‘Telling her what?’ For one moment I wonder if she’s leaving Ed: not that there’s been any indication that they are anything other than happy. Their relationship seems among the most solid of ours: certainly more than Mel’s, but also Charlotte’s, since she always seems dissatisfied with Andrew. (‘A good man but not someone to inspire deep passion,’ as Mel once said.)
But of course Jess is talking about something far more obvious. She leans back against the surface of the counter and looks down at her slightly convex stomach. ‘I’m pregnant,’ she says, and fiddles with her lips as if trying to coax a smile.
‘But that’s wonderful!’ I pull her into a hug. She feels slight: too insubstantial to have a baby. I draw back, noticing how pinched she looks, how uncertain. Never assume anything. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ I scrutinise her expression. ‘Is it good news?’
‘Yes, yes, of course it is.’ She gives me her cubic zirconia smile – dazzling and artificial – then starts arranging the raspberries in a neat circle. Her hands are trembling. ‘I’m slightly apprehensive about how I’ll cope with three of them . . .’ A small laugh. ‘But I’m sure I’ll muddle through.’
But muddling through isn’t something Jess does. Everything – from the food she produced this evening, to the candles and fire in the snug – will have been considered over the past few days; will have taken an inordinate amount of time to organise. The trick is to make it look easy, and of course she does, but babies and very young children – as she well knows – can be erratic and changeable. The order she achieves once the boys are in bed will be disrupted even more.
‘Forget I said anything,’ she says now, perhaps reading my mind. ‘The boys will be at school all day so I’ll have plenty of time with the baby, then, and they sleep when they’re little, don’t they?’
‘Yes. Not sure about Rosa but your babies did. Why do you dread telling Charlotte though? You’re not worrying about her liking Ed again, are you?’
When our first babies were tiny, Jess was convinced that Ed had slept with Charlotte at university. It almost became an obsession, and clouded those first weeks of Kit’s babyhood as she fretted that her husband might find Charlotte more attractive and leave. Mel told her she was mad. Subsumed by Rosa, I didn’t pay it much attention; perhaps was too dismissive. Anyone could see Ed adored Jess, and that Charlotte – attractive but socially awkward – could only ever have been a fling. I wonder if this pregnancy could be stoking the embers of that age-old fear.
‘No!’ She laughs and I’m relieved. ‘I’m dreading telling her because she had to have all those courses of IVF to get pregnant with George, and she hasn’t managed a second child. I feel so guilty getting pregnant, particularly since we did it almost on a whim.’
That surprises me. Jess is so controlled and careful that I can’t imagine her taking a decision like this recklessly.
‘Well, you don’t need to tell her it wasn’t really planned. That’s something quite intimate. Were you going to tell them tonight?’
‘Yes, now that she knows. I’m three months already and we want to tell the children so I’ll have to tell everyone soon.’
‘Then just make sure you’re really positive when you tell them. Don’t leave any room for her to imagine doubt.’
‘Thank you, Liz. You’re very wise.’
‘I’ve just dealt with a few Charlottes,’ I say, thinking of some of the pricklier women I’ve come across in medicine. ‘You never know. She might even be excited.’
And yet of course, Charlotte isn’t.
They know something’s up as soon as we go back into the snug. Mel is delighted, hugging Jess, and asking about dates: almost going overboard – at least in contrast to Charlotte, who looks, in her black work clothes, like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty’s christening. Her lack of response, let alone her lack of enthusiasm, becomes embarrassing.
‘Did you hear? Jess is pregnant,’ Mel turns to her.
‘So I guessed.’
I glance at her sharply. ‘You OK?’
‘I’m a little tired, actually. I think I might go home. How lovely,’ she tells Jess, but her comment comes a little too late. ‘It seems to be quite a common thing, doesn’t it, if you’re a stay-at-home mother? To have another baby, or a puppy, once your youngest is at school.’
‘Charlotte!’ Mel and I say in unison. Jess tried having a puppy last year: it only lasted three weeks before she handed it back, too distressed by its excessive incontinence to continue with it.
‘I’m sorry – that wasn’t meant as a dig . . . I’ve had a horrific week. I’m tired, and a little, well, surprised. You’ve never given the impression you wanted another one, particularly after all your difficulties with Frankie . . .’ She pauses. ‘Is Ed thrilled?’
‘Yes, of course he is. It’s me who’s a little more apprehensive.’ Jess falls into the trap of playing up her ambivalence to make Charlotte feel better.
‘Really?’ Charlotte raises an eyebrow. ‘Well, a baby’s not something to be apprehensive about it. Some of us would love one . . . But of course I’m pleased for you,’ she says.
She suddenly looks exhausted: the only one of us in her forties, her extra four or five years seem abundantly clear.
‘I will go now, though,’ she says, gathering her bags together, her voice strained and unnatural, and I’m reminded of quite how much she wanted her second baby. ‘Let’s email about the next date and book.’
‘OK, let’s do that,’ I say, feeling a rush of sympathy despite her spiky hostility; and relief that she still wants to meet.
Jess gets up to see her out, and is gone some time.
‘Bloody hell!’ whispers Mel when they’ve left the room. ‘That was a bit below the belt about the puppy, though I guess she had a point.’ Mel had a dog from the same litter, and has never quite understood Jess’s speed in getting rid of it. ‘She hated it. Couldn’t wait to hand it over to someone else.’
‘A baby’s not a puppy. You know how much she loves her children. She won’t want to give this back.’
‘I don’t know. I’ve often wanted to get rid of Connor.’ She takes a big swig of wine.
‘You don’t mean that.’ Mel is smitten with her boy.
‘Not really.’ She tops herself up. For a while, we are silent, perhaps both contemplating the upheaval of a newborn baby: the joy of its existence coupled with the anarchy of sleepless nights and disjointed days.
‘I suppose babies wear nappies, so the chaos is more containable than with a dog,’ she continues, philosophically. ‘Babies are just as needy, and there’s more sleep disruption, but it’s not as if they chew everything or shit all over the floor.’
‘I think the best thing we can do is be hugely supportive.’ I raise my glass and drink deeply, imagining the alcohol working its magic and flowing through my bloodstream.
Hindsight’s a wonderful thing. Did I consider why Jess might be anxious about having another baby? I think I dismissed it as a perfectly normal apprehension: the jump from two to three tilting them into the realm of being a ‘big’ family. I don’t think I dwelt on her behaviour; or gave it much more attention. Lulled by the warmth of the fire and my wine, I let myself relax.
JESS
Tuesday 23 January, 2018, 1 p.m.
Nineteen
Liz couldn’t get away fast enough.
And who can blame her? She thinks – they all think – that Jess is at best a hindrance, at worst someone sinister: a mother who needs to be controlled.
Jess rubs her upper arm. It hurts where the security guard gripped it. ‘Kick up a fuss and we’ll call the police,’ he had said. His size, his burliness, his implied authority in his faux-police uniform, even the red and green snake curling around his forearm suggested he meant it. She thinks of the shorter, squatter of the two, who grinned, his piggy eyes narrowing; shivers at the memory of the curved bicep bulging beneath his shirt.
She can’t risk going back to the ward. Not while Dr Cockerill or Liz are th
ere and not while the security guards are prowling. Instead, she must just sit and wait, her legs vibrating with fear. Breathe deeply: in for five, out for eight, she tells herself, as she tries not to obsess about the germs on this table but to focus on the hiss of the coffee machine; the cries of the baristas. Accept you are in limbo, unable to see Betsey; equally unable to leave.
Think of something else. But all she can see is her baby in the grip of a seizure: the flicker of her eyes, the quivering of her limbs. The images spool and her mind spirals with fresh questions – What if this kills her? What if she is having another fit while I’m sitting here?
She can’t rid herself of the sound of that terrible rasping from the back of Betsey’s throat that sounded inhuman. Should she just race up there? It’s only her fear of being denied any access at all that makes her behave as Liz suggested; and that makes her cling to the idea that she has still got a grip.
Focus on something different. Next to her the pregnant woman is delivering a monologue to her partner. A well-rehearsed birth plan: birthing unit, no pain relief, a water birth, no Syntocinon to speed up the delivery of the placenta once the baby is delivered. Jess gives a yelping laugh: she’ll be eating the placenta next. The woman looks at her, again, and she wants to tell her that, while she may believe she is in control in her final trimester, it’s all an illusion. She will lose any autonomy once the baby decides to arrive . . .
The memory comes in a flash, as it always does, knocking her off balance. Betsey’s labour: the horror of her head getting stuck; the terror as the registrar tried to ease her out. His intense concentration as the waves of pain intensified and Jess forgot how to breathe. A catheter inserted in her bladder; her pubic bone pushed down; her legs yanked into an excruciating position; two failed attempts to draw Betsey’s arm out. Then the most horrific sensation of her life. More manhandling, as she became a ragdoll – limbs pulled this way and that, and her body an appliance to be delved into – and then sweet relief as her baby burst free, and wetness. A rush of blood and a slipping from consciousness towards darkness and sleep . . .
Later, after the blood transfusion and the surgery to stitch her up, it wasn’t the pain that made her yelp when she peed, or the throbbing ache of her womb contracting that most distressed her, but her overwhelming sense of inadequacy. She hadn’t been able to have a natural birth; one of the key things her body was designed to do. Without massive intervention, she would have killed her longed-for baby. She was potentially destructive and powerless, all at the same time.
She feels that same crushing impotence here in this coffee bar. There is nothing she can do to help her girl. She is not allowed to see, let alone mother Betsey, or be left with Frankie and Kit. And she feels so very alone: an irritant to the hospital staff, confusingly superfluous for her children, distant from her husband. Someone from whom Liz, once her dear, dear friend, was desperate to rush away . . .
And perhaps she has good reason.
Because Betsey would never have had her skull fractured if it wasn’t for her.
JESS
Friday 19 January, 6 p.m.
Twenty
Friday. Early evening. Jess thinks this might be the worst part of the week. The time that, in a previous life meant drinks and celebrations and the anticipation of a fun weekend, but now means being stuck alone with the children while Ed chooses the company of his colleagues over coming home.
Kit is at football practice. It will be an hour before Charlotte drops him back and she can have a couple of minutes of adult chat. She’s never particularly relaxed with Charlotte – the question of the extent to which she was once involved with Ed has always niggled. (‘Is that how Ed put it?’ Charlotte once asked, when Jess referred to their being old friends, and the qualification ‘with benefits’ – too crude a phrase for Charlotte ever to use – had hung unspoken.) But she clings to the chance of any conversation. If she can just make it until seven, then there’s only another hour before they’re all safely in bed. If she can package up her evening, then perhaps she can manage to keep her thoughts checked, her children unharmed.
Because it’s been a long hard afternoon and early evening: the sort that would make her question her ability to parent even if Ed hadn’t come back and compounded her sense of inadequacy. Yet another day when she feels she hasn’t mothered well.
The rain hasn’t helped: the sort of relentlessly heavy rain that stopped her leaving the house, except to dash to the car for the school run, and barricaded her behind a curtain of water at home. After Ed left, she’d spent an hour peering out of the window, trying to ignore Bets’s whimpering, and watching rivulets trickle down the glass.
The heavy rain means Frankie has been fizzing with energy. ‘Careful!’ Her voice rises to a shriek when he decides to use his skateboard inside, streaking up and down the hall and across the kitchen before bounding off and haring upstairs.
Betsey, too, has been out of sorts. A sudden squall meant they’d abandoned their morning walk, rain seeping under the buggy hood and making Bets inconsolable; then she didn’t sleep at lunchtime. Of course Jess is to blame. As the afternoon has progressed, she’s been clingy then erratic, pulling herself up on Jess’s legs but resisting being cuddled. She stares, her gaze incredulous and dark.
She’d be better off without me. The thought builds, only confirmed by her daughter’s renewed crying. At teatime, Betsey is too tired to eat. Food is hurled on the floor – softly steamed carrot and a puree of cod and mash; then fingers of toast, offered to placate her because her rage now is that of a small tyrant, her exhaustion and hunger vicious when combined. All Jess wants is to get her to bed early – by six-thirty, not her usual seven. If she can do that, she will have an extra half hour in which her fears about this child’s safety – near the kettle, near the pans, near the knives, being strangled by the straps of her high chair – can be contained.
Bugger it. She’ll start her bedtime routine, now. But the wailing intensifies as she picks up her little girl, who lashes against her, anger making her wriggle and squirm. She’s as slippery as a salmon, one arm striking out, her tiny fist surprisingly strong.
‘Stay still. I only want to get you to bed. I’m only trying to help. I’m only trying to help!’ Her voice crescendos and rises in pitch until she is shouting at her baby. She catches sight of her own face in the kitchen mirror and is struck by how ugly she looks: her face twisted, her hair wild. I don’t know you any more, Ed had said – and nor does she know herself. She has lost all self-control.
Frankie, who has been kicking his foot against the leg of the table repetitively in a quick, fast rhythm, stops and stares. ‘Mummy,’ he says, and it’s as if her behaviour has shocked him into stillness. ‘Mummy, please don’t shout. Don’t shout, Mummy. Please.’
She crumples, putting Betsey back on the floor and kneeling down. He puts a thin arm around her shoulders, imitating the way in which she comforts him. ‘Don’t shout, Mummy,’ he repeats, as she buries her face into his small torso, feeling the firmness of his rib cage, the rapid thudding of his heart.
‘I won’t,’ she manages to promise. ‘I’m sorry. I won’t.’
‘That’s all right, Mummy.’ He strokes her hair, continuing this curious role reversal. Even Betsey seems to have stopped crying. ‘Shall I play with Betsey for you for a few minutes while you wash your face?’
She stares as he parrots words she might use and mirrors her ideal parenting.
‘No. No I can’t,’ she says, but her voice trembles. She is caught in a bind: she needs to be vigilant and keep watch over Bets but she doesn’t trust herself with her. She sees herself slapping her daughter, really slapping her, the flat of her palm sounding against Betsey’s soft, plump thighs.
And then she sees – oh God, her familiar thought; the one that keeps recurring – she sees herself smashing her against the marble mantelpiece then dropping, no, flinging her away.
Frankie looks at her and she sees his trepidation. He is properly scared.
You’re meant to leave the room if you think you’re at risk of harming your baby, aren’t you? Put her down, close the door, and walk away. Remain elsewhere until you feel calmer, that’s what the health visitors and the baby books say. But that’s always felt counter-intuitive. Why would you abandon your baby when she needs you the most?
‘I can’t,’ she repeats, and yet she has two children who are fearful of her. Who watch, trying to anticipate her next move. She remembers feeling that way with her father: wishing he would leave so that there might be some reprieve. The thought makes her breathless, so she aligns and realigns her rings. One, two, three, one, two, three. And again, to make it the correct number: One, two, three.
She could just walk around the block, couldn’t she? She needs some milk for breakfast and she can hardly ask Ed to fetch some. How long would it take? Not much more than five minutes if she ran to the corner shop and back. The cloudless sky might give her some perspective. Might calm her though she won’t see any stars through the orange smog of this light-polluted suburb, and the traffic will be hurtling along the main road. But it doesn’t matter. It’s 6.11. If she goes right now, she has time.
Betsey is calmer already. Sitting on her play mat and smiling weakly as Frankie plays peek-a-boo behind a teddy, her eyes widening as she’s captivated by his exaggerated expression; the humour in his own eyes. He’s better with her than Jess; and Bets seems happier, too. She’ll be safer with him than in this atmosphere of muted threat.
‘Frank . . .’
He looks up at her, his face pale.
‘I need to go out to get some milk. I won’t be more than five minutes. I promise. I’ve got my phone. Do you remember my number?’
He recites it perfectly.
Little Disasters Page 14