Into My Arms (32 page)

It was she and Nell who were struggling. Skye picked up the glue and bent once more to her task, the familiar ache in her back kicking in immediately. Of course Nell had said yes when Skye asked to move home. What else could she have done? Her mother wasn’t the type to turn her away, but did she regret it now? The last eight weeks had been difficult. Nell loved Skye and Molly, Skye knew that, and she’d sworn that she would welcome their company, but her modest house felt overcrowded with the three of them in it, and it wasn’t set up for a toddler. Molly was always pulling things out of cupboards or trying to open the bottle of bleach in the bathroom, even after Skye had asked Nell to store it somewhere higher. Once Molly had put her favourite doll to bed in the oven, which didn’t have a safety catch. Nell had turned it on that evening without checking inside, and Skye had spent the rest of the night alternately placating a hysterical Molly and trying to scrape molten pink plastic and charred acrylic hair off the element. Then there were Molly’s TV shows, which Nell disapproved of, and that time she’d once got into Nell’s studio, because Nell wasn’t in the habit of locking the door, and painted all over a half-completed canvas . . .

Skye had sympathised with Nell over that one. Your studio was a sacred space, the place where you were most yourself. She was lucky that she’d kept hers, at least for now. The statue was so heavy it wasn’t as if she could move it somewhere else, and she didn’t want to be working on it at Nell’s anyway, didn’t want to introduce anything else for them to argue about. Lucky, too, that when she’d screwed up the courage to call and ask him if she could have access to the studio two days a week while Molly was at creche and he was in the office, just until the commission was finished, he’d said yes.
Of course
, he’d told her wearily,
it’s not like I’m using it
. Then he’d hung up. She’d flinched and sat there staring at the receiver. It was the only contact they’d had since the terrible argument on the day she’d left two months ago; since she’d gutlessly begged Nell to ring him up and establish his schedule with Molly. Now she hid in her bedroom when he came to collect her. It was pathetic, yes, but she couldn’t bear to see the pain on his face, the way he looked at her.
Twice!
he’d yelled as she’d strapped Molly into the car seat on the day she moved out.
What sort of bitch breaks someone’s heart twice?

Jess stood up from her blanket in the corner and padded over to the door, waiting to be let out. She should take the dog for a walk, Skye thought guiltily. It couldn’t be much fun for Jess, spending almost all her days alone now, but she wanted to get as much done as she could before it was time to leave. The deadline for the statue was looming, and once that was met she could make some plans. She wasn’t being fair on anyone, she knew that—on Jess, whom she’d barely had time to pat; on Nell; on Hamish. For all their sakes she needed to make a new start—get her own studio, maybe find a flat for rent. The trouble was that it all cost money, and that was something she didn’t have. Nell only asked for her share of the bills, Hamish paid for the creche, yet still she was struggling. The final payment on the commission would help, but for how long? She’d have to look for a job. Skye daubed on some more glue and pushed the tiles down, hurrying now. Maybe something in a school again—the hours were good, which would be easier on Molly. When she got home tonight she’d have to check that grants website where she’d come across her artist-in-residence position . . .

The studio door opened, and she jumped. It was Hamish, clutching his briefcase and looking pale. ‘Skye,’ he said. ‘I left work early—I’ve got a migraine. I saw your car outside and thought I’d better tell you I was here, so you didn’t get worried if you heard someone moving around the house.’

‘Thanks,’ said Skye, her heart still racing. ‘I appreciate it. Can I get you anything?’

‘No. There’s some Panadeine Forte in the bathroom from when I did my shoulder. I’m just going to take that and go to bed.’ Hamish turned to leave, but then he noticed the sculpture. ‘Is this the one for the park?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Skye. ‘It’s nearly done. I’m just completing the base.’ She watched him study it. No one else had seen it yet, not even Nell or the committee that she’d had to submit her drawings to. For six months she’d worked on it alone. It was like being pregnant—the excitement, the worry, gradually growing something that you could imagine, but never definitively see. Now it was almost finished, and her pride made her want to talk about it. ‘It’s going to be installed in a fortnight, and on the Saturday after that there’s some sort of ceremony. The council are sending a truck to collect it, and a forklift. I just hope the driver knows what he’s doing. It’s really—’

‘It’s him,’ Hamish said flatly, cutting her off.

‘Who?’ Skye asked, confused.

Hamish waved his arm at the tallest figure. ‘The man in the statue. It’s him. Ben.’

‘No, it’s not,’ said Skye. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘It
is
him,’ Hamish repeated. ‘They’ve got the same colour hair. He was in that photo that you showed me on the school website, the one of the mosaic being made. I remember noticing him because you’d said his name so many times, you were always talking about him . . .’ Hamish’s face flushed. ‘Right before you dumped me.’

‘Hamish, it’s brown tiles,’ Skye said in exasperation. ‘It could be anyone. That’s the point.’

Hamish came closer to the sculpture, stretched out a hand to touch it. ‘The shape of the face is the same, the eyes . . .’. He swung back to Skye. ‘You’re seeing him, aren’t you? Is that why you moved out?’

‘No!’ Skye cried.

‘But it explains it, doesn’t it?’ he went on. ‘It would explain a lot. Why you pulled away every time I touched you, how you’d barely say anything at dinner, all those hours you were supposedly working while Molly was at daycare . . .’

‘No, you’re wrong!’ Skye protested. ‘I
was
working. I was working on this! What do you think, that I knocked it up one morning when I had nothing else on for the day?’

‘I don’t know what to think about you anymore,’ Hamish said. Outside, Jess barked, a short, reproachful sound. ‘So you swear you haven’t seen him since he left you, after those blood tests? Not once, ever? You can promise that, can you?’

Skye couldn’t help it. She flushed, the blood rising up into her face at the sudden, unwanted memory of being in this exact place with Ben, the two of them naked on the couch—the couch that she’d had to move out of the studio afterwards because she couldn’t bear seeing it there, couldn’t bear the longing and the grief that it provoked in her.

Hamish caught her hesitation and strode towards her. ‘You
are
seeing him! I bet you were screwing him before you even left—in
my
house, in
my
bed. Screwing him, but staying with me so I could pay for all this,’ he gestured wildly around the studio, at the statue, ‘because he couldn’t, could he? When did you see him? Every day? While Molly was having her nap? It must have been bloody inconvenient for the two of you once she started talking.’

Skye shrank back behind her workbench. She had never seen him so angry, so out of control. Even when Molly was at her toddler worst Hamish had been unfailingly calm and gentle, could put her back in her cot for the sixth time in a night without once being tempted to slap her, like Skye was. ‘It’s not true,’ she sobbed. ‘I haven’t seen Ben for years.’

‘I bet. You slut. You’re not fit to be a mother.’

At the accusation Skye saw red. Yes, she’d seen Ben, once, but she hadn’t given in, as much as she’d wanted to. Because it was wrong, yes, but also because Molly had needed her, because she had to look after Molly, so Molly could grow up with her own parents, her own father. Yet it hadn’t turned out like that, had it? She’d ended up leaving Hamish anyway, and the futility of it all was suddenly more than she could bear.

‘I’m
not
seeing Ben!’ she screamed. ‘I haven’t seen him, but I wish I had. And I’ve certainly been thinking about him, every single time you fucked me.’

Hamish’s face contorted and he rushed at her bellowing, eyes ablaze. Skye saw his hands contract into fists, then at the last moment he seemed to change his mind and he struck the statue instead, shoving it, hard, so that it teetered on its base. Instinctively Skye leapt forward to catch it, trying to save all that work, but it was too heavy. Her legs buckled under its weight; it pitched in her arms like a drunken dance partner. She heard Hamish roar her name; saw him lurch towards her, arms outstretched, at the same moment as pain, swift and jagged, pinned her to the ground and turned the studio black.

36

The chatter from the nurses’ station was driving her crazy. Couldn’t they keep it down a little, show a bit of respect? This was a recovery room, not a nightclub. Nell was tempted to march over and tell them so, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave Skye’s side. Just say she woke up while Nell was gone? She wouldn’t know where she was, what had happened to her . . . Another gale of laughter swept through the ward, and Nell stiffened, turning back to her daughter.

Skye didn’t look good. Her ash-blonde hair was hidden by a surgical cap; her insentient face was pale, drained. There was a bandage over her right eye, the skin around it already yellowing. Tubes snaked from her nose and the back of one hand. Nell reached for the other, squeezing it softly, but there was no response. She squeezed again, harder, then leaned forward and whispered Skye’s name, but still Skye’s eyes stayed closed.
Wake up!
Nell wanted to scream
. Get out of here, go back to your life.
But she couldn’t scream, she couldn’t even cry. She felt utterly powerless, hollowed out. Children take all of you, she thought. They unravel your heart.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t heard the phone ringing. She had, a few times that afternoon, but she’d been in her studio and couldn’t bring herself to put down her palette and go inside and answer it. Neither Skye nor Molly was home, after all, and these days she had so few opportunities to work undisturbed. When she finally came in to start dinner there were four messages on the answering machine. Carbonara, she’d decided, hitting the play button as she reached inside the fridge for eggs and cream. ‘Nell, there’s been an accident,’ Hamish’s voice keened, and she’d promptly dropped the items on the floor.

They would still be there, the mess waiting for her when she finally returned home. Nell had grabbed her keys and driven straight to the hospital. Hamish had first called at almost three, when Skye had just gone into surgery. By the time Nell found him, sitting outside the operating room, his head in his hands, it was ten past six. The light outside was fading; as Nell had arrived, everyone else was going home. It was Skye’s kidneys, Hamish had told her. Somehow the statue she was working on had fallen on her, and the sheer weight of it had torn one kidney almost all the way through while grazing the other. The falling statue had also bruised her liver and spleen, broken some ribs and gashed her head, but it was the kidney tear that had put her in surgery. He didn’t know, he’d babbled—Skye had lost consciousness, probably because of the blow to her head when she’d been knocked to the concrete floor of the studio, and he’d thought that was her only injury. He’d called an ambulance, of course, but it wasn’t until her blood pressure plummeted on the way to the hospital that the paramedics had realised there was another problem. Then at Emergency they’d scanned her and rushed her straight up here, into theatre . . .

‘The statue?’ Nell had asked. ‘But I thought it was big—bigger than Skye, not the sort of thing that falls over.’

A cleaner trudged past them pushing a mop and a bucket, leaving a trail of popping suds in his wake.

‘It is. Was,’ Hamish said. ‘I surprised her. I came into the studio while she was tiling the base. She wasn’t expecting me, and she must have jumped up and knocked it somehow. It all happened so quickly.’ He’d started to cry. ‘It’s my fault, it’s all my fault.’

Nell had put her arms around him. She liked Hamish, she always had. He was considerate and caring; he’d been good to Skye. Yet something wasn’t right. She didn’t understand it, didn’t understand how such a large, heavy sculpture could just topple over, or what Hamish was doing there in the middle of the day . . . But then they’d wheeled Skye out of surgery and Hamish had been called away to speak with the surgeon while Nell began her vigil beside her daughter’s still body.

Now Hamish was in the hallway, calling his mother, who had picked Molly up from daycare and was keeping her overnight. Nell bent over Skye again, willing her to wake up. This was the third time she’d done so in only four years: first following Skye’s collapse when she read the results of the blood test, then again after Molly’s traumatic arrival. It didn’t get easier. An image of Charlie came to her, just before he died. He’d ended up in a hospital bed too, like this one—not speaking, not seeing. Unlike Skye now, Charlie was conscious, but he hadn’t recognised Nell. A life together—two children, all their travels, that night he’d scrubbed her blood from the floor and they’d both wept for their loss—all that, and at the end he couldn’t tell her from the nurse who came to change his catheter. It was the dementia, his doctor had said, he wasn’t Charlie anymore; she shouldn’t take it personally. But how could she not? He still smelled like Charlie and slept like Charlie, mouth slightly agape, hair falling over his eyes. She remembered the shock of it, the absolute slap in the face: that he’d open those eyes and not know who she was.

But that wasn’t going to happen to Skye, Nell reminded herself. She was going to be alright. The surgeon had said so. She had lost a lot of blood and the kidney was badly damaged, but he thought he’d saved it. Skye would have to stay in hospital for a while, then take things easy once she was discharged. It was lucky, really, that they were living together—this way Nell could look after her. Though that was something else Nell didn’t understand: the split; why Skye had come home. She had thought Skye was happy, was settled at last; she’d been surprised and upset to answer the phone and hear she had decided to leave Hamish. Nell had endeavoured to talk to her, to tell her that all marriages went through their rough patches, that she should go back and work on things for Molly’s sake, but Skye hadn’t wanted to listen. It had got to the stage where she stormed off to her room whenever the subject was raised. And she shouldn’t have kept on raising it, Nell told herself now, she should have been more patient, more understanding. Skye was her only daughter, after all, and she’d fought so hard for her, gone through so many tests and tears to conjure her into being. Nell remembered once more that night in the studio, her thighs slick and red—then the next cycle, the day they’d been told they had seven healthy embryos. Ben, she thought suddenly. It was two years since the night she had rung him and tried to bring him back into their lives. Ben had spoken with her, but he hadn’t made further contact since that time. Surely, though, he must have contacted his mother—his ‘other’ mother, as she’d come to think of the woman in Tatong who’d carried him, raised him, who’d loved him as she loved Skye and Arran. Nell hoped he had contacted her, anyway. To lose a child would be the worst thing in the world.