The Girl in the Corner

by Amanda Prowse

  Rae felt her body freeze on the mattress. She saw a flash in her mind of the moment she finished giving birth, without contractions and with only a midwife present, tears falling, hands gripping the sheet and a prayer on her lips: Please, please, Lord, please let them have made a horrible mistake; let there be a chance, just give him a chance . . . let him live, please, please . . .

  ‘You . . . you saw him?’ The words caught in her throat.

  ‘Yes.’ He swallowed.

  ‘When?’ Rae felt torn; she both did and did not want the detail.

  ‘Before they took him out of the room.’

  She could hear he was crying.

  ‘Was . . .’ She struggled to find the right words for what she wanted to know. ‘Did he . . .’ She paused again. ‘How did he look?’ Her own tears now fell like hot glass slipping over her cheek.

  ‘Perfect, Rae. He was perfect.’

  ‘He was?’

  ‘Yes, he was.’

  ‘Small, though?’ she managed, her voice no more than a squeak.

  ‘Yes, yes, small – his head was about the size of a tennis ball – but he was . . . he was perfect,’ he stuttered through his tears.

  ‘Just asleep?’ She smiled, superimposing this image with those of Hannah and George snoozing as newborns, and it helped.

  ‘Yes,’ he wept. ‘Just asleep.’

  The two lay for a second or two, until Howard, without asking permission, climbed from his bed and pulled back her covers. Rae pressed herself against the wall and made space. He gently lay down by her side and took her in his arms and this was how they stayed for quite a while, her head resting on his chest, both weeping for the loss of their baby: joined in a powerful grief that swept away all recent hurt, because it was stronger, unifying and long, long overdue.

  Rae liked the feel of her cheek against his warm chest. She felt safe. ‘I still feel him.’

  ‘You do?’ he asked gently, kissing her forehead.

  She nodded against him. ‘I never got to hold him, never saw him and yet I feel him where I always felt him, right here.’ She placed the flat of her hand on the pouch of her stomach. ‘I am glad you saw him, Howard. I sometimes thought . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sometimes thought that maybe he looked bad or something was very wrong and it has haunted me. Frightened me, even.’ She was ashamed to admit this.

  ‘No, no,’ he soothed, ‘nothing like that at all. He was perfect, he really was.’

  ‘I try to imagine what it would be like if he had lived and we had three, Hannah and George and one in between.’

  ‘Toby.’ He spoke the name they had settled on: the name she had not mentioned since leaving the hospital that day because that made him real. And losing him, Toby, was, she knew, possibly more than she could cope with.

  ‘Toby.’ She cried.

  And this was how they stayed until the early hours, locked together in sadness, crying for the loss of their boy.

  Toby.

  Rae woke early and looked across at Howard, unsure when he had crept back to his own bed, but grateful that he had, knowing neither of them would have got much sleep squashed together in such a narrow space. She picked up her bottle of water and went to sit on the terrace, listening to the calls and chatter of hummingbirds and warblers who, like her, watched the coral-pink sunrise behind the coconut trees, which sat in shadow against the magnificent backdrop. The air, already warm, was heady with the floral and woody scents of the lush gardens, damp with dew. She felt lighter, as if a dark rock that had been weighing her down had been lifted.

  Howard disturbed her thoughts as he came out on to the balcony in his pyjama bottoms with bare chest and feet. ‘This is beautiful.’ He looked towards the horizon.

  ‘It really is.’

  ‘That was quite some night, Rae.’

  ‘It was, and I was just thinking that I feel better, lighter. Just talking about it was good, Howard.’

  He nodded.

  ‘But . . .’ She paused and he held her gaze. ‘You know that this doesn’t make everything okay? It doesn’t mean we laugh and skip off into the sunset. We are still pretty broken, you and I. Closer, I admit; healed a little, even. But being able to move closer over our loss and being estranged because of Karina – they are two very different things. You do know that, don’t you?’ It felt important for her to lay down the distinction.

  ‘I do.’ He swallowed and looked down. ‘But the fact you let me hold you in my arms and comfort you has given me hope, Rae. And I will cling to that hope, and pray that it’s a beginning, the beginning of forgiveness. Is that too much to ask?’

  ‘No, not too much to ask.’ She looked away. ‘But it might be too much for me to give.’

  She stood slowly and, with sadness flowing in her veins that they might never be able to go back to that time of love and happiness, took one last look at the glorious sunrise before slipping inside for her shower.

  TEN

  After lunch, Howard and Vinnie took a taxi into St John’s to go shopping. Rae and Dolly chose two sunloungers by the edge of the pool and sat down.

  ‘Nice to be back to just of the two of us, isn’t it?’ Dolly asked.

  ‘It is, and only three days left of our holiday.’

  ‘Don’t even say that!’ Dolly huffed, as she unpacked from her beach bag books, water, straw hat, sun oil, earphones, phone, magazine, sunglasses, a packet of boiled sweets and a spare towel.

  Rae laughed. ‘You do know that your apartment is only a ten-minute walk away?’

  ‘Of course. Why?’ Dolly smoothed the creases from her towel and kicked off her sandals.

  ‘Because it looks like you are either moving here or preparing for an emergency, I’m not sure which.’

  ‘I do like to be prepared.’ Dolly took up position and the two women lay back. Rae closed her eyes and thought that she was really going to miss the warmth of the sun.

  ‘And yes, and I mean it. It is nice to be just the two of us, Dolly – but I know you have loved seeing your man.’ It was the first time the two had been alone since the men’s arrival and Rae knew it was good to break the ice. The feelings of wariness when in her friend’s company still felt strange; the changes were almost imperceptible, but to her – and, she was certain, for Dolly too – they seemed huge.

  ‘I can’t help it. I love him.’

  ‘I had noticed. It’s gone quick, this holiday, hasn’t it?’

  ‘It has, but that’s the way with any vacation, isn’t it? At the beginning you are so excited because you have this long period of time stretching ahead of you that feels like forever, and then one day you look up and realise you are halfway through and then the last few days pass in the blink of an eye; and when you have been back home for two days in the rain, it’s like you were never away and it’s hard to believe that “this time last week . . .”’

  Rae smiled at this truth, no matter how depressing. ‘Please don’t talk about rainy old London. Not yet.’

  ‘You and Howard seem to be getting on well – and I am not prying.’

  Rae sat up and stared at her friend. ‘You are not prying? Who are you and what have you done with Dolly?’

  ‘Okay, so I might be prying a bit. But you do seem to be getting on well.’ There was an unmistakable note of hope in Dolly’s voice. It might have been toned down – perhaps there’d even been some coaching from Vinnie – but it was still prying.

  ‘Better, yes, I think so. But, as I reminded him, it’s a slow process and there are no guarantees.’

  ‘True, but this sounds very different to the angry “ain’t never going to happen” tone that you had only a week ago.’

  ‘I guess so.’ Rae considered this. ‘It’s funny, I feel better for letting go of some of the anger; almost like I don’t have the energy to carry on a fight like that.’

  ‘I hear ya!’ Dolly fanned her face with her hand. ‘I mean, I don’t even have the energy to go and get a drink even though I really want one!’
/>
  ‘Do you want me to go and get you a drink?’ Rae shielded her eyes and looked at her friend, who stuck her tongue out to one side as if parched.

  ‘Oh, Rae, well . . . only if you are going anyway – that’d be lovely!’

  Dolly picked up her magazine. Rae tied her long kimono over her swimming costume and made her way along the path to Max’s. Her stomach flipped at the sight of Antonio behind the bar. She had been avoiding the place for the last few days – or avoiding him, to put it more accurately.

  ‘Rae-Valentine!’ he called loudly, and she was glad the place was empty but for a young couple sitting on the step by the beach, far more interested in each other than what was going on behind them.

  ‘Good afternoon, Antonio.’ The sight of him brought a flutter of joy, no matter how misplaced.

  ‘Oh, good afternoon! I see how it is: we are all formal now!’

  She felt the sharp barb in his tone, an undercurrent that lurked behind his wide smile. Her joy turned into something closer to embarrassment.

  ‘Can I get two Cokes, please?’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ He reached into the fridge. ‘So where is your gang?’

  ‘Hardly a gang! My husband, brother-in-law and Dolly.’

  Antonio placed the bottles on the bar.

  ‘Thank you.’ She smiled, trying for friendly while attempting to reset the over-familiar tone she had used before Howard and Vinnie turned up. She felt instantly guilty at this acknowledgement.

  ‘I miss the real Rae-Valentine.’ He spoke softly.

  ‘I am the real Rae-Valentine,’ she answered with a slight tremor to her voice.

  Antonio shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. I think the real Rae-Valentine is the girl who laughed on the beach, the girl who I think I might have persuaded to come octopus fishing with me, the girl who blushed if I complimented her, the girl who was considering letting her soul get stitched to mine . . . I was so close!’ He held her eye and thumped the bar top.

  Rae reached for the cold bottles and spoke levelly. ‘You were not so close. Not at all. I liked talking to you, Antonio, I did. But, as I told you before, I am someone’s wife and I am someone’s mum. And there is very little space for anything else.’

  ‘Barmen are the best medicine.’ He smiled. ‘And I know I made you feel better.’

  She stared at him.

  ‘It’s a great shame.’ He kept his eyes trained on her face.

  ‘Oh, please don’t start with that.’ She looked around the bar with an embarrassed shake of her head. ‘There will be another lonely heart along in a few—’

  ‘No! No!’ He knitted his brows. ‘You misunderstand me. I don’t mean it’s a shame I could not get closer to you – although, yes, for me that is true.’

  ‘What did you mean?’ She was curious, knowing she should probably leave and head back to Dolly, yet wanting at some level to know that she might be missed. Her fragile ego was drawn to the practised words of this man, who was quite beautiful.

  ‘I mean it’s a shame you stay with the man with the loud voice and the fancy watch who stops you hopping from island to island with your red knapsack. He’s not for you.’

  She glared at the barman, who had gone a step too far, not only in his judgement of Howard, but also for taking her innermost desire and expressing it so freely when she had done her best to tamp down the longing to pack up and go. Her plan to travel was a mental escape hatch, nothing more, and to hear him spout it now felt like mockery. ‘You don’t know anything about him or us, nothing.’

  ‘I know that you think to betray someone, you have to think they shine less than brightly, that they are not worthy of consideration, because if they mattered to you that much – if they stood out, if they were the most important thing to you – you wouldn’t betray them, would you? Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I do remember. I also know that I shouldn’t have told you that and I wish I hadn’t and I also wish you hadn’t been mean to my husband over the whole cocktail thing. I know you thought that was funny, but it wasn’t. Not at all. It wasn’t very kind.’

  ‘I see things, Rae-Valentine,’ he countered, his stare unwavering.

  Rae stood tall and dug deep to find a confident voice that might help her stop the quake in her gut. ‘You might think you see things, Antonio, but what you are actually getting is a snapshot of a life, a glimpse of a marriage while people are here for this short window of time on vacation. You don’t see the whole picture, and that skews everything.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He smiled at her.

  Rae put her sunglasses on, picked up the cold Cokes and left without looking back, stomping along the path to find Dolly.

  ‘Flipping ’eck, I thought you’d forgotten and jumped in the sea! I was just about to send a catamaran out to find you, but then I realised there is no wind and we fly in three days.’

  Rae laughed.

  Dolly reached out and took her drink. ‘Thank you, Rae.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘Did you see whatshisname?’

  ‘Yes.’ Rae looked down at her friend and wondered if she knew Antonio was behind the bar.

  ‘And we’re all good?’ Dolly asked knowingly.

  ‘Yes, Dolly, we are all good.’

  The two sat quietly, each with their own thoughts. Rae hated the ball of confusion that bounced inside her, a potent mixture of anger and foolishness. She placed her palm on her stomach and took a deep breath. How dare he!

  Lying back in the sun, alone with her thoughts, she must have fallen into a doze, because when she awoke she found Howard and Vinnie standing at the end of the lounger. The sun had dropped a little and the heat had been drawn from the day. She felt her skin goosebump and pulled her kimono around her body.

  ‘Did you have a nice time in town?’ she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

  ‘We did!’ Vinnie smiled.

  ‘We did indeed!’ Howard clapped and spoke loudly, and she saw the glint of sunshine on his fancy watch.

  ‘All set?’ Dolly asked.

  The men nodded conspiratorially and Rae noted that they avoided eye contact with her.

  ‘All set for what?’ she asked, a little confused.

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it later.’ Howard smiled at her.

  ‘Okay . . . Sounds mysterious.’ She laughed nervously.

  ‘I need a wee.’ Dolly sat round on the sunlounger.

  ‘Are you going to go and use the bathroom or just stick your butt over the edge of the swimming pool?’ Howard asked his sister.

  And just like that, the four of them were laughing.

  ‘Are you lot ever going to let me forget that?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Definitely not!’

  ‘As if!’

  Rae looked at the three of them, people she cared about, people who shared her history, and she realised that this – this – was actually the best medicine.

  With Howard in the shower, she put a call in to Hannah.

  ‘Mum! Oh my God, Mum! It wasn’t my fault!’

  Her daughter’s panicked tone caused Rae’s heart to miss a beat. ‘Hannah? What a very odd way to answer the phone – is everything okay?’

  ‘Yes! Kind of. I just thought you might have spoken to George or Uncle Paul.’

  ‘Okay, why would I have spoken to Uncle Paul? And now I am worried – what’s going on?’ Rae sat down on the sofa and her mind raced with all the terrible possibilities, ranging from Hannah having totalled the car to being injured or something having happened to George and a million scenarios in between, all equally unpleasant.

  ‘Nothing!’

  Then there was silence, and Rae felt she could hear her daughter’s cogs whirring.

  ‘How long have you known me, Hannah Bee Banana?’

  ‘My whole life. Obvs.’

  ‘Right, and do you think there is any chance that I am joking when I say that I am sorely tempted right now to jump on a plane and get home as soon as is humanly possible because yo
u are scaring the living daylights out of me?’

  ‘No, Mother, no chance at all.’

  ‘Right, so what has happened?’ Rae swallowed, her breath coming in short bursts.

  ‘Okay, well, don’t freak out!’

  ‘For the love of God, Hannah!’ Her patience was waning fast. ‘The one phrase to guarantee that I actually freak out is “Don’t freak out”!’

  ‘Okay, Mum, I get it!’ She heard Hannah take a deep breath. ‘Niamh and I were staying at the house.’

  ‘Niamh your friend from college?’ Rae recalled Howard mentioning her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At our house, in London?’ She wondered if Hannah meant her student place in Liverpool.

  ‘Yes, Mum, we’re at home right now. And we decided to put a pizza in the oven.’

  ‘So far so good,’ Rae encouraged.

  ‘Anyway, we jumped in the bath and forgot about the pizza and . . .’ Hannah paused. ‘Cutting a long story short, the oven caught fire and the kitchen got a little bit burned and the fireman came with these massive foamy fire-extinguisher things that they keep on the fire engine, and it was all sorted very quickly – all much more dramatic than it needed to be, in my opinion, and the house smells a bit, well, smoky, but it’s all okay. I called George but he was out with Ruby so he called Uncle Paul, who came over with Sadie. And Paul says it’s all covered on the insurance and Sadie cleaned up a bit and I spoke to Nana Mitzy and she said you needed a new kitchen anyway because your cupboards were a bit dated, and I called George back and told him exactly what had happened and he and Ruby went crazy, and George said—’

  ‘Hannah!’ Rae raised her voice. ‘Darling, hold it right there. Stop talking! Just for a minute.’ There was a moment of silence while she digested the facts and her heart rate slowed. ‘You are not hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No one is hurt?’

  ‘No, Mum, no one is hurt.’

  Rae nodded and took a deep breath. ‘Did you say you were in the bath with Niamh?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She heard the tremble to her daughter’s voice and the loud swallow that followed.

  ‘Is . . . is she nice?’ Rae asked.

  ‘Mu . . .’ Hannah took a while to answer, as if keeping her emotion at bay and struggling a little. ‘She’s really nice. She is in fact wonderful.’