The Rival

by Charlotte Duckworth

  So I don’t make any sound because, even though I know she can’t live, I don’t want her to be in any distress.

  I lean down and pick her up. She is so light that it is like picking up a piece of cloth.

  She settles in my arms, turning her face towards me. She is wrapped in a bright yellow blanket. Underneath the blanket she is wearing a fleece Babygro, the colour of morning snow. Her hands are covered by little mitts and the only skin visible is on her face and the top of her head, peeking through patches of sandy hair.

  She doesn’t cry out as I walk through the kitchen, opening the patio door with one hand. She lies there in my arms, trusting, her cloudy eyes drifting around, trying and failing to focus on something. Not yet, little one. I feel the wind against my bare ankles and I realize that it’s cold outside, but for some reason I am so hot I am burning up.

  The grass is wet underneath my feet and I sink into it as I walk round the side of the house towards the road. The only light is coming from the bedroom upstairs but it’s enough, it’s all I need.

  The baby begins to squawk as I tread slowly across our gravel driveway to the road. I can’t tell if she’s cold, or if she knows what’s about to happen, but I visualize her cries being packaged up into a little box and sent away and I find that this time it’s OK, they don’t matter.

  We are standing on the road now. I look up. It’s a clear night and the sky is flecked with stars that swell as I run my eyes over them. The moon is a thin crescent somewhere to my left. I think of David Bowie again, the Starman, waiting in the sky. At last it all makes sense.

  I stare down at my feet, which seem to be bleeding, even though I feel no pain. I watch them, the shredded skin around my toes falling away, as I carefully count the paces into the road. There must be eleven of them, no more, no less, to find the perfect spot. It takes me three goes to get it right but eventually it’s done.

  I lay the baby on the tarmac and look down at her. Like the stars, she is gleaming, there is light coming from her chest and her head, and there is no way they won’t be able to see her here, no way she won’t be taken to where she belongs.

  Her little legs twitch and her arms quiver under the blanket but she’s stopped mewling now. Slowly, her eyes begin to shut and she is ready. We are both ready.

  NOW

  Helena

  The DJ is talking drivel on the radio, something about how we all used to love to create mixtapes, how it was once a way of wooing your beloved. And I want to shout at the radio for him to shut up, because how can he be talking about something so stupid when there is something so serious going on? But then he says something about number one on his ultimate mixtape being this song, and I hear the first few bars and I know instantly, I know with my whole body, what’s coming next.

  Goodbye love

  Didn’t know what time it was . . .

  And I turn it off, because I can never listen to that song again. The song that killed my beautiful baby girl.

  As I drive I am focused on my goal completely and utterly – which is liberating, at least. I just need to get home now, as quickly as possible.

  Before long I am pulling into our driveway, my tyres scrunching against the gravel, as always. But I barely notice, this time, and I don’t even care enough to leave the steering wheel straight. I am out of the car and into the house in seconds and I rush straight to Jack’s iPad, tapping in our anniversary and clicking immediately on the Find my iPhone app.

  It takes a few seconds to work and I shake the iPad in frustration, flipping the screen into the other direction.

  ‘Come on!’ I shout at the screen, and as if it is listening to me, suddenly a map appears with a small pin on it. Telling me where Jack is.

  I squint at the pin for a few seconds, my brain struggling to understand what I am seeing. But eventually there’s no mistaking it.

  Jack is at my mother’s house.

  THEN

  Helena

  The stars are still up there, still bright.

  I saw the car coming. I saw it swerve, spinning in the road before bouncing off the low cobbled wall and turning over completely. It’s her. Of course it’s her.

  For some reason, Ash has been thrown from the car and is lying by the side of the road, her body flung up against the wall like a discarded shop mannequin, limbs twisted and out of place. The headlights are still on and they provide the perfect stage illumination. Behind us, the car is making a strange hissing noise.

  He is still watching.

  I kneel down and crawl towards her, the glass on the tarmac cutting into my knees. I feel nothing but a strange tugging sensation on my skin. When I’m close enough, I look at her face. She’s staring at me, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. There are bubbles coming from her nose as she tries to breathe – bubbles tinged with blood. I try to shush her, to stop her from talking, but her mouth keeps making that same O shape, over and over again.

  ‘No,’ I say to her, and her eyes widen suddenly. ‘Don’t speak.’

  But she doesn’t listen, she keeps trying to speak, snorting blood bubbles from her nose. There is saliva running down her chin and on to her coat. Black trousers, now ripped in places, her skin pierced, blooded patches of it peeking through the material. There’s a faint smell of urine, mixed with that same masculine perfume I always hated.

  ‘I can take care of the pop-ups,’ I say, and her eyes tell me she doesn’t like this idea at all. ‘Don’t worry. Now that David has taken the baby. I’ll take care of work.’

  Her mouth is still moving and, eventually, there’s a sound, something like a word.

  ‘What did you say?’ I ask, and I can’t help it because, despite myself, I am enjoying this, and part of me thinks it must be a dream, my subconscious acting out my fantasies. That’s it, it’s a dream, and I will go with it because in a dream no one can get hurt.

  ‘H-el . . .’

  There’s a brief shake of her head that obviously causes her pain because it’s followed by a groan, a long, low, guttural sound that comes from somewhere deep inside her stomach.

  ‘He . . . lp,’ she gasps and then collapses inwards, shutting her eyes.

  ‘I am helping,’ I say. ‘What do you want from me? I didn’t ask you to come. I didn’t ask you to crash the car. I didn’t even know you could drive. You come to a dangerous lane like this, in the middle of winter, and you take the corner too quickly. And what about your seat belt? Didn’t bother to wear one? That’s always been your problem, Ashley. Never taking care. Always running before you can walk. But you never listened. You never listened to me.’

  I start to cry.

  Her eyes spring open again, bloodshot and popping.

  ‘I . . .’ she begins, but there are no more sounds, just a trail of bubbles from her nose, a line of blood trailing from her mouth. Her eyes stop moving, and fix me with a stare.

  I stand up, suddenly confused as to where I am, and what I’m doing here. And then I remember her, my baby. My beautiful baby. She’s gone. David’s taken her, and I have missed it. Thanks to Ashley, I have missed it all.

  I run into the road, but behind the upturned car it’s too dark to see more than a few inches in front of me. Can I hear a baby crying, or am I just imagining it? I spin on the spot, wondering how it’s all gone so wrong, where I am and what I’m doing, and I look down and realize I am frozen to the bone, that my nightdress is soaking wet, that my knees are bleeding.

  And nothing makes any sense.

  And then I hear my own voice screaming at the stars and the universe to help me understand what’s happening, to tell me where they have taken her.

  And as if to answer me, I see something in the distance: two lights, growing larger, and then I know they are coming for me, and I don’t mind. I don’t even care.

  THEN

  Ash

  All around me is blackness. I can’t tell if my eyes are open or not.

  I try to blink, but I don’t know if it’s working, whether my muscles
are doing what I want them to. There’s a burning wetness on one side of my face, and I can’t feel anything below my waist. I try to lift my head, to make sense of it all, but nothing happens.

  I was driving. The road was winding, there was black ice – I felt it under my wheels as I turned the corners. So many corners.

  I was driving.

  Cheap car. Seat belt broke this morning. Joel told me not to go.

  I was driving and there was something in the way. Lit by my headlights, laid out in the middle of the road. A bundle, something in a blanket, a baby moving.

  Where is it now?

  The baby was in the way, and I swerved to miss it, but the car seemed to fly over the road and then there was a sound of scraping metal, so loud it hurt my ears. The last sound I remember before I flew through the air. And then nothing, just this blackness.

  Helena. I was coming to see Helena. Why? To tell her about Kayleigh, my new niece. How much I love her. To give her a present. To congratulate her on something . . .

  Kayleigh. Perfect little mouth. Cheeks. A smudge above her eyebrow.

  Pain in my shoulder. Where am I? The thoughts muddle, and suddenly I can hear her voice. Kayleigh’s . . . no, Helena’s. A voice close to my face, saying something, but I can’t see who it’s coming from.

  Who is Helena?

  David. Work.

  The voice is telling me things, but I don’t understand them. Am I moving my lips? Am I asking for help? I’m trying. I’m trying. Whoever you are, help me, I’m trying.

  Why isn’t she helping me?

  The thoughts are coming too quickly now, crowding my mind and fighting for attention. The road. I had a feeling. I wanted to share. Forgiveness. Understanding. Kayleigh. Who’s Kayleigh? She matters, but I don’t know why. I need words. Must explain. The words, there are no words . . .

  The thoughts spiral away from me, even though I’m reaching for them as hard as I can.

  The steering wheel turned in time. This is all I know.

  I feel a heaviness in my chest. A gust of wind across my forehead, cool and comforting, and then, the blackness suddenly all-consuming, I feel nothing more at all.

  NOW

  Helena

  It is the second time today I have had to pull out of this driveway, but this time around I’m fearless and I don’t try to take care. I don’t try at all.

  My mother’s house is a twenty-minute drive from here. It was a conscious decision when I was pregnant, when I thought everything was going to be OK, that we would be a normal family like everyone else. Everyone told us to move closer to her, that when you have your first baby your mother is invaluable, that you need her by your side, that you can’t do without her. But in the end, of course, there was no baby, and my mother was as devastated as I was and had no value at all.

  When I speak to her on the phone now, she tiptoes around me, asking me how I am, if I’m feeling more like my old self, but she always breaks off the conversation in tears when I don’t tell her what she wants to hear.

  I have no idea why Jack is at my mother’s house, but I feel betrayed. By both of them.

  I turn the radio back on as I drive. The same DJ is still wittering on about mixtapes, and several carefree people are phoning in and regaling the world with their song choices. I think about Jess, about her story earlier about her cat, about the way she shared every inconsequential detail of her life with anyone and everyone, as though somehow her thoughts meant something to others.

  The DJ is playing Aerosmith ‘I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing’ and I remember the lyrics coming to me as I cradled my baby, minutes after she was born. I had always hated the song, dismissed it as cheesy. But now there are tears in my eyes as I listen to the words.

  I pull into my mother’s driveway and, sure enough, Jack’s car is there already. Her house is not dissimilar to ours; an old farmhouse off a single-track road with a large garden. Her pride and joy. The house is smaller than ours, though. Cosier, more friendly and less ostentatious.

  I sit outside for a few seconds, gathering my thoughts. Even though I was so sure I needed to come here, now I am here, I can’t remember why. But then it comes back to me. Ashley’s death. The accident outside our house. Finally, I remember it. But there’s something else, another piece of the jigsaw that’s missing from this picture, a blank space in my memory. What happened after the accident? I need to talk to Jack. That’s all I can think; I need him to help everything make sense again.

  I walk up to the front door and push the brass doorbell. I hear it ring out inside, shrill and demanding. Through the pane of glass at the top of the door I watch my mother make her way towards me. She is throwing her head back, talking to someone else as she approaches. She isn’t expecting me.

  ‘Helena!’ she says, and the expression on her face is something I can’t place at all. She is wearing a tracksuit, as though she’s just come back from the gym, and her short blonde hair is flattened on one side, her face make-up-less, reading glasses hanging on a chain around her neck. Despite all this, she is still beautiful, and she is glowing, her cheeks shiny, as though she’s just been laughing.

  ‘I need to speak to Jack,’ I say.

  Her eyes dart around nervously.

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’ she asks, putting her arm out and stroking my shoulder. ‘How did you know he was here?’

  ‘I just need to speak to him,’ I reply.

  ‘OK,’ she says, her lips twisting. ‘But, just wait here, will you? Just for one minute. I’ll go and get him.’

  And then she closes the door on me.

  I stand on the doorstep, the cold wind whipping around my ears. I look down at her porch. There’s a pumpkin here, precisely carved into a beaming smile. It’s so incongruous, so out of place. Since when did my mother care about Halloween? Perhaps she has a new man on the go, someone younger, someone with a family. That would explain it. I give the pumpkin a little kick, and its lid falls in on itself, revealing the inside to be rotten.

  The door opens again and my husband is there, standing in front of me.

  ‘Darling,’ he says, putting his arms around me and pulling me to him. ‘You’re freezing. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me Ashley was dead?’ I say. ‘Why?’

  ‘Darling,’ he says, stroking my hair. ‘I did. Many times. How did you remember? The treatment . . . they said it might. Let’s go home. Let’s go home now and we can talk all about it.’

  We turn to leave but then there’s a sound from the back of the house, from the large open-plan kitchen my mother had completely remodelled when she bought this place, adding a huge glass extension that in no way fitted with the rest of the architecture, infuriating the villagers who insisted the farmhouse should have been listed.

  ‘Wait,’ I say, and I see Jack’s eyes are wide with terror, and there’s a movement, a shift, and he almost bundles me off the front step and into the driveway. But he’s not quick enough and I hear it again, clear and unmistakable, calling me.

  The sound of a baby’s cry.

  The sound of my baby’s cry.

  I push past Jack and run through to the extension. It’s unrecognizable since the last time I was here. My mother’s previously immaculate white kitchen is filled with an explosion of coloured plastic: a plastic high chair, plastic playpen, plastic toys scattered all over the floor and covering every surface possible. There’s even a huge printed oilcloth covering the glass dining table. And there, in the furthest corner of the room, is my mother, crouching down over a small child. They both look up at me as I come in.

  ‘Helena,’ my mother says, snatching up the baby – except she’s not a baby, not at all. She’s almost a toddler, all long legs and wide eyes and curly blonde hair, pinned back with a pink hairclip. She’s wearing striped leggings and a pink knitted jumper and she looks at me and hands me a small plastic brick.

  ‘Dadadada,’ she says, smiling. ‘Deee!’

  I walk towards her instincti
vely. There are no thoughts involved as I reach for her and take her from my mother. I kiss her head and smell her. She looks at me and gurgles, but then she glances back at my mother, checking that everything is OK. It’s only then that I remember I saw her, a few months ago at the park. My mother was there then, too. I feel my body stiffen as I pull her closer to me. She’s so heavy, so much heavier than the last time I held her. She moans a little and holds her arms out towards my mother.

  ‘Helena,’ Mum says, eyes wide with fear. ‘Let me take her back, please.’

  I stare at the baby. My baby. She doesn’t even have a name. Does she have a name?

  ‘Sophia,’ I say, the name dropping into my brain like a coin in a slot machine. Jack has appeared behind me and I can feel his hands on my shoulders, trying to prise her away from me, but I cling on tightly, breathing in that smell; a combination of milk, baby skin and fabric conditioner. She smells so clean, so untainted, so perfect. ‘Her name is Sophia.’

  ‘Sophia,’ Jack repeats, his hands now firmly on Sophia’s small body. ‘Helena, please, don’t frighten her. Let me take her. Please, darling.’

  ‘She’s fine,’ I say, looking at Sophia, but her eyes are wide with fear and I can see her bottom lip start to tremble. ‘And if she’s scared, whose fault is that?’ My voice comes out harsher than I meant it to, and Sophia can sense the tension in my body. She lets out a long wail and starts wriggling, struggling to get away from me and back to my mother.

  ‘Helena,’ Mum says again. ‘Let’s talk about this. Give her to me, and we can talk.’

  ‘You stole my baby!’ I hiss, and I squeeze her even tighter. ‘You told me she was dead!’