VIKING
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
penguin.com
A Pamela Dorman Book/Viking
Copyright © 2018 by Catherine Isaac
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ISBN 9780735224537 (hardcover)
ISBN 9780735224544 (e-book)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For my family
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Manchester, England,
2006
Sometimes life takes the best and worst it has to offer and throws the whole lot at you on the same day.
This probably isn’t an uncommon conclusion to reach during childbirth, but in my case, it wasn’t the usual cocktail of pain and joy that led me to it. It was that, although I was finally about to meet the tiny human who’d shared my body for nine months, those eight agonizing hours were also spent trying to reach his father on my mobile—to drag him away from whatever bar, club or other woman he was in.
“Did you remember to bring your notes, Jessica?” the midwife asked after I’d arrived at the hospital alone.
“I’ve got my notes. It’s my boyfriend I’ve mislaid,” I said, through an apologetic smile. She glanced up at me from under her eyelashes as I leaned on the reception desk of the delivery suite, waiting for the searing pain in my belly to pass.
“I’m sure he’ll be on his way soon.” Sweat gathered on the back of my neck. “I’ve left him a couple of messages.” Twelve, to be exact. “He’s at a work event. He probably can’t get a signal.”
At this stage, part of me was still hoping this was true. I always was determined to see the good in Adam, even in the face of clear evidence to the contrary.
“We never used to have men here,” she reminded me. “So if we need to do it without Dad, we’ll be just fine.” Dad. I couldn’t deny the biological facts, but the title sounded wrong when it was applied to Adam.
The midwife looked reassuringly matronly, with stout legs, a bosom you could stand a potted plant on and the kind of hair that had been in foam curlers overnight. The name on her badge was Mary. I’d known Mary for about three minutes, and already I liked her, which was good given that she was about to examine my cervix.
“Come on, lovely, let’s get you to a room.”
I went to pick up the overnight bag that the taxi driver had helped me with, but she swooped in and took the handle, staggering under its weight.
“How long are you hoping to stay?” she hooted, and I did my best to laugh until I realized another contraction was on its way. I stood in mute agony, screwing up my eyes but determined not to be the woman who terrified everyone else by screaming the place down.
When the pain subsided, I slowly followed Mary down the over-lit corridor, pulling out my phone to check again for messages. There were a dozen texts from my mum and Becky, my closest friend, but still none from Adam.
It wasn’t meant to be happening like this.
I didn’t want to be on my own.
No matter how worried I’d been about our relationship in recent months, right then I’d have done anything to have him with me, holding my hand and telling me everything was going to be all right.
I’d discovered I was pregnant the day after my twenty-second birthday. Even though it wasn’t planned, I’d convinced myself in the nine months that followed that I’d be a confident mum. That suddenly felt like fragile bravado.
“All right, dear?” Mary asked, as we arrived at the door of the labor room.
I nodded silently, despite the real truth: even in her capable hands, I felt alone, terrified and certain that this feeling would continue until Adam arrived to do his brow-patting, hand-clutching duty.
The room was small and functional, with thin patterned curtains that gave it the air of a dated Travelodge. The sky outside was the color of treacle, black and impenetrable, a pearlescent moon reclining into the shadows.
“Hop on,” said Mary, patting the bed.
I followed her directions to lie back and open my legs. She then coolly declared, “Going in,” before maneuvering her hand up my unmentionables as my eyes popped and I lost the ability to breathe.
“Four centimeters dilated.” She straightened up, smiled and snapped off her latex glove as the contraction started building. “You’re in labor, Jessica.”
“Exciting,” I replied, too polite to mention that this didn’t feel like a revelation; I’d already christened my kitchen floor with amniotic fluid hours earlier.
“The best thing to do is get on the birthing ball and let gravity help us out. I’m going to check on the lady next door, but don’t hesitate to use your call button. Is there anyone else who could join you? A friend? Or your mother?”
Becky didn’t live far, but Mum was always the only choice, as humiliating as it had been to call and explain that Adam was AWOL.
“I’ve got my mum on standby. If I haven’t heard from my boyfriend by 2:00 a.m., she’s going to drive over.”
“Excellent,” she said, before leaving me alone with an iPod full of Jack Johnson songs and a gas and air machine that I’d forgotten to ask how to use.
I called Mum on the dot of two. She arrived at six minutes past, in slim-legged jeans and a soft linen blouse, the whisper of Estée Lauder Beautiful clinging to her neck. She was carrying a massive gym bag, which contained her last-minute “birthing kit.” This consisted of a compact video camera, a goose down pillow, a tube of toothpaste, a copy of Woman and Home, some Neal’s Yard hand cream, a bunch of grapes, two large Tupperware boxes containing a selection of recently baked cakes, some pink towels and—I kid you not—a cuddly toy.
“How are you?” she asked anxiously, dragging up a chair as she tucked a wisp of short blond hair behind her ear. She wore the softest hint of makeup; she had good skin so never needed much, and her brilliant blue eyes were luminous.
“Okay. How are you?”
“I’m great. Over the moon to be here, in fact.”
Her foot was tapping against the bed as she spoke, the metallic sound clanking through the room. Mum always kept her head in a crisis, but I’d noticed her nervous tics lately; that night her leg had a life of its own.
“It can’t have taken you six minutes to drive from home?” I said, trying a suck of the gas and air for the first time, before coughing as it caught at the back of my throat.
“I’ve been in the car park since midnight. I didn’t want to get stuck in traffic.”
“If only Adam had been so thoughtful,” I muttered.
Her smile faltered. “Have you tried texting him again?”
I nodded and attempted to hide how upset I was. “Yes, but clearly, something was more important than being here.”
She reached over and squeezed my fingers. She wasn’t used to hearing me sound resentful. I hardly ever got really angry with anyone or anything, with the possible exception of our crappy broadband connection.
But you wouldn’t have known it that night.
“I hate him,” I sniffed.
She shook her head as the pads of her fingertips stroked my knuckles. “No, you don’t.”
“Mum, you don’t know the half of what’s been going on lately.” I dreaded filling her in, because that would’ve burst the bubble, the idea that my family life with Adam could ever compare with the one she and Dad had given me. I looked back on my childhood as largely blessed—secure and happy, even accounting for some difficult periods that were by now all in the past.
She exhaled. “Okay. Well, don’t get yourself worked up about that now. You’re never going to get this moment back. Are you hungry?” She opened up one of the Tupperware boxes.
I managed to smile. “Are you serious?”
“No?” she said, surprised. “I was starving when I had you. I got through half a lemon drizzle cake before my waters had even gone.”
My mum was a brilliant birth partner. She made me smile between contractions, kept me calm until everything felt so out of control that I couldn’t stop myself from screaming.
“Why haven’t they given you something for the pain?” she said under her breath.
“I told them I didn’t want an epidural. I did a natural birth plan. And . . . I’ve done yoga.”
“Jess, you’re trying to push another human being out of your vagina; I think you need more than breathing exercises and a candle.”
She turned out to be right. By the point at which I’d vomited for the umpteenth time, I was in the grip of such incomprehensible agony that I’d have sucked on a crack pipe if it’d been available. A muted sun began to blur through the window, and a different midwife—who’d probably introduced herself earlier, when my mind was on other things—stooped to examine me.
“Sorry, my love, you’re too far along for an epidural. You can have a pethidine injection if you want, but this baby is going to be born very soon.”
My legs started shaking uncontrollably, the pain catching my breath, robbing my ability to speak properly, or think rationally.
“I just want Adam here. Mum . . . please.”
She frantically fumbled with her phone to try to call his number. But she dropped the handset, cursing her clumsiness as she scrambled on the floor, chasing it around like a bar of soap in the bath.
Events after that are vague, because I wasn’t concentrating on phone calls or the needle in my thigh; I was delirious with the terrible and miraculous force of my own body.
It was about a minute and three pushes after the pethidine was administered that my baby made his entrance into the world.
He was a thing of wonder, my boy, with chubby limbs and a perplexed expression as he blinked his eyes and unscrunched his little face when the midwife placed him in my arms.
“Oh my God,” gasped Mum. “He’s . . .”
“Gorgeous,” I whispered.
“Massive,” she replied.
I’d always thought of newborn babies as delicate and helpless, but William was a nine-pound, four-ounce bruiser. And he didn’t cry, not in those first moments; he just curled into the warm curve of my breast and made everything all right.
Well, almost everything.
As I pressed my lips against his forehead and breathed in his sweet, new scent, the door crashed open. There was Adam, entirely disproving the theory that it’s better late than never.
I don’t know what was more overpowering as he approached us, the smell of another woman’s perfume, or the bitter reek of stale booze. He was still wearing last night’s clothes. He’d failed in an attempt to wipe the lipstick off his neck, leaving a violent, slut-pink smudge that started by his ear and ended on his shirt.
I suddenly didn’t want him anywhere near me or our baby—no amount of antibacterial hand gel would’ve changed the fact that he was a complete mess. In more ways than one. I wondered desolately how long ago I’d come to that conclusion.
“Can I . . . can I hold her?” he said, extending his arms.
Mum winced as I drew a sharp breath. “It’s a boy, Adam.”
He looked up, surprised, and withdrew his arms. He sat looking at us, apparently unable to say anything, let alone the right thing.
“You missed it,” I said, brushing away the sting of new tears. “I can’t believe you missed it, Adam.”
“Jess, listen . . . I can explain.”
Chapter 1
Ten years later,
summer 2016
I don’t know when I became so bad at packing. I was good at it once, in the days when I had the time and headspace to stock up on inflatable travel pillows and mini toiletries. It’s not volume that’s lacking; my old Citroën is bursting. But I have an unshakable feeling that I’ve forgotten something, or several somethings.
The problem lies in the fact that I didn’t make a list. Women of my generation are led to believe that lists
are the solution to everything, even if the world around them is falling apart. Right now, I’m beyond lists—there comes a point where there’s so much to do that stopping for something as indulgent as list making feels like pure folly. Besides, if I’ve forgotten anything, I can just buy it when we get there—we’re only going to rural France, not the Amazon basin.
If my packing has been haphazard, I’m not sure what you’d call William’s. The contents of his bag largely involve Haribos found under his bed after a recent sleepover, books with names like Venomous Snakes of the World, several water pistols and a selection of heavily spiced toiletries.
He’s only recently begun taking an interest in the latter after his friend Cameron decided turning ten was the time to start wearing deodorant to school. I had to gently point out to my son that walking round in a mushroom cloud of Lynx Africa wouldn’t get him very far in France without any actual trousers.
I jump into the driver’s seat, turn the key and experience the usual flicker of surprise when the engine starts. “Are you sure you’ve got everything?” I ask.
“Think so.” The flare of excitement on his face makes my heart twist a little. He’s been like this ever since I told him we’d be spending the summer with his dad. I lean over to give him a quick kiss on the side of his head. He tolerates it, but the days of him flinging his arms round me to declare, “You’re the best mum I’ve ever had,” are long gone.
William is tall for his age, gangly almost, despite an enormous appetite and the recent obsession he’s developed with Domino’s. He got his height from his father, as well as those liquid brown eyes, skin that tans easily and dark hair that curls at the nape of his neck.
As I’m five feet four, it won’t be long before he towers above me, at which point he’ll probably look even less like he belongs to me. My skin is pale, freckled and prone to turning pink in the slightest heat. The blond hair that skims my shoulders doesn’t curl like my son’s, but it’s not straight either; it has a kink that used to annoy me in the days when that was all I had to worry about.
“Who’s going to look after the house while we’re away?” he asks.
“It doesn’t really need looking after, sweetheart. Just someone to pick up the post.”
“What if someone burgles it?”
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