by Voss, Louise
‘Oh Lil, please help me,’ I begged, not answering her question because I didn’t know how to. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’
‘First you have to find a way to tell Ken.’
‘I know. But it’ll ruin his life. He’ll never forgive me.’
‘He might. It won’t ruin his life, though, so don’t think like that. I suppose you just have to decide whether you’re telling him in order to ask his forgiveness and move on, or to simply explain why it has to be over between you.’
‘Yes,’ I said weakly. ‘But I’ve treated him so badly; him, and Adam…’ My voice began to crack. ‘All I wanted was to be part of a family.’
Lil rubbed my arm sympathetically, and stroked my hair.
‘It would take time, of course, for both of you. You couldn’t expect Ken to adjust overnight. But you could have counselling, perhaps?’
‘To help him come to terms with bringing up another man’s baby? That’s so not Ken. He’d never do it. No, I have to tell him, so that he can divorce me.’
Lil’s phone rang. We both listened as the machine picked up the call, and a quavery old lady left a very long and self-conscious message about the flower arranging rota in the church. She appeared to be reading out the entire rota over the telephone. Lil tutted, and spoke over the top of it.
‘Dear Edith. She always does that. I feel like telling her to simply post it to me but she clearly thinks I can’t contain my excitement and absolutely must know which dates everyone’s doing, the minute the rota is printed. Some of these poor old dears have such empty lives.’
I managed a weak smile. It was quite nice to pause for a moment, a commercial break in the tortuous drama of my own life—which, at that moment, I wished was empty enough to care so much about flower-arranging in the church. Edith carried on creakily reciting dates and old-fashioned Christian names such as Ivy and Doris and Marjorie, until the tape ran out and her voice stopped, mid-word.
‘Thank heavens,’ said Lil, before coming back to the question I’d left unanswered earlier. ‘And what about Adam - when are you going to tell him about the baby? Do you think your news will make him alter his decision to stay with his wife?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve hurt him too much. And besides, it isn’t fair on Max, or any of them. She’s Max’s mother…o, I’m not going to tell him, at least not yet. I’ll have to at some point, but I don’t want Adam thinking I’m using the baby to make him choose me.’
I’ve done so many selfish things, I thought. Surely I could manage this one unselfish one. Max needed his mum. I thought of a song about mothers which he had once sung to me. He’d learned it at school, and I’d felt annoyed with his blond, baby-faced teacher—not much more than a child herself - for her lack of sensitivity. She must have known that Marilyn wasn’t around.
The song, sung in Max’s off-key childish voice, went: ‘There are hundreds of stars in the sky/ There are hundreds of fish in the sea/ There are hundreds of people the whole world over/ But on-ly one muvver for me / But on-ly one muvver for meeee.’
He’d beamed with self-satisfaction at his word-perfect rendition, but then a frown had clouded his face. ‘Where is mummy?’ he’d asked me, in a ‘where did I leave her?’ kind of way; as if Marilyn had been a lost pair of swimming goggles, or a once-favoured now barely remembered toy which had scudded out of sight under the sofa.
‘I don’t know exactly, honey,’ I’d replied, stroking his hair back from his face. ‘But I’m here. And I love you.’
I shouldn’t have said that; I had no right. There was only one ‘muvver’ for Max, and it wasn’t me.
‘Would you consider having an abortion, to save your marriage?’
An abortion. Even the word made me cringe. Lil certainly wasn’t mincing her words—more like slapping them on the table like raw steaks.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I absolutely would not have an abortion.’
However much of a mess this was, I thought, it was imperative that I divested myself of all the secrets and came clean. An abortion would have been the worst secret of all. Besides, I could never have voluntarily got rid of a baby, no way. The idea was abhorrent to me—all those years, desperate for a child, and I’d just thrown away the chance? Not to mention hypocritical, after the hard time I’d given Vicky for considering the same thing.
‘I’m glad,’ said Lil. ‘But Adam does have a right to know.’
‘Yes. I will tell him. Only once I’m past three months, though, and maybe even not until the baby’s born…ust in case.’ There would be no point in dropping that kind of a bombshell on Adam and Marilyn, were this pregnancy to end like three out of my four other ones had. And it would give them time to work on their own relationship, without the spectre of me hovering over them.
‘But you will tell Ken before then, won’t you?’
I sighed, dread already collecting at the pit of my stomach. ‘Yes. I have to get it over with. I can’t stand keeping anything a secret for a minute longer than I have to.’ It was true. After months of seemingly effortless deception, I now felt toxic with deceit. I wanted to be clean for my baby, not choked up and rancid. I wanted to know my fate.
‘When he throws me out, could I come and stay with you?’
Lil put her arm around me. ‘He might not. But of course you may, if he does.’
‘Even if I did want to stay with him, he would never bring up another man’s child.’
‘So you said before. But it does happen.’
‘Does it?’
‘Yes. My friend Betty from the Choral Society, well, she died in ’89, but her husband still idolises her, even all these years later; and it turned out that he knew all along that their youngest son wasn’t his. She’d been having an affair for years. The natural father was the boy’s godfather.’
‘What, he knew even before the baby was born?’
‘Apparently so. So you see, it does happen, if the relationship is strong enough to start with.’
‘That doesn’t make sense, not in my case, Lil—if my relationship had been strong enough to start with, none of this would have happened.’
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not.’
It felt quite odd, discussing my sordid personal relationships with Lil, but I knew that she was more objective than, say, Vicky would have been. I would obviously have to tell Vicky at some point, but not until I knew my fate as far as Ken was concerned, I decided. I couldn’t handle another person’s input.
Lil busied herself watering a miniature rose plant on the kitchen windowsill. She used a small, immaculately-polished brass watering can with a long slim spout, and I could see her reflection in the side of it. It reminded me of when Adam and I first got together, seeing our distorted chrome faces in the kettle and realizing how complete I felt.
‘I’ll be praying for you, darling. I’m sure it’ll be all right,’ Lil said briskly, but she didn’t know that I was watching her expression reflected on the watering can and, despite her words, she looked every bit as desperate as I felt.
‘Thank you. I hope so.’
Chapter 38
Ken scrutinized the photograph of Adam, Max and I, and, not for the first time, I regretted the decision to use ‘props’. It felt far too much like evidence being passed around a censorious jury; that wordless studied consideration.
I had to keep reminding myself to breathe. There was something unbelievably surreal about the whole experience. I wished Lil was there with me, but of course she couldn’t be; this was something I had to do by myself. Over the past two days I’d wondered, many times, if I would still have confessed without the incriminating evidence of the baby. I knew I couldn’t have lived with all the lies anymore—although perhaps I was still being selfish, by confessing. Perhaps Ken would have rather not known at all.
So far, he had remained very calm, although at the sight of the photograph his brown face took on a grey, ashen appearance; almost a texture, as if one good puff would disperse it, dust to du
st, into the atmosphere. It frightened me more than if he’d been contorted with rage, screaming at me.
He handed the photo back, although my hand was trembling almost too much to hold it. There was no disguising the way in which Adam and I had been looking at one another in the picture.
‘So,’ he said. ‘That’s the boy?’
‘Max.’
‘And does his dad have his arm around you for any particular reason?’
I gulped. I’d thought sarcasm wouldn’t be far away - Ken was using the voice I imagined he used when firing employees who raided the CD cupboard.
I dropped the photo, reached back in the box, and passed him Spesh, Max’s battered tiger. Ken took it by one ear, with an expression of distaste which I found offensive, even under the circumstances.
‘What’s that?’
‘He—it—is called Spesh. He was Max’s most treasured possession. He was in hospital with Max the whole two years he was there. It’s why he’s so knackered-looking.’
For a second, alarm flitted across Ken’s face, and I loved him for it. Even in the midst of all this, he was concerned about Max’s recovery. ‘So why have you got it? Max hasn’t—’
‘Max is fine. I’ve got Spesh because…’ The tightness in my throat compressed my voice down to a croak, ‘…Max gave him to me. He told me that I was so special, he wanted me to have what he loved the most. And that was Spesh.’
‘Because you saved his life.’
I gazed into Ken’s dark brown eyes. ‘No. He didn’t know that I’d saved his life. Nor did Adam, his dad; although he does now.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Ken handed Spesh back to me.
‘They didn’t even know my real name. They thought I was Anna Valentine… just wanted to meet him, so badly,’ I began.
I had the weird sensation of a dam beginning to crack and burst; the initial drip drip of information about to become a flood. Here I go, I thought. The point of no return. Like when my waters had broken.
When my waters broke, I’d only been about ten feet away from where we sat now. The world had changed that day, not just for Ken and I, but for everyone: Holly was born on September 11th 2001.
I’d woken from a post-lunch nap, with a sensation like someone had tied an outsize elastic band around my huge middle and was twanging it, nastily. Ken was away at a meeting in Brussels—I hadn’t been happy about him travelling so late in my pregnancy, but I actually hadn’t been due for further ten days.
I’d waddled downstairs in the dressing gown whose cord-ends almost didn’t even tie up any more, made myself a cup of tea and turned on the television. Holly pinched the lining of my womb with her little soft fingers.
‘Ow,’ I said. It finally occurred to me that I might actually be in labour, although my waters hadn’t broken. So it was her, twanging away in there. I hadn’t yet known that she would turn out to be female, but the thought crossed my mind that only a girl knew how to pinch like that.
Then I stared at the buildings which had materialised on the screen in front of my face, part of the iconography of the world’s most famous city. One was in flames. A plane was flying in fuzzy slo-mo straight into the side of the second one, over and over, as if on a loop. I had to sit down - very heavily - on the sofa.
I wondered if Ken knew yet. He was bound to, I thought. Probably no need to ring his mobile and tell him…Then I realised that, somewhat more urgently for us, he might have been more interested to hear that I’d gone into labour. Lest I forgot, Holly reminded me with another less gentle squeeze. I needed to phone Lil too, get her over, and the other midwife. And Vicky.
I decided to call Lil first. Suddenly I didn’t want to see the planes crashing. Didn’t want to think about the people trapped inside, not when I had a new daisy-fresh life waiting to come out of me. I went back into the kitchen to get the phone.
The boiled kettle was still steaming, and I forgot that I’d already made myself a cup of tea. I made another one, welling up with tears as I did so at the thought of all those people inside those buildings. Men like Ken, with pregnant wives. Women like me, waiting to be mothers. With blurred vision I mashed the second tea-bag against the side of the cup, just as my waters broke, causing a mini-tsunami across the quarry tiles. My own little natural disaster, right there in the kitchen, as if tears hadn’t been enough and more liquid needed to flow from my body before an appropriate amount of grief could be demonstrated. I knocked over my mug in the confusion, and brown tea ran in rivulets down to join the amniotic ocean of salt water and baby-piss already on the floor.
I mopped up the deluge with three tea towels, and reboiled the kettle for yet more tea. The pain in my stomach was more intense, although it still felt as though it was happening to someone else. I forgot that I’d already elected to ring Lil, and wondered afresh who to tell first.
Later, after it was all over and we were back in the house, sitting stunned next to the birthing pool full of cold turquoise water, I felt guilty for my grief. Even though part of me knew it was perfectly understandable for me to feel this much pain, a less rational part thought that my pain should be reserved for the people in those towers and their families. For the wives watching their loved ones jumping to their deaths. Not for one little blue dead baby.
Perhaps I never had allowed myself to grieve properly.
I couldn’t remind Ken of that day, not now. It wasn’t fair to bring Holly into it, like some kind of excuse. Although perhaps if we’d talked about her more since she died, I wouldn’t have been sitting there trying to explain what I was trying to explain. I wouldn’t have had to watch Ken’s face going through twenty shades of emotion, most of them involving undiluted pain.
No matter how I tried to focus on other things: fallen bleached-out petals from a vase of blown roses, rivulets of wax frozen into the side of the candles on the table, an upturned flowerpot in the garden, earth and feathery roots spilling out of it—nothing seemed to be able to pull my eyes away from the pain on Ken’s face. The pain that I alone had caused him.
He was staring at the back of a postcard of John McEnroe, trying to take in the words I’d printed in capitals because I was too much of a coward to say them out loud: ‘MY SOAP OPERA DOESN’T EXIST. THERE WAS NO JOB. I MADE IT UP. I WAS WITH ADAM AND MAX WHEN I SAID I WAS WORKING.’
I felt so sorry for him. Knowing Ken, a lot of what he was feeling was the shame of the cuckold, the loss of pride that he hadn’t been enough for me; the foolishness of the duped. Even though that was utterly missing the point, I knew that was what he’d be thinking.
All of this, and I hadn’t even told him I was pregnant yet. The day seemed endless, as if the weak February sun had been shining relentlessly for about thirty-six hours non-stop. I wanted it to go down so I could go to bed and stay there with the covers over my head. Hibernate like a tortoise until my baby was due, and then start living again. The baby was the most important priority.
‘So, you’re leaving me for this guy Adam,’ said Ken, staring at a smear of bird shit on the glass roof of the conservatory. The heating was on, and the stifling atmosphere added to the guilt already making my scalp prickle. A bead of sweat ran down Ken’s face, and I thought for a moment it was a tear. But although his eyes were red, he wasn’t crying. He hardly ever cried. After Holly died, he’d once said to me, ‘I’m not very good at crying in front of other people,’ and I’d thought, how odd, like crying was some kind of skill he needed to practise until he was up to performance level.
‘No. It’s over between me and Adam.’ I suddenly wanted to put my hand on his knee, wrap my arms round his neck, beg him to forgive me - but I didn’t dare. A blackbird dug around for a worm in the gravel outside, oblivious of next door’s horrible cat stalking along the fence, eyeing it greedily. I hated that cat.
‘Why are you telling me all this then? You’ve gone to such lengths to hide it from me for so long, I’d have thought the last thing you wanted to do was confess.’
‘I couldn’t s
tand the lies any more.’
‘So you ended it with Adam?’
I hesitated. ‘Well. Not exactly. I told him I was already married.’
Ken laughed, the most excruciatingly laboured laugh I’d ever heard. ‘And he dumped you, didn’t he? So you decided that you’d have to settle for second best after all, the boring workaholic at home who you just happen to be married to. What a drag, eh? What a nuisance, that you foolishly promised to stay with me till death did us part—bet you’re regretting that now, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ I said, thinking that this was a touch unfair—after all, Ken had promised the same thing to his first wife, until I’d come along. ‘I’m not. I just regret…’ Tears fell down my face onto Spesh’s matted, patchy fur. I couldn’t hold them in any more, and words gushed out of me in fits and starts.
‘… just regret everything since. The babies. Holly. Not being able to talk to you about it all. It shouldn’t have been like this. Holly would have been nearly two by now. If she was still here, none of this would have happened.’
It seemed that I couldn’t help bringing her into it after all.
‘It’s my fault then, is it, because we don’t talk about Holly?’
‘No! I’m not blaming you…lthough it hasn’t helped that you’re away so much.’
Again, that hollow laugh. ‘Wondered how long it would be before you got around to my job.’
I swallowed hard. It was tempting to get into a row about it, to wail that Ken was married to his job and not to me; but I had to stay calm if I wanted Ken to do the same. Making excuses wouldn’t advance my cause.
‘So that’s the only reason you’re telling me now, is it? Because you want to be honest with me? It would be much easier if I’d never known.’
I sent up a fervent prayer, to God, to my guardian angel, to the heavens above, that they would have pity on me and help me, a stupid weak human. Help Ken, too.