The Woman Before Me

by Ruth Dugdall

  I made sacrifices too, just to keep you busy: we’d go to the local pub on the corner where I endured the drunken shouting, or to the cinema where I’d flinch at the loud soundtrack assaulting our baby’s paper-thin ears. I’d read somewhere that a baby in the womb can hear the outside world. I worried about giving him frightening dreams, and I couldn’t soothe him. I sighed with relief when the credits rolled and the lights went up. I went to watch those films for you, to keep you from thinking about Emma.

  Still, you were leaving me. Not physically, but slipping into a world which I feared. It was the world my mother had visited on her ‘loony’ days. I heard the flatness in your voice, your dull eyes, and remembered Mum’s depression, how it stole her away forever.

  So I got you a job.

  Chef knew of a fancy French restaurant that needed a wine waiter, but you hadn’t got the relevant experience. I lied to Chef about your qualifications. He eventually wrote you a personal recommendation, and on the day of the interview at Auberge, I gave you half the rent to buy some clothes for the interview. You came home a different man. Wearing a white linen jacket and beige trousers, you could have passed for a Frenchman and the restaurant owner offered you the post on the spot.

  Since I told you I was pregnant you never spoke about leaving me again, but your love for Emma was still between us like a sheet of glass. I checked your wallet, and saw her photo was still inside, staring back at me with wide hazel eyes, her blonde hair as yellow as the sun. With your new job you came home late but I never looked at the clock when I heard your key in the door. You started carrying your mobile again, and it would beep if you got a text, but I still never asked who it was. If you’d been with her I didn’t want to know. You came home to me, that was what mattered. I was carrying your child.

  It was February when I started to think about the box room I used for Rita’s things, and decided to make it a nursery. I was heavily pregnant by this time, and pulling boxes and suitcases around was tough, but I sorted through, chucking away what I didn’t want. I wanted to start afresh, and I felt finally able to let go of the past. I gave away the lamp from Rita’s sitting room, a sewing box that I’d never seen her use, her footstool. I called a local charity shop, and two volunteers came to collect the furniture, cheerfully loading their van with her walnut dresser and oak rocking chair. Without those old things the room was bare, a blank canvas. A new beginning.

  The next day I entered a shop I’d stood outside many times, looking at the window display of Victorian rocking horses and jointed teddy bears in jackets. I gripped my purse where I kept the grainy ultrasound picture, and thought of the tiny arm that had waved to me on the screen. The memory gave me courage. The smartness of the shop was daunting. The glass doors slid aside and the air conditioning assaulted my sinuses, but I didn’t care. My eyes greedily consumed the mock rooms, each one individually designed for an absent child.

  “May I help you?” From the cluster of idle shop assistants a smart brunette came over, an eager smile tilted on her pink lips.

  “Oh, I’m just browsing.” I took a step back.

  “Any particular colour?” she persisted.

  “Blue.” I said. “Definitely.”

  “So it’s a boy?” She came forward as if to touch my bump, and I shrank back. “Then I must show you our fabulous New England range. It’s just arrived.” I followed her, watching how her hips swayed as she trotted along in her high heels. Her ankles were slim, and I guessed she had no children of her own.

  The room she showed me was perfect. Cream walls were bordered with swans and geese drawn in duck-egg blue, and matching curtains. The cot was a reddish brown, the colour of maple syrup. I touched the wood, feeling its comforting sturdiness.

  “Isn’t it just to die for? It’s cherry wood, imported from America. And we have a matching changing table and chest of drawers.”

  I turned the tag over, handwritten in black ink. It was over two thousand pounds. “Wow,” I said, stunned.

  “It may seem a lot, but you’re buying a piece of furniture that will last for generations. Just think, your grandchildren will use it. It’s an heirloom.”

  I stepped back, in love with the cherry wood, the duck-egg blue and the tiny birds. But I didn’t even have two thousand pence in the bank, let alone two thousand pounds. I felt shabby and poverty-stricken, sorry for the poor mite in my belly.

  “We do have special hire purchase agreements,” she said, lowering her voice. “You could pay monthly.”

  When you arrived home I kissed you, holding you as close as my bloated figure would allow. “I have a surprise for you, Jason,” I said, reaching to kiss the tender place behind the ear.

  “Have you now?” you murmured, hands sliding under my top to my enlarged breasts and nuzzling my neck.

  “Not that.” I took your hand and led you down the hall. “Something much better. Ready?”

  I kept my grip on the handle until I could bear it no longer and threw open the door with a flourish. Inside the tiny room the cherry wood cot dominated the space, made up in readiness with blue bedding. The curtains hung from the small window, slightly too long, and squeezed next to the cot was a nursing chair, also in cherry. A row of immaculate white sleep suits hung on gingham hangers from a white rail, and on the cot sat a jointed teddy bear wearing a blue waistcoat.

  In the middle of the room was the pram. It was from the same shop and the pattern was Burberry check. I touched it and imagined myself pushing it through town.

  You stared in silence, taking it all in, until finally you spoke in a voice that seemed to come from miles away. “Rose, what the fuck have you done?”

  I felt like you’d hit me.

  “We can’t afford all this stuff. How did you pay for it?”

  My voice was shaking. “I got it on hire purchase, over four years.”

  “Four years? That’s a fucking lifetime. How much did it come to?”

  I didn’t tell the whole truth. “Two thousand.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You’re giving up work in a few weeks, and you know how dodgy the restaurant trade is after Christmas. Two thousand pounds? Christ, that’s three months’ rent!”

  “Jason,” I pleaded, “it’s for the baby. I want him to have the best.”

  “Oh, grow up, Rose. He won’t care about this crap.” With one hand you dismissed the room, all the hours I had spent getting it ready. “He’ll be happy in a travel cot as long as he’s loved.”

  I suddenly saw my beautiful room through new eyes. It was grotesque.

  “I’m sorry, Jason.” I put my hand on your arm but you pushed me away. I fell back, catching myself on the pram as I stumbled to the floor.

  “You just don’t fucking think, do you? It’s all about you, isn’t it?”

  Suddenly, a sharp pain stabbed my abdomen and I gasped, clutching my stomach.

  “Don’t push the sympathy button. I’m going out.”

  The pain came again, and I doubled over, one hand holding the pram chassis for support.

  “Give it a rest, Rose.”

  But the pain, worse than any period cramps, circled my abdomen and I crumpled, unable to stand, terrified.

  “Jason. Oh, God. What’s happening?”

  “You’re trying to keep me here, that’s what.”

  I bent my head low to the carpet, eyes screwed tight against the sudden grip of agony, and heard the front door slam shut.

  24

  Cate drove past the flats on Coronation Road and parked further down the cul-de-sac. She didn’t want to be seen gathering her paperwork and applying lip-balm and mascara, which she had forgotten in the rush for work that morning. Amelia’s ankle was now strapped up and she was on four-hourly doses of painkillers, so the night before she had slept with Cate, whimpering even in her dreams. Watching her daughter, she was smothered with guilt. Not just because she hadn’t been there when Amelia had fallen, but also because Tim had left them.

  Cate had dropped Amel
ia at Julie’s along with a large bottle of medicine and promises that she wouldn’t be late this evening. To Julie she had been polite but cool, still unable to lose the feeling that if Julie had taken better care of Amelia the accident wouldn’t have happened.

  She didn’t want to be outside the flat on Coronation Road, she wanted to be at home with Amelia, both of them snuggled on the sofa and catching up on sleep. She studied her bruised eyes in the rear view mirror. She looked as bad as she felt, and pulled her fingers through her hair in a futile attempt to tidy herself up.

  She hated home visits. It was all about territory and the visitor was at a disadvantage. The only time in her working life that she’d been assaulted was when she visited a prisoner’s father, to check the home was suitable for his son’s release. From the second she walked in the father had been wound up and aggressive, and when she had tried to make a swift exit he shot from the chair and had her pinned to the wall. The stocky man had his fist in her face when her adrenalin kicked in. She pushed free and ran for the front door just as his knuckle connected with the brickwork. Afterwards she had pulled her car in a lay-by, and briefly but fiercely cried her eyes out. Then she had driven back to the office.

  Nothing like that will happen today, she reassured herself. She’d probably just find a lonely husband desperate to have his wife back at home.

  Coronation Road was a crescent of seventies housing in the town centre, part of which had been converted into flats for rent. Lots of students lived in the area, and the unkempt gardens were testimony to this. Flat 38b was accessed from a side entrance and as Cate approached, she saw a man’s face dart back from the upstairs window. He had been looking out for her, but still she rang the doorbell.

  The door was opened by a tall man, over six foot, and slim, probably in his mid thirties. Good looking, he had high cheekbones, framed by a thick fringe of golden-red hair that partly obscured his eyes. Not the kind of man she’d pictured with dour Rose.

  “Mr. Wilks? I’m Cate Austin, from probation.”

  He took a second to look her up and down then opened the door just wide enough for her to enter. The hallway was cramped and junk mail littered the carpet.

  “Don’t mind the mess.” He looked down, as if he’d only just seen it and it had nothing to do with him. Like he was showing her into someone else’s home.

  He led her up the stairs slowly, reluctantly maybe.

  In the upstairs hallway a denim jacket was slung over a chair, a phone poised on a stack of telephone directories, plastic bags stuffed down the back of the radiator. “And it’s Clark, not Wilks,” he threw over his shoulder, “Rose and I aren’t married.”

  Cate realised that Rose hadn’t told her this.

  He led the way to the small front room, which would once have been a bedroom but now served as a lounge with a beige chenille three-seater sofa with fringed cushions and a stiff armchair. From the TV in the corner came the lively chatter of a daytime soap. The room was furnished with fifties furniture and there were piles of oddments and paperwork on every surface.

  Jason stood awkwardly, as if he’d entered a conversation he wasn’t part of. “You want a drink?”

  “Please.” Normally on home visits she refused hospitality, but this time she accepted. It would give her a bit of breathing space, time to take a measure of the place.

  She sat on the sofa, which dipped under her weight so she could feel the springs beneath.

  A few photos and cards were propped on the windowsill, others had fallen over and lay on the carpet. The TV chattered away as she took in the mess of CDs scattered on the carpet, stacks of local newspapers, and an empty pizza box. The signs of a man living alone who hasn’t quite got the hang of looking after himself. Where the coffee table wasn’t covered it was marked with rings and in its centre was an opened can of larger, an ashtray full of dog-ends, and a mobile phone. Next to her on the sofa was a box of tissues and a pile of unopened brown envelopes, probably bills.

  Jason Clark was gone for what seemed ages, but the kitchen was only a thin wall away. She could hear a cupboard door and a fridge being opened and closed. When he returned, he took up position on the furthest point of the sofa, placing a mug on the table. He hadn’t made a drink for himself but took a cigarette from a packet of Silk Cut and lit it.

  He propped his elbows on his knees, his chest rising and falling rapidly, dragging on his smoke.

  “As I said in my letter, I’ll be writing your wife’s—sorry, partner’s—parole report.”

  “Yeah. She said.”

  “I’ve met with Rose twice so far, and those conversations will provide the bulk of the information for the report. But I also want to include your opinions in it.”

  “What for?”

  Cate answered carefully. “Sometimes partners have mixed feelings about release. Rose has been in prison a long time. Having her back would mean an adjustment for both of you.”

  He bit the edge of a fingernail; then, catching himself, stopped. “I’ve got used to it, I suppose.”

  “But Rose being in prison must have turned your life upside down?”

  “I suppose I’d already found out that life is shit, and her being in prison was just another thing to get used to.”

  “Not easy though,” Cate suggested.

  “I visit every month, and send her cards and that. Do my bit.” He sounded like he was justifying himself.

  Cate sipped her coffee. It was very strong and the smell of the cigarette made her head woozy.

  “Rose tells me you’re a builder?”

  “At the moment. I mainly work in the restaurant business, but it’s a bit quiet at the moment. No one’s got any money to eat out.”

  Cate sipped her coffee again. She was asking questions to which she already knew the answers, but they broke the ice. No one wants to hear that a stranger knows things about them; it’s unnerving. So Cate asked another question to which she knew the answer. “How long have you and Rose known each other?”

  Jason frowned, “five years nearly.”

  “And you met when she was working at The Grand?”

  “What is this, Mr. and Mrs.?”

  “I’m just checking I’ve got my facts right.”

  “That’s a first—one of you lot caring about getting it right. Yeah, okay, I was working in the bar when we hooked up. When they layed me off I moved in here with Rose.” He ground his—cigarette butt into the ashtray.

  Cate was cautious now, realising that Jason was angry. He resented being asked questions, but she still had to ask. “And then she got pregnant?”

  “Yeah, after we’d been together a couple of months.”

  “That would be a strain,” Cate suggested, “an upheaval like pregnancy so early on in the relationship.”

  “You reckon? We were chuffed, even if it had happened a bit quickly. She wanted a baby—we both did.” His eyes moistened and he palmed a tear away.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Jason looked up for the first time, and she saw sadness settle on his features. “Everything would have been different if our son hadn’t died.”

  He stood up, a large man who needed to break free from the moment. He paced the lounge and went to the windowsill, picked up a silver framed photograph and handed it to Cate. “He was just two days old when that was taken.”

  The photo showed a tiny baby in a plastic incubator, a tube taped to his cheek. Rose was also in the picture, leaning over her son, trying to smile but failing. She looked younger, prettier, despite the dark circles under her eyes. Her long dark hair hung into the crib. Cate handed the picture back to Jason.

  She watched him holding the photograph of his dead son, thinking how vulnerable he looked. She recognised the need to protect your child, how strong that urge was, and here was a man who had failed. In that moment she realised that they were alike — the expression of loss written on his face was the same as hers, as she’d dashed to the hospital after Amelia’s accident. At least Amelia
was well; this man’s child had died.

  “Do you mind if I ask you about Emma Hatcher?”

  He flinched, then sat heavily onto the sofa, still clutching the photo frame, and reached for the opened can of beer, which he swigged. “I don’t have anything to do with her now.”

  “What about her friendship with Rose? Was it strange, having your ex-wife and new partner become friends?”

  He looked at Cate with something like disgust. “It wasn’t like that. You people, always making out something sinister going on. It was just a coincidence, Emma and Rose being together in hospital. I didn’t even know they knew each other. Not until right at the end.”

  “So Rose kept it from you?”

  He finished his beer, wiped a hand on his jeans, as if there were some stubborn stain there. “I suppose she was worried about upsetting me. When I met Rose I hadn’t got over Emma. She left me for a bloke she met at the school where she worked and I was pretty cut up about it.”

  “Dominic Hatcher.”

  “That bastard. He knew she was married, but that didn’t stop him making a play for her. Rose didn’t know that the Emma she had met in the hospital was the same Emma who’d been my wife. She only found that out much later.”

  “Do you really believe she didn’t know?”

  “Rose is not a liar.” His face reddened, “and neither am I.”

  “But at some point Rose did realise that her new friend was your ex-wife?”

  He seemed thrown by the question. “Well, yes, she found out when she got to know Emma better. I don’t know exactly when. But when they first met in the hospital she could never have known. I mean, why should she? She’d never met Emma so she didn’t even know what she looked like. And she was re-married by then so she had a different surname.”

  “Would you say Rose was prone to jealousy?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I need the bigger picture to form an accurate assessment of the case. I need to know if Rose could still pose a risk to Emma if she is released.”