‘She wouldn’t stop, either. She was tired and hungry but she carried on while I cooked dinner. She was wrapping torn-up bits of sheets around the door handles by the time it was ready.’
‘And later?’
‘She calmed down a bit. I made her eat and then Gabs woke up and needed feeding, and by the time she’d finished she was so tired that she went to bed. The next morning she was a bit more sanguine, shrugging and saying she’d gone a bit over the top and removing some of the padding!’
‘So, it was just a one-off?’
‘I think so, but…’
I waited.
‘She’s so over-anxious, Ben. I don’t know if it’s normal or maybe there’s something more to it. She doesn’t seem to find it as easy as I’d have imagined. I’m worried that maybe she’s got some sort of postnatal depression or something.’
I offered something along the lines of, ‘Maybe she should see someone?’ But I don’t know if she ever did. I don’t know if Eric really wanted her to. At the time, I think he just wanted to talk.
And almost on cue, as I am thinking this, as I’m putting on my coat and getting the buggy out ready to wheel Iris to the shops, my phone vibrates in my pocket, and I take it out and identify the caller’s number.
It’s Eric.
‘Hello.’ I try to sound neutral.
‘Ben, it’s Eric.’
‘I know.’
‘Listen, is this a good time to talk?’
‘It’s a bit late,’ I say.
‘Do you want me to call back later?’
He doesn’t seem to get it. ‘I meant I thought you would have called before now.’
‘I know, Ben, and I should have done. It’s just – well, I’m really sorry about what’s happened with Iris. It’s terrible news and I’m so sorry and I know that we are partly responsible…’
‘Then why didn’t you call?’ I ask. ‘Why didn’t you call me when you found out? Sally called last week. Other people have called or emailed or written. I kept waiting to hear from you or Isobel. But nothing. Why didn’t you do anything?’
‘I’m sorry, Ben. Believe me. I wanted to call, but…’
‘Then what stopped you?’
‘I was angry.’
‘Angry? Why were you angry?’ I raised my voice and Maggie, who was in the kitchen, came to the doorway holding Iris and looked at me questioningly.
‘Eric,’ I mouthed to her.
‘I was angry with Isobel,’ Eric said. ‘I know I’m responsible too. I do know that. But I was angry with Isobel. I know I should have called you as soon as I heard, and I’m really sorry I didn’t, but I wanted Isobel to do something.’
‘Well, she didn’t.’ I don’t count her text.
‘I know, and I’m sorry that I didn’t either,’ Eric says, and then waits as if he wants me to say something.
‘If that’s what you called to say, I’m about to take Iris out to the park,’ I say, adding, ‘She gets bored easily now.’
‘Sorry,’ Eric says again. ‘Should I call back later.’
‘No, we’ve got friends coming for lunch.’
‘OK,’ Eric replies, and that’s it. He hangs up.
‘What did he say?’ Maggie asks.
‘Nothing much.’
‘He must have said something.’
‘He said he was sorry about Iris and he was sorry he hadn’t called before,’ I tell her.
‘And have they got the letter?’
‘I presume so,’ I say. ‘I guess that’s what prompted him to call. But he didn’t mention it.’
‘Why didn’t you ask?’
‘I don’t know.’
It’s true. I’m not sure myself why I said so little to Eric. I’ve been wanting him to call, but when I heard him on the other end of the line it was Eric, and I don’t argue with Eric. This is really between me and Isobel. I think Eric knows that too, and that’s why he said so little.
Isobel, Saturday morning
‘What did he say?’ I ask Eric as he comes in from the garden and puts his phone in his pocket.
It’s Saturday morning. Eric came in late last night, tired and hungry and keen to go to bed, but we talked briefly first, and he said he’d call Ben this morning, before we did anything else. He went into the garden because the house is too full of children. But we have the kitchen to ourselves when he comes back in.
‘Not a lot,’ he says, closing the door to the garden.
‘But he must have said something?’ Eric was hardly gone two minutes, but still.
‘He sounded angry.’
‘Obviously, but what did he say?’
‘Really, he hardly said anything. I said I was sorry that I hadn’t called and he said he was too. And angry. Angry that neither of us had been in touch. And then he said he had to go.’
‘So he didn’t say anything about this letter.’
‘No.’ Eric is fiddling about with the kettle and now it’s me who feels angry – with him. I wonder if there is something he’s not telling me.
‘But did you ask him?’
‘Ask him what?’
‘Why they sent the letter?’
‘We know why, don’t we, Bel?’ He turns round to face me now. ‘It was all there in writing, clear enough.’
‘But I thought that was why you were going to call him. I thought you were going to try to find a way round all this.’
‘It was. I did. But he didn’t want to talk.’
‘So you just left it?’
‘I didn’t just leave it. I phoned him and I apologised for what’s happened – for our part in that. One of us needed to do that, and you never did. You’ve had a whole week and you haven’t done anything.’
‘I didn’t know quite what or how – ’ We’ve been through this. Our lives are beginning to feel strangely Groundhog Dayish. The shock of finding out has worn off, and the discussions we keep having are becoming increasingly familiar.
‘I didn’t say anything about the letter. Ben didn’t say anything. He was about to go out with Iris.’
‘So will you call him later?’
‘I asked him, but he said they were having friends round.’
I try not to let my fury at his unsatisfactory answer show. ‘And so you left it like that.’
‘Yes, I left it like that, Bel. He’s my oldest friend, for fuck’s sake. I phoned him and he made it very clear he didn’t want to talk to me. How do you think that made me feel? What was I supposed to say?’ There’s an edge to Eric’s voice and it’s not anger. I think he’s upset.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, going over to where he’s standing. I put my arm out to touch him but he moves away.
‘Don’t, Isobel,’ he says. ‘Just don’t.’
‘I don’t understand – ’ I begin.
‘What don’t you understand? What was I supposed to say to him? Sorry that your daughter’s deaf and that we caused it and I know that life’s going to be harder for you and Maggie but we can’t do anything about that so could you call off the solicitors? Sorry that Isobel never bothered to get in touch herself but she was busy helping the boys with their homework?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Eric. You know I just thought it might be easier if you spoke to him. He is, as you keep pointing out, your oldest friend, and I, as you also keep pointing out, am clearly the one in the wrong. You could have told him all that. You could have slagged me off behind my back.’
‘Is that what you think I’m like?’ Eric asks, infuriating me further with his ability to retain some form of self-righteousness no matter where an argument leads. ‘You think I’d call him just to start slagging you off?’
‘That’s not what I meant?’
‘Then what did you mean?’
‘I just feel sometimes that your friendship with Ben is more important than our marriage.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Eric responds. ‘Especially given the way you and Ben are sometimes.’
‘What do you mean?’ The words are out
and I wish I’d not asked them. Does Eric know more than he lets on?
‘That you’ve never quite managed to let go.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ I protest – perhaps too much. ‘Ben was a good friend to me when I first met him. I met you through him. I probably would have lost touch, if it hadn’t been for your friendship.’
‘You really are more self-centred than I ever would have thought,’ Eric says, and I am too stung to reply. ‘You must have known that Ben had a bit of a thing for you. He adored you and I never blamed you for not feeling the same way, but you must have been aware of it. Even after we were married, until he met Maggie he was still hung up on you – and you let him be.’
‘Well, if it bothered you so much – ’ I begin.
‘It did bother me, yes,’ Eric says, and I begin to panic. ‘It bothered me when I first met you because I could tell how he felt, even though he never said anything. He knew I liked you, he never said anything that suggested he wasn’t happy that you and I got together, but I know that must have hurt him.’
‘I knew that too,’ I say, not willing to allow him to portray me as totally insensitive.
‘Then you should have let him go sooner,’ Eric says. ‘And yes, maybe I should have done something too. Maybe I would have been a better friend to Ben if we’d seen less of him, but partly…’
‘Partly what?’ I ask, curious and fearful too.
‘You,’ he said simply.
I say nothing, waiting for further elaboration.
‘The way you were with the kids, the way your focus shifted… sometimes I felt I’d lost sight of you. I needed someone around who still saw you as you used to be. It helped me.’
‘I don’t know what to say,’ is all I can say. I’ve no idea how long Eric has felt this way. Does he really think I’ve changed so much? Am I really such a disappointment?
‘Well, I’m not going to let him just do this to us,’ I say, decisive where before I have not been. ‘It’s affecting us now too, Eric – all of us. I know it’s awful, what’s happened to Iris, but we can’t just let Ben and Maggie ruin our lives as well.’
‘I don’t suppose they want that, either,’ Eric says.
‘Don’t they? Then why are they doing this, if not to get back at us?’
‘They must have been advised,’ Eric says quietly. ‘Maybe the doctors told them. Whoever it was probably isn’t aware of the nature of the relationships between us all. Maybe they just want to do what’s right by Iris.’
Christ, how can Eric be so bloody reasonable? ‘And what about what’s right by us?’
‘We’ll just have to deal with it, Isobel,’ he says, his voice irritatingly measured.
‘So what do we do now?’
‘As I’ve said, we’ll have to find a solicitor ourselves and get some advice,’ Eric says, but we are interrupted by Gabriella, who comes down for breakfast.
‘What’s going on?’ she asks, looking from me to Eric.
‘I thought I might take the boys to Bowlplex this morning,’ Eric says, though he must know as well as I do that that’s not what she’s asking. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m going busking with Lucy,’ Gabby says.
They do this from time to time, Gabriella and her friend Lucy: head out and play a few songs on the streets of Brighton. Lucy plays guitar and sings, and Gabs plays French horn and sings harmonies. They look good together and they sound lovely, and they clean up, too. They make more money in half an hour than I could ever hope to now, having been out of the workplace for so long.
I look through the ads in the paper every now and then, wondering what I could be qualified to do and how much I might earn if I did try to start working again. It’s depressingly little on both counts.
I don’t regret having given up work. I wouldn’t have missed out on the kids’ early years, could not have handed them over to anyone else. But now they are getting older and I have a bit more time on my hands I regret slightly not doing anything to keep my options open. I wish I’d planned things a bit more, instead of letting them just happen to me.
After the initial shock of finding out I was pregnant I was in a strange phase of almost believing it was never going to happen: that, if I carried on as normal and ignored the flutters that were getting stronger ever day, it might somehow all go away. Perhaps the pregnancy would peak and reverse and my body would gradually reabsorb the growing infant inside me, returning to the point before I was pregnant.
I was thirty-two weeks pregnant, physically fine although emotionally still up and down, when it happened.
I was on a plane flying back from Krakow with a handful of colleagues. It was a fact-finding trip and we’d ended the three days of visiting various industrial areas in a restaurant in Krakow, eating dumplings. I hadn’t been eating for two, but the travelling had made me hungry, and the warm dough of the stuffed pierogi satisfied my craving for stodge.
I’d eaten a lot, and I’d thought I was simply paying the price for overindulging when I began to feel a little queasy and my stomach began to ache as we boarded the plane. By the time we’d taken off the ache was more intense. I could only liken it to a bout of food poisoning I’d had when I was in India, and I began to curse myself for pigging out.
‘I think I ate too much last night,’ I said to a colleague, now a minister, edging my way down the aisle to the toilet at the back of the plane, hoping the walk might ease the pain.
‘Are you OK?’ Helen asked, seeing the expression on my face.
‘I think I might have food poisoning. I’ve got terrible stomach pains.’
‘How often are you having them?’ She looked concerned, but even then the implication of what she was asking didn’t dawn on me. ‘And when did they start?’
‘In the night,’ I told her. ‘They weren’t bad at first, but they seem to be getting worse.’
My body suddenly cramped and I had to lean forward and breathe deeply to try to contain the pain. That was when Helen pushed the button to summon a member of the cabin crew.
‘Isobel,’ Helen said, so gently that it still makes me cry when I think of it. ‘I think you’re in labour.’
The maternity unit in Redhill where Gabriella was born was the closest by ambulance to Gatwick Airport. The staff there couldn’t have been nicer, and the care they gave her couldn’t have been better, but it was still a good hour’s drive from home, and beyond the first week, when I too needed medical attention, we couldn’t stay there.
That was the very worst part of it: leaving her there, in an incubator, tubes and breathing apparatus keeping her alive, having to go back to our London flat, knowing we had a baby out there in the world but not with us.
Helen came to visit and she was kind and funny in a good way. She made me laugh at myself for being so clueless, for really having had no idea that I’d been going into labour.
‘I wonder what would have happened if you’d not been there,’ Eric said to her. ‘She might have gone and had the baby in the toilet of the aeroplane.’
I shuddered to think. Once Helen had raised the alarm, the stewardess seemed to know what to do. She was ready to deliver the baby if necessary, but thankfully it wasn’t. If Gabby had actually been born before we got to hospital we wouldn’t have her now.
The moment Helen said to me, ‘I think you’re in labour,’ my mindset changed. I knew that I loved this baby more than anything in the world and that if anything happened to it I would be devastated. All that fear that I might not be able to love the child went out of the window. Seeing her tiny spoon-sized body for the first time was like falling in love ten times over. Worrying that she might not survive, while she stayed in the intensive care unit, was like the pain of losing my mother, but magnified. That sounds like a terrible thing to say, because I loved my mother and I still miss her desperately, even more so now, but I knew that I could cope and had coped with that loss. I didn’t think I could cope with losing this baby.
Dad cried the first time, when
he saw us both. He looked at Gabriella, lying in her little fishtank of an incubator, and he wept.
He kept apologising. ‘I’m so sorry, Bel. I’m so terribly sorry.’
And I kept saying, ‘Please don’t say that,’ because I thought he thought she wouldn’t survive and he was already commiserating with me for losing her.
But he wasn’t. He was sorry that I had to go through what I was having to go through. He said he couldn’t bear seeing the pain I was in.
And I was. All mixed up with the joy of being a mother was the terrible pain of parenting: the almost manic desire to protect your offspring from whatever the world might throw at them, and the terrible, paralysing fear that you could not possibly do that.
Bringing her home heightened that fear. I was on my own then. I was responsible for this tiny being. I was the one that would have to make decisions that would affect her future. Suddenly all the little decisions, the sort I’d been so good at making at work, seemed huge, their implications enormous.
I didn’t realise, then, just how enormous.
Ben, Sunday evening
‘Tell him we’re sorry we missed his fiftieth,’ Maggie says.
She’s painting with Iris. Creating one of those butterflies kids make when they paint on half the paper then fold it so the image duplicates.
‘He wouldn’t have minded. He knows the reason.’
‘Well, tell him I’m sorry anyway,’ Maggie repeats, as if she’s getting at something. I’m unsure what.
‘I won’t be late.’ I take a guess that she’d rather I was here on a Sunday evening. ‘Anton’s got an early flight in the morning.’
Maggie already knows this. He called yesterday just after our friends had gone. I picked up thinking it might be Eric again and was surprised to hear Anton’s voice – I don’t think he’s ever called me before – but he said he was flying to a conference early from City Airport, staying in a hotel the night before, and did I fancy a drink?
And there was something in the way he said it that made me think he might be a sympathetic ear.
‘I don’t mind about the time,’ Maggie says, although she still seems a little narked. ‘It will be good for you to have a chat with him.’
Living With It Page 17
