chapter fifty-two
It was done.
Cecilia and John-Paul sat side by side watching Polly’s closed eyelids flutter and smooth, flutter and smooth, as if they were tracking the progress of her dreams.
Cecilia held on to Polly’s left hand; she could feel the tears sliding down her face and dripping off her chin, but she ignored them. She remembered sitting with John-Paul at another hospital, at the dawn of another autumn day, after two hours of intense labour (Cecilia gave birth efficiently; a little too efficiently with their third daughter). She and John-Paul were counting Polly’s fingers and toes, as they’d done with Isabel and Esther, a ritual like opening and inspecting a marvellous, magical gift.
Now their eyes kept returning to the space where Polly’s right arm should have been. It was an anomaly, an oddness, an optical discrepancy. From now on it wouldn’t be her beauty that would cause people to stare at her in shopping centres.
Cecilia let the tears slide on and on. She needed to get all her crying out of the way, because she was determined that Polly would never see her shed a tear. Cecilia was about to step into a new life, her life as an amputee’s mother. Even as she cried, she could feel her muscles tensing in readiness, as if she was an athlete about to begin a marathon. Soon she would be fluent in a new language of stumps and prostheses and God knows what else. She’d move heaven and earth and bake muffins and pay fraudulent compliments to get the best results for her daughter. No one was better qualified than Cecilia for this role.
But was Polly qualified? That was the question. Was any six year old qualified? Did she have the strength of character to live with this sort of injury in a world that put such value on a woman’s looks? She’s still beautiful, thought Cecilia furiously, as if someone had denied it.
‘She’s tough,’ she said to John-Paul. ‘Remember that day at the pool when she wanted to prove she could swim as far as Esther?’
She thought of Polly’s arms slicing through sunlit chlorinated blue water.
‘Jesus. Swimming.’ John-Paul’s whole body heaved and he pressed his palm to the centre of his chest as if he was in the throes of a heart attack.
‘Don’t drop dead on me,’ said Cecilia sharply.
She pushed the heels of her hands deep into her eye sockets and turned them in a circular motion. She could taste so much salt from all her tears, it was like she’d been swimming in the sea.
‘Why did you tell Rachel?’ said John-Paul. ‘Why now?’
She dropped her hands from her face and looked at him. She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Because she thought Connor Whitby killed Janie. She was trying to hit Connor.’
She watched John-Paul’s face as his mind travelled from A to B and finally to the horrendous responsibility of C.
He pressed his fist to his mouth. ‘F*ck,’ he said quietly into his knuckles and he began to rock back and forth like an autistic child.
‘This was my fault,’ he mumbled into his hand. ‘I made this happen. Oh God, Cecilia. I should have confessed. I should have told Rachel Crowley.’
‘Stop it,’ hissed Cecilia. ‘Polly might hear.’
He stood up and walked towards the door of the hospital room. He turned back and looked at Polly, his face ravaged with despair. He looked away, plucked helplessly at the fabric of his shirt. Then he suddenly crouched down, his head bent, his hands interlocked at the back of his neck.
Cecilia watched him dispassionately. She remembered how he’d sobbed on Good Friday morning. The pain and regret he felt for what he’d done to another man’s daughter was nothing compared to what he felt for his own daughter.
She looked away from him and back at Polly. You could try as hard as possible to imagine someone else’s tragedy – drowning in icy waters, living in a city split by a wall – but nothing truly hurt until it happened to you. Most of all, to your child.
‘Get up, John-Paul,’ she said without looking at him. Her eyes stayed on Polly.
She thought of Isabel and Esther, who were at home with her parents and John-Paul’s mother right now, along with various other relatives. John-Paul and Cecilia had made it clear that they didn’t want any visitors at the hospital yet, so everyone was gathered at the house. Isabel and Esther were being kept distracted for now, but the siblings always got neglected when something like this happened to a family. She would have to make sure she found a way to be a mother to all three of her daughters through this. The P&C would go. The Tupperware would go.
She turned to look again at John-Paul, who was still hunkered down on the floor, as if protecting himself from a bomb blast.
‘Get up,’ she said again. ‘You can’t fall apart. Polly needs you. We all need you.’
John-Paul removed his hands from his neck and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. ‘But I’m not going to be here for you,’ he said. ‘Rachel will tell the police.’
‘Maybe,’ said Cecilia. ‘Maybe she will. But I don’t think so. I don’t think Rachel is going to take you away from your family.’ There was no real evidence for this, except somehow she felt that it was true. ‘Not right now anyway.’
‘But –’
‘I think we’ve paid,’ said Cecilia, her voice low and vicious. She gestured at Polly. ‘Look how we’ve paid.’