Who Loves You Best (3 page)

“It took me four hours to get us all ready this morning,” I say bleakly. “First I had to feed the twins, and then they needed changing. I put them back down for five minutes to have a shower, but Rowan screamed and screamed until he was sick all over the sheets and his clean clothes, so I had to strip the pram and change him for a second time,
by which time Poppy wanted feeding again. I just can’t seem to catch up. You’ve no idea how hard it is to feed two babies at once. Rowan keeps refusing the breast, I practically have to
force
him—”

I break into sudden sobs, and clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from waking the twins.

Fran pulls me into a sympathetic hug. “Clare, sweetheart, you’re doing a
won
derful job,” she says firmly. “
Every
one feels like this at first. You should have seen me when Hector was born. Every time he had a temperature, I was rushing off to Casualty, convinced it was meningitis or worse.”

“I feel—I feel so
hope
less—”

“You’re not hopeless,” Fran says, misunderstanding. “Darling, you’ve had a terribly rough start. I can’t believe how marvellously you’ve coped with it all. First having the babies in the
street
—I still can’t believe it!—and then getting so ill, and not even being able to
see
poor Rowan for two weeks—”

“I don’t think,” I say, “he likes me. He cries every time I pick him up.”

“Of course he
likes
you! He’s just getting used to you, that’s all. Look,” she adds, steering me back downstairs into the sitting room, and handing me a tissue, “would you like to borrow Kirsty to help out for a few hours a day, just till you find your feet? Now that Imogen’s at kindergarten, she’s got time on her hands, and as long as you frisk her for cigarettes on the way in, she’s marvellously organized. You could have her for a couple of hours after she’s done the school run—”

“That’s very sweet of you, but we’ll be fine,” I say quickly. “You’re right. We just need to get ourselves into a routine.”

“If you change your mind—”

“I won’t,” I say firmly.

But, over the next weeks, there are times I long to swallow my pride and take Fran up on her offer. I’d crawl over broken glass and stick shards in my eyeballs for a single good night’s sleep.

Rowan never takes milk from me without a fight. He twists and turns in my arms, arching his back and kicking his legs as if he’s trying to get away from me. Poppy nurses contentedly till she falls asleep with a smile on her milky lips. Rowan is sick after every feed; my clothes and hair permanently smell of vomit. I’m ashamed to admit it, even to myself, but there are times when I find it very difficult to summon even a shred of affection for my son.

Then, when he’s three weeks old, he develops colic.

I’ve read about it, of course, but the first time Rowan shrieks in agony, cramps twisting his tiny stomach, his little legs pulled up tight against his frail body, I have no idea what is wrong. Marc and I are frantic with worry, imagining twisted bowels, peritonitis or worse. When the pediatrician tells us the next day it’s colic—“hundred-day colic,” he says cheerfully; “never lasts longer than that”—I cry again, this time with relief.

But that night, Rowan screams solidly from eleven till four. I give him his useless medicine, rub his back, massage his tummy, stroke his bare toes. He doesn’t stop screaming. I take him downstairs so he doesn’t keep Poppy and Marc
awake, too; we eventually collapse into an exhausted sleep on the sofa together, both of us cried out. I never even hear Marc leave for work the next morning. The next night, at Fran’s suggestion, Marc takes him for a drive; Rowan falls asleep when the car is moving, and wakes up the second Marc steps back inside.

Marc and I are both shattered, but, as he says, he has a full-time job to hold down. One mistake could cost his company billions. I tell him to sleep in the spare room to get some rest, and then resent him furiously when he agrees.

By the time the twins are six weeks old, I’m a zombie. I’m dizzy from lack of sleep and weak from having no time to eat. I cry all the time. All I care about is the next pocket of time in the day when I can snatch a few moments of sleep. The second the twins close their eyes, I close mine. I wake when they wake. I have no life outside their needs.

There’s no one I can talk to. Everyone thinks I’m coping marvellously; they have no idea that inside I’m falling apart. Marc’s mother had six children in seven years; how can I admit to him I can’t handle two? Fran’s sympathetic, but she’s got her own life. I can’t burden her with my problems.

I could manage, if it was just Poppy. She sleeps through the night already. If it was just Poppy, I wouldn’t be so tired; I could catch up with things, pick up the reins at work (Craig’s stopped bothering to leave messages, since I never return them). I’d be a better mother, a good mother: the kind of mother who plays peek-a-boo with her new baby and blows raspberries on her tummy, instead of slumming
around the house in a stained nightdress at three in the afternoon. If I didn’t have Rowan, I could enjoy Poppy. She’s such an easy baby. She goes four hours between feeds; she gurgles with pleasure whenever I walk into the room. But I’m so tired and anxious, I’m a nervous wreck. I’m shortchanging them both.

If something should—
happen
—to Rowan—

Not that I’d ever want it to. He’s my son.
Of course
I don’t want anything to happen to him. But … but if it did—

For a brief moment, as I pace the floor in the soulless small hours one night with my screaming son, shivering with tiredness, I give in and allow myself to picture life without him. Just me and Marc and Poppy, a perfect little family. Going on outings, feeding the ducks, walking in the park. Simple, ordinary things that are beyond us now.

Poppy deserves better. It’s not that I don’t care about Rowan. But I have to think what’s best for Poppy. It’s only because I love her so much I’m thinking such unnatural, terrible thoughts.

The clock in the hall chimes twice. I stare at the wailing infant in my arms with curious detachment. I feel nothing: sadness or pleasure, grief or anger. I’m at the bottom of an abyss deep below the dark ocean. Nothing reaches me. I sit on the sofa and place him carefully next to me, wedging a cushion on either side of him so that he doesn’t fall. I know even as I do it that it’s pointless. Unless I pace with him in my arms, he’ll scream himself sick.

Within seconds, his cries are deafening.

Instead of picking him up, I sit and watch him scream,
his face scarlet. If I left him, would he literally cry himself to death? Or would he realize it was hopeless and give up?

He’ll wake Marc and Poppy. They need their sleep.

You wouldn’t think his lungs were big enough to make this much noise.

The streetlight outside casts orange Halloween shadows across the floor. It’s never truly dark in the city. Never truly quiet.

The room is filled with screaming. My head vibrates with sound, the way it does when a car has stopped next to you at a traffic light, the bass so loud you feel rather than hear it. My knuckles are white from gripping the arms of the sofa, but I can’t feel my hands.

“I’m sorry,” I say calmly. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to Poppy. You do understand, don’t you? It’s not fair to Poppy.”

And then I pick up a cushion to smother my son.

Best cure for a bad hangover is a good fuck.

Looks like I’m in for a monster headache, then.

I curl against Jamie, wrapping my arms around his stiff back. I know better than to tell him it doesn’t matter.

He pries my fingers away. “You’re going to be late for work.”

“Jamie—”

“Try to get home on time.”

The room swims when I get out of bed. I lean my forehead against the cool bathroom tile, wondering queasily if I’m going to puke again. Maybe I’d feel better if I did. I’m certainly in no state to take on two spoiled brats whose fucked-up parents should never have been allowed to reproduce.

When I finish my shower, Jamie has gone.

I sweep up the shards of his coffee mug—still warm—and run my finger lightly over the new dent in the bedroom wall. It’s been two months now. He’s got to talk to somebody who knows how to help him. I’m not sure how much longer I can cope with this on my own.

Maggie is standing on the doorstep when I arrive at the Hasselbachs’. She thrusts Tatiana into my arms with a glare. The two-year-old promptly spits in my face.

“Well, you can’t blame her,” Maggie snaps. “You’re late.”

Yeah,
three minutes
. I watch Maggie stalk down the front steps. Should I tell her she’s got her executive skirt tucked into her tights?

Tatiana spits at me again.

Screw it.

Three-year-old Galen is slumped on the floor of the living room, transfixed by
SpongeBob
. I turn the TV off. (“Please understand, Jenna, the children are
not
permitted to watch television. We believe it Rots Young Minds.”) Galen yells and turns it on again. I turn it off. Galen kicks my leg and lunges for the remote. I put Tatiana down, take the remote away and put it on a shelf out of his reach. The little sod pulls his sister’s hair, upends the LEGO table, and throws himself on the floor in a tantrum. So far, so normal.

In the kitchen, Maggie has left her usual list (heavily underlined) weighted to the hand-hewn butcher’s block with an empty bottle of avocado oil: Her subtle way of telling me to buy a new one.

I skim my errands for the day. “Collect dry cleaning. Tati haircut (remember we are
growing out her bangs
). Galen needs new shoes,
not
leather—”

Christ. That’ll mean a trip to the fancy vegan shoe store on the other side of town.

“Birthday present for Lottie’s party (
nothing
made in China). Toilet roll. Crushed garlic. Organic salmon fillets x2
(
fresh
). Pick up tile sample from Bathstore. NB dishwasher man coming 2 pm. Do
not
—” (triple underlined) “—let him leave without fixing problem
under any circs.”

“D’you think she expects me to sleep with him?” I idly ask my BFF Kirsty later.

“Would it help?”

“Not unless he’s into necrophilia. I look like death.” I jam the phone beneath my chin and rip open my second packet of Alka-Seltzer. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into that last tequila. I’m too old for this shit.”

“Stick the kids in front of the TV and sack out for a couple of hours.”

“I can’t. Maggie’s left me a list of jobs a mile long.”

“So? She doesn’t pay you to organize her entire life. You’re a nanny, not a bloody slave. You need to put your foot down. If I was you, I’d—Hector, leave that alone! You know Mummy doesn’t let you—oh, fuck. Hang on, Jen.”

I knock back the Alka-Seltzer, and root around in Maggie’s cupboard for the expensive shortbread biscuits she always hides at the back. Upstairs, Galen and Tatiana are battling it out in the playroom. It’s my policy not to intervene till there’s blood on the floor.

“Little bastard,” Kirsty pants, picking up the phone again. “He broke that vase on purpose. If Fran tries to knock it off my wages, I’ll quit.”

“Yeah, as
if
. You’ll never get a job this good again. She didn’t even fire you when she caught you smoking on the nanny-cam.”

“Only because she knows I’d go to Rod and she’d get fucked in the divorce.”

“Maggie’s got no idea what a pain it is dragging two kids all over town,” I mumble through a mouthful of shortbread. “You need a bloody physics degree to get them in and out of those fancy car seats of hers. It’s not fair on the kids either. No wonder they’re so bratty, they’re bored out of their minds. She might as well—oh, shit. She’s on call-waiting. I’d better go.”

“Who were you talking to?” Maggie demands.

“Cold caller—”

“Yes, well, never mind that. You need to take the children to get new ski outfits this afternoon,” she snaps. “We’ve decided to go to Val d’Isère at half-term after all. And you’ll have to buy yourself a decent jacket; the one you wore last year was
totally
inadequate.”

Yeah. That would be the one you made me pay for myself, Maggie.

It suddenly registers. “Actually, Maggie, I’m off that week—”

“So? You can have the week after off instead.”

“But I’m going to Málaga with Jamie. We discussed it months ago—”

“I can’t be expected to recall every little conversation, Jenna.”

“I’ve already booked the flights!”

“Well, you’ll have to change them. I can’t
possibly
go skiing without a nanny.”