‘Are you okay? Do you need a minute?’ comes David’s voice.
I make a noise, small but affirmative.
We sit in silence for that minute, for two of those minutes. Then David speaks.
‘Naomi and Luke moved back to Chicago. It’s not your fault that she did this. It wasn’t because of what happened with you.’
There is silence, end to end.
‘Harriet, do you understand what I am saying to you?’ David asks.
I am dizzy. I need sugar, or an arm around my shoulder.
‘No,’ I whisper, childlike.
Silence, again.
‘Do you hear me, Harriet? It’s not your fault. This is way bigger than that. Bigger and longer-term.’
I don’t know what he means. I think I might vomit.
‘Harriet, I spoke to some mutual acquaintances after I saw Luke. I did some digging.’
I can’t speak and cradle the phone to my ear with a shaking hand.
‘That day I saw him, when he told me Naomi had died, Luke tried to blame you.’
‘He was right,’ I said quietly, tears rolling prolifically down my face. ‘I did this. I did it.’
‘Harriet, listen to me. I’m not saying what you did wasn’t bad, but it didn’t do this. I found a friend of Naomi’s on Facebook. I met up with her one night, we talked for hours. Naomi’s injuries were quite bad, yes, but they weren’t life-ending. They were fading, slowly. She covered them mostly with make-up. They weren’t something that makes somebody kill themselves.’
Still, unclear.
‘What, then?’ I whisper. ‘What did?’
‘Harriet,’ David says very softly. ‘Naomi’s friend told me that she was in an abusive relationship.’
I frown. Had Naomi and Luke broken up? Had Naomi moved on?
‘Like you were.’
Me?
My heart starts pounding because yes, it has been suggested to me in therapy that Luke mentally – and sometimes physically and sexually – abused me. But it isn’t real, is it? That wasn’t what that was. I still know that most of it was down to me. Luke wasn’t a monster.
‘Luke abused Naomi, too. “Gaslighted” her, her friend called it. Stripped her confidence. Charmed her and then turned on her, belittled her, blamed her. All of the things he did to you. And Naomi was his type from the beginning: already depressed, low self-esteem, vulnerable.’
I think of myself when Luke met me. Depressed, low self-esteem, vulnerable. The words sounded familiar. Yet, how could they apply to confident, pristine Naomi?
Normally, I love the anonymity of non-face-to-face contact. Now, I wish so hard that David were here, in person, so that I could rest for a minute on his shoulder and absorb this.
‘By all accounts, his abuse and his taunts got worse and worse, and Naomi couldn’t cope with it. She took her own life. Because of her depression and because of Luke. It might have started rosy, but you were seeing it through a lens, Harriet. He did to her, what he did to you, especially by the end. He got bored and he played with her.’
‘No,’ I say, tears falling so fast now that my eyes hurt. ‘She did this because of me, I caused this.’
‘Are you still fucking defending him?’ David shouts, exasperated now. ‘Even now? I’m telling you that this guy is an abuser, that he did it to two of you – at least – and you still blame yourself. Look at what he has done to you. Look at what he has done to our family. Jesus, Harriet. Come on.’
But I ring off and mutter goodbye, and then I roar and yell, clawing at my sofa. It doesn’t matter what David says, my brain can’t compute anything other than Naomi’s death being my fault.
But how can I bear that? How can I have done this? How can I be responsible for this? I cannot even have contributed to this. I am not a bad person. I’m a bit much, and I’m weak, and I have done bad things, but I am not bad, I’m not, I’m not. Frances loved me. I write songs that make people feel things. I care deeply about David.
But I am so appalled by myself now that I throw up over and over straight onto the carpet.
When I am empty, I lie prone next to the vomit on the floor. When I am hungry, hours – days? – later, I gnaw stale bread standing up in the kitchen and I bring that up, too.
And it’s only then that somehow I can think a little more clearly. Were the words that David – and my therapist – said, true? Was I abused? And was Naomi, who I thought was so different to me, so together, Luke’s next victim? Did he flirt in front of her, criticise her doves? It seems impossible that I can have read a situation and another woman so inaccurately and yet, doesn’t it happen every day, all day? Skewed perspectives, everywhere. Look at how I used to view Lexie.
The next day, I finally reply to the text my brother sent me after our conversation, concerned about my reaction, hammering home his point.
Don’t worry about me, I type. Just off to meet friends for drinks xx
My favourite thing about text and email and any communication that doesn’t involve eye contact or time sensitivity is how unprecedentedly fine I can be all the time.
No one can ever catch you at a bad moment or take you off guard or make you blurt something out or read your eyes. Even I can be a woman, heading into Soho to drink one too many amaretto and Cokes at an old friend’s birthday do. I can be breezy and happy, enough to reassure even the people who know me best. I can fake it and omit things. I can build a picture of something that isn’t happening. I can present an existence-sized lie.
I’m fine, David, I continue. In fact, better than fine … I message. I add a wink emoji. Then, for good measure, because David’s never been one for subtlety and indeed, neither have I, I add the little picture of the happy couple and the words ‘new man’.
Oooh! says David, and I can virtually hear the relief tinged with terror and his breathing through his message. Name??
I reply.
Tom.
74
Lexie
April
Time has passed, slowly, with a distance between Tom and me, and a sadness, and we are here again.
Even though I’ve been through the IVF procedure before, the part on embryo transfer day where I have to drink enough water to give myself a full bladder but not wet myself next to the coffee machine in the waiting room hasn’t gone well.
‘Have you drunk any water at all?’ asks a nurse, harsh, and I am so prickly that I am defensive about this, the most ludicrous of things but also, not. The bladder affects the uterus affects the embryo affects the baby affects the life.
This is the most important thing in my world. Does she think I wouldn’t follow the rules?
‘Three more cups of tea and two water,’ she prescribes, opening the door, and Tom heads back to the drinks machine, hands me my first cup.
I walk, up and down a corridor, as this will apparently make the liquid reach my bladder faster. Sip, sip, sip in time with my footsteps.
Here we are, again.
There is nausea and discomfort but I welcome them. They are physical and right now that is what I need: to be distracted from the mental. People pay big money for mindfulness as effective as this.
Every time I pace, I pass a woman, glamorous, beautiful, mounds of blonde professionally done hair, from another London world to mine.
Her bag, her demeanour, everything says Kensington and private members’ clubs and oligarchs. My bag, my demeanour, everything says northern comprehensive school, cheesy Soho nightclubs and a massive dose of imposter syndrome.
But here, we’re equals. We have taken the same drugs, placed our feet in the same stirrups, and we have the same chance.
We pace past each other. She sips, I sip.
We don’t look at each other for a while because is that offensive? Invasive? Is there anything to smile about here? Isn’t this far too serious a situation to smile in? But in the end, we do. Because we are human, and no human couldn’t think that this situation warrants a wry smile. I think of hugging Shona close and I fight
the urge to take this woman – struggling, hoping, desperate, whatever handbag she has – into my arms, too.
In she goes to the doctor – and out again, more tea.
Sip, sip.
In I go – and out again, more tea.
‘More tea,’ we say, brandishing our polystyrene cups, hoping this one will be the one that tilts our bladder to the right angle to make our uterus right, and receive the right embryo, and make our lives and our futures right.
We think – or I think – about the women who become pregnant by having sex in their beds. The ones who suddenly realise their period is a week late. The ones who didn’t plan it, who necked four shots of tequila then accidentally conceived.
And then there is us, the other women, who become pregnant – we hope – by injecting hormones and inserting suppositories and drinking enough tea to feel like we might be sick. And by pacing. Sip, sip, sip.
This woman and I are relay racers, teammates but competitors. I look at her and wonder – who gets the good news in two weeks? Could it be both? Could it be neither? Is good news for her bad news for me? Has she done this before, too? How many times? One? Sixteen? What an odd thing, that we will leave here today and I will never know.
Tom is sitting next to her partner, a large, scowling man in his fifties. Tom has started to scowl as well, as though it is contagious.
A nurse walks by and I grab her.
‘I’m about to wet myself,’ I say, crying now – this is true torture, though it may sound comical. I am rocking front to back, I am in pain.
She takes Tom and me into a room.
‘D’you think you can just let a little bit out?’ she says and I grab the pot from her hand, yank my jeans down and wee in it standing up and in front of Tom and a small Asian nurse, who looks alarmed.
‘I meant in the toilet,’ she says at the same moment that Tom says: ‘Lex, I don’t think you took the pot wrapper off.’
On the floor, there is a small puddle, sitting there neatly alongside my dignity.
75
Lexie
May
It’s 10 a.m. on the date that a nurse scribbled on a piece of paper, two weeks ago, next to the words ‘Do test/call hospital’. Again.
Tom has booked the day off work. Again.
And still, we haven’t done the test.
Because what if it’s not worked again? What then? Our NHS tries are up and we will need to gather something like five thousand pounds and the emotional energy to go private.
We will need to consider how many of those tries we can afford – if any – and at what point we draw a line and stop.
Right now, I feel like I have no resilience or ability to dig deep. So it’s safer, I conclude irrationally, not to do the test.
By 11 a.m., though, still in bed hiding behind an Elena Ferrante novel, Tom leans over from his space next to me on his iPad and whispers: ‘We have to do the test.’
He rests his nose on my temple. ‘Come on. We can do it together.’
And so, we head silently to the bathroom. I wee in front of Tom, on the stick, hands shaking into the liquid. Again.
Tom sits on the bathroom floor, holding his knees and looking transfixed by a tiny bit of mould next to the shower. After I wee I immediately look away, panicking that a negative result will show up any second and I might see it and then it will be real, like last time.
I leave the room and lie face down on our bed and wait there instead, a child myself.
76
Harriet
May
The weeks after I left the hospital were some of the best of my life.
No one expected anything from me.
I wasn’t working, I had no friends, I had no hope any longer that maybe there was something I could do to change Luke’s mind. I had wiped the slate so clean that in it, I could see my solitary face.
My mom and dad still called and emailed endlessly, so I switched my phone off, deleted the messages.
I didn’t have the restrictions of the hospital: I could sleep from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m. but lie awake playing games on my phone at 3 a.m. I could numb my brain with noise and pointlessness. I didn’t have to talk or think, as I had had to do incessantly for the last few months.
I could get drunk and fall asleep and not worry that I might have missed an appointment or a pill. Because really, did it matter? I knew now that I was bad, and I had accepted it, and it was simple.
I didn’t work, as I had been in hospital for long enough that I had fallen off the radar and had no ongoing projects to pick up and focus on. I didn’t touch my piano. Again, what was the point?
Instead, I lay face down on my bed for large portions of the day, dressed sometimes, naked others, and I saw white noise TV come and go in front of my eyes. In retrospect, it’s obvious that I was waiting for somebody to find a way in to help me. And no one did.
Now, as I think about Naomi’s death, as I know – really – that I must be to blame, it is like being back there. Sometimes I drink until I black out at 11 a.m. Sometimes I vomit until my chest hurts. Sometimes I cry, terribly, and I dream about her blonde hair and her bare skin and always, about her doves.
And I wait for somebody to find a way in to help me. Nobody does.
77
Lexie
May
Hour-long minutes pass and I know I need to deal with this, whatever it may bring. I know I need to be brave, but I am made of jelly and terror.
I heave myself up from the bed, shove my feet into my slippers and walk slowly to the bathroom. Tom, who had followed me back into the bedroom, is behind me. Steeling himself for what his role may need to be today. Supportive partner, rock, voice of reason, mental punchbag, simply a shape on which I can cry.
I breathe, trying for deeply, but it’s shallow and raspy with nerves.
I think of Maurice from yoga. I picture his lit candle.
And then I push the bathroom door open and look down.
Next thing, Tom and I are wrapped around each other and again, I am a child. I cling to him, I cry, I heave, and he now does the same.
But this time it is different.
This time, I am being told that there are presents downstairs, Father Christmas has been. This time, something magical has happened. This time, it says yes.
I’m doing heaving sobs, every tiny part of me shaking as though it is minus twenty. This is the biggest influx of emotion I have felt in my life and already I am thinking: Shit. Calm down. Is this much shock good for the baby?
Because there is a baby.
Tom is smiling at me and hugging me and whispering one word: positive.
The test is positive. I feel positive. After so long of negative, there is positive.
And just like that, there is a new reality.
I think of last time, when our baby didn’t stick, and every time I go to the toilet it is like sitting in front of a doctor and steeling yourself for the worst news.
But it is impossible to block it out and pretend it’s not happening, because this Almost Baby is there, in all its physicality. I am only five weeks pregnant, but I am so bloated from all of the fertility drugs that my normal clothes no longer fit comfortably.
Days later I am opening a parcel containing a pair of maternity jeans. I stroke them. My pregnancy is tangible and it feels like size 14 super-soft denim.
I meet Anais for lunch, determined that I will keep this baby – this barely a baby – a secret. Until we’ve had a scan at least. Until it’s safer.
Anais looks nervous of me, wary. I know she is thinking before she speaks, tiptoeing around me like I am her sleeping child, just off for a much-needed nap. It’s understandable, I think, I don’t blame her.
‘We could get the goat’s cheese?’ she says, looking at the shared small-plates menu.
I look at her son, Dexter, who is sleeping next to us in a pram. It is only the third time that I have met Dexter. Dexter has been my enemy. Dexter is seven months old.
My eyes
spill with tears, but then there is more than that and out of nowhere I am sobbing on a shared table, as people try not to look at me and focus on their charred broccoli.
Dexter stretches and yawns.
Anais springs out of her chair and hugs me, and I think of how it used to feel, in the months when her bump was in the way and I wish we could go back. Do it all again. To a version of events where I don’t resent her happiness. Where I can be kind. A friend.
‘I want to explain some things,’ I start, pulling away, but Anais stays where she is and clings more.
‘You don’t need to,’ she says, speaking through her own sob as it catches in her throat. ‘I knew. I always knew.’
Was it so obvious? Did everyone know? I feel oddly relieved at the idea that that might be true.
And then we stay there until we have calmed down, the rest of the diners possibly thinking Anais has fallen asleep on me through baby-induced sleep deprivation.
I know I shouldn’t tell her, I know it’s too soon, but it’s impossible now not to complete the picture.
‘I’m pregnant,’ I whisper into her hair, and she pulls away with her eyes wide and then kisses my head over and over, crying herself. Then she hugs me again.
‘I don’t think I can have goat’s cheese?’ I say through tears that keep coming and aren’t slowing.
Dex stirs; cries lazily, half-heartedly.
Anais pulls away and says softly as she wipes a tear from her own face and then one from mine: ‘Goat’s cheese is fine when it’s cooked, my love.’
She takes Dex out of his pram and hands him to me, and I sit him on my knee while he giggles. When she takes him back, I look down at my stomach. I still feel the anxiety. But surely. Surely. Nothing can hurt us now, can it?
78
Harriet
June
It has been months since David told me about Naomi. How long exactly is hazy. I’m drunk, now, as I often am. Sometimes I don’t sleep for days; other times I sleep for eighteen hours. I am barely working; my bank account is in the red.
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