I Know You

by Annabel Kantaria

  ‘What are you implying?’ I say.

  Caroline closes her eyes slowly, breathes deeply in, and then opens them again – a lazy blink that implies she understands that I’m thick and that she can’t possible explain more clearly.

  Sarah comes back from the bathroom.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ she says, and I give her a weak smile.

  ‘Didn’t you say you were going away for work?’ Caroline asks Sarah.

  ‘Yes, to Leeds,’ Sarah says. ‘Tomorrow.’ She looks at me with a little laugh but my blood has run cold. Jake’s in Leeds.

  ‘Really?’ I say.

  Sarah’s looking too innocent. ‘Yes. Why?’

  Caroline looks from her to me and back. ‘Oh, don’t tell me,’ she says. ‘Is that where Jake is? How cosy.’ She pauses theatrically and presses her lips together as if trying not to smile. ‘I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,’ she says in a manner that implies she doesn’t believe for a second that it’s a coincidence. Then Sarah bursts out laughing.

  ‘Oh, don’t look like that, Taylor! I’m just joshing with you. I’m not going to Leeds! I’m going to Peterborough.’

  It takes a moment for this to sink in, but I’m not as relieved as she thinks I should be. She said Leeds. She knows Jake’s going to Leeds. I haven’t told her that. He must have. When did they speak? Have they been messaging? The paranoia leaps back. Every time I think I’ve got a grip on it, it grabs me from another angle.

  ‘Very funny,’ I say without a shred of amusement.

  Caroline picks up the empty wine bottle. ‘Right, let me get refills and the snacks – I’m afraid they’re homemade tonight: I didn’t have time to get out to Cook – and we should start on the books.’

  She clicks across the wooden floor to the kitchen and I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s the way Sarah’s joke’s left me feeling, but a wave of rage rises inside me, making my heart thud as if I’ve been running sprints. ‘I’m afraid they’re homemade tonight: I didn’t have time to get out to Cook.’

  I’ve had enough of Caroline carping on; of her bitching and digging and putting people down. Without stopping to think, I shove myself up and follow her into the kitchen. She’s standing by a tall wine fridge with her back to me but turns around when I click the door shut behind me.

  ‘What do you think? Chablis or a Cortese?’ She holds up two bottles. ‘Or I have a white Rioja that’s a bit bolder…’

  I’m breathing hard, my blood pounding in my veins. I put my hands on my bump and lean on the door for support.

  ‘Why are you such a goddamned cow?’

  Caroline doesn’t even flinch. She continues standing there holding the two wine bottles. ‘I’m sorry?’ she says.

  ‘You heard me. Why are you such a bitch? Just look at you tonight: telling me to come here then sniping at me about Jake. And all that crap about not having time to buy from Cook, just to make Sarah feel bad.’

  Caroline looks innocent. ‘What exactly did I say? Nothing that wasn’t true, I don’t think?’

  ‘Oh, come on! All those barbed comments. Don’t think we don’t know what you mean. You’re nothing but a passive-aggressive bully and I see straight through you.’

  She shrugs. ‘But it’s true. You can’t deny it. Nowhere does hummus as good as my own. I’ve been perfecting it for years.’

  ‘And then what you said about Jake not settling. He was eleven when you last saw him. Eleven! Are you telling me you were sizing up the marriage potential of the boys at junior school? Oh, come on! You’re just a bitch who gets off on making other people feel smaller than you. Well, let me tell you, I’m not putting up with it one moment longer!’ I stop for breath, while we eyeball each other. She’s clearly not going to say anything so I carry on. ‘What happened to you? What turned you into such a bitter, twisted, sorry excuse of a person?’ I shake my head, the wind suddenly out of my sails. ‘You know what, Caroline? You would actually be all right if you weren’t such a cow to everyone.’

  I shake my head and leave the kitchen, closing the door firmly behind me. My whole body is shaking. I don’t do confrontation. I don’t know what just happened.

  Back in the drawing room, Sarah’s sitting wide-eyed. It’s clear from her face that she heard everything. She raises her hand and starts to slow-clap.

  ‘Bravo.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, slumping onto a sofa. ‘She had it coming and if you weren’t going to say anything…’

  ‘I’m sorry about the Leeds thing,’ she says. She gets up and comes to sit next to me. ‘I was just joking. There’s absolutely nothing between Jake and me. He adores you.’ She rubs my arm, then takes my hand and squeezes it. ‘I’m really sorry about your birthday, too. I was drunk and out of order. I do it all the time. Truth is, I don’t get out much. I’ve no excuse. I get dolled up, have a few drinks and get overexcited. Don’t take this the wrong way but, apart from how good-looking he is, there’s nothing special about Jake. It could have been anyone giving me a bit of attention, even the bin man. I’m sorry.’

  I breathe in deeply. Somehow I believe her.

  The drawing-room door opens and Caroline appears. She puts the wine carefully into the cooler on a side table then turns to face us. We look expectantly at her. She folds her arms.

  ‘I suppose you heard that,’ she says to Sarah. ‘Do you agree? Do you think the same?’

  Sarah looks at the floor.

  Caroline pulls herself up straight, then speaks, her hands clasped in front of her. Her voice is quiet, but determined. She looks like a prime minister announcing that the country’s gone to war.

  ‘I had a son,’ she says. I’ve barely registered her use of the past tense when she continues. ‘He died.’

  It’s as if she’s dropped a thermobaric bomb on the room. I can almost feel the shockwave spreading out, hitting us all, rendering us speechless. Sarah has her hand over her mouth and I know it’s a cliché, but my stomach constricts and coldness slides through my veins.

  ‘He was two,’ Caroline says.

  She bites her lip now and I see that the ice woman’s actually fighting back tears. She yanks over a chair and sinks onto it, the muscles of her face struggling to stay straight, to push back the tears. She presses her hands to her face then looks at us, more composed.

  ‘I’ve never talked about it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ says Sarah quietly.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I say and, forgive me for this, but I’m also wondering if she’s making it up; if there’s any way we can check. Let’s face it, it’s a good excuse for being a bitch.

  ‘What happened?’ Sarah asks, and I’m thinking of things that cause toddlers to die: meningitis, sepsis, road accident, cot death, and thinking, please god, no.

  ‘He choked on a grape,’ says Caroline, and there’s another silence as we absorb the nonsense of this.

  ‘Were you…’ Sarah waves a hand at the room, ‘at home?’

  ‘He was at nursery,’ Caroline says. ‘You just don’t imagine… do you?’

  ‘Dropping off your child in the morning and never seeing them again,’ Sarah says quietly.

  Caroline presses her hand against her face, then looks up. ‘He ate grapes all the time. He loved them. I used to cut them in half but that morning I was running late. He’d been throwing his cereal around and I was cross. God! I was cross with him!’ She sobs then regains control, her hand on her throat. ‘I was shouting at him, and I made that decision: I put the grapes in whole. I knew the risk. I thought he was old enough. It’s my fault.’ She stops for a minute. ‘I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about it that morning, but I did. It crossed my mind that he might choke – you hear these things, don’t you? But how much cotton wool do you wrap your child in? Where does it end? I wanted him to grow up to be tough, not a namby-pamby.’ She takes a deep breath. ‘Anyway. It’s a decision I have to live with forever.’

  ‘You can’t blame yourself,’ I say. ‘It was an accident,’ and Caroline just lo
oks at me. I’d blame myself. I know I would.

  ‘How long ago?’ Sarah’s voice is soft.

  Caroline laughs bitterly. ‘A year. Exactly one year the weekend we went to Brighton and bumped into her.’ She nods at me. ‘That’s why we were there. Getting away. Making a break. Trying to get through that weekend as best we could.’

  I have a flashback to her drinking that champagne like it was going out of fashion; drinking herself to oblivion. No wonder they were so keen for company that night.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I say. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘None of us did,’ says Sarah.

  ‘Well,’ says Caroline, and her whole body seems to collapse, as if her bones are made of jelly. Her face looks different, too – as if the armour has dropped; the polished perfection. She looks older; I see wrinkles now, and shadows where before I just saw make-up. ‘Now you know.’ She raises her hands in the air. ‘So, if you think I’m a bitch, or I’ve got a chip on my shoulder, or I put people down – well, I’m sorry. I see only the bigger picture. I’m just trying to get through the day. Every day.’

  We sit there in silence for a minute. In my head I’m going over the conversations I’ve had with Caroline, and starting to understand a little more: the superiority, the brittleness, the drinking – the defences she must use to protect herself against pregnant women like me. Mothers. Half of book club, in a nutshell. It must be torture for her.

  ‘Well, some book club this turned out to be,’ Caroline says. ‘Top-up?’ She gets up and opens the new bottle of wine, sloshes some into her glass, swigs a mouthful, then looks to Sarah.

  Sarah goes over to her and touches her arm.

  ‘Thank you for telling us. Why didn’t you say something earlier?’

  ‘I didn’t know how. “Oh hi, thanks for inviting me to book club. By the way, I had a baby but he died.”’

  ‘We’d have understood,’ says Sarah.

  ‘Well, I also didn’t want to upset her.’ Caroline nods at me.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  But she has upset me. We move onto books and, despite our attempts to be cheery, the underlying mood is sombre as if we’re all still processing what Caroline has told us, and I can’t concentrate. All I can think about is Caroline in her perfect kitchen that morning. Caroline making the perfect little toddler snack for nursery: a cheese sandwich cut into a star shape; carrot and cucumber sticks; a fromage frais. She would have been an amazing mother: I can see that now. She would have been well informed, have the best of everything. No wonder she knew so much about pregnancy. I see her son in his high chair, chattering as toddlers do, and throwing around his Cheerios or whatever organic, sugar-free, do-good power cereal she lets him eat while she works at the countertop, and her frustrated that she’ll have to pick it all up when she gets back from dropping him off. Maybe that’s what she was doing at the moment he died. Perhaps the sun was shining; maybe it was raining, the drops sliding down the window panes. She must go over that morning in her head every day, thinking about that moment she decided to add the grapes to his snack box; wishing she’d cut them into halves, or put apple slices in instead. How such an insignificant decision can change our lives forever.

  I realize that none of us even asked his name. I want to know. I do and I don’t. I can’t stay here any longer.

  ‘I’m sorry, ladies,’ I say, pushing my chair back. ‘I’m going to have to call it a night.’

  Sarah jumps to her feet, surprised but not really surprised. ‘I’ll drop you back.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘Well, text me when you’re safe indoors, all right?’

  ‘I will.’

  Mercifully the taxi comes quite quickly, and I can’t get out of there fast enough. It’s as if the bad luck that had cursed Caroline and Toby will rub off on me.

  *

  Back home, I light all the scented candles I have, and say a little prayer for Caroline’s son. I’m not religious and I feel silly saying the words out loud but I also feel they need to be said, almost like an insurance for my own baby.

  Then I put my hands on my belly and whisper to the baby. I tell him to hang in there till it’s time to come. I tell him it’s going to be confusing coming out and that it’ll be bright and cold, and he might cry, but that I’ll be there for him. I tell him it won’t be long until he’s in my arms and I can touch him and hold him. I tell him to grow up strong and healthy; to have a long and happy life. I tell him that I’ll always be there for him; that I’ll love him no matter what, and always try to do my best for him. I can’t believe that, by the time book club rolls around again, he’ll be here, and I’ll be a mother. Yet the thought of how he’s going to go from being a bump in my belly to a live baby in my arms is a huge black hole in my imagination; a leap of faith. I can’t picture how it’s going to happen.

  I call Jake. The phone rings eight times before he picks up. He sounds out of breath.

  I can’t help myself. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Just got out of the shower. Sorry – dripping wet.’

  I tell him about Caroline’s baby. ‘I can’t believe she didn’t tell us that night at The Grand,’ I say, skirting away from telling him how her story’s made me feel. ‘I thought we got on all right that night.’

  Jake sighs. ‘I don’t know what I’d do in their place. Talk. Not talk. Who knows what goes on in your head when you lose a child? It shouldn’t happen. It’s one of those things that’s not supposed to happen. Your children should outlive you.’

  Suddenly I’m crying. Trying to do it silently.

  ‘Tay? Are you there? Are you okay?’

  I struggle to compose myself. ‘I’m just so worried.’ And another wave of tears hits me.

  ‘Worried about what, hon? Whoah, are you crying?’

  I can’t answer that. I press my free hand into my eyes and sniff.

  ‘Tay! Honey! It’s okay. The baby’s going to be just fine, and you’re going to be the most amazing mummy.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ My voice is a sob, accusing.

  ‘I just do. Trust me on this. Everything’s going to be fine.’

  ‘What if he’s born with some incurable congenital problem and given only a few years to live? What then? What if he’s stillborn? What if we’re in a car crash on the way home from hospital and the car explodes and there’s a fire and we can’t get him out of the car seat and we have to watch him burn to death? You’ve seen all those straps.’ I realize my voice is rising. ‘What if…’

  ‘Tay. We’ve had the scans. We’ve had the tests. Everything’s come back 100 per cent normal. And look, what happened to Caroline is not normal. Things like that don’t happen to the majority of people. Really, they don’t. Think about the number of kids there are running about, annoying people in restaurants and clogging up the streets at school pick-up time.’ He tuts. ‘I know it’s upsetting. Caroline really shouldn’t have told you at this point, but please don’t dwell on it. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise you.’

  ‘How do you know that? How?’ I wail.

  ‘I just do,’ he says. ‘Relax.’

  I know what you want to call your baby

  Joseph.

  A biblical name. How sweet.

  I can just see you both lying in bed, him spread tactfully over the damp patch with his hand on your belly, when you say, ‘So, hon, have you thought about names?’ and he hums and haws, and then says out loud as if it’s a question: ‘I quite like Joseph for a boy?’ and you cock your head and sound it out a couple of times, then you say in your chirpy little way, ‘Yeah, I like it. My parents are religious. They’ll love that. It’s perfect. And we can call him Joe.’

  And he gives you a squeeze and you say, ‘What about for a girl?’

  But while you’re mulling over Emily, Jasmine and Sophia, he’s not thinking about girls’ names. He’s remembering that kid Joseph at school. Of course he is.

  He can’t forget.

  Jus
t the two of them, out on the quarry. Two boys exploring, making camp fires, building dens, messing about like boys do.

  Until…

  There’s him bending down to gather sticks for the fire. The flames crackling into life, him standing back, rubbing his hands together, pleased, as he starts to feel the heat, then a scrabbling sound behind him, a scream, and Joseph dangling out over a hundred-foot drop, his face blue-white with terror, his hands rigid knots clinging to the root of a tree.

  At least, that’s what he told the police.

  Everyone knows he has a temper; I wouldn’t be the first to wonder if they had a row and he got angry, gave poor Joseph a shove.

  I suppose we’ll never know.

  But, with Joseph dangling, what can he do? He’s only twelve. What can anyone do? He lies down flat, inches to the edge, and drops his hands down to Joseph. ‘Take my hand!’ he shrieks and, for a second or two, he gets Joseph’s hands in both of his and it’s a stalemate but, ultimately, Joseph’s bigger than him, a strong boy, muscular, and he starts to slide towards the edge.

  Either he lets go, or they both go down.

  It’s a tough decision when you’re twelve.

  It’s no secret what happened out there at the quarry. But you don’t know about it, do you? He hasn’t told you, and I bet you haven’t googled him, his school, the news from his home town that year, have you? You haven’t checked news stories that involve the name Joseph; you haven’t googled anything except cots, prams and pushchairs and that poncey car. Of course you haven’t. Why worry your pretty little head? Not everyone’s as thorough as I am.

  Oh, and there’s one more thing. It’s not just the name of your soon-to-be-born child; it’s his email password, too: Joseph87. And his bank password. He really should use something stronger. Did no one ever tell him that?

  Thirty-four