I picked up the broken bracelet and went downstairs.
There was a patch of bright-red blood on the carpet where Mum had landed, she must have cut herself quite badly. I went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. I hit last number redial, I was hoping to wish Taylor a happy birthday, but nobody answered. My birthday cake was on a plate on top of the oven. Nana would have baked a cake herself, but Mum just got one from the supermarket. It was pink with a dancer made from icing and it reminded me of Taylor’s jewellery box, which made me want to cry.
I leaned on one of the buttons on the cooker by accident and jumped back when I saw the sparks, I’m not supposed to touch the oven. Silly, really, because it won’t catch fire without matches, I watched Nana do it hundreds of times. I pushed the ignition button again and again, just because there was nobody there to tell me not to.
By lunchtime I still hadn’t had any breakfast. My cereal was too soggy to eat by then but I was hungry, so I went to the top drawer and took out the biggest knife I could find. Then I cut myself a really big slice of cake and ate it with my fingers at the kitchen table. I blew on it first with my eyes closed and made a wish, even though there was no candle. I have to keep my wish a secret or it won’t come true.
When I had finished my cake, I looked at the small pile of presents and decided Mum would be even more cross with me if I opened them while they were out. I opened one card, because it had Taylor’s writing on the envelope. It didn’t say much:
Happy Birthday!!
Love from,
Taylor
Underneath her name, she’d drawn two green circles with smiley faces. I did cry then, proper big tears that rolled down my cheeks and wouldn’t stop. I don’t think we’ll be allowed to be two peas in a pod any more.
Now
Friday, 30th December 2016
‘You’re here already?’ says Paul.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Claire replies.
‘Me neither.’
Me neither, our insomnia seems contagious.
‘I’ll go, so you can have some time together.’
‘No, stay. If you want to. I don’t mind.’
Hours seem to go by without either of them saying a word. The nurses come to change my position, but the outlook stays the same. I want to tell them about the man who is holding me hostage in my sleep. I’m not sure they’d believe me, even if I could. I remember who he is now but I don’t know why he is doing this to me, all I did was say no.
My husband and my sister sit on either side of the bed, my broken body forms the border between them. The stretched out time the three of us endure is coated in the silence of unspoken words. I can feel walls of them, each letter, each syllable piling up on top of one another to form an unstable house of unanswered questions. Lies form the mortar, holding the walls together. If there weren’t so many lies, the walls would have collapsed by now. Instead, we’ve built ourselves a prison.
Paul doesn’t hold my hand today and he doesn’t play me any music. Pages turn, time rolls onwards and the ventilator punctuates each moment with the effort it takes to breathe for me, until the room is so fat with silence, one of us had to burst it. I can’t, she won’t, but he does.
‘It was a girl.’
The four words stab me in the stomach and punch a hole in the muted existence we’ve become accustomed to.
It was a girl.
I was pregnant.
It was a girl.
Past tense.
It was a girl.
I’m not pregnant any more.
Now that the memory is complete, I don’t want it. I want to give it back.
There was a baby growing inside of me but I killed it with my mistakes and now I can’t even remember what they were, only what I’ve lost as a result.
‘You could always try again,’ says Claire.
We weren’t really trying any more. We’d given up.
She was an accident.
A beautiful, fucked-up miracle of an accident.
I imagine Claire putting her arms around Paul, pushing her body up against his to comfort him. Even my grief for my unborn child is no longer my own, she’s taking that from me too. The thought sparks a rash of jealousy that spreads itself all over my immobile body, an emotional gravity pushing me down, further into my worst self.
I would have kept her.
We would have loved her.
Now I’ve lost her as well as us.
Northern Nurse comes into the room, smelling of tea, completely unaware that she’s interrupting something I can barely comprehend. I feel all of my hate direct itself at her, but she remains oblivious, pottering about the place as though the world didn’t just end.
Get out and leave me alone!
I feel myself letting go, my grip on reality loosening. Something is being pumped into me, something I don’t want. I can feel it snaking below the surface of my skin, paralysing my mind, squeezing the life out of me. For a moment, I think it might not be a bad thing to die now, to just slip away. Briefly, I don’t want to wake up. Nobody would really miss me if I was gone, they’d probably be better off for it. I think I cry, but the nurse is wiping my face with a flannel so she doesn’t notice. She’s not as gentle as the others. Perhaps she can see all the dirt that hides just below my surface. The wet flannel slaps me in the face and I open my eyes.
I see them standing over me, all dressed in black. I’m not in my hospital bed any more, I’m in an open coffin. They’re all there: Paul, Claire, Jo, even him. He’s shovelling soil onto me and I don’t understand why they don’t make him stop. It’s in my hair, my mouth, some gets into my eyes. I scream at them to stop him but they don’t listen because they cannot hear me.
I’m not dead.
He smiles at me, then leans right down to the coffin and whispers in my ear: ‘Yes, you are, but, don’t worry, you’ll have company.’
He lifts up the little girl in the pink dressing gown and lays her in the coffin next to me; she wraps her arm around my waist. Everything turns black as the coffin starts to lower down into the earth. I start to cry and she starts to sing.
Silent night. Holy night. All is calm. All is bright.
She points up at the starless sky and I stare at the moon.
Round yon virgin, mother and child.
She squeezes me tight.
Holy infant, so tender and mild.
She turns to face me, her finger lifting to where her lips should be. Shh.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
Sleep in heavenly peace.
She reaches up and pulls an invisible cord, I hear what sounds like my bathroom light as she switches off the moon, plunging us into the unforgiving dark. Then the dirt starts to rain down on us faster. I scream at them again to stop but, if they can hear me, they’re not listening. The hole is too deep for me to climb out of, but I have to do something. I scratch at the walls of earth, trying to find anything to hold on to, my nails clawing at the dirt. It starts to rain and water and soil fall down hard on top of me until I give up and roll myself into a ball. I hide within my fear and make it my home. A coin lands near my feet as though I’m at the bottom of a well where people make wishes. Neither side of the coin has a face.
‘If you want to get out, just point at the exit,’ says the little girl. She’s standing over me now, clumps of wet soil in her tangled hair. I follow her stare to a green-neon EMERGENCY EXIT sign buried in the dirt beneath my feet.
‘Just point when you want to get out, that’s all you have to do.’
I look down at the sign, half covered in dirt already, and try to point at it, but I can’t move my hands. I’m crying again when the pain comes. Then there is blood. Blood dripping down on the emergency exit sign, blood on my hospital gown, blood on my hands as I hold them between my legs, trying to stop the life falling out of me. I close my eyes with the pain and when I open them and look up, the only face I can still see is Claire’s. The little girl reaches for my hand and helps me to point my finger at the sign beneath my feet. It takes every last bit of strength I have.
‘Did you see that?’ says Claire’s voice in the distance.
‘What?’ asks Paul.