That felt like a non sequitur, so I ignored it. ‘I didn’t want it either,’ I said slowly. ‘I thought we’d just co-parent for a bit and then I’d go back to work and find somewhere to move out to, and we could share Tilly. But I was so sure that you were trying…’ I stopped. I’d made it clear what I had thought David was going to do and I didn’t want to emphasise either my breakdown or my evident mistrust in him.
Mum had smiled beatifically and helped Tilly to drink her juice. She was in her element as doting grandmother, and the realisation that she might have thought that she’d never get to see her granddaughter hit me hard.
Sitting here in my bed as the storm racketed around outside, I thought about Ross too. He’d left us to go and talk, heading back to his office to prepare his team to help Isobel move out tomorrow. While she hadn’t actuallypromisedto go, he seemed confident that she would and they were going to clear out the site office and make it ready for her to move in. It was definitely the site office now, and had stopped being ‘the shed’. I wished he’d come with us to the café though. There was something about his rather strung-out brand of companionship that I’d already started to miss when he wasn’t around. Andthatthought hit me hard too, here in this little dark room with the rattling windows, illuminated by the blue light that lit the car park. I really did like Ross.
Could we make any kind of relationship, that intense but oddly reassuring man and me? Would he still pay me the five thousand pounds? If he did, that wouldn’t get Tilly and me anywhere to live in the city; we’d need to move out to one of the little market towns where, because of lack of opportunities, things were cheaper. There would be a good deal of to-and-froing; he’d have work, I’d have work and Tilly would have nursery and school – would we have any chance to meet?
Then, as wind boomed around the building, I thought about Isobel. Was she all right in Elm Cottage, with its leaky roof and decidedly shaky walls? What if this autumn storm was a step too far and it razed the little house to the ground while she slept, covered with rubble and feathers? Tomorrow morning I’d go over to make sure she was all right. I could give everyone a hand helping her move out.And see Ross, whispered the little voice in my head that had a huge and rather teenage crush.
To distract myself from middle-of-the-night thoughts about Ross and his wiry energy, I turned on the iPad and began an internet search for postpartum psychosis, where I learned that I had got away very lightly and fortunately. Untreated, it seemed,PPPwould usually cure itself but while under its perfidious influence mothers had ended their lives. Or, convinced that their baby had been replaced, they’d abandoned their child. There were worse stories too, but I couldn’t read those, not with my own daughter breathing softly beside me, it was too upsetting. All I had done was to run away from my entire support network, convinced that I was in danger, and from some of the tales on the websites, it seemed that I had suffered a common symptom, that of impending doom and the ‘changing’ into threatening figures of those closest to me.
Poor David. He’d been terrified. Lost, bewildered, sleep-deprived and scared that his partner was descending into mental illness. In some ways my going on the run had been worse for him than for me – at least I knew I was alive. He had had to report me missing and then sit and wait for news, certain that any moment a body might be pulled from a river or, even worse,twobodies…
I groped for my phone and found it on top of the table, then stared at it for a moment. The innocent little oblong concentrated all my doubts and fears, and a certain amount of shame. How had I thought that hiding my phone and watching to see if anyone came to find it was normal behaviour? Why hadn’t that made me wonder what the hell I was doing? Why hadn’t I just got a new cheap phone and removed any possibility of being tracked?
Had I known, really and deep down, thatof courseDavid wasn’t tracking me? Had some detached part of my mind always suspected that it had beenmyproblem causing me to run and hide? I shook the phone lightly, as though this was all its fault. I didn’t think that I felt any differently now to how I’d felt when I’d run away, but my entire thought processes must have changed. I’d been deep in psychosis without realising, and I’d come out of it without ever knowing.
It was a terrifying thought: that my mind could have betrayed me so totally.
Tilly shifted and grasped Brass by his scales as the wind made the walls boom and echo with the force of it, and I tucked the covers more securely around her to keep the heat in. She was all right. It might not have been the best start in life for her, being taken on the road by her unstable mother, but she was all right. Her delayed development could be caught up, she needn’t be disadvantaged, and by the time she started school she’d be at the same level as the other children – I’d been assured of that by nursery.
She was all right. I had to keep telling myself that.
Whumpwent the wind and I sighed. I could sit here all night beating myself up, but dealing with Tilly on not enough sleep was never a good idea. I snuggled myself down next to her, feeling her little legs flex and twitch and the warmth of her body as she relaxed into me again.
She’d got a father and a grandmother today. I’d got some answers. We would be all right.
23
When the phone rang, I’d had it tucked half under my pillow, so it rang directly into my ear and woke me in a panic. Although, when I answered it, it seemed that my panic was nothing compared to that of Ross.
‘It’s… I don’t know what’s gone on, it’s terrible!’ he gabbled.
I sat up, phone held to my ear, my hearing blurry with sleep. ‘What’s the matter, Ross?’
Outside it was still dark and the wind and rain were still hurling one another around. The rest of the hostel was silent, even Slipknot couldn’t compete with the storm.
‘It… Elm Cottage… it’s… it’sdissolving!’
I rubbed my eyes. I was still dreaming, I had to be. ‘What on earth are you on about?’
I heard the deep breath. I could imagine his face too, he was probably chewing his lip, if not his nails. Then he spoke again, but more calmly now. ‘I came over to Elm Cottage, just to check the place out with all this weather going on and it looks as though the water has got into the walls and they’re sort ofcollapsing, but in a really soggy way. I’m worried about Isobel, Libby.’
I rubbed my face. My phone said that it was five thirty in the morning and I could hear that the wind hadn’t let up at all. ‘Have you been in to check?’
‘Of course. Taking my life into my hands, I have to say. It looks as though the place was built of tissue paper and cough syrup.’
‘And?’ Beside me Tilly shifted and stretched.
‘And she’s not there. Well, I only had a quick look around, but I couldn’t see her so if sheisin there she’s hiding under the sofa. I didn’t spend much time looking because it’s like something out of a disaster movie here at the moment. Can you come?’
‘Breakfast time, Mummy,’ Tilly said, cheerfully, ignoring the fact that it was still dark.
‘Why?’ I tried to ignore Brass wiggling in my ear.
‘Because I want you.’ Ross’s voice was suddenly lower, almost growling at me under the noise of the wind. ‘I’m a little bit scared of what’s happening here.’
I half turned away from Tilly who was happily bouncing around in the bed and muttering something about toast. ‘Yes, me too. I mean, I hardly know you at all and then there’s Tilly, could we ever manage to…’
