by Nicole Trope
‘Stay home and paint,’ he said when they married. ‘I can take care of you. Do what makes you happy.’
It only took a few months before she realised her mistake but by then she had begun to question herself, to doubt her abilities.
‘You couldn’t even get a job stacking boxes with your ridiculous degree and I’ll tell you something for nothing—no one wants to buy pictures of landscapes anymore.’
She had packed her case over and over again, mentally left him on countless occasions, but every time she was about to take the final step she found herself wondering, ‘What if he’s right? What if I am useless?’
‘I will go now,’ she thought the night she put his dinner plate down in front of him and he glanced at the reheated leftovers from the night before and without even shifting in is seat lifted the plate and hurled it across the room where it shattered against the white wall.
‘I fucking hate leftovers—idiot.’
She took a cloth and wiped away the mess and then she scrambled a couple of eggs for him. It was only after she climbed gingerly into bed that night, moving slowly and trying to prevent the mattress from dipping that she realised she hadn’t eaten dinner herself.
‘How can I still be here?’ she thought. ‘Why do I stay when I could just go?’ Her heart raced as she planned her escape and tried to drown out his voice in her head. ‘You wouldn’t survive a fucking minute out in the real world without me. Not you and not your mother.’
‘I’ll get a job, some job, any job and I’ll take care of both of us. I can get help. Can I get help? What if I can’t pay for food? What if I can’t pay rent? What if I need the doctor? What if mum gets worse? I can manage. I know I can manage. I’ll go tomorrow. I’ll go after I’ve taken the test. The test will be negative, the test will be negative, the test will be negative.’
They had not been trying for a baby and they had not-not been trying. Some nights he asked her to join him on the couch. He stroked her hair. He smiled when she said something. Some nights he would ask her when she was coming to bed.
‘You’ve been married for three years already,’ her mother joked. ‘That’s enough time for fun. I want to meet my grandchild.’
‘We’re not ready,’ she had murmured.
‘Maybe it will change things,’ she thought as she watched the second line blast into focus. She wonders now how many marriages are held together with band aid babies. ‘I can’t go anywhere now.’
She waited until a Saturday night to tell him. She judged the moment, somewhere between the second and third scotch. His body relaxed and his voice mellowed and he fell prone to memories of happier times.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, holding the test to prove herself.
He was quiet for a moment and then he hauled himself off the couch and enclosed her in a hug. ‘That’s amazing. That’s wonderful. Just what we need.’
‘Is it?’ she had wondered. ‘Is it just what we need?’
He had been patient with her for a few weeks, especially when she could only drag herself from bed to toilet to throw up bile. He had been patient and then one day he was done with that.
‘It’s all in your head. Greg’s wife didn’t even stop her daily run. What the fuck is wrong with you? Why do you have to be such a drama queen? I can’t fucking go to work all day and then come home and cook.’
‘I should have gone,’ she thought, but she could barely move. The nausea was all encompassing. She thought about dying.
It got better. She got better and he came with her to the appointments and smiled at the flickering heart on the ultrasound screen.
‘It’s a boy,’ smiled the technician.
‘My little man,’ he murmured and she felt her heart contract, saw herself in the future pointing at the two of them in a park, ‘Those are my boys,’ she would say.
‘I was such an idiot,’ she whispers to the ceiling.
She has been at many tables full of women where the ‘if he …’ conversations come up.
‘I would leave if he cheated.’
‘I would leave if he hit me.’
‘I would leave if he said we couldn’t have another child.’
Glib sentiments from women sure in the knowledge that they would never have to make that choice.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she has always said. ‘I suppose it depends.’ And then she has remained quiet, waiting for the conversation to play itself out, wondering to herself exactly what it would take, especially since they now had a child and were forever tied to each other.
‘Well, I found out didn’t I,’ she thinks as she squirms a little on the foam mattress.
Even the meekest of humans has a breaking point.
It had been an ordinary Monday night. His key had slid into the lock; the tablets had been waiting and the whisky already cracking the ice cubes in the glass.
‘What’s for dinner?’
‘It’s roast chicken.’
‘I’m hungry now, let’s eat.’
‘I just need to get him down. I can give you your meal now and eat later.’
‘Can’t I even have one meal a day with my fucking wife?’
She had recognised the edge to his voice, the sharpness that meant something else was coming.
‘I’ll just put him in his cot quickly.’
She had rushed through the bedtime routine and known as she was doing so that the baby would not stand for it. Even at six months he knew how things should go.
‘Just go to sleep please,’ she begged him quietly as she pulled his door closed.
Downstairs she had served up the food, moving quickly and quietly. She placed everything on the table and then sat down, waiting for him to finish watching the news. ‘You said you wanted to eat,’ she screamed in her head but she remained silent.
Finally he stood up and came to the table.
And that was when the baby began his wailing.
‘I’ll just go to him, you eat,’ she said.
‘Sit the fuck down. It’s good for him to cry a little. My mother left me to cry and it never did me any harm. He can’t run the house. Eat your food.’
The wails grew louder, more frantic. Her breasts pulled and leaked a little. She cut her chicken into small pieces and pushed the food into her mouth, swallowing it with gulps of water.
The cries became desperate.
He banged his fist on the table and she shot out of her chair and up the stairs. She opened the door to the baby’s room and stepped inside only to be pushed out of the way.
He had followed her upstairs. He walked over to the cot and looked down at the hysterical child and then he lifted him up and held him close to his face. ‘You need to shut the fuck up mate. Your mother and I are trying to have dinner.’ He dropped the child back into his cot, where he lay stunned into silence.
‘Now let’s finish our dinner,’ he said to her and pushed her out of the room.
She had followed him back downstairs and choked down a few more bites. Only when he was prone on the sofa did she go back upstairs to her child’s room.
He was lying, unwrapped and curled around his blanket, alone, asleep. His body was small, taking up as little space as possible. Usually his limbs would have made their way out of the wrap and he would be reaching to take up as much territory as he could. He looked older somehow, as though he had learned something new, something terrible.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered and then not able to help herself she had picked him up and nudged him awake, pushing her breast into his mouth. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered again and again. She swiped at her wet face as he fed, not wanting the milk to be salted.
She had failed him. She had understood before he was born that she was a failure as a wife, a failure as an artist and a failure as a functioning adult in society. She had understood that because she had been told it over and over again, but her fierce love for her child had reassured her that she would not be a failure at motherhood. She would protect him from anything.
She would be the mother lion who would rip the heart out of anyone who tried to hurt her cub.
She knew she was a good mother, a great mother. He was happy and healthy and while he did not sleep well he was already crawling and he smiled and smiled and smiled.
But as she rocked him back to sleep she understood that now she was also a failure at being a mother. She had failed to protect her cub.
‘So, this is what it takes,’ she thought as she rocked. ‘This is what it takes.’
She had not returned to the bed that night.
‘He slept well last night,’ he said as he slurped his coffee the next morning.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes he did.’
‘A little bit of discipline is all he needed. They’re never too young to start.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’
She spent the day adding and subtracting numbers. She had nothing to her name and he would want to see his son. He would have him alone. He would be able to do anything to him. Anything. She looked at her hands and imagined her nails turning to claws. She felt her thin body grow in size. She felt the rumble of her voice in her throat. ‘This is what it takes,’ she thought.
She had known an idea would come to her and a few days later there it was. So easy, so pathetically easy.
He had not moved when she injected him, not even grunted. She had used the whole vial. Ten times what she gave her mother. She had to be sure.
There wouldn’t be an autopsy, surely? He was a big man, a sick man, a stressed man. Two heart attacks already. Everyone would understand. It was almost expected.
She listens to her baby move in his cot. His arms have come out of his wrap. He raises them over his head. He has forgotten his terrifying experience. He has forgotten this time but she knows that it would only have gotten worse.
She takes a deep breath and feels the air fill her lungs. He is gone. She can feel it but she needs to see it. She rolls off the mattress and stands up.
In the bedroom his body is completely still. She places two fingers on his neck and waits but there is nothing. He is no longer there.
She covers him up with a blanket and takes off his shoes. He had not even been able to do that.
‘He went for a nap and he was so tired I thought it best to let him sleep,’ she rehearses.
She turns to go back to the baby’s room and then stops and walks back over to the bed. She leans over him and whispers in his ear.
‘Roar,’ she says.
‘Roar.’
MORE BESTSELLING BOOKS BY NICOLE TROPE
The Boy Under the Table
e-isbn: 9781742695907
Tina is a young woman hiding from her grief on the streets of the Cross. On a cold night in the middle of winter she breaks all her own rules when she agrees to go home with a customer. What she finds in his house will change her life forever.
Across the country Sarah and Doug are trapped in limbo, struggling to accept the loss that now governs their lives.
Pete is the local policeman who feels like he is watching the slow death of his own family.
Every day brings a fresh hell for each of them.
Told from the alternating points of view of Tina, Sarah, Doug and Pete, The Boy Under the Table is gritty, shocking, moving and, ultimately, filled with hope. A harrowing glimpse into the real world behind the headlines, this is a novel of immense power and compassion-one that will not fail to move all who read it.
Three Hours Late
e-isbn: 9781743434536
The terrible secrets of a marriage, the love that can turn to desperation, the refuge and heartbreak of being a parent, the fragile threads that cradle a family.
Once, so very long ago, she had watched him like this when he came to pick her up from a date... Her stomach fluttered and burned with infatuation and desire. She would watch him walk up the path and think, 'This must be love.' But that was so very long ago. Now Liz is wary and afraid. She has made a terrible mistake and it cannot be undone.
Alex believes that today will be the day she comes back to him. Today will be the day his wife and young son finally come home. Today they will be a family again.
But Liz knows that some things can never be mended. Some marriages are too broken. Some people are too damaged. Now the most important thing in her life is her son, Luke, and she will do anything in her power to protect him.
So when Alex is a few minutes late bringing Luke back Liz begins to worry and when he is an hour late her concern grows and when he is later still she can feel her whole life changing because: what if Alex is not just late?
The Secrets in Silence
e-isbn: 9781743434963
There was so much anger brewing in the child that sometimes Alicia feared for all of them. And now she had gone and done this terrible thing. This terrible, terrible thing.
Tara has lost her voice. She knows there was pain and fear but she cannot remember anything else. Now she can only answer the questions with silence. Minnie has buried her voice for years, losing herself in silence and isolation, keeping her secrets safe and her broken heart concealed. Liam finds refuge in silence; it is a place to go to when he cannot get the words out. Kate cannot speak for herself just yet.
People are only separated from each other by moments, by fate and coincidence.
One teenage mistake, one shocking choice and one terrible night will lead to courage found, voices raised and the truth finally spoken.
A stunning novel about secrets and silence - and how sooner or later the truth must be spoken. Another hard-hitting, gripping and unputdownable read from the queen of white-knuckle suspense and searing family drama.
Nicole Trope is a former high school teacher with a Masters Degree in Children's Literature. In 2005 she was one of the winners of the Varuna Awards for Manuscript Development. In 2009 her young adult novel titled I Ran Away First was shortlisted for the Text Publishing Prize. Her previous adult fiction titles include The Boy Under the Table (A&U 2012), Three Hours Late (A&U 2013) and The Secrets in Silence (A&U 2014).
