Something was terribly wrong. She clutched her belly tight, protectively, as she pushed the door to their room open.
There was a man in the room, in the shadows cast by the moonlight.
Her children, her twins, were in their beds. She could see their little arms and legs thrashing, her beautiful boys. Terror leaped at her, bit her like a mad dog and almost pulled her down, but her fear was for her babies and not for herself.
The man wasn’t moving. She ran at the man, the man who was reaching out for her boys, but then she realised he didn’t have any arms.
Somehow, it was worse.
Terrified, she swung her fist, in a kind of desperate and panicked half-slap. She connected hard enough to bruise her hand, and he teetered, like she’d knocked him off balance.
He rocked one way, then the other, then fell down with a heavy thump.
And the thumping continued. Thump, thump...thump, thump. Something regular, like the beat of a bass drum or some large animal’s heart.
But it was just a mannequin. The realisation didn’t help. It was dangerous, still, lying on the floor.
It rolled over until it was on its back, and then it rose, wobbling until it righted itself.
‘Irene,’ the mannequin said, though it had neither head nor face. ‘Irene...’
Nothing more, but it didn’t need to say more, because the voice was always the voice in her nightmares. The words sent shivers down her spine, cold shivers that made her want to wet herself...she tried to hold it, but she still felt her thighs get warm and wet.
‘Irene...’ he said one last time. ‘I’m coming back. For you,’ it said in that voice she recognised all too well.
Franklin Jacobs, the man who always haunted her nightmares.
She jumped awake with a shout and the boys kicked hard. She looked down below the sheet as she felt dampness there. She really was wet.
‘Oh, fuck,’ she said, because her waters had broken, but those words from the dream echoed in her head, even through her panic as she climbed out of bed.
‘I’m coming back,’ he said. ‘I’m coming back.’
*
Irene rushed down the dark stairwell as fast as a woman in the early stages of labour could go, cursing spicy food in general and tex-mex pizza in particular. Her terror of Franklin Jacobs, Paul’s brother, faded as her excitement at the prospect of seeing her babies grew. The dream fled and all that she could think of was her babies, the babies she’d made with her sweet and loving Paul.
Thinking of Paul hurt, though, so she concentrated on preparing for her birth.
She’d timed the drive to the maternity suite. She’d wanted a home birth, but it wasn’t practical, considering the nearest midwife lived an hour and a half away. They couldn’t guarantee they’d be there in time to deliver her children.
It was an hour’s drive to the maternity suite at the community hospital.
She called in and checked with the midwife on duty, an officious woman who rubbed Irene the wrong way just with the tone of her voice. The officious woman – Irene imagined the woman actually turning her nose up as she spoke – asked her a few questions...had her water’s broken, had she had a show...how far apart were the contractions...
All questions she’d been expecting, but she didn’t need to time her contractions to know the babies were coming, and with twins on the way, hoping for a natural birth, she couldn’t take any chances.
‘Wait until the contractions are a little closer...’ said the midwife in her condescending tone.
‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ said Irene down the phone, and hung up.
‘Right,’ she said, her belly cramping now, the cramps coming faster.
Contractions, you stupid...she had to almost double and she did have to puff and pant as the next came faster and harder than the last.
She didn’t have much time. She’d thought...well...she’d thought she could do this. Now she wasn’t so sure. All of a sudden living out on the point and driving herself to the hospital didn’t seem so smart at all.
But she didn’t have a choice now.
For some reason, despite her fear, and despite the pain, she realised she was smiling.
She picked up the phone again, because there was one more call she had to make and she wasn’t letting her boys out until she was good and ready.
Marc answered after the first ring, like he’d gone to sleep with the phone in his hand. Maybe he had. The thought made Irene smile again, despite the pain from another contraction, this one a little weaker, thankfully.
‘The boys are coming,’ she said without preamble. ‘Meet me there?’
‘I’ll be there, honey,’ he said. ‘You OK? You want me to drive down, meet you at the boathouse?’
‘No time,’ she said truthfully, though she didn’t want to worry him anymore than she had to. He worried enough as it was.
‘Oh. God. Oh...well...oh shit.’
‘Marc, calm down, OK? I’ll be fine. Just meet me at the hospital. I’ll be there in an hour,’ she said.
‘Get going. Be careful. Promise?’
‘I’ll be careful. You, too. Love you, honey,’ she said, and heard him smile. She imagined David holding his hand in bed. She felt a pang, wishing Paul could have been beside her to hold her hand and give her comfort, but no amount of wishing was ever going to make it true.
She hung up and finished getting ready. It took longer than she thought, because her contractions were more painful than she’d imagined they’d be.
Dressed, bag in hand, Irene Jacobs, nee Harris, closed the front door behind her – she never bothered to lock it – and walked across her sandy porch to the garage, where her Landrover waited. It started first time.
The car was new, so she wasn’t worried about the car not starting, but she had read a hundred books on child delivery, just in case. She’d read accounts online at the library of women delivering their own children. She knew it was dangerous, but she also knew she could do it if she had to. She read everything she could get her hands on. She had a kit in the house, now in the car, if she had to deliver the babies herself.
Self-control came readily to Irene, and in this she wanted to be in control.
But already she was beginning to doubt her plan to have a natural birth. As the contractions hit harder, she wondered if she wouldn’t be just as happy with the birth if she had an epidural.
But she’d try, and she wasn’t a stranger to pain.
She rubbed her shoulders as a shiver passed through her, thinking of all the times Franklin Jacobs had caused her pain and injury.
‘No,’ she told herself as she drove out of the garage. She wasn’t going to think about that anymore. Not this night. This night should be something of beauty.
Twins. She should have gone into hospital a week ago to be induced, but she wanted a natural birth, and though the midwives and doctors had pressured her, she held out. She’d fought for a home delivery, too – she wanted her boys born on the point – but she hadn’t fought too hard. She was brave, perhaps, but she tried not to be foolish with it.
She pulled out onto the sandy coast, the dunes and ridges ever shifting, but the Landrover could handle it. There was no road between the house on the point and the mainland. Just hard, sandy work for the big car. The car was heavy, but the tires were fat.
An evening mist was rolling in, and the tide was high. The spit of land between the point and dry land was narrow at high tide, and on rare occasions the tide came high enough to blot out the run altogether. But tonight, it was fine. She had a boat, too, docked out the back of the house, but she hadn’t had to use it to make the run yet.
The Landrover roared as she sped across the sand. The bumps weren’t helping, they really weren’t, but her contractions were fast, now, long contractions with a short break in between. Her eyes were teary with the pain. And she was still forty-five minutes away when she hit the first road.
Thankfully it was the middle of the night in north Norfol
k, and there was hardly any traffic on the roads. She gritted her teeth against the pain and put her foot down as far as she dared.
‘Won’t be long, now, my boys. Won’t be long,’ she said. She held her stomach with one hand and steered with the other. ‘Won’t be long, my boys,’ she smiled, then screamed as the next pain came and made her lose focus.
She opened her eyes and screamed again, because Franklin Jacobs was in the car next to her. The skin on his face had slewed off, so that she could see his back teeth through his cheeks...he stank, a deep horrid rank smell. He looked like he’d risen from the grave. He reached for her stomach with a knife in his hand.
‘Going to cut those puppies out,’ he said and she reached out to push him away, felt the knife in her belly...blinked, and he was gone.
Her hand clutched tight in her panic, then loosed and slipped from the wheel as another contraction hit her life a knife in the stomach. The car bounced into the hard verge that ran along the side of the road, bounced back to the other side, and hit a tree broadside with a squeal of metal and the shattering of glass.
The air bag in the steering wheel deployed with a bang and the stench of gunpowder, but the car had no side air bags.
Irene’s head cracked against the window, knocking her out cold.
The car came to rest in the quiet night with only the ticking of the cooling engine to break the still dark.
*
Marc paced the hall outside the maternity ward. David watched him from his seat, his legs crossed and stuck out before him. Whenever Marc passed David pulled his legs in. Legs in. Legs out. Over and over.
‘Something’s wrong,’ said Marc, checking his watch again. ‘She should be here by now.’
‘She’s fine,’ said David. ‘Stop pacing, for Christ’s sake. She’s fine.’
‘She’s not. I knew this would happen. I wish she’d let me...’
‘She needs time. Time to heal. This is part of it. Let her be, love. Let her be.’
‘Where is she then?’
‘On her way,’ said David, but although he said the words with all the surety he could raise, he was worried, too, because an hour and a half was half hour too long for the journey in from the point. With good weather – for the coast...there was no reason it should take so long. It wasn’t like you could get stuck behind farm traffic in the middle of the night.
But, David told himself, there’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. Then he heard sirens in the distance.
Marc looked at David, his face pale.
‘Don’t be daft,’ said David. But the sirens got closer.
A few minutes later a nurse came out and rushed toward the entrance. Another rushed through. Both came back ahead of an ambulance gurney pushed by two paramedics, and Irene was on the gurney.
Even as they rushed past both Marc and David saw the blood on Irene’s scalp, but worse, the blood on her thighs.
*
Paramedics transferred Irene to a bed, still unconscious. There was a small Accident and Emergency unit attached to the hospital, but the head injury wasn’t as urgent as the babies’ imminent arrival. Already Irene was coming around, groggy, moaning. Not fully lucid, but not unconscious.
‘It’s Irene Jacobs,’ said the midwife on call. She seemed calm, even though Irene, who she’d met every two weeks since her first scan, was obviously in serious trouble, and the babies more so.
She clicked her finger in front of Irene’s hazy eyes.
‘Let’s have a look,’ she said, and didn’t need to look far as she could already see the crown of the first baby pushing against Irene’s underwear.
Semi-conscious or not, the babies were coming. The pain and the adrenaline were waking Irene up.
‘She needs to go to A and E,’ said the student nurse watching the delivery with the matron.
‘Yes, but these babies aren’t going to wait. Now...help me, or leave the room.’
She reached between Irene’s legs and felt the head, pulled her underwear down and clear.
Three midwives and a locum doctor rushed into the room as the first midwife, Alice Simms, a veteran of hundreds of births, turned the first child. At the next contraction she shouted at Irene.
‘Push! Push!’
She shouted for all she was worth, because already she could feel the delivery was going to be a bad one.
Irene grunted.
‘My babies? My babies?’ she said, but her words were slurry.
‘Fine, honey,’ said Alice Simms, even though she was troubled. ‘Fine, now...push!’
Irene didn’t respond, but her body did. The delivery was running on automatic.
‘We should get the anaesthetist. She needs a caesarean!’
‘Shut up and help me save this baby,’ said Alice to the student nurse without turning around from her work. Another nurse checked the baby’s heartbeat within the womb. The locum doctor hovered, doing nothing useful as far as Alice could tell, which was just fine by her. She didn’t want him getting in the way, because she could feel this one going wrong. She’d seen enough deliveries to know if she didn’t work fast they could lose both babies in the blink of an eye.
When the second twin came out with the umbilical cord of the first wrapped around its head, not breathing, blue, she knew just how bad a delivery it was going to be.
As the second baby died on the respirator despite the other midwives and the doctor desperately trying to revive him, the first baby gave a hearty cry.
Thankfully Irene Jacobs fell unconscious.
Alice Simms laid the first child on Irene’s breast and helped him latch on, even though the poor woman didn’t even know what had happened.
‘Get her over to A and E,’ she said, finally, stepping back.
Alice never understood how women could take such pain, but she’d seen plenty come and go, and lost a child herself. She knew it could be done.
But every tragedy hurt.
*
Marc and David came in the following day.
Every day for five days they sat beside Irene, watching her cry, holding a hand each.
She cried her heart out for her lost baby and all the while her friends were there, holding her, comforting her, watching her fall apart, and then, slowly, pull herself into her hard shell.
Marc told her once that he thought of her like some ancient proud monument when he saw her, like a beautiful sculpture, but carved from stone.
She knew part of that was true. But she knew, too, that the pain chipped away at her.
She had some internal bleeding, but she didn’t care about herself. Sam, her baby, nuzzled at her breast.
He wailed and cried like he missed his brother. Of course he didn’t. He’d never remember his brother, never know him. They wouldn’t play together, go on dates together, or fight over toys then girls. She’d never get to see the two of them through school, or into college, maybe. Everything she’d imagined in her head for two was now just for one, and that kind of sadness is unbearable. That loss of something or someone that never really was. Maybe, in her head, he would get older as Sam did. Maybe she would see him every day as Sam grew and changed and eventually became a man.
Irene cried her heart out every day.
Stillborn was all she knew, and she’d always put it down to the accident.
And that’s all it was, she thought. A stupid accident. Like falling for the wrong brother, losing your husband, driving into a verge because you were too fucking stubborn to see sense. The last moments of the accident were a blur to her. She didn’t remember why she’d crashed, but she didn’t doubt it had been her fault. When she should have come to be induced, she could have witnessed the birth of her twins and remembered the beauty of it. She would have two babies now nestling and nuzzling against her, making that soft mewling sound that Sam was making now.
But no. Same as always, she’d been too fucking stubborn.
‘It’s alright, honey,’ said Marc as he held her hand. ‘It’s alright.’
She sobbed all the while, all the while Sam suckled hungrily and her heart broke down over and over. She cried for her baby, for Paul, and for herself.
‘It’s not alright,’ said David. ‘But honey, you’ve got a beautiful baby boy. Hold onto him. He’s precious.’
I will, resolved Irene. I will. But still she cried, breaking her heart all over again.
But then Sam seemed to look up at her and grasped her finger, and in an instant something changed.
Five days in hospital, a lifetime out. And a family of two again...
Once, it had been her and Paul, and her world had revolved around him. Now, she had a new focus, a new love.
Her heart broke again, holding Sam’s tiny fingers in her hand. He was so small, helpless, but adorable, too.
She couldn’t see Paul in him, saw more of her, but he had his father’s eyes. Deep and knowing, and even though she’d read that newborn babies couldn’t focus, she could swear that he looked up at her with love when he fed. Probably not, but he was her responsibility now, and would be for the rest of her life.
She smiled down at him, and at Marc and David.
‘I’m ready,’ she said. ‘Ready to take him home.’
*
Marc drove her home when she was discharged. She could barely walk, her insides hurt so much. She knew most of the pain was where she was ruptured, but some of it, too, was heartache. Something deeper and different and fresher than when she’d lost Paul.
It would never go away, she knew, just like the pain of losing Paul would never leave her. But this was hers, the fault. She owned it.
Just like Paul was her fault, too.
Could she live with this, like she lived with her guilt over Paul, and the constant sorrow?
She nodded silently to herself as Marc drove. Of course she could. Because now she had a family, and she already knew that she’d never let Sam down. Never make a stupid mistake again.
She’d never let him come to harm.
A Home by the Sea (A Supernatural Suspense Novel) Page 2