Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

ashes. I wanted to take him to the park, push him on the swings. I wanted the warmth of his body against mine. I wanted to lie down with him, to close my eyes.

Daniel swore he’d never leave. But I didn’t believe him, especially not after it happened to us again, and again. Why would he stay, when all I gave him was this? Hospitals, nightmares, bleeding, misery, dead babies. He was chained to it, to my useless body: bloated, bleeding, bearing the ugly scars of pregnancy and birth, but with no life, no child to show for it. I started to feel I was dead already.

After it was bad for a while, we started seeing someone. Daniel thought it would help. I didn’t. I knew that Daniel would go eventually. I could see how it all was for him.

When I was on the drugs, things were easier, mostly because I didn’t feel very much at all. But sometimes that would frighten me, the feeling nothing. And I didn’t want to feel nothing about my babies. I wanted to grieve for them. It was all I had left of being a mother.

So then I would tell him that was it, that I didn’t want to take the pills any more. And then I’d be all right for a few days. And then it would happen again. We’d go to a cafe, order eggs and coffees. Do the sort of thing that Katie and Charlie do at the weekend, tell ourselves we were having a nice time. All the time Daniel would be glancing at me, to the door and back, would be fiddling with the keys in his pocket, waiting for it to happen. And then it would. A tiny, perfect baby, asleep in a pram, its little curled-up hands thrown over its head, a pastel-coloured blanket over its chest. And I would be hunched over, sobbing, like I’d been punched. People passing by, asking if I was all right, if there was anyone they could call.

I’d been barely aware of Charlie and Katie’s break-up, of him finding someone else, Maja. Then suddenly, they were having a baby. The sight of her growing belly made me feel sick. I felt like the whole world was taunting me. I started looking for excuses not to see them. When Ruby was born, I tried to go a few times. The therapist encouraged me to try. I knew I had to. I even bought presents. I got as far as the car. But I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I would call and Charlie would say they understood, that it didn’t matter. But I couldn’t bear the ugliness of my thoughts. This accidental baby. My useless brother. Undeserved. It still sits between Charlie and me now, those missed months. I missed so much of her.

It took me such a long time to get better. To not feel like that any more. To go and meet Ruby, close my fingers around her chubby palm. To take the ashes Daniel had saved and scatter them in our garden. Daniel helped me plant the roses. One for each of our little babies. He did so much, put up with so much. He was the one who kept me alive.

The last time I saw the therapist, she said that I had come a long way, that both Daniel and I had. I believed her. I didn’t want to see her ever again. I didn’t want to go back.

But now, when I think about the night of the party, I get that same sense of low-level dread, of darkness behind the windows about to close in on us. It frightens me so much to feel that again.

I wish I hadn’t shouted at Rachel. And now I think about it, I don’t even completely remember why I was so angry. Was it just the laptop? Was there something else, something I hadn’t seen before? I am almost sure there was. But all I can remember are fragments, pieces of a whole that don’t make sense on their own. The muffled thump of bass vibrating through the four white walls. Snatches of laughter drifting up from the garden. Footsteps on the stairs, steady as a heartbeat. The turn of the doorknob. The low hum of the dehumidifier, getting louder and louder and louder.

38 WEEKS

HELEN

Since the party, I keep finding myself consumed by an urge to wash things, to clean everything in the house. It’s normal – I’ve read about it. Instinctive. A sign that your body is readying for labour.

I have scrubbed every surface in the house, bleached every floor. Scoured the skirting boards, some of them twice, my huge belly pressing against my thighs as I bend. Daniel suggested we call off the building work for a few weeks, until after the baby’s born, and I agreed. He’s right – we need some time to be just us. We need the house still, quiet.

And clean. There is no limit to my hunger for the chemical smell of lemon, the scalding bliss of hot soapy water. At night, I dream of cleaning. In the morning, I haul myself bolt upright in bed, flip my legs over the side, pull my maternity tracksuit bottoms on.

‘It’s the weekend, Helen,’ Daniel complains. ‘Can’t we just relax?’ But I want to keep going. I clean the windows with water and newspaper until they gleam, I polish the banisters on the stairs, dust the ceiling roses. I wash all the baby clothes, load after load. I lay them out to dry on the rack, then take them to iron in front of the TV. I stack the short-sleeved bodysuits in little piles for the drawer, arranged by size. The newborn ones are so little I am not sure I know how to fold them. They feel so small, so strange to my hands. The idea that, soon, I will have a newborn baby, that I will be