* * *
When someone knocked on the front door, she thought about leaving it. It wouldn’t be Ruthie, not at this time; she’d be at work. Lauren stood in the arch between the kitchen and the sitting room, as still as she could, so that whoever it was might just think she wasn’t in and go away. But then, one of the boys made a loud sound, and the letter-box flapped open. A set of manicured fingers waggled at her through the gap.
“You going to let me in, babe?”
It was Cindy. Lauren crossed the room and opened the front door to her friend.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone,” she said, turning and quickly picking up several dirty cups from the carpet. “But come on in.”
Cindy waited for Lauren to stop fussing and gave her a hug. Lauren, aware she might not smell that great, broke away quickly and stepped back. Now that she looked properly at Cindy she was stunned at the sight of her; Cindy was neatly dressed, her post-baby bump only just visible beneath a floaty vest. She was wearing full make-up and strappy sandals with heels.
“Wow,” said Lauren, combing her hair with her fingers, “you look amazing. It’s really good to see you.” She glanced down at the baby. “Both of you. Isn’t she adorable?”
Cindy’s baby was sleeping soundly in the car seat, which she placed next to the Moses basket holding the twins, on the floor.
“Sorry to drop round like this,” said Cindy, “but me and Rosa were getting a bit worried about you.”
“Worried about me?” Lauren tried an offhand laugh that fell rather flat. She knew how it must look, how unwashed she was, how the house was a complete tip.
“Yes. Rosa set up that message group called Baby News, but you never put anything on it. You did see that she had the baby, the day after we came to see you?”
The time had all been sucked away. While she was in them, those hours that she fed to her babies went slower than they ought to, but then the days, the precious days flicked by as quick as streetlights on the motorway.
“I did see that, I think. Such good news. Have you visited them?” The other women’s babies were vague to Lauren, conceptual. She knew of them, but there was no space in her heart to wonder, or to care. About this she felt guilty. Her capacity to feel guilt was apparently unimpaired, possibly infinite.
“Don’t you read the posts? We’ve met up twice already. You were invited, both times.”
She’d read the posts. They both knew it; the ticks, that went blue automatically when the message was read, would have given her away.
“Yeah, I know. I couldn’t come. I meant to say one way or the other, sorry about that.”
“You didn’t even say anything in the group when I put on that I’d had Lucy.”
Guilt again, prodding at her.
“Oh, Cindy, how awful of me. I meant to. How long has it been?”
“Lucy’s two weeks and one day old now.”
“Cindy, I’m so sorry. I was going to get you a gift, but I couldn’t get out—”
Cindy waved away the apology. “Don’t worry about that, we’ve got baby stuff coming out of our ears. I just wanted to make sure you were OK, and ask if you needed any help. Your fella must have gone back to work now, right?”
Lauren nodded.
“My partner went back yesterday, too. It’s different, isn’t it, once it’s just you.”
“Yes,” said Lauren. “Kind of lonely. Even though you’re not technically alone.”
Cindy said, “I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but it’s as if he’s left me with this little person who I don’t really know very well, that I have complete responsibility for. He says he’ll ring me every lunchtime, but still. If I feel like this after one day, with just one baby, you must be tonnes worse than me. I was OK yesterday, because I went out to meet Rosa. I thought—I hoped—you’d be there too.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Is it something we’ve said or done?” said Cindy.
“No, it’s not you. The truth is, I haven’t been out yet.”
“At all?”
“No.”
“Not even to the registry office?”
Patrick had started bringing this up, too. They had six weeks, didn’t they, to register the birth? There was no hurry. He’d said, I just want them to be legal. At the moment, they don’t exist properly in the eyes of the law. They’re in limbo. Lauren had said nothing, thinking, that is such bullshit. They’re more real than you are.
“No,” said Lauren, attempting breezy, “not yet. We’ve time. I’m not quite ready to face the world, I suppose.” She indicated her stained joggers, fiddled with a strand of her drooping hair.
“Babe,” said Cindy, “that’s nothing a nice bath wouldn’t fix.” She looked at Lauren from under her mascaraed lashes.
“I don’t know how you do it, how you look so great after only two weeks.”
“The make-up doesn’t take long. You should see me without it, it’s a horror show.”
In the car seat, Lucy woke up with a small cry. Cindy rummaged in her bag, pulled out a bottle and a milk dispenser. “Can I use your kettle?”
“I’ll do it,” said Lauren, jumping up. Lucy’s cries were getting louder, and Cindy bent to pick her up. It took a few minutes for the bottle, once made, to cool enough to give it but once it had, the room exhaled in calm as the hungry baby fed. Both the women smiled down at Lucy, dressed in a pink baby vest and matching socks.
“How are the nights?” said Cindy. “Are you getting enough sleep?”
Lauren realised after a few seconds that she hadn’t responded, that she’d been thinking about sleep, how she craved it. How much was enough sleep? Occasionally she totted it up and all the little bits made up five, sometimes six hours. That was enough, wasn’t it? She shook her head, forced a laugh. To keep from crying. “Well, I do all right, I think. Does anyone get to sleep with newborn babies? How about you? Please don’t tell me she’s sleeping through the night already.”
Morgan had woken up and started to ask for milk by chewing his hand and moving his head from side to side, saying ung-ung-ung.
Cindy laughed. “No, nothing like. But Ryan and I take it in turns, so I do sometimes manage a longer stretch.”
“I wish Patrick could do that.”
“You mean he doesn’t? Why can’t he? Don’t you express, so he can use a bottle?”
“I do, sometimes.” It wasn’t true, she never did. She didn’t even know where the breast pump was. “But Patrick’s not good at being woken up. He can’t function properly at work. So, I suppose I said I would do the nights, and then it just, went on like that.” As she said it she heard how pathetic it sounded, making excuses for him. Lauren raised her eyes and met Cindy’s, where the kindness broke the weakened dam holding back her tears. Cindy gently patted her knee as she cried. When she could speak she said, “I keep crying. I can’t stop it, I’m so sorry.”
“You’re doing the best you can do, and you’re a great mum. Believe me. Look how happy and well-fed these two are.”
The two women looked at the boys. Chubby wrists, cheeks as fat as plums. Lauren gently stopped Morgan’s arm from whirring, stroked his fingers with her thumb which she then pressed into his little palm for him to squeeze.
“They should be well-fed,” said Lauren, “they never stop feeding.”
“Is there anyone else you can ask for help?”
“Not really. I don’t know if I told you, my mum …”
“Oh, of course. I’m so sorry. It must be so hard without her.”
More tears came, crowding her throat in great heaving sobs that she couldn’t stifle. Cindy made soothing noises. She passed over a tissue from the box.
“I mean,” said Lauren, “I don’t know why I’m so upset. She’s been dead for years. I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Nothing at all.” She folded Lauren into a hug.
Lauren leaned into Cindy and cried like a little girl.
* * *
Later
, Lauren was calm. The crying had been the good kind, the sort you feel so much better for. The two women sipped tea and watched the babies, who were falling asleep where they lay.
“Identical twins are funny, aren’t they?”
Lauren was shocked. “No,” she said. The offence hung between them as Lauren’s frown deepened.
“Oh,” said Cindy, “I don’t mean funny. I mean … interesting. Part of it is the mystery. How can there be two people the same, but different? Something about their interchangeableness, maybe.”
Lauren wanted her to stop talking. They weren’t interchangeable, they were two different people. Two different personalities. Riley was serious, he wanted things his own way and was finding ways of making himself heard. He was determined, intelligent. Morgan was more laid back; he would be the artist. Totally different, unmistakably so. And, they looked different, the same but also so obviously different. To her, at least. It didn’t matter what anyone else saw.
Cindy, oblivious, did not stop talking.
“There are stories about twins, you know. It came up in my English A-level. Lots of different cultures have different stories—they used to think magic was involved. You can see why, can’t you?”
“No.”
“Some African tribes thought they brought a curse upon the village. They would just throw them into the bushes to die, the moment they were born.”
The idea of baby twins, dying in the bushes; a painful stab in her heart. “Why are you telling me this, exactly?”
Cindy caught the warning tone in Lauren’s voice. She took a sip of her tea. “Oh, well, that’s just an example. I’m sure they’re not all as gory as that. Look, I’m sorry I started this. Let’s talk about something else.”
Lauren remembered the storybook, the one she hadn’t read, because she was frightened of what might be inside. Perhaps she ought to face it head on, the way her mother had done when she’d pretended to like spiders even though she was terrified of them, so as not to make her small daughter afraid too. Didn’t she have a duty now, to try not to pass on her own fears to Morgan and Riley? Why was she scared of a few fairy stories anyway?
“Is that why you gave me that book?” said Lauren. “I haven’t read it yet.”
Cindy frowned. “What book? I gave you a fish and an octopus. Those ones.” She pointed to the soft toys, dumped in a pile in the corner and still half in the wrapping.
Lauren rummaged in the pile and found the book. The spine was coming away slightly, the binding soft to the touch. As she turned it over in her hands, a smell of ancient libraries rose from the dun-coloured cover.
She handed it to Cindy, who took it with her fingertips, as if she didn’t really want to. “I would never have given you this,” she said. “What makes you think it was from me?”
“It was in the gift bag, with the toys. You said there was a little something for me in there, didn’t you?”
“Yes, it was soap. Hand-made lavender soap, from the craft market.”
“Soap? I didn’t find any soap.”
Cindy’s eyes were wide with disbelief. “That is so weird.”
The crumbling hardback nearly fell apart as Cindy flipped it open to read the contents page.
“It’s fairy tales.”
“I know.”
“They’re all about babies. And, there’s a section on twins. Oh, look. One of the stories is local.”
Before she could be stopped, Cindy found the page and started reading aloud.
Once there was a man and his wife who lived together in a hut on the side of a mountain. They had baby twins, both of whom the wife nursed tenderly. One day, while the husband was far away with the flock, the wife was called to the house of a neighbour who was dying. She did not want to leave her two babes, as she had heard tell that faeries were roaming the land. Still, the neighbour was in dire need and so she went.
Lauren’s pulse started racing. Goosebumps all over. The woman’s face, her matted hair.
Choose one, that’s what she’d said. Choose one or I’ll take them both.
Don’t leave them alone. Ever.
Cindy didn’t look up. She kept reading.
On the way back she was dismayed to see a pair of old Elves of the Blue Petticoat crossing her path. She ran all the way home but when she got there saw that the twins were still in the cradle, and all was the same as when she had left.
But all was not the same. From that day forward, the twins did not grow at all, and the man and his wife began to suspect that something was wrong.
“These are not our children,” said the man.
“Whose children can they be?” asked the wife.
You’ll never know the difference. I can make sure they look just the same.
She picked up Riley, who’d started to fuss. She’d know him anywhere. She held him close and breathed him in. My baby.
They were both very sad for a long time, until the wife decided to seek the help of the wise man, who lived in a cave in the place they called the God’s Graveyard a few miles hence.
It was the time of year for reaping, and not long until the oats and rye would be harvested. The wise man, hearing of the woman’s woe, told her this: “You must clean out an old hen’s egg and boil up some potage in it, then go to the door as if to give it to the reapers for supper. Then, listen for what the babies say.”
“But they are too young yet to speak,” said the woman.
“If the elves have changed them, they are as old as the hills, and more,” said the wise man.
“And what of my own two babes?” she asked.
“If the babies speak, you will know that they are changed. But also that your own are close by, with the elf-mother.”
“And if they speak, and they are changed, what am I to do?”
“You must change them back,” said the wise man. “You must throw them into the river.”
“Stop,” said Lauren, too loudly. All three babies jumped.
Cindy closed the book. She examined the front cover, running her thumb over the gold embossed title.
“Who sent you this?” said Cindy.
“I told you, I thought it was you.”
“I can’t imagine what you must have thought about me, then. I promise you, I would never gift someone something so … ugh. A book of scary stories about twins, for a woman who’s just had twins? How inappropriate can you get?”
Lauren couldn’t stop thinking about the mother in the story. She wanted to know whether she went ahead and threw her own babies in the river, and if they drowned. At the same time, she didn’t want to know, ever.
Cindy stood up and pushed the little book deep into the bookcase by the fireplace. “I wouldn’t read it if I were you. Give it to a charity shop, maybe. I’ll put the kettle on again, shall I?”
Lauren carefully arranged her face in a semblance of nonchalance. Underneath it she was a boiling ocean of mixed-up feelings. She wanted to be alone, to calm herself down, to try not to think too much about what she’d just heard. Also, more than anything, she wanted to get the book down and finish reading the story. Not knowing the end was somehow worse. Cindy wouldn’t understand—especially after she’d shouted at her to stop reading; Lauren wasn’t sure she understood it herself. She stood up, Riley still latched to her breast. She found her voice, small and careful. “Cindy, can you just pass Morgan over?” Cindy picked up Morgan from the carpet and tucked him into Lauren’s other arm.
“Thanks, lovely,” said Lauren. “I won’t have that tea just now, actually. I think I might go for a lie down.”
“You OK, Lauren?” said Cindy.
“Fine. A bit tired, that’s all. I’m sorry. Do you mind?”
“No, not at all.”
Cindy fastened Lucy into the car seat and stood up to leave. She opened the front door, letting the heat roll in.
“Shall I come again next week, or …”
“I’ll come out next week,” said Lauren, “to the park for a coffee. I promise. I’ll be
less of a state then. I’ll even have a shower, how about that?”
“We’ll be honoured. I’ll tell Rosa.”
They kissed on both cheeks and Lauren shut the door with a foot, hearing the Yale lock click into place as she did. She looked down at the babies in her arms, sighing, smiling, for a moment feeling almost normal before the tiredness descended on her once more. She sank down into a chair and closed her eyes. She’d just sit for a second. Then she’d get the book down.
When she opened her eyes, the light in the room was different. An unknown amount of time had passed, and the nap had somehow made her even more tired than she was before. She stood up, still holding the babies, thinking to go upstairs to bed. Taking a few steps towards the kitchen, the air shifted slightly, a chill touched the back of her neck. There was a faint scratching, tapping sound, and her head snapped around to find the source. Something was darkening the window at the back of the house. The woman’s filthy face, her matted hair, her glittering eyes. Grinning, pressed against the window she pointed at Lauren, one fingernail scraping slowly down the glass.
Lauren screamed, screwed her eyes tight shut, threw herself backwards so that she was flat against the wall. The boys began to cry but it barely registered. When she dared to look again, the woman was gone. She forced herself to step closer, to peer a little further, and there was still nothing. Had it been a shadow—a bird? The light playing tricks? Cindy’s visit had tired her out. It was so exhausting having guests. The colours in the kitchen were unreal, vivid and blurred at the edges, saturated by the terror. She ought to check the garden, see if anyone was there. No, there won’t be, better to rest, to go where it’s safe, quickly. Lauren, gripping her precious boys against her body, climbed the stairs to the bedroom and shut the door, before sliding the bolts across and squeezing closed the padlock.
She curled up on the bed, encircling Morgan and Riley, trying not to think of the horrible woman, or of the pictures her mind had made out of those awful stories from Cindy. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t banish the faces of any of them: not the dark mouth and flashing eyes of the woman at the window; not those poor, nameless babies, crying alone in the African bush, or the ones in the river, sinking.
Little Darlings Page 11