The Child Inside (36 page)

‘Has Dad come home?’ he asks and my anger fails, washed away on a wave of guilt.

I make him pasta for his tea, and loiter in the kitchen while he prods miserably at it with his fork. I am reminded of when he was a toddler; he’d have the same expression on his face then, when things went wrong. When he couldn’t fit all his toy animals into his barn, for instance, or when he bit into a biscuit and found out the chocolate drops were raisins. His mouth would turn down, just as it does now, and that frown would wrinkle up the softness of his forehead.

But how easy things were to fix, back then.

‘Jono,’ I say gently, when I can stand him pushing his pasta around the plate no longer, ‘please eat up. Things . . . will be okay.’

‘No, they won’t be,’ he says and pushes his plate away, hard; so hard it skids across the table and nearly falls off the other side. ‘You’re lying. You always lie.’

Later, Janice calls me again.

‘Rachel,’ she says in a quiet, icy-polite voice, ‘there is something I think you need to know.’

And of course I think she is going to tell me that she is screwing my husband, now that she has got him on her sofa. I especially think it when I hear her take one deep breath and then sigh it out, slowly, over a count of eight seconds. I am braced, waiting to hear it, ready to hate her, ready to hate them both.

But she says, ‘When you lost your baby – and refused to talk about it, and refused to even acknowledge that there was a baby – Andrew had to deal with that all on his own. He had to fill in the form for the death certificate. He had to arrange the funeral. And yes, there was a funeral. Andrew wanted to say goodbye to his daughter properly, whereas you didn’t want to know. A priest blessed her body in the hospital chapel. You weren’t there, Rachel, but I was. I know what that was like for Andrew, whereas you, I assume, only know what it was like for yourself.’

She pauses and I would speak; I would say something, some
Shut up
retort, only I have no words suddenly. I am shaking from head to toe. I cannot feel my feet. I cannot feel my hands. I sit down on the edge of my bed with the phone clamped rigid to my ear.

‘Andrew didn’t want to upset you, Rachel, any more than you were upset already. But did you ever think how upset he was? Because believe me, Rachel, he
was
upset. But you shut him out. You shut everyone out. Andrew had to deal with the funeral and the grief and everything else – and as far as I can see, he’s been dealing with it ever since; but you – we all had to
protect
you.’

Again she pauses, and again I’m silent. And maybe now she feels a sense of betrayal, of regret, or
something
, because she says, in a softer voice than I have ever, ever heard from Janice before, ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but I think you need to know this. Andrew is not cold. He grieved the loss of your baby just as much as you did, and for you to go home and tell him you’re pregnant by someone else – just think what that did to him, Rachel. Just think.’

I can’t think. I don’t want to think. If I think I see the shadow in my head that will always be there; and that shadow is Andrew, holding our baby daughter in his arms as tenderly as if she had lived and breathed. I shut my eyes at the time, and I shut them again now, but still I see it.

He held her; I didn’t.

And then I see him properly; I see the anguish pulling at the contours of his face and the bleakness filling up his eyes. I see his pity, and I don’t want to see his pity. I don’t want to see him tiptoeing around me, being so patient, trying to pretend that everything is okay. And I don’t want to see him gradually giving up on me, and retreating into himself. I don’t want to see any of it. I don’t want to see him.

‘I told him he can stay here for a couple of days,’ Janice is saying. ‘I don’t see what else I could do. But please, Rachel, don’t insult him or me by suggesting that either of us is enjoying the situation.’

I sit there on my bed long after she hangs up.

Was Andrew just trying to protect me? Did he keep his feelings to himself, for my sake? Is that really what he thought I wanted?

How can you live with someone, and think that you know someone, and then when something bad happens find that you are in different corners of a triangle, far, far apart?

I didn’t want Andrew to protect me, but I didn’t want to talk to him, either. He wouldn’t have got it right, whatever he did. He was the father of my dead baby. How could I ever see beyond that?

All evening Janice’s words go round and round inside my head. I move about the house, tidying things that don’t need tidying. I sweep the floor, from one end of the hall to the other, through the living room, the dining room, the kitchen. I sweep and sweep, but ours is an old wooden floor, badly restored. Weekend after weekend Andrew was on his knees with a useless old sander, scouring away. We still have the cracks. We still have the draught and the dust that comes up through the cracks. I sweep, and it gets me nowhere.

I turn on the TV in the living room and sit on the sofa, and try to watch. But how can I possibly be still? Janice’s voice is in my head, tormenting me, making me see images I don’t want to see.

My sister and Andrew in the hospital chapel, heads bowed together like Mary and Joseph. My baby daughter, wrapped in a blanket, in a death-shroud, her skin cold and white as porcelain, held in Andrew’s arms. And where am I? Where am I?

Did I shut Andrew out, or did he – and everyone else – shut me out? How could my sister be there beside Andrew when I am not? And when I think back to those numb and thumped-out days, all I see is Andrew and Jono, Andrew and Jono. As if Jono was a shield to hide behind, or some kind of distracting toy to wave in my face. Andrew and Jono – never just Andrew. I never saw just Andrew again.

And those other people who traipsed through my house being useful in the aftermath – my mother, my father, any friends who were brave enough still to come – didn’t they too just shove my son at me, as if to say,
Look, look at this boy, look at what you have still got
?

How could I grieve with no space? How could I open my arms to Jono without longing to hold
her
? How could I ever love him without guilt, without fear?

Jono is in his room. He has been there since he left his pasta, uneaten, at the kitchen table. I do not know what to say to him. I do not know what to do.

Often I have fantasized about leaving Andrew, but I always imagined Jono and I sticking together. I imagined a scenario not unlike the times when Andrew is simply out, or away on business, when Jono and I relax, and watch too much TV, and eat careless, lazy food from the freezer at all the wrong times of day. I imagined how much closer we would be, Jono and I, without Andrew there to create the triangle. With Andrew exiled, the pressure would be off, and Jono and I would be free at last to just be.

But if Andrew created the triangle, it was the triangle that held us together.

Jono’s door is closed, shutting me out. I stand there on the landing, listening for sounds from within, but hear nothing. I tap on the door, and I wait. I tap again.

‘Jono,’ I say, my face close to the door so that he will hear me, ‘would you like to have a go on the PlayStation before bed?’

He doesn’t answer and I creak open the door. He is sitting on his bed, legs crossed, and fiddling with a little torch attached to a metal key ring, flicking it on, flicking it off. He stares down at the torch, his face bloated with misery.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, but he doesn’t answer. The frown on his face deepens, and he draws his lower lip in, creasing up his chin. I watch him fiddling with that torch, and my heart contracts. I remember when he got it; Andrew brought it back from a trip to Bath last year. I wipe my hands on my thighs and move a little closer. I strive for normality. ‘Have you done your homework?’

Flick
, goes the torch in his fingers.
Flick, flick, flick.

‘Have you done all your homework?’ I ask again.

‘Homework, homework, homework,’ he mumbles without looking at me. ‘All you care about is homework.’

‘I thought you might like a go on the PlayStation,’ I say, trying to make it sound like a treat, trying to inject a little light into my voice.

‘I don’t want to go on the PlayStation. I want my
dad.’

Still he doesn’t look at me, and my heart twists some more. Carefully I sit down on the edge of the bed beside him and he turns away from me, his shoulders raised so that he is hunched right over, almost into a ball.

‘Jono,’ I say, and I am fighting back the tears now. ‘Sometimes things . . . happen. Between grown-ups. Things you couldn’t possibly understand.’ I try to touch him, but he flinches, and curls himself up further. My heart is a solid burning mass. ‘Whatever happens between me and your dad, we both love you. We’ll always love you.’

I don’t see it coming. He moves so fast; like an animal, he uncurls from his ball and rises up and hurls that key ring straight at me, at close range. It hits me on the cheekbone, right where Andrew struck me. It hits me so hard that I hear it crack inside my head like a pistol shot. I feel it like a pistol shot, too, and slap my hand across my face, clutching at the pain.

‘Well, I don’t love you!’ Jono screams and he’s lashing out at me now, too, arms and legs flailing like a wild thing. He kicks my chest, my legs, my stomach, and I double over, protecting myself, protecting my unborn baby. ‘I don’t love you! I
hate
you! I hate you!’

I manage to stagger from his room. My face is bleeding; I can feel it sticky under my hand. I can’t stand up straight. I can’t even see properly. I feel my way along the landing to my room, close the door behind me and collapse down on my bed. Jono is still screaming,
I hate you! I hate you!
and I hear the thud and the crash as more things are thrown. And I hear him crying, too, in between his screams, sobs loaded with hatred and rage.

I curl up on my bed with my eyes closed. My head is throbbing, but my body and my heart are numb. I need to sleep. I need to sleep and sleep and block it all away.

You think you are bound forever. You think you are tied, to this person and to this person. You think that it really matters. You spend your life, clutching at chains, clinging, clinging.

We are undone now.

I hear Jono get up in the morning and go downstairs, but I cannot bring myself to follow him. I hear him slamming his bag around in the hall. I hear him open the cupboard and rummage for his trainers; it is Friday, indoor PE day. I sit on my bed and I listen to the faint rustlings as he laces his shoes and puts on his blazer; I hear the click of the front door.

And then he is gone.

He did not eat last night and he did not eat this morning. Because I am his mother, I care about this. I care about this more than I care that he threw the torch at me, that he kicked me, that he hates me.

He cannot hate me.

He did not say goodbye to me, nor I to him. This hurts most, like the most brutal severing of the cord.

I would lie on my bed forever. I would sleep again; I would sleep forever. But in my head I picture Jono, plodding up the street to wait for the school bus with his bag on his back, shoulders stooped, face turned to the ground. My little boy, my little boy. And I picture Andrew, his body bent into the confines of Janice’s sofa –
if
he has slept on Janice’s sofa – in her dark and poky living room in her dark and poky flat. I picture his unshaven face on her cushions; she has too many cushions. Too many cushions and too many throws, and everywhere too many candles. I can smell those candles; the cloying spinster stink of wax and hippy oils. How I hate those candles. And I can smell Andrew, too; the sleep smell, the man smell, the smell of his socks and his unwashed hair, cocooned, confined, on Janice’s sofa.

I think about them talking about me, and there is a hard, tight knot deep inside my heart.

And I think of Simon, crisp and fresh in his expensive clothes, planning his day, planning his weekend, dispensing me from his life as casually as I entered it. I think of the dreams I spun, the stupid, ghost-driven fantasies. Whatever did I hope there could be?

I cannot sleep again. The demons in my head will not still.

How I longed to be free. How I longed to be free, but I am not free; I am merely alone.

My eyes are sticky and tight from crying. My cheek is sticky and tight from the blood that has congealed on my skin. Some of my hairs are caught in that blood; I try to prise them away, but they are trapped, like spider’s legs in glue.

I force myself to rise and go into the bathroom. My body is as slow and stiff as an old lady’s. I place my hands on the sides of the sink to steady myself, and peer into the mirror. How ghoulish I look, the wound to my face as bright and overdone as a Halloween party-piece, the bruise raised and purple already, the cut juicy and moist and vampire-red, stark against the pallor of my skin. I take a cotton-wool pad from the packet on the windowsill, dampen it under the cold tap and start cleaning off the blood. The cut is deep, and bleeds anew as I dab at it, and threads of cotton wool attach themselves to the goo. So much damage from one small key ring. I should probably get it seen to, but I won’t of course.