‘You’re going to her, aren’t you?’
‘Alice.’
‘You were always going to.’ I let rip then. ‘I’m your last fling—your last shag before you settle down. You were always using me.’
‘Alice!’ He shouted the word, his lips white. ‘Shut up. This isn’t about Gemma…’
‘Then who?’ I screamed. ‘Everything was fine and then she turns up…’
‘Everything was not fine.’
‘Yes, it was!’ I insisted. ‘Look at Coogee—you said this was it, and now she’s back, bloody Gemma…’
‘This isn’t about Gemma!’
We went back and forth, or rather he carried on packing his stuff as I ripped it back out and demanded he stay—demanded that we talk—and he said he’d been trying to talk, and then I said…
Something… (I can’t remember—sorry…)
And he went to walk out.
And I was pulling at him and he was shaking me off.
And then it was Hugh’s turn to let rip.
In hindsight, had I let him go when he first wanted to, we might have had a chance. He might have come back the next morning and we’d have spoken. But I hadn’t let him go. I’d demanded that he stay, demanded that he talk.
Oh, my!
Did he talk.
‘We have a name for people like you, Alice.’
We—it was a ‘we’ I didn’t like: a sort of professional ‘we’ that I didn’t want attached to my name. I wanted him to go now, but Hugh wasn’t keeping quiet, Hugh wasn’t holding back.
‘FITH syndrome.’
I wasn’t going to listen to this—I didn’t want to argue; I didn’t care what it meant. I walked back along the hall to the living room, only that didn’t stop him.
‘Fucked In The Head.’
And he told me how he’d come to his diagnosis and I just sat there. I sat there silent, stunned, as he packed—properly this time—not just a toothbrush or a change of socks—no, he put everything he could into his backpack, and the stuff left over into carrier bags.
And I hated him for turning this on me—he was making an excuse, blaming me, when really he was just looking for a reason to go back to her.
He was standing in the lounge looking at me, breathing so hard you’d think he’d been running, just standing there for the longest time.
‘You need help, Alice.’
‘Just go to Gemma!’
‘Yeah, blame it on her, why don’t you? Instead of taking a look at yourself.’ He grabbed at my handbag and I moved to stop him. I pulled at his hands as he shook the contents out.
‘Just go.’
‘I am going.’
‘Then go!’ I was screaming. The neighbours were banging. But Hugh didn’t care about that.
‘I’m doing you a favour, you stupid bitch. For the last time ever, I’m doing you a favour!’
And he opened all the zips and took out the bottles, the blister packs and the prescriptions, the fags and the lighters. Then he went under the mattress and pulled out the credit-card bills, and I was grabbing at his arms and trying to stop him, but he shoved me off as easily as brushing off a fly. He stormed into the kitchen and turned on the waste disposal and tipped in my pills—only he didn’t stop there. He took out the wine casks, and then he went to my make-up bag and found some laxatives. He tipped out my protein shakes and broke all the eggs for my omelettes, and turned the waste disposal on again. I stopped fighting him then. I just sat there.
‘You know why I hate my job sometimes?’ Hugh said, and I didn’t look at him and didn’t answer. ‘Because I know where to look.’
And I knew as he closed the door that he wasn’t just talking about my bag, or under the mattress, the sink, the cupboards… Hugh was talking about my mind.
I just sat there when he’d gone.
Hugh did know where to look, because he’d seen everything.
I couldn’t have a drink.
I couldn’t have a pill.
I couldn’t even bloody kill myself as no doubt he’d hidden all the knives, so I just sat there in silence. I didn’t even wonder if he had gone to Gemma, because I knew it didn’t matter whether he had or not.
He had been preparing to leave anyway.
Just as they all did, just as anyone did when they got too close.
Or grew up.
Or got a life.
Or saw me.
I cried then—real tears this time. Cried so hard I was retching, I cried more than I ever have in my life.
Except once.
Forty-Eight
She was here.
That quickly.
It was a girl.
She was a girl.
A life.
And it ended.
She was as big as my hand, perhaps a little bit bigger, and they wrapped her up and brought her over and offered her to me. She wasn’t dead—she was breathing, she was pink, more red than pink—she was alive and I couldn’t stand it.
‘Just take it out!’ I could hear my voice. I was shouting. ‘Take it out.’
So they did.
And as I tried to wrap my head around it—as I thought it was over—Fi pulled me back to the world.
‘Sweetie, you need to hold your baby.’
I hated Fi. As she spoke on all I did was hate her. I don’t remember what she said word for word but it took eight minutes—eight minutes of her telling me to do something that I didn’t want to, to do the hardest thing imaginable.
‘You deserve this time.’
Shut the fuck up.
‘I will hold her for you if you want me to, but you need to have this time.’
I looked at the clock and it was only ten past eight.
An hour ago I had been in the bath…
Seventeen.
A day ago I had been worried about my music exam.
‘This is the most important decision you can make. Some time in the future…’
Now I was a mum.
And my baby was going to die.
So I let Fi bring it in.
She was wrapped in a lemon brushed cotton baby rug.
Fi held her for me and explained things to me.
She held her till I was ready to look properly; she explained that the soft, colourless hair on her head had no pigment—and I was twisting inside. I was twisting and folding over on myself and twisting in pain, because even if I could guess its potential colour I would never ever get to see it.
And she showed me her eyebrows, these little translucent lines that I wanted to touch but my hands stayed closed.
And she showed me her fingers, but I pulled at the rug because I needed more of her and I saw tiny, tiny toes.
I touched her foot and it moved; she felt my touch, and then I touched each little toe.
And then I wanted more, so Fi passed her to me.
It was like catching air.
She weighed nothing as I took her in my hands, yet she felt like everything to me as I drew her in.
‘Have you thought of a name?’
‘No,’ I said because I had tried so hard not to think of her—but now she consumed me, her skin, her tiny little hands. I wished I’d eaten better, wished I could feed her, wished I’d held on just a little bit longer and given her a tiny chance.
I thought she had stopped breathing. I felt a shudder of panic because she seemed so still and then she breathed again and so could I, but I knew for not much longer.
‘She needs to be named,’ Fi said gently, and because she had lived she would be registered and I was relieved to hear it.
‘Lydia,’ I said.
It’s my middle name.
No matter how I held her—no matter how my body tried to warm her—she grew colder. I saw her colour change from red to pink, to this mottled colour like when you’ve sat too close to a fire—and I held her closer and she got paler and sometimes she didn’t breathe for ages but I always knew there would be one more. I kind of knew that it wasn’t over. So much so…
that I knew when it was.
I wanted to kiss those lips, to literally give the kiss of life, but my kiss, I knew, was too fierce for that tiny mouth. I held my breath with my lips open and tasted your last breath and I didn’t breathe out—but you didn’t breathe in.
You were a whisper…
And I closed my eyes and I closed my mind and I tried to hear it.
They say that when you die, life rushes past you.
I disagree.
I think, if you are lucky, you get a glimpse at the truth.
I feel that I nearly died at seventeen with my daughter, or rather that I glimpsed it with her, because she was too fragile to do it alone. So for that moment I held her tiny fingers and I pressed my lips to her cool soft cheek and I whizzed to the white light with her.
I went beyond music.
I went beyond.
I saw time.
I saw my music practice timetable beside my piano.
My alarm clock.
My future.
My goals.
Mum’s goals for me.
This race to get there that was life.
Fi’s race to get home.
I saw my future if I could ever catch up.
Or my demise.
I could see the luxury I had in this moment—and all that had been denied you.
I sped through differences as you slipped away from me, through so many different scenarios.
Different father.
Different year.
Different mother.
But it was here and now and I was the mother you had and then, though I tried to reclaim it, I knew that you had gone.
My lips were on your cheek and I never wanted to let go.
You did.
You were ready.
You were so fragile and tiny, but you know what? You were so much stronger than me—you were ready to go.
You left me.
Don’t go.
Don’t leave me.
I could taste my tears but they didn’t matter because at least I could still feel you. There was a bit of your back that was still, not warm, but tepid. I don’t know if it was from the way I’d held you, but there was still warmth there and I held it.
Don’t leave me.
And then she had to go.
Fi, I mean—because you had gone already.
I felt it.
I felt the feeling I would feel, diluted a million times over in the years to come, but I felt it first today.
Saw Fi glance at the clock.
Heard the whisper from the day staff who came in to check we were okay, and who quietly questioned why Fi was still there—and I understood that she had to be back for her shift tonight.
I felt her leave before she said it.
‘You can hold her for as long as you need.’ I didn’t hear the rest—I just knew that Fi had to go.
And so had you.
I knew I could sit in this bed; I could hold you; I could rest here with Fi; I could stay till tomorrow, till next week, next month, next year, but nothing could change the fact your time had run out.
And the best, the absolute best, I could do for you was to end it now.
‘Take her.’
‘Sweetie.’ Fi was uncomfortable, as if she’d speeded up the end—but it had already happened.
I wanted Fi to do this.
I didn’t want to be on the next shift; I didn’t want it to be anyone other than Fi who took you.
I wanted her to be the one to take my baby.
To take Lydia.
And so she did.
Forty-Nine
No…’ It was four in the morning and poor Roz woke to my sobbing. ‘That’s not it.’
‘Alice?’ I could hear the worry in her voice; hear her talking to someone about Alice not being able to breathe again. ‘No, Roz, that’s not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is if your kids can’t talk to you.’
‘Alice, what’s going on? I’m coming over.’
But I was not listening, I was rambling on, trying to make her understand, that that wasn’t it, that wasn’t the Worst Thing That Can Happen. ‘Because you can be gay or straight, or sleeping around, or pregnant or depressed, but if that’s how you feel and you can’t tell your parents, how can they help you?’
She was over in minutes.
With… wait for it… Karan too!
Even in my self-absorbed, totally devastated state, I did manage a flicker of—ohmygod so Karan’s gay too.
Am I the only straight one?
How did I not see?
Her hot date hadn’t been with Trevor, it had been with Karan.
So that was why Karan had been so shirty that Sunday she did my hair and I bitched about Roz.
All of that I thought for a second.
Then I got back to woe is me.
Fifty
‘What did Bonny say?’
Lex had come into the room as they prepared to move me from the birthing suite to the ward. I didn’t look at him; instead I looked at the wall.
‘Bonny hasn’t rung back. I’ve rung a few times—you know what she’s like, she never has her phone.’
I had accepted that they knew now, had assumed he had told them. It had been hours, after all; then I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only eleven a.m. And it wasn’t like now—there was no Twitter to record your farts, no texts to demand where you were. Or maybe there were, just not in this family.
Bonny never turned on her phone.
You had been born, lived and died and it was still only eleven a.m. and no one else knew.
‘You don’t have to tell her.’ I didn’t argue the point now, I just said it. I wasn’t even scared of them knowing—there was just no point.
‘You can’t go through this alone, Alice.’
‘So stay in England,’ I said. ‘Because if you tell Bonny, that’s what will happen, and you know what, Lex? It won’t change a single thing.’
I was moved up to the ward.
Oh, the joy of the NHS.
I was on the maternity ward, though I did get a side room—not that it silenced the lusty cries of the other babies.
They almost could have been her—they just didn’t quite hit the note.
My heart leapt each time I heard one.
But it was always too deep, or too soft. It sounded like Lydia as much as a G sounded like a G.
Every time it’s different.
It was perfect music.
It just wasn’t mine.
Where was she?
Where was that energy?
I don’t think it’s fair.
Not on me, I hasten to add, on those poor bloody babies, because they’re all ten years old now and walking around not knowing that there had been a mad woman a few yards away who’d felt like taking a pillow from her hospital bed and shutting them the fuck up.
Permanently.
Oh, yes, I thought about it.
It was torture and the nurses thought they were being nice.
I hated Big Lip, who took me up and then gave a handover out of my earshot. I mean, what the fuck could she say had happened that I didn’t know already?
I hated the awkwardness of the student midwife who came in and took my temperature and checked my pad and had no idea what to say.
Then lunch came around.
Lunch.
I was an emergency admission so I got a cold lunch. I lay on my side and gazed at a club sandwich as a woman next door said lunch was late and she was putting in a complaint.
She had her baby.
I wanted to wee—and it would have been so much easier to let go, to lie there, to let someone change me.
I nearly did.
But I couldn’t.
With massive effort I staggered to the toilet, but I got dizzy.
‘You shouldn’t have got up on your own. Why didn’t you ring the bell?’
I’ve no idea who she was, but she found me on the loo and told me off.
Not nastily, she said she was worried, that I could have fainted. She told me off for getting up, for not ringing the bell, for not asking for help.
She shoved a flannel between my legs, wiped me, tucked in a pad and then pulled up my paper knickers.
She dealt with my bodily functions.
I dealt with breathing.
I hated that place.
I hated the social worker who called me Alex instead of Alice and made a lot of notes, despite the fact I said absolutely nothing.
Lex came in then.
He’d been crying, I could tell, and I hated what I’d done to him.
The funeral director could take care of everything, apparently.
I should, of course, have counselling.
Like that would change a thing.
They had already taken photos and they would make footprints and whenever I was ready I could make an appointment.
‘I don’t want my mum to know.’ It was all I said to the social worker.
‘You’re eighteen soon, Alex,’ she replied. ‘That’s your decision.’
‘Her name’s Alice,’ Lex sneered. ‘And can I suggest she’s in no fit state to make any sort of decision?’
‘I’m just telling her her options.’ Her pager went off and she excused herself, and then Lex’s phone rang and he stared at it for a long time before answering. I could hear Bonny’s voice in the still, silent room, hear her cheerful and laughing for once, even asking why he’d rung so many times. I saw Lex’s face screwing up as he braced himself to tell her.
What?
The drama was over.
I wasn’t in labour.
There was no chance.
Hurry home, darling—we need to squeeze in a funeral before we head off.
‘I just miss you.’ He forced himself to smile so that the words would sound truer. ‘But I’m glad you’re having a good time.’
They chatted for a moment longer and then he clicked off the phone and walked out of the room.
The lie was born.
When I wanted to go home from the hospital at three p.m.—when I demanded to go home—they didn’t try too hard to dissuade me. My placenta had been delivered intact, I had seen the social worker, and I had someone to take me—and the paperwork for her was taken care of. So I got to go.
I got to sit in the car with Lex.
Who silently drove.
I got to walk into my home.
And I saw the mug and the wine and I wanted to say that I hadn’t had any but I just stood there.
Putting Alice Back Together Page 18
