When she had got home from the hospital, Carla found, to her relief, that it was still in her handbag, suggesting that no one else had found it.
‘It will be our secret,’ Carla told the child as it tore into her nipples, making them bleed. ‘You must say nothing.’
As for the letter writer, she was convinced that the spiky writing belonged to a woman. Someone who was on Lily’s side. One of her friends who wanted to get revenge on Lily’s behalf. Her old secretary, perhaps, who had pretended to be kind when her waters had broken. She must trust no one.
‘I am worried about you,’ Ed kept saying. ‘You’re not eating properly. Poppy won’t have enough milk.’
That could be another way for them to die, then. They could both perish from malnutrition. Then they could join Mamma in heaven.
‘She keeps dreaming about a letter,’ she overheard Ed tell the health visitor who’d been called out to check up on her. She always listened outside the door when they thought she’d gone back to bed.
‘Giving birth is a traumatic event, you know,’ came the crisp reply. ‘She’s entitled to a few nightmares.’
Nightmares? They had no idea of the turmoil churning round and round in her head. Another plan was needed. But what? There was no way out. Just an endless blackness ahead that swallowed her up, threatening to suffocate her. A woman in the paper the other day had suffocated her baby. She’d got ten years. It would have been more if she hadn’t had postnatal depression. But Carla didn’t have that. Ed said it was a myth. Lily had been fine when she had had Tom. When you had a baby you just had to accept that life had changed and get on with it.
This meant doing things his way.
‘I’ve cooked us a chicken.’ Ed took her by the elbow and steered her towards the table. ‘It will do you good. Come on, Carla. You know this is your favourite.’
Eat? How could she eat?
He poured another glass of wine.
‘Haven’t you had enough?’ she snapped.
‘What are you going to do about it then? Hit me again, like you did in front of Tom that time?’
‘I didn’t hit you.’ Carla wished he’d stop going on about it. She’d only reached out to stop him from opening another bottle, at the same time as he’d turned towards her. God knows one of them needed to be sane while they looked after Lily’s son.
‘I’m going to have another bloody drink, if only to celebrate my birthday. That’s right. You’d forgotten, hadn’t you?’
No wonder he was cross. But Poppy took up all her time. She couldn’t remember everything!
She went to the sink, pulling on her washing-up gloves, shaking with fear and rage. (‘Always look after your hands,’ Mamma used to say.)
‘Don’t wash up those pans before we’ve eaten. I’ve told you. I’ll do it myself later.’
She ran the hot water, furiously squirting washing-up liquid into the bowl.
Her heart fell at the sound of the doorbell. The man next door again? He had already complained about the rows.
‘You.’
Surely Ed wouldn’t speak that rudely to their neighbour?
‘Rupert!’ Carla felt her face flushing as she turned round to face him.
‘Forgive me for just calling in, but I found myself in the area.’
He held out a beautifully wrapped present: silver paper with curly ribbons.
Carla began to sweat with fear and excitement and terror and hope: all mixed up in an impossible way.
‘May I look at her? It’s a little girl, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Ed crisply. ‘But actually we’re about to eat so –’
‘She’s just here,’ cut in Carla.
Holy mother of God. Her husband was staring at Rupert’s red hair. Surely he wouldn’t be thinking …
Rupert’s face softened. ‘Isn’t she lovely? I hadn’t realized how small they are. Is –’
‘I said we’re about to eat.’
How rude of Ed! Flustered, Carla tried to peel off her washing-up gloves but they wouldn’t come.
‘Would you like to stay too?’ The invitation tumbled out of her mouth. Please, she wanted to say. Please. I need you. When you’ve gone, Ed will say something. There’ll be another row …
‘I think,’ said Rupert with a glance at Ed’s dark face, ‘I should go. Katie – my fiancée – will be waiting for me.’
So she was still around. All her hopes, all her desperate, crazy ideas that she’d had when Rupert had rung the bell, came crashing down.
‘Fiancée?’ scoffed Ed, barely waiting for the door to close on their visitor. ‘I’ll bet. How many times has that kid been round here?’
His voice made Poppy stir in her carrycot at the far end of the kitchen. (Ed would not let her out of their sight.)
‘What do you mean?’
Ed’s face was close now. ‘I saw you blush when he came in. I saw how you tried to speak normally.’ Spit was flying out of his mouth. ‘He has the same colour hair as our daughter. If she is our daughter.’
‘Don’t be so ridiculous. You know your grandfather had red hair. You yourself have commented on how it often skips a generation.’
He had her wrists now, squeezing them hard. ‘How very convenient! But we both know what your morals are like.’
Struggling, she spat back, ‘And what about yours? You didn’t mind leaving your wife for me, did you?’
‘And you didn’t mind tempting me away from her.’
What happened next? What happened next? How many times was she to be asked that in the next few days, the next few weeks, the next few months.
All Carla knew was this. It was sudden.
All she cared to remember was this.
There was a scream. Poppy from the carrycot. Another scream. Her own as Ed began to shake her by the shoulders.
The carving knife.
The green-handled carving knife. Another possession which Lily had left behind.
A terrible, body-shaking groan.
Blood.
And then running. Running across the park with all those thoughts racing up and down and side to side.
I hate him. I hate him.
Mamma! Where are you?
If only they could start all over again.
55
Lily
October 2015
‘A man has been found stabbed to death in his West London home. It is thought that …’
Then Tom’s shout drowns out the radio. ‘You’ve got to do it first, Mum! I’ve told you before.’
How stupid of me. I know perfectly well that Tom needs me to buckle up my seat belt before he does his. Precisely four seconds before him, actually. He times it with his watch. It’s another of his rituals. One which, on a normal day, is surely not too difficult to follow.
But for some reason I am feeling wobbly today. Perhaps I’m still tired after being in London yesterday. Perhaps it’s the impending meeting with Tom’s headmistress about the recent ‘incident’. Perhaps it’s because I’ve got a particularly tricky appointment with an NHS official this afternoon, concerning another set of lost notes following the birth of an oxygen-deprived child. Or perhaps it’s because I am infuriated by Ed’s latest declaration that he wants full-time custody of our son.
I start the engine, telling myself that there are plenty of men who live in that part of London. Stabbings happen every day. There is no reason – none at all – why it should be someone I know. But my skin has begun to form goose pimples of its own accord. At the T-junction, I take a left and then stop – over the line – just in time to allow a motorbike, which is surely going too fast, to go before me.
‘That motorcyclist could have died if you hadn’t stopped,’ comments Tom in a matter-of-fact tone.
Thanks.
‘He could have been left with only part of his brain, like Stephen,’ he continues. ‘Did you know that your skin weighs twice as much as your brain?’