The Wife Who Ran Away

by Tess Stimson

‘What am I supposed to do?’ I plead.

  ‘Agness is fifteen this year!’ he cries, as if I haven’t spoken. ‘She’ll be off to university soon. Guy even sooner. We’ll have a chance to get our lives back. Travel, do what we want, go where we like. Do you really want to exchange all that to go right back to the beginning?’

  I sink into a chair, gripping the edge of the table so hard my knuckles whiten. On one level, I understand where he’s coming from. I’ve looked forward to our liberation as much as he has. For years I’ve dreamed of trips to Californian wineries and walking tours of Tuscany, freed from the tyranny of school calendars and the endless demands of teenagers for nightlife, entertainment, lifts. In a couple of years, we’ll have paid off our mortgage, and once the children leave university, we’ll have more disposable income than we’ve ever had in our lives. Maybe, given time and space alone, Ned and I will rediscover each other, too.

  I’m fully aware what a new baby will do to our lives. No more skiing trips to Whistler every winter. No early retirement to the south of France, as we’d fantasized. Bucket-and-spade holidays instead of pony-trekking down the Grand Canyon. Forking out for a babysitter every time we want to go to the cinema. Giving up my dressing room to make space for the nursery.

  I’ve even debated with myself whether it’s fair to burden a baby with ageing parents. It’ll effectively be a single child, its siblings long since grown before it’s even at school. We’ll be pensioners by the time it leaves college. Many of the things we did with Guy and Agness, from piggybacks to white-water rafting, will be physically beyond us as we get older. Can we bear to repeat so much of the mind-numbing early years, the cake-and-ice-cream birthday parties, the trips to Disney? Will we have the energy to battle through the teenage stage, just as many of our friends are enjoying the indulgence of becoming grandparents? Will this baby grow up feeling cheated of a normal childhood?

  And yet I don’t hesitate for a second. I want this child more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.

  I close my eyes. The milky, yeasty smell of a newborn. The warmth of a baby against my chest again, the feel of a small hand in mine. Isn’t that worth a few missed holidays, an extra couple of years on the mortgage? How could a second home in Provence compete with the sound of childish laugher echoing round the house again?

  I grope for Ned’s hand. ‘This wasn’t what I’d planned, either, but it’s happened,’ I plead. ‘C’mon, Ned. We’re older, yes, but hopefully we’re wiser, too. We can do this.’

  He pulls free. ‘I can’t, Kate. I’m sorry, but I’m not ready to go back to the beginning. I can’t do it all again.’

  ‘I’m not asking you to. I’ll give up work this time. Take a career break.’

  Ned laughs shortly. ‘You, give up work?’

  ‘I mean it,’ I say, realizing as I speak that it’s true. ‘Advertising is a young person’s game. I’ve only got a few years left before I get overtaken or sidelined by one of Paul’s new boy wonders. I’ve had enough. Once the baby’s at school, I can think about what I really—’

  ‘How can we afford for you to give up your job?’ Ned cries. ‘You’re living in dreamland, Kate! We couldn’t possibly get by on my salary!’

  ‘We could if we made some changes. Economize a bit. Eleanor could easily manage a mortgage herself if she moved somewhere smaller. We’ve got some savings, and we could sell this house if need be. In a couple of years, we’ll be done with school fees, and—’

  ‘Jesus,’ Ned says, burying his head in his hands. ‘You’re serious. You really want to go through with this.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I demand shrilly. ‘Get rid of it? Kill it, just because it’s not convenient?’

  Ned exhales slowly and looks up. ‘I don’t know,’ he says tiredly. ‘Christ, Kate. I don’t know.’

  I try to give him space and time to get to grips with the idea. I tell him when I go for my first scan the following week, but I don’t ask him to come or show him the amazing 3D photographs afterwards. I stand in my dressing room and work out where the cot will go, and find a local handyman who can build me some new wardrobes in our bedroom for my clothes. I keep crackers by the bed for the morning sickness, but wait till Ned takes his morning shower before munching them and getting up. I don’t mention the baby when he talks about where to go for our summer holiday – I’ll be seven months pregnant. I won’t be in any shape to hike in the Carolinas! – or make a fuss when he pours me a glass of wine at dinner. It nearly kills me to keep quiet when I want to immerse myself in what’s happening to me, but I manage it, waiting for Ned to be ready.

  It’s exactly the same as when I was pregnant with Agness, history repeating itself. I just have to hope that when this baby is born, Ned falls in love all over again.

  Except he never gets the chance.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the sonographer says. ‘The baby didn’t make it. There’s no heartbeat.’

  I stare up at the monitor. ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘It looks like it died a little while ago, at around nine weeks. I really am so sorry, Kate.’

  ‘But there was a heartbeat last time,’ I say stupidly. ‘I saw it. I heard it.’

  She gently wipes the gel off my stomach. ‘I know. It’s nothing you did, Kate. Sometimes this just happens, especially with older mothers. It’s nature’s way of taking care of something that wasn’t quite right. There’s absolutely nothing you could have done to prevent it. Doctor Walbert will come and see you in a few minutes to explain what happens now.’

  She switches the monitor off and quietly leaves the room. I lie there in the semi-darkness, my hand fluttering over my still-rounded stomach. I can’t quite take it in. I just came in for a routine nuchal scan, so they could check for Down’s. I’d prepared myself for the one-in-a-hundred chance, at my age, that the baby might have something wrong with it; steeled myself to make a choice if I turned out to be that one. It never occurred to me the baby might have died. I made it through the dangerous first trimester. I heard the heartbeat. I still feel pregnant. Morning sickness, peeing all the time, swollen breasts. Nothing to suggest my poor baby quietly left me without me even noticing.

  Doctor Walbert returns and kindly explains my options. I can wait and let nature take its course, which might happen in days or weeks; I can try to induce the missed miscarriage chemically; or I can have a D&C tomorrow to remove the ‘products of pregnancy’.

  ‘I don’t want to wait,’ I say. ‘I need this to be over.’

  ‘The D&C, then,’ she says.

  When I get home and tell Ned, he doesn’t trouble to hide his relief. ‘I’m sorry for you,’ he says, ‘but I can’t be sorry for me. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.’

  ‘You’re not the least bit sad?’ I ask curiously. ‘We made this baby out of love, and now it’s died. You don’t feel anything at all?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I love you, Kate. I’d do anything for you. Maybe I’d have loved this baby too, for you. But I can’t feel sorry it’s gone. For your sake, I wish I could, but I can’t.’

  How can I blame him for being honest? He’s as entitled not to want another child as I am to want one. Everything he’d said before was true: a baby would have transformed our lives, but while I welcomed that, it was a transformation he hadn’t sought or wanted. He warned me that my age would count against me, and he was right. I’m too old for a baby. My eggs are hard-boiled, past their sell-by date, and my body has now made that plain.

  He comes with me when I go to hospital for the D&C, and drives me carefully home. He’s solicitous, attentive, loving. I can’t fault him in any way.

  And yet every time I look at him, all I can think of is that Ned didn’t want this baby. And now it’s gone.

  Ned

  I can’t believe I didn’t think of Julia before. In the past two days, I’ve called everyone in Kate’s address book and gone through her whole email history. Julia wasn’t in either of them; it’s been so long since Kate mentioned her, I’d forgotten she
existed. But it totally makes sense, now the cops have told me she’s in Rome. If Kate’s having some sort of emotional meltdown, it stands to reason she’d go off to that bloody hippy dyke. The bitch has never liked me, not since the day we met.

  I open the fridge and take out a beer, surprisingly calm as I wait for someone to answer the phone. Now I know where Kate is, we can get things sorted out. Clearly I mishandled the whole baby drama. It obviously upset her more than I realized, and she’s having some sort of hormonal breakdown. It’s only been a couple of months, after all. I’ll apologize, make it clear I’m not going to hold this running-away nonsense against her, and we can all move on.

  To her credit, Julia doesn’t hang up when I tell her it’s me. She doesn’t even sound rattled as she goes off to get Kate. Cool as a cucumber, that one.

  ‘Kate?’ I say as I hear the phone being picked up again. ‘Kate?’

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  I wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t say another word. I realize I haven’t really thought through what to say. It’s only been five days since she left, but it might as well have been five years. Fifty. I don’t know where to begin.

  ‘I knew you’d be with Julia,’ I say eventually, to break the ice. ‘As soon as the cop said Rome, I realized where you must’ve gone.’

  ‘The police?’

  ‘Well, I had to call them,’ I say reasonably.

  ‘Yes. Of course. How did they know I was here?’

  Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact. I crack open my beer on the edge of the kitchen counter with one hand, noting with a degree of satisfaction the deep groove the bottle-top leaves in Kate’s expensive granite. ‘Oh, it doesn’t take much, these days,’ I say, matching her tone. ‘They can pull up everything about you at the touch of a button. You used your credit card at Heathrow—’

  ‘Of course. My ticket.’

  ‘You threw us for a while,’ I add lightly. ‘Using a card in your maiden name. Kept us all guessing for a bit.’

  ‘It’s the only one not maxed out,’ Kate says.

  I move to the other end of the kitchen, peering out of the window at the rain. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t think of Julia before. I called everyone else in your address book.’

  ‘It’s a new one,’ Kate says. ‘I didn’t get round to transferring all the numbers.’

  She goes quiet again. I watch two raindrops chase each other down the pane. You’d think she could make this a bit easier on me. I don’t know what to say to her. All this talking about feelings is the kind of stuff women do so much better.

  ‘You’re all right, then?’ I manage finally.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine.’ Another pause. ‘Well, not fine, of course. Or I wouldn’t be here. But I’m OK otherwise, I think. You?’

  ‘Oh, fine, yes. All things considered.’

  We’re like strangers discussing the weather.

  I take another long pull of beer. I’ve been so worried about Kate that I haven’t had time to get angry. But now, when for the first time in days I know she’s safe – not dead in a ditch, not raped or murdered – and I start to think of what she’s put me through, angry doesn’t begin to cover it. Without warning, I’m consumed with a rage so intense it snatches the oxygen out of the room.

  ‘Christ, Kate!’ I shout. ‘What in hell possessed you? You just vanished! Without a word! D’you know how worried I’ve been?’

  Silence.

  I slam the bottle on the counter. ‘Couldn’t you have called, at least?’ I demand. ‘Left a bloody message? Jesus, Kate. I thought you’d been kidnapped or murdered!’

  I take another beer out of the fridge and open it the same way I did the first. I finish half of it in one gulp, forcing my temper back under control. Still Kate says nothing, though I can tell from the sound of her breathing that she’s still there.

  ‘The police wanted to know if you’d been depressed,’ I say tightly. ‘I suppose they thought you might have killed yourself. Then they asked if there was another man.’ I laugh harshly. ‘You should have seen the bastard’s face when he let that one drop. Loved every minute of it. Your little game has turned me into a bloody laughing stock. Whatever you’re playing at, I hope it’s made you happy.’

  ‘Of course it hasn’t made me happy,’ Kate says finally. ‘This isn’t some kind of perverse game, whatever you might think. I didn’t set out to upset you. This isn’t really about you . . .’

  ‘You’re my wife! You left me! How can that not be about me?’

  She sighs. ‘The world doesn’t revolve around you, Ned. I realize you’re upset, but—’

  ‘What about Agness?’ I interrupt furiously. ‘She’s been worried sick. How could you do this to her?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t do this to anyone. I’ve only been gone five days, and I’m sure the children have managed. They’re not babies.’

  Babies. The word reverberates between us. I spent most of last night going over and over in my head why she left. I don’t know where I could have gone wrong. I took her to the hospital for the D&C and stayed with her till she came round. I drove her home, made her soup, bit my tongue when she snapped at me over nothing. I treated her with bloody kid gloves for weeks. I kept out of her way as much as I could, and didn’t mention the baby in case it upset her. I didn’t even say a word when she didn’t want to have sex. Frankly, I don’t know what else I could’ve done to make her happy, but clearly I screwed up somewhere along the line. Things evidently aren’t going to get back to normal until I make an apology. I just wish I knew what the fuck it was for.

  I grit my teeth. ‘About that. The – you know. The baby.’

  ‘Don’t,’ Kate says quickly.

  ‘Tell me. Is that what this is all about?’

  ‘It’s not that simple . . .’

  I cough nervously. ‘Because I get it. The hormone thing. I mean, it was only, what, a month or two ago . . .’

  ‘Ten weeks,’ she says stonily.

  ‘Well, there you are, then,’ I offer awkwardly. ‘Hormones all over the place. It’s my fault. I realize I should’ve been a bit more supportive—’

  ‘Supportive? Ned, you said you were glad our child had died!’

  Why do women always have to talk about things? Why can’t they just get through them and keep their mouths shut?

  I shift uncomfortably, switching the phone to my other ear. ‘Come on, Kate. I didn’t exactly say that. And it’s not like something happened to Agness or Guy . . .’

  ‘What are you saying? That it didn’t matter? It wasn’t a real baby?’

  ‘Christ, you don’t have to yell. I said I’m sorry. I don’t know what else you want from me.’

  ‘No. You never do,’ she says bitterly.

  I finish the second bottle of beer. God knows I didn’t want another kid, but despite what Kate thinks, I didn’t wish it dead either. I’d never tell her this, it’d only make everything worse, but I’d actually started to come round to the idea of a new baby. Got a bit teary-eyed myself when I realized it wasn’t going to happen after all. I was looking for the insurance papers in Kate’s office one afternoon the week after it all went wrong, and I found this tiny Babygro she’d hidden away in a drawer. The length of my forearm. I can remember holding Agness that way when she was born, her head in the palm of my hand, her tiny feet in the crook of my elbow. Never forgotten it.

  ‘Fine,’ I sigh. ‘Fine. We can talk about it tomorrow when you get back.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m ready to do that yet, Ned.’

  I freeze. It hadn’t occurred to me she might not come back.

  ‘Well, when will you feel “ready”?’

  ‘Ned, this isn’t just about the miscarriage. I’ve been feeling unhappy for a long time – I didn’t realize how unhappy until now. Work, Eleanor, the way the kids are around me. Something has to change. I need a bit more time to think about what I want before I come home.’

  ‘You can’t just stick me with the kids!’ I exclaim. ‘How am I sup
posed to manage?’

  ‘The same way I do, I should imagine.’

  She sounds different. Steely, and not in her usual hardarsed business way. It’s like everything’s suddenly up for grabs.

  ‘Oh, very funny,’ I snap. ‘You only cope because you have me at home, remember? And what about your bloody mother? Am I supposed to look after her, too? I have a job too, you know. How am I going to get everything done and write as well?’

  ‘It’s only for a few more days. Please, Ned. Don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.’ She hesitates. ‘Can I speak to the children?’

  ‘How many more days?’

  ‘I don’t know. I didn’t plan any of this, Ned. It just . . . happened. I don’t expect you to understand. I’ll be back soon. Can you just trust me?’

  ‘So I’m supposed to just sit here and wait till you decide you’re ready to come home?’ I demand, hurt and confused. ‘Fine, if that’s the way you want to play it. I’m certainly not going to come out there and beg you to come back. Just don’t expect me to still be here waiting when you finally come to your senses.’

  I slam down the phone, which promptly falls off the wall and smashes on the tiled floor.

  ‘Nice going, Dad,’ Agness yells, storming into the kitchen. ‘She’s never going to come back now!’

  Kate

  For a moment, as I stare up at the ceiling and watch thin strips of sunshine spill through the shutters and play across the whitewashed walls, I don’t remember where I am. And then, as it does every morning, it all comes rushing back on a wave of guilt.

  Sawyer 2 leaps onto my stomach to demand his breakfast, and with a sigh I flip back the covers and get out of bed. It’s Monday: a week to the day since I left. I can’t believe I’m still here. I hadn’t realized until Ned asked me two days ago when I was coming back that I wasn’t yet ready to. I’d assumed that sooner or later he’d find me and then I’d go home; I was almost as surprised as he was when I said I was staying. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand about the baby, or that he still wanted to brush it all under the rug. It wasn’t even the infuriating dig about my hormones. It was the fact that he assumed I would just come back, without ever really understanding – or caring – why I’d left.