Thirty-Three
I would have got his phone in my lunch break except I had an unexpected appointment.
‘I just didn’t get the grades that were expected.’
‘By who?’
‘By anyone.’
I had sworn I wouldn’t go back, and I still hated her with a passion, but I sat in Big Tits’ office, because…
I don’t know.
It didn’t help: it was making things worse.
I knew, though, that I was looking for answers.
But I didn’t give her the questions.
I wanted to talk about Hugh.
I wanted to fix it before it unravelled.
Because of my tantrum the previous week, I had to pay for my last session and pay up front for this one.
It would be worth it for some insight into Hugh, I told myself.
Not that she’d let me talk about him.
Instead, she kept asking about me.
‘Did you expect better grades?’
‘Not really.’ I shrugged. ‘I mean, I can play the piano, but I’m not brilliant…’ I struggled to explain. ‘It was a difficult time. Bonny was emigrating, Dad’s girlfriend was pregnant.’
‘So you didn’t expect good grades?’
I didn’t answer.
‘So who did?’ Big Tits said. ‘You said you didn’t get the grades that were expected’
For fuck’s sake.
‘I didn’t get the grades I had aimed for.’ No bloody wonder kids topped themselves—ten years on and I had to explain why I had flunked my music A-level. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do—I could maybe have scraped into university on the second round, I was hoping to be a music teacher, but I was tempted to take the exams again…’ To be all that I could be. I didn’t say that bit, I heard it. I heard my voice say it to me and I wanted to cry. I wanted to fold up in two on the chair and cry and to say it.
To be all that I could be.
And I hadn’t been.
‘What did your mum want, Alice?’ Her voice was for once gentle, kind even, but I remembered then I hated her. I wanted to talk about Hugh.
‘Alice. What did your mum want? What did she say about your results?’
‘Mum wasn’t actually that bothered…’ That halted her. ‘She was worried because Bonny and Lex were struggling. Bonny was homesick, Lex had been arrested…’ I saw her lips purse, as if Lex was some sort of scum. ‘He’s nothing like that,’ I rapidly explained, ‘that was why it was such a shock, it was completely out of character. He got in a fight at some pub, but the charges were dropped. Of course, Bonny was upset and she was threatening to come home…’
She didn’t fill the silence.
‘I can’t remember who, if it was Bonny or me or Lex, but it seemed a good idea for me to take a gap year—and to come to Australia and cheer Bonny up while I worked out what I do.’
‘What did you do?’ Big Tits asked.
‘I came to Australia and I got a job.’
I moved into the youth hostel and I got pissed and partied.
I didn’t have to come home and I didn’t have to answer to anyone, so I did it some more.
I got a job, which meant I could party harder, so I did.
And I had friends and I got a flat and I partied some more and then the friends moved on and so I got some more. I partied and I got drunk and then when they moved on I partied harder.
I didn’t say it, of course, but my answer was the most honest I had ever given Big Tits.
‘Pretty much what I’m doing now.’
Not that she appreciated my honesty—she asked about Eleanor and I could not think of much to say. She asked about dad’s daughter Charlotte, who is nearly ten now and I’ve only seen her a couple of times so there wasn’t much to say about her either.
‘Alice.’ Lisa gave me a tired smile. ‘Being a psychologist isn’t like being a car mechanic.’
My head hurt.
‘It’s not like a car, where it doesn’t matter if you have no idea what’s going on under the bonnet.
‘You can’t drop yourself off and have me fix you.
‘I need to know things.
‘I need you to help me to understand you.’
‘And then you’ll fix me?’ My eyes darted with hope and then she shook her head.
‘Then I can help you to help yourself.’
Which I took as a no.
Thirty-Four
I really didn’t want to visit Olivia—I hate hospitals, and the only thing the maternity ward reminds me of is both my sisters’ rapid descent into PND.
I can remember both Bonny and Eleanor—eyes pleading with me to get this baby off their tit as various relatives snapped away with their cameras.
Still, Roz had organised the envelope and she was on my team so it was only right that I come along—and we’d been given an extra hour’s lunch break so I had no excuse.
Roz is so girly in some ways: she burst into tears when she walked into the four-bedded ward. I was rather more restrained (we still were hardly talking) and handed Olivia her present.
‘Are you better?’
It had been Olivia’s leaving do I had collapsed at, and I said I was fine now as she opened her present and Roz cradled the monkey.
I am not being horrible.
This baby was covered in hair. Its hairline stopped at its mono-brow and it had this down all over its body. And Olivia—who had always been sort of sassy and sexy and had bawled her eyes out when she found out she was pregnant and had even gone for an abortion—was suddenly like the Virgin Mary, taking the sobbing baby from Roz and offering it her breast.
I have never seen a nipple so big.
I thought she would drown the baby. I could see milk dripping and this huge, dark brown nipple being thrust down its throat and, worse, Roz was helping. She was shoving the baby’s face into this vast white pillow of a breast and telling Olivia she was doing great.
I felt like I’d landed in the Ukraine. I just didn’t understand anything they were talking about and, worse, she stopped feeding it and Roz brought the monkey over for me to hold. I’d missed breakfast and now lunch, and with the hospital smell and everything I also felt a bit sick, and then I looked up and there was Hugh.
I had seen him leave for work this morning but he looked different now that he was here. He had a couple of pagers in his jeans pocket and a big lanyard round his neck with his photo on.
Roz was delighted to see him.
So too was Olivia—I couldn’t believe that she knew his name.
I felt rigid. I was holding this very ugly baby and Hugh was assessing me. I knew that—I got that—because Roz was laughing and Olivia was chatting and I just sat there holding the monkey and not knowing what to do. I mean, he was my boyfriend and I was the only one in the room who didn’t know how to react.
Thankfully Roz was still in clucky mode and scooped up the babe and I headed out into the corridor with him.
‘What are you doing here?’ It was a reasonable question—he was a psychiatrist, this was Maternity. I had this false grin plastered on and I still felt sick. The smell of hospitals always makes me feel like that.
‘I do a ward round here each day.’
Of course he did—I mean, I’d heard of PND and all that—it was just… I never got the multi-faceted nature of his job. I just thought he was stuck with the loons, or that the occasional private patient lay on his couch and told him about their problems. It unnerved me that he walked amongst the normal.
And Olivia knew his name.
Was she having problems?
He suggested lunch and took me to the canteen where he bought me a club sandwich. He asked if I’d managed to get his phone—er, when? I pointed out, given that I was here. I saw him watching as I ate the chicken, cheese and avocado but left the bread.
We had sex that night but something shifted.
I don’t know what.
But something changed.
It just did.
&n
bsp; Thirty-Five
‘Alice, get up!’ It was way past the third and final call, but I was so tired I didn’t care.
I’d crammed in two hours piano and a three-hour shift at the burger bar and had fallen into bed at about eleven, just too tired to be careful.
Normally I dressed and undressed in the bathroom—there was no such thing as privacy in this place. Bonny was always wandering in to borrow something. Mum didn’t think she needed to knock. So for bed I had these massive flannelette pyjamas, which thankfully were fashionable at the time if you wore them with big fluffy boots.
I hated them but they did the job.
Still, last night I had been beyond tired and had just peeled off the disgusting burger bar uniform and fallen into bed in my bra and knickers.
‘Alice, I won’t tell you again… I’ve got to go soon…’ She pulled off the duvet. My hand went to grab it, to stop her, to cover myself, but it was too late.
I was lying there flat on my back, naked except for my bra and knickers, and my mum was standing over me.
‘I’m going to work—you need to get up!’
And I thought I’d been caught—I thought, she’s surely seen. I mean, she was standing there in her nurse’s uniform. She’s a nurse, for God’s sake, and I’m lying here practically naked. But then this was Mum we were talking about. She didn’t look to the side, or up and down, she didn’t look, she just headed to the wardrobe and started pulling out my school uniform as I pulled the duvet back over me.
‘I want you up and dressed before I leave.’
How could she not have seen?
My hand slid down to my stomach, to the hard mound that was there. It was not soft, not a slight roundness, and I pulled my hand away. I didn’t even wash, I just pulled on my uniform and then found my jumper and put that on and went downstairs.
‘What have you got a jumper on for?’
‘I feel cold.’
She put a hand to my forehead but I pushed it off.
‘You might be getting a cold. You do look a bit pale.’
Stupid bloody cow.
Stupid blind cow!
‘I’ll be home about four.’ She was making the lunches, and I poured myself a mug of tea as she chatted away.
‘I thought you had to be there at seven?’
‘I’m in Outpatients, I don’t have to be there till eight-thirty,’ Mum said. ‘Prenatal.’
Lucky them, then… to have such an observant, clued-in nurse looking after them.
I just stared into my mug. I almost said it. I don’t even think I was nervous at that point. I just wanted to say it, and watch her reaction.
But I sat in silence.
Thirty-Six
‘Sorry, your card’s been declined.’
I could feel the impatient line behind me suddenly curious; feel my face burning with colour as I rummaged in my purse to pull out another card.
Except I knew that one had already been stopped.
‘Oh.’ Attempting a casual shrug, I put down the phone I had been getting for Hugh. ‘My pay mustn’t have gone in.’
Flaming, embarrassed, I fled out of the shop, grateful that Roz hadn’t been there to see my shame. I’d finally agreed to have lunch with her, but first I had to get his phone and Roz stayed outside to cram in a few fags.
She wanted to talk.
Wanted to go back to how it was.
I couldn’t.
‘Did you get it?’
‘Nope.’ I shook my head. ‘They didn’t have the one he wanted.’
‘The guy needs a phone,’ Roz insisted, heading back towards the shop. ‘Come on, we’ve still got time.’
‘He can get it himself!’ I snapped, marching in the opposite direction. ‘I’ve got better things to do with my lunch break than look for phones for Hugh. I’m busy too.’
Thirty-Seven
You weren’t moving tonight.
Always you were still when I practised, then I would have a bath and you would move.
I dropped my hairbrush.
I’d read that if you brushed your conditioner through to the ends your hair would thank you within a week.
As it dropped into the water and hit the enamel you moved.
I felt it, I saw it.
I smiled.
Thirty-Eight
Even if it was awkward, even if she had lied, it had been so nice to have Roz in my life that I decided that I would cancel the bad and try to accept the good.
That we’d be friends again, just take it slowly.
But she’s like a puppy with a new toy.
After four weeks of near silence from me, when I started to come round, she should have slotted into my life a little more discreetly, in my opinion. But the day after we went out for lunch and my card was declined, almost as soon as I let her back in, she was knocking on the door.
She had forms Hugh had asked for.
Tax forms.
He had been setting up the phone that I had finally got for him.
I had no money, but Nic’s rent had pinged into my account and, yes, I should have paid the rent, but Roz was right. He needed a phone and he paid me back anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal.
Well, Roz came in and they spoke a mumbo-jumbo language as I escaped to the bathroom. I walked past the perpetually flashing light on the answering-machine. I had a bigger problem than debt collectors—this one was small and blonde and wanted to speak to Hugh, was begging, in fact, for him to pick up.
Hitting ‘Delete’ was bliss.
I had a new doctor.
I still had loads of Valium but I knew it ran out, so I had gone to someone else and she had given me some Kalmas.
Lovely, they were.
Like a glass of wine.
Not quite as good as Valium, but very, very nice.
They worked within twenty minutes and she had given me one hundred and twenty.
One to be taken as prescribed.
I took three and then I headed back out.
They were watching the news and Roz was making him laugh.
Then a news story came on about some woman who hadn’t known she was pregnant and had flushed it down the loo.
‘For God’s sake,’ Roz said, ‘how could she not know? How can she say she didn’t know?’
And I gave a half-laugh, topped up my wine and carried on watching the news. But my face was burning, just as it did during a love scene at the movies when I felt as if the whole cinema was watching me and gauging my reaction, just as it did when Dr Kelsey asked all those questions.
I couldn’t hear the scratch of Hugh’s pen any more and I was sure he was watching me.
I just felt as if he knew.
And Roz was wrong. That woman didn’t know. Well, of course she did, but she didn’t. I could see how it happened, I knew how it happened.
Because it had happened to me.
Thirty-Nine
I didn’t even pretend to kiss her back as Mum gave me a kiss on the cheek. She didn’t notice me flinch as her lips brushed my skin. She picked up her basket and waddled off to work.
I don’t think I was scared at that moment.
I was certainly angry—but I didn’t know why.
And maybe I’m slow, maybe I’m thick. I don’t expect anyone to believe me, because even now I can’t believe it myself, but until that point I didn’t really know.
I mean, I’d had a test ages ago.
I had a bump.
I hadn’t had a period in months.
I was deliberately, actively, covering my body, making up stories, hiding at every turn.
So, as Roz and everyone else says—every time some poor cow flushes a baby down the loo, or it turns up in a rubbish dump, or she arrives in Emergency with abdo pain and gives birth, or pops a foetus into her hand luggage and tries to head from home—she must have known.
No.
No.
No.
She didn’t know.
She couldn’t know.
Because w
hen she did, then it was real.
She didn’t know.
And as for me—well, I only really found out that morning.
Even though there was no one home, just in case, I wedged a chair against the door and took off my school uniform.
I took off my jumper and then my tie and shirt, and then I fiddled with the elastic band and safety pins that allowed a big enough gap in my skirt, and took it off. I took off my bra and pants and stood there and looked at myself in the mirror.
I moved in close and I couldn’t see my head, just my torso.
I was pregnant.
I stared at my breasts. They were big and had veins, but it was the areolas that held my attention. They were huge, and my nipples were thick and swollen…
And then, only then, did I stare at my stomach. I had a white, almost silver line down the middle. I could see my hip bones, but above that there was a firm mound. I didn’t touch it; I just stared at my torso in the mirror, my head chopped off. I stared at a pregnant torso and then I stepped back and there I was. There was my head on a pregnant woman’s body.
And was that the moment that separated me from the others—the one where I grew up and made decisions and took responsibility?
No.
I pulled on my uniform and raced down the stairs, because I didn’t want to miss my bus. I didn’t actually have to go in—it was a study day—but I wanted to practise my piece and the teachers were available.
Even before I got to the bottom step, I wasn’t pregnant again.
I swear, even before I got to the bottom step, I didn’t know that I was…
Forty
There had been a house fire on the outskirts of Melbourne.
Roz was stapling up forms at the table.
Hugh had come to the sofa and was sitting next to me. I was relieved that the news bulletin about the baby was over and we sat watching, hearing that a husband and three kids were dead, and then you saw the poor wife dashing down the street and being held back.
‘God…’ I turned my head in the direction of Roz, who was behind me. ‘We’re going to have a great week at work with that lot.’
Putting Alice Back Together Page 15
