Go to Sleep (20 page)

From the number of black four-wheel drives crunching in on the gravel and spinning to a dramatic stop, I’m starting to feel I’ve missed out on some dress code. Everyone seems to have the same car – if you can call these monster-trucks cars. Immaculate young mothers jump down from their steeds, all hairspray and lustrous locks, their slim, slightly faded jeans cupping their small bottoms. Some of them are near-dancing down the path in pairs, already firm allies, their laughter oozing self-confidence, self-belief. They walk like they know where they’re going; what lies behind the door.

I steady myself, smile down at Joe and step out from the shadows, start making my way towards the café’s glass façade. As I get closer, one woman stands out among the gather of well-groomed mum-chicks. Her hair is wild, her face shock white. Instinctively I make a beeline for her, but as I get closer to the plate-glass window I realise the woman is me.

This is a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. All this will do is serve up my uselessness, my failings as a mother, lay it all bare to an audience of supermums. No. I’ve done well to get this far, but I should just turn around now and walk away. Nobody has seen me. I carry on round the side of the café – there’s another gate leading out on to the river path. I can make my getaway and take Joe
on a bracing riverside romp instead. But as I get round the back of the café and on to the path, there’s a familiar face coming towards me. Vicky. My expression is immediately guilty for having left her in the rain that afternoon, but if she did see me duck back behind the shadows then lope off up to my flat, she doesn’t let on.

‘You too?’ she smiles.

I nod. I like her. She looks dishevelled and . . . well, she looks
mad
. There’s tomato sauce or maybe raspberry juice around her mouth and a perfectly circular stain of vomit on her raincoat’s lapel, like a brooch. To the left of the stain is her
tiny
baby, fast asleep in a sling. Vicky’s next to me now, smiling mischievously.

‘I was just about to do one myself,’ she grins. She’s got a very slight, girlish Liverpool accent. ‘And it felt great. I felt dead . . .
naughty
, sneaking off like that. Then I just thought – who you kidding? Sometimes you’ve got to make yourself do things you don’t want to, haven’t you?’

‘Have you?’

Any sign of encouragement and I’m off. Vicky thinks about it.

‘Don’t get me wrong. They’re a lovely bunch of girls and that . . .’

‘But?’

Again the impish grin. Her nose wrinkles as she shrinks her head down inside her raincoat.

‘I’m just not sure I want to sit there hearing how brilliant other women’s babies are? Do you know what I mean?’

Do I know what she means? I could hug her!

‘So it’s not just me?’

‘Joking, aren’t you? This little madam hasn’t give me forty winks since she was born.’

‘Hah! Seriously? Fuck. Joe just never— has never—’

I still can’t say it. Joe. Will. Not. Sleep. Vicky drops down to her knees, sticks her head inside his buggy.

‘Ah, but
look
at him! He’s just
gorgeous
! Aren’t you?’

‘Don’t be fooled. He’s the devil’s spawn.’

‘Ah, darlin’– have you heard what your mam’s saying about
you
?’

Joe gurgles. I’m shot through with a surge of relief, of ecstasy. I have met someone whose child doesn’t sleep! I want to know
everything
!

Vicky stands up again, darts a look at the café. The last of the NCT mums is inside, now. She gives me a teasing look, rocks ever so slightly from side to side. ‘So . . . to bunk or not to bunk? That is the question.’

I give the café a once-over. Behind the tinted glass, a silhouette is standing on a chair, opening a window.

‘Haven’t got much choice now, have we?’

The window resists at first, then jerks open. They’ll see us any second.

‘I think we’ve been rumbled.’

Vicky links me around the elbow, and starts pulling me down the path, giggling.

‘Nah – fuck it! Let’s go to ours for a glass of wine!’

* * *

Vicky lives in a spacious 1930s semi with barrel-fronted windows that look out on to a tree-lined avenue whose gutters are still studded with the spiky brown husks of conkers. It’s the kind of house I’d have grown up in if Mum had had her wish. On the little picket gate there’s a sign saying
Chat Sauvage
and when Vicky lets us in, I have to fight myself not to react to the stench – or stenches. Cat wee, last night’s supper, something damp and mouldy; the house is full of pungent smells. The whole place is chaotic, filthy in places. I almost fall over a Tesco bag that has keeled over in the hallway, spilling out dirty nappies. Vicky just kicks it aside as we step in.

‘Make yourself at home,’ she winks. ‘I’ll go and pop a bottle.’

I wheel Joe into the living room, flooded with winter sunshine, and try to push my anxieties back, but there are cat hairs everywhere. Mindful of the bacteria that must be running rampant on every surface, I gently push his buggy back out to the hallway and leave him sleeping soundly in the porch. And once we’ve walloped our first glass, I stop noticing my surroundings.

‘God! Look at us pair of plonkies! Where did
that
go?’

She tops up the glasses. Half measures. I give her an eyebrow. She nods to her baby.

‘She’ll be legless, poor thing.’

I laugh. ‘At least we’ll both get some sleep tonight.’ I reach for the bottle, top mine up. The delicious sluice of cold Sancerre slices right through me. I’m giddy and
optimistic – happier than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I know the wine is responsible and I know it’s nothing more than a fake head-rush, but so what? I don’t drive, and who wants reality? That’ll be back soon enough. ‘I had no idea you were . . .’

I’m trying to think of an elegant way of saying ‘on your own’. I know it’s wrong but I’m still tingling from the joy of her revelation that there’s no significant other in her life.

‘A fellow saddo?’

I almost yelp with mirth, spitting wine all over her carpet. I laugh, long and hard, physically unable to breathe in.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do! You sad old bitch!’

And she laughs, she throws her head back and shows her teeth – but something has changed. Through the foggy blur of the wine-buzz, I know that something is wrong and, somehow, Vicky is changing gear. Her face has sobered, her eyes are probing mine. Whether with hurt or indignation, I don’t know, but that cheeky sparkle has gone out of her, all of a sudden. She addresses the rug as she speaks.

‘I did get a lot of help from my old man, after Jeffrey left.’ Jeffrey! She had sex with a man called
Jeffrey
! Serves her right, then. I try to fight back the crater-wide smile that’s threatening to erupt all over my face. Vicky reaches down to the vibrating baby seat where Abigail, her docile and delightful baby, blows bubbles and fixes her wonky gaze on something that doesn’t exist. ‘He did everything for me, Dad. Fixed up the nursery. Took me to all my
antenatal classes. Went shopping for baby clothes, the crib, everything you could think of, Dad had thought of it first.’ And I’m trembling here. Out of nowhere I am unable to control the swell of outrage and disbelief and red-hot jealousy. I thought she was like me. I thought I had a friend here. I grip the glass, trying to breathe through the spiteful onslaught of emotions. ‘And as for this place . . . well, we just couldn’t have afforded to get our own place. Simple as that.’

We
? So she’s not all alone, then. I clench my fists, but no. It will have to come out. Once again, I can see my lips are moving, but I have no control over the message.

‘I bet he even gets up to her in the night, doesn’t he?’ With an embarrassed smile, she shirks the question and spirits my glass up and away from the table. I lunge out a hand. ‘Hey, I’ve not finished with that.’

She calls back from the hallway. ‘I’ll cork it for later. You should eat something.’

Patronising cow! How
dare
she?

I attempt to get up, go after her, but my legs are dead-weight from the wine and I’m suddenly overcome by agonising tiredness. I don’t know how long she leaves me sitting here but when I come to the sun has dipped behind the clouds; my anger tamped down to sadness. The aftertaste of the wine feels rancid in my throat, sour on my tongue. I’m sinking here and it’s a real struggle to keep my eyes open.

I’m vaguely aware of Vicky coming in, pulling down
the blinds. I force myself wide awake for one moment.

‘There’s nothing fucking cool or glamorous about bringing up a bastard on your own.’

‘Shhhh.’

A blanket being placed across me, the fire lit. I pull myself up again.

‘Sorry.’ I smile up at her through the drugged weight of my eyelids. The motherly creases around the corners of her eyes and the strands of grey slicing up her hair make me feel young and needy and so horribly abandoned for a moment that I start to cry. ‘I miss her.’

‘Who, honey?’

And even if I wanted to there’s nothing I can do to stop the waves crashing over and pulling me down.

*

I wake up, knowing instinctively where I am but not knowing why. It’s dark outside. How long have I slept for? Where is Joe?

On the other side of the wall I can hear plates clanging, laughter. My hair is wet and matted to my face. My tits feel damp. I fumble out for the lamp switch and the clock on the wall bolts me upright.

I get up and, feeling the first splinters of panic in my throat, make my way down the hallway towards the source of noise and light.

* * *

A teenage girl, dainty, pretty and with the same oval grey eyes as Vicky is talking to a man in his early sixties. He’s slender with a shock of white hair and sharp blue eyes like my father’s. His sun-browned arms are dappled with liver spots. The man is holding a spoon to his mouth, hovering over a vat of Scouse. The girl is slicing beetroot. Slowly I creep into the periphery of their vision and they stop talking and turn to take me in – the frightened child, frozen in the doorway of her parent’s room, shaking from the nightmare that woke her, that won’t go away.

The man steps towards me with arms open wide, his face creasing up into one magnificent smile.

‘Ahhh, Rachel! I’m David, Vicky’s father.’

The girl grins at me with small teeth, holds up a hand. ‘Hi. I’m Meg.’

‘Vicky’s sister,’ says her dad, all proud and smug.

‘Where’s Joe?’ I ask.

‘Upstairs, I think. Are you going to stay for tea? It’s nothing—’

I turn tail and leave them, already scaling the stairs two at a time before her old man can finish his sentence.

At the end of the landing a little bar of light spills out from under the door. I can hear Vicky now, singing to a baby. And it’s not love or joy that sweeps through me, nor is it plain old relief or guilt. It’s something unpleasant, something instinctual.

‘Vicky?’

‘In here, Sleeping Beauty.’

I push open the door. Vicky smiles up at me, doesn’t break from her song, her head swaying rhythmically to the lullaby on her lips. The baby suckling from her breast is not Abigail. It is my son. My Joe.

I gawp, dumbstruck, unable to move, unable to fathom what I see. Joe’s forearm is resting on her collarbone in easy repose. His little thumb caresses his own palm in ecstasy as he suckles away. She lowers him now so I can see his face. His big slick eyes look right up at her, attentive, content. And all I can do is stand and stare.

Finally, words come.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’

An immeasurable silence, filling up the spaces between breaths. Vicky’s face crumples in on itself. So bitterly shocked and hurt is she that I have to step back, take it all in a second time.

‘I . . . God, Rachel . . . I didn’t think. You needed your sleep. He was hungry.’

My instincts don’t waver.

‘You have no right,’ I say. ‘NO right!’

Confused, saddened, but with the noble certainty she’s committed no wrong, she gently, lovingly removes my little man and hands him back. He looks drugged, sated. My baby is happy.

I pass the old man on the stairs; he flattens himself to the wall to let me past. I bundle Joe into the pram, click
the brakes off and bodily lift the whole buggy out of Vicky’s porch. And I walk and walk, further and further away from whatever that was, back there. When I come round, we’re sitting in the little derelict park again and I’m staring at the slide where Ruben fucked me, once.

Joe is five weeks old. The days grow shorter. The nights are cold and dense. If it wasn’t before, then sleep, or lack of it, has become the lodestar around which my every waking thought orbits. I am obsessed with sleep. I fantasise about it, I ache for it, and down on my knees I beg for it. In those rare and grainy snatches of half-life that now pass for sleep, I dream about it. Its elusiveness beats through my veins like a secondary pulse.

I take to playing a kind of Russian roulette, accosting new mums in the supermarket, the street, and asking after their baby’s sleeping habits so that I can pit them against Joe’s. The answers these interrogations elicit will either elevate me to a state of euphoria or sink me like a stone. When they tell me,
No, my baby doesn’t sleep either,
I’m socked with a sudden burst of hope and deep
raging love for Joe and my heart skips to the beckoning promise of all that lies ahead, all those antenatal fantasies that had me cradling my bump in joyful anticipation – conker-picking in the park, Christmas trips out to Haworth, my doe-eyed little boy dozing softly on my lap on the coach back home as I watch the moon rise – and when I put him down I find myself laughing out loud at the absurdity of our situation, shaking my head in a kind of mocking, affectionate,
Well, here’s to another night of hell, Buster!

But then when I’m told,
Yeah, sleeps like a dream, eight till eight, has done since the day I brought her home
, my heart plummets and I look upon these mothers with the same acid resentment I looked upon the fudge-skinned girls at school, with their perfect little bums and full mouths, and who made me so aware of my own flawed design. I trudge home, sad and bitter, and this time when I heft Joe on to my breast for his final feed of the evening I regard him with pity, wishing him to a different mother, wishing I could turn back time, before one became two.