‘I see.’ He takes me in his arms, rests his chin on my head. I can feel him thinking what to say. ‘Well … I can’t say I’m thrilled. You know how I feel about it.’
‘You couldn’t be more pissed off at me than I am at myself. I felt disgusting – I couldn’t hold Freya until I’d had a shower.’
‘What did you do with the rest of the packet?’
‘I threw them away,’ I say after a pause. But the pause is because this is a lie. I didn’t throw them away. I have no idea why not. I meant to – but somehow I shoved them into the corner of my handbag instead before I went for my shower. I’m not having another one, so it doesn’t matter, does it? It all comes to the same thing. I will throw them away, and then what I’ve said will be true. But for now – for now, as I stand there, stiff and ashamed in Owen’s arms … for now it’s a lie.
‘I love you,’ he says to the top of my head. ‘You know that’s why I don’t want you smoking, right?’
‘I know,’ I say, my throat croaky with tears. And then Freya cries out, and I pull away from him to pick her up.
He is puzzled though. He knows something is wrong … he just doesn’t know what.
Gradually the days form a kind of semblance of normality, though small touches remind me that it’s not, or at least if it is, it’s a new normal, not the old one. For one thing, my jaw hurts, and when I mention it in passing, Owen tells me that he heard me last night grinding my teeth in my sleep.
Another is the nightmares. It’s not just the sound of the shovel on wet sand any more, the scrape of a groundsheet across a beach track. Now it’s people, officials, snatching Freya from my arms, my mouth frozen in a soundless scream of fear as she is taken away.
I have coffee with my antenatal group as usual. I walk to the library as usual. But Freya can feel my tension and fear. She wakes in the night, crying, so that I stumble from my bed to her crib to snatch her up before she can wake Owen. In the daytime she is fretful and needy, putting her arms up to be carried all the time, until my back hurts with the weight of her.
‘Maybe she’s teething,’ Owen says, but I know it’s not that, or not just that. It’s me. It’s the fear and adrenaline pumping through my body, into my milk, through my skin, communicating themselves to her.
I feel constantly on edge, the muscles in my neck like steel cords, perpetually braced for something, some bolt from the blue to destroy the fragile status quo. But when it comes, it’s not in the form that I was expecting.
It is Owen who answers the door. It is Saturday, and I am still in bed, Freya beside me, sprawled out frog-legged on the duvet, her wet red mouth wide, her thin violet lids closed over eyes that dart with her dreams.
When I wake, there’s a cup of tea beside my bed, and something else. A vase of flowers. Roses.
The sight jolts me awake, and I lie there, trying to think what I could have forgotten. It’s not our anniversary – that’s in January. My birthday’s not until July. Crap. What is it?
At last I give up. I will have to admit ignorance and ask.
‘Owen?’ I call softly, and he comes in, picks up the stirring Freya and puts her to his shoulder, patting her back as she stretches and yawns, with catlike delicacy.
‘Hello, sleepyhead. Did you see your tea?’
‘I did. Thanks. But what’s with the flowers? Are we celebrating something?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing.’
‘You mean they’re not from you?’ I take a sip of the tea and frown. It’s lukewarm, but it’s wet, and that’s the main thing.
‘Nope. Take a look at the card.’
It’s tucked beneath the vase, a little anonymous florist’s card in an unsealed, unmarked white envelope. I pull it out and open it.
Isa, it says, in handwriting I don’t recognise, probably the florist’s. Please accept these as an apology for my behaviour. Yours always, Luc.
Oh God.
‘So, um … who’s Luc?’ Owen picks up his own cup of tea and takes a sip, eyeing me over the top of the cup. ‘Should I be worried?’
He makes the comment sound like a joke, but it’s not, or not completely. He’s not the jealous type, but there is something curious, a little speculative in his gaze, and I can’t blame him. If he got red roses from a strange woman, I would probably be wondering too.
‘You read the card?’ I ask, and then realise, instantly, as his expression closes that that was the wrong thing to say. ‘I mean, I didn’t mean –’
‘There was no name on the envelope.’ His voice is flat, offended. ‘I read it to see who they were for. I wasn’t spying on you, if that’s what you meant.’
‘No,’ I say hurriedly, ‘of course that’s not what I meant. I was just –’ I stop, take a breath. This is all going wrong. I should never have started down this track. I try – too late – to turn back. ‘Luc is Kate’s brother.’
‘Her brother?’ Owen raises an eyebrow. ‘I thought she was an only child?’
‘Stepbrother.’ I twist the card between my fingers. How did he get my address? Owen must be wondering what he’s apologising for, but what can I say? I can’t tell him what Luc really did. ‘He – there was a misunderstanding while I was at Kate’s. It was silly really.’
‘Blimey,’ Owen says lightly. ‘If I sent roses every time there was a misunderstanding I’d be broke.’
‘It was about Freya,’ I say reluctantly. I have to somehow tell him this but without making Luc sound like a psycho. If I say – bluntly – that Luc took my child, our child, away from the person looking after her without permission, Owen will probably want me to call the police, and that’s the one thing I can’t do. I have to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. ‘I – oh, it’s complicated, but when we went out to the dinner I got a babysitter, but she was a bit young and she couldn’t handle things when Freya kicked off. It was stupid – I shouldn’t have left Freya with a stranger, but Kate said the girl was experienced … anyway Luc happened to be there so he offered to take Freya out for a walk to calm her down. But I was cross he hadn’t asked me before he took her out of the house.’
Both of Owen’s eyebrows are up now.
‘The guy helped you out and you chewed him out, and now he’s sending roses? Bit over the top, no?’
Oh God. I am making this worse.
‘Look, it was a bit more complicated at the time,’ I say, a trace of defensiveness coming into my tone. ‘It’s a long story. Can we talk about it after I’ve had a shower?’
‘Sure.’ Owen holds up his hands. ‘Don’t mind me.’
But as I grab a towel from the radiator and swathe my dressing gown around me, I catch him looking at the vase of roses on the bedside table, and his expression is the look of a man putting two and two together … and not really liking the answer.
Later that day, when Owen has taken Freya out to Sainsbury’s to buy bread and milk, I take the flowers out of the vase, and I shove them deep into the outside bin, not caring how the thorns prick and rip my skin.