CHAPTER 31
O nce she was out of our lives, I thought I’d find it easy. Easier. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t simply about Nova, was it?
It was also about our baby.
I hadn’t only been buying clothes and books. I’d bought a couple of rattles, three teddy bears, a musical mobile for over the crib. And a diaper bag, which was square and white, covered in pink, blue, yellow and green daisies. It was so gorgeous I used to take it out and open it up, imagine filling it with diapers and wipes and diaper rash cream and a toy to keep the baby occupied while I did the deed.
I had kept everything in the second bedroom, the one that would have become the baby’s room, and now I had to pack it all away.
I could have given them away, but I didn’t want to. They were meant for my baby. I held each romper in my arms, imagining them filled with my baby’s plump limbs, stretching and contracting at the chest with the gentle in and out of his breathing. He was a he, I was sure of it.
After I held each one, I folded them into the diaper bag until there was no more room. Then I got out my designer weekend bag. It was the most expensive thing I had ever owned—it cost even more than my car—and I had saved up for years to own that little piece of design history.
I put everything else in that. It seemed fitting, memories of the most precious thing I would never have, kept in the most expensive thing I would ever own.
Afterwards I braved the scary attic and tucked them out of sight. Not out of mind, of course.
Never out of mind.
CHAPTER 32
I ended up in Brighton.
I had to come away because I couldn’t do it in London.
Not in the city where I lived. I couldn’t imagine having to walk past it every day, knowing. Or even looking on a street map, a train planner or a tube map and seeing the name of the place. The area of London where … where I did this thing.
I’d had two pregnancy scares in my life, both times because of a split condom and both times I’d known without a doubt what I’d do if I got pregnant. The thought was difficult, but I knew both times I wouldn’t be able to cope with being a mother. I couldn’t go through with it. Both times had turned out to be just that: scares.
This time was different in many ways, not least of all because I was pregnant.
I’d booked the hotel a few weeks after I got … got into this thing. I’d needed a few days to myself. Every year—even when I’d been with Keith—I went away on my own, to somewhere near the sea. Some days it was more spontaneous: I would wake up in the morning and would need to get away. Would need to not be in London, and I would get dressed, get on a train, destination: Brighton. I would walk on the beach, inhaling the salty air, loving the rush of the sea in my ears, the feel of the pebbles under my feet. On the way back at night, I’d feel calmer and in control. As though I’d had the chance to step out of my life for a while.
And now I was using this six-day break for …
I’d had the initial appointment after I got here, and in two days, it would be done. Afterwards, after it had been done, all I’d want to do would be to sit and stare at the sea. More than anything, I’d need to lose my mind in the motion of the sea afterwards. It would take me out of myself and I would be able to get my head together, reassemble the pieces of my mind before I went back to London, back to work, back to my flat, back to “normal.”
The hotel—four stars, no less—was horrible. The pictures the travel agent had shown me were of a pristine, elegant establishment resplendent with old-world charm and antique fittings. The room I was shown to had wallpaper that bubbled away from the walls, peeling in some places. The original sash windows sat in frames that had been rotted, cracked and peeled by the sea air, and the wind whistled relentlessly through the gap between the new double-glazing on the inside. The shower had no temperature control; the television would only find three channels or encourage the viewer to pay for porn; the red, patterned carpet was worn in places, dirty gray in others.
Everything wrong with the room was tempered by the unhindered view of the sea. I lay on top of the bed, ignoring the suspicious stains on the duvet cover, and stared out of the window, watching the waves rollicking and rolling. Mal always thought he’d die at night in the sea, I remembered suddenly. He never had a reason to think it, nor could he explain why he’d be on or in the sea at night, but he believed it with an unshakeable, fervent certainty. It wasn’t something he had to convince himself to believe, he just knew it to be so. And despite all the times he’d dismissed my interests, my knowledge, my beliefs, he still held on to that one.
I watched an old man sitting on the bench beside a green-blue bus stop shelter with sea-salt-smeared glass. The wind was howling around him, tugging, pulling, tearing at his pink skin, white hair and beige zip-up jacket. But he sat rock-still. His hands, bunched into fists, rested on his thighs, and he stared straight ahead. Unbothered and untouched by the battering elements.
What’s your story? I asked him in my head. Why are you alone? Why are you so numb to everything going on around you?
He didn’t answer, obviously. I moved my gaze further up the horizon, to the gray sea topped with white foam, fighting a battle with itself that didn’t need to be won.
I looked down to find I was resting my hand on my abdomen. The skin was taut and warm, I could feel the blood moving under my hand. In all the times Mal and Stephanie had done that, I hadn’t. I knew it was important not to touch the baby, acknowledge it, engage with it when it was not going to be mine. If I bonded with it, connected with it, then how would I be able to give it to its parents? Now I was touching it.
And in two days, I’d be doing this thing.
My hand slid over the warm skin, and I felt it. Movement. Slight, fleeting, but movement deep inside. I snatched my hand away as all the different emotions that had been bundled up in a tight ball inside me unwrapped themselves.
I’m pregnant.
With Malvolio’s baby.
I’m pregnant with the baby of the first man I ever loved.
It wasn’t anyone else’s baby. It wasn’t a man I’d been casually dating for a few weeks. It wasn’t Keith, who I’d only just split up with. It was Mal. I’d known him a lifetime. If we had been more honest with each other, this would be something we had planned and were doing together.
But he didn’t want the baby and I had not intended to do this at this point in my life.
I wasn’t sixteen, but I was on my own.
I was a twenty-nine-year-old knocked-up teenager. And I hadn’t even had sex to get myself into this condition. I couldn’t have a baby. I couldn’t bring up a baby on my own.
But I couldn’t lose the only little part of Malvolio I had left.
I moved my hand to my abdomen again. Felt it again. Deep inside, fluttering, small little flutterings. Tears started to leak from my eyes as I waited to feel it for a third time. Just once more I would feel it, then I’d stop doing this. I’d distance myself again.
I had training to complete, a research paper to finish writing, a round-the-world trip to go on.
I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t have a baby on my own.
I couldn’t. That was all there was to it. I couldn’t.
CHAPTER 33
B y the time the baby’s due date—a day burnt into my mind—arrived, Mal had completely shut off from me.
And he cried all the time.
Even when there were no tears, his eyes had the haunted hollowness of someone who was sobbing inside.
I wanted to help him but he wouldn’t let me near. The crying he did alone, shut away in the room that was once going to be the nursery. He slept with his back to me, like a solid wall of flesh that kept the world out. He talked to me with empty words, in sentences that held no deeper meaning. He used to weave everything he said with the strands of the depth of his love. Now, he talked to me because he had to. Now, everything he said was flat and meaningless.
The grief was so huge, so imme
nse that he was floundering in it. Swimming blind as he would in a raging sea at night. Swimming against the crashing waves and getting nowhere. Every day, he was dragged further down, into those depths. Away from the surface. Away from life. Away from me. All he clung to was the loss. Nothing else mattered. I wanted to take his hand, swim us both to safety. To make him whole again; to soothe his wounds and help him heal.
But he would not reach for me. Instead, he flinched away, preferring to do this alone. He blamed me. He blamed himself. And he blamed me.
I blamed myself, as well. But I also blamed her. Nova. This was her fault, her responsibility, too. If not for her …
Mostly, I blamed myself. Mostly, I wanted him to stop crying, to stop hurting, to stop grieving with every piece of his soul.
I didn’t understand the loss that he and Nova shared. I doubted I ever would. But I understood my husband. And soon, I’d lose him. The one thing I tried to stop by doing what I did, saying what I said, would happen. But this time I wouldn’t lose him to another woman and her unborn baby, I wouldn’t lose him to her and her child; I’d lose him to himself.
I could see it happening: he was going to drown in his grief, he was going to be pulled so far down he wouldn’t be able to break the surface. He would be dragged down to those bleak, gray depths and would never start living again. And all I’d be able to do was stand on the shore and watch.
CHAPTER 34
I sat up in bed, exhausted, sore, flitting between complete despair and complete euphoria.
Every few seconds, I would glance at the clear cot beside my bed. At him. Him. A living gurgle, wrapped up in a white blanket, lying two feet from me. I’d lost a lot of blood, the doctors told me, so I was to stay in an extra day. Every time I glanced at him—his face turned upwards toward the ceiling, his wrinkled eyelids resting together, his mouth open a fraction, his cheeks a reddened mocha—I wondered what I’d done.
Have I made the biggest mistake of my life? I kept asking myself. Should I have done what I intended to do when I went to Brighton?
I looked away from the little boy and found her standing at the end of my bed. Even though visiting hours were over and my family had just left (the poor beleaguered nurses had tried fruitlessly to get only two of them to stay), she was back. Standing there in her black overcoat, her blue scarf draped around her neck, her black bag on her shoulder.
She knows, I realized. Aunt Mer knows. The look on her face when she first saw him popped up in my mind: momentary shock, quickly brushed over by elation and delight.
“When Malvolio was born, his cheeks were so red,” she said, staring at my son, remembering hers. “And he had these thick, thick curls. So blond.” With the gentlest touch, she stroked her forefinger over the tips of my boy’s dark, curly hair. “Your father walked all the way to the hospital to see me the day after he was born because it was Sunday and there were no buses. Your mother wanted to come, but she was close to having you and could hardly move.”
She looked away from the little boy at me. “He’s so beautiful.”
I nodded, slowly, carefully. “You can hold him, if you want,” I said to her. Out of everyone who had visited, she hadn’t held him. “I’m too shaky,” she had said; now I knew it was because she might betray herself and so betray me.
“Thank you, no. I wouldn’t want to disturb him.” Her face, soft and gentle, creased into a deep smile as she stared at her grandson. “When Malvolio was born, all you had to do was look at him a bit too hard and he’d wake up.”
“This one likes his sleep,” I said to Aunt Mer.
“Good for him,” she said. “And you, of course.”
“Yes, good for me.”
“I told Malvolio you’d had your baby and that I was coming to see you today,” she said, her softness now smoothed over with regret. “If I had known …”
“It’s OK, Aunt Mer, you can tell him whatever you want. I really don’t mind. And if you hadn’t, Mum, Dad or Cordy would have.”
“Do you know what you’re going to call him yet?” she asked.
“Yes. But I’m going to try it out just between the two of us before I tell anyone?” I phrased it as a question so that she wouldn’t feel offended.
“I remember when I wanted to call Malvolio Malvolio. Everyone tried to talk me out of it. But I always knew if I had a son that was what I would name him.”
“Because that was the first play Uncle Victor took you to see,” I said before I could stop myself. I had lived twenty years without repeating that to anyone.
“How did you know that?” she asked, looking a little upset. Uncertain. Scared. Aunt Mer didn’t like to be startled. And if I told her the truth, God knows what it might do to her.
“I kind of guessed over the years that it must have had some sort of significance. It’s so unusual.”
“It’s at times like this that I miss Victor the most,” she said with a sad smile. “I know how much he would have loved to be here. I know it doesn’t seem important, but he was sad that he missed Malvolio’s birth. Even being there at Victoria’s birth didn’t make up for it. He missed his firstborn coming into the world. That weighed heavy on him, I know it did.” Her grin grew. “And it obviously meant he would have been able to stop me calling him Malvolio.”
I laughed.
A lot of people—Mal included—didn’t think that Uncle Victor loved Aunt Mer, but I did. Aunt Mer did. But then, maybe that’s because Aunt Mer and I were always hopeless romantics; we believed in the unending, redemptive power of love.
Uncle Victor did time for her. We weren’t even born when he went into prison. We’d been told that he went in for fraud, but we found out years later it was far more serious: Grievous Bodily Harm with intent to kill. The person had called Aunt Mer a lunatic and said she should be locked up, not knocked up. Uncle Victor went crazy. Several witnesses all testified that the man in question had been goading Uncle Victor (who was of good character) for weeks, and had only hit upon that particular button by accident. The reason Uncle Victor was sent to prison was that he showed no remorse. His lawyer had told him to apologize to the man, to apologize to the court, to throw himself on the judge’s mercy and reassure them it wouldn’t happen again, especially since he had a baby on the way. “I’d rather have the death sentence than apologize when I’m not at all sorry,” Uncle Victor had said. (I heard Mum and Dad discussing it years and years later.)
As a result, he served five years; each one of them was hard and difficult and left him scarred inside and out, but he would do it again and again. Because no one talked about or to Aunt Mer like she didn’t matter.
He never stayed with her, though. That was the deepest sadness. He loved her, but couldn’t handle her illness and had to remove himself from her. He had been a builder before he was sent down—we were told originally that he was working away, then when the local grapevine put paid to that, they told us he was in prison for fraud and not to listen to what anyone else said—and when he came out of prison he decided to leave to find work. Everyone around our way knew what he had done and so wouldn’t hire him, so he traveled the country looking for work, living away, sending money home and returning every so often—usually during the quieter winter months—to live with Mal, Aunt Mer and Victoria. Winter was quieter in many ways—the dark skies, cold weather and general barrenness in the world also quietened Aunt Mer. She was much more depressed in winter, and for Uncle Victor that meant she was easier to handle.
He had to watch her carefully, because the likelihood that she would try to … went up. But he could cope with that. Much more than the highs. Which made her into a different person almost. She was still Aunt Mer but she would talk quickly, do unusual things, spend all the money they had and every penny they didn’t have, clean maniacally, come up with fantastical schemes (like digging up the garden in the middle of the night looking for archaeological finds), not sleep, not eat.
Uncle Victor loved Aunt Mer, of that I was sure, but he could not live wit
h her for any length of time. He just wasn’t strong enough. Physically he was, emotionally he wasn’t. I used to think it was because he couldn’t stand to see her suffer and know that he couldn’t do anything to stop it; I used to think that he hated himself for not being able to love her better, for not being able to give her enough to keep her well and stable. But I was an old romantic. And as I had discovered over the years, all relationships had their secret coves and hidey-holes, and no one on the outside could ever truly know what lay buried in them.
“I had better be going, dear, I told your parents that I had forgotten these.” She reached into her bag and pulled out her blue wool gloves. “I don’t like telling white lies, but I wanted to tell you he’s beautiful.”
I smiled at her.
“Really”—her voice caught in her throat, a silent sob she managed to choke back—“beautiful.”
“Do you think I did the right thing?” I asked her before she turned away. Now that she knew a part of it, and she probably thought Mal and I had been having an affair, I had to ask. I wasn’t sure, still, if I should have gone through with the other option.
Her face softened with the biggest smile I had seen her give in years. “Absolutely,” she replied. “I couldn’t imagine the world without him. Can you?”
I glanced over at my son. My son. Holy God in heaven. My son.
“No,” I replied, a rush of protective emotions surging through me. “No, I can’t.”
CHAPTER 35