Apple of My Eye

by Claire Allan

  He’d written that in the note he’d left on the kitchen table. Was it bad to say that when I read it, all I felt was relief? A part of me had come to hate him, you see, for not understanding why I couldn’t simply get up and face each day as if my whole world hadn’t imploded around me.

  When I heard him whistle around the house, I swear to God, I wanted to stab him. I was afraid I might actually stab him. I didn’t trust myself. I felt calmer after he left. I didn’t even try to stop him.

  But it was good to find a new energy. A positive energy. To think I was back in His favour. The God who’d forsaken me was making things right. I just had to work with His plan.

  The person I was would have to vanish. I’d leave what remnants of this life I still had behind, with that same sense of relief.

  A flash of guilt for that woman washed over me as I packed up that room, but it was just that. A flash – gone in a second. It wouldn’t be the same for her. She could have another baby – one she actually wanted. She wouldn’t have to give birth to a corpse. The baby would breathe. She’d hold her baby, still warm, in her arms. Rock her. And then I’d take her to be mine and give her a brilliant life.

  That’s what any mother would want for their child, wasn’t it? I mean, it was like the Judgement of Solomon. Surely a mother would want a baby to be loved and cared for rather than be robbed of a life altogether?

  She’d move on. She’d get over it. This would be her cross to carry, but it was time for me to put mine down. It had been too heavy for too long.

  I’d looked around the nursery again before standing up. All these things would be packaged up, delivered to the charity shop. They’d be grateful for them. People would look at me and then chat among themselves. ‘She seems to be getting better. She must be coming to terms with it. She’s moving on.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Eli

  Mum’s tidying up, leaving me sitting curled up on the sofa in front of the fire in her living room, a green mohair throw over my legs. A half-drunk mug of tea is sat on the floor beside me. Served with an almost even milk to tea ratio, it’s cooled quickly and now the tepid liquid makes me feel queasy, but I’m too tired, and too comfortable, to move. I can feel my eyes drooping already, the lure of my bed growing too strong to ignore.

  Stifling a yawn, I climb the stairs and I’m getting ready for bed when I hear a message ping on my phone. The sender is listed simply as ‘Anonymous’. Curiosity nipping at me, I click to open it:

  I’m surprised you let him go back to London. Even more surprised you left your lovely house without upping those security measures. I thought more of you. But cheers for the drink. I’ll never understand why he sleeps in someone else’s bed when his own is so comfortable.

  There’s a picture attached. One of my crystal glasses, a wedding present, sitting on my bedside table. A measure of what looks like whisky in it. My head struggles to process what I’m seeing. I know what it looks like, but it can’t be. My house. My life. Someone else in it. It’s surreal. Not the kind of thing that actually happens in real life. I hit the message again, look at the information being sent to me. There’s no number attached. None. Just that word: anonymous. How is that even possible?

  It starts to sink in – quickly, an anchor hauling me down to reality. Someone was in my house. Could be in my house right now. I can’t tell from the picture if it’s daylight or night-time. They could be, at this moment, in my bedroom. In my bed. Up close and personal, telling me once again that I’m not to trust my husband. The sucker punches come thick and fast. My stomach turns and tightens until I hear myself scream out for my mother, my screams drowning out the thumping of my heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Eli

  ‘Let me call the police,’ my mother says, turning and leaving me sitting staring at the message on my phone.

  Am I really seeing what I’m seeing? This message. Will it self-destruct? I take a screenshot just in case as I hear my mother on the phone to a 999 operator reporting a possible break-in at my house.

  ‘She’s had a text message,’ my mother says. ‘With a picture from inside her house. Look, get them to check their records. This is the second incident at this address since Friday. No, she’s here now. Safe with me. Scared but safe. Yes. Yes.’

  I hear her trot out her phone number while I reread the words in front of me again and again. What’s most disturbing? Someone in my house? Another allegation that Martin’s cheating? The fact someone seems intent on making sure I get the message loud and clear and doesn’t seem to want to leave me alone?

  I should call Martin, I suppose. But I don’t know if I have the emotional strength just now. He’ll deny any wrongdoing. Again. He’ll only just have arrived in London. Will be preparing for his big meeting. Putting his work first. I realise I have nothing to say to him in this moment that won’t just make things worse between us.

  It feels as though there’s a ticking time bomb in my hand. I should call that policeman who came out to our house. Constable Dawson? I was sure I had his card with his contact details in my purse. He should be on duty now.

  He needs to know something else has happened. He needs to work harder to find out what’s going on. I can see his tired face in front of me. His questioning expression. Is this just a domestic? Am I wasting police time?

  But someone was or is in my house. I’m not making that up. I don’t know whether to be relieved I’m not there, or angry that I can’t confront whoever this is head on. Such a coward, sending messages this way. Anonymously.

  I hear my mother climb the stairs. She’s always in her element when she has a purpose, especially when there’s an extra layer of drama to things.

  ‘They’re sending a car out to your house now,’ she says. ‘They’re going to contact the officers who came out to us on Friday night to let them know about this latest incident but said you might want to follow up with them yourself when you get home. Has that security firm of yours not called? I have to say, I’d be having words. Someone in your house, pet, and not a word to you? What kind of a system is that?’

  ‘No police officer’s coming here?’ I ask, surprised.

  She shrugs her shoulders. ‘They said there wasn’t much point. You aren’t in any immediate danger. They’ll call with any news from the house. If there’s anything they need to tell you.’

  ‘But someone’s targeting me! Targeting us. How do they know I’m not in any danger? Mum, what if I’d been at home? What if whoever this is had come into the house and I’d been there on my own? Having a nap. Resting because of the baby. What might have happened then?’

  I shudder. My mother looks at me open-mouthed, sits and takes my hand.

  ‘You can’t think like that,’ she says.

  ‘I can’t not think like that,’ I reply. ‘It could’ve happened.’

  ‘But it didn’t,’ she says. ‘Focus on what you actually know.’

  I want to scream that I don’t know anything at the moment, but I don’t. I can’t lose my cool. I can’t become hysterical. I need to take control.

  ‘I’m going to phone Constable Dawson now,’ I tell her.

  ‘That might be an idea,’ she says. ‘Check where they’re at.’

  ‘I’ll push them to try harder. They should be able to trace this message, shouldn’t they? Police can trace everything these days.’

  I feel a kick square in my ribs. It’s enough to make me gasp and grab my stomach.

  ‘Is it the baby? Is everything okay?’ My mother puts her hand on my stomach.

  For a moment I feel a pinch of something like jealousy. It’s childish and selfish of me, I know. But I wish she’d asked how I feel. If I’m okay. Of course the baby is. She’s always okay. Through the sickness and the early spotting and the exhaustion, she’s been fine. She’s a force to be reckoned with. Looking at the determined look on my mother’s face as she feels around for a rogue kick or punch, I figure she takes after her grandmother. Made of stern stuff.

>   ‘Everything’s fine,’ I say, although my chest feels tight.

  I’m reluctant to admit to my anxiety, even though it’s perfectly understandable given that at this moment there could be some weird anonymous stalker in my house.

  ‘Eli?’ I hear my mother’s voice, hazy as I focus on the sound of my breath, the beating of my heart and my inner monologue.

  I want to put my fingers in my ears to make it stop, except there’s no way to make it stop. Not the inner monologue. That keeps going all the time. All. The. Time. I could listen to music, or go to work, or walk along the banks of the lake at the back of the house, or wander through the shops at Victoria Square, or sit there vaguely hearing my mother say my name over and over to try to pull me into the here and now. But the inner monologue would still be there, loud and clear:

  There’s no smoke without fire.

  People don’t do things like this unless they really dislike you. Really want to hurt you. Really want to destroy what you have.

  Everything goes fuzzy around the edges as I suck in air and try to exhale slowly, my breath coming in shuddering spurts, my stomach tightening further, the voice in my head telling me everything’s going wrong and there isn’t anything I can do about it. I can’t deal with his betrayal. I can’t deal with knowing someone’s stalking us. Stalking me. That’s what it is now, isn’t it? Three times.

  Most of all, and I hate myself for thinking this, I hate myself for thinking I don’t want this, any of this – this baby that we wanted together – without him to help me.

  I don’t think I can do it alone.

  I don’t want to do it alone.

  ‘Breathe.’ My mother’s voice cuts through the haze and the noise.

  ‘Eli, you have to breathe,’ she repeats, but there’s no sense of panic in her voice. It’s calm. Pulling me back to me. ‘In and out,’ she says slowly. ‘This is a panic attack. This will pass. You can control it.’

  Her voice is rhythmic, soft. I allow it lull me. To wash over me. To bring my breathing back to normal. While she can’t silence the voices, she manages to quieten them. She makes them secondary to her soothing tone. She always could.

  ‘Everything will be okay, my darling. I promise you, and remember, I’m always here for you. Always. You’re never alone. You’ll never be alone. Even if this is true – and I’m not saying it is. You’re a strong woman, Eliana. You always have been. You’ve nothing to fear about anything. Not this person trying to threaten you. Not whatever might happen with Martin. Not this baby. I promise.

  ‘Now lie down, I’ll stay here with you. I’ll stay here until the police call back. I’ll stay here until you talk to Martin. I’ll stay here as long as you need me.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Louise

  I needed to prove to people that I was okay.

  My parents had made me go to grief counselling. They’d insisted on it after Peter left. They’d escorted me to the doctor, one of them either side of me to make sure I didn’t make a run for it, and they’d begged for help. They didn’t want to see me ‘do anything stupid’, they said.

  So I knew if I was to put my plan in motion, I had to make sure that it looked as though I wasn’t doing anything stupid at all. I had to appear to have started to cope, and cope well, with my loss. I had to show that I was ready to move on with my life. Was keen to make a new start. Which of course was all true – the only problem being that I knew people wouldn’t necessarily understand or approve of my method of moving on. They didn’t know what I knew – that God had willed this baby to me.

  So the next time I visited my grief counsellor, I made sure I made an effort with my appearance. I made sure I didn’t look like a broken woman when I walked through her door. I had a bath, washed my hair. I even had it cut to get rid of all the dead ends. It seemed symbolic.

  I’d rifled through my drawers until I found clothes in bright colours. A red jumper, my once favourite pair of blue jeans with a pair of brown boots. I even applied some make-up, but not too much. I didn’t want it to look too obvious. I kept the locket on, which carried a lock of my baby’s hair, but made sure it sat under my jumper – away from view but close to my heart. I spritzed on some perfume from a bottle my now ex-husband bought me when things seemed much more hopeful.

  Word had reached me, as it always did in our hometown, that he’d met someone else. A part of me had been happy for him. He hadn’t asked for any of our tragedy, either. But it also hurt.

  Within a couple of months she’d fallen pregnant with his baby. So quick. So easy. That news had reached me quickly and easily, too. That she’d been able to give him what he wanted all along. She already had two children – had proven herself to be fertile and able to bring babies safely to term. She was a real woman. A proper woman. Unlike me. When they’d taken my womb, they’d also taken the essence of who I was meant to be.

  Looking in the mirror that day, the one when I was to see the counsellor, I felt surprised at my reflection. I’d done a good job. Reclaimed just a little of the femininity that had been taken from me.

  I’d practised my smile. Soft. Not too manic. Not too cheery. I wouldn’t cry at that session, I knew that. There’d be no need for me to twist a tissue around in my hands until it disintegrated into well-worn flakes and carpeted my counsellor’s floor.

  I was so confident, I’d even risked a slick of mascara.

  My grief counsellor was a woman in her fifties, who wore her grey hair in a bob that always seemed impossibly sleek and who wore no make-up except for a trace of the palest pink lipstick, which was much too light for her skin tone. She lived in flowing skirts and oversized jumpers, and was so softly spoken that I couldn’t imagine she’d ever have been anything but a grief counsellor.

  Victoria. That was her name. ‘After the sponge, not the queen,’ she’d said with a wink the first time we met. She was a perfectly lovely woman. She rarely stopped me from raging against the unfairness of it all and she listened intently, but after a time I started to notice a change in her. It was almost as if her mind wandered as we spoke. As if she thought she’d already heard this sad story so many times there was no need for her to listen actively any more.

  But I needed to tell it, you see. I needed to keep him alive in the only way I could. I needed to atone for my body’s epic fuck-up in killing a baby so close to life. I could almost forgive myself for the others. Almost. But not for him.

  I was sure she’d be delighted to see me in a better mood. Upbeat, even. Only not too upbeat that she’d think I was being manic and not actually recovering. Because I was recovering. I was getting better, and all it took was for me to take matters into my own hands.

  ‘You look different,’ Victoria said as she looked at me. Assessed me from head to toe.

  ‘I feel different,’ I’d replied. ‘I feel, well, I feel as if maybe I’m ready to move on. Does that make sense? I mean, I won’t forget him. I could never in all my years on earth forget him, and I can’t imagine a day when I’ll wake up and he won’t be there scattered among my first thoughts. But I think I’m ready to start living again. I keep thinking, it’s what he would’ve wanted, isn’t it? Me to live my life. To make up, even, for the life he didn’t get.’

  Victoria nodded, her dangling gold earrings rocking back and forth. ‘Well, I have to say, that sounds like a very positive way to look at things. Acknowledge your grief. Feel it when you need to but don’t let it consume you.’

  It was my turn to nod. ‘I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but I think I have to do it. I was thinking of maybe finding a new job. Something more enjoyable than wiping tables. I thought maybe I’d do a night class, learn a new skill.’

  ‘It’s good to hear you talking so positively. I’m really impressed with you, if you don’t mind me saying.’

  ‘I’m impressed with myself, too,’ I told her, and not a word of it was a lie.

  I resolved to see Victoria again for another few weeks, after which she’d hopefully declare me off
icially fit for a new life again. I decided to flick through the prospectus for the local college when I got home to find a course that appealed to me – find out where else I could study it. After all, I still needed to move.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Eli

  I’m running through the people we know. The women we know. Is there anyone Martin’s been extra friendly with? Or behaved differently around? Would he be as clichéd as to be sleeping with his secretary? His partner’s wife? My friends? Rachel? They’ve always got along so well …

  But I trust Rachel. I’ve always trusted Rachel, with everything.

  Just as I’ve trusted my husband.

  ‘You should call Martin. He should know what’s happened at home.’

  My mother’s voice cuts through my thoughts, but I shake my head. I can’t think straight. If I’m honest with myself, I’m scared, too – scared to call in case some mystery woman answers the phone. Like a reveal in a movie, the unsuspecting wife hears her husband’s mistress purr down the phone …

  I’m too tired to cry, so I lie down and try to shut the world out for a bit. This doesn’t feel like my life any more.

  My mother strokes my hair, as she did when I was a child. She tells me she loves me. She tells me over and over it’ll be okay.

  She can’t possibly know that, but I allow myself to believe it, as exhaustion overwhelms me and I drift off to sleep.

  *

  I wake up an hour or so later. Mum’s still beside me, a look of concern on her face.

  ‘Did the police call back?’

  She looks down, won’t meet my gaze.

  ‘There was no sign of anyone in the house,’ she says. ‘No sign of any break-in, either. All windows and doors closed. They asked, have you considered who else might have access to your house? Have you given a key to anyone?’

  ‘Well you, obviously. Martin’s parents. And our cleaner – but I don’t think anyone else has access.’