‘I don’t care,’ James told me. He pulled me close and felt my shivers. ‘Hey,’ he said gently, ‘don’t be scared.’ That’s when he took me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length. My left cheek had a single stray tear that I cursed for escaping, for betraying my feelings. ‘I want you to move in with me and the boys, Claudia. I want that more than anything else in the world. Say you will.’
Inside the privacy of my head, my answer snapped out immediately: Yes! But I knew better than that so I put on my thoughtful face, tried to quash the smile that wanted to erupt. This was the start of a new life. Finally, after all the heartbreak and emotional turmoil I’d suffered with Martin, I was being offered another chance at happiness. I’d never thought it would happen. ‘That’s utterly crazy,’ I said with a laugh. James laughed, too. In fact, he’d laughed in the days immediately after learning of Elizabeth’s passing, and I couldn’t quite understand. Now, knowing him as I do, I realise it was his way of coping. A person can only take so much stress before their minds naturally divert them as close as possible to normality. It’s self-protection and, to a certain extent, I was doing exactly the same thing. We were both on the rebound, both hopelessly lost and needy, though trying to be terribly sensible and grown up about it.
‘Crazy, yes. But I’ve fallen in love with you, Claudia. I want to marry you. I want you to be a mother to Oscar and Noah.’
I only heard the words I want you to be a mother. It was the nearest he ever got to a proposal. The actual wedding seemed to flow as naturally as me cooking supper or taking care of the boys without him ever actually asking again.
How many times had I tried to be someone’s mother? How many times had I failed?
Suddenly, I wasn’t a failure any more. I ignored the shrieks of doubt in my head; indeed, I ignored the cautious warnings of family and friends when they raised eyebrows and made comments about the dubious timing of my relationship with James. He’s just lost his wife, Claudia . . . Do you really want to take on someone else’s children? . . . His money’s come from his dead wife . . . I had no idea of the extent of what Elizabeth left him or her family fortunes; I’m still uncertain about James’s private affairs. But the comments and warnings came thick and fast from do-gooders uncomfortable with my new-found happiness.
For us, it was simple. He was hurting. I was hurting. Together, we were mended. It never once occurred to me that James was using me as a surrogate mother or a convenient live-in nanny and housekeeper to heal his broken life. And if this had crossed my mind, I would have dismissed it immediately. I loved James and I loved his sons. I wanted to be their mother. I wanted to be James’s wife. He’d promised me a baby of my own and I trusted him to give me that. To begin with I didn’t dare mention all my miscarriages and stillbirths. I wanted that to be a part of my past, not my future. I’d concluded it was all Martin’s fault and nothing to do with my body. Even when the doctors told me they doubted I’d ever be able to have children, I refused to give up hope.
‘Damn and bugger,’ I say just as Zoe comes home. She’s singing to herself.
‘Did I hear someone cursing?’ she says jovially, poking her head round the sitting-room door.
She catches me sucking my finger. ‘I’m completely useless,’ I tell her, glancing up casually. I wave the blouse about.
‘I’m so sorry, I meant to do that for you.’ Zoe blushes a little and comes in, gently taking the garment from me. The tiny button dangles from the knotted cotton. She doesn’t know that I wasn’t swearing about the blouse or, indeed, my pricked finger. I was swearing because of my stupidity in mentioning Zoe to the police before I’d spoken to her myself.
She sits down next to me. ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.
I look intently at her face. There’s nothing to betray any underhandedness, and nothing, either, to give away my anxiety.
‘Zoe, sit down. There’s something I need to ask you.’
‘Oh, OK,’ she says obligingly. ‘What’s up?’ There’s a little line of doubt in her voice, but nothing that reflects what I’m about to bring up.
‘When I was looking for that book up in the attic, Zoe, I couldn’t help noticing that there was blood on one of your sweatshirts.’ I pause. Now she knows I was in her room.
‘Oh that,’ she says with the beginnings of an embarrassed smile.
‘I wasn’t snooping, I promise,’ I add. ‘I thought the book might still be in your wardrobe.’ I had indeed once stored some of my university papers and books in that wardrobe. ‘But I forgot that I’d moved some of them into the basement before you arrived. I spotted the sweatshirt and was wondering if you’d hurt yourself.’ I can’t possibly mention the photos or the pregnancy test kit now as well.
‘Yes, I did hurt myself,’ Zoe says automatically. She holds her shoulder. ‘I fell off my bike. But I’m OK,’ she adds, probably because my face is adopting a disbelieving expression. ‘I was dashing down to the shops to get some milk and my brakes failed. Don’t worry, the boys were at school. It stopped bleeding eventually. More of a broad surface graze than anything, but because I carried on to the shop, it made a right mess of my sweatshirt.’
I stare at her. It sounds entirely plausible except I can’t help wondering why she didn’t mention it to me.
‘I would have told you but didn’t want you to have any more worries,’ she says as if she’s read my mind. She reaches out and taps my arm. ‘Or for you to think that I’m a clumsy idiot as well as a bad driver.’
I can see her point.
‘Do you want to see the graze?’ She makes to unzip her top and wriggle out of the sleeve.
‘Oh, no, really. You don’t have to do that.’ I feel stupid now. ‘I’m sorry for asking.’
‘Claudia’ – she pauses while staring into my eyes – ‘I would have asked too if I’d seen my nanny’s top covered in blood.’ She laughs, probably more than is warranted, and begins to unpick the mess I’ve made of sewing on the button.
36
MOVING IN WITH Cecelia two years ago wasn’t an easy decision to make. Neither was moving out. Now I’ve left, I’m worried what will become of her. I feel utterly responsible for her well-being yet every sane cell in my body screams at me never to go back, that she is poison, that as long as I’m with her I’ll be weighed down as heavy as the crazy thoughts that inhabit her mind.
She’s always battled with her health – body as well as mind; mostly mind – and I’m sympathetic as far as I can be. But Cecelia isn’t like other women. No one apart from me understands her, gets her irrational fears or anxious fits that can take place any time of day or night. I was the one who trailed her around the darkened high street in the dead of night when she went Christmas shopping in July. It was me who picked her up from hospital and held ice against her cut feet after she’d walked ten miles barefoot searching for a baby that didn’t exist. No one except me knows what she’s been through; no one but me understands her need to be loved a certain way – a way that only a real mother can, she once said.
It’s for this reason that Cecelia refuses to adopt – not that she’d be allowed to anyway. Despite her innate desire to reproduce, she truly believes she’s always been infertile – even before her operation. She says her hips are too narrow and nothing would want to grow inside her anyway. She says God made her barren as the desert. Sometimes, I’m inclined to agree.
So, one way or another, it’s fallen to me to get her a baby. I admit, it started off as me humouring her, to keep her agitated thoughts passive and her imagination sated. But as she began to believe what I was telling her – that somehow, one day I would get her a child – she behaved, worked and functioned in a semi-normal way. It was, I concluded, all about keeping the hope alive.
Cecelia demanded that we co-parent the baby. I thought about it. I had doubts as to whether either of us was ready to mother a child but, because it soothed Cecelia, because I was trying to hold down a demanding job while looking after her needs, I allowed her to believe I wo
uld do it.
She had always been determined and, frighteningly, for me, she was furiously planning and getting it all worked out. I would continue to be the breadwinner while she looked after the child. She would continue to make her jewellery but in a scaled-down way. She wanted me to get pregnant from a sperm donor. That’s where the plan fell apart, really. I didn’t conceive.
I can’t say I tried my hardest: unbeknown to her, I flushed the samples down the toilet without even trying. After the sperm bank didn’t work, we supposedly tried seven times with sperm given to us by a good friend. After that she made me try a couple of other willing friends, and then when that failed Cecelia announced she wanted me to hook up with a man in person – any good-looking chap would do, she said – and I remember laughing so hard it made me feel sick. ‘Hook up?’ I asked. ‘You make it sound like a lab experiment or in-flight refuelling.’ I was shaking my head all the while, worried she would actually want to witness the act. There was no way I was doing it. Stringing Cecelia along with botched inseminations was one thing, but ending up pregnant by a random man was quite another. Still, I had to keep the hope inside her alive. It was pretty much the same as keeping her alive, even though I was beginning to feel Cecelia’s madness might be contagious. Work was becoming harder and harder for me alongside keeping Cecelia’s demands at bay. Deep down, I knew I had to get away but had no idea it would be nearly another year before I finally did.
It was a Christmas party that so very nearly got Cecelia what she wanted. It was almost classic, along the lines of a photocopier fumble or water-cooler tryst except we had full-blown unprotected sex in a hotel room. All the while I was thinking of Cecelia, pretending I was doing it for her. Really, it was because I couldn’t admit to wanting to do it with a man I didn’t know. After taking care of Cecelia and being part of her crazy world, and holding down a job, the notion of actually enjoying myself was rather foreign. But it was Christmas, after all, and my short hair came tumbling down. It was the glint of his wedding ring under the bedside lamp while he pulled on his socks that sent me running to the chemist to buy the morning-after pill the next day.
As I sat with the pill’s empty foil packet in my hands, waiting for the chemicals to work their magic, I mulled over the night before. He’d wanted my number.
‘But you’re married,’ I’d reminded him. I tried to imagine his wife.
His answer was a shrug as he buttoned up his shirt. He was good-looking and fit, intelligent too, but I couldn’t imagine why he’d done this. When he was ready to leave, he took me by the shoulders. ‘Yes, I am,’ he said, with the first glimmer of regret. ‘But I want to see you again.’
Perhaps he thought that’s what I wanted to hear and he had no intention of ever really calling.
‘Well you’re not going to,’ I told him.
In the end, he concurred easily. ‘You’re right.’
I wished him a merry Christmas and left, praying I wouldn’t see him again.
I actually told Cecelia about my encounter – a kind of twisted Christmas present to keep her going until my next period, although I didn’t mention the pill I’d taken. She was overjoyed with what I’d done. Never mind the taste of guilt I’d been left with for shagging some woman’s husband.
But then a week later, Cecelia went into one of her unfathomable and petulant fits of moodiness. She refused to get out of bed, wash, eat or talk except when she screamed at me. I had no idea why. It was just what she did from time to time. It lasted at least the next three weeks, and by the end of January I’d had enough. I told her I was going to leave.
‘If you do, I’ll kill myself,’ she announced, and I knew she would, so I stayed.
I was desperate with worry for Cecelia yet felt the weight of our turbulent lives together pressing down on my shoulders. I was at a loss what to do. We muddled along for most of the rest of the year and things seemed to get better. But come November when the leaves turned and the wind whipped up, so did Cecelia’s mood once again. She catapulted herself into a particularly high-functioning manic state and worked tirelessly on pieces for a London show. Her jewellery was selling well and, at the time, she was making more money than me.
Then she found another willing donor. Cecelia wanted to try for a baby again. After all, that’s what I’d always promised her. This time I did it properly, for her sake – for my conscience’s sake. I thought it might make things better even though I prayed it would fail. But her mood got worse. Things could have been good for us but she continued to hiss and spit and growl at me just for being alive, as if I was the cause of her illness. My days became more and more miserable and I was hauled in front of my boss several times for performance issues.
So when I learnt of the job with Claudia and James, I decided it would be a fresh start for us both, and I finally left Cecelia. If it turned out I was pregnant, I’d do the right thing and go back to her. If I wasn’t, then I swore to myself it would be over.
Deep in my heart, in the place where it hurt the most, I knew I didn’t mean it, that I would never really leave her. But then wasn’t I being petulant too? I’m ashamed to say it, but the day I walked out of our flat, I was filled with hate for her.
*
So here I am, out to impress my boss, thinking of my future and welfare for once, but all I see are final warnings and last chances. Cecelia flashes through my mind, her hair blowing wildly; her laugh, spilling out through a demented toothy grin, jangles between my ears. If I’m honest, everything seems bland and empty without her – a vague reverberation of lives once shared echoing around the edges of a dream that fizzled out for what, a nameless baby? I can’t blame Cecelia for everything that doesn’t go my way, but feeling so responsible for her has taken its toll. Inexplicably, I still want to look after her.
I take the long way back from the shops. It gives me time to think about what Claudia told me this morning: that the police came calling again last night. Why didn’t she tell me when I was sewing on her button? She seemed more concerned with confessing to snooping in my room, even though she says she was just looking for a book. I’m not stupid. And what if she found my camera and saw the photographs? I don’t think any amount of explaining-away would prevent her from sacking me on the spot. As it was, I don’t think she believed me when I told her I fell off my bike. I should have been more careful than to leave a blood-stained top lying about.
‘What did they want exactly?’ I asked earlier as I made the boys’ breakfast. Each twin stuck an ear close to the cereal when I told them to count the pops. It kept them amused as I chopped up some fruit and asked their mother about the detectives. ‘It was rather inconsiderate of them to come calling so late.’
Claudia looked embarrassed. ‘They asked questions about my work,’ she said, plausibly.
I arrive back and unlock the front door, ready to get on with everything I need to do. Immediately, I freeze. There are low voices coming from somewhere inside the house. Unfamiliar male voices. Cautiously, I peer out of the front door again, down the drive and beyond into the street. It looks tempting, safe, full of freedom and the rest of my life if I choose to run. I’m about to turn, make a dash, when two well-dressed men appear in the hallway. One of them is clutching a stack of papers and they look as surprised to see me as I am to see them.
‘Who are you?’ I’m shaking, pulsing with adrenalin. They might not be intruders. They could be friends of Claudia.
‘We were about to ask you the same thing,’ the tall blond one says.
‘Are you family friends? I wasn’t expecting anyone.’ I take a step sideways, trying to see what they’ve been up to. This doesn’t feel right. Judging by the files they are holding, they’ve been in James’s study. My heart pounds as I edge forward, rounding the corner to see what they’ve done. I gasp when I get a view of the study door. The lock has been jimmied open. The wood is splintered. ‘Oh my God,’ I say, taking several steps back, ‘you’ve broken in!’
The fearful look on my face tempers
the cocky attitude of the men and the shorter one holds up his free hand in defence. ‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he says. ‘We’re Elizabeth’s brothers. We’ve come to collect some of her things.’ His expression is cold and devoid of emotion.
‘But you’ve broken in,’ I say, trying to buy a moment to think. This is not good. My job will be on the line for sure. ‘I’m really sorry about your sister. I never met her, but . . .’ I’m frowning. I’m rubbing my forehead. They broke the lock on James’s door. Every bit of me screams out to call the police . . . except I can’t. ‘Look, should I phone Claudia to let her know you’re here? I’m her nanny.’
The two men seem more at ease when I mention who I am. Just the dumb nanny. ‘We’re leaving now so no need to bother her,’ the blond one says with a nasty grin. ‘Nice to meet you. And sorry about the door.’ They stride briskly out of the house.
‘But . . .’ I say, holding out my arms helplessly as they pass. I’m certain they shouldn’t be taking all those documents, and when I realise the implications, I make a dash for the downstairs toilet. I throw up. Then I set to work cleaning up the mess they’ve made.
37
‘THANKS FOR ATTENDING at short notice,’ Adam said to the team of detectives working on the investigation. Some were chatting, some were perched on the edge of desks, while a couple leant against the wall. Everyone wanted to get on. Lorraine was jabbing buttons on her phone, working her way through the school’s options menu. Adam scowled at her but she didn’t care. He could update her later. She stepped out into the corridor, but the reception wavered so she darted out of a side door to the small area of concrete where the smokers went. She could hardly hear the headmaster’s secretary when she finally came on the line.
Until You're Mine Page 27