‘I’ll call for help,’ he said. He clicked open his door and, as he got out, he almost didn’t hear his mum speaking above the wailing coming from the other car as a woman screamed ‘Jake’ over and over again.
‘Wait,’ Mum said. ‘You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be driving. You’ve no license and, with your suspended sentence, you’ll go to prison.’ With small jerky movements she dragged herself over to the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll say I was alone. You have to go.’
‘I won’t leave you.’ There was a gash above Nick’s eyebrow; he wiped blood from his eye. Nick knew he should stay; he wanted to stay. But was his mum right? Should he flee? The sound of Elvis was drowned out by a roaring in Nick’s ears that grew louder and louder, the word ‘prison’ spinning round and round his head.
The last thing he heard was his mum saying ‘Run.’ And to his eternal shame he did.
52
Then
There were shadows on the ceiling as consciousness tugged me awake. Dark, malevolent creatures with snapping jaws and flaring nostrils. My hospital gown was scratchy, tiny spiders skittering over my skin. I placed my hands over my belly as though I could keep the monsters at bay, keep my baby safe, but I knew, while I was sleeping, one of them had slipped inside of my head and they’d whispered it was too late for Jake. The image of him slumped in the seat, eyes wide and unseeing, was almost too much to bear but sleep was waiting and I stepped into its arms where it cradled me, warm and soft.
When I woke again, mum was sitting beside me, fiddling with the hem of her dress.
‘How are you?’ she asked but I couldn’t answer her, fixing my eyes instead on the clear plastic jug next to my bed. She sloshed water into a beaker and gently propped up my pillows so I could sip, and her touch was so tender, so unexpected it brought with it a memory of lying on the sofa as a child. Throat raw. Fever raging. She had cradled my head in her lap and stroked my forehead. Time slipped past as I drifted between sleep and wakefulness and we must have stayed like that for hours until Dad’s key had turned in the lock and she’d hurried to the kitchen to start dinner. And it hit me, for the first time: she loved me.
‘Mum.’ I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I didn’t know what I wanted her to say but she said nothing, fussing instead with water that had spilled. Mopping up with tissues.
‘Mum,’ I said again. This time louder.
There was another painful pause until Mum said, slowly, carefully: ‘There’s been an accident.’ The whites of her eyes were streaked with tiny blood vessels as though she had been crying for a long time.
‘But I’ll be okay?’ I shifted in my bed. My body felt heavy.
‘I was talking about Dad. He had a fall. Down the stairs. While you were out with Jake. That loose carpet he never fixed, I expect.’ She looked at everything but me.
‘But he’s okay?’
Wordlessly she shook her head, and I fumbled for her hand but she pulled it out of reach. I didn’t feel guilt or regret or any of the things I thought I might. Not then anyway. Then all I felt was numbness.
‘The police want to talk to you,’ she said. ‘They’ll likely be in later. They’ll want to talk to you about the car accident too. But I’ve told them about the loose stair carpet. Told them you were out at the time.’ She stood.
‘Don’t go!’ I cried as she headed for the exit, but I had no words to pull her back as she hovered, fingertips brushing the door handle.
She lowered her head, and her voice was barely audible over the clattering trolleys in the corridor outside. ‘I think it’s better if you don’t come home, Kat. When you leave here. I’ve brought you in some clothes.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why.’ She turned and held me in her gaze and it burned white-hot, and this time it was me that couldn’t look at her. ‘You mustn’t tell, Kat.’
As the door swung shut behind her I realised she knew what I’d done, and that if I left we’d be the only ones who did. She was setting me free, and I was certain, for the second time that day, she loved me. But it was a small comfort.
The doctor stood in front of the window. A shaft of sunlight cast him in bronze, almost as though he was a god. He was speaking but it was like watching a foreign film without subtitles.
‘We performed a D&C, of course, when we brought you in—’
‘A what?’
‘A Dilation and Curettage. It’s where we scrape away the contents of the uterus. The scan showed there was still some tissue there.’
The dawning, when it came, was slow and sickening. My hospital bed spinning and spinning and I gripped the sides so I didn’t fly away.
‘You do understand what has happened, Miss White?’
‘No,’ I said without hesitation because if I pretended not to understand it could not be real. It could not be true. But it was.
My baby was gone, along with Jake.
I was all alone.
He explained once more before checking his watch and hurrying away, leaving me in the cold, sterile room with the monsters on my ceiling and my dark, dark, thoughts.
I curled into myself remaining dry-eyed and mute with grief as the hours blurred and stretched. I turned away from the kind nurse with the curly blonde hair, who murmured comforting words I did not want to hear. Phrases such as ‘complete recovery’ and ‘future pregnancies’ sprung at me with sharpened claws but still I could not feel.
Eventually, the sound of an infant wailing on a distant ward was my undoing. An onslaught of tears, and regret and shame, while the monster in my head laughed and laughed and told me I would always hear it. The lost baby. My baby. That I deserved no less.
Days later, as I dressed to leave I found an envelope in the bag of clothes Mum left: ￡5,000. Enough to start again. As I left the hospital, the bright sunlight bouncing off the row of ambulances, the world felt too large. I was too small. I was misshapen with grief and knew I still had it with me, the darkness. What I didn’t know was the scar tissue left over from the D&C would prevent me from ever conceiving again. If I had known then, my unravelling might have been complete.
53
Now
It is the dripping of the kitchen tap that brings me back to the present moment. Nick and I slumped on the kitchen floor as though shedding the lies we’ve been carrying have made us heavier, not lighter. Eventually, it is me who speaks first.
‘You killed Jake. My baby.’ I hiss out my words, my anger catching in my throat
Nick rubs his scar and this causes my fury to erupt.
‘You expect me to feel fucking sorry for you because you cut your fucking head? That accident left Jake dead. It left me infertile.’
‘I am so sorry.’ His useless apology claws at my chest, burrows into my racing heart that feels in danger of bursting from my ribcage, free to skitter across the kitchen floor, where it will sit with us amongst the shards of our marriage.
‘You knew? You knew it was me?’
‘Yes.’
‘So you married me out of guilt? Out of pity? Did you even love me?’
‘Kat, I love you. I do.’ He reaches for my hand but I snatch mine away.
‘It was a lie. It was all a lie.’ My head is swimming as I draw in short, sharp breaths through my nose.
‘No!’
‘How soon did you realise who I was?’
‘As soon as I saw you in the high street. I had never been able to forget your face. I waited until you came out of the temping agency and I went straight in and booked you to work for the charity.’
There is a pressure in my skull. A thousand fingers pressing into my temples.
‘I never expected to fall in love with you, Kat, but I did. I do love you. At first, I just wanted to make amends somehow. Give you a job. Richard had helped me buy that first investment property, and I’d done so well when the market boomed. It didn’t seem right. You needed help too. I wanted to put you back on your feet.’
‘You can never make amends.’