When I can’t stand it any longer I slide out of Stuart’s arms and move noiselessly to the landing.
I check on Beth first. Her covers are a scrunched-up ball at the bottom of her bed. She’s flat on her back, arms out. I remember her as a baby so vividly. A tiny bundle of warmth and red-faced anger. Even then it felt as though she was fighting for independence. When I gave her formula for the first time at three months old, Beth’s chubby little hands gripped the bottle, pushing my own away, and she chomped hungrily, happily, refusing to take my boob again.
And that magical baby smell – there really is nothing like it. By the time Beth arrived I’d handled babies in A&E plenty of times. I thought I knew everything about them but I was just as clueless as every other first-time mother. Just as besotted, too.
I spent hours in the nursing chair in Beth’s bedroom, rocking and cuddling, breathing her in. For the first time in my adult life, medicine wasn’t the most important thing. And that scared and delighted me in equal measure.
In the semi-darkness I catch sight of the slight curve of her changing body and a sudden panic flutters in my empty stomach. What do you think when you look at Beth?
It’s a down-the-rabbit-hole-never-to-return type of thought and I force it away.
Archie’s bedroom is at the back of the house and cooler than the other rooms, but he’s wrapped up in his duvet so tight that his hair is damp with sweat.
My memory of Archie as a baby is less defined. Life was different – hectic. Quiet cuddles were had late at night or in between entertaining Beth – snatches of time that were over as soon as they began. And yet somehow he still feels like my little baby. My funny sweet boy who lives most of his life fighting aliens on his imaginary planet of Bong.
I lean down to kiss his cheek and feel his breath brush my skin, before creeping out of the room and down the stairs.
In the kitchen, I turn on the light. I long to open the back doors and let the night air sweep through the house, but it doesn’t feel safe. My jaw clenches. I hate you for doing this to me.
I stare around my kitchen – the pale wooden worktops, cream cupboards and the matching island in the middle of the floor with four stools positioned around it. In between the work surface and top cupboards, the walls are tiled with the terracotta squares Stuart chose for us because I was stuck at work the day the decision had to be made. Anytime I look at the tiles, all I see are the three children and two teachers who died when their school bus crashed off a bridge and fell to the road below. We saved so many lives that day, but it’s the ones I didn’t save that haunt me.
My gaze moves to the calendar hanging on the wall between the fridge and the bi-fold doors. I made it for Stuart for Christmas, using different photos of Beth and Archie for each month. June is a photo of them arm in arm on a bouncy castle.
Our entire lives are scrawled across the pages. Stuart is blue ink, I’m green. Beth is orange and Archie is red. You’ve been in our house. You’ve seen this.
I rush forwards, snatching the calendar from the wall and laying it across the island worktop. Orange and red – trampoline-park party this weekend; blue – away at the end of the month for a boys’ weekend in the Netherlands; green – Diya’s birthday drinks; orange and red – dentist. And on it goes. A printout of my shift pattern is stuck down one side.
We might as well have given you a set of keys to our lives. You know exactly where I will be, for how long, with whom. You know when I’ll be here alone and when I’ll be travelling to and from the hospital. I can take different routes, I’ll move the kids’ dentist appointment, but it won’t be enough. It’ll never be enough.
Sometime in the early hours, when the dawn is breaking a yolky-orange in the distance, I tiptoe back to bed and sleep for an hour. There is only one thought on my mind as my eyelids close and exhaustion pulls me into its depths – I can’t live like this any more.
Chapter 9
Sophie, aged eight
Her nan’s front room smells like the travel sweets in the gold tin. The slightly stale red-and-green squares, covered in powdery sugar, that her nan likes to suck on while watchingCountdownin the afternoons.
The room is old-fashioned and hasn’t changed a bit in the years that Sophie can remember, and probably a hundred before that. Everything is dark brown. The carpet and the curtains are brown; so is the sideboard where her nan keeps the old board games and the posh glasses Sophie isn’t allowed to touch. The sofa and armchair are brown with faded flowers on them, and the wall with the gas fire is covered with wallpaper that’s supposed to make it look like a brown-brick chimney. Even the lampshade is brown.
In a corner is a wooden TV cabinet with doors and two brass rings for handles. To watch TV Sophie has to open the doors and push a big button on the front. Not that she watches much TV at her nan’s. The picture is a bit fuzzy, and anyway her nan is always doingfun things with Sophie, like makeovers with her old make-up bag or fairy-cake baking.
Her nan shuffles into the room in her pink slippers with the white fluffy trim, carrying a chocolate Swiss roll from the corner shop, which her dad had rushed out to buy at the last minute. ‘This is a big day, Sophie. Are you excited?’
Sophie looks up from the colouring book and nods, not because she really is excited, but because that’s all everyone has been asking her for the past month. Her teacher asked her at school last week. Charlotte’s parents asked her the last time Sophie went for tea, and then of course there are her mum and dad, who ask her almost every day. The funny thing is that no one ever waits for an answer, like they’re not really asking but telling.
It isn’t that Sophie doesn’t want a brother. She does. It’s just weird. Everyone else’s parents have a baby, but Matthew is already five. He already has a mum and dad, but because they don’t want him any more, they are giving him to Sophie’s mum and dad.
Sophie was eating breakfast one morning when she was still really young, like five or something, and asked her mum why she didn’t have a brother or sister like everyone else in her class.
Her mum stood at the sink with her back to Sophie and said nothing for ages. Sophie thought she was in trouble but didn’t know why. Then her mum turned, her face wet with tears, and pulled Sophie into a hug before she explained that she couldn’t have any babies because something happened when Sophie was born, but it wasn’t Sophie’s fault. Although the way her mum kept saying that last bit made Sophie feel like it was.
Sophie wanted to tell her mum that she’d only asked because Ashlee Greeves had asked her in the lunch line the day before. But her mum was really upset and Sophie wasn’t sure if saying any of that would make it better or worse, so she said nothing.
It was soon after that chat that Sophie’s mum and dad started trying to adopt. They wanted a baby, but no one would give them one because of their age and because they already had Sophie. So now someone was giving them Matthew, and Sophie should be excited.
Sophie tries to remember what Matthew is like. She met him once, about a month ago, but she knows her mum and dad have visited him more. He didn’t speak, Sophie remembers. There were lots of other people there. It had been some kind of test. Her mum made her wear a dress and said if she was really good and smiled lots then she’d get jelly and ice cream for pudding.
Her nan slides the cake on to the sideboard in the corner before giving a little shiver. ‘It’s freezing in here today. So much for an Indian summer,’ she says with her usual tinkly laugh.
