The Child Inside (34 page)

Twenty thousand pounds. Not much for a child’s life.

The train back to Surbiton is packed with people still on their way home from work, but I manage to get a seat by the window, squashed in beside a large man reading a paper; his arms, his newspaper, his legs are all in my space. The man opposite me is also too big for these small seats and his knees knock against mine as the train moves. My feet are cramped between his, pigeon-toed. Repeatedly, obliviously, he treads on my shoes. I feel trapped, crushed, invisible.

I look out of the window and watch the grey of the city chug by. I do not know what I am going to do. I am too miserable to think. Simon’s cheque sits in my purse, which is inside my handbag, squashed on my lap. Its presence is like a dirty secret, a pointed finger; confirmation of my shame. And yet I hold onto my bag tightly, lest I should lose it.

And then my phone rings, its tinny, irritating tune shrieking into my gloom. The man opposite me tuts; the man beside me shuffles his newspaper in pointed, exaggerated annoyance. I dig into my bag, drag out my phone and see Janice’s number flashing up on the screen.

I brace myself and whisper, ‘Hello.’

‘Where are you?’ she demands straight away, and there is something in her voice that sends a flick of alarm snaking its way up my spine.

‘I’m . . . on a train,’ I whisper. ‘Why?’

‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Why? What’s the matter?’

For a moment she is silent and that snake of alarm crawls deeper. And then she says, ‘Andrew phoned me.’

My heart flips inside my chest. ‘When?’

About half an hour ago,’ she says woodenly.

‘What did he want?’

The man sitting next to me shakes his newspaper as if he was shaking a dog and clears his throat noisily. I shift around as far as I can, turning my back to him.

‘He wanted to know if you were really with me on Friday night,’ Janice says.

‘What did you tell him?’

‘I told him,’ Janice says, her voice rising now in indignation, ‘that he should ask you that.’

My heart, now, is pounding. ‘Well, that pretty much answered him, didn’t it?’

‘Well, what did you expect me to say?’ Janice yells in my ear, and the man opposite me tuts and huffs and bangs his knee against mine. ‘I’m not going to lie for you, Rachel.’

‘No,’ I snap back. ‘I know you’re not.’ Then, ‘What else did he say?’

‘He asked if I knew what was going on.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘I told him to ask you,’ Janice replies, emphasizing each word as if I’m an idiot.

‘Shit!’ I say.

‘This is your own fault,’ she says, starting up on a lecture now. ‘You’ve brought it on yourself. And you can’t expect me to go covering up for you.’

‘Where was he?’

‘What?’

‘Where was he when he phoned?’ I ask. ‘Was he at home?’

‘Well, I assume so. That’s why I called you, on your mobile.’

‘Shit,’ I say again, and the woman sitting next to the man opposite me blurts out,
Oh, for heaven’s sake
, as if she’s never heard the word ‘shit’ before. ‘Now what am I going to do?’

‘That,’ Janice says ominously, ‘is for you to work out.’ And she hangs up on me.

It’s just gone nine when I get home. The light is off in the living room, but the hall light is on and the upstairs, too. I push open the front door and Andrew’s shoes are on the edge of the mat, lined up side by side; his briefcase just beside them. The house is silent.

All the way back from the station I have been trying to think up lies and excuses, but there are none. The best I could do is bat it back, and blame Janice; say that she’s just making trouble.
Of course I was with Janice
, I could say.
She’s just being awkward. You know what she’s like; any opportunity to stir things.

But it won’t wash, I know it. Andrew is many things, but he isn’t a fool.

And anyway, what is the point?

And so I walk into the house with a leaden sense of fatalism.
What will be will be
, I tell myself over and over.
What will be will be
.

He’s in the kitchen, sitting at the table, facing the door; I walk into that kitchen as though into a lions’ den, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. He is sitting with his elbows propped on the table and his chin resting on his hands, simultaneously condemning me, and blocking me out. His eyes are fixed on the table and his mouth is a grim, taut line. I see him like that and I hate him. Who is he to sit in judgement on me, when he hasn’t cared one little bit about the hell that has gone on inside my head for the last however many years? Look at him, sitting there like that; isn’t it a little late to start acting as though he cared in some way? Am I supposed to be afraid, I wonder? I almost want to laugh, but it’s the dangerous, maniacal laugh of hysteria too loose, too close to breaking out.

I go to the sink and pour myself a glass of water, and quickly I drink it down. I place the glass back down on the counter. My hand is shaking. Andrew doesn’t move.

‘Where’s Jono?’ I ask, and there is an echo to my voice.
Where’s Jono? Where’s Jono?
Always,
Where’s Jono?

And what about us? Where are we?

Where is
she
, who was ripped out of my body nearly ten years ago now, and taken away from me, unseen and untouched, and flung into some hospital incinerator to burn and disappear? Where is she, who promised so much to our small, suburban lives, and destroyed, by her absence, even more?

One, two, three, four seconds pass, then Andrew says, ‘He’s in his room.’ His voice is as tight as the expression on his face.

‘Right,’ I say, and I make to leave the kitchen again, but now he moves. Now he takes his hands away from his face and pushes back his chair, scraping it gratingly against the tiles, and stands up.

And he says, ‘Where’ve you been?’

Where’ve you been? Where’ve you been?
Like I’m some errant wife of old and he is my keeper? I laugh, I can’t stop myself; a short, wild, humourless burst. He stares at me, and in his eyes I see all the bitterness that I feel reflected back at me, black and raw.

‘I want to know where you’ve been,’ he says, biting out the words.

But he’s never wanted to know before. Before, he’s never even cared. And so I say,
‘Out,’
and the sarcasm is thick enough in my throat to choke me. ‘I’ve been
out.
Is that okay with you? And now I’m going to say goodnight to my son.’

I turn and start walking out of the kitchen and my legs are like rubber; clumsy, weak.

‘Don’t you walk away from me!’ Andrew barks behind me, and I can feel him glaring at my back. I can literally feel his anger – and poor Andrew, he doesn’t
do
anger – but away I walk, and I’m halfway down the hall before he kicks into life and starts following me. He grabs my arm; I try to pull away and he yanks me back.

‘Don’t walk away from me!’ he repeats, and is it fury or desperation that has him digging his fingers into my arm? I turn to face him and his eyes are as hard and dark as stones. Is this the man who blushed and stammered when he asked me to marry him, who’d get so worked up when he made love to me that he’d leave his hand-prints, pink and bruised, upon my skin? Who sat on the bed beside me when we returned from the hospital having left our dead baby behind, and stroked my back, and told me everything would be okay? He lied to me. He
lied.

His hand is like iron on my arm.

‘Let go of me,’ I say, and the colour rises in his face. He drops his hand and takes a step back.

‘Tell me where you’ve been,’ he says. ‘Tell me where you were on Friday.’

‘Andrew,’ I say and my heart is racing against my ribs, ‘you haven’t wanted to know where I’ve been or how I feel, or anything about me, for
years.
Don’t tell me that you suddenly care.’

‘Of course I care,’ he says in a tone that tells me otherwise.

And I say, ‘Well, you’ve got a funny way of showing it.’ Then before he can stop me again, I turn and quickly run up the stairs.

‘Rachel!’ he calls after me. ‘Rachel!’

Jono’s bedroom door is closed, but I open it, go straight in and close it behind me. My heart is beating so hard it almost hurts. Jono is lying on his bed in his pyjamas, reading a book. He doesn’t look up at me, but I see a frown of acknowledgement cross his forehead.

‘Hello, Jono,’ I say, doing my best to keep my voice light and steady. ‘Did you finish your homework okay?’

He grunts in reply.

I walk over to his bed and sit on the edge of it, by his curled-up knees. I touch his shoulder and feel his body stiffen. I lean over and kiss his head, and he shrugs me away.

‘I’m reading,’ he says, by way of dismissal.

I sit there a moment longer, ignored. The sorrow in my heart swells and burns.

‘Well. Goodnight, then,’ I say at last. ‘Turn your light out at ten.’ And I stand up to leave.

He doesn’t reply.

I close Jono’s door behind me quietly. Andrew is still downstairs, standing where I left him. I do not know what I am going to say to him, or what I am going to do.

I walk along the corridor to our room, and go in and close the door, and moments later Andrew comes up after me. He enters the room and I see the fury in him, suppressed, buttoned down, as it always is. I am standing by the window, as far away as I can be from him; he stands midway across the room before me with his hands hanging down by his sides like a monkey’s. His shoulders are tense and hunched up, and he is glaring at me in a pitiful mix of rage and impotence. He huffs and he puffs, unable to get his words out.

Seeing him like that, so blustered up and helpless, makes me cruel, makes me want to hurt him.
This was his fault
, I tell myself;
his fault.
And so I speak first. ‘Do you know how lonely I have been? Do you know what it has been like for me, living here with a husband who doesn’t talk to me, and a son who doesn’t talk to me, either? It’s like being trapped in an emotional
graveyard
!’ That familiar look crosses his eyes – that
here we go again
look, and I never, ever want to see that look again. There is a lid lifting off inside my head. I am
done
with this. ‘I cook for you,’ I say and my voice is thick and sore. ‘I clean for you. I look after your son. I feel more like your fucking housekeeper than your wife, Andrew. Do you think I could just live like that forever?’

He finds his voice. ‘I am well aware that Jono and I are not good enough for you, Rachel,’ he says, biting out the words. ‘You make that plain every single day.’

‘It’s nothing to do with Jono.’

‘No, it’s to do with you. We’re a
family
, Rachel. You, me and Jono. But that’s never enough for you!’

‘We’re not a
family
,’ I rail at him. ‘We’re not a family. How can you call us a family when one quarter of us is dead, and the remaining three are merely forced together in mutual, suffocating misery—?’

He is trembling now; I see how the cotton of his shirt ripples against his skin. ‘Will you never let it go?’ he pleads. ‘Will you spend your whole life hankering after what we lost? Why can’t you just appreciate what we
have
got, Rachel? You’ll never be happy.’

‘You don’t try to make me happy!’

His hands are clenching and unclenching by his sides. ‘I’ve tried, Rachel. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

‘How have you tried? You don’t talk to me. You don’t make love to me.’ I see the colour rise in his face.
Good
, I think.
Good.
‘You’re so
cold
to me, turning away from me all the time. Living with you is like a punishment!’

‘You push me away.’ He bites out the words.
‘You
are cold. Every day I live with your misery . . . with your resentment. I don’t know what you want—’

‘I want to be
loved!
I want passion; I want to feel
alive
!’

He flinches.
Good.
And he says, ‘Is that what you got then? Wherever it is that you’ve been – did you get passion, Rachel? Did you get
loved?’

He is
mocking
me. There is a bad, insidious flame burning up inside me. I blank out of my mind the shameful, sordid image of Simon handing over that cheque, and push into my head instead the thought of his lean, beautiful body and his expensive clothes, and I cling to that memory.

‘Yes,’ I say to Andrew just to hurt him. ‘Yes, I did.’ And I watch the sneer slide right off his face. I am horribly lightheaded. All shackles are loose now. ‘I
did
find love and I
did
find passion.’ Again that image of Simon putting his hand to his jacket pocket, taking out his wallet and pulling out that cheque springs into my head, but I bat it away.
Bat
it away. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t? Did you think I’d just stick here forever, condemned to rot and die with you, when you are the coldest, the most emotionally fucking frigid person I have ever
met
?’