by Lucy Lawrie
There was a sharp, collective intake of breath at this mention of the ‘v’ word. Molly spilled coffee into her saucer. Jody dropped her gaze to Vichard and sang a very quiet ‘la, la-la.’
Dita looked at me, confused, as well she might. There was a complex code with these girls. You were allowed (and indeed, expected) to share whatever grisly obstetric details you wished as long as you didn’t say certain words out loud.
I glanced across to check the clock on the wall, wondering whether we could get away with leaving yet. And that’s when I saw my ex-boyfriend, Malkie, joining the end of the queue for the hot food counter.
It wouldn’t be him, of course. Nine years after splitting up, I still ‘saw’ him in the street with alarming regularity. It didn’t make my insides lurch anymore (that was just for the first five or six years). It was just a slight quickening, a spike of curiosity. ‘Oh, is that Malkie?’ I would think, until I realised that it wasn’t him. It was never him. Why would it be him? As far as I knew (from a perfunctory email exchange six years ago) he had moved to London, and had been working there ever since.
It had occurred to me that perhaps these appearances meant that he was there in my head all the time, just underneath the level of conscious thought. It had also occurred to me that this seemed pretty incompatible with a happy marriage to someone else. But what could I do? I didn’t seek him out; he was just there, flashing into life in the face of a stranger, or in a half-overheard snatch of conversation. Or captured, fleetingly but perfectly, in the stride of a man passing by on the other side of the street. And then he would be gone again, as lost to me as he always was.
It certainly wouldn’t be him now, in the John Lewis café on a Wednesday morning. The man at the hot food counter had his back towards me, and could be anybody. But then again, there had been those missed calls that I’d never returned . . . Maybe Malkie had been phoning to let me know he was in Edinburgh.
The man’s profile came into view, as he looked up to read the overhead menu board. It made me wonder. But it was the inward flick of his wrist as he looked at his watch that hit home, and sent adrenalin juddering through my body.
Seemingly in slow motion, he turned, placed his tray back on the stack and walked out of the café towards the main shop floor.
‘I think Sophie needs changing,’ I said, rising to my feet with her pinned against my chest. I felt, rather than saw, the stares of the other mums as I hurried out of the café, minus the changing bag.
Halfway through the furniture department, I stopped and wheeled round, looking across the expanse of mocked-up living rooms. There was no sign of him at all. Whoever it had been, he’d disappeared.
Suddenly light-headed, I teetered backwards and sank onto an orange and purple display sofa. Hearing a little mew, I looked down and remembered Sophie, pressed against my chest, her hair mussed up and damp from my tears, her thin little arms flailing.
Oh God. What kind of mother was I, chasing the ghost of an ex-boyfriend through the furniture department at John Lewis when I was supposed to be exchanging birthing stories with my Babycraft comrades?
‘Are you okay, Cassie?’ It was Dita, come to check on me.
‘Fine. I just felt a bit dizzy.’
She sat down next to me. ‘I could do with a bit of air myself. Let’s just sit for a minute, shall we? Maybe I could have a little cuddle?’ She held out her arms for Sophie.
I watched Dita shushing and patting my daughter, contentedly at ease with her in a way that still eluded me. But it would be fine, I told myself. It was just a question of time and experience. It would take a bit of time to adjust to this new life, with all its strangeness. And my visceral reaction to the Malkie figure was surely just a symptom of this. I’d been living on the edge of my nerves since the moment Sophie had been placed in my arms.
We left soon afterwards, making a detour back to the café to collect our things and make our excuses. Dita was unusually silent as she pushed Sophie’s pram through the shopping centre and out to the car park.
‘So what did you think of my Babycraft friends, then?’ I asked.
She raised her eyebrows, as though trying to think bright thoughts. There was a long pause, followed by a sigh. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, with a sudden rush of affection, linking my spare arm with hers. Thank goodness she was here. My support network, as advocated by Mum, was looking a little ropey. My best friend was in New Zealand; Jonathan, whilst good on the practical side, merely brushed away all my concerns and baby angst; and my attempts to confide in Mum herself had failed. And after today, it was clear that the Babycraft crew were only going to make me feel worse. So Dita would have to be my network of one – until she went back to Holland next week.
‘What’s this, Cassie?’ asked Dita as she loaded the bags into the back of the car. I was strapping Sophie into her car seat.
‘What?’ I looked over.
She was holding a handful of white petals.
‘They were in the changing bag, just inside the top where it was unzipped.’
‘That’s odd.’
‘I suppose they must have fallen in. Maybe we brushed past one of the displays on the shop floor. Oh – was there not a vase of carnations on one of the tables in the furniture department? That’ll be it.’
‘Hmm. I suppose so.’ It was a plausible explanation. Suddenly feeling a crawling sensation at the back of my neck, I turned and looked around the car park. There was nobody around, just cars and concrete pillars. I shivered and pulled my coat around me.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
5
So much for our wedding anniversary. Instead of gazing into Jonathan’s eyes over a candlelit dinner, I was locked in the bathroom, clutching a McKeith’s pad and a biro, and making a list of my worries.
Jonathan had tried to surprise me by booking a table at my favourite restaurant, and he’d even booked a babysitter from an extortionately expensive childcare agency. But I’d had to explain that this was sheer madness – I couldn’t even think of leaving Sophie with a complete stranger, and unless he could spirit Dita back from Holland, or my mother from her Swedish island, we wouldn’t be going anywhere. He’d taken it well, and said he’d book somewhere for lunch the next day instead, so Sophie could come too. He’d confessed that he fancied an early bed and a good night’s sleep, anyway.
I’d smiled, agreeing that it sounded nice, but in truth, the idea of a good night’s sleep was just a fantasy. I’d hardly slept at all in the two months since Sophie had been born. The three-hourly feeds and spikes of inexplicable crying would have been manageable on their own, but my own insomnia tore huge holes into already broken nights. The eight-hour blocks of dark, velvety sleep that I’d enjoyed pre-Sophie had fragmented into a series of short, restless naps. Gritty-eyed, brain-buzzing days had become the norm.
And exhaustion, it seemed, was the perfect breeding ground for anxiety. The spores would settle in my mind quietly, drifting in from snatches of news on the radio, doom-laden passages in the Sunday supplements or conversations overheard in the park. It was at night, under darkness, that they would mushroom and bloom. It began with fears that I would accidentally kill Sophie by dropping her down the stairs, pushing her pram in front of a car or letting her suffocate in her cot. The night when I’d nearly poisoned her with old milk had highlighted how easy it was to slip up. The responsibility – what was being asked of me – was so absolute, so uncompromising, and there were so many ways in which I could fail. Scenarios multiplied in my mind, alternative realities lurking behind every aspect of life. Hardest to shake was the fear that I would die, and abandon her. My own empty, post-pregnancy body became a source of dread.
I’d read in a magazine that psychologists encouraged anxious patients to put their worries down on paper. So, sometime after midnight, I’d left my bed and taken refuge in the bathroom. Having completed the exercise, I was now reviewing the list I’d made. It included the following:
In retrospect it had probably been a mistake to Google ‘dizziness symptoms’. Out of the array of devastating conditions to choose from, a brain tumour had seemed one of the more cheerful possibilities. Against this tide of gloom, it was hard to convince myself that it was just tiredness, or my body getting back to normal after the birth, but nevertheless I purchased a bottle of disgusting iron and vitamin ‘tonic’ and pinned all my hopes on it.
2. Possible early motor neurone disease.
That morning I had leaned over and picked up a magazine (in fact the same helpful magazine that had suggested listing all my worries) from where it had fallen under the kitchen table. My thumb and forefinger had trembled slightly, resulting in the magazine slipping to the floor. Google beckoned again, and a few clicks later I found myself reading posts on an internet forum for hypochondriacs. One of the hypochondriacs had cautioned the others that weakness between the thumb and forefinger was the first symptom of motor neurone disease. Horrified, I began to picture myself Stephen Hawking-like, paralysed in a wheelchair with a computerised voice, while Jonathan had to give up his job to provide me with twenty-four-hour care. Since then, nasty little twitches had sprung up all over my body, and my legs began to feel weak when I climbed the stairs. My body seemed to be accommodating itself to my worst fears, weakening in response to the terrible knowledge I had gleaned.
3. Possible onset of blindness.
For a few months, I’d been seeing floaty things in front of my eyes whenever I was looking at something against a bright background. The internet (yes, again) assured me these probably were just harmless ‘floaters’ but that they could occasionally be due to retinal detachment, or in one in every ten million cases, due to a rare but deadly form of eye cancer.
Obviously, I thought, biting my lip and digging my toes into the thick carpet, I should go and see the doctor about all of these symptoms. However, this was a course of action fraught with difficulty. The last time I’d been there I had seen a big notice in the waiting room advising patients that they were only allowed to ask the doctor about one thing in each consultation. Neither did I feel able to make three appointments to discuss each issue separately. Such an attempt would have probably made the appointment-booking computer explode, given the difficulty in arranging just one appointment with a particular doctor. Even if I were to be successful, the appointments would no doubt be so far apart as to span weeks or months. So that would mean I’d have to prioritise which was the most urgent symptom. The responsibility of this choice made me feel even more anxious than the symptoms themselves.
With a sigh, I put a question mark next to each of the health worries, and moved on to the next item in the worry list.
4. Exorcism – yes or no?
I couldn’t do anything about that unless I wanted to go into the office and trawl through endless databases for case reports that probably didn’t exist. Another question mark.
And there, at the end of the list, was the final worry. It had emerged from the deepest, darkest part of my mind, but seemed prepared to display itself only in initials.
5. J & C ? ? ?
I stared at it for a moment before tearing the sheet off the pad, scrunching it into a ball, and going downstairs to put it at the bottom of the kitchen bin.
*
Driving to the restaurant for lunch the next day, the bright spring sunshine glared through the windscreen, and the potentially deadly ‘floaters’ danced round in my field of vision. Breathing deeply to try and quell my panic, I decided that I should try and share some of my worries with Jonathan. Maybe that was the way forward. How could I expect our relationship to flourish when there was an entire soap opera of doom going on in my head that he wasn’t even aware of?
I gripped the steering wheel firmly and took a few deep breaths. I’ve always found it easier to talk about difficult subjects whilst driving. I think it has to do with risk perception. The part of my brain that normally scans the conversational road ahead, to identify potential hazards, is kept fully occupied watching the actual road.
‘Are you okay?’ asked Jonathan. ‘What’s with the heavy breathing?’
‘It would be terrible to go blind, wouldn’t it?’ I said. But part of me obviously didn’t want to go down this road – my tone was conversational, rather than confessional.
There was a long pause while Jonathan considered the question.
‘Yes,’ he said.
There was silence for a little while, while I negotiated some roadworks and temporary traffic lights. When we were moving steadily once more, I tried again with a more direct approach.
‘Lately, I’ve felt that perhaps my sight may be failing a little.’ It was a good way of putting it, I thought. Not too alarmist, but straight to the point.
Jonathan sniggered.
‘What?’
‘Why are you talking like a person from Victorian times?’
‘I’m not. It’s just, sometimes I think I can’t see very clearly.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Jonathan. ‘Maybe you need stronger glasses. You should go to the opticians.’
‘Do you get floaty things in front of your eyes sometimes?’
‘No.’
‘But just think how awful it would be to go blind. There would be lots of things you couldn’t do.’ I tried to think of a salient example. ‘I wouldn’t be able to measure out the boiled water to make Sophie’s milk.’
Jonathan frowned.
‘The measurements have to be very exact,’ I went on.
‘Hmmm. We would have to buy the ready made cartons, I suppose.’
I considered this. ‘But even so, it would be terrible, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, Cassie.’
I gave up. ‘Maybe we could go to the garden centre on the way back from lunch. We should get that bird feeder thing. It would be nice for Sophie to see the birds.’
‘And we need that slug stuff, remember,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘You know, it’s been a while since I’ve had my eyes tested. And I saw a nice pair of designer frames in the window of Black & Lizars last week. Let’s all go and get our eyes tested next weekend.’
‘What, Sophie too?’ Maybe he had a point. The blindness could be hereditary.
Jonathan didn’t say anything. That proved he was worried.
‘Can they test their eyes at that age?’ I wondered.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jonathan. ‘I think she would need to be a bit older. Maybe . . . two? She wouldn’t need to know the alphabet. I think they can use pictures instead of letters.’
‘What, like little bottles of milk, getting smaller and smaller?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Or maybe, in Sophie’s case, there could be a very small picture of a bath on the bottom line. And if she started thrashing about and screaming, we would know that she could see it.’
‘Oh yes, or a tiny picture of the health visitor.’
He was always doing this; making me feel better, against my will. With all the confidence of an expert surgeon, he would sweep in and perform a sort of anxiety bypass in three minutes flat. I still had the lunch, though. I was going to make him talk.
*
‘The Underground? We’re going to The Underground?’
After we’d parked the car, Jonathan had led the way down a narrow close into the Cowgate, bringing us to a halt outside the door of the nightclub where we’d met one foggy October night, eight years earlier.
‘They’ve renovated it and reopened it as a sort of bistro,’ said Jonathan, holding the door open. ‘I found it on the internet last night, and booked a table. Apparently they still use the basement for functions. I thought we could sneak down and have a re-enactment.’
I remembered the cavernous basement, with its black, sweat-soaked walls, and glanced nervously down at Sophie. The place had enjoyed quite a seedy reputation back in the day, though its clientele had been mostly students and young professionals in disguise: law students, medics, teachers,
and even, once, an astrophysicist. Not that anybody ever admitted to such status. The thing was to come across as someone a little bit gritty, if not actually dangerous. Even the skeletal DJ, who looked as if he were in the final stages of heroin addiction and was rumoured to live in a squat in one of the dodgiest parts of Muirhouse, turned out, somewhat disappointingly, to be a trainee meteorologist who lived with his parents in a vast Victorian pile in Morningside.
A waitress showed us to our table, then reappeared moments later with two watermelon Bacardi Breezers, which she set down in front of us with just a hint of a raised eyebrow. Jonathan gave me a beaming smile.
‘Oh, that’s sweet,’ I said. On the night we’d met, Jonathan and his friend Gordon had appeared beside Helen and me on the dance floor and presented us with fresh Bacardi Breezers, which were welcome replacements for the warm, nearly empty ones we had been singing into. We’d introduced ourselves, as policewomen, and Jonathan had burst out laughing, immediately guessing not only that we were students, but also that we belonged to the law faculty.
Sophie, obviously not appreciating the Bacardi Breezer reference, was grizzling a bit so we decided we’d better order – lasagne for both of us, the safest-looking option on the menu. It arrived in minutes, its cheese topping anaemically pale.
‘Fresh out of the microwave,’ commented Jonathan, grinding copious amounts of pepper onto his.
‘Never mind,’ I said. ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
‘So, I forgot to ask, did you get that case sorted out in the end?’ he asked, spreading butter on a hard piece of baguette. ‘What was it, the Working Time Regulations? Something to do with ghosts?’
He’d always enjoyed hearing stories about my work, fancying himself as a bit of an armchair lawyer. In pre-Sophie days we used to discuss work – my cases, his fund-managing stories – in the evenings over a glass of wine.