Greenwich Park

by Katherine Faulkner

  I walk downstairs to survey the damage. The kitchen floor is cold, and when I run the hot tap, ghosts of hot steam drift out of the boiler pipe, escaping into the frosty garden air. I take a deep breath, rub my eyes, flick the kettle on. My shoulders ache. I don’t feel right. Maybe I should take some paracetamol. I put my hands to my throat. It feels red raw, as if I have spent the whole night screaming.

  I pull my blue check coat over my pyjamas, stepping into my wellies with one hand on the wall in case I topple over. The coat will no longer fasten over my bump.

  Outside, the bonfire has burned out, leaving a huge black wound in the centre of the garden. There are crows in the trees and on the fence, diving down to pick over the charred remains. I shoo them away, pick a path through the wet grass to check on my roses. I pluck a cigarette butt out of their beds, retrieve an upturned wine glass. When I stand up again, the earth swims. I grasp at the trellis. I can see those twists at the sides of my vision again. Little spirals of black and white, like tickertape.

  I make my way back to the kitchen to make tea. It is spotlessly clean, the surfaces wiped, with that artificial forest smell everywhere. The mugs and glasses are all washed up, sparkling and stacked neatly on the draining board. Did I do all that? I don’t think so. Katie must have stayed after I’d gone to bed, helped to clear up the house. I suppose it might have been Daniel, though he doesn’t normally leave anything this neat. It won’t have been Charlie. Charlie always disappears whenever there’s work to be done.

  I lift the lid of the bread bin, reach inside. Empty. I sigh, crossly. Rachel must have finished the bread again. With the thought comes a memory. We argued last night, Rachel and I. The laptop! That’s right. I found the laptop in her room. I told her to leave. Did she leave?

  When I knock on the spare-bedroom door, there is no answer. I push it open and stare. Rachel is gone. All her stuff is gone too. No suitcase, no mess. The bed has been stripped, the bedside table cleared. The sheets and the towels she’s been using have been piled into the laundry basket.

  I go to wake Daniel. I push his books and glasses to one side on his bedside table to make space for the tea. Then I sit down on the bed, lay my hand on his chest. He is still sleeping, but fitfully. His T-shirt is drenched in sweat. When I move my hand to his arm, his eyes snap open.

  ‘Daniel?’

  He sits up, wincing, as if his body aches all over, too. Oh God. I hope it isn’t flu.

  ‘What?’

  He rubs his eye sockets with his fingers. He sits up, takes the coffee and drinks deeply from it. Pats around for his glasses, then fumblingly pushes them onto his face with a flattened palm.

  ‘What’s up? Why are you looking like that?’

  ‘Rachel’s gone.’

  Daniel stares at me. He doesn’t look at all well. His skin is almost green, as if he is about to throw up.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Rachel. She’s gone. All her stuff is gone. She stripped the bed and everything.’

  Daniel throws his legs over the side of the bed and marches down the stairs in his T-shirt and pants, as if he doesn’t believe me, wants to see it for himself. After a few minutes he returns. He looks agitated.

  ‘Didn’t she say where she was going?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. I feel terrible now – we had an argument last night …’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘You’re not going to believe this. I found your laptop in her room.’

  ‘Seriously? She stole it?’

  I shrug. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Jesus. And then what?’

  ‘That’s the thing,’ I say slowly. ‘I know I told her to leave. But – it’s so weird – I can’t seem to properly remember what happened afterwards. Going to bed, and stuff like that – I only remember it really vaguely. It’s almost like I’d been drinking.’

  Daniel sits down on the bed next to me, pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘Could you have drunk something by mistake?’

  ‘Of course not.’ I pause, start to pick at the skin around my thumbnail.

  ‘Oh, Helen.’ Daniel pulls me towards him, holds me tightly. ‘You’ve just been so tired.’ He starts to rock me gently.

  I squirm away from him. ‘Something’s not right. Did you see her, before she left? Was she upset? Did she tell you she was leaving?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything to me.’

  ‘Did you actually see her leave the party last night?’

  ‘No. I must have already gone to bed.’

  He stretches his head one way, then the other, his neck clicking slightly. Then he takes my hand.

  ‘Do you think we should do anything?’ I ask.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I rub my eyes with my hands.

  ‘Come on, Helen,’ Daniel says. ‘Rachel is an adult. She can look after herself. And I’m sorry if this sounds harsh, but I’m glad she’s gone. I don’t think it was good for us. Her being here.’

  I look at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just – I don’t think we need any extra stress. Look, I’m sorry, you were right about the party. I should have been firmer with Charlie. I had no idea he would invite all those people into our house.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Rachel?’

  ‘Nothing. I know you didn’t want to have the party, that’s all. I’m sorry I said yes to it. I’ll clear everything up.’

  I pull at a loose thread from my jumper sleeve. The seam inside is unravelling.

  ‘Do you think we should report her missing or something?’

  Daniel looks at me. ‘What? Why?’

  ‘I don’t know … I mean, it’s weird, her just disappearing. Isn’t it?’

  Daniel shrugs. ‘Although you did ask her to leave, didn’t you?’ He puts his hand over mine again. ‘I just think we need to get back to normal. Focus on us, and the baby.’ He pauses. ‘I can repaint that room, now, can’t I, if it’s empty? If you still want me to.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Daniel pulls his T-shirt over his head, throws it on the floor and heads to the bathroom for a shower. As I listen to the sound of the water, I lie down on the bed. The room is spinning. I close my eyes, try to remember exactly how I left things with Rachel. But my mind isn’t working. It’s like when you wake up and you can’t quite remember a dream. Every time you try to snatch at it, it edges further out of reach.

  Daniel emerges, rubbing his hair dry. When he sees my expression, he stops, throws the towel into the laundry basket and comes to sit beside me.

  ‘All right,’ he says. ‘I can see you’re worried. But first things first. Why don’t you just send her a text, asking if she’s OK? She’s probably fine. You might be worrying about nothing.’

  I nod. ‘Sure. Good idea.’

  Daniel rotates his neck. He still looks pale. ‘You know what? I think I’m going to head out for a run. Will you be OK?’

  I blink at him. ‘What?’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘But you just showered. And you don’t look all that well, Daniel.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  My vision wobbles again. ‘All right,’ I mutter. ‘I’m going to lie down here for a bit.’

  I hear the front door close behind him, the soft pat of his trainers on the path. I take off my coat, curl back under the covers. I tap out a message to Rachel, hit send. To my relief, ten minutes later, she replies – an unusually long reply for her. She is fine, she says. She is sorry about the row, and she has decided to go and stay with her mum for a while. She hopes we are still friends. She wishes me luck with the baby.

  I try to feel relief. She is fine, I tell myself. She is fine, and she is gone. She is really gone. But for some reason, deep down, I know that this is not the end of it.

  HELEN

  Mummy’s illness started when we were little, and kept coming back to her all her life, like the circling birds we watched together i
n the park. It never went away for good. And gradually she slipped under the water of it, like a bath filling up that she couldn’t control. She got cold in it, from the inside out. So that when she turned the wheel that day, into the central reservation at ninety miles per hour, the most surprising thing to all of us was that she hadn’t done it years before. That, and the fact she did it with Daddy in the car. That was the hardest part to understand.

  The water that came for Mummy nearly came for me, too. A few times, when I was younger. I came pretty close. That’s why Mummy and Daddy wanted me to study where my brother was, so I would have someone watching over me. And why they were so happy when I met Daniel. I suppose I became less of a burden to them once he was in the picture.

  I was all right for a while. But the water came again when, just a few months after we lost Mummy and Daddy, I lost the first baby, as well. I’ll never forget how they took him away, a ripped piece of blue NHS towel over a silver kidney dish. Like he was nothing. Like he was rubbish. They told me that I wouldn’t want to see. But I did, I did. I told them I didn’t care what he looked like. That he was mine. That to me, he would be perfect.

  But they shook their heads and gave me a liquid that tasted sickly sweet, and I drifted away on a papery pillow and when I came back again it was all still the same, the square white lights, the beeping machines, the hard bed, the empty feeling in my body. Except there was a tube in my arm this time, and somehow, I didn’t have the strength to feel as bad about it all any more.

  When we got back from the hospital, I lay in our bath for hours, the door locked behind me. Daniel stopped knocking and gradually I chipped away all the flakes of peeling white paint on the windowsill with my fingernail. They fell into my bathwater, floated on the top like snowflakes. Through the window I saw London, the dark cloak of night over the river. I looked away from my reflection. I let the water go cold and I willed it to go over my head.

  Later, Daniel had to collect his ashes from the crematorium. He asked me what I wanted to do with them. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to do anything with them, then. I felt so dark, so broken. I wanted to be asleep, in the earth. To be with my baby. I didn’t want ashes. I wanted to take him to the park, push him on the swings. I wanted the warmth of his body against mine. I wanted to lie down with him, to close my eyes.

  Daniel swore he’d never leave. But I didn’t believe him, especially not after it happened to us again, and again. Why would he stay, when all I gave him was this? Hospitals, nightmares, bleeding, misery, dead babies. He was chained to it, to my useless body: bloated, bleeding, bearing the ugly scars of pregnancy and birth, but with no life, no child to show for it. I started to feel I was dead already.

  After it was bad for a while, we started seeing someone. Daniel thought it would help. I didn’t. I knew that Daniel would go eventually. I could see how it all was for him.

  When I was on the drugs, things were easier, mostly because I didn’t feel very much at all. But sometimes that would frighten me, the feeling nothing. And I didn’t want to feel nothing about my babies. I wanted to grieve for them. It was all I had left of being a mother.

  So then I would tell him that was it, that I didn’t want to take the pills any more. And then I’d be all right for a few days. And then it would happen again. We’d go to a cafe, order eggs and coffees. Do the sort of thing that Katie and Charlie do at the weekend, tell ourselves we were having a nice time. All the time Daniel would be glancing at me, to the door and back, would be fiddling with the keys in his pocket, waiting for it to happen. And then it would. A tiny, perfect baby, asleep in a pram, its little curled-up hands thrown over its head, a pastel-coloured blanket over its chest. And I would be hunched over, sobbing, like I’d been punched. People passing by, asking if I was all right, if there was anyone they could call.

  I’d been barely aware of Charlie and Katie’s break-up, of him finding someone else, Maja. Then suddenly, they were having a baby. The sight of her growing belly made me feel sick. I felt like the whole world was taunting me. I started looking for excuses not to see them. When Ruby was born, I tried to go a few times. The therapist encouraged me to try. I knew I had to. I even bought presents. I got as far as the car. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I would call and Charlie would say they understood, that it didn’t matter. But I couldn’t bear the ugliness of my thoughts. This accidental baby. My useless brother. Undeserved. It still sits between Charlie and me now, those missed months. I missed so much of her.

  It took me such a long time to get better. To not feel like that any more. To go and meet Ruby, close my fingers around her chubby palm. To take the ashes Daniel had saved and scatter them in our garden. Daniel helped me plant the roses. One for each of our little babies. He did so much, put up with so much. He was the one who kept me alive.

  The last time I saw the therapist, she said that I had come a long way, that both Daniel and I had. I believed her. I didn’t want to see her ever again. I didn’t want to go back.

  But now, when I think about the night of the party, I get that same sense of low-level dread, of darkness behind the windows about to close in on us. It frightens me so much to feel that again.

  I wish I hadn’t shouted at Rachel. And now I think about it, I don’t even completely remember why I was so angry. Was it just the laptop? Was there something else, something I hadn’t seen before? I am almost sure there was. But all I can remember are fragments, pieces of a whole that don’t make sense on their own. The muffled thump of bass vibrating through the four white walls. Snatches of laughter drifting up from the garden. Footsteps on the stairs, steady as a heartbeat. The turn of the doorknob. The low hum of the dehumidifier, getting louder and louder and louder.

  38 WEEKS

  HELEN

  Since the party, I keep finding myself consumed by an urge to wash things, to clean everything in the house. It’s normal – I’ve read about it. Instinctive. A sign that your body is readying for labour.

  I have scrubbed every surface in the house, bleached every floor. Scoured the skirting boards, some of them twice, my huge belly pressing against my thighs as I bend. Daniel suggested we call off the building work for a few weeks, until after the baby’s born, and I agreed. He’s right – we need some time to be just us. We need the house still, quiet.

  And clean. There is no limit to my hunger for the chemical smell of lemon, the scalding bliss of hot soapy water. At night, I dream of cleaning. In the morning, I haul myself bolt upright in bed, flip my legs over the side, pull my maternity tracksuit bottoms on.

  ‘It’s the weekend, Helen,’ Daniel complains. ‘Can’t we just relax?’ But I want to keep going. I clean the windows with water and newspaper until they gleam, I polish the banisters on the stairs, dust the ceiling roses. I wash all the baby clothes, load after load. I lay them out to dry on the rack, then take them to iron in front of the TV. I stack the short-sleeved bodysuits in little piles for the drawer, arranged by size. The newborn ones are so little I am not sure I know how to fold them. They feel so small, so strange to my hands. The idea that, soon, I will have a newborn baby, that I will be placing him in these clothes, is still not real to me, even now.

  I have tried to put Rachel out of my mind, to focus on us, on the baby. I always thought I’d be delighted if she just disappeared. But whenever I think about the night she left – the night I can’t remember – I’m filled with that sick feeling. My thoughts keep looping back to her, to the spare room and our last encounter.

  The more I try to remember the end of the party, the further away it seems to drift. I try to think if there is any chance I could have drunk something, accidentally, like Daniel said. I haven’t touched alcohol for nine months – I’m sure it wouldn’t take much. But enough to make me forget how I got to bed?

  Over the past few days, I keep finding myself on the stripped bed in the spare room, looking around as if the room might hold the answers somewhere. I sit there for a long time sometimes, staring up at the cornices on t
he ceiling, the blind cord, the shelves on the far wall, the baby stuff piled up in the corner. Anything that might jog my memory into life. The air in the room feels cold, quiet, thick. She is gone. I got what I wanted. But if everything is all right now, like Daniel says, why does it feel like it isn’t?

  The other night, Daniel found me in there. I’m not sure how long I had been sitting on the bed. It had got dark, but all the lights were off. I hadn’t noticed I was sitting in the dark. When he asked what I was doing, I wasn’t sure what to say.

  The laundry is a displacement activity, probably. But it seems to work better than most things. The soft hiss of the iron, the clouds of steam that come and go in front of my eyes, the smoothing of creases, all of it is hypnotic somehow.

  Daniel says he is going out for a run. Running seems to be a new obsession, like mine is cleaning.

  ‘Don’t you want to watch this?’

  I have been encouraging Daniel to watch episodes of One Born Every Minute with me. I think it will be useful for him. Every time one of the babies is born, I find I have tears all down my face. Daniel doesn’t seem to enjoy it as much as I do, however.

  ‘You carry on. I think I’ve seen this one.’

  ‘No, you haven’t, it’s one of the new –’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  He is still out when the knock on the door comes. I place the iron upright on the board, brush my hands on my jeans. Steam clouds the windows, little drops of condensation gather in the corners.

  Two blurry shapes in the glass of the door.

  Only when I open the door do I see the police badges. The man speaks first. He is tall, red-haired, gangly, young-looking, his jacket sleeves just slightly too short.

  ‘Good evening. I’m DS Mitre and this is DC Robbin.’

  DC Robbin nods, her eyes travelling from my face, to my bump, and then up again. She is thick-limbed, powerful-looking. Her skin the colour of coffee, her eyebrows plucked into two elegant arches.