The Idea of You

by Amanda Prowse

  She addressed her husband. ‘I’m sorry – sorry that I’m not the person you thought I was. And I am sorry that you feel unable to support me when that is what I need more than anything right now.’ She waited for a second, almost subconsciously waiting to see if he tried to stop her. He did not. And with that one sentence hanging in the air, she walked out of the room.

  Lucy lay on the wide bed in the pristine bedroom of the flat that looked out over the Thames Path. With neither the energy nor desire to move, she drifted in and out of sleep, wishing, not for the first time, that she wouldn’t wake up.

  There she lay for forty-eight hours. Apart from reluctant trips to the bathroom and to take sips of water, she lay very still, almost comatose.

  The grief that rendered her thus was as fresh as it had been on the day she gave her daughter away, only now it was wrapped in the memory of the way Jonah had reacted, the things he had said and thoughts of her mum. She saw her sitting in the armchair, crying into her palm, her face contorted, mumbling regret and recrimination of how this might have happened. Lucy recalled the visceral punch of concern she had felt for Camille at her announcement, and again she saw her mum, all those years ago, doubled over with her head in her hands.

  ‘I’m so lost,’ she wailed into the darkness. ‘I love you, Jonah, and I’m sorry for not telling you, but you have no right to punish me further. Don’t you think I have suffered enough? Because I can tell you I have. I have . . .’ She cried, beating her pillow with her fist until, overtaken with exhaustion, she slept once again.

  I am nearly forty-one, but saying those words out loud, admitting for the first time ever that I had you, took me back to that time when I was a frightened girl. I felt instantly guilty for sharing it, after swearing that I would never tell a soul. I felt the hot, uncomfortable cloak of shame that I had worn for all these years, but right then, it was no longer hidden under layers of laughter, achievement or any other number of diversions. It was a brightly coloured shame, there for all to see. Now, it feels as if a burden has been lifted and I want to shout at the world: ‘I was sixteen when I had my baby, when I had you, my little girl!’

  EIGHTEEN

  The hot shower went some way to restoring her body; it brought feeling back to her hollow limbs, but could do little to stop the gripping sadness that sat in her gut and the feeling of weakness that clung to her, dragging her down. Lucy stood facing the warm deluge, trying to block out the intrusive thoughts of self-recrimination. What would Jonah do now? Where did this leave their marriage? And what would Camille think? How was she coping alone in the house with only her angry dad for support?

  Working her hair into shampoo lather, she lifted her arms with some difficulty and tried not to think too far ahead. It was only when she felt the wrinkly touch of her finger pads to her face that she switched off the tap and stepped into her towelling robe.

  She pictured the beautiful green silk kimono that she had left on the arm of the chair, wondering if she would ever get to feel it against her skin. After this short window of time, mere hours, the house in Windermere Avenue and the things in it already felt like another life, and one that she could hardly relate to. With her head in a towel, she padded across the floor to the kitchen and searched the cupboards, where she was delighted to find a sealed packet of ground coffee, courtesy of Ross. She set the cafetière to brew on the stove and picked up her phone for the first time in nearly two days. She felt sick when she saw that there was no attempt at contact from Jonah – sick and disappointed. There were numerous missed calls from work, which could wait; she considered she had done enough, sending the relevant people an email explaining she needed emergency leave. There were also several news updates from various alerts she had set. They all seemed trite compared to her own situation: a meteor of truth and confession had landed on her marriage and she could hardly see or think straight for the debris and dust that it had kicked up. Lucy cleared the screen without a second thought; she could not have been more disinterested in what was happening anywhere outside of the flat. Her voicemail icon pulsed. She switched the phone to loudspeaker and placed it on the empty worktop, listening to the messages. The first was from Fay.

  ‘Hey! Pick up your phone! What’s going on? I called you at home and Jonah was a bit curt and said you were at the flat. Don’t tell me you have had a lovers’ tiff already? If you have, this is way too soon! You are supposed to be married a good long while before they start. Anyhow, call me, need a favour – do you still have that black dress with the strappy back? Adam’s got a rugby dinner and I have to dress up, yuck, and I’m darned if I’m going to splash out on something I’ll never wear. Anyway call me . . . it’s your sister by the way.’

  Lucy felt the threat of tears at hearing her lovely sister’s voice. The next message was from the effervescent Tansy.

  ‘Lucy, HR said you had taken some leave, hope all is okay, give me a ring if you need anything or if you fancy some company. I have wine. Nuff said. Speak soon!’

  The coffee burbled in the percolator. She poured a big mugful, gulping down the dark, restorative blend before slumping on the white leather sofa and staring at the large picture window, which the rain trickled down. It felt like the whole world was crying, and that suited her just fine.

  She was considering another cup when the front doorbell rang. Misery gave her the gait of the elderly or infirm as she limped to the door and placed her eye on the spyhole.

  Jonah stared at the door.

  This time there was no smile, no brown paper bag full of breakfast, no encircling arms, no laughter and no promise of forgiveness, and just the memory of that previous visit was enough to make her tears pool. She opened the door and he stepped inside, eyes trained on her face. She stared at the man who had become a stranger in such a short space of time and closed the door, gathering her robe around her frame.

  ‘Come through,’ she offered, walking slightly ahead with her eyes downcast, until she found the familiar territory of the sofa and sat down, already further weakened by the exchange. Jonah sat too and they stared at each other. Her own face, she knew, bore the hue of an insomniac, with two dark shadows of fatigue sitting below her eyes, which were swollen, reddened and small. She noticed his uneven stubble, the fact that his face looked thinner, his sunken eyes and his expression of hopelessness. He too looked like he was grieving.

  ‘How’s Camille doing?’ she asked with a croak to her voice.

  ‘She’s . . .’ He breathed out and shook his head, looking out of the window at the grey rain and dense cloud. He lifted his hands and let them fall into his lap, whether unwilling or unable to talk about his daughter, she wasn’t sure. ‘I was going to call but thought this might be easier, face to face.’

  She nodded, hating the finality of his phrase. ‘This might be easier’ sounded like the beginnings of goodbye, and her heart flipped.

  ‘I don’t know where to start.’ He rubbed his palm over his beard. ‘I feel sick. I’m shocked, upset . . .’ He closed his eyes, as if words failed him.

  Lucy could do nothing to help him out; it wasn’t like any other day, when he had forgotten the name of a client as he often did and was clicking his fingers until she threw in suggestions – ‘Mr Potter? Mr Noakes? I give up!’ Or when he would fire a question – ‘Where was that place we ate, near High Street Kensington tube, with the great veg? You know it!’ – accompanied by the clicking of his fingers. ‘Maggie’s!’ she would chime. ‘Yes, that’s it! Maggie’s.’ And he would beam at her superior memory for such details.

  She stared at him, waiting for him to speak. Feeling a shiver along her limbs, she reached for the faux reindeer fur that sat on the arm of the sofa, wanting to pull it over her shaking limbs. But she realised the instant her hand touched the cool hide that the throw resided in the house in Queen’s Park, the home with the soft arcs and plush furnishings, the dusty corners and the worn wood, unlike here, where everything was sharp, cold and angular. She had thought she liked living like this,
until Jonah had shown her the alternative and she realised that she didn’t, not at all.

  ‘I can’t sleep,’ he confessed.

  She nodded. Me neither . . .

  ‘I keep replaying that moment.’ He looked towards the window. ‘I was reeling from the news about Camille; that information was swirling around my mind and I was waiting for you both to give in and tell me it was a joke.’ He shook his head. ‘I was tired from my trip, still am. I saw the scan picture and I was . . .’ He paused. ‘I was elated, and then to hear it was my grandchild, not my son . . . it was hard to take in. And then to top it all, you dropped a bombshell.’

  ‘I have wanted to tell you – more than I have ever wanted to tell anyone.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ he asked, holding her gaze.

  ‘Because I have never told anyone.’

  ‘But I’m not anyone – I am your husband!’ he interrupted with passion.

  She closed her eyes, knowing she didn’t have the strength for another fierce row. ‘I know. And I know it’s hard to accept or even understand, but the thing is, Jonah, no one in the world knows apart from me and my mum. We even kept it from Fay, arguing silently behind closed doors and keeping her in the dark. That has been one of the hardest things for me over the years, the fact that she was an unwitting outsider.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ he interjected.

  ‘My mum made me swear, and I have spent so many years being so afraid of people finding out that I never considered it might be okay to break that promise I made her, to admit to what I had done.’ She felt her lip quiver. Her mum’s voice was loud in her ear: ‘You never tell a soul! No one, ever, do you understand me? Because if you do, you’ll be finished!’

  ‘So what changed? Why the sudden confession the other night?’

  She shrugged. ‘I guess it was the right time.’

  He gave a short snort at this. ‘Oh God.’

  She continued. ‘You can snort, Jonah, but you have no idea of what I went through, what I continue to go through.’

  ‘You are right,’ he fired, ‘because you kept it from me!’

  She decided not to get sidetracked into another fight. ‘I watched Camille shrink from your words; she had her fingers in her ears and her eyes screwed shut and I remembered what it felt like on the night I told my mum.’ She took a stuttered breath as her tears gathered. ‘My dad had already died, and she said it was a good job as he would have died anyway of the shame. I never forgot that. And I still think about it sometimes. I was so frightened, more frightened than I had ever been in my whole life, and usually when you are afraid, if you are very lucky, you can go to a parent, who will make everything feel better, but she didn’t.’ She picked at the belt of her bathrobe. ‘She made me feel dirty; her words filled me with self-loathing and shame. For her, it seemed to be more about the fact that I had had sex than the fact I was expecting a baby.’

  There was a moment of silence while they both digested the new gobbets of information being shared. It was Jonah who coughed and broke the silence. ‘Your words are heartbreaking, they are, but it’s like you are talking about a stranger.’

  ‘I’m not a stranger, Jonah. It’s me!’ She placed her hand on her chest.

  ‘When I met you, Lucy, and we sat up late on the sofa in front of the fire, chatting and asking questions and getting to know each other . . . I thought you were perfect. Not because you were without flaws. Who is?’ He gave a fleeting smile, as if forgetting for a glorious second the situation in which they found themselves. ‘But perfect because you were so open, honest. I had never met anyone like you, and I knew you were the woman I wanted to marry, the woman I would be happy introducing to Camille as my wife. I’d never been that happy.’

  She pictured those magical nights on which the foundations of their relationship were to be built, and her heart ached. ‘Me either.’

  ‘But now I feel like I don’t know you,’ he whispered.

  ‘You do!’ she cried. ‘You know me, Jonah.’ She was aware of the weary tone of her words. How many times did she need to express this?

  ‘I’m not sure I do, and that realisation is as terrifying as it is sad. I didn’t know this one thing about you and it’s not a small thing, like pretending you like football or saying you like my cooking; it’s a bloody big thing. The biggest. You had a baby! You have a child in this world somewhere.’

  Lucy felt the creep of tears over her cheeks; this she already knew. My daughter . . .

  But Jonah wasn’t done.

  ‘You cried to me only a month or so ago, saying how you felt as if you were being excluded, and it ripped me apart, the idea that you thought there was some conspiracy to hide something from you, make you feel left out, even if it was done at a subconscious level. I beat myself up about that. And all the time, you had this big, big secret. Talk about exclusion!’

  ‘I know it’s hard to understand, but—’

  He cut her off. ‘You’re right; it’s hard to understand. I feel as if you have ripped my heart to shreds. It’s so unfair, Lucy, so unfair to have kept this from me. I thought I was worth more than that, deserved more than that.’

  ‘You do.’ She tried to offer a verbal balm that might help them move forward.

  ‘And the thing that really gets me, the one thing that has gone around and around in my head since you left, is that we were trying for a baby, trying hard.’ He stopped talking to rectify the catch in his voice. ‘The hours I have spent holding you, telling you it was all going to be okay, believing we could get through anything, anything. The endless trips back and forth from the hospital . . . It has killed me to hold you while you cried, to see your blood and your expression when yet again you were faced with that loss. It has killed me to see you so excited and to watch it fade to nothing while you knitted away, knitting all the love and hopes you carried into those bloody baby clothes!’ He sniffed his tears to the back of his throat. ‘And all the time, all the time, Lucy, you chose not to tell me that you had had a child, a baby girl. How do you think that makes me feel?’

  How do you think it makes me feel? she echoed.

  She felt her body fold as she wept. He made it sound so simple. As he spoke, she realised that something had been broken between them that couldn’t be fixed. His lack of sympathy made her muscles coil. A thought occurred: that maybe he wasn’t the man she had thought he was. This very idea struck her as final and left her with a new layer of sadness to sit atop her grief.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jonah. For everything, for this situation.’

  ‘Me too.’ He shifted on the sofa until he was facing her.

  ‘I can see how angry you are, but you haven’t once asked how I am feeling or what it’s been like for me. This is not all about you. It’s about us, all of us.’

  There again was the uncomfortable beat of silence.

  ‘Who was the father?’ he whispered.

  His question came out of the blue and floored her a little. It wasn’t one that she had been expecting. By the set of his jaw, she could see that despite so many years having passed there was still a flicker of jealousy, and she understood a little. He was curious as to who had managed to succeed where he felt he had failed to give her a healthy full-term baby.

  She shook her head. ‘Just someone.’

  ‘No,’ he boomed. ‘You don’t get to leave it like that. You can’t keep cherry-picking what aspects of your life you get to share – you just don’t get it, do you? I need you to be open with me, Lucy, for my own peace of mind.’

  ‘The trouble is, I think that no matter what I say, you are only going to get madder. I feel like I can’t win!’

  ‘Try me.’

  She took a deep breath and pictured the boy in the year above her at school. It felt difficult to dig into the past and pull out the facts that Jonah craved, but she knew she had to try.

  Her hands fidgeted in her lap. ‘His name was Scott. He was a year older than me. Not popular or particularly good-looking and I can’t think of on
e thing that singled him out, apart from the fact that I loved him. And I did, as far as you can when you are sixteen and think that the world can be like a movie and everything will work out fine.’

  ‘Were you seeing him for long?’ he asked, as his leg jumped against the sofa.

  ‘Not really, six or seven months. We got the same bus and we became friends and my dad had just died and he was kind to me. That was it really.’

  ‘Are you still in touch?’

  She let out a loud burst of nervous laughter at the idea, angered by this unfounded, ridiculous obsession with the boy. ‘No, Jonah. I was a kid. He was kind to me and we used to have sex in his house when his mum and dad were at work.’ She saw him wince at her matter-of-fact statement, and a small part of her was glad that she had wounded him a little in return. ‘There was nothing glamorous or exciting. It was as if we were playing house and I couldn’t see beyond how to wear my hair at school the next day to make me look nice for him.’

  She thought about Scott, who had been just a boy, a clever boy, a maths whizz who was working hard towards his exams, hoping for a better life than the one his parents had, living in their damp little house with a scrawny backyard and having to scrabble down the back of the couch for their bus fares at the end of the month. The couch on which she and Scott had made a baby. She remembered the damp smell of their house and immediately thought of Camille, wanting more for her than a life of hardship with a baby in tow.

  ‘I want more for you, Lucy, than this! This is not the life your dad and I planned for you. We have worked so hard!’