Putting Alice Back Together (22 page)

‘Is it Hugh?’ My tongue was on the roof of my mouth as she continued, ‘He was a bit short with you the other night.’

I hated that she’d noticed, because I’d been trying not to notice. ‘He’s fine…’ I shrugged. ‘He just gets in a knot if I have more than half a glass of wine.’ I waited for her to grin, but she didn’t. ‘He hates me smoking,’ I added, because Roz smoked more than me, but she didn’t shrug and she didn’t grin, she just kept looking at me. ‘Anyway, it’s not that…’

‘Then what?’

‘Gemma’s called a couple of times.’

‘His girlfriend?’

‘His ex-girlfriend,’ I corrected.

‘And what did she want?’ Roz asked. ‘What did Hugh say?’

‘He doesn’t know!’ I saw a frown on Roz’s face, and I didn’t like the disapproval I could feel winging its way over.

‘You can’t stop him talking to her.’

‘If I can I will.’

‘Alice, if he finds out that you haven’t told him…’ I’d come to her for help, yet I didn’t like what she was offering—and, again, what would she know?

‘Look…’ I stood up, swung up my bag ‘… you’ve got enough on your mind, with Lizzie and everything. Don’t worry, I’ll talk to Hugh.’

No, I bloody well wouldn’t.

What I did, though, when I got home and there wasn’t a red light flashing was take out a Post-it note and write ‘Gemma called’ and then I took out another one and wrote ‘Gemma again—please call her back’. I placed them on the floor just under the side table where the phone sat.

And I was relieved later that I’d done it because, though Hugh was working that night and all weekend, he blasted through the door at six a.m. still wearing his lanyard and… er… not very happy.

‘Has Gemma been ringing here?’

‘I told you…’ I started, but seeing his expression I got out of bed. ‘I wrote you notes.’ I was scrabbling on the little side table. Really, my acting skills were marvellous, because I picked up the notes from the floor. ‘Here they are.’ I watched him read them.

‘You could have said.’

‘And what? Should I have checked if you’d called her back? We always write phone messages on notes.’

I could see him swallowing, trying to believe me, to rationalise.

‘I bought you a mobile,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t she just call on that?’

‘That was just for work. I’m on a crap plan—she doesn’t even have the number. For Christ’s sake, Alice, did you not think?’

‘I think,’ I shrilled, ‘you’re rather overly upset to have missed Gemma’s call.’

‘She called me last night at work from Singapore!’

‘Singapore?’

‘She doesn’t want it to be over, she doesn’t understand why I won’t talk to her, so she’s on her way here to talk to me.’

Oh, God. What had I done?

‘My first weekend on call and I’ve had to ask someone to cover for me.’

Oh, God. Oh, God.

‘I’m going to the airport…’

‘When will you be back?’

He didn’t answer. He was furious, I could tell, and I knew I deserved it, but I still denied it. I watched him check his wallet, and call for a taxi, and then I heard the slam of the door—and I did the only thing I could think of.

I took a Kalma.

Then another, and a few hours later, when he still hadn’t called, I took a couple more.

It was the longest day.

Just unbearable.

Roz was out, so too was Dan.

I spun around the apartment, pacing. I checked my phone constantly. I checked the flight times from Singapore and she’d been in the country for hours. What the hell did they have to talk about? In the end Dan answered and I begged him to come over and hold vigil, and he was a good friend because he came, and by midnight, when there was still no Hugh, I gave up being brave. If I closed my eyes I could see Gemma’s head thrashing on the pillow at their tender reunion.

I wanted to text him, to ring him, but Dan said to have another margarita instead.

‘Don’t look needy.’

‘I feel needy…’ Oh, God, it was three a.m. and he hadn’t called. Dan was holding my mobile hostage.

‘You will not call him!’ He frogmarched me to bed and poured me another margarita. We had the jug with us, and he lay on the bed with me and ordered me to sleep—but I couldn’t. I just lay in the darkness, itching for my phone, hating Hugh for not calling. I surely deserved that at least?

And then the front door slammed.

And he was home.

As the light flicked on in my room I climbed out of bed and I was beaming, but I saw the look of disgust on his face as he saw there was a guy in my bed.

‘It’s Dan!’ I grinned, because for Christ’s sake he was only on top of the bed—and he was gay. ‘It’s Dan!’ I said again, as Dan got up and gave me a grim smile and left us to it.

I was doing my YMCA dance, but Hugh wasn’t smiling.

I was—he’d come home to me. Late—very late, perhaps—but he had come home.

He’d come back to me.

‘You’re pissed.’

‘A bit,’ I admitted.

‘In bed with Dan.’

‘I didn’t sleep with him.’ I was still grinning, ‘You know we’re just friends—as if I’d sleep with him…’

‘Oh, but you would have…’ There was disgust in his eyes as he scanned the room, the ashtray, the margarita jug, me half-dressed. ‘If Dan had tried, do you know what, Alice? I reckon that you would have.’

‘Hold on a minute.’ I lurched towards him, because the margaritas had gone straight to my legs. ‘You’re the one who just spent the night with your ex.’

‘She’s flown ten thousand miles,’ Hugh roared, ‘and had you passed on the messages she wouldn’t have had to—she’s been ringing all week!’

‘So it’s my fault?’ I demanded, grabbing his arm, but he shook me off. ‘My fault your loopy ex can’t stop ringing you? My fault your psycho ex hops on a plane to the other side of the world?’

‘I can’t do this…’ Hugh shook his head. He was in his room and shoving stuff into his backpack. ‘I can’t do this any more, Alice. The one time I needed to come home and talk, the one time I needed to have a sensible conversation, what do I get?’

‘You spent the night with your ex!’

It had surely been my right to call friends, my right to get pissed and feel sorry for myself, but Hugh refused to see it, and all I could see was that he was packing his bag, that he was leaving and I didn’t want it to end.

‘Don’t walk out.’

‘If I stay,’ Hugh hissed through very taut lips, ‘then I’ll say something that we’re both going to regret.’

‘You’re going to her, aren’t you?’

‘Alice.’

‘You were always going to.’ I let rip then. ‘I’m your last fling—your last shag before you settle down. You were always using me.’

‘Alice!’ He shouted the word, his lips white. ‘Shut up. This isn’t about Gemma…’

‘Then who?’ I screamed. ‘Everything was fine and then she turns up…’

‘Everything was not fine.’

‘Yes, it was!’ I insisted. ‘Look at Coogee—you said this was
it
, and now she’s back, bloody Gemma…’

‘This isn’t about Gemma!’

We went back and forth, or rather he carried on packing his stuff as I ripped it back out and demanded he stay—demanded that we talk—and he said he’d been trying to talk, and then I said…

Something… (I can’t remember—sorry…)

And he went to walk out.

And I was pulling at him and he was shaking me off.

And then it was Hugh’s turn to let rip.

In hindsight, had I let him go when he first wanted to, we might have had a chance. He might have come back the next morning and we’d have spoken. But I hadn’t let him go. I’d demanded that he stay, demanded that he talk.

Oh, my!

Did he talk.

‘We have a name for people like you, Alice.’

We—it was a ‘we’ I didn’t like: a sort of professional ‘we’ that I didn’t want attached to my name. I wanted him to go now, but Hugh wasn’t keeping quiet, Hugh wasn’t holding back.

‘FITH syndrome.’

I wasn’t going to listen to this—I didn’t want to argue; I didn’t care what it meant. I walked back along the hall to the living room, only that didn’t stop him.

‘Fucked In The Head.’

And he told me how he’d come to his diagnosis and I just sat there. I sat there silent, stunned, as he packed—properly this time—not just a toothbrush or a change of socks—no, he put everything he could into his backpack, and the stuff left over into carrier bags.

And I hated him for turning this on me—he was making an excuse, blaming me, when really he was just looking for a reason to go back to her.

He was standing in the lounge looking at me, breathing so hard you’d think he’d been running, just standing there for the longest time.

‘You need help, Alice.’

‘Just go to Gemma!’

‘Yeah, blame it on her, why don’t you? Instead of taking a look at yourself.’ He grabbed at my handbag and I moved to stop him. I pulled at his hands as he shook the contents out.

‘Just go.’

‘I am going.’

‘Then go!’ I was screaming. The neighbours were banging. But Hugh didn’t care about that.

‘I’m doing you a favour, you stupid bitch. For the last time ever, I’m doing you a favour!’

And he opened all the zips and took out the bottles, the blister packs and the prescriptions, the fags and the lighters. Then he went under the mattress and pulled out the credit-card bills, and I was grabbing at his arms and trying to stop him, but he shoved me off as easily as brushing off a fly. He stormed into the kitchen and turned on the waste disposal and tipped in my pills—only he didn’t stop there. He took out the wine casks, and then he went to my make-up bag and found some laxatives. He tipped out my protein shakes and broke all the eggs for my omelettes, and turned the waste disposal on again. I stopped fighting him then. I just sat there.

‘You know why I hate my job sometimes?’ Hugh said, and I didn’t look at him and didn’t answer. ‘Because I know where to look.’

And I knew as he closed the door that he wasn’t just talking about my bag, or under the mattress, the sink, the cupboards… Hugh was talking about my mind.

I just sat there when he’d gone.

Hugh did know where to look, because he’d seen everything.

I couldn’t have a drink.

I couldn’t have a pill.

I couldn’t even bloody kill myself as no doubt he’d hidden all the knives, so I just sat there in silence. I didn’t even wonder if he had gone to Gemma, because I knew it didn’t matter whether he had or not.

He had been preparing to leave anyway.

Just as they all did, just as anyone did when they got too close.

Or grew up.

Or got a life.

Or saw me.

I cried then—real tears this time. Cried so hard I was retching, I cried more than I ever have in my life.

Except once.

Forty-Eight

She was here.

That quickly.

It was a girl.

She was a girl.

A life.

And it ended.

She was as big as my hand, perhaps a little bit bigger, and they wrapped her up and brought her over and offered her to me. She wasn’t dead—she was breathing, she was pink, more red than pink—she was alive and I couldn’t stand it.

‘Just take it out!’ I could hear my voice. I was shouting. ‘Take it out.’

So they did.

And as I tried to wrap my head around it—as I thought it was over—Fi pulled me back to the world.

‘Sweetie, you need to hold your baby.’

I hated Fi. As she spoke on all I did was hate her. I don’t remember what she said word for word but it took eight minutes—eight minutes of her telling me to do
something that I didn’t want to, to do the hardest thing imaginable.

‘You deserve this time.’

Shut the fuck up.

‘I will hold her for you if you want me to, but you need to have this time.’

I looked at the clock and it was only ten past eight.

An hour ago I had been in the bath…

Seventeen.

A day ago I had been worried about my music exam.

‘This is the most important decision you can make. Some time in the future…’

Now I was a mum.

And my baby was going to die.

So I let Fi bring it in.

She was wrapped in a lemon brushed cotton baby rug.

Fi held her for me and explained things to me.

She held her till I was ready to look properly; she explained that the soft, colourless hair on her head had no pigment—and I was twisting inside. I was twisting and folding over on myself and twisting in pain, because even if I could guess its potential colour I would never ever get to see it.

And she showed me her eyebrows, these little translucent lines that I wanted to touch but my hands stayed closed.

And she showed me her fingers, but I pulled at the rug because I needed more of her and I saw tiny, tiny toes.

I touched her foot and it moved; she felt my touch, and then I touched each little toe.

And then I wanted more, so Fi passed her to me.

It was like catching air.

She weighed nothing as I took her in my hands, yet she felt like everything to me as I drew her in.

‘Have you thought of a name?’

‘No,’ I said because I had tried so hard
not
to think of her—but now she consumed me, her skin, her tiny little hands. I wished I’d eaten better, wished I could feed her, wished I’d held on just a little bit longer and given her a tiny chance.

I thought she had stopped breathing. I felt a shudder of panic because she seemed so still and then she breathed again and so could I, but I knew for not much longer.

‘She needs to be named,’ Fi said gently, and because she had lived she would be registered and I was relieved to hear it.

‘Lydia,’ I said.

It’s my middle name.

No matter how I held her—no matter how my body tried to warm her—she grew colder. I saw her colour change from red to pink, to this mottled colour like when you’ve sat too close to a fire—and I held her closer and she got paler and sometimes she didn’t breathe for ages but I always knew there would be one more. I kind of knew that it wasn’t over. So much so… that I knew when it was.

I wanted to kiss those lips, to literally give the kiss of life, but my kiss, I knew, was too fierce for that tiny mouth. I held my breath with my lips open and tasted your last breath and I didn’t breathe out—but you didn’t breathe in.