Everything You Told Me

by Lucy Dawson

  ‘Perhaps if you’d just done it at breakfast, when I asked you…’ I bit the bait.

  ‘Right. It’s my fault he’s woken up. Of course it is. Sorry… What the hell is that?’ Matthew peered tiredly down at the floor, then bent over and touched the gaffer tape that was holding the ripped lino together. ‘Oh lovely, the bag’s leaked everywhere.’ He straightened up. ‘It’s probably not the best idea to put the rubbish right on top of that dodgy bit.’

  ‘Have the flooring samples you were going to order arrived yet?’ I shot back.

  He looked at me meditatively for a moment. ‘I think you know the answer to that. I haven’t had time. I know you’re exhausted, Sal. We’re all exhausted, but—’

  ‘Well, probably not quite as much as me.’ I was unable to help myself.

  ‘I’ve offered to get up at night too.’

  ‘I know, but we agreed that was my responsibility, given you have to actually work during the day.’ His pending contract instantly loomed back into my mind. I remembered how worried he was, bit my tongue, and rubbed my eyes tiredly. ‘I don’t mind, though, honestly I don’t.’

  ‘OK, well I’ve said I’ll have him down here for a couple of hours each evening too, so you can get some rest, but you won’t do that either.’

  ‘Only because I think it’s easier for me to try and keep him settled upstairs. Plus you really can’t afford to be tired yourself at the moment, not with your job the way it is. When things calm down, I might take you up on that offer.’ I tried to smile, although it felt unnaturally tight. I didn’t have the heart to say it, but Matthew was totally useless at getting Theo to sleep, hauling him around awkwardly like a sack of potatoes, which in turn made Theo cry, and meant I would lie upstairs getting more stressed at how unhappy he was, which sort of defeated the object. Matthew had been the same with Chloe too, not really coming into his own until she was about two. It wasn’t his fault – it was just the way it was.

  ‘We have to face facts.’ Instead, Matthew began to bulldozer off down a now well-worn conversational cul-de-sac, and my heart sank. ‘We need more help. What about an au pair? A guy at work said it’s revolutionized their lives.’

  Theo began to grizzle and I jiggled him a little faster. ‘I don’t think I could cope with also being responsible for some sixteen-year-old French girl living in the spare room and coming home at God knows what hour. And where would your mum or my parents sleep when they come to stay?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what else to suggest. Things aren’t sustainable as they are. It’s not easy for me either, you know, working from home when it’s like this. And it’s not like I don’t wake up at night too when he cries. I do. All the time.’

  I stared at him as the flint of a row sparked again and my short fuse flared. ‘You find it hard to sleep while you’re lying in bed in the spare room and I’m pacing the floor for literally hours at a time in Theo’s room, rocking him, you mean? Wow. I’m so sorry to hear that. It must be dreadful for you.’

  ‘And once I’m awake, it’s really hard to get back to sleep.’ If he’d noticed the point I was making, he ignored it.

  ‘You know,’ I said, lightly, ‘I had – in total – three and a half hours’ sleep last night.’

  He looked heavenward. ‘OK. Never mind.’ He glanced back down at his watch. ‘Well, that was a fun lunchbreak.’ He picked the bin bag up again and walked over to the door.

  ‘I know it’s dreadful at the moment, Matthew. Believe me, I know,’ I said, with sudden energy. ‘I mean, just look at me!’ I nodded down at my sick-stained maternity trousers, and the shapeless shirt straining slightly over my doughy tummy. Chloe had only that very morning prodded it and remarked, ‘You’ve still got a bump, haven’t you?’ before adding darkly, ‘There isn’t another baby in there, is there?’

  Matthew paused, but remained silent.

  ‘I think that’s the bit where you say, “Don’t be silly, you look great to me”.’ I tried another smile.

  His work mobile buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out and stared at the screen. ‘Oh, just fuck off and leave me alone…’ He glanced up. ‘Not you, them. You had a baby six months ago and you’re getting zero sleep. What do you expect?’

  The rather ungallant response stung, but I tried to ignore it. ‘I thought we weren’t swearing in front of Theo? What I’m trying to say is, yes, it’s rubbish, but we just have to hang on another month or so until he’s old enough for me to do sleep training with him.’

  ‘Another month?’ He looked up bleakly. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to make it to the end of the week, to be honest. Why’s the Calpol out, by the way? Is he ill again?’

  I hesitated. ‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I thought it was worth a go.’

  ‘We can’t just drug him!’

  ‘Well, it didn’t work anyway. I thought if—’

  But Matthew had already lost interest in what I was saying, and was wrinkling his nose. ‘Jesus. This reeks. Right. I’ve really got to go and get on now. Don’t forget I’ve got an eight a.m. call tomorrow too,’ he called as he reached the front door. ‘So you’ll have to do both school runs.’

  ‘I know,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I’m really looking forward to it.’

  ‘I have to, Sal.’ He reappeared. ‘If I don’t get this contract signed off and in by the end of the week, I’m actually going to lose my fucking mind.’

  ‘Seriously! Can you please stop swearing! No one is trying to stop you working, Matthew. I promise. I’m trying to give you as much space as I can, believe it or not.’

  Theo stepped his protests up a notch, probably picking up on the mounting tension, so I moved over to the kettle to start making up a bottle.

  ‘It’s all I do at the moment – work,’ Matthew continued. ‘I just work, and help you with the kids, and go to the gym. That’s it.’

  I couldn’t be bothered to respond to such a ridiculous statement. I hadn’t had more than five minutes to myself for half a year. The flame in me died suddenly, and all I wanted to do was find a hole, climb into it, and sleep for a hundred years. Matthew watched in silence as I soothed Theo, and then, without saying anything else, turned and left the room. I heard him pull his shoes on in the hall, then moments later a fiercely cold draught rushed in where he’d left the front door open.

  Shivering, I almost called out to ask him to shut it, but too defeated, closed my mouth again. Instead, a couple of fat tears sploshed down onto Theo’s downy head, making him look up at me in surprise. I wiped them away gently.

  ‘Sorry, baby boy.’ I tried to smile. He regarded me for a moment and then gave me a huge, gummy grin and waved his little fist at me again. I caught and kissed it, more tears blurrily flooding my eyes. ‘Don’t worry, Theo,’ I whispered. ‘Mummy’s just a bit knackered. That’s all.’

  He started sucking his fist, and I reached to my left so I could put the radio on. Silence wasn’t good. It felt too big. When Chloe had been a similar age, the radio had helped massively with the daytime loneliness of being in the house so much. Although, of course, that was when we’d lived in our tiny, but pristine, flat in London. I looked despairingly at the disgusting frosted pink stripy wallpaper, upon which I’d hopefully daubed three different paint samples when we’d first moved in and I was pregnant, about eight months ago. The blobs were still there, untouched.

  The kettle began to bubble as I jiggled Theo. Once his sleep was sorted, I’d put Project House back on the front line. I felt immediately cheered at the thought of new showers that pulsed rather than dribbled, wood flooring throughout, no more patterned carpets, all the Artex gone, a woodburner in the sitting room, a front door that wasn’t entirely constructed of swirly glass, and that had a proper handle rather than a catch that skinned the thumbs and forefinger of the person trying to shut it. No more velvet pink curtains or brown kitchen tiles with orange baskets of fruit adorning them, either.

  And defiantly, nothing held together with gaffer tape – that went for Matthew an
d me too. I wanted things back the way they’d been before Theo had arrived. I hated the constant niggling and bickering that came with this stage of having a baby. It wasn’t us. I’d also woefully underestimated the increased workload of having two rather than one child, while additionally being under virtual house arrest while I tried desperately to get Theo into a daytime nap schedule. Life was a little like being part of a Milgram experiment. Who would crack first, me or Matthew? Perhaps we’d end up eating each other.

  I picked up my phone, the only thing still connecting me to the outside world, and absently googled ‘studies into the effects of small children on happy marriage’. The top result to come back was ‘Is Divorce Bad for Children?’, followed by ‘The Implications of Divorce’. Yeah, that’d be about right. I put my phone back down as the kettle clicked off and Roxette’s ‘It Must Have Been Love’ came on.

  Oh God, no! I groaned and hastened back over to the radio to find something more cheerful, but it was too late. As if I wasn’t depressed enough, the song had already transported me back to being eighteen again, bombing around the country lanes in bright sunshine with my long-term boyfriend from home, Joe. That particular summer had been full of carefree laughter, lots of driving too fast with the windows wide open, fish and chips on the beach as the sun went down… A lifetime ago. I hadn’t known I was born.

  ‘This too will pass.’ I closed my eyes. ‘This too will pass…’

  *

  Poor old Chloe looked just as shattered as me when she got home from pre-school, choosing to collapse quietly on the sofa so she could watch Sarah & Duck on the iPad, as I made tea.

  ‘Who did you play with today?’ I shouted over Theo’s dinging as he tiredly sat in his bouncer, and I hurtled around trying to cook pasta.

  ‘Amy,’ said Chloe, not looking away from the screen. ‘And Harry. Ben hit Harry on the head with a bit of train track.’

  ‘On purpose?’ I tried to concentrate on not grating my fingers in addition to the cheese.

  ‘No. He wasn’t looking where he was going. Harry cried. And I felt sad because Harry’s my best friend. He tried to hug me in assembly.’

  ‘OK.’ I gathered the cheese up and put it in a small bowl. ‘Well, all you need to say is “Thank you, but I don’t want to be hugged at the moment”.’

  ‘But I liked it.’ She looked up in surprise. ‘Can I have the cheese not on my spaghetti, please?’

  ‘I’m already doing it,’ I promised, smiling as I made a mental note to tell Matthew later about the hugs with Harry.

  ‘Would you like Harry to come and play, do you think?’ I asked Chloe during their bath after tea. Theo was squirming around madly in the water as I clutched him tightly under his arm, while trying to rinse crusted sweet potato from between his fingers with my free hand.

  Chloe poured some water from a plastic pink teapot and said decisively, ‘Only if he doesn’t play chase. I don’t like it when he and Ben try to catch me and Amy. They pull us by our hoods.’

  ‘Who do?’ Matthew appeared in the doorway, leaning in and passing me the towel I’d already carefully laid out ready on the floor, as I lifted a dripping Theo out.

  ‘Could you just pop it back down?’ I said, forcing a smile and trying not to sound irritated. Theo, cold and suspended in midair, gave an indignant bellow that made Chloe look up briefly.

  ‘I think he needs a feed, Mummy,’ she identified, correctly, and returned to her pouring.

  Matthew chucked it back, haphazardly. ‘Do you mind if I go to the gym tonight?’

  I placed Theo down and wrapped him as best I could.

  ‘I’ll do Chloe’s stories first, of course.’

  ‘I want Mummy to do them,’ Chloe said quickly.

  ‘Mummy can’t,’ Matthew said dismissively. ‘She’s got to feed Theo. So who pulled your hood?’

  ‘Harry. But it was part of a game. I want to get out now too.’ She stood up. ‘Mummy, I don’t want to get married. I want to live here with you, Daddy and Theo.’

  I looked up at her, concerned. She’d said the same thing two days ago. The diet of Disney DVDs that she’d been watching almost twenty-four-seven since Theo’s birth was obviously coming home to roost.

  ‘You don’t have to get married, darling. Not if you don’t want to.’

  ‘You might want to get your own place, though,’ Matthew suggested.

  Chloe and I both stared at him. Chloe’s bottom lip began to tremble as I said incredulously, ‘She’s four, Matthew. What Daddy means is,’ I reached for her towel, and turned back to Chloe, ‘of course you can live with us. For ever and ever.’

  She climbed out, and as I wrapped her, she tried to lean on me. ‘Please can you do stories, Mummy?’

  ‘I sure can!’ I beamed, as Theo rubbed his eyes furiously before letting out a sharp, cross and hungry wail.

  Matthew gestured helplessly. ‘I said I’d do them! She’ll be fine.’

  ‘No!’ Chloe’s eyes began to fill with tired tears.

  ‘Just go to the gym,’ I said quickly, in an attempt to calm everything down. ‘I’ve got this.’

  ‘Sally, you need to back me up when I say things,’ Matthew continued. ‘I said I was doing the stories. It doesn’t help if you then steam in, take over, and—’

  ‘Shall we discuss this later?’ I said with a bright, warning smile. Chloe looked between us uncertainly, and Matthew shook his head.

  ‘I’ll be back later then.’ He turned and left, without kissing the kids goodnight.

  ‘Right! Pyjamas!’ I smiled cheerfully, and tried to move us on quickly. ‘OK, Theo. I get the message. Bedtime!’

  Once I’d finally read them both stories, sung to Chloe, fed Theo, held him in my arms for long enough so that I could sneak him into the cot without him waking, and crept back out to the safety of the hall, it was eight p.m. I was starving. I wandered down to the kitchen and opened the fridge. I couldn’t be bothered to do anything more than cereal. Matthew could have fish fingers, chips and the courgette later when he got in if he wanted. In fact – I considered his ridiculous ‘get your own place’ comment to Chloe – I could think of several things he could do with the courgette.

  Suddenly too tired to even get the milk out, I closed the fridge and sank down onto a kitchen chair for a moment, putting my head on my hands. All I could hear was the white noise machine we’d bought, whirring away in Theo’s room through the monitor, but thankfully nothing from Theo himself. His sleep cycles were becoming shorter and shorter, though – I probably only had another thirty minutes before he’d be awake again. It was utterly tortuous. I loved Theo, I really did. But no matter how gorgeous he was, I needed a break. He was attached to me twenty-four hours a day. I was beginning to lose my mind.

  I took a deep breath and lifted my head again, just in time to see the most enormous spider saunter casually past me, about an inch away from my foot.

  ‘Shit!’ I gasped, and scrabbled to a stand, looking around quickly for something to catch it in. Luckily there was an empty glass Matthew had left on the table. As if aware of my intentions, the spider drew its legs in slightly and crouched still on the lino. I wasn’t convinced the glass was big enough, but there wasn’t anything else I could do. God – it was huge. I gave two short exhalations to psyche myself up and, making a quiet ‘eeeeee’ noise under my breath as I approached it, slowly extended my arm out – but as the glass lowered, it scuttled off towards the kids’ toys in the playroom. I instantly imagined it popping back out of a box of Lego while Chloe was playing, and shoving the glass down, I legged it around the table, and instead grabbed Chloe’s hobby horse, Penelope, lying on the carpet. The spider made another run for it, and with reactions I didn’t know I still possessed the energy for, I flipped the head end around, grasped the pole, and whacked it furiously. Penelope unhelpfully neighed loudly, and then made a trotting sound, but I was so determined to finish the job, I just kept whacking. After a few moments more of whacking, neighing, and trotting, I stopped, slightly pu
ffed out, and lifted up the horse to see the poor, now very dead spider mashed into the floor. Using Penelope as a sort of equine broom, I swept the mangled body to the front door and out onto the doorstep, before closing it again and collapsing down onto the carpet.

  How the hell had I managed all of that without waking Theo? I exhaled in relief, and then, glancing at the hobby horse, pictured how ridiculous I must have looked. I smiled, and then laughed out loud. What an idiot! But then tears simultaneously rushed to my eyes, and I realized that I was in fact crying. Disconcerted, I made a huge effort to get myself under control and quickly reached into my pocket for a tissue and my phone.

  Hey. How are you? I began to text Liv. One friend losing the plot here… I have just annihilated giant spider in house using a toy horse. Would call, but Theo about to wake up. This baby is breaking me. Chat tomorrow? Xx

  Right on cue, I heard Theo begin to whimper. Sighing, I hit send, then made my way upstairs.

  Matthew was back, and on the sofa in front of the TV eating a fresh batch of pasta when I trudged into the sitting room at ten past nine clutching the baby monitor.

  ‘Oh, thank you for making that.’ I nodded gratefully at his bowl as I flopped down on the sofa opposite him. ‘Is mine in the kitchen?’

  He pulled a face. ‘Um, sorry, no. I thought you’d gone to bed. I didn’t leave you any.’

  ‘Oh.’ I unaccountably felt tears spring to my eyes again. ‘OK. No problem.’

  He peered at me, puzzled. ‘Are you crying?’

  ‘I’m just very tired, and hungry,’ I whispered.

  He breathed out, deeply, and put the bowl down on the carpet beside him. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose, Sally. I thought you’d gone up for the night. How was I supposed to know you’d not eaten? I’ll go and make you some right now.’ He stood up.

  ‘Don’t bother.’ I shook my head. ‘By the time it’s cooked, it’ll be half nine, and Theo will be up again.’

  He gestured helplessly. ‘So what would you like me to do?’