Apple of My Eye

by Claire Allan

  She shushes me. ‘She was in a lot of pain, Eli. You said she was screaming with pain. She was dying, Eli. She could’ve passed away at any time.’ She’s whispering.

  She knows as well as I do that officially it’s not likely to be seen like that. There will be an investigation. An inquest. Repercussions for my career, but that’s not even what hurts the most now.

  ‘She had a chance to see him. I took away her chance. His chance.’

  I feel grief buckle me in half. Grief and more. Shame. Embarrassment. Guilt. As I sob, I swear I can feel every ounce of confidence I have in who I think I am, how good I consider myself to be, release itself from my body into the room around me. Until there’s nothing left but the shell of who I was – and the galloping heartbeat of a child who’s unfortunate enough to have me for a mother.

  I watch as Rachel talks to the others in the room. There’s talk of a possible autopsy. As if Dotty hasn’t been through enough.

  I hear Rachel talk. ‘She’s been under a lot of stress. There’s been some trouble at home. Anyone would crack. I probably shouldn’t have called her in for the shift.’

  I feel gut-punched. ‘Some trouble at home.’ It would be laughable, really. I look at her as she talks more, dropping her voice to a whisper. I want to tell her to speak up. Ask what she’s saying. That my husband is cheating? That I’m not capable? She’s supposed to be on my side. Not this. Not hanging out my dirty laundry. Talking about my personal life. Playing the innocent.

  I see sympathetic looks in my direction. I don’t deserve them. Rachel turns to me, urges me to drink the tea. ‘For the shock,’ she repeats. There’s a confidence about her. Is it superiority? Is it because my life is more of a colossal disaster than she perceives hers to be? She has the upper hand. The impeccable career. Everyone’s friend. My husband’s lover …

  I think of the notes, and the faux sympathy, and her face as she tells our colleagues that I’m ‘not myself’, and I wonder how I ever trusted her in the first place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Louise

  Someone once told me the definition of a sin was when you intentionally hurt yourself or other people.

  If the intention is not to hurt, then it couldn’t be a sin.

  I may have been aware that my actions would result in people getting hurt, but my intention was never to hurt them. Hurting people was never my driving factor.

  Love was my driving force.

  Love was what made me want to give that baby the very best in life.

  Love was what made me want to spend hours being the best parent I could.

  Love was what made me push my concerns to one side, to encourage the advances of a married man – when they came. I prayed my God would forgive me. Would understand that I’d been a weak and flawed human. Would understand that I’d been blinded by love.

  I never wanted to hurt his wife. So it was only a couple of times. I knew I had to let him be with her. I knew I had my own plans in place and I wasn’t prepared to let go of them.

  And I knew, with the utmost certainty in the world, that he’d never, ever leave her. She was the mother of his unborn child, after all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Angela

  Eliana’s been gone less than twenty-four hours when she calls me to ask if she can come back.

  I can barely make out what she’s saying. Her voice is little more than a whisper, but I know something is very wrong. A mother knows.

  When I hear how upset she is, I expect her to tell me she’s finally had it out with Martin. I hope she’s told him where to go. I used to like him, love him even, but he’s proven in recent times that he doesn’t deserve to have her in his life. He’s not a man to be trusted.

  He’s still denying that he’s cheating, of course, despite all the allegations that have been made over the last few days. All the evidence that something is up. Poor Eli, too trusting always.

  From the moment she told me about the first note, I’ve been anticipating this phone call. Steeling myself for it. Waiting for the moment I’d be asked to step in and soothe her, offer a listening ear, a warm hug and a big cup of tea by the fire.

  I know that when things go wrong, she turns to me. We’re so close. We always have been. Of all the relationships in my life, my bond with Eli is the one I value most. I’ll do everything I can to protect her from hurt. Especially now she’s pregnant. It’s been so difficult to watch her struggle with her pregnancy. I wish she was able to enjoy it a little, enjoy all those kicks and wriggles and having a gorgeous swollen tummy. But she’s been so sick and things with Martin have been so strained.

  If only they lived closer, I could help her more. Support her more. Give her something to focus on outside work and her designer home and her errant husband.

  I’ve done my best to try to understand her feelings and her struggles to bond with her baby. But the truth is that I don’t. She’s the greatest gift the world has ever given to me. Even when we struggled, when times were particularly tough, I never once regretted my decision to keep her and raise her.

  I pray Eli will find that same love for her child. Once she holds that baby in her arms, she’s sure to feel it. Even the coldest of mothers feel it when they meet their babies. An instinctual pull towards them. An urge to protect at all costs. It’s the most overwhelming feeling in the world.

  I suppose that’s why I’m angry with Martin; although I’ve tried my very best to hide that from Eli. He must see her struggling too, but still he’s abandoned her – skipping off to London at a moment’s notice, leaving her isolated in that house. I’d never do that.

  So as I hear her sobbing down the phone, asking if she can come and stay, just for a bit, I feel relieved. I’ll have her close to me. I can look after her. I can protect her, and her baby.

  She sounds so very young and vulnerable and my heart lurches. I wonder if it makes me a bad person, but as I listen to just how much she needs me, really needs me, I feel a warm glow. A renewed sense of purpose.

  ‘Of course you can come and stay, darling,’ I soothe. ‘Are you okay? Is it Martin? Oh, sweetheart, I’m so sorry, but it’ll be okay. I promise you.’

  I hear her sniff, gulp back a sob. ‘I just need to pack a few things … I need to find my case.’

  ‘Are you in a fit state to drive?’ I ask, alarmed by how distressed she sounds.

  The last thing I want on my conscience is her having an accident on the drive to Belfast because she’s too distraught to concentrate properly.

  ‘Erm … I don’t know, Mum. I think so. I’ll be fine …’

  ‘I’ll come and get you,’ I say, already kicking off my house slippers and sliding my feet into my shoes, which I’d left beside the hall table. My keys are in the dish on the console. I’ll be in my car and on the way to her in less than a minute. I can be with her in ninety minutes and that way I’ll be sure she isn’t taking any unnecessary risks.

  ‘I’ll be okay,’ she says, but I can hear it in her voice.

  I shudder. Devastated at her pain but thrilled that she needs me. It’s a heady mix.

  ‘I’ll be with you in an hour and a half,’ I tell her. ‘I want you to try to breathe and we’ll sort it out. I promise. You’re more than welcome here for as long as you need. You know that. I’ll be with you soon, my darling. Try to stay calm. Think of the baby.’

  *

  The rain that’s been falling all morning has turned to sleet by the time I find myself nearing Derry. Traffic has started to move frustratingly slowly. It’s taking me much longer than I’d hoped to reach Eli and my patience is starting to wear thin.

  I try my best not to use bad language, although I can’t help but swear at the drivers exercising undue caution at roundabouts and traffic lights. If they can’t deal with a bit of sleet, they shouldn’t be on the roads in the first place.

  When the traffic starts to logjam on the Crescent Link, outside one of the city’s big out-of-town retail parks, I find myself fighting the gr
owing tension in my neck, shoulders and arms. I can’t show up at Eli’s stressed. I need to exude calm.

  Lord knows what exactly I’ll be walking in to. Is Martin there? Is he going to cause a scene? He always has been one to wear his heart on his sleeve and there’s little chance he’s going to let his pregnant wife leave without putting up some resistance.

  I’d had such high hopes for him when I’d first met him. Not only did he treat Eli with respect, but he also treated me with respect. He seemed fully on board with how close our relationship was and when he’d turned up at my door one evening, when Eli was at work on shift at the City Hospital, to ask for her hand in marriage, he’d impressed on me how it was important to him that he had my full support.

  ‘I know this is a little old-fashioned,’ he’d said as he’d perched nervously on my armchair, an untouched cup of tea in his hand, the saucer rattling slightly, belying his nerves. ‘But I know that you mean the world to Eli and she wouldn’t agree to anything without your full approval. You must know how much I love your daughter and I promise you I’ll never do anything to hurt her. Ever. No one could mean more to me than she does and I’d really love it if you’d give us your blessing to get married.’

  I love that he asked me for my blessing. To be honest, I’d been feeling a little pushed out. A mother’s love is one thing. That first full-on in-love feeling and the infatuation that comes with it is something else. At that moment, Martin Hughes was more exciting to my daughter than I ever could be. I was the comfortable and the reliable. He was the fizz in the pit of her stomach. He was the new and I was the old. His asking, and his reassurance that he’d never hurt her, meant a lot. I’d hoped he’d never hurt me, either.

  I’d imagined our lives together as a new chapter in the book that had already been Eli and me. They were both career-oriented but I was fine with that. I understood that things were different for young people these days and besides, I was so very proud of Eli and her chosen field. A daughter of mine, a palliative care nurse! She makes a real difference to people’s lives. I’d imagined they’d marry, eventually have children and that perhaps I could step in as a grandma on call for all the childminding duties. I was still young enough. I’d love it. I’d look forward to it, if truth be told.

  I believed that she’d always be near me, just as she used to promise me when she was little.

  ‘We’ll always live together, won’t we, Mummy?’ she’d ask.

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  ‘Or I’ll get a house next door to you and knock a hole in the wall so we can come in and out of each other’s houses any time we want.’

  ‘Sounds just lovely, my darling.’

  ‘Will you look after my babies when I’m a mummy? Just like you look after me.’

  I didn’t have to think about it.

  But things didn’t work out that way, did they? Eli and Martin married. It was a great day, even if they’d insisted on a civil wedding and I didn’t get my day in church. I’d been so proud to fulfil my mother-of-the-bride role. To walk my daughter, who I’d raised single-handedly, down the aisle. I was set for our new life.

  But he took her away from me. Back to his native Derry. Bit by bit. I suppose the wedding being held there should’ve been a sign.

  Within a year of them getting married, he set up his practice there. Then she got the job at the hospice. And, finally, they ploughed all their savings into that house. Keen to make it their ‘forever home’.

  It hurt me. It still hurts me. That I’m being written out of their lives. That their day-to-day existence doesn’t involve me at all.

  But maybe she’ll come to see all this upset as a blessing in disguise. As we get closer again. It’ll be hard, I know, but I can help her through it.

  The traffic jolts forwards another few metres. I turn the radio off. The interminable chatter of the hosts, talking of some sort of political stalemate nonsense that seems to have been on repeat for the last two years, has started to annoy me. Just as the sound of my windscreen wipers, rhythmic as they are, starts to grate and the sound of my indicator nips at me. I look at the clock. I’d told Eli I’d be with her in ninety minutes. It’s closer to two hours now. I’m angry at myself for not having a hands-free thingummy fitted in the car like Eli’d nagged me to. I could call her if I did, tell her I’m almost there.

  I wonder if she’s worried about me. She must be, given the weather and the driving conditions. I hope she isn’t upsetting herself too much.

  I tap my fingers on the steering wheel impatiently, waiting for the traffic to move again. There appears to have been an accident in the oncoming lane, fairly minor but enough to bring everything to a standstill. Someone’s probably misjudged the slippery road surface.

  There’s no way around it, not from here. I offer up a silent prayer for divine intervention and take deep breaths.

  With a knot of tension so tight across my shoulder blades that I want little more than to sink into a hot bath, I pull into the driveway of my daughter’s dream home on Judges Road twenty-five minutes later.

  The sleet is still falling, threatening to turn to snow, and if we’re much longer before we set off back for Belfast there’s a danger it’ll freeze over and the roads will become too treacherous to risk.

  Both their cars are parked outside. I gird myself to see Martin. Eli will want me to be polite yet firm. She won’t want me making a scene. Eli doesn’t do scenes, even when she’s sure she’s in the right.

  I know if I go in there and start launching an attack on Martin, it may start her thinking defensively about him and, God forbid, if she decides to give him a second chance, I’ll end up being the worst in the world for speaking up and voicing my opinions.

  It’s only a few short steps to the front door, so I put my head down and go straight there, reaching out to ring the doorbell just as the door swings open and a haggard-looking Martin stands in front of me.

  Although he’s clean-shaven, he looks done in. His shirt is crumpled, his tie undone. His sleeves are rolled up and his hair is far from the neat style he normally wears it in. Ruffled. That’s how he looked: ruffled.

  ‘Angela,’ he says, looking me in the eye. His expression has a pleading quality about it. I guess this is where he’ll tell me it’s all a mistake. All a lie. How he doesn’t know who’s behind it and where he’ll implore me to talk some sense into his wife.

  ‘Thank God you’re here,’ he says, throwing me off guard. ‘Please, you have to try to get her to calm down. She’s making herself sick. I’ve tried to tell her that they’ll know it was a mistake, a simple mistake. Anyone could have made it.’ He drops his voice to a whisper. ‘I know it’s bad, but we have to try to calm her, for the sake of the baby if nothing else. I know they’ll look at the bigger picture. She’s a good nurse. She wouldn’t have intentionally hurt anyone. These things must happen, when the patients are so vulnerable.’

  This isn’t what I was expecting. Intentionally hurt someone? My Eli? What are ‘these things’ he’s talking about? What vulnerable patient?

  This isn’t part of my script. I hear a keening sound from the living room and I feel my stomach tighten.

  What has she done?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Angela

  I don’t like this feeling in my stomach. A lead weight, pulling me down.

  ‘I’ve told her to speak to a solicitor, in case. She should be able to get someone fairly specialised through her union,’ Martin says, turning and heading towards the back of the house and his distraught wife.

  I want to scream at him. Why does she need a solicitor? In case of what? But it’s clear he assumes I’m already in the know.

  My heart’s beating loudly, blood whooshing in my ears as I see my daughter. My baby. The one person in this world I’d do anything for. There is she is. Curled, almost foetal, her hands to her face. Her chestnut hair messy. Her hands white with tension. Her cries loud. Pitiful. My child.

  In front of me now, she’s my ba
by again. Not the thirty-three-year-old, capable woman she’s become but scared and vulnerable. Inconsolable, as if she’s in the middle of one of the night terrors that used to torment her as a child. It’s terrifying. Most of all because I know I can’t just hold her until it passes. I can’t just wake her out of it and make it all better again.

  She sees me; her face contorts further. ‘Oh! Mum,’ she wails. ‘I killed her. I didn’t mean to, but I killed her.’

  Her words are a like a punch. No! I want to scream that she didn’t. I don’t need to know the facts to know that my child didn’t kill anyone. Never in a million years.

  This was supposed to be about Martin. This mercy dash was supposed to be about his cheating. I was prepared for that. I’m not prepared for this. I fight back a wave of nausea as I sit down and pull her to me – her body rigid with fear and grief.

  ‘You didn’t. You didn’t. It’ll be okay, my darling. It’ll be okay.’

  I hope that it will be. I can’t stand this. I look to Martin, back to Eli.

  He speaks.

  ‘There was an incident at the hospice. Eli was on night shift and caring for one of her patients, in the very end stages of her illness. The woman became very distressed and, well, Eli administered medication to help her, but the dose was miscalculated and …’

  And. That word he leaves hanging there. As if he can’t say the words.

  ‘She was in so much distress. I just wanted to help her. I was tired but I should’ve called a colleague for help. I didn’t realise I’d drawn up too much until it was too late. She was gone. I swear,’ Eli says, her eyes wide, ‘I swear on my life, and this baby’s life, it wasn’t intentional. She was trying to hang on to see her son. We were trying to help her hang on but I took that from her. I’ve messed up. I’ve really messed up.’

  Martin speaks. ‘Her colleague, Rachel, brought her home, in this state. After she’d spoken to the management team and the police.’

  ‘The police? But it wasn’t a crime,’ I almost scream.