by Jane Corry
As Joe pushed me roughly to the ground and unbuttoned my blouse, I remembered how ‘wrong’ and ‘lust’ could give you an inexplicable million-volt charge that was like nothing else. So strong that it made you melt and burn at the same time. It’s an exhilarating feeling when someone gives you permission to break all rules – especially when that person is yourself. Finally I felt free.
‘Quick,’ said Joe, soon after we’d finished. ‘Someone’s coming.’
I scrambled to my feet.
Only then, when I saw the disgusted look on the face of the approaching dog walker, did I feel the shame I should have felt before. Shame that might have saved me from this situation had I felt it sooner.
‘Go away,’ I said, my fingers trembling over my buttons. ‘Go away and never come back.’
Then I ran. Ran across the Heath, aware that I must have looked a mess. Ran down pavements and into the Tube, pressing myself against other sweaty bodies, conscious that I was smelling of ‘wrong’. Desperate to get back home for a shower. A long, hot shower to wash Joe Thomas away.
‘We must celebrate!’ Ed said when I got in. ‘Open a bottle.’ His face tightened. ‘Then we can have that talk you’ve been promising.’
The very sight of my husband’s face had filled me with such guilt that I insisted on going out for that bottle, just to get away.
Then there was the argument with Tony and Francesca outside in the corridor. That’s why I was so hard on him. Of course I felt sorry for Tony’s poor wife. But I lashed out at Tony because I recognized my own frailties in him. I despised him just as I despised myself.
The following night when I couldn’t put off that talk with Ed any more, I sat in the bathroom and tried to decide whether to leave him or not.
If I opened on a page with an odd number, I’d leave.
If it was even, I’d stay.
Page seventy-three.
Odd.
The page showed a picture of a happy family sitting round the table. The picture and the print swam before my eyes. Sunday suppers. Normal life. The kind that my parents and I should have had. The kind that Ed and I could still have if we stopped lying.
I don’t have to take the odd number fate has given me. Just as Daniel often rejected the heads. ‘You know deep down what you want, before the coin comes down,’ he used to say. ‘That’s why it’s such a great way to make a decision.’
And I knew, deep down, that despite Ed’s behaviour and mine, I still loved my husband. Joe had been lust. I shouldn’t have let myself go so far. Ed was my chance to turn my life around.
Yet sometimes you have to do something wrong before you can make things right.
That’s what I had to do now, today, just in case Joe’s tiny seed was already growing inside me.
So I came out of that bathroom and took Ed’s hand, leading him to our bed.
The following month I found I was pregnant. With a child that might belong to either man.
52
Carla
‘Carla? Can you hear me?’
It only seemed like a few minutes since someone in the ambulance had asked her the same question. But this was a different voice. This was Ed’s.
Carla’s first thought was that he had discovered the note with the spidery writing. She had put it in her bag, hadn’t she? But he might have gone through it. Ed had done that before on the pretext of ‘looking for change’.
‘It’s all right, Carla. I’m here now. And we’ve got a beautiful baby girl.’
A girl? Please no. If she had a girl it meant she might make the same mistakes that she and Mamma had. It would never end.
‘She’s very tiny, Carla. Just a few pounds. But they say she should be completely fine.’
How was this possible? She couldn’t even remember giving birth. Ed was lying.
He’d done it before to Lily. So why not to her?
His face was coming into view. He was bending over her. Kissing her cheek. His touch made her skin crawl. ‘You gave us all a terrible fright, darling.’
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she managed to say.
There was an edge to his voice. ‘I could have lost you both.’
‘What happened?’ she murmured.
‘Baby decided to come early.’ This voice was different. Carla tried to turn round to see where it was coming from, but everything hurt. ‘Just as well for us that she did. Turned out you had a low-lying placenta, dear, so we had to give you an emergency Caesarean. Caused quite a stir, you did! Would you like to see your baby, now?’
What baby? Carla couldn’t see one. She couldn’t hear one either. She knew it. Something had gone horribly wrong.
‘Intensive Care is just round the corner, dear.’ A nurse in green uniform came into focus now. ‘Legs still a bit wobbly, are they? Let’s ease you into this wheelchair, shall we? That’s the way.’
‘Is it healthy?’ asked Carla faintly.
‘She,’ said Ed firmly, ‘is a fighter.’ But she saw the look he gave the nurse. It spelled fear.
‘Here we are, dear.’
That was a baby? Carla stared at the incubator. A little rat lay inside. Its skin was so pale and translucent that it reminded her of a dead baby bird she had once found outside the old flat when they had lived near Lily and Ed. (‘Leave it alone,’ Mamma had squealed, before walking her briskly on to the bus stop.)
This ‘thing’ was not much bigger than the width of Ed’s hand. Wires were sprouting out of it. Its eyes were closed. A mask was covering the rest of its face, if that’s what you could call it.
‘She’s on oxygen at the moment, dear,’ said the nurse gently. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to breathe for herself in the next few weeks.’
Weeks?
‘I’m afraid you won’t be able to pick her up for some time, but you can talk to her.’
‘Babies can hear when you do that,’ butted in Ed. He sounded so knowledgeable, but at the same time smugly aware that he was the expert compared with her. ‘We used to talk to Tom all the time.’
‘But how can it hear if it’s so ill?’
‘You’d be surprised, dear. You can go home in a few days – the surgeon did a nice clean job, although you’ll need to rest and not lift anything heavy. You can visit baby every afternoon and evening.’ There was a little sigh. ‘We used to have a special place for parents to stay over, but I’m afraid that went with the cuts.’
Scarcely hearing, Carla continued to stare at the rat. Its puffed-up little stomach was rising and falling with a strange steady regularity. The rest of it could hardly be seen with the mask and wires. This was her punishment! This was what she got for taking another woman’s husband. And now she was going to be truly trapped – far more than before. How could she go back to work? Ed had already been against that idea, but it would be impossible if her child was sick.
Furiously, she turned on Ed. ‘Why did you get me pregnant?’
‘There, there,’ said the nurse, patting her shoulder. ‘You’d be surprised how many of my ladies say that. But you’ll change your mind when you get to know baby better.’
Ed was staring at her with a shocked look on his face. ‘Come on, Carla. You’ve got to be strong for our little girl.’
But this thing didn’t look like a girl – or a human being for that matter. ‘I don’t want to see it,’ she said, hearing her own voice rise in hysteria. ‘Take it away. I want my mother. Why isn’t she here? Get me the phone. Now. I need to speak to her.’
‘Carla –’
‘No! Stop being so controlling. Give me your mobile.’
Ed and the nurse were exchanging looks. What was going on?
‘Carla, darling, listen.’ He put his arm around her. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until you felt stronger. But your grandmother rang when you were in labour. I am afraid your mother has been ill.’
Carla stiffened. ‘How ill?’
‘She’s been treated for cancer for some time now. Your mother didn’t stay with an aunt that Christmas
. She was actually in hospital. In fact she’s been in and out since then too.’
Her mouth went dry. ‘But she is better now? She is coming over to see her granddaughter?’
Ed tried to hold her but she pushed him away. ‘Tell me. TELL ME.’
His eyes were wet with tears. So too were the nurse’s.
‘Your mother died, Carla. Just after you gave birth. I’m so sorry.’
53
Lily
Back on the seafront I race away from Joe, seagulls screaming overhead. It’s only then that I realize something so obvious that I wonder why I haven’t thought of it before. If I can prove that Tom isn’t Ed’s child, I can surely stop him from having access. He doesn’t need to know who the real father is.
And, more importantly, I can prevent my husband’s wife from doing the same.
One small way to claw back some of my life. To take my child for my own.
But if Joe’s DNA matches, then my child would have a murderer for a father.
In the distance, a small boat bobs up and down on the waves.
That’s when another idea comes to me. Far better than the last.
54
Carla
Mamma had taken her last breath without her by her side? ‘But I never said goodbye,’ she sobbed down the phone to Nonna.
Her grandmother was weeping too. ‘She didn’t want to upset you.’ In the background, she could hear deep howls of male grief.
Nonno. He cared after all?
It transpired that they had all hidden it from her. Only now did the signs add up. Mamma’s gaunt appearance before she had left. (The cancer had just been diagnosed.) Her frail voice over the phone. Her later insistence that letters were better than expensive phone calls. Her promise that she would come over to England when the baby was born but at the moment she was ‘busy’.
And now, on top of the grief, she had to cope with this scrap. This thing.
You’ll feel different when you’re able to hold her. That’s what Ed and the nurses kept saying. But when they finally placed the rat in her arms, there was a high-pitched electronic sound. ‘It’s all right, dear,’ the nurse said. ‘It just means baby isn’t ready to come off the oxygen yet.’
It was all so scary. How could she possibly take it home if it couldn’t breathe on its own?
‘These things take time,’ said the young doctor briskly.
‘I keep telling her that,’ butted in Ed as though he were medically qualified himself.
Once more, Carla felt like a child who got everything wrong every time she opened her mouth. If only Mamma were here to help. She would know what to do.
Sometimes Carla thought they had taken her real baby away. The rat didn’t look anything like her or Ed. Even worse, they had been told that premature babies often had some ‘developmental issues’ which might not, according to the consultant, be apparent until later. How was she going to manage with the uncertainty?
Five weeks later, when Carla was paying another of her reluctant daily visits (prompted by Ed), she found a crowd of people around the incubator. This was not uncommon. Medical students were constantly being brought in to admire the smallest baby that had been born this year in the hospital. But an alarm was ringing – a different sound from the one before – and the screen next to the incubator was bleeping madly.
‘We’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ babbled a nurse. ‘But your husband and you both have your phones off. Have you thought of a name?’
Everyone had been asking her that ever since the rat had been born. But Carla had turned down all Ed’s suggestions during pregnancy, as if in denial of being pregnant at all. Now this thing was here, she still didn’t want to name it. That would mean acknowledging that it was here to stay.
‘You might like to have her baptized,’ said the nurse tensely. She was holding a form. ‘It says here that you are Catholic. The priest is here if you would like to talk to him.’
‘I don’t understand …’
‘My dear.’ A stout young man with a white clerical collar grasped both her hands as though they were intimate friends. ‘The nurse is trying to tell you that your daughter has taken a turn for the worse. Shall we ensure that she is prepared for the eternal life that is waiting for her?’
The rat was going to die? Wouldn’t that be the answer to all her problems? So why did she feel a sickening sense of dismay rising up through her?
‘It can’t.’
‘My dear, God’s plans aren’t always what we expect.’
‘Would you like to hold her, dear?’
No. She might drop it.
One of the doctors nodded to the nurse. The rat with all its wires was placed in her arms. A pair of small beady eyes stared up at her. A strangely long, almost aristocratic nose. And then Carla saw it. A tiny red hair on an otherwise bald scalp. ‘Poppy,’ she whispered. ‘She’s called Poppy. Poppy Francesca.’
Miraculously, Poppy ‘turned the corner’ as they put it, during the night.
‘You should have consulted me before you named her,’ Ed said when he finally turned up, his breath reeking of whisky.
‘I would have if you’d been there,’ she retorted, without taking her eyes off her daughter, who was now back in the incubator.
‘I was selling a painting actually.’
‘Never mind,’ said the nurse. ‘If you ask me, Poppy got what she needed. A cuddle from her mummy. Of course the doctors would say it was their skills that sorted out those lungs of hers. But there’s a lot to be said for love. For what it’s worth, I think her name is wonderful. We haven’t had a Poppy in a long time.’
‘I suppose it is rather distinctive,’ added Ed grudgingly. ‘Funny how the colour skips a generation, isn’t it? My grandfather was auburn, you know.’
Incredibly, in the following month, Poppy went from strength to strength. But as she did so, that flash of love Carla had experienced during that drama – yes, love! – waned. In its place was fear. No, Carla wanted to say, when they talked about Poppy being ‘nearly ready’ to come home. How would she cope on her own with a baby as fragile as this?
‘I know it’s hard for you, but we’ll be fine,’ Ed said as he cradled their daughter against his chest. It was all right for him. He knew what to do with a baby. But she was hopeless. And with Mamma gone, it felt as though half of her was missing. She should never have left her to come to this country.
‘Just the baby blues,’ said the health visitor when she came to visit and found Carla in floods of tears. ‘It’s very natural, especially after a tricky birth. Do let us know, though, if it continues.’
Natural? It was a complete and utter mess. On the one hand, Carla was terrified of leaving her daughter alone in case she stopped breathing. Yet if she did – what a horrible thought! – she would be free from this terrible, overwhelming responsibility.
If only she could get some sleep, she might be all right. But Poppy ‘catnapped’ rather than slept for the two or three hours that the baby books described. Every time Carla managed to close her eyes, Poppy was yelling again. It was like being on a twenty-four-hour flight without any refuelling stops. Day after day. Week after week.
‘She needs to gain more weight,’ said the health visitor. ‘Maybe a top-up bottle would help.’
So her own milk wasn’t enough? Once more, Carla could see in Ed’s face that she was a failure. Poppy’s startlingly blue eyes followed her everywhere as a double reproach.
‘Have you taken her to Mothers and Babies yet?’ asked the health visitor on another occasion.
Luckily Ed was in the gallery that time. ‘Yes,’ she lied.
But the truth was that Carla was too scared Poppy might catch something from one of the other babies at the group (there were so many awful germs out there!).
Had Mamma felt like this? If only she could ask her …
Meanwhile, she and Ed were about to lose their home. The bank was running out of patience. They would repossess next month if it wasn’t sold
. That’s what the letters to Ed said. The ones he hid from her but which she’d learned to sniff out.
But she didn’t want to risk another row. When Ed got into a mood, he scared her, particularly now he was drinking even more than before. His eyes would go red and his body would shake as if it wasn’t his own. He even started talking about getting full-time custody of Tom (‘I’ve been talking to Lily about it’).
‘I couldn’t cope,’ she’d protested.
‘Have some sympathy, Carla. He’s my son and I want him with us.’
Where had the old Ed gone? Yet he was softness itself when it came to calming Poppy, whose lungs now worked full time, day and night.
‘Get some rest,’ Ed would say in a way that suggested it pleased him that Poppy responded to him and not her.
But Carla couldn’t sleep. Instead she tossed and turned and thought about what might have happened if she and Mamma had never had the misfortune to live next to Lily and Ed.
It sometimes takes time to bond with a baby. That was another sentence from one of those baby books which lined the shelves from when Tom had been born. But every time Carla picked up this tiny scrap to latch it on to her breast (the only thing that would soothe her), she felt a terrible, overwhelming sense of panic.
Her initial terror that this child would die had now been replaced by another worry. In the panic of premature labour, she had forgotten temporarily that last note with the spidery writing.
YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL PAY.
When she had got home from the hospital, Carla found, to her relief, that it was still in her handbag, suggesting that no one else had found it.
‘It will be our secret,’ Carla told the child as it tore into her nipples, making them bleed. ‘You must say nothing.’
As for the letter writer, she was convinced that the spiky writing belonged to a woman. Someone who was on Lily’s side. One of her friends who wanted to get revenge on Lily’s behalf. Her old secretary, perhaps, who had pretended to be kind when her waters had broken. She must trust no one.
