The start of us, p.15
The Start of Us, page 15
‘Bathroom.’
‘Everything. I’m sorry, Erica. I really don’t have to do it if you’re not sure.’
‘Oh,’ I say, waving his worries away with my hand. ‘You know how much I love old stuff. I’m in my element.’
Daniel looks at me, and the house and its temperamental toilets that only flush sometimes, its rusty taps and cracked floor tiles, its crooked windows that don’t open or shut properly and threadbare carpets, seem like nothing – tiny dots, like boats on our smooth blue horizon. All I can feel is new beginnings. Our endings are a million worlds away.
Chapter 31
It is going to rain any minute now.
I have been walking along the promenade for an hour or so, and although the May air has been warm, the sky has been grey. Now I’m reaching home, the afternoon is darkening, the clouds black and heavy. There are steps up to our front door that I can’t get the pram up, so I unstrap Joshua to take him into the house. I should hurry, I think as I feel for my keys in my bag with my free hand, because if I leave the pram outside it’ll get soaked. I should not, I think, and not for the first time, have been seduced by this bargain coach-built pram just because it looked nice and had a bit of history. I should have got a light one that I could fold up at the touch of my toe, and fling into car boots and hallways. I’m thinking this, hurrying to get Joshua in and on his mat, when I abruptly trip on a snapped tile in our hallway and sail through the air, Joshua loosening in my grip. My spare arm flails and I somehow manage to keep hold of him, to stop myself from crashing down or dropping him, by grabbing hold of the bannister.
‘I dread to think what could have happened,’ I say to Daniel that night, shuddering. ‘We really need to make a few improvements on the house, even if they’re only really small.’
A day later, an odd-job man arrives in a small red van like a postman’s and cringes when he enters our hallway.
‘Taken on a project and a half here, haven’t you? I saw this house on the market a few years ago and thought to myself, whoever buys that is either brave or stupid,’ he shakes with laughter and turns pink with pride at his own joke. ‘Especially with a little man to look after too,’ he adds, pointing to Joshua who I’m holding with one aching arm.
‘Yeah,’ I clear my throat. ‘It is a big project. We love it, though. We have lots of plans. But for now, I just wanted to know how much would it be to sort the floor in here?’ I gesture to the tiles in the hallway and the man shakes his head like a dog. ‘Big job, love. We can’t just make a tile out of thin air. You’d need to get the whole thing replaced. Laminate would look nice. These tiles need ripping up. You can’t have these once your little one starts crawling about. He’ll be into everything.’
I adore the black and white tiles that stretch from the front door through to the kitchen. Some of them are cracked, but to me that’s part of their charm: if they could talk, they’d have so many stories to tell about the different shoes that have walked on them over the last hundred years.
‘It’s fine,’ I sigh. ‘Thanks for coming anyway.’
‘If you get yourself a job lot of laminate, then give me a ring and I’ll lay it for you. Or if you come to your senses, and need help moving house, let me know. Got a few mates in removals.’ He hands me a red leaflet which reads:
Handyman Neil.
No job too big or small.
***
‘What did he say?’ asks Daniel later that night as he takes off his coat and flings it over one of our mismatched dining chairs.
‘He suggested taking the whole lot off and replacing it with laminate flooring.’
‘Oh, Erica! It’s like he swore at you!’ He comes over to where I sit and kisses me lightly on the forehead. ‘I’ll call round some reclamation yards and ask if they have any similar tiles or any ideas. He just didn’t get it. But someone will help us sort it out.’
‘I’ve been wondering,’ I say quietly, looking past Daniel to the crooked old kitchen cabinets, ‘if we should just give it up. Put it on the market and move on.’
‘What? Quit on the house?’
‘I don’t know. It’s since I tripped with Joshua. It’s just kept going through my mind that we could look at what else there is,’ I admit. ‘I didn’t say anything because it felt wrong, like we’d be giving up too soon. But I just don’t know if this house is too much of a project. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.’ I see guilt flash across Daniel’s face and immediately regret my words. ‘I don’t mind that – I really don’t. You having shares in Palms is something we both wanted to put our money into.’ I watch him, wanting him to feel okay about his choice. I would do anything for him and I know how he feels about his work. ‘It was fine just for us. But now we have Joshua, things are different. We didn’t really know what having a baby would involve when we bought it, did we? And we definitely didn’t properly think through the costs and the time it would take.’
We stare around us. The mould that we scrubbed at only last week is sprouting from the wall again in mini black swirls. The kitchen units are hanging from the walls like crooked teeth, the wood brittle and stained. Daniel, in his suit, with all his fine features, is at odds with the chaos.
‘I know,’ he sighs. ‘I have been trying to ignore it, but you’re right. Let’s think about it, then,’ he says.
***
We find a house to go and view at the weekend. It’s newly built, a few streets back from the promenade further towards St Anne’s. Zoe is away for the weekend, and I have been in touch with a different agent. I feel disloyal when I think of her but then I remind myself that we haven’t made a decision yet, that we are only seeing another house to try and help us work out the best thing to do.
‘Look,’ says Jack, the estate agent, as we stand awkwardly in the master bedroom. ‘If you look past those houses on your right, you can just about see the sea. Perfect.’
We crane our necks until we catch the glint of waves between buildings. If you didn’t know to look you wouldn’t see it at all.
‘We’re in a house on the promenade at the moment,’ Daniel tells Jack. ‘We’re a bit spoilt with the view.’
Jack shudders. ‘All that maintenance though. Salt corrosion. Floods. Nah, this is what you need. You get the view but none of the problems. Once I’m back in the office I’ll have a look at the diary and arrange to come and value yours, if you like. Once you’re on the market you’re in a much better position. This one will probably be snapped up if you hang around.’
We follow the estate agent around the rooms, which are all completely spotless: lush cream carpets, every surface gleaming with glossy white paint, immaculate wardrobes and en suites. Beneath is a bright, square garden with a swing set standing proudly next to the orange brick garage. Joshua stares up at the bright gold spotlights in the ceilings as Daniel carries him round. The room that would be his is painted a soft lemon. I imagine his cot in there, turn to Daniel and wonder if he is imagining the same.
‘It’s the complete opposite of our house,’ Daniel says afterwards when we sit in a cafe in St Anne’s square.
I peer into Joshua’s pram and adjust his blankets, touching the tip of his tiny nose as he gives me a gummy smile. ‘I know. It would be so strange to live somewhere so …’
‘Nice? Clean?’ Daniel offers and we laugh.
‘Well, yeah.’ I stir my coffee and stare at the swirling foam. ‘It would be better for Joshua, wouldn’t it? So much cleaner and finished.’
‘Better in those ways. But we need to love it too. Do you really love it? Or any other house like it that Zoe could find us?’
‘I think I would, eventually.’
‘So do you think we should get ours valued?’
I say nothing, taking a sip of coffee and feeling sick as it slides down my throat.
Daniel throws up his hands. ‘Erica, what are we doing? Do we really want this? Do you want this? Be totally honest.’
I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t. I feel like I should. But that house is not our home. And what I want is to go to our home right now and stay there. Of course I want to do what we can to make it safer for Joshua. But I want to live there forever and make it beautiful, even if it takes fifty years. I want to stick at this plan.’
‘Me too,’ Daniel says, downing his coffee even though it must be way too hot. ‘So let’s.’
***
A few weeks later, we find some tiles at a reclamation yard to repair our hallway. Daniel takes a day off to do the job himself, and once he has carefully fixed them into place we ooh and ahh over the transformation, congratulating ourselves. Why, we laugh happily, did we ever consider moving? It looks as good as new. It looks better. And it will be safe for Joshua when he starts to crawl, walk, run.
And as we talk about tiles and houses and hallways and live a beautiful normality, life careers on, speeding to its next destination.
PART THREE
Chapter 32
7th September 2017
I always thought the problem would be my disappearances.
Now, it seems they are the solution.
The biggest events that crash into our lives seem so insurmountably huge: lightning and fireworks, so loud and bright we think we’ll be deafened and blinded. It seems impossible that we didn’t know they were on their way to us. It seems that if we’d listened harder, stayed still for a moment, we might have heard the distant rumble of the approaching storm, felt that something was off kilter somehow, that life was about to split into two.
So many Befores and Afters seemed to be important before that day. Before my parents divorced. After, when we moved to Blackpool. Before Mike ended things with me and I met Daniel, and After. Before we bought the house and got married, and After.
Now, they are all mangled, crushed into the bigger Before, the only one that seems to matter.
I stab at a slice of dry cake with a fork before lifting it to my lips, but then drop it back down with a clatter. An autumn chill snakes its way through the air and I pull my cardigan around me. I frown as I look across at the broken window.
I can’t help but feel like part of the problem is the house.
They all said it wasn’t the house. They said it was unexplained. Unascertained.
But what if there was something we could have done to stop it? What if there was some way of explaining it?
What if we had never bought the house? What if we had never stayed?
What if, what if, what if.
What if I don’t meet him in Luigi’s? What then?
Chapter 33
Joshua is six months old. It’s a hot day, one of those September afternoons that refuses to let go of summer, that won’t let in even a whisper of autumn. I’m going to get my hair cut and so I am leaving Joshua with Daniel, who assures me that he is more than capable of looking after our son.
I take Joshua’s chubby curled hand in mine across his yellow highchair table, and I kiss his smooth cheek that is stained with impossibly bright carrot juice, and tell him that I will be back soon.
‘It’s the first time he’s having carrot,’ I tell Daniel, who is sitting at the table, and doesn’t look up from his laptop, but reaches out and strokes my thigh absentmindedly as I speak. ‘I don’t think he’ll be allergic, but if he is sick or anything and you want me to come back then I have my phone, okay? I shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Hmm. Yep. Got it.’
‘You need to watch him,’ I say to the side of Daniel’s face, trying to keep my tone light. ‘You can’t not watch him while he eats.’
He looks up then, finally, and I laugh at myself.
‘Got it. Watch him eat the carrot.’ Daniel shuts his laptop and pushes it away, moving his chair closer to Joshua, who squeezes his puree with his fat little fist.
***
I think about the carrot, and tomorrow’s potato and swede that I need to take from the freezer as the hairdresser chops and chops, black strands decorating my shoulders like feathers. I don’t hear a distant rumble, or the crackle of something about to catch alight and rip through my world in a furious blaze. I sit there, staring at my own face in the mirror, thinking about how it is too hot and how I am looking forward to winter: candles and blankets and long winter walks; cinnamon coffee and satsumas in stockings; Joshua’s first Christmas.
Chapter 34
I hear Joshua’s indignant howls before I even open the front door after returning from the hairdresser.
‘He spat out the carrot,’ Daniel says when I arrive in the lounge. ‘Wouldn’t touch it. More on his face than in his belly. He’s super grumpy.’ He does an amusing dance in front of Joshua, who is propped up on the sofa. Joshua’s face, still tinted orange, crumples and is still for a moment before another holler erupts.
‘It’s too hot.’ Loose strands of sharp hair prickle at my skin and I tear my black cardigan off. I touch Joshua’s clammy forehead and whip off his little blue t-shirt, which makes him scream even more, and pick him up. ‘He’s tired out. I’m going to put him to bed.’
Daniel looks at his watch. ‘It’s only six.’ He glances at me and smiles. ‘Your hair. I love it.’
I touch the nape of my neck which is strangely exposed. ‘Really? They always do it shorter than you want.’
Daniel reaches out and touches my hair, and Joshua grabs his hand, his little face scrunched up in anger. ‘It suits you.’
‘Come on,’ I say to Joshua. ‘Let’s see if a nice sleep sorts you out.’
‘He’ll be up at the crack of dawn if we put him to bed now,’ Daniel groans.
I yawn, the very mention of sleep making me want to crawl under the duvet and close my eyes. Joshua still doesn’t sleep through. I’ve spent so many blue dawns rocking him and shushing him that I am constantly exhausted. ‘I know.’
Joshua wails again and I pat his downy head gently as we go up the stairs.
I peel the rest of his clothes off and fight his little thrashing body as I give him some liquid paracetamol. Daniel appears with a bottle of milk. Joshua calms as he drinks, his eyelids flickering, drooping. It’s Sunday tomorrow, but I will, I decide as I place him in his cot, take him to the doctor on Monday if he doesn’t seem any better. He’s probably coming down with something. I try to open his window, but Joshua’s window is one of the many in the house that doesn’t open. The catch is infuriatingly stubborn, caked in years of gloss paint. Daniel tries too, and gives up.
‘These windows!’ I hiss, annoyed. ‘It’s too warm in here.’
‘I’ll get a fan tomorrow,’ Daniel says.
We go downstairs, me clutching the baby monitor, pressing it to my ear and hearing the steady rise and fall of Joshua’s soft breaths. We order a pizza and fall asleep on the sofa when we’ve eaten. I wake in the early hours, thirsty from the pizza and aching from sleeping at a strange angle. Remember, I think to myself, the early days, when we used to fall asleep together on the sofa because we were talking and kissing, not because we were exhausted to the bone. How things have changed. Remember, remember.
I force myself to stand up and go to the kitchen, then get a drink of tap water that makes me grimace because it is too warm, too metallic. I climb the creaking stairs, open Joshua’s door and make my way to his cot to check on him. I place my hand on his cheek.
And that is the end of Before.
Chapter 35
Our world is smashed into pieces, unrecognizable in seconds.
I scream Daniel’s name again and again, my voice someone else’s, someone who lives in a horror film of nightmares and terror and life that cannot, cannot carry on.
He appears in the room, sleepy and confused. I can’t say anything but hold my hands up to my face. Daniel looks down into the cot, and I recognize something like hope in his face, a hope that makes my insides feel as though they are being twisted and crushed.
Your phone, he is saying, patting his pockets in a crazed way. A phone.
He calls an ambulance somehow, tells them. Cold skin. No. Yes. No. And then he stops talking, starts to wail instead. The sound winds itself around my mind like a snake, and I will never ever stop hearing it.
The paramedics arrive even though I don’t remember either of us telling them our address. This is how life will be now. Memories and thoughts won’t make sense. They will be sharp fragments, pieces of broken mirror in which I cannot recognize myself.
***
It’s inevitable, isn’t it? As soon as the paramedic turns to me and I hear his mouth saying the red-hot, burning words that brand themselves on my mind, I want to rush from it all, to escape to a world where this isn’t happening, where it never could.
I close my eyes, press my hand into Daniel’s so hard that it should hurt us, yet we feel no pain other than the roaring hot one that is inside us both.
The front door opens and closes, opens and closes.
The air smells too sweet, of late summer and sickly honeysuckle. It sticks in my throat and makes me gag as we climb into the ambulance.
When we get to the hospital, I don’t let go of Daniel’s hand at first. I have to stay with him. Vanishing now would be too cruel.
A man says that he needs to ask us some questions. He tells us that he is an investigator but he doesn’t wear a uniform. He has coffee spilt on his shirt, an ugly brown pock on the pale green fabric. That’s the worst bit of his day, I think bitterly. A spilt drink. I glare at him as he asks us thousands of questions that make me feel as though I can’t breathe: questions about stuffed toys and bedding and the cot and how much of his milk Joshua had before bed. I think vaguely, horrifyingly, of the heat of Joshua’s room, of the window that wouldn’t open. I think of us sleeping on the sofa as he took his last breath and I scream.
And then I am running.
I hear Daniel calling my name, the thumping of his fist hammering at the door of the hospital toilets. He comes in and bangs on the cubicle but I have locked it. Sadness drowns me. I try to call out to him but my voice won’t leave my body.
‘Everything. I’m sorry, Erica. I really don’t have to do it if you’re not sure.’
‘Oh,’ I say, waving his worries away with my hand. ‘You know how much I love old stuff. I’m in my element.’
Daniel looks at me, and the house and its temperamental toilets that only flush sometimes, its rusty taps and cracked floor tiles, its crooked windows that don’t open or shut properly and threadbare carpets, seem like nothing – tiny dots, like boats on our smooth blue horizon. All I can feel is new beginnings. Our endings are a million worlds away.
Chapter 31
It is going to rain any minute now.
I have been walking along the promenade for an hour or so, and although the May air has been warm, the sky has been grey. Now I’m reaching home, the afternoon is darkening, the clouds black and heavy. There are steps up to our front door that I can’t get the pram up, so I unstrap Joshua to take him into the house. I should hurry, I think as I feel for my keys in my bag with my free hand, because if I leave the pram outside it’ll get soaked. I should not, I think, and not for the first time, have been seduced by this bargain coach-built pram just because it looked nice and had a bit of history. I should have got a light one that I could fold up at the touch of my toe, and fling into car boots and hallways. I’m thinking this, hurrying to get Joshua in and on his mat, when I abruptly trip on a snapped tile in our hallway and sail through the air, Joshua loosening in my grip. My spare arm flails and I somehow manage to keep hold of him, to stop myself from crashing down or dropping him, by grabbing hold of the bannister.
‘I dread to think what could have happened,’ I say to Daniel that night, shuddering. ‘We really need to make a few improvements on the house, even if they’re only really small.’
A day later, an odd-job man arrives in a small red van like a postman’s and cringes when he enters our hallway.
‘Taken on a project and a half here, haven’t you? I saw this house on the market a few years ago and thought to myself, whoever buys that is either brave or stupid,’ he shakes with laughter and turns pink with pride at his own joke. ‘Especially with a little man to look after too,’ he adds, pointing to Joshua who I’m holding with one aching arm.
‘Yeah,’ I clear my throat. ‘It is a big project. We love it, though. We have lots of plans. But for now, I just wanted to know how much would it be to sort the floor in here?’ I gesture to the tiles in the hallway and the man shakes his head like a dog. ‘Big job, love. We can’t just make a tile out of thin air. You’d need to get the whole thing replaced. Laminate would look nice. These tiles need ripping up. You can’t have these once your little one starts crawling about. He’ll be into everything.’
I adore the black and white tiles that stretch from the front door through to the kitchen. Some of them are cracked, but to me that’s part of their charm: if they could talk, they’d have so many stories to tell about the different shoes that have walked on them over the last hundred years.
‘It’s fine,’ I sigh. ‘Thanks for coming anyway.’
‘If you get yourself a job lot of laminate, then give me a ring and I’ll lay it for you. Or if you come to your senses, and need help moving house, let me know. Got a few mates in removals.’ He hands me a red leaflet which reads:
Handyman Neil.
No job too big or small.
***
‘What did he say?’ asks Daniel later that night as he takes off his coat and flings it over one of our mismatched dining chairs.
‘He suggested taking the whole lot off and replacing it with laminate flooring.’
‘Oh, Erica! It’s like he swore at you!’ He comes over to where I sit and kisses me lightly on the forehead. ‘I’ll call round some reclamation yards and ask if they have any similar tiles or any ideas. He just didn’t get it. But someone will help us sort it out.’
‘I’ve been wondering,’ I say quietly, looking past Daniel to the crooked old kitchen cabinets, ‘if we should just give it up. Put it on the market and move on.’
‘What? Quit on the house?’
‘I don’t know. It’s since I tripped with Joshua. It’s just kept going through my mind that we could look at what else there is,’ I admit. ‘I didn’t say anything because it felt wrong, like we’d be giving up too soon. But I just don’t know if this house is too much of a project. We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.’ I see guilt flash across Daniel’s face and immediately regret my words. ‘I don’t mind that – I really don’t. You having shares in Palms is something we both wanted to put our money into.’ I watch him, wanting him to feel okay about his choice. I would do anything for him and I know how he feels about his work. ‘It was fine just for us. But now we have Joshua, things are different. We didn’t really know what having a baby would involve when we bought it, did we? And we definitely didn’t properly think through the costs and the time it would take.’
We stare around us. The mould that we scrubbed at only last week is sprouting from the wall again in mini black swirls. The kitchen units are hanging from the walls like crooked teeth, the wood brittle and stained. Daniel, in his suit, with all his fine features, is at odds with the chaos.
‘I know,’ he sighs. ‘I have been trying to ignore it, but you’re right. Let’s think about it, then,’ he says.
***
We find a house to go and view at the weekend. It’s newly built, a few streets back from the promenade further towards St Anne’s. Zoe is away for the weekend, and I have been in touch with a different agent. I feel disloyal when I think of her but then I remind myself that we haven’t made a decision yet, that we are only seeing another house to try and help us work out the best thing to do.
‘Look,’ says Jack, the estate agent, as we stand awkwardly in the master bedroom. ‘If you look past those houses on your right, you can just about see the sea. Perfect.’
We crane our necks until we catch the glint of waves between buildings. If you didn’t know to look you wouldn’t see it at all.
‘We’re in a house on the promenade at the moment,’ Daniel tells Jack. ‘We’re a bit spoilt with the view.’
Jack shudders. ‘All that maintenance though. Salt corrosion. Floods. Nah, this is what you need. You get the view but none of the problems. Once I’m back in the office I’ll have a look at the diary and arrange to come and value yours, if you like. Once you’re on the market you’re in a much better position. This one will probably be snapped up if you hang around.’
We follow the estate agent around the rooms, which are all completely spotless: lush cream carpets, every surface gleaming with glossy white paint, immaculate wardrobes and en suites. Beneath is a bright, square garden with a swing set standing proudly next to the orange brick garage. Joshua stares up at the bright gold spotlights in the ceilings as Daniel carries him round. The room that would be his is painted a soft lemon. I imagine his cot in there, turn to Daniel and wonder if he is imagining the same.
‘It’s the complete opposite of our house,’ Daniel says afterwards when we sit in a cafe in St Anne’s square.
I peer into Joshua’s pram and adjust his blankets, touching the tip of his tiny nose as he gives me a gummy smile. ‘I know. It would be so strange to live somewhere so …’
‘Nice? Clean?’ Daniel offers and we laugh.
‘Well, yeah.’ I stir my coffee and stare at the swirling foam. ‘It would be better for Joshua, wouldn’t it? So much cleaner and finished.’
‘Better in those ways. But we need to love it too. Do you really love it? Or any other house like it that Zoe could find us?’
‘I think I would, eventually.’
‘So do you think we should get ours valued?’
I say nothing, taking a sip of coffee and feeling sick as it slides down my throat.
Daniel throws up his hands. ‘Erica, what are we doing? Do we really want this? Do you want this? Be totally honest.’
I shake my head. ‘No, I don’t. I feel like I should. But that house is not our home. And what I want is to go to our home right now and stay there. Of course I want to do what we can to make it safer for Joshua. But I want to live there forever and make it beautiful, even if it takes fifty years. I want to stick at this plan.’
‘Me too,’ Daniel says, downing his coffee even though it must be way too hot. ‘So let’s.’
***
A few weeks later, we find some tiles at a reclamation yard to repair our hallway. Daniel takes a day off to do the job himself, and once he has carefully fixed them into place we ooh and ahh over the transformation, congratulating ourselves. Why, we laugh happily, did we ever consider moving? It looks as good as new. It looks better. And it will be safe for Joshua when he starts to crawl, walk, run.
And as we talk about tiles and houses and hallways and live a beautiful normality, life careers on, speeding to its next destination.
PART THREE
Chapter 32
7th September 2017
I always thought the problem would be my disappearances.
Now, it seems they are the solution.
The biggest events that crash into our lives seem so insurmountably huge: lightning and fireworks, so loud and bright we think we’ll be deafened and blinded. It seems impossible that we didn’t know they were on their way to us. It seems that if we’d listened harder, stayed still for a moment, we might have heard the distant rumble of the approaching storm, felt that something was off kilter somehow, that life was about to split into two.
So many Befores and Afters seemed to be important before that day. Before my parents divorced. After, when we moved to Blackpool. Before Mike ended things with me and I met Daniel, and After. Before we bought the house and got married, and After.
Now, they are all mangled, crushed into the bigger Before, the only one that seems to matter.
I stab at a slice of dry cake with a fork before lifting it to my lips, but then drop it back down with a clatter. An autumn chill snakes its way through the air and I pull my cardigan around me. I frown as I look across at the broken window.
I can’t help but feel like part of the problem is the house.
They all said it wasn’t the house. They said it was unexplained. Unascertained.
But what if there was something we could have done to stop it? What if there was some way of explaining it?
What if we had never bought the house? What if we had never stayed?
What if, what if, what if.
What if I don’t meet him in Luigi’s? What then?
Chapter 33
Joshua is six months old. It’s a hot day, one of those September afternoons that refuses to let go of summer, that won’t let in even a whisper of autumn. I’m going to get my hair cut and so I am leaving Joshua with Daniel, who assures me that he is more than capable of looking after our son.
I take Joshua’s chubby curled hand in mine across his yellow highchair table, and I kiss his smooth cheek that is stained with impossibly bright carrot juice, and tell him that I will be back soon.
‘It’s the first time he’s having carrot,’ I tell Daniel, who is sitting at the table, and doesn’t look up from his laptop, but reaches out and strokes my thigh absentmindedly as I speak. ‘I don’t think he’ll be allergic, but if he is sick or anything and you want me to come back then I have my phone, okay? I shouldn’t be too long.’
‘Hmm. Yep. Got it.’
‘You need to watch him,’ I say to the side of Daniel’s face, trying to keep my tone light. ‘You can’t not watch him while he eats.’
He looks up then, finally, and I laugh at myself.
‘Got it. Watch him eat the carrot.’ Daniel shuts his laptop and pushes it away, moving his chair closer to Joshua, who squeezes his puree with his fat little fist.
***
I think about the carrot, and tomorrow’s potato and swede that I need to take from the freezer as the hairdresser chops and chops, black strands decorating my shoulders like feathers. I don’t hear a distant rumble, or the crackle of something about to catch alight and rip through my world in a furious blaze. I sit there, staring at my own face in the mirror, thinking about how it is too hot and how I am looking forward to winter: candles and blankets and long winter walks; cinnamon coffee and satsumas in stockings; Joshua’s first Christmas.
Chapter 34
I hear Joshua’s indignant howls before I even open the front door after returning from the hairdresser.
‘He spat out the carrot,’ Daniel says when I arrive in the lounge. ‘Wouldn’t touch it. More on his face than in his belly. He’s super grumpy.’ He does an amusing dance in front of Joshua, who is propped up on the sofa. Joshua’s face, still tinted orange, crumples and is still for a moment before another holler erupts.
‘It’s too hot.’ Loose strands of sharp hair prickle at my skin and I tear my black cardigan off. I touch Joshua’s clammy forehead and whip off his little blue t-shirt, which makes him scream even more, and pick him up. ‘He’s tired out. I’m going to put him to bed.’
Daniel looks at his watch. ‘It’s only six.’ He glances at me and smiles. ‘Your hair. I love it.’
I touch the nape of my neck which is strangely exposed. ‘Really? They always do it shorter than you want.’
Daniel reaches out and touches my hair, and Joshua grabs his hand, his little face scrunched up in anger. ‘It suits you.’
‘Come on,’ I say to Joshua. ‘Let’s see if a nice sleep sorts you out.’
‘He’ll be up at the crack of dawn if we put him to bed now,’ Daniel groans.
I yawn, the very mention of sleep making me want to crawl under the duvet and close my eyes. Joshua still doesn’t sleep through. I’ve spent so many blue dawns rocking him and shushing him that I am constantly exhausted. ‘I know.’
Joshua wails again and I pat his downy head gently as we go up the stairs.
I peel the rest of his clothes off and fight his little thrashing body as I give him some liquid paracetamol. Daniel appears with a bottle of milk. Joshua calms as he drinks, his eyelids flickering, drooping. It’s Sunday tomorrow, but I will, I decide as I place him in his cot, take him to the doctor on Monday if he doesn’t seem any better. He’s probably coming down with something. I try to open his window, but Joshua’s window is one of the many in the house that doesn’t open. The catch is infuriatingly stubborn, caked in years of gloss paint. Daniel tries too, and gives up.
‘These windows!’ I hiss, annoyed. ‘It’s too warm in here.’
‘I’ll get a fan tomorrow,’ Daniel says.
We go downstairs, me clutching the baby monitor, pressing it to my ear and hearing the steady rise and fall of Joshua’s soft breaths. We order a pizza and fall asleep on the sofa when we’ve eaten. I wake in the early hours, thirsty from the pizza and aching from sleeping at a strange angle. Remember, I think to myself, the early days, when we used to fall asleep together on the sofa because we were talking and kissing, not because we were exhausted to the bone. How things have changed. Remember, remember.
I force myself to stand up and go to the kitchen, then get a drink of tap water that makes me grimace because it is too warm, too metallic. I climb the creaking stairs, open Joshua’s door and make my way to his cot to check on him. I place my hand on his cheek.
And that is the end of Before.
Chapter 35
Our world is smashed into pieces, unrecognizable in seconds.
I scream Daniel’s name again and again, my voice someone else’s, someone who lives in a horror film of nightmares and terror and life that cannot, cannot carry on.
He appears in the room, sleepy and confused. I can’t say anything but hold my hands up to my face. Daniel looks down into the cot, and I recognize something like hope in his face, a hope that makes my insides feel as though they are being twisted and crushed.
Your phone, he is saying, patting his pockets in a crazed way. A phone.
He calls an ambulance somehow, tells them. Cold skin. No. Yes. No. And then he stops talking, starts to wail instead. The sound winds itself around my mind like a snake, and I will never ever stop hearing it.
The paramedics arrive even though I don’t remember either of us telling them our address. This is how life will be now. Memories and thoughts won’t make sense. They will be sharp fragments, pieces of broken mirror in which I cannot recognize myself.
***
It’s inevitable, isn’t it? As soon as the paramedic turns to me and I hear his mouth saying the red-hot, burning words that brand themselves on my mind, I want to rush from it all, to escape to a world where this isn’t happening, where it never could.
I close my eyes, press my hand into Daniel’s so hard that it should hurt us, yet we feel no pain other than the roaring hot one that is inside us both.
The front door opens and closes, opens and closes.
The air smells too sweet, of late summer and sickly honeysuckle. It sticks in my throat and makes me gag as we climb into the ambulance.
When we get to the hospital, I don’t let go of Daniel’s hand at first. I have to stay with him. Vanishing now would be too cruel.
A man says that he needs to ask us some questions. He tells us that he is an investigator but he doesn’t wear a uniform. He has coffee spilt on his shirt, an ugly brown pock on the pale green fabric. That’s the worst bit of his day, I think bitterly. A spilt drink. I glare at him as he asks us thousands of questions that make me feel as though I can’t breathe: questions about stuffed toys and bedding and the cot and how much of his milk Joshua had before bed. I think vaguely, horrifyingly, of the heat of Joshua’s room, of the window that wouldn’t open. I think of us sleeping on the sofa as he took his last breath and I scream.
And then I am running.
I hear Daniel calling my name, the thumping of his fist hammering at the door of the hospital toilets. He comes in and bangs on the cubicle but I have locked it. Sadness drowns me. I try to call out to him but my voice won’t leave my body.
