While I Was Sleeping

by Dani Atkins

  ‘No. It’s not weird at all. It’s comforting in a way, especially as you’ve kept the place pretty much as she had it. It’s given the flat continuity, but also breathed new life into it. And I think she’d be happy about that.’ He paused for a moment. ‘She’d have liked you, you know,’ he added with quiet certainty.

  Without bothering to consider whether or not I should, I leant across the worktop and laid my hand lightly on the thick breadth of his forearm. ‘I’m sure it would have been mutual.’

  We steered a careful path that day around all possible minefield topics. Mitch never spoke of his ex-wife, or their divorce; and I stayed away from all mention of Ryan or my accident, as though it was conversational Kryptonite. And yet we never ran out of things to talk about. It helped having worked for the same company for several years, but as I listened to Mitch’s deep rumbling voice talking about the day-to-day trivia of the office which had once been such an important part of my life, a realisation that had been crystallising for some time now finally became an undeniable truth. I was done with that kind of job. Whatever I did next would have to be something completely different, something more meaningful. That’s the thing about coming back from the dead, which was how I still felt about my awakening. It made you realise that there had to be a reason you were here. A reason you’d come back. I might not know what that was yet, but I was sure that sooner or later it would reveal itself.

  ‘Don’t cross anywhere except at the zebra crossing,’ said Chloe worriedly, as she tucked a warm scarf securely around Hope’s neck.

  ‘Maddie knows how to cross a road,’ said Ryan reasonably, leaning back against the wall with an easy smile.

  Chloe straightened from double-checking that Hope’s coat was buttoned up, and her eyebrows rose meaningfully.

  Okay, fair enough. She had me there. My experience with road-crossing skills wasn’t exactly a shining advertisement for the Green Cross Code.

  ‘We’ll only cross at zebras,’ I assured Chloe, ‘and we won’t walk by the edge of the pavement, and we won’t—’

  ‘Okay. I’m sorry,’ cut in Chloe, sounding apologetic, yet still worried. Clearly she wasn’t used to handing over the care of her daughter to someone else, outside the house.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ I reiterated. ‘I’ll look after her as if she was . . .’ my voice trailed off as all three adults exchanged an identical and uncomfortable look. ‘I’ll look after her,’ I finished instead.

  There was a strangely liberating feeling in closing the front door and walking down the path to the pavement with Hope’s hand held firmly in mine. I felt like a prisoner on the day when the jail gates are finally flung open and freedom stretches before you like an unfurled carpet. We could go anywhere, my daughter and me. We could jump in a car, drive to the coast, drive to an airport, we could— I snapped off that train of thought before it got truly dangerous. And it was all totally ridiculous anyway. I wasn’t going to kidnap my own child and take her away from the only home she had ever known. Plus, on a purely practical level, I didn’t actually have a car, and although my doctors had now cleared me to drive, I didn’t yet have my licence back. Far better to stick to the original plan, and spend the afternoon at the park, I decided.

  Nevertheless, sooner rather than later, we were all going to have to sit down together and figure out something a bit more structured with regard to the amount of time I could spend with Hope. I hadn’t liked the way it had felt as if I was begging for crumbs at their table when I’d phoned Ryan to ask if I could see Hope today.

  ‘I’d like to give her my Christmas present, before it seems like an afterthought,’ I’d said. I realised how anxious I was by the way I kept shifting my weight from one foot to the other as I stood staring unseeingly out of my kitchen window, waiting for Ryan’s reply. And you did just have her exclusively for the last six days, I wanted to add, when the silence at the end of the line grew uncomfortably long. Actually, you’ve had her exclusively for the last six years, an advocating devil corrected in my head. I was bracing myself for his refusal, so he took the wind completely out of my sails when he eventually replied: ‘Yes. That should be absolutely fine. How about this afternoon?’

  The park had seemed like an excellent choice, and Hope skipped happily along beside me as we walked the twenty minutes or so to reach our destination. I smiled as she chattered enthusiastically about her recent holiday, the favourite bits of which seemed to involve either reindeers or huskies. Animals were clearly a passion with her, and I wondered how Mitch felt about his tenants keeping a pet. I could ask, I thought, already knowing it was a bad idea. I shouldn’t be trying to buy Hope’s affections, or attempting to lure her into visiting me. When the time was right, she should want to come and stay with me, regardless of how many furry creatures shared my home.

  I let Hope decide where we should head first, and she didn’t hesitate. ‘Swings!’ she cried gleefully, pulling me by the hand and tugging me across the grass, which was frosted with a thin crust of snow. I committed my first faux-pas when I tried to steer Hope towards the enclosed toddler-seat swings.

  ‘I haven’t been in those for years,’ she said, with a disparaging sigh, and for a moment I caught a brief glimpse of the petulant teenager she might one day become. My grin was difficult to stifle, because she’d looked and sounded exactly like me. My mother had once said it would serve me right if I had a stroppy teenager of my own one day, and I wondered if she was going to get her wish, and how sad it was that I wouldn’t be able to share that joke with her.

  ‘I’m sorry, Pumpkin. Of course you’re too grown-up for those.’ Hope raced across the artificial safety surface and leapt like a tiny stuntwoman onto the wooden seat of a far more substantial two-swing set. I watched her settle herself onto the plank and curl her hands around the thick metal chains. Before I had a chance to ask whether she’d like me to push her, she was kicking out her legs and swinging forward to gain momentum.

  I watched her for a moment, but she seemed utterly competent, so I gave a shrug, dropped my handbag on the ground and climbed onto the vacant swing beside her.

  ‘Maddieeeee!’ Hope exclaimed delightedly, as she watched me launch myself into the air, my long legs swallowing up, and then overtaking her head start. ‘You’re swinging. Are grown-ups allowed to do that?’

  To be honest, that thought hadn’t even occurred to me. There was probably a stuffy council notice nailed to the play area railings, prohibiting adults from climbing all over the apparatus. I shrugged my shoulders mischievously, which made me wobble slightly on my trajectory through the air.

  ‘I don’t know, kiddo. But I can’t see anyone around who’s going to tell me off, so let’s not worry about it,’ I replied, aware I was probably straying as far away from Chloe’s sensible parenting guidelines as it was possible to get.

  ‘When Mummy brings me here she just stands on the side and watches, or sometimes she pushes me,’ declared Hope as we passed each other through the air. ‘But this is much more fun.’

  I was smiling, and trying very hard not to mentally lick my finger and mark down a point for me. It wasn’t a contest, Mitch had said, and he was right. ‘You’re much more fun than a regular mummy,’ Hope declared, with all the honesty and innocence of youth. To hell with it, I thought, metaphorically licking that finger and noting down my score anyway.

  My legs were trembling from the unaccustomed activity by the time Hope eventually grew tired of the swings. Heidi should introduce this into her rehab exercises, I thought as I followed Hope on shaky legs towards a tall climbing frame with a slide on the side. This time I decided not to join her, worried that the slide’s narrow trough was designed for bottoms far younger – and slimmer – than mine. I liked firemen as much as the next girl, but I had no desire to meet a bunch of them while they were cutting me free from a piece of playground equipment.

  A little boy, around Hope’s age, joined her on the frame, and for a while I was happy to watch them tirelessly clamber and
race over the structure, small hands and feet scrabbling like mountain goats over the rungs. But as much as I wanted to be the cool and nonchalant grown-up, some of Chloe’s over-protectiveness must have rubbed off on me. Was that frame too high for her? Was she too young to be on it? And shouldn’t I have asked those questions before I allowed her to climb on it?

  ‘They’re fearless at that age, aren’t they?’ said a woman a year or so younger than me, who I assumed was the little boy’s mum. ‘But I’d really rather not spend another afternoon at Accident and Emergency,’ she said, sounding almost resigned.

  My eyes widened in alarm. Hope had now reached the topmost rungs and was attempting to swing monkey-style, using only one hand to support her weight.

  ‘Hope,’ I called out anxiously, and perhaps it was the sharpness of my tone, or perhaps she was always going to find it impossible to support her body with one tiny hand. She twisted to face me and in that second her equilibrium shifted and the next moment she wasn’t on the frame at all, but was tumbling down onto the ground some two metres below.

  Her howl of pain split the air, and I felt it ricocheting around the play area like an echo of blame as I raced across the distance to reach her. She was screaming so loudly I was convinced that at the very least bones had to be broken. ‘Don’t move,’ I cried out as I threw myself onto the ground beside her. Because that’s what you’re meant to say to casualties when they’re injured, isn’t it?

  I doubt Hope heard me over the impressive decibel level she was currently achieving with her cries, for she drew both her legs up protectively towards her body. The fact that everything appeared to move the way it was supposed to was only a small consolation when I saw the ripped tights and the blood pouring freely from two nastily grazed knees. Despite the safety surface, Hope had somehow managed to fall onto an earthy patch of frozen ground, and particles of dirt peppered the twin wounds like buckshot. The guilt smacked me like punch. This was my watch. This was my chance to show I knew how to look after her, and I’d failed miserably.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said, sounding more distraught than she did as I scrabbled in the depths of my handbag. ‘Let’s find something to get you cleaned up.’ I rummaged frantically among the detritus of my bag, as though it was a high-stakes lucky-dip, but all I could find were a couple of used tissues and some panty liners. Even my handbag didn’t know how to be a proper mother.

  The other mum knew no such deficiency, and she quickly passed me antiseptic wipes and a couple of oversized plasters from her own bag. My fingers trembled as I ripped open the packets, thanking her without looking up.

  ‘No worries. It’s every mother’s survival kit,’ she said with a smile.

  Except mine, I added silently, head bent low as I concentrated on cleaning up Hope’s injuries. Scared of hurting her further, I just covered the grazes with the wipes and tucked them into the gaping holes in her tights, watching with alarm as the squares turned from white to pink, and then red with worrying speed.

  ‘I want to go home. I don’t want to be with you. I want my real mummy,’ Hope wailed miserably, and I felt rather than saw the woman beside me stiffen and grip her own little boy’s hand more securely. Her expression of concern was replaced with one of immediate suspicion.

  ‘I’m her cousin,’ I said, answering the unspoken question in the stranger’s eyes, as I rose to my feet with Hope cradled in my arms. I hated the way Ryan’s lie suddenly felt more comfortable than the truth.

  ‘Come on, Pumpkin, let’s get you back home,’ I said to my daughter, who was now snivelling quietly against my shoulder. ‘Let’s get you back to your mummy.’

  I’d seen Ryan angry before. Well, I thought I had. There was the time when I reversed his brand-new car straight into a concrete bollard, marring the perfect paintwork. Then there was the time when I’d somehow muddled up our travel plans, and we’d gone to the wrong London airport, and missed our flight. Or the time I’d put my new red top in a wash load of his white shirts. But, despite whatever I might have thought at the time, that hadn’t been angry. This was angry.

  I didn’t say a word. I just let his words lash me like a whip. I flinched at some of them, how could I not. I caught irresponsible at least three times; inept made an appearance twice, but negligent was the one that cut the deepest.

  It didn’t seem to matter that Hope was now desperately trying to convince her father that it was all her fault, because he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t ever going to forgive me for this, and that was fine, because neither was I. And I couldn’t deny the truth. I shouldn’t have allowed Hope to climb like that. For God’s sake, she could have fallen and broken her neck. The thought made me feel physically sick.

  ‘Please don’t tell Maddie off,’ said Hope, from the safety of her position, fixed – as if by glue – to Chloe’s hip. It was where she’d been from the moment her parents had opened the front door and found two figures with long dark hair and tear-stained ashen faces standing on the step.

  ‘I shouldn’t have gone on the big children’s frame.’

  ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ agreed Chloe, the hand stroking her daughter’s head, soothing the sting from her words. ‘You know we don’t let you go on it. But Maddie didn’t know that.’

  Ryan was shaking his head, as though it was all too much to take in. ‘Well, one thing’s for certain. It won’t happen again. You’re clearly not ready to take Hope out on your own.’

  ‘Daddy,’ pleaded Hope, looking very much as if she was about to start crying again.

  ‘Ryan, please,’ I began, not knowing how on earth I could get him to trust me, when I didn’t even trust me now.

  But the words which finally pierced the red mist of his anger were surprisingly Chloe’s, not mine. ‘Come on now. Let’s keep this all in proportion.’

  ‘What? Are you serious?’ Ryan said, turning to his wife, who seemed to suddenly grow in stature as I watched her shoulders pull back when she answered him.

  ‘Kids do this kind of stuff all the time. They run off, they go where they’re not meant to go. It doesn’t make you a negligent parent.’

  ‘Well it doesn’t make you a terrific one either,’ countered Ryan.

  Chloe was quiet for a long moment, as though considering. ‘Nor does dropping her, when she’s only a baby,’ she said softly.

  I felt as if I’d walked into a play that had started several scenes ago, and I had no idea what was going on.

  ‘She fell onto the bed.’ Ryan’s voice was so quiet, I could hardly hear him.

  ‘Or the time you shut her finger in the cupboard door?’

  ‘What?’ Ryan sounded startled to hear his parenting misdemeanours being presented as evidence. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’

  ‘Or taking off the training wheels on her bike, when she wasn’t ready?’

  ‘All kids graze their knees when they’re learning to ride.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Chloe, as though she was an attorney in a court of law, who’d just made a very valid closing argument. ‘We all make mistakes when we’re learning to be a parent.’ Her eyes went from Ryan to me. ‘We’ve all done it.’

  There was something in Chloe’s eyes that I’d never expected to see there. If I had to name it, it would be called kindness. ‘Maddie’s coming to all this very late in the day. The mistakes you and I made are years in the past. Maddie’s playing catch-up, and she’s going to make a few of her own. The important thing here,’ she paused and her eyes went to her husband’s, and for a moment I felt totally excluded by the bond they shared. ‘The important thing is no one was seriously hurt. Apart from a few grazes, everything is fine.’

  She turned away from the man we’d both fallen in love with, to face me. ‘Hope rolled off the settee when I was changing her nappy once. I’d only looked away for a second to grab the wipes, but when I looked back she was staring up at me from the carpet. Then, when she was three, I lost her in a busy shopping centre. I was running up and down the stairs like a lunatic. They�
�d even put a message out on the tannoy when a security guard came up to me, carrying her in his arms.’ She looked at me for a very long moment. ‘We all do it. And we all beat ourselves up about it. But the important thing is that we all learn from it.’

  I nodded fiercely as though taking an oath.

  ‘Then let’s put today behind us, and move on,’ Chloe said firmly.

  Chloe

  He waited much longer than I’d been expecting, almost five hours in fact, to raise the subject once more. I was in the kitchen, loading the final items into the dishwasher. I heard the click of the kitchen door and slowly straightened. The overhead lights were switched off, leaving the room bathed in a soft glow from the cabinet lights.

  ‘Is she asleep?’ I asked.

  Ryan nodded and came to stand opposite me, leaning back against the worktop. There was an unreadable expression on his face.

  ‘Hope never fell off the settee when you were changing her.’

  It might have sounded like an odd way to begin a conversation, but I’d been expecting it. I stared into the blue eyes I loved so much, and said nothing.

  ‘You never lost her at the shopping centre. I know you didn’t.’

  The room seemed very silent, with only the quiet hum of the dishwasher as a backdrop to our conversation. I didn’t bother denying his accusations. We knew each other too well.

  ‘And your point is?’

  Ryan pushed away from the worktop and crossed to where I stood. His arms slid around me slowly, as if it was the very first time he’d ever held me.

  ‘The point is . . .’ he said, his voice and his head lowering almost simultaneously, ‘. . . the point is, is that I love you for lying. I love you for trying to make her feel better. I love you for not taking my side. I love you for making me see I was wrong.’ His mouth was so close to mine, I could feel the warmth of his words as his breath brushed my lips. ‘I just love you,’ he said finally, before his mouth found mine and words at last became redundant.