Almost imperceptibly he turned towards the hallway. Noting it was empty, he carried on, though more quietly this time.
‘Maria has them. I think it’s probably best you leave them for now, you don’t want to excite them.’
‘But the health visitor said if I had any chance of breastfeeding, I …’
Stepping back inside, he lowered his voice. ‘Breastfeeding? You really think that’s a good idea, with the drugs you’re taking?’
‘There’s no chance of infiltrating my supply, the midwife told me. The hospital prescribed those specific painkillers for that reason.’
‘Anna, let’s not kid ourselves. You’re not …’
He paused, apparently pained by what he had to say.
‘You’re not safe, if I really have to spell it out. For the moment I think we need to lean on Maria.’
With those words, he walked away.
I cannot be sure how long I lay there before pushing myself up slowly, adjusting to the dusty light of the room.
My hip rubbed against the mattress as I slid to sitting position, confused yet again by the inflated barrel of flesh wedged across my stomach. Just along the line of pubic hair was the trace of the incision, a horizontal slit three inches across. Pressing lightly, my fingers followed the raised line of the wound, which was still numb. At any minute I expected it might rip open, my insides pouring out in hot red waves.
Pulling out a small white packet from the pocket of my dressing gown, I used my fingernail to pierce the silver film, pushing one of the pills into my mouth and then another. Taking a sip of water from the glass David had placed there the previous evening, I felt the medicine scrape against the back of my throat.
When I came round again, the light was more insistent in the room. David must have been in and pulled the curtains apart further while I slept, another weak attempt to lure me back into the world.
I glanced at the clock. 10.45. From the hall, I could hear him, his voice breaking into a fragmented lullaby, his shadow pacing back and forth in front of the door, head stooped over the bundle in his arms.
Somewhere in my subconscious I recalled a conversation through the gauze of sleep. Maria and David, discussing her next day off, away from the girls.
‘I don’t have to go, I can stay if you need me.’
‘Don’t be silly, we’ll be fine. I know how much Mass means to you, and St Mary’s is just around the corner, and I’ll be here. Honestly, we’ll be fine.’
I pictured Maria, her scarf pulled over her head, slipping quietly through the streets of Hampstead, lowering her eyes as she passed under the vast white pillars on Holly Walk.
It was Sunday, then. I felt a twinge of regret, imagining my mother waiting by the phone in the hall, worry tinged with relief when the call never came.
Over the years, I had taken to ringing every Sunday at the same time; since moving in with David I would leave the house on the pretext of picking up supplies from the high street before walking to the same bench by the call box on Well Walk. Giving myself a moment to switch modes, I would watch the well-heeled couples with their spaniels and perfectly turned-out children striding from lunch at The Wells to the lane that offered a short cut onto the Heath, while I gathered my breath. My mother always answered after the first ring, and my toes would press into the paving stones as I pictured her perched on the same seat in the same narrow hallway where she had scrubbed at Thomas’s final footprints until the whole house stung with the smell of bleach.
During our last call, not long before the girls were born, I had been hit by a desperate surge of emotion, a suddenly overwhelming longing to be able to tell her the truth. To share my excitement, and fear, to ask the questions only a mother could answer.
‘How is work?’
It was the same question every time.
‘Busy.’
I fought back tears.
‘I haven’t received any of your articles in the post. I thought you were going to send some.’
‘I’m sorry, there’s just been so much going on, there never seems to be any time.’
‘And the flat they put you up in, it’s going well?’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Your father and I would love to come and visit sometime. You know, it’s just at the moment we’re so … busy.’
My mother’s voice trailed off, the silence ringing between us.
‘Are you OK, dear? You sound—’
‘I’m fine. Just tired, you know. Things are just so busy at work, but I’ll be fine.’
There was a moment’s silence. In that moment, I imagined telling her, practising the words; I need not tell her everything, need not mention David. I could just say I was pregnant and the father wanted nothing to do with the babies. Her grandchildren …
‘Right, well, make sure you eat properly, won’t you? We don’t want you wearing yourself away.’
I exhaled, the moment gone. The possibility of a moment that I knew had never really existed at all.
David went back to work two weeks after my operation, kissing the girls on their foreheads before heading for the train station to a job I never allowed myself to fully imagine.
With weekdays spent at the office, he threw himself into the parenting role with a vengeance come the weekend, sending Maria off to enjoy her free time, his pointed comments about my retreat to the bedroom eventually fading to resigned silence.
‘Which day are the builders starting?’ I asked over supper one night, not long after his return to work, a takeaway I hardly had the energy to move around my plate with my fork.
He stopped eating, his eyes narrowing. ‘I told you, I’ve cancelled them.’
‘What do you mean?’
He inhaled, as if taking a moment to gather himself. ‘You don’t remember? I mean just that. I told you, I’ve put them off. Now is not a good time, when things are … Well, everything is a bit unsettled at the moment.’
‘You didn’t tell me that.’
He looked at me, unblinking, for a beat too long before nodding, turning his attention back to his plate. ‘OK. It’s OK, you’re very tired. We’re all tired. I probably didn’t say it clearly enough, or …’
Something about his voice stopped me from answering. When he looked back at me, his eyes were shining with tears.
Late one Saturday afternoon, hearing his feet move on the stairwell, the steps creaking in time to the song he whispered in Stella’s ear, I slowly eased myself out of bed, sliding my feet into the sheepskin slippers Clive’s secretary had ordered as part of an elaborate care package, which had arrived along with an apology for his prolonged absence.
Can’t wait to meet my girls. Not long now …
Pushing the thought away, I focused instead on the gentle crunch of the wool between my toes as I made my way towards the bathroom, where I found no reply from Harry since the last time I wrote to him. He could be dead, and there would be no way of knowing. Sometimes, when I thought of him in the middle of the night, the sound of the girls whimpering in the next room, David breathing steadily beside me, I found myself wondering if I had made it all up. And in those moments I could not be sure what scared me more, the possibility that Harry was not real or knowing that he was.
As I made my way along the hallway, I became aware of my husband’s voice rising through the house. The bathroom on this floor was on one side of the hall; the carpet up here a deep emerald green, curling around the spindles of the staircase like the mouth of a snake sucking up its prey; the same carpet which had been here when David was a boy. I pictured him now, pressing his face between the wooden bars of the bannister, listening to his parents from the rooms below. What did he hear? Laughter, music, screams?
Poor David. Poor, sweet, trusting David. My eyes filled with tears for the boy I never knew, for the girl I had been. For the sea of lies that stretched between us, so that there was no way to cross without drowning.
I know how it must look, the hypocrisy of it; bu
t the truth is back then I believed I was doing this in part for him too. He had a right to know who his father was, did he not? He had a right to know the truth. Or at least part of it.
My longing for a message from Harry led me towards the bathroom, but as I approached, I felt myself lured towards the door opposite.
The curtains in this room had been pulled tight so that it was pitch-black, but from somewhere inside I could hear shallow breathing. Taking my first hesitant step over the metal guard that marked the entrance, I felt a weight drop in my gut. Pressing my feet carefully onto the carpet, feeling like an intruder, I realised I had no sense of the geography of the room since David and Maria had moved it around, filling it with the pieces he had picked out in my absence.
My husband and the hired help playing happy families in my daughters’ nursery, while I was recovering from an operation? What else had they done that I had no knowledge of?
The smell inside the room was overpowering, sweet and sour. As I tuned into the stillness, I could feel the movement from one of the cots, the one furthest away. Hesitant at first, repulsed by the sight of the beds, the slatted wood like tiny prisons, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of urgency as I moved across the room, closing my eyes for a moment as I leaned over the cot.
Pausing briefly, I reached in, tucking my hands under the baby asleep at the bottom of the mattress; one palm cupping the bottom of her neck, the other holding her legs.
‘Oh my darling, what have they done to you?’
Glancing around before bending my knees, I placed the child on the floor in front of me. As I did so I felt her body tighten, her tiny mouth torn open, her cheeks firing red.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ I whispered, pulling frantically at the swaddle blanket, desperately trying to unleash her from its grip.
‘What did they do to you?’
My hands shaking, I unravelled the final layer of the blanket and Rose’s arms flew upwards, like an animal bolting from its cage. Tossing her head, fragile pink limbs flailed and then immediately calmed as I once again scooped her up, pulling her into my chest this time, forgetting the shooting pain that tore through my stomach.
‘It’s OK, Mummy’s got you. Mummy’s got you, baby.’
‘Anna?’
David’s body cast an invisible shadow across the darkness of the room.
I turned to see him, Stella in his arms. The look on his face made me pull Rose tighter to my chest.
‘She was caught up, she couldn’t move.’
My voice was urgent.
‘What are you talking about?’
David’s eyebrows furrowed above a concerned smile.
‘Rose. She was bound in a blanket, she couldn’t move.’
For a moment he paused and then he laughed uneasily. He laughed at me.
‘You mean the swaddle blanket?’
He took a step forward, regarding me with a pitying look. My eyes must have been wide, I felt them dry and unblinking, searching a face I no longer recognised.
‘That’s what you do with babies. They like it, it reminds them of being in the womb.’
‘She didn’t like it, she was crying.’
I looked down at my daughter, her mouth held in a tight O-shape.
‘She’s hungry,’ David’s voice hardened. ‘She can smell your milk.’
‘I don’t have any milk.’ I flinched, shifting into kneeling position so that one foot was pushed in front of me, preparing to stand. Realising I had no free arms, I looked around for something to lean against.
Noticing my pain, David took a step forward. Without saying a word, he reached out for Rose. For a moment, I clasped her to me; holding my gaze, David moved his arm slowly closer.
‘Let me take Rose, then I can help you up.’
Reluctantly loosening my grip on my daughter, I watched David scoop the baby up and lay her in the cot next to Stella. Feeling him move behind me, I let him help me, pushing my weight against his as he pulled me up by the armpits, the pain shooting through my abdomen like a knife.
‘Why don’t you go to bed?’
‘I’m not tired, I want to feed Rose.’
David regarded me for a moment. ‘I’m not sure if that’s the best idea right now.’
‘What do you mean, it’s not the best idea? You’ve been telling me how little time I spend with the girls – that I need to feed—’
‘Anna, stop. You need to rest. And take your pills.’ There was something in his voice that made me pause, and from downstairs, I heard the front door pull shut. Knowing she was home, I felt air seep from my body, the relief overwhelming. As the sound of Maria’s assured footsteps rose up the stairs, David took a step back.
‘I have taken them.’
David sighed. ‘You haven’t taken them, they’re by your bed. I hid the packet so you wouldn’t take more than you needed, so you can’t have had any—’
‘But I did …’ Heat rose in my cheeks. Why was he questioning me? I distinctly remembered, this morning: two pills laid out on my bedside table, a glass of water. It was this morning, I remembered it clearly.
Opening my mouth to speak, I looked at him, both babies suddenly asleep in the cot beside each other, oblivious to whatever it was that filled the air around them.
There was no point arguing with him when all I had to do was walk back into the bedroom, to the side table and show him …
‘I don’t understand.’ My eyes moved from the two pills laid out on the side table, and David standing in the doorway, his eyes filled with sadness. Without saying a word, he closed his eyes and turned back into the hallway, his feet padding towards the stairs.
Since the birth, the dream had started to return with increasing regularity, variations on the day it happened; the sense of inevitability growing with every night that I relived it.
The afternoon had been too bright that day, over-exposed. The trees that lined the bottom of the garden were smudged around the edges, like a warning.
My mother’s voice was strained as she ran into the kitchen where my brother and I were gulping water from plastic cups at the table, escaping the heat.
‘I’ve got to run into the office. Your father needs some papers typed up, I’m afraid it can’t wait.’
She absent-mindedly brushed her hand over Thomas’s head as she swept past towards her handbag, which was perched on the counter. Her only son’s cheeks were wet with sweat, his fringe plastered to his forehead.
‘Marianne …’
She picked her car keys from the hook by the door before moving to the sink. Two pumps of hand-soap, thumb between knuckles. Rinse.
‘You’re in charge, OK?’
‘But—’
‘No buts, Marianne. You know what boys are like. You’re the sensible one and I’m relying on you to look after your brother, make sure he doesn’t get in any trouble. You can at least do that for me, can’t you?’
She gave me a knowing look, scrubbing her wrists with a clean tea-towel.
‘Thomas, you do as Marianne tells you. You listening?’
She pulled her bag over her shoulder as she headed towards the hall.
‘And no leaving the house.’
I watched her go, willing her to turn back around, my annoyance following her up the garden path.
‘Let’s play.’ Thomas slammed his glass loudly on the counter and ran out to the garden before I could object.
I followed him into the garden, slowly settling myself under the tree.
‘Come on, you’re so boring.’ He jumped from one foot to another as I pulled rhythmically at strands of grass, wondering when my parents would be home.
‘OK, fine, let’s play hide-and-seek.’ I had said it to get rid of him, giving myself at least a minute’s peace.
‘Fine. I’m hiding first, start counting. Don’t cheat!’
He fell for it every time. Believing I actually wanted to play, too. Oblivious to the contempt I felt for his very existence.
Before I had reache
d four, I sensed Thomas slip out of earshot. Satisfied by my clever ploy, I enjoyed letting the words fall away, letting my eyes fall open, returning my focus to the grass, sprinkled with tiny white flecks blown over from the bulrushes up the road.
In the dream, though, I looked up. In the dream I watched Thomas creep back through the house, along the silent corridor towards the front door. His shoes, the ones with the Velcro straps, leaving the traces of dried soil that our mother would later quietly scrub away with a mop.
I watched him glance back to check I was not peeking as he pulled at the latch. I watched myself wilfully ignore him as he shimmied himself up the window ledge at the side of the house, with glee, his grazed knees pushing him up onto the roof of the garage.
How could I have known, how could I have predicted what would happen next? And yet, in every incarnation of this dream, every flashback, it’s there: the sense that I did. The sense that my parents were right to blame me.
In this version of events, I saw myself, bored now, distracted by the lurch of voices next door. Helplessly, I watched my own face freeze as I finally spotted him on the roof of the house, grinning back at me.
Did I move? Did I call out to stop him? No matter how hard I racked my brain for evidence that I had tried to stop him, none could be found.
I can still hear it, even when the dream is over: the screech of brakes sounding from the road on the other side of the house, my mother’s car arriving home just in time to see the body of her youngest twin drop, like a discarded doll, onto the driveway.
I woke up once again, damp with cold sweat, sitting up too soon, forgetting the pain until it seized my abdomen.
The silhouette of the tree in front of the house streaked along the hall as I opened the bedroom door, David stirring under the covers behind me before settling himself.
A single light called out from the ground floor as I stepped into the hall, the one Maria liked to keep on at night in case the girls needed her. From the nursery, I could hear the gentle rhythm of the lullaby seeping out from one of the countless gadgets David had bought in those first weeks, to soothe and cajole, to offer love where mine was lacking.
Taking a tentative step into the room, I was struck by an urge to run to my daughters, to prise them from their beds and bolt into the night, to leave the door swinging behind me as I hurtled across the Heath.
The Most Difficult Thing Page 18