Magpie

by Elizabeth Day

  ‘Guys,’ Marisa said, directing her comment to Jake. He didn’t hear her. ‘HELLO?’ she shouted.

  Kate stopped dancing abruptly. She was wearing leopard-print ballet pumps and skinny jeans and a T-shirt with ‘Ciao Amour’ splashed in sans serif across the front.

  ‘Oh. Hi,’ Kate said, her cheeks shiny.

  Jake smiled at Marisa standing in the doorway as if nothing were amiss.

  ‘Could you turn the music down? I’m trying to work.’

  Two pairs of eyes gazed at her, uncomprehending.

  ‘The music?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Marisa glanced at Jake meaningfully, trying to make her frustration understood.

  ‘It’s really not that loud,’ Kate said.

  Marisa gasped. How dare she?

  ‘It’s loud enough that I had to put in earplugs.’

  ‘Ooookaaaaayyy,’ Jake said, drawing out the vowels unnecessarily. ‘Sorry about that.’

  He went over to the speaker and stopped the music.

  ‘Thank you,’ Marisa said.

  Kate had not moved from her position in the middle of the room. She was looking at Marisa, almost startled, as if Marisa were scaring her, as if she were the one being unreasonable.

  When she had left, closing the door behind her, she had waited and listened at the door. Nothing. But when she reached the stairs, she could hear muffled female laughter and the sound of Jake shushing her. The music started up again, this time more quietly.

  ‘Remember?’ Jake is asking now. ‘When you asked us to turn it down?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He raises his eyebrows, his expression one of intense understanding, as if he is trying – really, truly trying to be sympathetic to this pregnant woman’s needs. His eyes are so clear and blue they look unreal.

  ‘It was … disproportionate, wouldn’t you say?’

  She wants to tell him to fuck off. Instead, she turns away from him, mutely buttoning up her fury.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jake says. ‘Perhaps that was out of line.’

  ‘Yes,’ she replies, rigid with annoyance. ‘Yes, it was.’

  He sighs, and it is this – the audible exhalation intended to emphasise his ability to be infinitesimally patient – that finally pushes her over the edge.

  ‘Why are you taking Kate’s side over mine? It’s so unfair! I told you I didn’t boil the milk. The music was really fucking loud.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘It was!’

  She can hear how petulant she sounds and yet she can’t stop herself. Her throat constricts and for one terrible moment she thinks she’s going to throw up, right there in the kitchen, across the Porcelanosa tiles. Malaga beige. Impeccable.

  ‘You’re ganging up on me!’

  ‘We’re not.’

  He is excruciatingly calm. She is infuriated by it. He reaches out again to graze his fingers against her sleeve.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I definitely don’t want you to feel ganged up on. That’s terrible. We’ll be more considerate.’

  ‘Stop saying “we”. You’re not my parents.’

  He laughs.

  ‘That we are certainly not.’

  His eyes are kind again, crinkled at the corners.

  ‘As long as you’re OK, and you have everything you need …’ he says. ‘It’s difficult for me to understand what it’s like being pregnant. I’m just a fairly hopeless bloke, when it comes down to it.’

  It is her turn to laugh.

  ‘You’re not. You’re a great bloke.’

  ‘Not sure about that.’

  The light in the kitchen begins to turn. The end of their garden is overlooked by the neighbouring council estate. On the other side of the fence is a tall, dark tower which houses the connecting stairwell for a series of flats. The only windows are small, plastic apertures that open just a few inches – slanted, at an angle – so the tower has the unsettling feel of a checkpoint. Sometimes Marisa imagines men with guns, angling their barrels through the single-glazed slivers, training their crosshairs directly at the house.

  She shivers.

  ‘Cold?’ Jake says.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Can I have a hug?’ she asks.

  His eyes widen. A flush appears on his cheeks. So she can still embarrass him, Marisa thinks, she still has that power. He’s so English and so upstanding and decent and so bloody repressed. She’s not asking him to strip off naked and take her over the kitchen counter, is she? A few more seconds pass. He makes a great show of considering her request. It is a joke they share and, like all private jokes between couples, it is never as funny as it first appeared to be.

  ‘Of course,’ he says.

  She folds herself into his chest, inhaling him, and he crosses his arms around her back, holding her close. She closes her eyes, allowing herself to feel safe. She fits into him exactly – his chin propped on top of her head as if their sizes had specifically been designed to dovetail.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ he murmurs, and she allows herself to believe him and wraps her arms around his waist, placing her hands in the lower curve of his back. She presses herself closer and then she hears someone cough.

  Jake pulls away from her. A strand of her hair gets tangled in his shirt button and she yelps as he jerks away. It takes her a moment to realise what is happening.

  ‘Sorry,’ comes a voice from behind Marisa’s left shoulder. It is Kate. Of course. Kate. Always there.

  ‘Marisa was just …’ Jake is spluttering over his words. ‘She was a little upset so I …’ He brushes back his hair. ‘We were hugging.’ He swallows drily, the lump of his Adam’s apple moving down his neck.

  ‘I can see that,’ Kate says.

  Marisa giggles. She can’t help it. Jake is so unnecessarily flustered.

  ‘He’s really not great with public displays of affection, is he?’

  She directs the question to Kate, deciding generously to include her. And then she asks, ‘I thought I’d get Vietnamese for dinner if you want to join?’

  ‘Sure,’ Kate says, with no enthusiasm.

  ‘Great. I’m just going to finish up upstairs and then I’ll order.’

  Marisa turns to wink at Jake as she leaves the room. He looks away, trying not to smile. She feels like a naughty schoolgirl, caught in the act by a disapproving teacher. She wonders how long Kate was standing there before they heard her cough.

  The twelve-week scan. They get an Uber to the hospital and when the sonographer prods at her, a pixellated black and white image appears on screen. The outlines of the image are shaped in an attenuated semi-circle that gives Marisa the feeling of vertigo when she stares at it. And there, in the centre of the monochrome curve, is a fuzzy shape studded into the darkness like some alien constellation. On the screen, the white dots pulsate and flicker and the blob contracts, amoeba-like.

  ‘There’s the heartbeat,’ they are told.

  Jake is hypnotised and as he stares at it, his eyes mist over. Marisa feels nothing and is surprised and a little scared by the fact that she feels nothing. She wants to experience the same emotions as Jake, and yet the grainy cells on the hospital screen seem so far removed from the idea of a living, breathing, squalling baby and so distant from what might be going on inside her womb that she can’t seem to bridge the gap. She knows she is pregnant, and yet she doesn’t feel it. When she moves, it is as though there is an invisible layer of bubble wrap around her and she cannot move without there being a barrier between herself and the rest of the world.

  The sonographer tells them there is ‘a great deal to be cheerful about’, and Jake says, ‘OK. OK,’ as if he’s still in a state of shock.

  ‘Well done you,’ he says, looking at her fondly.

  Once again, she feels patronised, but she che
ws the inside of her cheek and forces out a smile and he doesn’t seem to notice. She can see the idea of himself as a father expanding to fill all the available space in his mind. There is no room left for her. Marisa has become a vessel. It is her worst fear: that once she’s had their baby, she will become expendable.

  Pretend everything is fine and it will be, Marisa tells herself. She wishes she could talk to Jas about it, but the two of them have lapsed into silence and the distance feels unbreachable. Marisa had been so insistent she was making the right decision that to admit to any uncertainty, however minor, would be a humiliation.

  Back at home, she tells Jake she’s tired and goes to bed, slipping under the duvet without taking off her clothes. He asks if he can get her anything and she shakes her head. In the bedroom, she can hear him humming happily as he walks around, the sitting-room floorboards creaking under his weight. The sounds of his presence calm her and her tiredness pools around her as if she is sliding into a cool, dark lake. Then, she sleeps.

  She dreams of having to catch a flight. She knows she has not done enough packing, and yet she can’t find time to put all of her belongings into the cases before the plane takes off. She misses flight after flight after flight and she keeps feeling relief that the deadline has passed, but then realises that she still has to get on a later plane, and the time keeps running out and her possessions keep proliferating and she cannot pack them all and so she is forced to choose between the things she most needs and those she is willing to lose forever.

  She has almost managed it when, in her dream, Marisa spots a pair of knitted pink booties under the corner of a heavy rug. She lifts the rug and frees the booties and holds them up to the light and then she knows, with a lurch, that these are her sister’s and she drops them and zips up the case, which has too much in it already, the zips buckling and warping as she forces it shut. It is only when she gets on the aeroplane and is finally seatbelted in, that she is struck with fear that the booties were not, after all, her sister’s, but belonged to her own baby whom she had forgotten in the rush to get everything together.

  Marisa wakes with a gasp, air slamming into her lungs. She is sweating, the back of her T-shirt sticking to her lower back.

  ‘I’m awake, I’m awake,’ she keeps saying.

  She brushes the hair off her forehead and presses her fingers under her eyes to blot away any mascara that might have run. Outside, it is dark. She hadn’t drawn the curtains and beyond the window-frame, the stammering light of a streetlamp bulb casts narrow rectangles across the duvet. She shivers, exposed.

  She gets a cardigan from the wardrobe – one of those chunky, baggy affairs with big pockets – and wraps it tightly around her. The nap seems to have had no discernible effect. If anything, she is more tired now than she was before. Her throat is dry and her stomach is lightly cramping. She stretches out flat on her back and the cramps go away. She is weak, but doesn’t want to eat. And yet she must or Jake will be worried.

  ‘You need extra energy now you’re building a whole new human,’ he has started saying. ‘We need to feed you up!’

  She can’t bear the thought of him hovering over her at dinner, looking worried as she fiddles with the vegetables on her plate. Lying in bed, she runs through a mental inventory of various foods that don’t make her feel sick. All vegetables are out. Tomatoes too. Avocados make her want to throw up.

  Cornflakes? She can’t stomach the idea of milk.

  Toast? Too dry. The idea of honey repels her.

  Eventually she lands on a baked potato. Plain. Maybe she could put some hummus in it? But no butter. No cheese. Perhaps some salt if she dares.

  Buoyed by the thought, she rolls to the edge of the bed and levers herself upright. Yes, a baked potato, she thinks. That will make her feel stronger and more herself. She is wearing a faded grey T-shirt and the same leggings she wore to the hospital. The leggings are old and comfortable and the black Lycra is sagging at the knees. She hasn’t washed today and there is a metallic fustiness emanating from her armpits but she’s pretty sure no one else can smell it. Her face is slack from sleep but she can’t be bothered to check her reflection in the mirror before going downstairs. It is unlike her, this casual approach to her appearance. In the early days with Jake, she had set an alarm on her phone and put it on vibrate under her pillow so that she could get up half an hour before he woke to brush her teeth and dab cream blush over each cheek. In this way, she ensured that when he saw her, she would be the prettiest version of herself.

  Lately, she has been having odd thoughts about what would happen if her hand slipped while she was curling her eyelashes. Weird visions of her lashes being sliced off with the guillotine pull of the metal. She hasn’t been able to cut her nails for the same reason. What if she stabbed herself with the sharp point of the scissors? What would it look like if she gouged into the soles of her feet and allowed the blood to spatter on the tiled bathroom floor? These images are so vivid they bring her to the edge of fainting and then she has to sit down and put her head between her knees.

  For a long time, Marisa has not had visions like this. The last time it happened … but she doesn’t want to think about that. She refuses to think about the downward spiral, the sensation of being sucked into quicksand. She is fine. She has Jake. She is happy. They live in a perfect house. They are having a baby.

  These are the solid things, the hooks of clarity onto which she can hang her feeling of dread. These are the good, decent facts. They are all that matter.

  She thinks Jake is in the sitting room where she left him, but when she peers in, he isn’t there. There is an indentation on the armchair and a half-read book on the coffee table, spine bent back because he never uses a bookmark. She looks at the title: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. It’s unlike Jake to read anything that isn’t a business manual or a periodical. He prefers non-fiction to novels. It might be Kate’s.

  If Jake isn’t here and isn’t upstairs with her, then he must be in the kitchen. Marisa turns into the staircase that leads to the basement. Her mind is still fogged by sleep, by the lingering aftermath of the dream, and so she doesn’t pay much attention when she walks in and hears a rustling sound coming from the sofa. Fleetingly, she thinks of the magpie and wonders if a bird has got into the room again.

  ‘I thought I’d have a baked potato,’ she announces, turning towards the island where she imagines Jake will be standing, preparing dinner or even pouring a glass of apple juice in readiness for her appearance. He will have missed her, Marisa thinks. He will want to talk about the scan and share his excitement and talk about baby names and what colour they’ll paint the nursery and when they should tell his mother now that twelve weeks have passed and she has prepared her face and her mindset for this eventuality. She is making an effort not to let the exhaustion or the nausea overwhelm her and it is as she is doing all of these things that her mind snaps into focus and she notices that Jake is not where she thought he would be and that the rustling from the sofa was not, in fact, a stray bird but the sound of two people huddled together rapidly separating themselves. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees two embracing shadows contract and release, pushing each other away. She thinks of the scan; of the black and white blobs tightening then expanding.

  ‘Shit,’ she hears Kate mutter. Kate scampers to the furthest edge of the sofa, putting distance between her and Jake who, Marisa now notices, has been sitting so close to her that their thighs must have been touching.

  ‘Great,’ Jake is saying, standing and smoothing down his hair in one swift motion. ‘About the baked potato, I mean.’ He tries to smile at her and Marisa’s chest tightens. There is a whooshing sound in her ears. She feels like a cartoon figure she used to watch as a child: a coyote whose legs whir as he runs off a cliff edge, the intensity of the motion ensuring the coyote stays suspended mid-air for several seconds until reality catches up with him and he drops onto the ground below.
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  Beneath her chest, her heart knocks and beats. There is a light fluttering in her throat, as if a wide-open space has opened up in her gullet.

  Jake is blushing. He is actually fucking blushing. His eyes are flicking to the left and right and he is unable to look at her. His shirt is untucked, four buttons undone from the neck.

  Kate, wild-eyed, is now cross-legged on the sofa in the half-gloom. She stares at Marisa and the way she looks at her feels like a challenge. The light is so dim that Marisa can’t make out the individual features of her face, just the sparkle of her blackened eyes and her lips, blurry and pink, as if something has been pressed against them. As if someone has been kissing her.

  Marisa has not moved from the stove. She wonders if she is still, in fact, dreaming. If this is part of a nightmare. Or one of those violent, surreal visions that have been creeping up on her lately. Whatever it is, the truth – if it is indeed the truth – of what might have just happened is too big for her to digest. She will leave it for later, she thinks. She will deal with it then. For now, she just wants things to be normal. To be as they were before she walked down the stairs. After all, she didn’t see anything. She has simply imagined the worst. Yes, she thinks, that’s all that has happened. Her imagination has run away with her. That’s it.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘It’s the only thing I feel like eating.’

  Jake walks over to her then, his face beaming.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he says. ‘Then a baked potato you shall have.’

  Kate stays sitting on the sofa. Marisa meets the lodger’s gaze and smiles at her. It is a lethal smile. Kate looks away, and in that single moment she knows.

  I’ll fucking destroy you, Marisa thinks. She is still smiling when Kate leaves the room.

  10

  She starts following her. To begin with, it is almost a joke. Marisa tells herself she’ll do it once, to set her mind at rest, in the same way that you might expect a spurned wife to trail her husband’s suspected lover in a television soap. She is aware of the absurdity of it, and yet this doesn’t stop her on the first day from putting on a beanie hat, pulling it low over her eyes, and wearing a pair of plain glass spectacles and an oversized army jacket bought from a charity shop for just this purpose. She feels swaddled in the anonymity of her new clothes and when she glances at the hallway mirror on the way out, she is satisfied with what she sees. From a distance, it would be hard to make out any distinguishing features.