The Reading Group Part 23

Nicole was calmer this morning than she had been for a couple of weeks. She was getting nearer. She knew that by this evening it would be over. She would have done it. At this point she believed that wondering about doing it was harder than coping with the aftermath would be. It felt like she had a pair of scales in her brain, with weights for and against: while she'd been thinking about it, the weights had been going on and coming off, tipping the scales this way and that. Now they were almost perfectly balanced it was just a fraction out and she knew that was the best she could ever hope for. A decision like this would never present itself in absolutes. She would carry those weights around for ever after she had done it.

In the car park, Harriet switched off the engine and turned to her friend. 'Okay, don't get mad, but I have to ask this. Are you sure you want to go ahead?'

'I'm not mad. But yes.'

'Okay. If you're a hundred per cent certain, I won't ask you again.' Which was, of course, Harriet asking again.

'Harry, I'm sure.'

Harriet pursed her lips and gave a small, decisive nod.

'Are you sure you can do it with me?'

'I said I would.'

'I didn't ask you that. I'd understand, you know, if you didn't want to come in.' Please, please, come in.

'Don't be daft. Course I'm coming in.' Harriet opened her door. 'Let's get on with it.'

She didn't have to do anything much, of course. Once Nicole was in her room, with its bizarrely chintzy 1980s Laura Ashley decor, in the backless gown, which they had managed to laugh about, with her little pills in the plastic shot gla.s.s, a nurse came in with a clipboard of questions and Harriet was asked to go outside. Before she left, she kissed Nicole and held her hand. She had no idea what to say to her, so she whispered, 'I love you,' felt Nicole squeeze her hand in reply, and almost ran out of the room, feeling her own tears rising.

Nicole appeared to have gone on autopilot. She had that ability to switch herself off from something unpleasant. She had been Stoic in childbirth, Harriet remembered. And she was like that whenever Gavin hurt her. It was as if her body had its own anaesthesia. She needed it now.

She drank two cups of watery cappuccino from the machine in the waiting room, and tried to concentrate on the back issues of Country Life she found there, but she watched the big white clock on the wall above the door almost minute by minute. She was half expecting Nicole to walk in and ask to be taken home. But as ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes pa.s.sed she had to accept that she was going through with it.

Finally a young nurse appeared and approached her. 'Your friend is back in her room now. You're welcome to come and sit with her, if you'd like.'

'Thanks.' Harriet gathered up her jacket and bag, and followed the nurse to where she had left Nicole an hour or so earlier.

Nicole looked as though she was still asleep. She was pale against the white pillow, and her hair was neat around her face. Harriet was relieved to see that she looked peaceful this way, that the anaesthetic hadn't frozen her features in a grimace of pain or remorse. She sat down on the chair beside the bed to wait for her to wake up. She felt unbelievably sad for her friend and what she had just been through. Part of her wanted Nicole to wake up so that she could see she was okay. Another part wanted her to sleep on and on in oblivion. She knew that she would never again wake up on a day where she hadn't done this to herself, and to this baby that didn't exist any more, except in her imagination, and her memory.

It was another ten minutes before Nicole opened her eyes. She smiled weakly at Harriet. 'Can I have some water?'

Harriet poured some into a cup and Nicole lifted her head gingerly, frightened of a sudden movement, to sip it.

'That better?'

'Much. Thanks.' Then her face crumpled. Her features distorted, as if she'd been too close to a fire and was melting. Harriet had never seen her like this before. Her face was suddenly wet with tears.

'Oh, honey, don't cry, please don't cry.' Harriet didn't know how to stop her, and she wasn't sure that she should. G.o.d knows she'd have been crying, if it was her.

They stayed that way, Harriet sitting in the chair, Nicole lying on the bed, for ages, without a word spoken, because there wasn't anything to say. Harriet held her hand, sometimes crying herself, and Nicole's tears came and came, until her body was too dry and too tired to produce any more.

When they said it was okay to take her home, Harriet helped her get dressed then took her home, and they sat in the kitchen, drinking tea, until Nicole said she thought she would try to sleep. Then Harriet took her upstairs and tucked her in, as if she were Josh or Chloe. Nicole asked her to keep the children at her house for the night. 'Turns out I can't face them, after all. Not tonight.'

'Okay, don't worry. They'll stay with me, if that's what you want.'

'It's not so much what I want. I just don't think I can handle talking to them, seeing them. Not just yet.'

'So don't, I'll look after them.'

'I know.' Nicole held her hand, and looked at her face. 'You've been brilliant today. Thank you so much for everything you've done.'

Harriet wasn't sure what she had done, but she felt pretty horrible as she shut Nicole's bedroom door behind her and went home.

There in the room, Nicole rolled over to watch the branches of the trees through her bedroom window, just beginning to turn. She brought her knees up to her chest, and hugged herself with both arms. She felt cold all over, although it was a warm day, and she was under the counterpane. If she had thought she had no more tears, she had been wrong. They came again now, and she wondered whether they would ever stop.

Cressida It was still taking Cressida about ten minutes to change Spencer's nappy, even though she was no longer struggling to make sure his umbilical stump lay comfortably under the top fold and had mastered the art of tucking his tiny p.e.n.i.s downwards so that he didn't wee exultantly over his shoulder, or hers, while she fiddled with the sticky tabs. Now it took so long because she couldn't stop gazing at him, and kissing his tummy whilst he got his fingers tangled in her curls, and singing him little songs, and burying her head in the crease of his neck to sniff that oh-so-potent baby smell. He was like the best drug ever she was totally addicted, and the effect was euphoria, and she never came down from it. Although it had its dark side. The moments when she held him almost too close and was gripped by illogical fears of losing him. Or when she woke up, bleary-eyed, and found he had slept an extra hour. Then she went, shaking with fear, to the crib, afraid of what she might find. Or when the news broadcast its usual planetary menu of violence, famine, and loss, and she felt the vicarious pain so much more acutely than she ever had before. But most of the time she was suffused with this incredible, sleepy joy, and pride and excitement. G.o.d, he was gorgeous. He had what she claimed as her own thick, dark hair, l.u.s.trous and silky. He had been a little jaundiced at birth, but now he looked as if he'd spent his first weeks in the Caribbean, sun-kissed and healthy.

He had the temperament to match. Polly had shaken her head in mock dismay with the injustice of it Cressida had been a wailer, she said, colicky and irritable for months, but her baby was so laid-back and happy that you wouldn't know he was there if it wasn't for the paraphernalia that now filled the house. And the laundry a never-ending parade of tiny white garments to wash and fold, and the steaming steriliser in the kitchen, perpetually engaged in the incessant a.s.sembly line of bottle production.

Polly was loving it. The house felt so full, and the routine of caring for such a small baby put a wonderful rhythm and shape into the days. She had missed it. He was all-consuming, this tiny lodger, and totally absorbing.

Night feeds were her favourite times. Cressida, still a carrier of the young person's sleep gene, loathed getting up. She had to turn on MTV to keep her awake while she fed Spencer at two a.m., besotted though she undoubtedly was. Polly had been woken by Nirvana one night and crept downstairs to catch Cressida three-quarters asleep with her head against the sofa cus.h.i.+on and Spencer wide awake, lying across her lap, intently watching Kurt Cobain gyrate as he himself struggled to get a decent burp up.

After that, by unspoken agreement, Polly did it. Cressida had Spencer in Harriet's old Moses basket next to her bed, but when Polly heard him stir, she would creep in to get him. This was her time, hers and Spencer's. She would sway with him in her arms, while his feed warmed in a jug of boiling water, then take him back to her big, empty bed and feed him there, all the while talking to him. She told him in a whisper all about her, and Dan, and his mum, and his uncle Daniel, and the house and the world. She told him, every night, how loved and wanted he was, how special. About how much she loved his mother, and how full she was of the inexpressible joy of watching her baby with a baby of her own. And then, when he'd taken all his milk, and given back his wind, and listened to her with his eyes, which were slowly turning brown, fixed wide on her face, she would hold him and rock him gently until the eyelids fell and just love him, quietly, long after she knew she should have put him down. This new love, for her child's child, was both a revelation, and what she had always imagined it would be. The layering of feeling was extraordinarily rich and powerful. A friend from work had bought her a fridge magnet that said, 'If I had known being a grandmother was so much fun, I'd have had my grand children first.' People said things like 'Oh, yes, and the real joy of being a granny is that you can give them back when you've had enough.' They didn't know what they were talking about. It was wonderful, that was all.

Susan understood. 'I know I can't wait,' she'd said. 'I hope my boys marry girls whose mothers live abroad.'

Part of the pleasure came from watching Cressida with Spencer. She reminded Polly of herself. She was not an instinctive, earth-mother type, but tentative, enthusiastic, frightened of doing the wrong thing but so consumed with love and tenderness that it was impossible to do other than the right thing. One day, just after Polly had brought Cressida and Spencer home, she had walked in on her daughter as she tucked her baby up, fast asleep, into the Moses basket. Polly had put her arm round her daughter, and they had stared at him for a long time, watching his tiny rosebud mouth purse in dreams. Cressida had glanced at Polly, her eyes full of tears, and a moment of pure understanding pa.s.sed between them. Cressida had seemed to grasp, all at once, what Polly felt for her, and all that had happened in the last twenty years, and in the last eight months, was lit in a different way.

The first time Cressida had taken him out for a walk on her own Polly had caught her on the garden path with the pram, with Spencer, on a day in the mid-60s, wearing a hat, vest, Babygro with scratch mittens attached and activated, a hand-knitted woollen cardigan, a padded jacket, a flannel sheet and two blankets beneath the pram's own ap.r.o.n.

Elliot came almost every day to see them and spend time with Spencer. He had soon stopped asking permission and now he just turned up, usually in time to feed or bath him. Polly had become used to having him around, and he was sometimes really useful, to be honest. He had put up the cot for them, with Daniel's help, and figured out the extra ordinarily complicated pram-car-seat-push-chair pantechnicon, and the origami sling Cressida liked to use. He handled Spencer as if he'd been doing it for ever, in the confident, almost unconcerned way of doctors and health visitors. He always knew how to stop a grizzle with diversion, and it gave him an obvious thrill to be able to. He called him 'Spence', and she once heard him call him 'son'. He was a good man and he loved Spencer, but Polly still didn't believe that he and Cressida should or would be together. Elliot was clearly giving Cressida all the s.p.a.ce he could he hadn't asked her any big questions since the birth, just accepted that this was the way it was for the time being. They weren't 'together' in the conventional sense right now Elliot didn't sleep over, and the intimacies Polly saw exchanged between them were all about Spencer. Their eyes would meet above his head sometimes, and she saw a smile pa.s.s between them that was the preserve of new parents. He would hug her, and kiss her, but as a couple they were in a strange limbo. Polly forced herself not to ask Cressida what she was feeling about Elliot. She didn't want to pressure her. She knew things could take on their own momentum in such circ.u.mstances, and that she would do what she could to give Cressida options. Now that she knew Elliot better she wasn't as afraid as she had been of them ending up together, but she still believed that Cressida had more life to lead, more to discover about herself and the world, before she was ready for that kind of commitment.

Harriet 'Chloe, Martha, please don't do that. I don't mind you playing up here, but please be careful.' The first time, Harriet was kinder than she might have been if it was just Chloe: shouting at other people's kids was harder. The second time she meant it 'Stop that now, both of you. I mean it! You're getting the floor really wet' although she didn't think she had the energy to follow through with any threats. She wasn't in the mood today. She felt really low, as she had for weeks. Months, really, she supposed, but especially since Nicole's abortion. Everything felt sour. If Nicole was even vaguely with it, she would tell her it was a cla.s.sic sign of depression, this lack of energy and permanently crabby mood. But anything Harriet was feeling was seemingly forgotten. Maybe it seemed pretty trivial, by comparison.

She and Tim were just coexisting. Whatever detente she had declared over the summer, and whatever closeness they had found in helping Nicole, had evaporated once term began and life got back to normal. She had thought having Chloe at school all day might make her feel freer she could make some changes in her life learn to play golf, or paint pottery, or something but that was rubbish. Getting out of the house didn't change the fact that the work was still there when you got back, and that Tim would still come home every night, guilty only of not being what she wanted him to be. And then she'd lost her partner in crime: Nicole was still in a dreadful state. Harriet knew it had only been a couple of weeks, and she felt selfish for even thinking it, but she missed her friend. Nicole wouldn't come out with her, or make plans to do anything. She wouldn't let herself have any fun. She'd even said she wouldn't come to the reading club next week she hadn't had a chance to open the book. Which was blatantly untrue since she hadn't done anything but sit at home. She was like an automaton when the kids were around desperate to make life normal for them but she collapsed, Harriet knew, like a rag doll when the door was closed behind them. Cecile had dropped them off this afternoon, and Harriet had asked her to stay for a cup of coffee. She had been pathetically grateful, close to tears. She didn't know about the abortion, so she believed Nicole was in this mess because Gavin wasn't there.

'All she does, when the children are not there, is cry. It makes me so sad. I do not know what to do to help her.'

She was barely out of her teens, and Harriet felt sorry for her. 'But you do help her, Cecile, by taking care of the children and the house so that she doesn't have to worry about those things.'

'It's easy enough. I wish there was more.'

Harriet wished there was too.

Between them, she and Cecile were doing everything for the children, and Harriet was tired. William and George seemed unscathed, so far, by what was going on at home they inhabited that secret self-sufficient twin world, and they were ten-year-old boys, which was a considerable buffer in itself from the emotional frailties of those around them. But Martha was quieter than usual, and coming off worst in her everyday battles with Chloe quicker to tears, and slower to be comforted. The other night, when Harriet had put both girls (and their plastic ponies) through the bath, and was dressing Martha in a pair of Chloe's pyjamas, Martha had put her little hands on Harriet's cheeks to hold her face still, and said, 'Is my mummy going to die, Harry?'

Harriet had closed her arms round her and pulled her down on to her lap. 'Of course not, sweetie. Why on earth would you think that?'

'I think she must be really poorly. She has to stay in her pyjamas all day sometimes, and I only do that when I'm really ill and I can't go to school.'

Oh, G.o.d.

'And her eyes look funny all the time. All red.'

'Mummy has been a bit poorly, darling, but she's getting better now. I promise. She's just very tired, and she needs to have a lot of rest, and lots of cuddles to feel all okay again. That's all. Are you looking after her?'

'Yes. Will and George aren't, but I am.'

'That's a good girl. Isn't she lucky to have a nurse like you taking care of her?'

Martha smiled with pride. 'Yes.'

'I promise you, Martha, Mummy is not going to die. She's going to be fine, very soon now.'

Martha rested her hands on Harriet's shoulders while she stepped into the pyjama bottoms. Another shadow of concern crossed her face.

'Can I call my daddy and ask him to come home and help me look after mummy?'

'Not just now, darling. Daddy's busy in London. I'll help you instead, shall I? Me and Chloe?' Diversion. 'We could make Mummy a cake tomorrow, if you like. That would cheer her up, wouldn't it?'

'A pink one?'

'Of course a pink one!'

The next day, of course, Martha and Chloe had remembered about the cake so they had made one, along with all the mess in the kitchen, and the b.u.t.tery sugar splatted against the walls by mishandled electric whisks, and the icing sugar trail left by little feet between the kitchen and the downstairs loo.

Tim told her she was doing too much. He didn't know about the abortion, he probably thought that Gavin would buy his way back into the house with roses and dinners and Viognier, and that the status quo would be restored, just as it had been every other time over the years.

Harriet didn't know what else to do. Having the kids made her feel that she was doing something. She had nothing to say to Nicole that might make it better.

'Could you have stopped me?' Nicole had asked her.

'I tried. You didn't want me to stop you.'

'I didn't know.'

'You seemed so sure.'

'I was sure. But I didn't know what I was talking about. I'd put it into a box, you see. Closed the lid. Dealt with it.'

'I know.'

'But you don't deal with it. It deals with you. You can't close the lid, put the box away. It's there every time I open my eyes. Or close my eyes. Or do anything. And it always will be.'

'It won't always feel like this, though, Nic. Things never do. You know when someone dies, the feelings don't stay the same. They recede, everyone says so. You do get better. I really believe that.'

'It didn't die. I killed it.'

'Oh, stop it.' That made Harriet cross. 'Don't talk about it like that. You're just torturing yourself with that emotive language.'

'What other language can you use? Believe me, if I could think of a way to let myself off the hook I would. You know me. I'm a coward. I must be. Couldn't face being a single parent, could I, so I just got rid of it?'

Harriet was staring at a wall of self-loathing and self-pity so thick she couldn't find a way through it.

Nicole was blaming herself in new improved ways. 'I keep thinking of the people I can't face any more. Gavin's just the tip of the iceberg. Anyone with a baby. Polly's daughter her baby is just a few months older than mine would have been. Every time I see her I'll be thinking about it. What about Clare? She'll probably never have a baby. What the h.e.l.l would she think of me?'

Harriet had stood up. 'I can't talk to you when you're like this, Nic. You're just refusing to take on board anything I say to you. I can't get through to you, and it's too hard.'

Now Nicole was crying. 'Please don't go. I'm sorry.'

Harriet knelt by her friend's chair. 'Listen to me, Nicole. You have just done one of the hardest things you have ever had to do that anyone ever does. You made a decision about your own body and your future, based on what you instinctively felt at the time was right for you and the kids. You had an abortion, Nicole. You made that choice. I don't suppose you're ever going to feel good about it. But you did it. It's over with, and there's no going back. You can't undo it. And I don't think I'd want to be friends with a person who could make that kind of decision lightly, or without any regrets at all. That would be f.u.c.ked up. This is how I'd expect you to feel about what you've done. But you have got to stop thinking of yourself as a monster, motivated by selfishness and cowardice. You were brave and strong. But this person you're allowing yourself to be now, she's not strong. Clare will never know. Polly will never know. No one will ever know, unless you choose to tell them. It's just you and me.'

Harriet wanted to say more, to tell Nicole that she had children who were alive and needed her, that she should do something about Gavin go and see a lawyer, or at least decide what she was going to tell him. But she had said enough for now. Better to let Nicole digest this first. It was incredible to her that this woman she loved excused Gavin so often, blamed herself for what was a bad marriage to a bad man, who had just had two of the biggest shocks a person could be expected to take in a lifetime, could still be so hard on herself. When was she going to get angry?

That had been a few days ago. Now she looked at the devastation Will, George and Josh had caused in the TV room. Every square inch of carpet was covered with videos, computer games and violent little plastic men. She thought they might be outside now, since she couldn't hear the cacophony of trainer-clad feet and banter seeping down from the landing. Chloe and Martha were standing on chairs at the kitchen sink, shampooing the Barbie dolls with was.h.i.+ng-up liquid. They were chatting happily about which Barbie was going to marry which boy doll ('ladyboy Barbies', Tim called the unfortunate dolls Chloe selected for a s.e.x change; they retained their 36-24-36 figures, but acquired army-issue haircuts and surprisingly gruff voices), blissfully unaware of the growing puddles on the floor.

The mess defeated Harriet before she had even gone into battle. She went over to the sofa and lay down dramatically, feeling completely exhausted. In cla.s.sic Pavlovian response, the demands started.

'Mummy! We want drinks.'

'I didn't hear a please.' There was really no point in them saying it since she had no intention of getting off the sofa for at least ten minutes.

'Please,' they chorused.

'In a minute.' She heard them scrabbling off their chairs. 'You girlies haven't left my tap on, have you?'

'No, Mummy.'

'Can we watch Barbie in Rapunzel?'

'Yes. Watch it in my room, will you, though?'

'We can't work the video in your room, Mummy.'

Always a reason for you to get up. Always!

'Okay, you can watch it in here, then.' Two small bodies hurled themselves at her on the sofa. She wrestled them off her lap and stood up. 'Oh, no, you don't. I didn't say I'd watch it too. The first seventy-three times were enough for me, I'm afraid. I'll get some juice.' See? They always won in the end. She was wondering whether to laugh or cry when she heard George's scream. You knew, with screams, when you were someone's mummy. You could define them the not-sharing scream, the frustration scream, the sc.r.a.ped-knee scream, the bad-dream scream. She hadn't heard this one before and her whole body went cold. Straight away, Will's voice joined George's. She couldn't hear Josh's. Josh wasn't screaming.

She ran to the door. 'You stay in here, girls.' But they didn't, of course. They could pick up almost as many nuances in Harriet's voice as she could in theirs, and they had caught the terror. They were in nervous tears before they even got to the front door behind her, holding hands, not knowing why.

They'd been skateboarding. They must have been taking turns the twins hadn't had theirs with them. They'd made an a.s.sault course, found some planks and a green milk crate.

Josh was lying motionless next to the crate. Beside him, Will and George were frenetic and loud, each telling the same story. He'd fallen, they were screaming at her. They thought he'd hit his head. On the milk crate, maybe. On the corner. Or just on the tarmac. He wouldn't wake up, they said. But he wasn't bleeding.

'Fallen off his skateboard?' If she sounded incredulous, it was because he fell off it a hundred times a day. And got straight back up again.

'Off the roof,' George said.

Off the roof. The roof.

'We were just mucking about.'

Her world stopped. There was just the beating of her heart, harder and faster than she could ever remember hearing it before. Off the roof.

Afterwards she supposed it had been she who called the ambulance and Nicole. She didn't remember.