Back in the car, the vinegar from the fish and chips stung the ulcer in Mira’s mouth and the indigestion pushed up her throat. She had had enough. The months of hiding her bump had sapped all of her energy, but no amount of putting off telling her mother was slowing down the changes in her body. Soon, it would be impossible to hide it.
There had never been a moment of doubt that she would keep the baby, but everything she had read about in the pregnancy books in the library were as different from her own experience as she could imagine. She hadn’t had a scan or a doctor’s appointment or even a chat about baby names. She had conspicuously bought tampons every month, which she threw away, bought two baggy navy jumpers from the charity shop to wear to school, eaten for three instead of two to hide the bump under fat, rolled her socks down to conceal her swollen ankles, turned down all invites to the parties her friends were going to.
All the way home from the fish and chip shop, blood had roared in her ears, drowning out the car radio. She was never going to feel ready, but she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
They parked up outside the house.
‘Mum, wait a seccy.’
‘Yes?’ Her mother replied irritably, her hand poised on the car door handle.
‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ The words were more like a wretch.
‘If you’re going to tell me that you failed your Geography mock, I know. The teacher called me.’
Momentarily side-tracked, Mira said, ‘What? Mr Dilcot called you? What did he say?’
‘He said your marks were crap and he didn’t understand why. He said you’d fail your O levels if you carried on like this.’
‘Why didn’t you say anything to me?’
‘I didn’t want to upset you, you know, after everything you’ve been through with Craig and everything,’ she explained, looking away. ‘Come on, these’ll get cold.’
Mira was touched. She wanted her mother’s show of affection to last. This could have been the perfect diversion, to back out of her decision to tell her. Or, this could be the perfect time to tell her, while she was in a good mood.
‘Mum, you know how I’ve got really overweight and everything?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you ever wonder why?’
‘I guess you’re depressed about that shit-bag dumping you.’
‘Nope.’
Her mother’s hand fell from the handle and she turned to face the passenger seat where Mira sat, the veil of denial had dropped clean off her eyeballs as they ogled Mira’s stomach.
‘You’re not.’
‘I’m twenty-six weeks.’
‘Christ!’ Her mother glared at her for a second, speechless, and then leapt out of the car and slammed her door. ‘No, no, no, no, no, NO.’
Mira stayed put inside the car. ‘Yes,’ Mira mumbled to herself.
Her mother charged round the front of the bonnet to her side and motioned at her to wind down the window.
‘I’m not having a baby in my house, get it?’
‘But where else would I go?’
‘I don’t want to be a bloody grandma!’ she yelled, stamping to the front door.
Mira noticed how her mother’s hands trembled as she struggled to put the key in the lock. It was the first time Mira had considered how much stress this would put on her mother and she felt she had been heartless to tell her about her pregnancy.
Too scared to go in the house, Mira rolled up the window and ate her fish and chips and Mars Bar in the car. The hot food had steamed up the glass, where she had finger-traced a stick figure with a big round belly, within which she drew a heart. It had made her smile. Mira was warmed by the food and the little life radiating from her womb. But the heat became scalding.
Her hand jerked back from the potting shed window. The steam from the kettle that she must have clicked on by mistake burnt her wrist. She cradled it. Tears fell onto the back of her hand. She yearned for Barry and ran across the garden into the house.
Before she returned to bed, she found the brown envelope in the dining room and picked out the photograph of the baby-blue rabbit. Tearing it away from the rest of the picture, she curled her fingers around it and climbed the stairs. With it tucked in her palm, she snuggled into Barry, drawing heat from his body until she felt a little less empty inside.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The curtains in the children’s rooms were open and their beds empty. It was as though the soul of our home had left with them. The silence scared me.
I went straight upstairs to the bathroom for a shower. The smell of urine hung off my clothes. The sweat – that now reeked of that recent fear – was cold and wet in the lining of my suit jacket as I shrugged it off. In the mirror, before the steam from the water obscured my face, I saw my ghostly, unkempt appearance. My thick eyebrows would usually enhance my eyes, bringing out the blue, but instead they hooded them, and my lips were cracked where they would usually be plump. If I had forced a smile like Audrey Hepburn’s, they would bleed.
Just as I opened the shower door, I heard something outside the bathroom and I grabbed a towel to cover myself. Blood rushed through my head, my heart was in my mouth.
‘Hello?’ I called out, unable to hide the trepidation in my voice.
‘Gemma?’
I dropped my head in my hands and cried out with relief. ‘Peter! Oh my God!’
When he opened the bathroom door, it was as though it was the first time I had ever laid eyes on him, as though I fell in love with him all over again. There he was, his face scrunched from sleep and his body musty in his boxers as I held him to me.
‘You’re here!’
‘Of course I’m here.’
‘I didn’t think you’d see my text. I thought it was too late.’
‘I couldn’t sleep until I heard from you.’
I laughed and I saw tears well up in his eyes as he watched me laugh.
‘Can you believe this is happening?’
‘No, I literally can’t. Rosie won’t talk to me. She’s clammed up completely. The only information I know is what DC Miles told me.’ He was shaking his head, bemused, searching my equally distraught face for answers I couldn’t give.
‘She’s lying.’
‘Of course she’s lying.’
‘Did she really not say anything about it to you?’
‘Totally stonewalled me, and everyone else. In fact, she was mute all evening. She wouldn’t even open her mouth to ask for the most basic things.’
‘Does she understand what she’s done?’
‘She can’t have meant to lie. She must have got her words twisted or got carried away or something.’
‘Maybe’. I thought back to my own interview, and how pushy DC Miles had been, and how confused I had become, but remembered Philippa Letwin’s information about TED: Tell me, Explain to me, Describe to me. The police were not allowed to lead a child. But I was not in the mood to spell this out to Peter. Rosie could wrap Peter around her little finger, she was his princess, the apple of his eye, there was no way Gemma could broach with Peter the idea that this whole nightmare might have been predicated on malice or spite or revenge.
‘When Rosie’s home, we’ll talk to her together.’
‘What if she changes her statement and the police think I’ve forced her to?’
When I thought of talking to Rosie, I couldn’t disassociate her from the police, as though they were in cahoots and I was their shared enemy.
‘Kids must lie to the police all the time, they must be used to it.’
‘I can’t believe she said all those awful things about me,’ I said, feeling the tears push at my tired, dry eyes. For the first time that day, in the face of Peter’s unquestioning loyalty, I became the victim when before I had been the accused. There was acute relief in this, but there was horror in it too: to play the victim, I had to believe that my own daughter had turned against me.
‘Are you okay?’ He stepped closer, took my arms and flipped them over, as though checking them for damage, and ran his hands slowly, gently over our baby inside me, and finally checked behind each ear. I laughed, ‘What are you doing?’
‘Making sure you’re intact.’
‘Can you believe I’ve been locked up in a cell, Peter? And they took my fingerprints and everything.’
‘Oh Gemma.’ He took my hands in his and kissed my palms, which still felt raw. I winced. He stopped kissing them and brought them right up to his face.