‘That’s not true,’ Mum replies. ‘You know that’s not true. I’ve been looking after her while you’ve been unwell, since you came out of hospital. Now please, try to think what’s best for her and give her back to me. She’s tired, it’s nearly time for her nap. Let me put her down for her sleep, and then we can talk. OK? Let’s do this like the grown-ups we are. Please.’
My eyes flick to the large clock. It’s huge and ugly and takes up the entire wall along one side. It’s 11.45 a.m. Sophia’s wails become more persistent. I think of the sound she made when she was a newborn, those five days when she seemed to do nothing but cry, no matter what I did. But that cry was nothing like this. How can she have changed so much? Yet when I look at her face I can see her eyes, the set of her cheeks, the shape of her head; these are all the same as I remember.
’You’re fine,’ I say, jiggling her up and down, smiling at her with all my might. She notices my necklace and, distracted, starts yanking it out from underneath my coat, her little forehead furrowed in concentration as she wrenches it free. When she finally has it in her podgy fist she beams with glee, and claps her little hands together. ‘See, you’re fine, aren’t you? Do you like Mummy’s necklace? Isn’t it lovely? Daddy bought it for me for our anniversary . . . Daddy bought it for me just a few weeks ago.’
There are tears cascading down my face now, as I lean in again and kiss her head through her hair. I am overcome. I want to squeeze her until there’s nothing left, eat her up, kiss her all over, never let her go. My teeth clench with an unexpected aggression.
‘Why?’ I say, looking back at my mother and Jack, who are standing watching us, their eyes also wide with alarm. ‘Why have you been keeping her from me? Why did you tell me she was dead?’
I start sobbing. I have no idea what to do, where to go or what happens next.
‘We didn’t,’ Jack says, softly. ‘We didn’t tell you she was dead.’
I frown at him. Nothing makes sense any more. Nothing. I need to be alone, I need to think. To sort out the truth from the fiction, the dreams from the reality. And I can’t do that here. Not with them – the two liars, who have kept me from my baby for nearly a year. I have to get out of here.
Before I am even aware of doing it, I am walking towards the door.
Jack follows me.
‘Helena . . .’ he says, and I can hear the wariness in his voice. ‘Helena! Where . . . what are you doing?’
I break into a run. As I approach it I am filled with gratitude for my stupid new car, a present for my birthday earlier this year from Jack, an attempt to cheer me up. It opens automatically if someone with the key comes near it. I am inside and have locked the doors before Jack or my mother have had time to catch up with me.
It has started to rain, and I listen as it pounds on the roof of the car. Sophia is gurgling gleefully at the steering wheel, trying to press the buttons for the radio. She thinks it’s all a big game.
‘That’s right, sweetheart,’ I say to her, whispering through her hair. ‘It’s all OK, you’re safe here, safe with Mummy.’
It’s only then that I realize I don’t have a car seat. I don’t have a car seat, or a plan.
I hear hammering on the driver’s door and I realize it’s not the rain, it’s Jack. He’s shouting something but I can barely hear him over the thumps from his fist. Sophia looks up at him, her innocent face confused but amused at the sight of her father banging to be let in. She points up at him.
‘Oooh!’ she says, laughing. ‘Dada! Dada oooh!’
I want to scream at him to leave me alone, to leave me with my baby, my beautiful baby, but I can’t scream because I don’t want to scare her again. Instead, I sit her on my lap, facing outwards, zip my coat up around her and stretch the seat belt over us both. It’s not ideal, but it will have to do. It’s the only solution.
I look up at Jack, his face a watery blur through the car window. His mouth opens in horror as he realizes what I am about to do, but I don’t care. I am not here to reassure him any more, to make him feel better.
I push the start button on the car and reverse out of the driveway.
NOW
Helena
I have no plan so I just drive, aimlessly, crossing over roundabouts and taking the path of least resistance at traffic lights, seeing where the roads will take me. It’s only a few minutes before I notice Jack behind me. He’s driving my mother’s car. After I spot him, I refuse to look back. He can follow me all he likes. I’m not stopping yet.
Sophia begins to wriggle and wail on my lap, and I start to panic. I try to shush her, but she’s frightened and unwieldy, and in the end I have to take one hand off the steering wheel and use the other to firmly restrain her. Before long, she is screaming, tears running down her fat cheeks. Her ears have turned bright red.
Of course, I am crying too. I am crying because my little girl shouldn’t be sitting on my lap in the car, wailing with fright because she has no idea who this crazy woman is or why she has taken her. I am crying because I just want to be alone with my daughter, but I can’t be, because Jack is following me, and there’s no way I can escape him without doing something terribly dangerous that might kill us all. And now, after all these months, the last thing I want is to die. I want my baby. I want to be loved by my baby. I want to have known her and for the last year to be rewritten.
But it’s not possible. I have come through the village and am back on the main road. My speed has dropped to a snail’s pace, and Sophia seems to have worn herself out screaming and is now slumped against the side of my coat, using it as a makeshift pillow. I keep getting scared that she’s stopped breathing, that the exertion of crying has somehow stopped her little heart, but every now and then she gives a heavy sigh, as though she’s worldly-wise and already fed up of her useless mother. My tears continue to come and I kiss the top of her head. She’s heavy, squished into her coat cocoon, pressing on my bladder.
At the next set of traffic lights the road splits into two lanes and I realize that the turning on the right, just ahead, will take me home. Jack pulls up next to me at the lights. The rain is finally starting to clear. I glance at him sideways, out of the corner of my eye, not daring to meet his gaze. But despite not looking at him directly I can see his animated gestures and imagine his frantic worry. I kiss Sophia’s head again. She gives a soft murmur, like consent.
‘Shall we go back to Daddy?’ I say, and I am sobbing again, barely able to pull away when the lights turn green.
I take the turning towards our home, slowing to ten miles per hour, terrified that something will go wrong just before we get there. Wouldn’t that be ironic? To crash at the very same place I once thought my baby had died.
I begin to wonder if I might be dreaming. If everything is a dream. I look in the rear-view mirror and watch Jack, his forehead furrowed with worry and concentration. His car is so very close to mine. He is leaning forward over the steering wheel, his lips aren’t mouthing song lyrics as they usually are when he drives. Instead, his jaw is clenched, and I can imagine the tendon underneath his cheek pulsating as he focuses on one thing and one thing only: getting his daughter back alive.
In the end, I pull over at a passing place. I can’t face that corner, can’t take the risk. I put my hazard lights on and wait for him to come. Sophia has fallen asleep, and I bury my mouth and nose in her soft blonde hair, wiping my tears on my coat sleeve.
It’s only seconds before Jack is at the side of my car. I look up at him, and I see that he is crying, too. His face is red with it, his eyes bloodshot and strained. I open the car door.
‘Oh my God,’ he says, and then he erupts, his whole body convulsing. ‘Thank God . . . thank God . . .’ he says in between his sobs.
‘She’s asleep,’ I say, softly, my own tears suddenly stopping short.
He looks down at her, his eyes clouded with relief and love. He rubs his thumb across her hair, gives a short laugh.
‘Of course she is,’ he says, smili
ng with damp eyes. ‘She loves the car. When she was tiny and wouldn’t settle, I used to drive her around for miles . . .’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, because I shouldn’t have taken her, not like this, not without a proper seat. ‘I . . .’
But he doesn’t want my apologies.
‘We need to get out of the road, to get home. Her car seat is in your mum’s car. Let me take her.’
I look at him.
‘Where will you take her? I want to see her. I want to be with her.’
He bites his top lip, his eyes unfocused as he decides my fate.
‘OK, we can go back to ours. She’s exhausted. Hopefully, she’ll stay asleep and then we can talk.’
He leans down and gently, carefully, unclips my seat belt, guiding it back into position. I open my coat so that he can take her from me. As he lifts her out of the car my stomach suddenly feels cold. I miss the heat of her little body already. She was once there, inside me, and she belongs there still.
I watch as he carefully carries her back to my mother’s car, opening the back door and sliding her into her seat. Her head flops forward and then back again, and her eyes flick open, but once she’s in position she falls back to sleep without so much as a cry. She looks so peaceful, her head resting on the side of the car seat. Another memory rushes back to me: that first journey with her. Tucking her into her car seat in that waiting room, before we left for home. She looked so tiny, just a scrap of a thing coated in clothing. Now she fills it, her legs hanging over the edge, her head nearly reaching the top.
‘You’ve changed so much,’ I whisper.
‘I’ll see you at home,’ Jack says, and I can’t tell anything from his tone. At least he’s stopped crying. As for me, as for my feelings, they have deserted me. I am comfortably numb.
*
It’s only five minutes before I am back in the gravel driveway. I left here barely an hour and a half ago, but everything has changed. Everything I believed was wrong, back to front. Ashley is dead, my daughter is alive. How is it possible that I confused the two?
Jack brings the car seat with Sophia in it inside the house and puts it down in the hallway. She doesn’t stir, doesn’t move an inch, seemingly unaware of the drama of her momentary kidnap. I crouch down next to her. Her eyelids flicker as she sleeps, and I wonder what she’s dreaming about, and I hope that it’s comforting. I hope that she feels safe, that I haven’t scared her.
‘I’ll make us some tea,’ Jack says.
I follow him into the kitchen and watch, wondering what will happen next.
‘Are you hungry?’ he says as I sit on one of the bar stools, staring at the mug he places in front of me. The concept of drinking the tea right now, let alone eating something, feels bizarre, but this is Jack’s way of bringing order to the chaos, normality to the insane.
‘No,’ I say. I have forgotten it’s lunchtime.
‘Me neither.’
There’s a silence then, and I think that one of us should fill it with anger. That’s what seems appropriate. I have every right to be angry with him for keeping my daughter from me, and he has every right to be angry with me for taking her and putting her life in danger. But neither of us has the energy for anger, it seems.
‘Tell me what happened,’ I say, instead, watching the surface of my tea still swirling as Jack stirs in the milk. ‘Nothing makes sense.’
Jack gives a deep sigh but then, somehow, rights himself and sits down at the bar stool opposite me.
‘You were very ill,’ he says. ‘Do you remember? You were very ill when Sophia was born.’
I search my memory but there’s nothing. Only the grief, the absolute grief.
‘I don’t remember,’ I say. ‘I don’t remember anything about the night of the crash.’
‘We brought Sophia home the day after she was born. Do you remember your labour? You were in labour for three days. You didn’t sleep. Your contractions stalled and Sophia got stuck, and in the end the doctor had to use forceps to get her out. You had a nasty tear. But you were fine. For those first twenty-four hours, you were fine. Exhausted, of course. But your blood pressure came down, everyone was happy.’
I shake my head at his words. I remember nothing of this. I blanked it all out afterwards, my way of protecting myself from the pain of remembering her.
‘We took her home,’ he continues. ‘And that’s when things started to change. You were worried, fussing continually, anxious that she didn’t seem to be breastfeeding well. You didn’t sleep that first night, because every time you put her down she would cry. She just wanted to be held. So you sat up with her and held her all night on the sofa. I came down in the morning and found you there. There was something different about you, even then. Your eyes seemed bigger, you were staring a lot, and you started talking fast. So fast. I could barely keep up.
‘At first, I thought it was normal. Just your excitement and having Sophia, the relief of the labour and your stressful pregnancy being over. But it got worse. Your behaviour started to change even more. At some point, I told you to go upstairs and have a nap while I took over, and you went upstairs. But when I came to find you, you hadn’t slept at all. You hadn’t even laid down. You were in Sophia’s nursery, going through all her clothes. You said they were all too big, you were sorting them out and throwing them away. I told you not to be silly, that she would grow, that we would still use them, but you insisted. Said something about it being a bad omen, that you’d bought the wrong size clothes. You ordered a whole load more online and paid extra to have them delivered that day. And then you spent the whole evening washing and ironing them, folding them neatly and putting them away in the drawers underneath her changing table. I remember . . . they were all white. Plain white Babygros. I asked you why and you said she was an angel, and she could only wear white. It was so unlike you. I couldn’t tell if you were joking, or what. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea. I had no idea how sick you were.’
‘I was just tired . . . I hadn’t slept . . .’
‘The midwives came to check on you the next day. You hadn’t slept again. They were concerned, they wrote it down in their notes, they told you that you needed to rest. But you were in a flap about the breastfeeding. Sophia was a little small when she was born, and you were convinced she wasn’t getting enough food. You’d started pumping, even though the midwives said there was no need, that Sophia was perfectly healthy. They told you to rest, and told me to keep an eye on you, and to get back in touch if you carried on behaving strangely. They were quite bossy – and when they left, you said they were idiots, which was also so unlike you.
‘The next morning, I woke to find you downstairs again, in the utility room. You were washing everything again. You’d read something online about the chemicals they use to protect clothes from getting damp in factories, and you were paranoid that you hadn’t got them all out, that Sophia might get sick. The irony was, Sophia was fine. She was fine, and you weren’t.’
‘But . . .’ I say, ‘the crying . . . I remember the crying. She was always crying. There was something wrong with her . . .’ My voice fades to a whisper.
Jack ignores me.
‘The next day I called the midwives again. The one who had visited us was on annual leave, and I had to speak to someone else. She tried to dismiss it all as baby blues. Said it was normal, that there were massive hormonal changes that happen a few days after you give birth. But I knew it was more than that. I was so frustrated. They weren’t listening to me. They told me to ring again the next day, but by then it was too late . . .’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You had a fever by then. From the infection. Your stitches were infected. But there was more than that. You were ill. There’s this thing . . . they don’t talk about it much, it’s very rare.’ He gives a rueful laugh. ‘Lucky us! It’s called post-partum . . .’
He pauses then, and I know what he is going to say.
‘Depression. I know,’ I finish his
sentence. My voice is flat, like my emotions. I remember promising never to succumb to the illness that stole my mother from me. I remember vowing never to let myself become a victim, vowing always to be strong.
‘No,’ he says, and his eyes flick heavenwards, as if calling for strength. ‘Not post-partum depression. It was much more serious than that. You had post-partum psychosis.’
THEN
Helena
I am standing in the middle of the road, watching the headlights approach. Not caring if they hit me.
They don’t. They stop short a few metres away, and then the driver’s door opens and Jack steps out.
‘Helena!’ he shouts, but I don’t move. ‘What are you doing? Where’s the baby?’
The baby.
I don’t know.
‘What’s happened?’
He is next to me now, pulling on my shoulders, shaking me, trying to get answers. I can’t speak. I just watch him as his face distorts and reddens. At one point I think he’s going to slap me, but he doesn’t. Instead, he shoves me to one side and runs past me. I turn round. Ashley’s car – I didn’t even know she had a car – is turned upside down, one wheel wrenched off. There’s a strange hissing noise coming from beneath the bonnet. The smoke has faded now. From my position in the middle of the road I can see Ash, still slumped against the low cobblestone wall. But my baby. Where is she?
‘It’s OK,’ I call out after him, but I’m confused, and I don’t know if what I’m saying is true. I’m only saying it to calm him down. ‘I think David took her.’
Seconds later, I hear Jack’s voice again. He is shouting something. I turn round and see him, his phone against his ear, the baby cradled in one arm. He slumps to his knees and begins to sob.
‘Come quickly!’ he is saying into his phone. ‘I can’t tell if she’s still breathing . . . please . . . please! She’s so cold.’
He’s taken her, then. She’ll be up there, in the sky, with him. I have done what I was meant to do, and Ashley was there to witness it all. It’s strange, how these things work out.
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