The Other Child

by Lucy Atkins

  ‘I’ve been calling you,’ he says. ‘Didn’t you hear your phone?’

  ‘I was probably reading Joe a story.’ Her belly clenches again. She has ignored his calls all evening – put her phone on silent, watched it buzz and vibrate angrily across the countertop.

  ‘Is he asleep now?’ Greg goes to the counter and reaches for the wine bottle. He pulls a glass down and sloshes some into it. She watches him take a swig, with his back to her.

  Then he lowers the glass and turns to face her. ‘I am so, so sorry about what happened to you today, I’m so sorry she came into our house. It must have been scary for you.’ He reaches out a hand but she steps back. His fingers hover in the air then drop to his side. ‘Do you know how she got in?’

  ‘I left the door unlocked.’ She examines his face. Erase the lines, the shadows, the years and the bone structure is right there. It isn’t photographic trickery. She is looking at an older version of the face on the courtroom steps in Philadelphia: the medical student whose girlfriend accused him of killing their baby.

  ‘You have every right to be upset with me—’

  She grips the breakfast bar that separates them. ‘I know who she is, Greg.’

  The overhead lights form two tiny, glinting triangles in his dark eyes. ‘What do you mean?’ He tips his head back and takes another gulp of wine. His face has reddened. The wine stains his lips.

  The ache spreads through her belly.

  ‘I know her name.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her name is Sarah Bannister.’

  ‘OK, listen. This sort of stress is really not good for you right now!’ He says it abruptly, almost madly. ‘It really isn’t good for the baby either.’ He puts down his wine glass. ‘I’m going to make you some hot chocolate. We both need to calm down. We have to sit down and talk about this. It’s been a rough day. We both need to calm down, sit down, talk.’

  She grips the kitchen counter. He goes to the fridge, gets out the milk, a mug, a milk pan. His movements are taut and sprung.

  ‘I know who Sarah Bannister is,’ she says.

  He doesn’t turn around. But his hands stop moving.

  She tries to keep her voice low because they mustn’t wake Joe. Joe can’t witness this – whatever this is. ‘Almost thirty years ago in Philadelphia, Sarah Bannister accused a medical student called Carlo Novak of giving her drugs to abort their baby, then watching the baby die.’

  Greg turns his head, quite slowly. His face is a mask. His jaw is clenched, his eyes small and unblinking.

  She lets go of the countertop, steps back.

  He moves around the breakfast bar towards her, very fast.

  ‘No!’ She holds up both hands. ‘Don’t – don’t.’ Her spine is pressed against the kitchen cupboard. He stops just in front of her. ‘Carlo Novak’s library card is in your box in the basement. And the medal, with his name on it. Alex Kingman recognized your face – right away. He thinks you’re Carlo. And I’ve seen an old picture outside the Philadelphia courtroom.’ She lifts her chin. ‘It’s your face. It’s your face in that photograph.’

  He towers over her. ‘This is not what you think, it really isn’t.’

  ‘What? What do I think?’ She slides along the cupboard away from him. ‘My God, I have no idea what I think except that you’ve been hiding things from me, and lying. I called the ER this afternoon. I told them my sister had been hit by a car on Walnut Street – I asked for her by name, I asked for Sarah Bannister.’

  ‘They aren’t allowed to give out that sort of information.’

  ‘He didn’t; he said he couldn’t tell me. But I suppose he felt sorry for me, because when I begged him for information about my sister he said, ‘I’d urge you to come down here right away.’ And I said, ‘Is that a yes? Does that mean you have Sarah Bannister there?’ and he said, ‘Miss, you should come right now.’ So yes, Greg, yes, it’s Sarah Bannister who was hit by a car on Walnut Street – running away from you.’

  A part of her wants him to say no – to explain this away, to make it all vanish. But he doesn’t. There is an awful silence.

  ‘Who is Carlo Novak, Greg?’

  His mouth gives a panicky spasm, his brows lower. He moves towards her and all at once the fear that has been coiled in her belly all day explodes inside her. She ducks out of his way, her socks slipping on the tiles. He shoots out a hand – maybe to steady her, or maybe restrain her, she doesn’t know. She feels his fingers clamp onto her bone and twists her arm out of his grasp. She darts through the archway into the hall. He is coming after her. If she goes upstairs Joe will be brought into this and she can’t have that – she cannot have Joe wake up. She is at the front door so she wrenches it open, steps onto the porch and slams it behind her before he can follow her out. She feels it bounce off something – his fingers – and hears his brief bellow of pain. Then she runs into the bitter night, supporting her belly with both arms.

  Chapter Twenty

  The snow needles the soles of her feet as she goes round the side of the house. She does not know what she’s doing. She can’t think clearly anymore. She ducks into the bushes and feels a sliver of ice slide from a branch down the back of her neck.

  She can’t leave Joe – she has to go back in. The urge to run was instinctive but she has to calm down. Go back. Face this. Face him. She sees his dark shape over by the porch.

  ‘Tess?’ he calls – but not too loud. He wouldn’t want to involve the neighbours.

  She crouches between the houses and her belly tightens. A persistent pain is spreading around her middle; she feels as if a huge hand is squeezing, tightening. She bends her head, tries to breathe, tries to think. The branches crowd closer. The fresh snow smells otherworldly beneath the earthy, darker smell of the frozen trees. The baby’s head presses onto her pelvis like a big metal bullet.

  ‘Tess?’ He is coming round the side of the house now. He can’t see her. ‘Tess, honey? Please, this is crazy – where are you?’

  He is right. But she can’t move; it is as if she has frozen solid, with only the pain alive, burning low in her back. She hears his feet moving past, crunching down the snow. His shadowy shape flickers through the branches. She has to get up. She takes a breath. She has to get out of the shrubs.

  She tries to rise, but nausea surges through her, sticky and grim. Her belly tightens again.

  And then she understands what is happening.

  It has been going for hours, if not all day – of course it has – but she has been so distracted that she has not allowed herself to tune into it. The low pains, the backache, the tightenings, the nausea. But it is far too soon. This baby is not ready to be born – there are still almost five weeks to go. This cannot possibly happen now.

  She hears his feet in the snow again. She tries to think. First she has to go and get someone to look after Joe and then she has to get herself to the hospital. The pain builds, rakes through her, peaks to burning and for a while she can’t think anymore.

  As the pain subsides she becomes aware of the cold again, the frozen branches by her face, Greg’s footsteps fading. She can’t have him holding her hand as she gives birth, not tonight. Sandra will help. But she might not make it across the road to the Schechters’ before another contraction comes, and Greg will see her if she tries to cross the road, he will catch her up.

  She can hear him calling her name in a quiet, low voice, but he is further away now. Maybe he is going round the back of the house, under the deck and down to the garage. She crouches, clutching her sides, trying to breathe, waiting for the last of the pain to ease off. This baby isn’t ready to be born. Its lungs might not be fully developed, it will be far too small, too fragile, it will need medical help. Of course she must get up – she must get Greg. And then a terrible question rises in her mind: would he save this baby?

  But of course he would. She is not thinking straight. She is confusing two men – Carlo Novak and Greg, her Greg, who would never harm their baby, no matter how co
mplex his emotions towards it might be.

  When the pain has gone she slithers out, staggers to her feet and calls for Greg, but before she can get to the front of the house the pressure begins to build again – already – to expand through her pelvis and intensify. It is far too close to the last one – almost on top of it. She knows what this means. She puts her head down and moans, swaying, trying to breathe. This is very bad indeed. She has to get to the hospital right now.

  She manages to stand and then there is a sensation of falling and warmth spreads down both thighs. Her waters soak the snow. Her leggings are sodden and the baby is screwing itself against her pelvis even harder, bone grinding against bone. She has to get Joe to the Schechters’ and herself to the hospital. These two tasks feel both simple and overwhelming.

  She shouts for Greg, as loud as she can. She takes a step or two forwards, and shouts again. She can hear her own breathing bouncing off the snow. The weight in her pelvis is enormous now. She tries to waddle, her legs slightly apart. A bright security lights flashes on and she is spot-lit, bewildered. She realizes she is on Helena and Josh’s front lawn. She both longs for and dreads the sight of Greg pushing through the bushes.

  She drops to her hands and knees; she isn’t cold anymore, she is sweating. She needs Greg, because this baby is going to be born and it is going to be too small and she doesn’t even know if she will make it to the hospital. She tries to call out again, but instead of his name a long moan rises from her chest as the pain swells. Then, somewhere far off, she hears a rhythmic sound.

  At first she thinks it is her own heartbeat and then she realizes it is the crunch of feet on snow. She sways as the fog closes in and the pain spreads, and she is dimly aware of hands closing on her shoulders.

  ‘Tess? Tess? Honey?’

  She peers up. Greg’s face wavers into focus. She bends her head and vomits over his shoes. ‘Call an ambulance’ she spits. ‘Now.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Their baby is like an unexpected visitor, bringing sudden lightness and relief to a troubled house. They gaze at her through the glass sides of the incubator. She has a pointed chin and fingernails as delicate as petals; her movements are slow and otherworldly; pencilled blue veins pulse beneath her skin; her eyelashes have not yet developed; there is an oxygen tube in her nose, sticky sensors on her chest and belly and foot and she has to lie on a heated pad – but she is whole and miraculously healthy, all her organs function, she breathes on her own and her plum-sized heart keeps perfect time.

  Tess feels as if her body has been flipped inside out and torn from front to back, but she is oddly calm. The light coming through the slatted blinds is crystalline, as if minute particles of frost are suspended inside it, sharpening all the edges and brightening the air.

  ‘She’s amazing.’ Greg sounds hoarse. ‘We’re unbelievably lucky; just look at her, she’s a great size, nice and pink, her lungs are in amazing shape, all her reflexes are good, the cord gases were all normal. My God, we’re lucky, Tess; she’s going to be OK, she really is.’ He sounds as if he is trying to reassure himself, to pin down this mind-blowing experience and talk his way onto safer, more medical ground. His hair is sticking up and his face looks pale behind a dark wash of stubble. He is, she supposes, in some kind of shock.

  Perhaps watching her in the rear-view mirror as she gave birth five weeks early in the back of his speeding car was more disturbing than actually doing it. For her there was no time for fear because the baby was coming and the force of that was far bigger than anything her conscious mind could come up with. But Greg would have had all sorts of frightening medical scenarios running through his head as he sped through the snow.

  The machines monitoring the baby’s heartbeat and oxygen levels beep constantly. Greg is sitting on a high-backed chair with one leg crooked. Anyone glancing at them now would think that they were the perfect new family.

  She needs Joe. Joe has to meet his sister and she needs to hold onto him and reassure herself that he is OK. It must have been so frightening for him to be woken in the night by Josh, a virtual stranger, and taken across the road to the Schechters’. She had not prepared him for this – she’d assumed that there was still at least a month in which to have these practical conversations. Suddenly she remembers the panic she felt in the kitchen when Greg came at her. Birthing hormones must have skewed her mind, triggering the deep, primitive urge to flee.

  She looks down at her baby again. The neonatologist, a woman with cropped hair and a strange, soft accent, has explained about oxygenation levels and blood sugar, about the possibility of unsteady breathing patterns, the risk of jaundice, the need to express milk until a stronger sucking reflex develops. She also explained that they would need to stay in Special Care until Christmas Eve, as it was against hospital policy to release a baby before a gestational age of thirty-six weeks. Greg says he will fix things so he can be at home before and after school with Joe. At least in Massachusetts the schools are open right up to Christmas Eve.

  Nurses come and go, checking and rechecking vital signs – in both her and the baby. But she feels oddly well, perfectly alert.

  ‘Can you go and get Joe when he wakes up?’

  ‘Of course,’ Greg nods. ‘Absolutely.’ She has a feeling that he would do anything she asked of him right now – except, perhaps, tell her the truth.

  ‘I don’t want him going to school today.’

  ‘No, of course not, he should be here with us – I’ll go get him.’ He glances at his watch. ‘It’s almost 6.30; you want me to call Sandra? I’m sure they’ll be up by now.’

  ‘OK.’

  He reaches for her hand. ‘Tess,’ his voice wavers, ‘you were incredible. You really were.’

  The birth is like the memory of a drunken night out – flashbulb scenes, extreme sensations, odd smells, interspersed with periods of blankness. She remembers Josh helping her up, after she was sick, then Greg saying something about ‘pre-term’ and ‘transition’ and Josh, somewhere further off, talking on the phone: ‘Her husband’s bringing her in by car – they can be there in ten, twelve minutes.’

  She remembers the smell of the leather seats in Greg’s car and shouting at him about Joe – and Greg saying Joe was with the Schechters, that he was fine, not to worry, he was safe. Then the hospital car park: on her hands and knees on the backseat, the urge to push overwhelming, feeling the baby’s head between her legs – and paramedics everywhere, suddenly, bitter air sweeping into the car with all the doors flung open, and thinking Greg had gone and then realizing that the arms around her, holding her up, were his, that she was on her back now, with Greg supporting her torso.

  She remembers looking up at his face and thinking that he did not look like someone who had witnessed childbirth countless times: he was barely holding it together. She wanted to reassure him that it was going to be fine, but then she had to push again and the rest of the baby came out – she reached down to lift the tiny, limp body and suddenly there were people everywhere in scrubs and someone said, ‘It’s a girl!’ and gloved hands whisked her baby out of her arms – strangers – and a man in a mask with an African accent of some kind was introducing himself as an OB/GYN, peering between her legs. Then hands lifted her onto a gurney and there were bright lights flashing overhead and Greg was gripping her hand, saying, ‘It’s OK, she’s going to be OK, they’re just checking her over – she needs a little oxygen, everything’s going to be OK’ – and panic bloomed in her chest because someone else had her baby: she couldn’t see her baby among all these strangers in scrubs.

  She feels her throat and chest tighten and looks down into the incubator. There are thin wires snaking from the swaddling. She will never let anyone take her baby from her again.

  ‘I need to call Nell.’

  ‘Sure. You want to call her right now?’

  ‘I’ll call her when you go for Joe.’

  The rims of Greg’s eyes are red. She looks down and realizes that she is wearing a gow
n with teddy bears on it. She has no idea where her clothes went. Her whole body throbs.

  ‘My God, Tess,’ he says. ‘She’s …’ But he can’t find the words. ‘We have a daughter.’

  They look at each other and start to laugh, and she realizes that in all these months she has never actually allowed herself to imagine this baby as either girl or boy. It has been a genderless, separate being. And now its position in the world is staked out. She is a she – daughter, sister.

  ‘She has such dark hair,’ she says. ‘Joe only had a blond fuzz.’

  ‘That’ll be the Italian genes.’

  For a moment all the unanswered questions close back in and swing between them. They stop laughing, and stare at each other.

  ‘We haven’t even talked properly about names.’ Greg looks away first.

  ‘We haven’t talked about anything.’

  ‘I know. Do you want to? Do you want me to—’

  ‘No, God, no – not now, but …’

  ‘Later, then.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looks down at their baby again. ‘I’d like to call her Lily.’ The process of choosing a name must have been going on somewhere in her subconscious because this feels like a solid and well-considered decision.

  ‘Lillian? After your mother?’

  ‘After my mother but not Lillian, just Lily.’

  ‘Lily – Lily – you mentioned that before. Actually, I love Lily, it’s beautiful.’

  ‘Then she’s Lily? Lily Harding Gallo?’

  ‘She is.’ Greg looks slightly dazed, as if he cannot quite take in that she is real, his daughter – let alone that she has his name, Lily Gallo.

  ‘Do you want your mother’s name too though?’ she asks. ‘Natalia’s beautiful. It could be her middle name. Lily Natalia?’

  He frowns. ‘No, no, I don’t think so. No.’

  ‘Really?’