Theo reaches across from the tatty sofa and takes my hand. ‘Stop talking, Jess, and please listen. Anna gave me a letter when she started working in the bank.’
My thoughts are jumbled. I think of all the times that they spent together. They were friends. We were all friends. Theo and I are friends … The times she worked at the surgery during school holidays, or later when she interned there for a whole summer while at university. There was the choir thing, some regular charity choral event that Theo organized; she babysat for Finn right up until she left for France. She and Harriet were close, too. Memories of our last Christmas together in their home flood my brain. Theo is still talking, my hand still resting in his.
‘When she started her job, the bank were sorting health and life insurance for her and she said it had got her thinking. She said if anything ever happened to her,’ he hesitates, ‘if anything ever happened to her, she felt you should know the truth.’
My open mouth is gaping.
‘I told her that anything we had ever discussed was confidential and that I’d be bound by oath never to speak about it – unless someone, somehow, was in danger.’ He shrugs. I watch his broad shoulders move up, then down. ‘She wrote the letter, only to be opened if … if … It gave me her permission to speak.’
I take my hand back, begin to rock back and forth on the chair. ‘What are you talking about?’
He stands and I’m forced to look up at him as he paces. He stops, looks out towards the garden to the black night, and seems to be wishing he wasn’t here. ‘Anna was involved with someone on and off for a few years. She never told you.’
‘Who? Involved with who?’ My hands grip my head. ‘I’d have known. What are you saying?’
‘I only knew she’d been seeing someone years ago. She told me that much when she worked in the surgery the last summer she was in uni. By then it was over, but she just needed someone to tell; blurted it out one day after work …’
‘I don’t believe this.’ My hands clasp my hair, pulling it at the roots.
‘Recently, they’d started seeing each other again.’
‘I don’t fucking believe this. None of this makes sense. And I thought we were friends.’ I stand, take his plate from where he left it. He hasn’t finished his food but I’m taking it anyway.
‘We are friends. It’s because we’re friends that I’m here.’
‘Friends don’t lie to each other.’ I stack his plate on top of mine and am about to sit down again when he tries to take my hand.
‘I never lied.’
I pull away. ‘You did! When she went to see you last. You said it was about travel sickness or something … I don’t remember! Something like that, I remember asking you around the time of the accident. And this other shit? She was “seeing someone”. What the hell does that mean? Why wouldn’t she just tell me?’
‘Jess. Stop.’
That’s twice now. Twice I’ve been told to stop talking. ‘I can’t do this. This is my house. I think you should go now.’ I grab the plates and march back to the dishwasher. ‘Did you hear me? Go!’
It’s too much: too much to take in. Anna was pregnant again. Anna was going to have a termination. My head shakes. And I knew nothing. She told me everything, yet I knew nothing. How is that even possible?
Theo follows me, stands a few feet away. ‘The guy she was seeing, the father, he was married. That’s why she never told you.’
I drop the plate. It smashes all over the floor. He moves.
‘Leave it!’ I yell.
Both of us stare at the scattered pieces on the tiled floor. Bean sprouts, noodles, sweet and sour sauce. Pug is there in an instant and I yell at her too, before leaning on the sink.
Concrete again. It fills my legs. The words ‘father’ and ‘married’ are rolling around my head. Anna would not do that. No. Anna would not do that.
‘When she last came to see me, just before France, she was heartbroken.’ Theo is still talking. ‘She had just told him she was pregnant. He’d reacted angrily and she knew it was over.’
I hold my hand up, hold my stomach with the other.
Theo moves towards me.
‘No!’ I cry.
He stills. ‘She told me that day that she didn’t want to bring a second child of his into the world knowing how he felt …’
The nausea is coming in waves now. I breathe in between. ‘A second child of his? My God. Sean isn’t Rose’s father?’
Theo shakes his head and my knees buckle.
He catches me but fails to pull me up; instead we both end up on the floor amongst the food and the shattered plate. I see for the first time that he hasn’t changed out of that lovely new suit. Now there’s orange sauce all over the knees.
‘Your suit,’ I sob. Anna wouldn’t do that.
He pulls me to him and I’m enveloped by him. His arms circle around me and I disappear in his bulk. I fight him at first. I can’t breathe, but his grip is so firm I give in to being held because I need it. I need him to hold me and tell me everything. He pulls me gently away from the debris, sliding me and him along the floor, sits with his back against the fridge, doesn’t let go. Pug settles at his feet, her eyes like dark brown marbles, watching us warily.
‘Did she tell you who?’ I look up at him, my voice almost hoarse.
He shakes his head, his eyes closed.
‘Why you? Why couldn’t she talk to me? I don’t get it.’
His grip tightens and he’s stroking my hair and I can’t bear it, it’s so calming, so soothing. Something in me is screaming but I’m also hypnotized. ‘Anna.’ I speak her name. She wouldn’t do that.
His hand keeps moving as he repeats what he knows: Anna had been seeing a married man when Rose was conceived. He is, according to her, Rose’s father. They had an on-off relationship for a couple of years, more off than on, before Anna finally finished it. The relationship had only started up again last October.
None of it makes any sense. Enveloped by Theo, I’m cast back in time to when Rose was born. Anna wasn’t seeing anyone. Sean was around but as Rose’s dad. He and Anna had been together only briefly. Jesus … Sean … My hand forms a soft fist and I hit Theo’s chest rhythmically as tears fall. Anna wouldn’t do that.
Yet here we are, Theo and me, sitting in Chinese leftovers on my kitchen floor. She had told him about an affair. He has a letter.
‘This letter.’ I force myself to stop crying. ‘Does it say anything else? It—’
‘It just allows me to talk to you, to tell you what I know.’ I feel his head shake. ‘I only know Sean’s not Rose’s dad and that Anna was pregnant again. That’s it. Jess, I could have had that letter for ever, unopened. She gave it to me to cover me talking to anyone, to release me from my oath – that’s all. Maybe she’d have told me more over time. Maybe she’d have told you more over time. Actually, I think she would have …’
The tears fall again and for ages, we sit there, huddled in the strangest of poses – him covered in sweet and sour, rubbing my head, and me enclosed, foetal-like, in his arms.
I pull away, just enough to look up at him. His eyes are closed again.
‘Theo.’ I am sobbing.
They open. His lashes are damp too. With his free hand he smudges away my tears with his thumb, leans his head down to me and kisses my cheeks.
A tiny turn; the smallest of angles of his mouth. That’s all it takes and we’re kissing. A gentle touching of mouths, nothing else, but our lips meet and … cement again. This time locking his lips with mine.
We had a moment once. A long time ago. He walked me home after a Christmas party when I worked with him at the surgery. I was single. He wasn’t. We shared a drunken kiss at the end of my driveway. We’ve never spoken of it since, not once, so it never happened.
But sitting here amongst the bean sprouts, as my heart is hanging onto bits of itself, as I fear it’s going to remain a shredded mess for ever, as the words Anna wouldn’t do that repeat over and over again in my head, it’s tha
t moment I recall, before something close to reality kicks in.
‘No, no, Theo. No.’ My voice catches as I move away from him, stand up. ‘You are my friend. I don’t have many friends.’
He struggles to stand, slips on the sauce again and finally faces me. He tries to touch my cheek, but I turn away.
‘I’m sorry.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s the shock – this whole thing.’ I reach for his hand. ‘I’ve lost Anna, the dearest person in the world to me. Sean is fighting me for Rose. I don’t want to lose you too.’
He sighs, accepts the madness of the moment. ‘At least let me help you keep Rose. You can prove Sean’s not the father.’
‘DNA?’
He nods.
‘How do I get him to take the test?’
‘Try asking him. Tell him you’ve found something in Anna’s papers. If necessary, I can confirm what I knew, now I have that letter.’ He reaches for and squeezes my hand.
I kiss his cheek. ‘Back to cheeks. Let’s forget that … Please.’ I walk back to the sink.
‘Okay. I suppose we’re good at that,’ Theo says, and follows me. He pulls a handkerchief from his top pocket and soaks it under the sink, dabs it on his orange knees. It will never work. His suit and my perfect image of my only child. Both ruined.
I wake with a start. Sweat runs in streams between my breasts. Tiny crusts of salt glue my eyelashes together. The clock says 03:04 a.m. The house is still, silent. The only sound I can hear is my own heartbeat.
None of it makes sense, and when something makes no sense, jars you awake in the middle of the night, it’s usually because there’s something missing. My weary brain lists the facts as I huddle under the duvet, suddenly cold, despite perspiring.
The letter. A letter only ever to be opened in the event of her death. Why would Anna give Theo permission to speak about an affair, about the fact that someone else had fathered Rose, without actually ever saying who?
I reach for my phone and send him an immediate text.
The letter. I want to see it. J x
24. Jess
Doug has told Leah about the pregnancy. He shouldn’t have. That was mine to do and only after I’d had time to process it myself. I have needed to try and get Anna’s pregnancy – and the news that I know nothing about my own daughter – straight in my own head. Leah has called and I’ve texted back, asking for some time, just a bit of time. When I think I’m ready, I call her. ‘You’re up.’ I look at the neon numbers on the oven.
‘Just about to jump in the shower. You okay?’
‘No.’ Suddenly, my heart-rate quickens and I begin to sweat. I’m not ready to say any of this out loud. ‘Leah, sorry, I shouldn’t have called, sorry.’
‘Jess—’
‘Leah, just pretend I never called. I’ll be fine. Talk later, okay?’
I hang up the phone, stand staring out at the garden. I’m still in my pyjamas and my naked feet are frozen on the tiled floor of the kitchen. I hug my arms, look around the room, wonder why I don’t actually have a proper dining table in here. Why the tatty sofa and a worse armchair? I should get rid of them. I open the back door and am pulling the small sofa into the garden when I hear my front door open. I blow my hair from my face and look up to see Leah.
She heads straight to the kettle and fills it. ‘What has that poor sofa ever done to you?’ she asks.
‘I need to get rid of it.’ I’ve managed to pull it to the back door but am trying to figure out how it can be so small yet still look as if it’s not going to fit through. Leah approaches, pulls the sofa away from me towards its original space.
‘No!’ I tug it back again.
‘What the hell, Jess? What’s going on?’
I slump into the chair, with my right thumb and forefinger begin to pull at a loose piece of material. ‘Anna and I were meant to upholster this.’
‘I’ll help you.’ Leah squeezes into the space beside me.
‘It’s such a stupid size. It’s too big for one and too small for two.’
‘That’s why you bought it.’ She points to the television on the furthest wall and then to my breakfast bar. ‘Up here is where Rose can do her homework while you make dinner, and over there, she can watch telly. This sofa is big enough for you and her to sit and watch something together. It’s perfect.’
‘It was for either Anna or me to sit with Rose in.’ I nod.
‘This is the chill-out zone and next door is the sort of grown-up room.’
‘I don’t do zones. They’re your thing. I think I need a dining room.’
‘You don’t. You need a nice cup of tea.’ She stands up, heads back to the boiled kettle.
‘You need to get to work.’
‘You need to let me help you.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I hug my arms tight, and walk to one of the two seats at the small bar that divides the room. ‘I really shouldn’t have called you.’
‘Yes, yes you should. You need me, you call me. That’s what we do.’
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘It’s not what we do.’ I catch Leah’s eye, note her stretched, arched eyebrows. ‘It’s not what we do,’ I repeat. I have never been one to ‘call people’, and if I did, it wouldn’t have necessarily been Leah.
I feel her hand over mine; look down at the worktop that mine is clutching the edge of, as if it’s the only thing that’s grounding me.
‘It’s what we do now, Jess,’ she whispers.
‘Theo came around.’ I lift the cup of tea she has placed in front of me, glance at the clock, aware that Rose will surface any minute. ‘He knew that Anna was pregnant.’
She sips from her cup, gives a slow, acknowledging nod. ‘I suppose it makes sense. He was her GP.’
‘She had booked a termination.’
‘Oh …’
‘She told Theo she’d been seeing a married man.’ I watch Leah’s face react. Her eyes scrunch; her mouth opens as if to say something, and then she seems to think about it, stop herself. What she can’t stop is herself frowning.
‘Who?’ she asks.
‘He doesn’t know, but she had been seeing him for a long time, on and off since she went to uni.’
‘What?’ Leah puts her cup down, stares at me. ‘Say that again?’
‘You heard me.’
‘Jesus …’ She takes the seat at my side, gulps. ‘Jesus,’ she says again.
‘So, I thought I’d have a dining table in here.’
‘Right.’
‘I thought I’d just put the tatty sofa in the garden and make room for a dining table.’
‘You don’t need a dining table,’ Leah says. ‘You do need a break, though. The universe should give you a bit of a fucking break.’
My eyes look to the ceiling, towards the sounds upstairs. ‘She’s up,’ I say. ‘I’ll just go and get her.’
Minutes later, I’m back downstairs, a sleepy Rose in my arms. ‘Guess who’s come to see us even though it’s only breakfast time?’
She puts her arms out to Leah and my sister lifts her into her own, enfolds her, and sits down with her on her lap on the tatty sofa, which she has moved back to its original position. Rose bends like an ‘S’ shape into her, sucks her thumb.
‘See?’ Leah says. ‘It’s perfect.’ She swallows hard and seems to be inhaling the scent of Rose’s hair. ‘She’s perfect,’ she adds.
‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘Yes, she is.’
Leah is back two days later, Saturday, helping me in Anna’s room. She has offered to have Mum and Dad at hers, but it’s best they’re here. Dad could not navigate her stairs; all glass and shiny and nothing for him to hang onto. She has even offered to change her dining room into a downstairs bedroom. I look at her and love her. She is a beautiful being, my sister.
But we’re here, in Anna’s bedroom, about to strip her linen from her bed.
‘You don’t have to do this,’ Leah repeats.
Rose is next door in her room. I can hear the puppet voices of the DVD she’s watching.
>
‘I do have to do this sometime. So, let’s do it now.’ I lift the duvet from the top of the bed, snap open the poppers at the end and start to remove it. Leah pulls the other side until I can lift the cover into my hands. I raise it to my nose, tell myself that it still has her scent but, months later, all it really has is a thin film of dust, and I sneeze. It drops to the floor and we continue until there is a small pile of linen.
‘There,’ I say aloud, proud of myself. I have managed one thing I really didn’t want to do today.
‘Alan, the guy in work who I gave the phone to,’ Leah says. ‘He’s been out for a few days but he texted me to say he’s got it unlocked. I’ll have it on Tuesday.’
Today is Saturday. I’m about to ask her why not Monday, when I realize what day Monday is. She won’t be in work. She will be in the church with me and a hundred others.
‘And the letter to Sean …’ She picks up the crisp white cotton linen, Anna’s spare set, that we’re about to put on the bed. ‘It’s been sent.’
My hand rubs my stomach automatically. When Leah spoke to a solicitor friend, their advice was to work quickly with Sean, not to allow time to pass where he would be organizing another life for Rose. I’d argued. I argued because I just didn’t want him to be hurt the way I knew he would be. I’ve never been his biggest fan, but the timing of this sucks. This whole thing sucks, but Sean is going to get our request for DNA just before Anna’s funeral. I shake my head.
Our conversation is halted by a sound coming from the doorway. Both of us look up from making the bed at the same time. Rose is almost hyperventilating ten feet away.
‘What are you doing?’ she wails.
‘Rose, love.’ I’m by her side in a nanosecond. ‘What’s the matter?’ I bend down to her eye level.
‘What are you doing to Mummy’s bed? You have to keep it the same!’ She runs from my grasp and throws herself on the bed. Leah reaches for her and Rose screams.
‘Leave me alone! You can’t touch Mummy’s bed!’
‘Okay, okay, stop screaming, Rose.’ I come and sit by her on the bed, rub her back. ‘Tell me what’s wrong, darling.’
She doesn’t move from her spread-eagled position. ‘You can’t change Mummy’s bed. We have to keep it the same.’ She is sobbing now. ‘For when she comes home.’
The Day I lost You Page 14