My fingers touched the gold cross around my neck as Lisa screwed up her face that was scarlet and slick with sweat. She grunted and I hated her and was glad she was suffering, and yet there was part of me that still cared, even though I knew I shouldn’t. Lisa and Jake and I, we are a tangle of past, present and future. Once her contraction had passed she babbled again.
‘I realised how much I had missed you. It felt good to be friends again. New Year, when I came to stay and saw the nursery, saw how much it meant to you, and I met Nick properly, I knew I had to stop. I felt so guilty. It wasn’t fair to let you believe the baby was his. Yours.’
‘Was it ever twins?’ I was desperate for something to be real.
‘No. I did slip on the ice. That was true. I pretended to have a miscarriage. Because I cared about you. I felt awful deceiving you both. I was a mess. It was too late to have an abortion and I didn’t know what to do. But then you came and found me and it seemed like fate. I didn’t want to be without you again. It was easy to carry on lying. I’m so sorry this isn’t your baby, Kat. Or Nick’s.’
It had been a night for truth but sometimes you can hear so much it’s hard to take in, and you look back and wonder whether you ever actually heard it at all. I so desperately wanted this baby to be mine. All along I had believed he was, and sometimes believing is enough. It has to be. Lisa was half out of her mind with pain. She had no idea what she was saying. It is my baby. It is.
Nick gently places a blanket over Lisa, covering the face that I used to sprinkle with silver glitter before our school discos. The hard ball in my chest plummets into my gut.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he says. ‘Make some calls.’
I nod but as we reach the foot of the stairs I turn and hand Nick the baby. Back at Lisa’s side I pull down the blanket, lean over to the coffee table and click on the lamp.
‘She’s scared of the dark,’ I say through my choking sobs. I raise her hand to my cheek, linking her fingers through mine, remembering all the times we’d run out into the playground holding hands, eager to reach the hopscotch first. Although I had gone years without her, there’s a hollowness inside when I think I will never again hear her laugh. It seems impossible it was only a few months ago we reconnected. I still remember that day. The snow. The taste of frost and hope on my tongue. Lisa will never see another winter, and I feel my heart is breaking. Already, without her, I feel lost. Hopelessly, irretrievably lost.
‘Kat.’ Nick touches my shoulder.
‘I can’t…’ I can’t tear myself away from Lisa. I can’t leave her. I won’t be able to live with myself. My forehead lowers onto her chest, resting on a ribcage housing lungs that will never again draw in air.
‘She’s with Jake now,’ Nick says and that, at least, is some comfort.
‘Goodbye, Lisa.’ My fingers shake and it takes several attempts to unfasten the gold cross from my neck and place it around hers.
‘I’m sorry too,’ I say as I kiss her lips that are already losing their warmth. The kiss of Judas.
I stop in the doorway to the kitchen as I see Nick’s dad lying where he fell. I’d forgotten he was here.
Silently I watch as Nick kneels next to him and checks his pulse. His face is ashen as he turns to me. I already know what he is about to say.
‘Shit, Kat. He’s dead.’
‘You killed him.’ I shift the weight of the baby in my arms.
‘It was an accident,’ Nick says but now he has as much to lose as me.
And as much to hide.
57
Now
‘You have to go.’ Nick is flinging my clothes into a suitcase as I lie rigid on the bed. My cheek sinking into the feather-soft pillow smelling of the husband I should hate, but somehow can’t. I’m so very, very tired.
‘I’m not leaving you.’
‘You must.’ Exasperation has again crept into his voice.
‘Two people are dead, Nick.’
‘Don’t you think I know that?’ He is shaken. Pale. ‘It will be fine.’ His blue eyes lock onto mine, and we both know it is as far from fine as it can be. ‘I’ll sort everything out and then I’ll join you.’
‘How can you sort it out?’ I want to believe him but can’t quell my gut feeling telling me this is impossible to sort out.
‘Richard.’
The sound of his name tears through me as if I have fallen on barbed wire. Can I trust him to keep me safe, after everything he has done? I am scared. So scared.
There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t run away, and one reason why I should. The baby is asleep next to me. Snuffling like a small animal. He is early. A bit small perhaps but I’ll get him checked over. I’m going to take very good care of him. There are veins visible beneath his paper-thin eyelids. He is as weak and powerless as I feel but his fragility draws a strength from me that grows with each and every breath he takes.
‘I’ll go.’ I push myself to sitting.
The mattress squeaks and dips as Nick sits on the edge. He smooths my hair away from my temples, cupping my face between his palms. There is nothing quite as painful as knowing something is ending.
‘I love you, Kat. I always have.’ He rubs his thumb over my cheekbone. I raise my hand and take his in mine. Kiss his palm. Pull him towards me and kiss his lips. The kiss of goodbye.
I don’t tell him I love him.
I can’t.
Even though I know I’ll probably never get the chance again.
Epilogue
There’s a sweet scent of freshly cut grass hanging in the breeze that is warming my skin, ruffling my hair. The park is busy, the sunshine drawing out families. It saddens me Nick will never feel this again. Once the bodies were discovered he had handed himself in. Confessed to things he had never done. Confessed to the things he had. I wrote to the prison last week. I do sometimes. But I’m careful to use a different name each time. A different address. Nick may have taken the blame for everything that went on in the house that night – he did owe me – but you can’t be too careful, can you? He knew, I think, even as he threw my things into a suitcase, it was all over for him. It was the last thing he could do for me, and I like to think he acted not just out of guilt, but out of love too. Despite everything he told me there is a part of me that misses him. Misses us. The Friday nights spent snuggled on the sofa watching TV in our pyjamas; curry-stained plates stacked on the coffee table.