wouldn’t have been, not really. It broke my heart, the unfairness of it all. I would have given everything I had to be that baby’s mum.
It was 1980. The use of IVF—or “test-tube babies,” as we called them then—had hardly begun; it was considered an almost freakish thing in those days, “weird science.” It certainly wasn’t available to someone like me and wouldn’t be for years. Perhaps, eventually, I would have come to terms with it all; perhaps I would have gone on to happily adopt like many millions of couples do. But I was very far from that state of mind back then: it was like a physical, desperate need that was bigger than myself, that I couldn’t control or contain.
That particular morning, the morning of the baby that was taken into care, I fled from the delivery room as soon as possible and shut myself in the first store cupboard I came to. I clasped my hands to my mouth, but I couldn’t help it; I sobbed and sobbed. And then the door opened and to my horror, Rose Lawson walked in, absorbed in a list she held in her hand, presumably of supplies she was after. She stopped stock-still when she saw me. “Beth?” she said, astonished. “What on earth’s the matter? What’s happened?”
I couldn’t speak, and it was so like her to do what she did next. She didn’t say another word and as though it were the most natural thing in the world, she walked over to me and hugged me. Such an instinctively kind thing to do, I’ve never forgotten it. I cried and cried until the shoulder of her white coat was sodden and bit by bit she got it all out of me.
“Beth, I’m so very sorry,” she said, and I could tell that she was. Someone tried to come in, but she put her foot against the door and said in a grand sort of voice, “This one’s taken, thank you very much. Try the next one!” She winked at me and I laughed a little. She talked so much sense that morning; she was so gentle and comforting. “Listen, my love,” she said, “I know things feel very, very bleak right now, but you will be a lovely mum one day. I know you will. You’re still so very young. In a year, or two years, things will look different. You’ll see.” The words would have sounded like platitudes on anyone else’s lips, and I suppose they were, but nevertheless they did help, because I could tell she meant them, and having someone like her saying them did make me feel a little less hopeless about it all.
After that day, whenever I passed her in the wards, or saw her in the canteen or the tea room or whatever, she would make a point of stopping me, to ask how I was and put a hand on my arm. It was nice, supportive—I didn’t feel any better about my situation, but I did feel a little less alone.
And then something entirely unexpected happened that solidified our friendship—or our connection, I suppose you’d call it—even further. Because I had grown used to looking out for her, to always taking special notice when she was on shift at the same time I was, a few months later when I was back on the pediatric ward, I suddenly noticed a change in her. She’d always taken such good care of her appearance—beautifully cut and colored hair, lovely makeup, nice clothes—but suddenly she seemed to let herself go entirely. She’d turn up to work looking haggard and ill, her clothes crumpled, her face lined with tiredness, as though she hadn’t slept in days. There was clearly something very wrong, but I felt too shy to ask—it would have felt too forward, I think.
A few weeks later, however, I came across her in the ladies. I was washing my hands at the sink when she came out of one of the cubicles, her eyes red and raw as though she’d been crying. “Oh,” I said before I could stop myself, “Rose, are you all right?”
She went to a sink as though she hadn’t heard me, and stared down at the running water without moving. I didn’t know what to do. After a while I put a hand on her arm. “Rose? Is there anything the matter? Can I help?”
She looked up as though she hadn’t known I was there. “Oh,” she said, “oh, Beth. I’m—no—I’m fine,” but then she started to cry.
“Rose, what’s happened?” I said.
She waved me away. “No, no, please, don’t be kind. Please, I couldn’t bear it.” She pulled a hand towel from the dispenser and put it to her face, then gave a half laugh through her tears. “Ridiculous. I can’t seem to stop crying. Oh, please ignore me, Beth. You’re very kind. It’s just I have no one to talk to, no one at all.”
“But I’m sure you have lots of friends,” I said, surprised.
“Oh yes,” she agreed dispiritedly. “I’m very lucky.” And then she whispered, “I just feel so ashamed.”
“Well, you could tell me,” I coaxed. “I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
It was then that she broke down and began to cry as though her heart was broken. “Oh, Beth, it’s such an awful mess.”
On impulse I put my arms around her, just as she had done to me all those weeks before. “What am I going to do?” she said. “What on earth am I going to do?”
And finally, little by little, she told me what was wrong, how Oliver had confessed to having an affair with one of his students at the university. “She’s nineteen,” Rose said. “Nineteen! He said it just happened, that it got out of control, that he’d tried to end it but she became obsessed with him. He says that she’s unstable, that he hadn’t realized how fragile she is and that . . . that he’s sorry, and . . .” She broke down again, too distraught to go on.
“Oh,” I whispered, “oh, Rose, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all so sordid,” she cried, “so humiliating. How could he do it to us, Beth? To me and Emily? How could he?”
I don’t think s
he meant to tell me so much. I think it was like a dam breaking, that it was a relief to finally confide in someone. She said she couldn’t face anyone finding out, her family, her friends. I think she only talked to me because I was so removed from her personal life. And people have always said I’m a good listener; perhaps she felt safe unloading it all on me. Finally she stopped crying. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m due to see a patient any minute.” She took a gulp of breath and dried her eyes, but she looked so hopeless still, so crushed.
“Do you want to meet for coffee tomorrow?” I asked her shyly. “We could go somewhere in town, if you like, away from the hospital, I mean.”
I wanted her to see that she could trust me, that I’d keep her secret, that nobody from work would find out. I thought she was going to turn me down, but to my surprise, she looked at me gratefully. “Are you sure?”
After that, we fell into the habit of meeting up once a week or so. We’d go for coffee in an out-of-the-way place in town, or sometimes I’d go to her lovely house, the Willows, when Oliver wasn’t home. We were unlikely friends, but friends we became. I honestly think I was the only person in the world she could talk to. And I thought how strange and sad life is, that someone like Rose, with all the grand and important friends she must have, had only me, a near stranger, to confide in. How different people are, aren’t they, from how they first appear? I tried my best to comfort her, because I felt so sorry for her. She told me that she wanted to forgive Oliver, that he knew he’d made a horrible mistake, that he regretted everything.
“Can you forgive him, though?” I asked, surprised. I tried to think how I would feel if it were Doug cheating on me. I didn’t think I would be able to get past it, to be honest, not if we had a little baby too.
A strange expression came over her face then, and suddenly she didn’t look quite so vulnerable anymore. In fact, in that moment she looked quite fierce. “I will not let that little bitch destroy my family,” she said, and she sort of spat the words at me, and I remember being quite shocked. “I will not let that happen,” she said.
* * *
—
And then, a week or so later she came looking for me on the ward. She looked dreadful; I could tell that something was very wrong. She pulled me into an empty office, her face very white. “She’s pregnant, Beth,” she said. “Nadia. The girl my husband has been fucking.”
I’ll never forget her saying that word. I’d never heard her swear before; she just wasn’t the type. But she said it with such bitterness, such venom. My hand flew to my mouth. “Oh no!”
“She’s due in two months!” she cried. “Two months! Oliver said he’s only known a month, that he couldn’t face telling me before, but he’s lying, of course. And now she’s started calling the house. She won’t leave us alone. She said that unless he leaves me for her, then she’ll tell everyone about their affair.” She shook her head in dismay. “His career will be over, Beth. We’ll have to leave—everyone will find out at the hospital—everyone will know. All our friends and colleagues and family . . . oh, Beth, what shall I do? Everything, our lovely life, our lovely family, it will all be ruined! It will be so humiliating, so utterly humiliating.”
She was beside herself. I tried to comfort her the best I could, but I didn’t know what to say, not really. After that night I didn’t see her for a while. She took some time off work and then, what with one thing and another, a few weeks slipped by, though I worried about her constantly. Occasionally I’d see her, but she was always busy or rushing off somewhere. When, finally, we did arrange to meet, I thought she seemed a little calmer, a little more resigned to it all, as though she’d begun to come to terms with it a bit. I knew the girl—Nadia—was due to have her baby in late March, and when the date came and went, I was surprised when Rose didn’t ask to meet me. I assumed she’d decided to accept it, to get on with her life.
And then, one night, at around nine o’clock, when Doug and I were just settling down to watch TV, there was a knock on the door. We looked at each other in surprise and when I went to answer it, there Rose and Oliver stood on our front step, Emily beside them asleep in her buggy. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “What’s happened?” They looked so odd, staring back at me like that, their eyes so big and frightened.
It was Rose who spoke first, and her voice was strange, not like her usual one at all. “Beth,” she said, “you have to help us. You’re the only one who can.”
TWENTY-FIVE
SUFFOLK, 2017
For a long moment in the living room of the Willows, no one moved, as though they were frozen by Oliver’s words. It was Tom, finally, who spoke. “What?” he said faintly. “She’s your what?”
At this, Rose made a low moaning sound, and, dropping her head, began to cry bitterly into her hands. Nobody moved to comfort her. Clara looked at each of their faces, shock reverberating through her. This, surely, was some sort of joke? She glanced at Mac, but he, too, was staring at Oliver in astonishment.
“Before you were born, when Emily was still a baby,” Oliver said, “I had an affair with one of my students.” He paused and for a moment his eyes met Clara’s, until, embarrassed, she looked away. “I was a stupid, weak fool, and I have no excuse—I have no defense—only that I know now that it was the very worst mistake of my life and I have regretted it every single moment since.”
He turned to Tom. “I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I want, at least, to try to explain.” There was a pause, the silence broken only by the sound of Rose crying. “Her name was Nadia, a student of mine. We became close, and I suppose I was too infatuated, too flattered, to realize how troubled, how . . . unstable she was. It wasn’t until later that I learned quite how unstable.”
Clara stared at him in horrified fascination. This brilliant man, this loving father and devoted husband, whom she had admired, loved, from the first moment they had met, was a cheat? Had betrayed his wife and child for the sake of a vulnerable woman far younger than he was? Something hard and bitter lodged in her throat as she listened to him speak. For the first time since she’d met him, she suddenly saw Oliver very differently. Her gaze turned to Tom and she noticed he was very still, his eyes fastened on his father’s face.
“Your mother was completely blameless,” Oliver went on. “Emily was still a baby. It was an unforgivable betrayal for which I was entirely responsible. When I came to my senses and ended things between Nadia and me . . .” He paused and swallowed, glancing at each of their faces. “I didn’t know that she had already fallen pregnant with my child.”
Rose’s head whipped round at this. “Don’t, Oliver,” she cried. “You promised me!”
Oliver’s voice was tender. “Rose, don’t you see? There’s nothing we can do now. She’s won. Hannah’s won.”
At this, Tom’s head shot up. “What the fuck are you talking about, Dad?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘She’s won’?”
Oliver flinched at his anger. “When Hannah was a baby, she was adopted by a woman named Beth Jennings and her husband. She grew up believing they were her natural parents, but then, when she was seven, she found out the truth.”
“That you were her real father,” Tom said coldly.
“That, and what happened to Nadia, to her mother.”
Tom shook his head in frustration. “Well, what did happen to her?”
Oliver glanced at Rose, something passing between them fraught with pain. Finally, Rose cleared her throat and said, “She died. Nadia died. It was all my fault.”
Clara shot Mac a look of stunned disbelief. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“When Oliver finished things with Nadia, after he’d confessed to me about the pregnancy, she became obsessed with him,” Rose said. “She persecuted him—both of us—she wouldn’t leave us alone. She said she was going to expose him to his university, finish his career.” She turned to Tom. “Your father told her he would pro
vide for the child, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted him. She became manic, obsessed—she wouldn’t be happy until she had Oliver to herself, until he left me and Emily for her.”
There was absolute silence, the three of them staring at her mutely. “I arranged to meet her,” Rose continued. “I wanted to make her see sense. And if that didn’t work, I decided I’d offer her money, enough to leave the area, to start again somewhere else. I asked her to meet me somewhere we wouldn’t be seen. I used to walk the dogs we had then along Widow’s Cliff, above Dunwich beach, you know. It seemed like as good a place as any, equidistant to where we both lived. It was usually deserted and I knew she’d make a scene.”
Rose hesitated, her eyes staring unseeingly at the window as she remembered. “She was quite calm at first. But then, when I told her what I was offering, that I’d pay her to go away, that Oliver didn’t want her and never would, she went crazy. She had her daughter in her pram, and Emily was sleeping in her pushchair. She started ranting and raving, shouting that it wasn’t fair that Emily had her father, but her daughter wouldn’t. And then . . . and then . . .” Rose broke down, crying into her hands.
The three of them exchanged horrified glances. “What?” Tom asked. “What happened to her?”
“She jumped,” Rose whispered. “Suddenly and without any warning at all, she stepped off the edge and she jumped, leaving her poor baby alone up there with me! I ran to the edge and looked down, and her body was . . . oh God, it was so awful, so horrible—her body was there, on the rocks below, before she got swept away.”
