It started when I was fifteen. I remember I used to wake up then, unable to move or breathe, it felt like. Night terrors I suppose they’d be labeled now. But no one could imagine what it was like. In the dream, a baby was talking to me, angry with me, following me on its little legs like a grotesque doll. It was banging on the door to get in. And I was holding the door closed and sobbing. I woke, as I always did, when the door began to crack open.
I can see myself then, transfixed. My chest tight and my throat thick with distress. It took what felt like ages for me to be able to move again. I had to work out where I was and convince myself that it had just been a dream and I could nail the door shut again. I remember I used to bury my face in my pillow when I heard Jude moving about in her room below mine because she’d heard me. I used to slow my breathing to pretend I was still asleep.
Sometimes it worked, but other nights, Jude’s bedroom door creaked to alert me and I heard her pad in bare feet to the bathroom.
“Go back to bed, Mum,” I whispered to myself, willing her to stay away. But, inevitably, the bare feet padded up the attic stairs and stopped outside my room.
“Are you all right, Emma?” Jude said softly as she opened the door. “I heard you crying again.”
I remember lying there with my back to her, in silence. I didn’t know what to say, what to tell. Sometimes Jude stroked my head and went away when I ignored her, but that night, she sat down on the bed.
In the end, the pressure of my mum’s presence in the dark forced me to speak.
“It was just a dream. I think I ate too much dinner. That’s all.”
“You hardly ate anything. You’re getting thin and I’m worried about you. Will and I both are. I know things have been difficult, but you’re just growing up. I wish I knew what’s going on in your head. Tell me, please.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Jude,” I said quickly. I hadn’t realized she’d noticed so much. I thought I’d made myself invisible. “I’m just a bit fed up with school.”
“Oh, Emma, what’s happening to you? You were doing so well. It’s like you don’t care about anything anymore.”
? ? ?
I roll onto my back and put my hand out to touch Paul’s face. To know he is there. He puts an arm across my chest, squeezing me as he sleeps. I’d wanted to hug my mum that night, but I was afraid to.
Afraid that my body would give me away.
? ? ?
Paul is so worried about me he’s rung in to cancel a lecture this morning.
“I’ll work from home, Em. I can’t leave you like this,” he says. I try to object, but I haven’t got the energy. I go upstairs and try to work but nothing is happening. The words just jumble up and stick, like an old record, juddering in my head until I want to scream. In the end, I go downstairs to make a coffee and turn on the radio for company.
When the music stops, the lunchtime newsman announces there’s been a new development in the Alice Irving case and I stand and wait, letting the kettle go cold again. I have to listen to three or four stories about the Olympics and politics and wars. And suddenly, the newsreader tells me that the baby was buried in the 1980s. Just like that. And I shout “No!” at him. I want him to take it back. Say he’s made an error. But he carries on, saying the police have “made fresh discoveries that place the burial of Alice Irving at least ten years after her abduction.”
I don’t know what to think anymore. Everything is wrong. I’ve got everything wrong.
Paul rushes into the kitchen, making me jump. I’d forgotten he was there and it frightens me when he appears suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” he says. “What’s happened?”
“Just something on the news. Just me being silly, that’s all,” I say, trying to be soothing but sounding too loud.
“What was on the news?” he says.
I try to lie. But I can’t. There are no other words in my head.
“About a baby,” I say. “They’ve got it all wrong. They’re making a terrible mistake.”
“Come and sit down. You are getting yourself all upset again,” he says and takes me by the hand to sit me at the table with him. “Now then, why are you so worried about this baby?”
I look at him and say, “I think it’s my baby.” And I watch his face collapse.
“Em, you haven’t got a baby,” he says gently. “We decided not to have one, didn’t we? Because you weren’t ready.”
I swipe away his words with my hand. “Not your baby, Paul. Mine.”
“Why are you saying this? You’ve never mentioned this before,” he says, searching for the truth in my eyes. I am frightening him. I know I must sound mad.
“I didn’t want you to know,” I say. “No one knows.”
“Not Jude?” he asks.
“No,” I say, and I can see the disbelief creeping across his face.
“You’re upset,” he says. “I’ll get your pills.”
FIFTY-ONE
Jude
FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012
She hadn’t recognized his voice when she picked up the phone, and for one wonderful moment, she thought it might be Will. But it was Paul. Emma’s Paul.
What does he want? she thought crossly.
“Hello, Jude,” he said. Well, at least he’s dropped the Judith thing, she thought.
“Hello, Paul. This is a surprise.”
“Look, I’m sorry to ring out of the blue, but I’m worried about Emma.”
Jude sat down and gripped the receiver. “What’s happened?”
Her son-in-law hesitated, searching for the right words. “Em is getting herself upset about the discovery of a baby in Woolwich.”
“The baby in Howard Street?” Jude said. “Yes, she told me about it. It’s the road where we used to live.”
“Yes, I know,” Paul said and stopped again.
“You are obviously trying to tell me something. Just spit it out,” Jude said. She hadn’t meant to be so brusque, but he was unnerving her with these long, ominous silences.
“Sorry, yes, well. Emma says she thinks it is her baby.”
Jude gave a bark of astonishment. “Her baby? What a lot of nonsense! It’s been named as Alice Irving.”
“No, that’s right, but the police have issued new information—saying she was buried in the 1980s—and it seems to have sent Emma into a panic.”
That stopped Jude dead. But only for a second.
“Have they? I hadn’t heard that. But it’s still nonsense. Look, Paul, you haven’t known her as long as I have. My daughter has always had a tenuous relationship with the truth.”
“You think she is making it up?”
“Obviously. To be frank, she used to make up a lot of things when she was younger. Silly lies about her dad and my boyfriend. We don’t need to go into that, but perhaps she’s upset at the moment because we talked about the old days—the bad old days, in our case—when she came for lunch the other week.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” Paul said.
“Didn’t she? No, well, she probably doesn’t want you to know what a nightmare she was when she was younger. You know we had to ask her to leave home in the end?”
There was silence at the other end of the line.
“Paul?” Jude asked.
“Yes, I’m here. Poor Emma. I didn’t know that. She’s never talked about her childhood, really. But you said ‘we.’ I thought it was just you and Emma. She said she didn’t know who her father was. Who else was there?”
“My boyfriend. Will. Emma must have mentioned him.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Paul said.
“How strange. Well, anyway, it wasn’t poor Emma, it was poor us. You can’t imagine what it was like,” Jude said. The case for the defense.
“Why don’t you get Emma to ring me?” she went on. “I’ll have a chat with her about things. Maybe I can calm her down.”
“I might suggest it, Judith. Good-bye.”
? ? ?
Jude got up and picked up a photo of Emma from her mantelpiece. She’d been two when it was taken, dressed in a little kilt Jude’s mother had brought home from a holiday in Scotland, and she was beaming up at the camera. That little face.
When she’d dreamed of having a baby, Jude had never really thought beyond the cradle stage to the impact of having another person in her life. She’d concentrated on the image of herself as Madonna with child until the issue was forced by Emma growing out of her arms and becoming herself.