by Dawn French
‘D’you wanna go find some breakfast …?’ he offered, in the hope that it could be a treat for her. He wasn’t sure if she would be up for it, was almost certain that she wouldn’t, but he still wanted to offer, in the belief that there could still be some joy in their lives after this shattering tragedy.
‘No, no. Home. Please.’ Hope sounded urgent. He could see that she was breathing deeply. Had she been running? That couldn’t have been wise after all she’d been through. He wished he was a rich man who could whisk her away somewhere on holiday to recover, instead of a poor third-year engineering student without two farthings to rub together.
No matter, he would do whatever was in his power to make sure Hope was all right. ’Twas ever thus. That’s who Isaac truly always was, and now, as he was driving, he felt reflective. It might have been the case that the pregnancy was a surprise to both of them, totally unplanned, but in all the months leading up to the birth, he had been in no doubt that they were a strong couple. Their endless chats about how they would somehow manage to be good parents had really focused his mind on their relationship. However much Quiet Isaac was falling for Hope, the pregnancy clinched it; he fell right in, the moment she told him.
He remembered what had happened: he had been due to go over to her flat in Kensal Rise to see her on that day. He let himself in with the keys she had given him months before. He was chuffed that she’d had a set cut for him, that she trusted him enough to let him come and go as he pleased in ‘her yard’. On that day, he struggled to get the wretched rusty Yale lock to move with the key. It was old and stubborn. He made a mental note to fix that for her with some WD40. Once inside, he awkwardly manoeuvred past the bike belonging to the hermit bloke in the downstairs flat, which was forever illegally parked against the wall. Hope rarely saw him, he rarely used his bike, but always left it there, exactly where it was the most inconvenient. Hope had guessed that it was a prized possession, so she didn’t want to confront him about it. Plus, the small communal hallway which serviced both flats often smelled of weed. It seeped from under his door. Hope knew that smell well, and she consciously stayed away from him, leaving him to what she imagined was his mellow stoned state. He was no bother to her, or she to him, but she decided not to seek him out, or provoke him.
Quiet Isaac had carefully shuffled past the prized bike, and up the narrow, cheaply built and therefore very hollow-sounding stairs to her flat door at the top. The carpet on the steps was threadbare, and non-existent in some parts, so the sound must’ve been major in the flat below, and definitely heralded any arrival in Hope’s flat. There was no chance of surprising her. He didn’t really need to; she was expecting him that day.
The lock to her actual flat was easier to operate. One turn and he was in. The flat was very small. A living room with a bay window at the front looking out on to the busy road below, a bedroom just behind that, a small bathroom behind that, and a half-sized kitchen at the back with double doors that opened out on to a fire escape with metal stairs going down into the shared garden space. He called out immediately.
‘Hope! ’S me. Where are you?’
No reply. The flat was quiet. He listened. Perhaps she was in the bath? Or on the loo? No sound. He walked to the kitchen first, and immediately put water in the kettle and turned it on. There were two chairs at a small table at the far end but otherwise the kitchen was uninviting, which was all wrong, they thought. Hope told him that any home where she lived should have a kitchen you can hang out in, but this one was too small and shoddily put together. The saving grace was the door out to the stairs. Hope was specifically told by her landlord that, by law, she WASN’T to block the access on these stairs, they WERE NOT for her recreational use, they were a fire escape ONLY. They weren’t even the proper access to the garden. To get into the garden officially, legally, she was supposed to go out of the flat, down the clompy entrance stairs, out of the front door, turn right on the street, turn immediately right again up an alley to the narrow lane at the very back, which ran along all the yards, and which contained everyone’s bins. There was a door into the garden yard from there, and THAT was the one she was supposed to use …
Yeah. Sure.
Just like Mr Bike Hermit wasn’t supposed to keep a bike in the hallway …
Of course, she used the fire escape. She often left the door wide open, and she had commandeered the slightly bigger top step to put plenty of planted tubs out. She grew herbs for cooking there. She had mint and basil and chives and rosemary. She had a honeysuckle which was growing vigorously up and twirling around the railings, and which had a heavenly perfume that blew back into her flat on summer evenings and helped to combat the sickly sweet cannabis aroma that wafted up from Mr Below, the Bike Hermit.
Quiet Isaac opened the door. It was April then, and warm enough to let the fresh air in. He walked back up the narrow corridor to Hope’s bedroom. He glanced ahead into the tiny front room to check she wasn’t asleep or something in there, but no. So, he opened the door to the bedroom. It was a small room, but Isaac loved it. It was where they were intimate, so even the lovely musky smell of the room as he opened the door excited him; there was always love in this room.
The curtains were open on the small window and the top half of the window was ajar a few inches. It was impossible to open the door fully since Hope had insisted on having a double bed in a room so small that a single bed was pushing it, space-wise. The double bed took up all the space and pretty much touched the walls on three sides. Since there was no room to walk around the bed, Hope had put shelves up everywhere so that whatever might be in bedside cabinets was now on shelves all over the walls. It made for a cluttered, cheerful room. Pride of place, above the head of the bed, was a painting Isaac had brought with him. His mother gave it to him just before he left Africa. It was the side-on silhouette of an African American in a high collar, circa eighteenth century, with a majestic clipper ship beneath, and the words ‘Captain Paul Cuffee 1812’ written around it. This was his mother’s hero, a black Quaker ship’s captain who assisted free blacks in America to emigrate to Sierra Leone, and played a huge part in abolishing slavery and establishing a new colony in Freetown. Quiet Isaac’s mother often told him that this was a man to aspire to be like, a courageous traveller who NEVER FORGOT HIS ROOTS. Isaac had heard the stories of Cuffee’s bravery all his life, but the overriding message was about returning. His mother wanted him to arm himself with all the engineering skills he could, then bring them home.
HOME.
HOME.
Her message was powerful and Quiet Isaac fully intended to honour her wishes … It was testament to his high regard for Hope that he had brought the painting from his campus room to here. He knew it would be safer here, and this was where his heart was. Hope had placed it there, and next to it on the shelf, she put two small flags she’d made and coloured with felt-tips. A Union Jack and the tricolour green, white and blue flag of Sierra Leone. Isaac whooped when he first saw them and it had made Hope very happy.
So here he was, entering the room he loved so much. As he flung his tote bag on to the bed, he noticed a blue shoebox there, with ‘OPEN ME’ written on it in Hope’s unmistakeable bold clear handwriting. He looked closer.
As Quiet Isaac bent over to examine the curious box, Hope held her breath. She was hiding in the small wardrobe in the corner of the room, just behind the bedroom door. The cheap built-in cupboard had slats on the doors, so she could just about see him. She didn’t want him to have a single clue she was there, so she had been sitting as still as a statue in the cramped space ever since she heard his key in the door downstairs. She was hot and uncomfortable, but she was determined to witness his true reaction at this crucial moment. She really needed to know how he would take the news.
Quiet Isaac picked up the box. It was the one she had brought her new trainers home in. Was she saying something cryptic about them …? The box was too light to contain trainers; it didn’t seem to weigh anything at all. Was it empty?
He opened the lid to find lots of white toilet roll bunched up to be wrapping paper. He delved a bit deeper. There was something inside. He pulled out the central package, wrapped in the same paper. He guessed it might be a pen; it was that kind of shape and size.
It wasn’t a pen. As he unwrapped it, Isaac took a couple of moments to understand just what he was looking at. He had never seen a pregnancy test indicator before. Inside the wardrobe, Hope almost passed out with the tension and her breath held too deeply and for too long.
He had his back to her, so she couldn’t quite tell what he was thinking. He seemed to hold it in his hands and peer at it for an age, but gradually, she saw his shoulders sink and his head lolled forward on to his chest. Her heart sank; he seemed sad. She couldn’t hide away any longer, so she flung the door open, and rushed to him. ‘Isaac, I’m sorry …’
Quiet Isaac almost jumped out of his skin with fright at the sudden shock. He yelped, and his arms flailed up in the air like a berserk windmill. Hope dodged an inadvertent clout by millimetres. She flew at him and flung her arms around him, knocking the test out of his hands and pushing him to the bed, all in the propulsion of one bear hug.
‘Whaaa!’ he shouted.
‘It’s just me!’ she yelled as they fell on to the bed.
‘Be careful, Bubs, watch out.’ He was worried. He quickly sat her up next to him on the bed and she could see that he still had a tear on his cheek.
‘Are you OK? I’m sorry. I thought we were careful … I’m so sorry …’ She tried to reassure him. She felt panicked. She didn’t want to lose him – Quiet Isaac was the best person she’d ever known. Maybe this was a disaster for him?
He spoke breathlessly, ‘Yes, yes, it’s OK. I just … You scared me then. I didn’t know what the hell … but this …’ He leant over and picked up the pregnancy test. ‘This doesn’t scare me. No. This is us. You and me. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault, because it’s not a fault. A life can’t be a fault. God makes life, so it can’t be wrong. Can it? We made this life together … right here in this bed. It’s gotta be good, it’s gotta be OK. It’s beautiful, Bubs. You are beautiful. Don’t worry. We’ll do this together; we’ll manage it somehow. We’re blessed. Now I need you to be careful. No falling down …’ With that, Isaac started to well up again and Hope saw that his tears were a kind of gratitude, not the anger or sadness she had supposed. She pulled him in close to her.
‘We can do anything, Isaac. If we’re together,’ she reassured him quietly, close to his ear, but as she said it she realized that so many reassurances in her life, both told to her and by her, were no more than words of comfort, often without any real truth to them. Her mother’s hollow drunken reassurances, however constant, weren’t that real. Doris forgot them by the next day. Hope’s own reassurances to her sister in difficult times were her dearest wish that the two of them would be OK, not her certain knowledge. However, this, now, with Isaac, was the incontrovertible truth and, as such, was a beautiful relief. Yes, together they would be mighty, and inside that strength would be a great place to be a baby.
Hope had felt her fear flood away back then. She wasn’t frightened with him alongside her, and he made it clear he wasn’t going anywhere. She had a rock to stand on. Solid and reliable … and quiet. Isaac.
And Isaac had known, at that precise moment, that for the first time ever he was surely in love, with both Hope and their baby she was carrying. Abundantly in love.
Now, here, in the car as they drove home from the hospital with an empty baby seat, and an empty Hope, Isaac seriously prayed that she would still believe in his love … and that he would also. He had come to know and adore Hope for all the good stuff she clearly was. He hoped that it wouldn’t matter that there was no baby. He hadn’t known the baby before she died, of course he hadn’t, not in actuality, but the two of them had spent many hours imagining so much, thinking about her, and who she might turn out to be. Wondering what name might suit her, and how they might raise her. They’d thought about her all the time. They’d called his parents and told them. It was a shock, but his mother especially was supportive, so long as he promised to bring the child home at some point. Hope told her sister, and left it for her sister to tell their mum and dad. She was better placed than Hope to choose the right moment, when Doris was sober and receptive and when Zak was cheerful and present, rather than in the depressed paranoid slump he so often lived in. So, everyone knew this baby was arriving.
Sitting together side by side in the car, they both tacitly understood that they would have to explain what had happened that night to everyone. It would be difficult but it had to happen.
Hope had been very quiet for most of the journey. She was trying to process what she’d just done and she was frantically working out how she would tell Isaac. She clung on to the bag and its precious cargo, her heart in her throat fearing that the baby would cry out, but miraculously she didn’t. A couple of times, she heard some contented gurgling noises. So Hope reached over and turned the radio on. The old radio in the old car was stuck on Radio 1 – it hadn’t moved from there for two years, according to Isaac – so they listened to Zoe Ball excitedly sharing her favourite tunes in her new job, on the new day.
The journey was only twenty minutes or so, but Hope was fidgety throughout, Isaac noticed. He supposed she might still be sore from the birth; perhaps that was why she was so restless in her seat? In actuality, Hope was attempting to cradle-rock the baby to keep her nicely soothed. It seemed that the baby had no problem being cossetted in such a small dark space. Hope imagined that perhaps it was because she had so recently been born. She had, after all, spent nine months in a tiny dark safe place and only a few hours in the light. The bag was likely very comforting. Maybe every new mother should put her baby straight into a bag to zip up and transport about for a while at the beginning.
Hope purposely kept her thoughts occupied with ridiculous ideas like that. After all, if she halted her frantic mind even for a few moments, and let herself consider the other woman’s pain at that exact time, she would surely have had to return the baby? She knew this deep down, but her need was greater than her conscience so she shushed it with distractions, until at last they were home.
They pulled up outside Hope’s flat. Isaac said, ‘You go on up, I’ll bring the bags and everything.’
She climbed out of the front seat, carefully guarding the all-important bag. Isaac had quickly nipped out and, in true gentlemanly style, he tried to help her by offering to take the heavy bag.
‘No, no. I’ll take this, you bring the rest,’ she said, keeping the bag handles firmly clasped in her hands. She was a tad sharper than she might ordinarily be.
Hope took her key out of her bag expertly with one hand, and once she’d given the lock the familiar extra flick she knew it needed, it opened immediately. It helped, of course, that Quiet Isaac had in fact squirted WD40 in there months before, as he’d promised he would. She pushed through the door and carefully past the annoying bike propped up in the hallway. It had never irritated her as much as it did today. It was DANGEROUS, for goodness’ sake; it would have to change.
She mounted the stairs tentatively, being sure not to bash the bag in any way; she opened the flat door, and she was in. HOME.
Quiet Isaac loaded himself up with the remaining bags, but decided against bringing the car seat up; it was just too sad. He put it in the boot, locked the car and started to head into the flat. Hope had left the door open, so he went in and battled past the bloody bike, and on up the stairs. Halfway up, he stopped. He took a breath and wondered why these stairs suddenly felt like a mountain he would never reach the summit of. He was so so sad. He let the sorrow flood through him for a moment, leaning against the wall. Then he heard it. He heard the sound of a baby. He shook his head. He must be imagining it. On he went. Up the mountain. Into the flat.
Anna’s Pleas
Detective Inspector Mike Thripshaw and his sidekick Constable Debbie Cheese (as if
her life wasn’t difficult enough) had arrived at the hospital with a flurry of activity.
Julius was shouting, ‘We’ve told you the entire situation four times now. Seriously. You need to cease with the questions and get on with finding my daughter. Immediately.’
‘My’ daughter? Even through her fug, Anna wondered why he had chosen to be so possessive. Florence wasn’t only his daughter. If she had felt any urge to be generous, she might have considered this to be a slip of the tongue indicating his extreme personal despair. She didn’t.
They were still sitting in the same small hot delivery suite. Anna and Julius had been asked to remain there until the police arrived and now the officers had been questioning them for nearly an hour, all crammed into the room, sapping the oxygen and creating even more heat than the bright morning sun was, as it blasted rudely in through the dirty windows.
Anna was sitting in the chair Julius had slept in, and she permanently held on to the side of the bassinet, subconsciously guarding the missing babe. She wanted any connection she could have, however pointless.
Julius answered impatiently as the police machine-gun fired a rattle of questions at them. Anna’s mind was operating slowly; she had entered a treacley world of cloggy thought. She knew it was the effect of shock, but she’d never experienced a shock as massive as this before. This was tragedy. All she knew was that her stomach was full of concrete, and her brain was on pause. Nothing made sense. Nothing mattered. She wasn’t even properly in the room; she felt floaty and strange, as if she were watching the scene, not in it herself. She could’ve been forgiven for thinking she was drunk. Time around her was slurring; nothing was sharp. Everyone was yak-yakking. Especially Julius.
What were they all saying?
Why were they talking at all? There was nothing important or clever to say after they’d told the story the first time.
