Countless

by Karen Gregory

  ‘That’s exactly what I told Fel–’ I stop myself short.

  ‘Sorry?’ Lois says, her eyes on the road.

  ‘Never mind,’ I say.

  We turn off the main road and up a drive that leads to a stately home, long and low, with a lake in front of it. To the side on perfect lawns two arenas have been roped off. One is full of people dressed up like medieval soldiers, fighting pretend battles. We get the babies out and wander over to watch.

  ‘Now that’s what I call a sword.’ Lois nods to a man swinging a huge broadsword.

  I listen to the metal clank as the two soldiers clash, but to be honest, it’s not really my thing. In the other arena, there’s a falconry display going on. I push Rose’s buggy over to watch. A woman stands with a huge leather glove on, the bird perched on her wrist. I can’t take my gaze off its talons, or its eyes, which look intent, wily. Dead. It opens its hooked beak and calls out, a desolate, gaping sound.

  ‘These birds are extremely intelligent hunters,’ the commentator says.

  A shiver runs down my back.

  The bird spreads its wings and soars up into the sky, and then plummets with deadly accuracy before swooping away in another loop. And I see it. The bird’s nature.

  Lois comes up next to me.

  ‘It’s not meant to be caged up and trotted out for people to stare at. It’s meant to be free,’ I say. ‘It must hate it, living like this. Trapped.’

  And then everything stops.

  I think about Nia, about Rose, and I see it’s not just the bird that’s trapped.

  I hate living like this.

  There are tears in my eyes.

  Lois doesn’t ask if I’m all right, but puts a hand on my shoulder.

  After, we explore the house and stare at tapestries and four-poster beds with intricately carved headboards. But Ethan starts to fuss before we’ve seen half the house.

  Lois gives a sigh. ‘Abort mission?’ she says.

  ‘Yup.’

  In the car on the way back, Lois says, ‘Are you good with numbers?’

  I start to laugh and worry for a moment I won’t be able to stop.

  Lois casts sideways glances at me.

  I get myself under control. ‘Not bad. I was doing maths A level,’ I eventually manage.

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Yeah. I had to quit … Well, I decided to quit, to look after Rose. Maybe I’ll go back in September, I don’t know.’

  Lois drives a little way then says, ‘I might need someone in a few months. I’m thinking about setting up on my own. If you’d be interested, I could do with some help. It would only be basic admin at first, but I could train you up.’

  I watch the fields fly by, feel how smooth the car is, how comfortable.

  ‘I’ll definitely think about it,’ I say.

  Two days later, the conversation I had with Tammy is still looping round my head. I decide I can’t put it off any more. I have to go and see Mum. I need to check she’s all right. And also, I have to admit, because I’m hoping she might lend me some money.

  I run my fingers through my hair, which yet again I forgot to brush, before I press my finger to the bell of the house. I hear it sound, chirpy and bright through the rooms. I always hated that bell.

  I’m about to turn away when Mum opens the door.

  She looks … the same. I don’t know what I expected. For her to have wild hair, be rending her clothes? We watch each other and I see Mum take in my frame under the baggy clothes. I scan her eyes for signs of crying and don’t see any.

  She looks past me, to Rose, and her face softens, but I catch something wide and hungry in her eyes. I reach into the buggy and pass Rose wordlessly to her.

  Mum holds her close and blinks a few times, then says, ‘You’d better come in. You can leave the buggy in the porch.’

  She disappears into the kitchen with Rose while I park it and shut the front door.

  I sit at the table while Mum bustles about, putting a cup of milk and some biscuits in front of me, like I’m twelve again. Good old custard creams, I have missed you. Though I have no intention of eating any, obviously. Mum sits opposite me, but doesn’t comment on my untouched plate. I realise we’ve gone back in time, to after-school snacks, and a sticky sense of her in the background – always knowing where some toy was when I asked, or ironing school uniform and nagging me about homework – rises up and I want to push it away, scrub it off me, all that care sucked tight like cling film.

  ‘Tammy told me about Dad. I’m really sorry,’ I say.

  Mum shifts Rose on her lap to face her and says, ‘She’s grown. Her face has changed.’

  I look at Rose, really look at her, and see that what Mum has said is true: she’s emerging, her face widening out, tiny curls appearing at the back of her head, which also has a large bald patch from where she sleeps on her back. I stressed about it at first, but the health visitor at the clinic said it’s totally normal and she definitely wasn’t going to end up all baldy like the baby I saw that time at the antenatal class. She looks more solid, more girl-like now.

  In a weird role reversal, I’m saying, with an approximation of Felicity’s Listening Face, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Yes, fine, thank you, Hedda. Your father and I, as Tamara has told you, are spending some time apart. He has so much work at the moment. Truthfully, I think perhaps he’s having a little midlife crisis. I’m sure it will pass.’ She tries to give a laugh, but it’s not coming out properly.

  ‘Tammy said he’s been having an affair. She said he’s moved out.’

  Mum stiffens, but doesn’t answer.

  ‘How long has it been going on?’ I say.

  I think about how Dad was at my flat last time, what he said about Mum being depressed after she had me, and I’m suddenly sure of something. It rises up, new and shocking, making things fall into place with a sharp click.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you? He’s done it before, hasn’t he? After I was born.’

  Rose senses the change in atmosphere because she begins to wriggle on Mum’s lap.

  I go around the table and reach for her. ‘Can I warm a bottle?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t really want to discuss this with you, Hedda,’ Mum says, and there’s a hint of weariness in the way her shoulders slump as she goes to the microwave with the bottle I hand her.

  When it’s done, I say, ‘Would you like to feed her?’

  Mum nestles Rose in the crook of her arm and plugs her in. Rose chugs solidly to start with, one hand gripping the bottle, one holding on to the edge of Mum’s hand. Then she slows, and her eyes start to open and shut more heavily. Mum sits her up so she can let out a burp, and then Rose is asleep, cradled in Mum’s arms. Mum’s face looks older, under the make-up, but more real as she gazes at Rose, like she’s surrendering something.

  ‘She reminds me of you. You used to hold on just like that,’ Mum says.

  I think of all the hours I’ve spent, learning Rose, her cries, the way she moves, memorising the way her hairline goes and I realise then, that whatever’s happened since, Mum must have sat here and done the exact same thing with me. It’s like cream on a burn; it might not take away the sting, but it helps.

  ‘It must have been so hard for you,’ I say to Mum in a soft voice.

  Mum pops Rose back in the buggy and then begins tidying away my untouched biscuits and milk.

  ‘Mum?’

  She keeps her back to me, rinses the plate in the sink. ‘Well. You have to get on with things, don’t you? It’s the only way.’

  I follow her through the hall, past rows of pictures of me and Tammy. Us at the seaside, at parks, making a snowman. Both of us in Dad’s lap next to the Christmas tree. Mum is in hardly any of them; she was always the one taking pictures, always moving, cleaning, organising, tidying. In the bathroom is a framed copy of her degree certificate, part of the wallpaper all my life.

  ‘Do you regret it? Not having a career?’ I say.

  Mum straightens some
cushions. ‘We never needed the income.’

  I stare at the way she moves and suddenly this burst of images comes at me, like paparazzi: Mum in the front row at school plays, while Dad was at work, and behind the PTA cake-sale stall, as a parent governor, a reading helper, a charity bucket shaker, the centre of a large group of women in the playground at pick-up time. The day I came home from getting the bus to school all by myself the first day of secondary school, proud and excited, to find her crying in the kitchen, the washing-up still in the sink.

  ‘You all needed me,’ she says, and I see how desperately she needs this to be true, for it all to have been worth it.

  ‘You did a good job, Mum,’ I say and she meets my eyes, then looks away, but I mean it, I really do. She did what she could do, what she thought was right.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quietly.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For all of it. For the units … For what I said that time I asked you about my name.’

  Mum looks straight at me, and she seems a bit broken. ‘Perhaps you see more than people your age are meant to,’ she says. ‘Maybe you always did.’

  It’s as close to an admission that all is not right in her world, that it probably never was, as I’ll ever get. My heart hurts for her. There’s so much I want to say, but I don’t know how. How can we move past a lifetime of never saying what we mean, at least not in words?

  Then she says, ‘Hedda, your shoes!’ And she rushes off to get the Dustbuster.

  I look at my grubby trainers, which are starting to come apart at the seams, and I don’t know how to ask Mum for money she probably doesn’t have anyway.

  That evening, I really try to eat a proper dinner, but all I can manage are noodles. I think about knocking on Robin’s door, like in the old days, getting him to do one of his omelettes for me, but when I listen at the wall I can hear Jade’s voice calling to him and I know there’s no way to get that time back – if it was ever really mine.

  Chapter 29

  Another week drips past. Rose is four months old. She can roll, flipping over and over, looking delighted when she winds up somewhere new. Still doesn’t blinking sleep though and sometimes, when I’m trying yet again to settle her, I realise why they use sleep deprivation as torture. Then I feel bad that I blame her for not sleeping more, but it’s hard not to take it personally. She’s trying to push herself up on her arms already and reach for toys. I take this as a sign that she’s clearly a genius, then tell myself off for being like Mum with Tammy.

  Rose is growing as I shrink.

  At night, Nia seems to expand and fill the room, swooping, her wings like they could almost reach down and smother me.

  You’re disgusting, she says, and I lie there, trying not to listen, holding the pillow over my head, attempting to drown her out with Rose’s deep sighs and grunts, but the only thing that works is getting up to pace round and round, or exercise, falling into an old routine as I count push-ups and lifts and crunches. I get the sense again and again that there’s a giant clock ticking through me, that Nia is growing alongside Rose.

  I haven’t heard from Laurel.

  I dream about money and things chasing me through empty streets. Of wandering the aisles of a deserted supermarket where everything is too bright and hurts my eyes, but the checkout keeps getting further away so I can never find what I need and get out of there. When I wake, my heart feels faint and jerky. Temporary. The two ridiculous books I got out of the library the day after I found out about Robin are now overdue and I can’t afford the fine. At least they don’t fine you for overdue kids’ books.

  There’s no word from Dad. It’s as though he’s melted away, like he was never really there.

  I speak to Mum a couple of times on the phone.

  ‘How’s Rose?’ she says, and I tell her about the latest cute thing Rose has done, like when she laughed at a teddy bear, but it’s as though someone else is speaking, and somewhere inside I understand I’ve crossed the tipping point and now there’s no way back.

  White noise starts to crowd the edges of the room.

  The more I try to eat, the less I can manage.

  The nappy situation is getting desperate; I’m almost out again. I switched to a new, cheaper formula and it doesn’t seem to agree with Rose. She’s done about twenty poos in one day. I put the last nappy on her before I go to see Felicity.

  I let myself out of the flat as quietly as possible, so I don’t annoy the man next door. I think about his hard knuckles, his face that pushes out into a dark frown whenever he sees me and Rose. I glance at Robin’s door as I shut my own, then look away fast. The other day when I looked out of the window, I noticed all the flowers he planted have gone brown and brittle through lack of water. It scratches at my heart, but I won’t give in, I won’t knock on their door.

  Off we go on the long walk to the unit. By the time I push Rose across the car park, past the usual cohort of girls smoking outside, I’m panting. I give them a proper look, comparing, but they don’t even see me, their ranks closed into a different, private world. I want to run and join them, to tell them I’m one of them, and I want to run away too.

  I tell this to Felicity, sitting in the same chair I’ve sat in a thousand times, with the same books and pot plants, and ticking clock. ‘I want to go and give them a shake, you know?’

  ‘Why?’ she says.

  ‘I don’t know. To tell them to stop. To make them understand getting back isn’t as easy as you think it is. To ask them to let me in. Who knows?’

  Felicity considers me. ‘You’re losing weight.’

  Rose is on my lap. She’s getting so big. She coos and stuffs her fist in her mouth, chewing so hard I worry she’s going to hurt herself, but every time I pull it away, sticky with drool, she calmly and firmly slots it right back.

  I nod. I’m tired of the BS. ‘It’s not on purpose.’ OK, maybe I am still a BS factory. I meet Felicity’s eyes. ‘It’s half on purpose and half … like it’s coming from outside of me. It’s Nia. She won’t shut up.’ I find I’m crying, tears plopping on to Rose’s head. She carries on chewing her fist. ‘I just want … Sometimes I want her – it – to … to leave me the hell alone!’

  Felicity hands me the tissues.

  She’s smiling, a small smile. But her eyes are sad and worried.

  ‘We talked about control last time,’ she says.

  I give a laugh at that, a strangled sound. ‘You know what? I always thought it was me, or that Nia and me, we were a team. Both in control. But these days, I don’t know who I love more, Nia or … or …’ I don’t want to finish that sentence. ‘Hate is another form of love, isn’t it?’

  Felicity is silent.

  ‘Well, I guess it’s safe to say when it comes to who’s in charge, all bets are off, because … I don’t think it’s me,’ I say.

  Finally admitting it gives me a feeling like there’s a chasm inside. With sharp spikes at the bottom. I’m not in control. I haven’t been for a while. And for the first time I want to scream, to make it stop. The fear rises all around, filling up the room, beating me down in my chair, battering Rose’s head.

  ‘I used to be so sure,’ I whisper. ‘When Rose was inside me, I was doing it, I was eating, for her. Why can’t I do the same now she’s out? I do love her.’ I breathe in Rose’s smell, feel the weight of her fitting just right in my lap. ‘I do,’ I whisper.

  ‘I don’t doubt you. But, Hedda, have you considered that being well needs to be about you too, about loving yourself, if it’s going to be sustainable?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I say.

  Right now, I don’t know if I can even do it for Rose, let alone me, and the unfairness of it all threatens to choke me.

  ‘She’s so small,’ I say. And what I mean is: too small to hold me up. How can I even make her try? How can I put that on her? And Nia has grown so big.

  Felicity looks at Rose, happy in my arms, not knowing any of this. Yet.

  A shadow goes over Felicity�
��s face, one whose meaning I refuse to interpret.

  In the morning, there’s a faint tap on the door and I know it’s Robin.

  When I open it, I see he’s come to say goodbye. Jade is at his shoulder with Ellis. I know it’s wrong, but I want to smack the sympathetic look out of her eyes.

  ‘I just wanted to say goodbye, and good luck,’ he says.

  I thought this was going to happen, but still, it’s a shock.

  ‘Yeah. OK. Bye then,’ I say it fast, so it hurts less.

  ‘We’re going back to Leeds,’ Robin says.

  I nod.

  We hold each other’s eyes.

  ‘You look … Are you OK?’ he says.

  I keep still.

  Robin reaches out and puts a finger on Rose’s cheek and it’s like he’s touching mine. ‘I called the council, about the damp in the flats,’ he says.

  Jade coughs. ‘I’m going to wait in the car. Take care, Hedda.’

  I nod, say ‘Thanks’ so quietly I’m not sure she heard me. Then I look at Robin and try to keep myself steady.

  ‘So … I guess you made your decision then,’ I say.

  Robin’s eyes have dark semicircles underneath them. My heart is going fast. I think again about what Felicity said about feeling emotions. I stand by my previous thought; I don’t see what’s so great about this.

  ‘Yeah.’

  I swallow hard. ‘But you don’t love her.’

  ‘No,’ he says and holds my eyes for a long time and I read a whole universe there. Then he sighs and says, ‘But I love Ellis. He’s my son. I have to try.’

  I put one hand up in front of my face, like I can block out the path we might have taken, together.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  I look up at him, at his silly glasses, his eyes, which are shining and so tired. Why did I never stop to think he had stuff too? I try and think of a way to tell him that I’m sorry, that I should have asked properly, not just skimmed over the surface of things for the sake of it, but in the end I just say, ‘Good luck. I hope it works out for you.’

  He touches his fingertips to mine, then lifts up my hand and runs one finger along the bones of my knuckles. ‘I’m worried about you. Will you be all right?’