Her Sister's Child

by Alison James

  Tom shakes his head. He seems genuinely upset. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  She’s crying now, her sheer exhaustion making her crumble. ‘But the babies, what about the twin babies?’

  ‘Someone else will give them a wonderful home, I’m sure of it. There are always queues of people wanting to adopt newborns. You said so yourself.’

  Marian thinks of the two tiny humans hidden away in the corner of the loft, and her weeping intensifies. This isn’t the wonderful home Tom’s referring to. She isn’t what the babies need.

  He fetches a tissue from the box on the dresser and hands it to her. ‘Remember what the IVF consultant said, Marrie? It’s me that’s infertile, not you. You could still have a baby if you met someone else. There’s still time.’

  She simply scowls at him and shakes her head.

  ‘Look, we’ll talk about what to do with the house at some point, but now obviously isn’t the time. Let’s leave it till things have settled down a bit, okay?’

  Tom goes into the hall and is hefting the box of vinyls when a distinct screeching sound floats down from the top floor. He straightens up and looks back up the stairs.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he asks, startled.

  ‘Oh, it’s that wretched Burmese cat from number twenty-seven,’ Marian says, quickly. ‘It’s taken to sitting in our garden and howling.’

  ‘We should go out there and chuck cold water over it,’ Tom says. An awkwardness descends with his use of the word ‘we’. ‘I’ll do it if you like. You don’t want the thing coming in and spraying everywhere.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ says Marian, firmly. She places her body so that she’s blocking his route to the garden.

  ‘Okay then.’ Her husband gives her a long, thoughtful look, before carrying his things out of the house and driving away.

  Marian watches the car through the sitting room window. Don’t go, every cell in her body is screaming. Don’t leave me alone with them.

  Once the car has rounded the corner onto Alexandra Park Road, she dabs her eyes with the tissue Tom gave her, and walks slowly up the stairs. There’s a cry; a cross, indignant cry.

  Saffron, she thinks. That’s the sound Saffron makes when she’s hungry.

  She yanks down the loft ladder and climbs up into the loft, pausing at the top to give her eyes time to adjust to the gloom. The dust in the air makes her cough. Saffron is still crying, tiny hands and feet waving.

  Marian reaches instinctively to pick her up and calm her before carrying the basket back to the ladder.

  And then she sees that something is very wrong.

  34

  Marian

  ‘Who’s the patient, is it yourself?’

  The nurse on the end of the line at NHS Direct speaks the words in a sing-song voice, sticking to her script. Marian’s first instinct had been to phone her GP, but of course her GP knows that she’s been going through fertility treatment, and has not recently given birth to twins.

  ‘No. No, it’s my son.’

  ‘And how old is your son, please?’

  ‘Ten days old.’

  ‘And can I take your name please?’

  ‘Um, Cathy. Cathy Smith.’

  ‘And the baby’s name?’

  ‘Noah.’

  ‘Right, Cathy, can you tell me what the problem seems to be.’

  ‘Um, he’s… he’s not breathing properly, and—’

  ‘Let me just stop you there, Cathy… he is breathing?’

  ‘Yes, it’s just… he’s a bit blue around the lips. And his breathing is a bit shallow, a bit rapid. A bit like an asthma attack.’

  ‘Did he have breathing difficulties at birth?’

  Marian hesitates. ‘No.’

  ‘Is he premature?’

  Was he? She didn’t know. Nobody knew Lizzie’s dates, not even Lizzie.

  ‘No, but he’s on the small side. He’s one of twins.’

  ‘In that case I think you should take him straight to hospital and get him seen by a neonatal specialist. There are several reasons for a baby turning blue, including heart problems, but they all need immediate attention.’

  Marian says nothing. She can hear nothing, except for the thumping of her own heart.

  ‘Cathy? Cathy… are you still on the line?’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m here. Okay, thank you, I will. I’ll take him straight to A and E.’

  She hangs up the landline. She’d withheld the number just in case. The trouble with going to her local A and E is that they’ll want to look up Noah’s birth record. They’ll want details of her midwife, who should have been doing daily home visits. It won’t take much to raise their suspicions that this is not really her child. And then the police might be called. And the local social services, where she herself is an employee. Oh, the irony. The tabloids would lap it up.

  She reaches down and picks up Noah. His colour has improved, and his breathing is a little less shallow. Perhaps he just got a bit of dust in his lungs when he was in the loft, and it was stuck in his airway. He grimaces and squirms in her arms.

  ‘Hungry, little man?’ she asks. He’s still a lot less interested in feeding than his sister, and she’s sure he’s lost weight rather than gained. Marian fetches a bottle and coaxes him into drinking a few ounces before he falls asleep, the teat slipping from his lips. She lays him down in his basket and feeds and changes his sister. Saffron screams on and off for what feels like hours before settling, though the clock says it’s only forty minutes. Once she’s finally asleep, Marian places her basket on the bedroom floor next to her brother’s. Noah’s chest is rising and falling rapidly, but he looks peaceful. She makes herself some toast, has a quick shower and then collapses into bed, delirious with exhaustion.

  Her first thought on waking is that this is the longest period of sleep she’s had all week.

  The clock tells her it’s well over four hours since she turned out the light. Until now, she’s rarely been more than an hour and a half without one of the twins waking. The startling thing is what a difference this makes. A stretch of deep, dreamless sleep has reset her brain.

  One of the babies is crying now, however. From the volume and the indignant tone, it has to be Saffron. Marian tugs on her dressing gown and walks over to the baskets. As she bends down to lift the little girl, she freezes. Noah is completely still, and there’s something about the stillness that feels quite wrong. She’s seen enough newborn sleep in the last few days to know how it looks. And instinctively she knows this is not it.

  This is not sleep.

  With Saffron draped over her shoulder, she reaches down and touches Noah’s cheek. It’s cold, despite the warmth of the July night. Icy cold.

  The shock is visceral, like a physical blow to her body.

  It takes her a long time to accept it. To accept that he has gone. At first she just stands there staring down into the bassinet, at the tiny waxen figure. Willing him to move. But of course, he doesn’t. He won’t.

  Saffron twists in her arms, rooting against her chest for milk, stuffing her curled fist into her gummy mouth. Marian puts her back into her own basket and, when she begins to wail, takes the basket into the spare room and shuts the door. She can’t deal with another baby right now. She has to think. She has to act.

  Lowering herself onto the edge of her bed in the silent room, Marian buries her face in her hands and tries to order her swirling thoughts. She could take Noah’s body to the hospital, anonymously of course, and leave him where he would be found. But if they somehow manage to trace her afterwards, they will think that she killed him. Even if she could persuade them it was a natural death, they’ll take Saffron away, and possibly send her to prison. And it would make no difference to Noah, not now. He’s gone. She consoles herself that if he had been left alone with Lizzie, this would still have happened. It might even have happened sooner. Marian wasn’t the one who drank her way through her pregnancy.

  It’s not her fault.

  From her work
at social services Marian knows only too well that the bodies of newborns are found in all sorts of places: toilet blocks, dumpsters, storm drains. But she could never do that. Would never do that. She has to give him some dignity. She pulls on tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt and, ignoring Saffron’s discontented murmuring, goes out to the garden. There’s a light fitting in the shed, but she doesn’t dare switch it on. She mustn’t do anything that will attract the attention of the neighbours. Instead she gropes around in the dark until she finds the spade that Tom used to dig the flowerbeds.

  She knows the perfect spot. At the far end of the garden is a large, overgrown ceanothus bush. Its flowering has just come to an end, but in bloom its stems are heavy with blue flowers. She digs a hole behind it, with difficulty, because she has to angle the spade past the branches and can’t get enough downward purchase. Eventually she abandons the spade and resorts to a large trowel, getting down on her knees and hacking away at the topsoil. The earth beneath is heavy London clay, and she struggles to keep going. But keep going she must, because the hole can’t be too shallow.

  It takes her about an hour, by which time Saffron has given up crying and gone back to sleep. Marian rinses the mud off her hands, and with tears half blinding her, gently wraps Noah in the blue cashmere blanket, covering his face. She remembers a wooden wine box that contained a magnum of champagne, given to Tom by a client, and retrieves it from the back of a cupboard in the utility room. The blanketed bundle fits inside it perfectly.

  She carries the makeshift coffin across the moonlit lawn and lowers it with infinite care into the grave. Filling it in does not take quite as long as digging it, but she takes pains to flatten the surface of the earth as much as possible. The overhanging branches of the ceanothus will mask the disturbance until it settles. And it’s not as though Tom is going to be doing any more gardening in Ranmoor Road.

  It’s done, yet walking away feels impossible. Marian sinks back onto her knees at the edge of the lawn and uses the hem of her T-shirt to wipe away the tears that have been coursing down her face. She feels the need to say or do something to mark the occasion. A prayer, perhaps. She’s not religious, but her Church of England grammar school was very big on praying. She reaches back into her memory to try and dredge up something suitable. The only thing that she can recall with any clarity is Psalm 23, so she whispers it now.

  ‘“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”’

  It doesn’t feel enough, yet it’s all she has. She drops her head and weeps some more, then walks wearily back to the house to care for Noah’s sister.

  35

  Marian

  The text message makes her heart leap in her chest.

  Am in area, thought I might pop in for a chat. Angela x

  Marian has been signed off work with stress for the past month and a half, citing the stress of her marriage ending as the reason. The truth is she doesn’t ever think about work, or her colleagues. She thinks of them now as her former colleagues. The only thing occupying her mind is the challenge of new motherhood.

  The logistics of caring for one newborn are straightforward, after dealing with two on her own. One set of feeds to prepare, one set of nappies to change. No background screaming from Twin 1 while she attends to Twin 2. But something in Saffron has changed since Noah’s death. While she was always the louder and hungrier of the siblings, her needs were simple. She cried when she was hungry, but once fed she stopped. She was easier to settle, and slept for longer periods.

  But now it’s as though Saffron has taken on Noah’s role as the difficult one. As though she senses his absence and is traumatised by the loss. She wails inconsolably for long periods of the day, for no apparent reason. If Marian picks her up, she squirms and arches her back, refusing to be comforted. As if she’s angry. At night she rarely sleeps for more than an hour and a half at a time. Marian is so exhausted, her own sleep pattern so disturbed, that she’s like a zombie most of the time. She rarely leaves the house, having all her groceries delivered instead. When she can do so without detection, she takes Saffron out in the car, because the sound and vibration of the engine usually soothe her.

  And now this. Angela calling round. She thinks about texting her back and saying she’s not at the house, but if Angela doesn’t check her phone and comes round anyway, that could be a problem. Instead, she’ll use the excuse that she’s not well and get rid of her as quickly as possible. It’s not as if she doesn’t look terrible, so her excuse won’t seem fabricated.

  She puts Saffron in the carrycot and pushes it down to the end of the garden, positioning it out of sight behind the shed. As though sensing the proximity of her brother’s resting place, Saffron begins to wail.

  ‘It’ll only be five minutes,’ Marian tell her. ‘Then I’m coming back.’

  It’s all right to leave her there, she tells herself. She’s only in the garden. People left prams in the garden all the time when I was a baby. Fresh air was considered a good thing. And it’s still only September.

  But the memory of leaving the twins in the loft eats away at her. She’d thought they would be okay, but Noah wasn’t. Noah had become ill and died. It’s necessary, she tells herself briskly. Of all the people to discover her with a baby, Angela would be the worst.

  In the kitchen she strains to hear, but the carrycot is mercifully out of earshot. She scoops up the feeding stuff and any stray bits of clothing into a wicker basket – a routine that has become familiar – and bundles it into the under-stairs cupboard. Thirty seconds later, the doorbell rings.

  ‘Oh, sorry! Have I woken you up?’ Angela takes in Marian’s stained dressing gown and wild hair.

  ‘I was just about to have a shower,’ Marian replies truthfully. ‘I’ve been a bit under the weather… this bug that’s going around… so I won’t ask you in if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that.’ Angela glances past her shoulder into the untidy kitchen. ‘I just wanted to check up on you, see if there was anything I could do. You’re obviously going through a tough time, with Tom and everything.’

  ‘Yes,’ Marian mumbles. ‘It’s been really difficult.’ Tears well up in her eyes, and to her horror she starts to sob. If she needed to convince Angela that she was suffering with stress, there can be no doubt about it now.

  ‘Oh, you poor love!’ Angela reaches in and gives her a hug, stiffening slightly at the smell of Marian’s unwashed hair. ‘And this situation can’t help.’

  Marian pulls back, wondering what she means, then realises Angela is pointing to the FOR SALE board nailed to the gatepost.

  ‘Yes, well… it’s probably for the best in the long run. Fresh start and all that.’

  Marian means it. She wants the house to be sold so she can put an end to this soul-destroying subterfuge. Hiding a young baby in a neighbourhood like this is almost impossible. The business of selling is draining, however. Because of Saffron, she can’t be in when potential purchasers come round, and has had to refuse several requests to conduct last-minute viewings herself.

  Tom has become angry and exasperated about this. ‘I’ll come over myself and talk to buyers if you don’t want to,’ he argued. ‘Honestly, Marian, I know this is difficult, but the way you’re behaving at the moment, it’s like you’ve lost the plot. I don’t know how to get through to you any more.’

  She only just succeeded in persuading him that there was sufficient interest in the property for them to be confident of a quick sale. ‘Then we can both move on. Which is what we want.’

  She knows that Tom and Vanessa are looking at properties in North London together, but she has a different plan. The more distance she puts between herself and London, the easier it will be to blend in as a
mother. To have some sort of normal life. She has decided she’ll move to Brighton. She used to enjoy visiting when she was a child, and loves the idea of raising a child at the seaside. Fresh air, playing on the beach, freedom from scrutiny. And with her share of the capital from Ranmoor Road she’ll be able to afford somewhere decent without the need for a big mortgage.

  ‘Probably for the best,’ Angela is agreeing. ‘But going through the upheaval must be hard.’ She attempts another stiff-armed hug. ‘Poor you. Let me know if there’s anything I can do. Promise?’

  ‘Promise,’ says Marian. She waits until Angela has got into her car, before shutting the front door firmly behind her.

  There’s a reluctance in Marian as she walks down to the end of the garden to retrieve the carrycot. She feels uneasy at being so near to where Noah’s remains are buried.

  Saffron was only out in the garden for a few minutes in the end. And her crying has stopped, so no harm done. If she stays asleep a bit longer, Marian might even get to take a shower and put on some clothes. After checking that the neighbours on either side aren’t in their gardens, she wheels the carrycot gingerly back to the house.

  Just as she is lifting it over the sill of the French windows, Kate from number twenty-three heads out onto her terrace. She turns her head in Marian’s direction, sending her scuttling into the kitchen and closing the doors, despite the Indian summer warmth. This is ridiculous, she thinks. I can’t live like this. Like a fugitive. And somebody is going to notice something soon. It’s only a matter of time.

  She has just stripped off her dressing gown and stepped into the shower when Saffron begins to scream again. According to most of the online childcare tips she’s read it won’t harm a baby to let it cry for a bit, but it still risks the neighbours hearing through the walls. She wraps a towel round herself, goes downstairs, lifts the small body against her shoulder, and carries her back up to the bathroom, placing her on the bathmat with her jungle gym positioned above her. Saffron ignores the bright shapes and continues to grizzle, but at least in here with the door closed the neighbours are unlikely to hear.