Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner (read book txt) 📗

if I’ve been anaesthetised. I can’t seem to feel happy, or sad. I try to think of holding a little baby in my arms, dressing him in his first outfit, the one with little penguins on it, packed neatly in my hospital bag with its matching hat. But I just feel like I’m searching for answers in an empty room.

I wish I hadn’t agreed to Daniel working late this week. I know I’ll need him most when I finally go into labour, when the baby is here. But the days are getting shorter and shorter, the nights longer and longer. Serena isn’t returning my calls. And the police keep coming round, checking and rechecking our statements. I feel alone with the ghost of Rachel rattling around the empty house, half our furniture still coated in white dust sheets.

I watch the news endlessly, but they just keep going over the same few facts we all know already. There are no answers. Only questions. What happened to Rachel? Where is she? Where did she go?

Every hour now seems to stretch into the longest of my life. There are flurries of snow, the first of the year. The flakes whizz around, cartwheeling, but not settling. Just a few of them catch in the gaps between the paving stones, on the bare branches of the hawthorns. The house is cold. With some effort, I make a fire, piling the last of the coal on top of some kindling, some scrunched-up balls of newspaper.

I sit in a comfy chair in the front room while it crackles at my feet, staring out of the window, over the front garden. I try to read, but really, my focus is pointed inward. I am waiting for a sign, the slightest shift, the slightest twinge.

I start to become desperate for it – for the drama of birth, the cataclysm everyone talks about – the end of one part of your life, the beginning of another. Nothing will ever be the same, people say. And that’s what I want, more than anything. To be transformed, to shed the skin of this dead time I am stuck in, with nothing to fill my time but thoughts of Rachel. Thoughts about where she might be, what might have happened to her. And others, that I try to push away. About what I might have done, by sending her away. What I might be responsible for.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital for my full-term appointment. Daniel came with me. They said they were going to examine me. I held on to Daniel’s hand, stared at the cheap ceiling tiles and tried to count them. Ten across, fifteen down.

‘You’re doing really well,’ Daniel said soothingly as I breathed in and out. His voice was flat, like something rehearsed. When I glanced over at him, he had his phone in his other hand and was checking his work emails.

‘You’re already one centimetre,’ the nurse said. ‘That’s a really good sign. I’m sure it won’t be long. Shall I give you a sweep, try and get things moving?’

I nodded, pressed my chin to my chest, held on to the edge of the sheet with my fist. The pain was sharp as a knife, unbearable. I cried out, the sound of my voice echoing down the hospital corridor. My nails dug into Daniel’s palm; I felt him flinch, sit up, stare at the midwife in horror. When it stopped, I was panting, staring at her, hot tears clouding my eyes.

‘I didn’t know it was going to be like that.’

The midwife pulled her gloves off and laughed at us both. ‘You wait till the main event.’ Then she saw my face, and her smile fell away. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sometimes a cervical sweep can be a bit more painful for some people. Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’ She turned to her computer, started tapping up notes.

The sweep hasn’t helped. Nothing happens. By four, the light is failing, the sun dipping below the hill, the spidery shadows of the bushes in the garden lengthen and darken. I take the blanket and pull it around myself. Most labours start at night, I tell myself. It could still happen tonight. I move to the sofa, face up, my gaze fixed on the ceiling roses, the swirls and cracks in the plaster as familiar to me as my own hands.

When nothing has happened for another hour, I throw the blanket to the side, stand up, set about rearranging another one of our drawers. But I soon get bored, put it back, make another cup of tea, sit at the kitchen table. I retrieve my book, but I can’t get into it, my concentration drifting away at the end of each paragraph. I walk back into the sitting room, try to settle on the sofa. I close my eyes. I keep seeing her face.

The embers in the fire die to a weak red glow, then to a grey ash, light and delicate as the snowflakes outside. Finally, I give up and go to bed early but cannot fall asleep.

My phone rings at half past eight. It is Katie. I ask her about Rachel, whether she has heard anything at work. She won’t answer my questions.

‘Can you meet me, Helen?’

‘I’m already in bed, Katie. I’m exhausted.’

‘I know – you must be, I’m really sorry.’ I can hear the noise of chatter in the background. It sounds like she is in a pub. ‘Look, I’m at the end of your road,’ she says, lowering her voice. ‘In the Plume of Feathers. Please?’ She pauses. ‘I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’

‘Why can’t you come here?’

She doesn’t answer.

‘Please, Helen. Ten minutes.’

I dress slowly and make my way there, the wintery wind stinging my fingers. Frost snaps in the air. I wish I’d thought to bring gloves. I walk slowly, unsteadily, fretting about the ice. The pavement isn’t gritted, and the light from the street lamps glints off the surface of the frozen puddles.

When I reach