The start of us, p.14
The Start of Us, page 14
‘Spring,’ I tell her. ‘The middle of March.’
She squints and looks at my stomach. ‘Boy or girl, do we think?’
‘Boy,’ I say.
‘Boy,’ Daniel says.
‘Girl,’ Zoe says.
We all wait for Ben, who says, ‘Boy or girl,’ then we laugh.
‘Well, cheers. To Erica and Daniel, and your new family,’ Ben says as the sun scorches down on us.
***
Once we’ve eaten blackened burgers and sausages and deliciously juicy slices of watermelon, we all collapse on the stretch of crisp lawn at the back of the house. The sound of the radio floats from the kitchen and competes with a distant thump of music that comes from somewhere along the promenade. We chat, our hands dangling over our faces to shield our eyes from the glare of the sun. Zoe and Ben quiz us on names we like and the nearby schools. I ask Zoe about work and she groans, telling me about how difficult the house market is.
‘What about the museum? How’s the job thief?’
Now it’s my turn to groan. I turn over onto my stomach, but that feels strangely uncomfortable so I flip back over and cover my face again. ‘He’s unbearable.’
When I didn’t make the interview because of the accident, Katie had no option but to offer the job to the other candidate, Carl. He is a tall, pin-striped, loudly spoken man who seems entirely at odds with the fragile elegance of the town that we’ve been trying so hard to highlight. Since he started, the museum has changed its opening hours, and the other day he called me into a private room, hands steepled, his face full of false sorrow, and told me that my hours would have to be cut due to a lack of resources and funding.
‘He’s already taken down the exhibition display,’ I say, frowning. ‘I’m really upset about it. It took so long to put it together.’
‘Don’t be upset,’ Zoe says, standing up and peeling a cold sausage from the barbeque. ‘Be angry.’
I sigh. I never told Zoe why he got the job over me, just that he did. She thinks I turned up and did my best at the interview but that the museum chose Carl, and that the accident, when I went out in the car and lost control, was unrelated, just another unfortunate event. I have never told Zoe about my disappearances. We met at school, when we were part of a huge friendship group that I tried my best to hide behind. It was only when we went to college and ended up in the same English class that I got to know her a little more. By then, my disappearances happened less often, so there was no reason to open up to her.
‘I think it’s good they’ve reduced your hours,’ she says as she takes a bite of the cold sausage, grimaces, then hands the rest of it to Ben. ‘I don’t think being with Carl every day would be good for you. Have you looked to see if there’s anything else around here?’
‘Yes, I have,’ I tell her. ‘There’s nothing similar. But Katie has been in touch a bit. She told me to bring all the exhibition stuff home, so I have.’
‘She’s going to be an author,’ Daniel says excitedly.
‘Well, we’ll see about that. I’ve written to a few agents with my idea of a book about families whose lives started as a result of a trip to Blackpool.’
‘That’s so cool,’ Zoe says. ‘Have any of them got back to you?’
‘Not yet. But it was only a few weeks ago. I think they can take a while to reply.’
Zoe springs up. ‘I have a good feeling about this, Erica. Cause for another beer, I reckon. Anyone else?’
There’s the clink of bottles, the blaze of sun on my skin and the tickle of grass beneath me. I close my eyes as a heavy tiredness washes over me, put my hand on my stomach and listen as Ben asks Daniel if he’s played football lately. I smile to myself; Daniel still hasn’t told his football-crazed friends that he doesn’t want to be part of their five-aside team. Because they are friends from university, they are all spread out over the country and he spends quite a lot of time travelling to different locations, because although he doesn’t particularly want to play, he likes to see them and be part of their group.
‘I only go for the beer after,’ Daniel tells Ben now, and Ben laughs.
Zoe sighs and looks at her watch. ‘Work tomorrow,’ she says. ‘We’d better go soon, Ben.’
But it’s one of those days that nobody wants to end and they are still here an hour later, as the orange sun dips in the sky and a gentle breeze begins to ruffle our hair. I stand up and brush strands of yellow grass from my skirt before clearing the plates.
‘You want some help?’ Zoe offers, but I shake my head.
‘I’m fine, thanks.’
I place plates in the sink, run the tap and stare beyond to the garden. After five minutes or so, Daniel comes into the kitchen, his hands full of bottles of ketchup and mustard, his face glowing from a day outside. He puts the sauces away in the fridge, then comes over to me and puts his arms around me. ‘How does it feel?’ he whispers.
It’s a question that would have made more sense, in a way, before. How does it feel not knowing if you will last a whole day in this life; how does it feel when your bones and muscles are slammed into a world that is not your own? How does it feel seeing yourself whole, not one angle in a mirror or a photograph, or self-aware, behind the lens of a video camera, but as a complete person?
But it’s not this he wants to know.
He wants to know how it feels for me to be alone and yet to feel safe; to watch my friends outside in the softening light of the garden after a day of lounging and food and sun; to feel full and happy and complete and like I’m never going to disappear into another world again.
I lean into him. ‘It feels like … someone has closed a door that was letting in a horrible draught. It feels warmer. Safer.’
‘Good?’
I close my eyes and listen to the low hum of Zoe and Ben’s voices from outside, their bursts of laughter, the wails of the seagulls that circle the house and the rolling of the waves beyond. ‘So good.’
Chapter 29
‘Erica?’ The shout wakes me and I sit up on the sofa and stretch my distorted body. The baby jerks, nestling its foot underneath my ribcage and I wriggle, nudging the little knot that juts out underneath my jumper.
‘In here,’ I say.
Daniel is grinning. I stumble to my feet clumsily and kiss his cheek. ‘You’re frozen. Come under the blanket and get warm.’
‘I can’t. I haven’t quite finished my jobs yet.’
I squint, trying to see into his eyes for a secret that he’s been guarding in the lead up to Christmas. It’s Christmas Eve now and I still have no idea what he has been planning.
‘Is it another cat?’ I guess, even though we’ve played this game before and I know it isn’t.
‘Nope. Bigger.’
‘Dog?’
‘No. It’s not alive,’ he says, flicking on the light and pulling closed the heavy, deep red curtains that took us months to save for. The room glows yellow with the Christmas tree lights on the tiny tree in the corner.
I think hard and pat my belly softly. ‘What is it, baby? What is it?’ The baby dances, pummeling its miniature fists and feet under my skin.
‘I’ve told him not to say.’
I smile. We didn’t find out the sex of the baby at our scan, but Daniel is convinced it’s a boy.
‘Give me a clue.’
‘Okay,’ Daniel relents. He hasn’t given me any clues at all yet and up until now, I have been quite patient. ‘It’s something to do with the house. Something it used to have that you loved.’
My heart lurches as Daniel pushes the sofa in the corner of the lounge along the wall to leave a space. ‘Oh! You haven’t? Have you?’
The doorbell chimes. ‘Go upstairs,’ Daniel says. ‘And come back down in ten minutes.’
***
I lie on the bed, the duvet cool underneath me, listening to the huffing and puffing of delivery men, grunts of thanks and Merry Christmas, then the roar of an engine outside. I think of the present I have bought for Daniel, an espresso machine that he’s looked at a few times and never bought because we’re saving everything up for the house, for the baby.
***
And then, the gentle tinkling of music floats through the house. I go downstairs carefully, gripping the bannister, my heart fluttering as the music becomes louder. I stand in the doorway of the lounge and take in the beautiful piano that sits in the corner, a red bow tied around it.
‘Daniel!’ I say, wanting to run to him, but having to lumber. ‘You bought me a piano?’
‘I saw it advertised. It was only local. It’ll need tuning,’ he says, kissing my forehead. ‘And obviously, none of us can actually play. So in the meantime,’ he spins me gently around to a record player. ‘I bought us this. But then I realized that the only record we have is The Wizard of Oz.’
We dance, laughing as Daniel struggles to get his arms around me, as we keep bumping into one another inelegantly, as the record skips and scratches its way through the colourful songs that bring back my childhood.
‘And I know you wanted to dance in the garden. But I think we’d get frostbite and it might end in possible amputation. So this will have to do.’ He leans forward and whispers in my ear. ‘There might be more records in your stocking tomorrow. I ran out of wrapping time.’
‘Your present is nothing like this,’ I tell him. ‘You’ll like it. But it isn’t your dream.’
‘Well, no, because my dream is to install bi-folding doors. Unless you’ve bought the doors and they’re hidden under the bed?’
I feel a lump in my throat and blink, feeling silly. ‘I’m so happy,’ I tell him.
‘Good. Happy Christmas, Erica.’
Chapter 30
Joshua arrives three days after his due date with a squashed, wise face, eyes the colour of a stormy summer sky and curled, wrinkled fingers.
‘I wonder,’ I say to Daniel as I stare at Joshua in his hospital cot, ‘if he will count as company?’
‘You mean someone who can see you and stop you from disappearing? I don’t think you will now, do you? It hasn’t happened for so long.’
I shake my head, unable to take my eyes from Joshua: this strange, precious bundle that I am now in charge of. The mere thought of my disappearances, of leaving him for an unknown amount of time, of being in a world where he doesn’t exist, terrifies me. The fear is liquid and hot inside me, a physical entity. ‘I just worry that now he’s here, and not inside me, I am sort of free to go again. But surely I won’t go when I’m with him?’ I hear desperation in my voice. I thought, before Joshua, that I knew the taste and feel of fear more than most people. But now, I realize that I didn’t.
Daniel crouches down and kisses Joshua’s tiny cheek. ‘I would think he counts as a person,’ he says, and I feel the knot of dread in my stomach loosen slightly. ‘He’s still a person, after all. He’s just a very small person. But he still counts, probably more than anyone has ever counted before.’ He looks up. ‘So there are two of us now. Two of us to keep you here.’
I nod again, reaching out my hand to touch Daniel’s, my eyes never leaving Joshua.
‘You can look away from him,’ Daniel says, his voice amused, affectionate. ‘I’m here too. You won’t go anywhere.’
I peel my eyes away from Joshua, to Daniel’s face and his creased shirt that he threw on during the night when I went into labour, only hours ago but already strangely timeless. He holds out his arms and I move stiffly, sorely, towards him, letting myself be enveloped my him. ‘I really hope he does keep me here,’ I say quietly. ‘What if he doesn’t, and I—’
‘Stop,’ Daniel says, and his voice is forceful and different and I realize that he is already different to the Daniel of a few hours ago who wasn’t a father, that this Daniel is firmer because he has to be and because he wants to be, that the other Daniel has melted into the past. And I think, as I turn my head ever so slightly to steal a glance at Joshua who is still safe in his cot, I am different too. I am a mother now. That will change everything because it has to and because I want it to.
And so I push the worry away.
***
Once we are released from the hospital, the days with Joshua and Daniel pass sweetly and quickly. I feel the other Erica ebb again, bobbing gently away in the sea of my consciousness. I spend lazy showers alone in a blissful haze of vanilla bubbles, lie in bed and listen to Daniel chat and sing made-up songs to Joshua downstairs as he gives him his last milk of the evening. I am alone, and I go nowhere.
‘You’re going to be fine when I go back to work, aren’t you?’ Daniel asks the night before his return.
I nod, sit Joshua on my lap and hold his tiny chin in my hand, rubbing his soft little back in my other. ‘I will be more than fine,’ I say. ‘I feel like a different person compared to when it used to happen. Everything has changed for the better.’
I spend my mornings walking along the endless promenade, climbing up to the grassy slopes and looking across at the sea with my Silver Cross pram bouncing gently in front of me. I tell Joshua about the snowdrops and clouds and the changing colours of the sky and he watches me curiously, his sharp blue eyes following my every move, his mouth making little o’s in response to my words, bubbles escaping from his tiny pink lips. As we turn and see our house in the distance, I feel a thrill that it belongs to us.
Each night when Daniel gets home from work, we stare at Joshua in his Moses basket, stunned by the way he has changed since the day before, and the day before that. We settle on our grey sofa, flicking through the television channels lazily, eating stews and curries to warm us from the eternal cold that has settled in our house. Pip the cat curls up with us, always on my lap. The days are laced with a kind of magic that comes only with new beginnings.
An agent has been in touch to ask me to complete my book, and so I’m spending any time that Joshua sleeps working on it. There are a surprising amount of stories to include, and within those, histories of buildings, homes and family businesses. I spend evening after evening surrounded by sprawling memories of Blackpool, faded photographs and scribbled phone numbers of people who might agree to tell me their stories. There is the eighty-four-year-old woman who met her husband on a holiday to Blackpool that she wasn’t meant to go on and the fifteen great-grandchildren who now exist as a result; the man whose mother, a performer with the Blackpool Tower Circus, left him wrapped in a blanket in the doorway of Blackpool Tower when he was just two days old; my own dad’s visit back to Blackpool that he extended so that he could stay with my mum, the visit that turned into his life and then mine.
***
It’s in the middle of this stretch of pleasantly repetitive days that I stand in the back garden, rocking Joshua gently and breathing in the sweet spring air. It’s been raining all day, and we’ve been inside, listening to the constant tapping of water on the windowpanes. As soon as the rain stopped, I unlocked the heavy back door and pushed it open, Pip winding himself around my ankles.
The sodden garden is gnarled and wild as an old witch, bypassed completely in the fruitless and seemingly growing pursuit to try and get the house done first. I brush some sticky cobwebs from the bench that has been sheltered by the house, and sit down with Joshua nuzzled into my arm. I hear the rhythmic whooshing of the sea, in and out. The gulls cry and cry. And then, the unexpected: footsteps from the back of the house.
It’s Daniel. He’s grinning, waving some papers around in his hand. I stand up to kiss him.
‘Why are you home so early?’ Usually, he doesn’t get home until at least six. It’s only about four in the afternoon.
‘Because,’ Daniel says, pressing the papers into my free hand and scooping up Joshua from me, ‘I have something important to run by you. You can say no if you want to.’
‘Yes,’ I tell him, and he laughs loudly so that Joshua is startled in his arms.
‘You don’t even know what I’m going to say!’
‘It doesn’t matter when you look this happy. How can I possibly say no? I think I have an idea of what you’re going to say anyway,’ I tell him as I look down at the papers in my hand. When Daniel came back from Berlin and we bought the house a couple of years ago, he got his job at Palms Architecture in Manchester. When he joined the company, it was only small. Daniel helped it to grow by expanding the client list and developing its reputation which is now strong, with businesses returning and encouraging others to do the same. Although the commute is long, and the work trails home with Daniel like a stray dog – into our bedroom, our kitchen table, our car – Daniel’s designs are consistently well-received and John, the owner, has become a good friend. He’s mentioned Daniel taking more of an active role in the business a couple of times now.
‘John wants to move offices,’ Daniel says, as we both sit back down on the bench. ‘The one we saw a while ago is still up for rent, and it’s in a much busier area of the city which would obviously mean more exposure and hopefully new clients. He says that whilst we do that, we could go for an expansion. We’ve been discussing me buying shares of the limited company. But it would mean using all our savings for the house, Erica. They’d be gone.’
‘Daniel, I really don’t mind. You need to say yes.’
‘At least think about it. We’ve lived so carefully for so long. In a way, it feels wrong to spend our money on something other than what we planned.’
I shake my head firmly. ‘It doesn’t. It feels right. You’ve said to me so many times that sometimes plans need to change. This is a big opportunity. You love working with John. You know this is what you wanted.’
‘Obviously, I’ll meet with the bank and I need to see a solicitor as well. We’ll probably just have to hold off on the windows.’
‘And the plastering.’
‘Carpets.’
