The Innocent Sleep (17 page)

I finished my drink and walked up the stairs from an alcoholic underworld and wondered about where the license plate would lead; what pathway would it take me on? Was the sun to shine? And the boy on the horse, was that Dillon?

CHAPTER TEN

ROBIN

In
the end, Harry was gone for four days. When he finally got home, he appeared in the doorway dark-eyed and bleary, several days’ worth of stubble shadowing his face. He looked like someone troubled, someone who was letting himself go, a shadow of the man he’d once been. And I thought back to how he had been in Tangier—so vibrant and alive, full of bright color, awake and instinctive, inquisitive and hungry. Not this tired, worn-out, beaten-down person with a hollow stare. Part of me strained toward him with a terrible pity for all he had become.

After I told him what had happened—the bleeding, the hospital, the threatened miscarriage—he sat down heavily on the couch beside me and stared blankly ahead. He didn’t say a word. And then he lowered his head into his hands and started to cry. Silent tears. I didn’t see his face, only his body shuddering and his hands shaking.

“Harry.”

“I’m sorry, Robin.”

“Baby, don’t say that. Come here. Show me your face.”

I felt the pull of his resistance, but slowly he yielded to me, letting me take his hands in mine, looking down shyly, unable to meet my gaze.

“I can’t believe you went through all that on your own.”

He looked at me then, and I felt I had a chance in that one moment to make things right between us.

“I have been so angry with you, Harry,” I began tentatively. “All that time you were away, I kept trying to call you. Last night I left messages, sent texts, and yet there was no response from you. I couldn’t believe you would be so callous—so cold. And after the way we left things, well … you can imagine what I was thinking. Things have not been good between us lately, not really. Ever since you moved your studio. Ever since I told you about the baby.”

He shook his head and stared at the floor. I saw the movement of muscle along his jaw as he clenched his teeth, but still I went on.

“I had the impression that you viewed your London trip as a welcome escape from me.”

“That’s not true, Robin.”

“Isn’t it? In these last days, I’ve felt that I’ve been losing you.”

He didn’t say anything, or try to deny it.

“You’ve felt it, too?” I asked, and he nodded slowly. I found my lip starting to tremble, the tears coming unbidden, but I swallowed them away.

“We can’t lose each other, Harry. Not now. Not after everything we’ve been through.”

“I don’t want to lose you, Robin. It’s just that…”

He stopped, and I had the notion that he was on the verge of telling me something, confessing something to me, and I thought again of the drawings of Dillon and all the secret pain he kept hidden from me. I took his face in my hands and looked into his eyes.

“This is a new start for us, Harry. A new beginning. This baby is real. It is happening. When I saw that ultrasound, that little heartbeat, it made me realize—all the other shit doesn’t matter. This is what matters. So I’m not going to ask you about London. I’m not going to demand an explanation as to why you didn’t return my calls or why you’ve been so distant lately. We need to put all of that behind us. Because this is our future.” I reached for his hand and placed it on my belly, still flat, and yet I thought of the child embedded deep within me, the little bean nestling into the soft layers of my body, silently growing in the darkness. “I know you weren’t happy about the pregnancy— no, please, let me finish. I know you weren’t. But if you had been there, Harry. If you had seen what I saw, I know you would feel differently. This child isn’t Dillon. No one will ever take his place. But we can still have this baby and love him or her as much as we loved Dillon.”

“I know. I know.”

“Listen to me now, Harry. No more lies. No more deceits. I don’t want us to keep things hidden from each other. We used to be so open with each other. We used to be able to tell each other anything. Do you remember?”

“I remember. I just can’t seem to remember when that stopped.”

He looked up at me then, his eyes so plaintive and forlorn, and I experienced a rush of guilt so strong, it almost made me tell him.

The moment passed. We sat together. I felt his hand moving over my tummy. I heard the logs in the open fire cracking and spitting.

“A new start, Harry.”

“Yes,” he said. And then he fell silent.

*   *   *

It
snowed again—heavier and softer than the earlier fall of snow. For the first time in many years, we would have a white Christmas. I watched it come down, heavy and thick, filling up the garden, easing a soft blanket over every surface, every shrub and bush, clinging to the crooks of branches and the tiles of the roof, frosting the windowpanes. We had the fires lit all the time. We tried to keep the house warm and our spirits light, and yet still the cold air crept in through crumbling window frames, whistling through the cavities in the brickwork. The tide of Christmas parties swept us along, and I felt an attendant tiredness, irritability I put down to pregnancy hormones and the pressures of work. The office had grown more stressful. A project we had successfully bid for had fallen through, and there was talk of coming pay cuts.

On a cold Thursday evening, Harry and I put on our hiking boots and trudged down through the snow to Blackrock College, where they were selling Christmas trees for the Society of St. Vincent de Paul. We picked one out—a large, bushy thing—and half-carried, half-dragged it home. There was a silence between us that day that I couldn’t account for. I was tired and anxious. Our office Christmas party had taken place the previous night. Usually a lavish affair, this year it had consisted of a few drinks and some sandwiches in our local pub. I had felt like the only sober person there. At one point in the night, one of my colleagues, the worse for drink, had passed on a rumor he had heard that there would be layoffs in the New Year. When I’d pressed him on the issue, he had given a hollow laugh and said, “CAD monkeys like me and you, I suppose.” And then he saw the anxiety on my face and instantly changed the subject. I thought of mentioning it to Harry, and yet I didn’t want to worry him. He seemed caught up in his own thoughts that day, and I couldn’t quite muster the effort required to dispel the weight that was between us.

Back home, I sliced oranges and studded the slices with cloves, then baked them in the oven. The dried-out wheels I strung with twine and hung from the tree. The whole house seemed to smell of Christmas—the pine needles, the spices, the sweet orange tang—and my spirits lifted a little. Harry went up to the attic and brought down the lights for the tree and the box of decorations, and then he sat on the floor and drank coffee laced with whiskey and watched me untangling the strings of lights.

“That tree is fucking huge,” he said, casting his eye over it. “I think we got carried away.”

“It’s a big room.”

“It’s not that big. You’d need a ballroom to fit that tree.”

“I love it. I think it’s perfect.”

“The angel will have vertigo. Maybe we should cut a bit off the branches?”

“No! Leave it! Wait until I’ve the lights and the decorations on—then it won’t look so monstrous.”

“Do you think that’s why they call it ‘trimming the tree’? Because you always end up hacking bits off it just to get it to fit in the room?”

“No hacking bits off it, Harry. Just leave it be.”

I had the lights untangled and was standing on a chair, trying to loop them around the top of the tree.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Harry asked, watching me with a doubtful expression. “A woman in your condition?”

“Oh, please. Don’t start that now.”

“Start what?”

“The overprotective routine.”

“Why? Did I do that before?”

I turned and looked at him.

“Harry? Are you serious? With Dillon, you hardly allowed me to move. I couldn’t leave the house without an escort. You’d have a fit anytime I carried a few plates from the table to the sink!”

“Did I?”

“Yes!” I laughed. “You were a nightmare.”

This was something new. Dillon had started creeping back into our conversations. For such a long time, I had closed my mind to that whole chapter of my life. I had buried it deep down in the dark recesses of memory. But now, with this new life started inside me, I found I was able to open the door just a chink and let a little light in. Gradually, bit by bit, we were reclaiming ourselves as parents. We were reclaiming our son—our memories of him. The pain was still there—it never really went away—but it had softened. The sharp edges of it had grown blunt. I was finding that I could say his name and hear it said back to me without feeling that instant rush of sadness, that well of melancholy springing up.

“So do you think you have enough decorations?” Harry asked, peering into the large box stuffed full with angels and Santas, reindeers and bells and stars.

“It is a big tree, need I remind you?”

He had picked out a wooden angel with movable arms, and with one finger he was causing the arms to rise and fall, rise and fall.

“Seriously, how long have you been collecting this stuff?”

“I don’t know. Years. What can I say? I love Christmas.”

“Other people love Christmas. With you, it’s an obsession.”

He paused and looked down for a moment, his eyes growing dreamy with some old memory.

Then he said, “Do you remember that Christmas tree we had in Tangier?”

I stopped draping lights over the branches.

“We must have been the only people in the whole of Morocco who had a real Christmas tree. Jesus!”

“Yes,” I said.

I stared at the string of lights in my hand.

Harry said something else, but I had stopped listening. I turned the lights over in my hands, and ever so slightly my hands began to tremble.

“Robin? Are you all right?”

I looked down at him and saw the concern in his eyes. My hands were steady now, but something had come over me.

“I’m tired,” I said. Getting down from the chair, I dropped the lights onto the couch. “I’m going to lie down.”

I didn’t look at him as I left the room.

*   *   *

On
the last Saturday before Christmas, I was in the homewares department of Brown Thomas with Liz, both of us attempting to cram all of our shopping into a couple of hours. Guilt plagued me as I eyed the price tags and thought about my mortgage payments and my reduced working hours and wondered how on earth I was going to stretch my budget to buy presents for my family. I was flustered and hassled and overheating.

“What do you think about this for Andrew’s mum?” Liz asked, holding aloft a blue bread bin with a walnut lid. “It’s ridiculously expensive, but does it look it? I don’t want her to think I picked up some cheap tat for her, especially as she’s cooking Christmas lunch for my whole brood.”

“It looks fine.”

“Hmm.” Liz frowned and returned the item to the shelf.

“Can’t Andrew shop for his own mother?”

“Ha!” she laughed. “If I left it to Andrew, he’d just get her a gift card. Or, worse, he’d present her with a check.”

“What’s he getting you?”

“A gift card,” she intoned humorlessly. “Don’t say it, Rob. I know—the romance is dead.”

I smiled and picked up a jug, turning it over to check the price.

“How about you?” she asked. “Are you still dead set on having your folks over for Christmas?”

“Yep. It’s all arranged. The goose has been ordered, the wine and champagne have been bought—”

“Fair play to you. Just don’t kill yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Robin, you know what I mean. Cooking, entertaining, preparing the house. You’re like Nigella Lawson on speed when it comes to these events. I just don’t want you overdoing it, that’s all. Not in your condition. Not after the scare you’ve had.” She eyeballed my belly dramatically, and I laughed in response.

“Relax. It’s nothing lavish. Just Christmas. And besides, Harry is digging in to help.”

“Is he now,” she remarked skeptically. “I bet he’s overjoyed at the prospect of Christmas with the in-laws.”

“Actually, he’s been fine about it. I expected some resistance, but he’s been great. Brilliant, in fact. He’s taking care of the shopping and cleaning up the house. All I have to do is cook. So between us, we have it all covered.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

She picked up a Le Creuset pot with an air of mild distraction and asked, over her shoulder, “How has the move worked out? Has he sorted out his studio yet?”

“Yes, I think so.” My mind went instantly to that box of sketches I had discovered, the drawings of Dillon, and I wondered whether they still sat there, hidden away in the dark. Since that night, I had not set foot in the studio. Resolve had gathered inside me to ignore all that. To put my back to it and face the future. That was what mattered now.

“His London trip went well,” I carried on in a voice full of optimism. “I think some work will come out of it.”

“Oh yeah?” She glanced across at me. “Well, that would be great. So long as he’s not spreading himself around too much. His work is wonderful, of course, but hardly prolific in recent years.”

“Listen to you! Worrying about Harry’s workload.”

“Yes, I do worry,” she replied sharply, suddenly serious. “I don’t like the thought of him committing to things he can’t deliver on. Not with his history.”

“Liz…”

“Tell me to piss off and mind my own business if you like, but you’re my oldest friend, Robin, and I wouldn’t be that friend if I didn’t tell you that I worry about Harry when he’s put under pressure. I know how sensitive he is. And I can’t bear the thought of his old trouble returning. I hate to think of you having to go through all that again.”

“It won’t,” I said solemnly, and in that moment I believed it. “He’s fine. We’re fine. More than fine, in fact. All of that is behind us now.”

Instinctively, my hand went to my belly. She caught the movement and nodded slowly, her expression softening.