Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word (33 page)

“Jack, I’m exhausted. It’s been really lovely having you for dinner in our own house, but now I’m knackered. Blame it on the
operation, or blame it on the fact that suddenly, I can’t deal with you being here but not being here and the uncertainty
of not knowing what the hell’s going to happen to us. Please go now before I say something I’ll regret.”

Jack stands and sighs. “We were doing so well, I thought.”

“We were for a bit. And we will again. But no more, not now.”

“Look, why don’t you go upstairs to bed, and I’ll clear away the dishes and let myself out.”

Every bit of my body is crying out for the cocooning comfort of my duvet, the escape of sleep. “I won’t say no to your offer.
I’m far too tired for dishes, and if I’m not in the room, I can’t possibly say the wrong thing. Oh, and help yourself to the
bread-and-butter pudding. Good night.”

I turn my back on Jack and walk slowly out of the room.

• • •

Maddy’s on the sofa, lying feet up to relieve the pressure on her swollen ankles. “The baby’s still breech, and the chances
of it turning of its own accord are pretty remote. I saw the obstetrician this morning, and we agreed that I’d elect to have
a cesarean.”

“There goes the birthing pool and the scented candles.”

“Big baby. Small me. Breech. Old as God. A cesarean does seem sensible.”

“Of course it does. And I’m glad you’re making the decision now rather than possibly ending up with an emergency C-section
after a long labor.”

“You know, you don’t still have to be there. It’s one thing holding my hand while I’m moaning and groaning and shouting abuse
at you, and another to see me sliced open in the operating theater.”

“Me down at the sharp end? No way, but I wouldn’t miss this show for the world. Just remember where you’ll be in the war-wound
pecking order—two scars behind me and not a chance of catching up. So when’s C-day?”

“Monday morning, nine o’clock. A week before I’m due, so hopefully I won’t go into labor early.”

“Only four days to go! I’d better get into training. My first major outing, and back to the place I’ve just come from. My
favorite hospital, my home away from home.”

“Shut up, Hope, and make me a camomile tea. You don’t look that much of an invalid to me.”

“Give me the update on Ed and the boys.”

“The boys are practically bursting with excitement. Their beloved aunt Maddy having a baby means they’ll have their first
first cousin. If they knew I’m was expecting their brother or sister, I have a feeling there’d be less enthusiasm. A cousin
is fun, a sibling an attention-seeking rival.”

“And Ed?”

“He seems quite relaxed with me, as though he really wants us to be friends. I don’t get the impression that he feels at all
guilty about what happened between us, although I can’t be sure. He started to say something the other day, and I cut him
right off.”

“And what was that?”

“He said he wished the baby were his.”

“He did? And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Well, it’s not, and I wouldn’t be happy at all if it were.’ ”

“And then?”

“He looked rather crestfallen and didn’t say anything. But before he left, he kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘You and Ru,
I miss you both.’ ”

“And you said . . .”

“‘But I’m here,’ and he said, ‘Who are you trying to kid? When Ruth died, because of what we did, I lost both of you. It doesn’t
seem fair.’ ”

“Oh, Maddy,” I say. “If only you’d—” I cut myself off midsentence. Now is not the time to lecture Maddy on why she ought to
tell Ed the truth. “Let’s concentrate, shall we, on giving birth to this little person inside your tummy?”

While I boil the kettle for Maddy’s tea, I am struck with a notion that has all the clarity and brilliance of the Koh-i-Noor
diamond. It is so spectacularly simple that I can’t believe I haven’t considered it before. All at once I’m impatient for
Maddy to go home. There’s something I need to do. Simple as my task is, it involves taking a huge risk that I may regret for
the rest of my life. On the other hand, if I don’t do what I’m about to do, I will regret that for the rest of my life as
well.

• • •

“Ed, darling,” I say when he picks up the phone, “I haven’t seen you for ages. And I’m going stir-crazy stuck at home. Get
a babysitter and come and see me. You’ll have to forgive me my ravaged appearance, but it would be so wonderful to catch up
and hear how you’re getting on.”

I don’t really give Ed the chance to say no.

“My minders move out Saturday, so Saturday evening—if you’re not busy—would be great. Look forward to it. Bye.”

• • •

Maddy’s been allocated one of the side rooms off the end of the main ward. She has given birth to a beautiful baby girl, weighing
eight pounds, two ounces, a very big little girl indeed for someone with as small a frame as her mother. I held Maddy’s hand—and
my breath—throughout the proceedings. Until the actual moment when the doctor lifted the baby from behind the screened-off
section below Maddy’s waist and we heard her first cry, it had all felt pretty clinical. Once the epidural was working, the
whole thing took only about twenty-five minutes. The operating theater was crowded with people—the obstetrician and his assistant,
the anesthesiologist with his, two nurses, a midwife, the pediatrician. But without the emotional buildup of labor itself,
I almost forgot about the fact that Maddy was being opened up to get a baby out, and all my concern was focused on whether
she was reasonably relaxed and pain-free. Which she was.

But the look on Maddy’s face as the baby was placed in her arms said all I needed to know. “Look at her,” she said over and
over. “Just look at her.”

I looked, and for a tiny instant, through the muslin of tears that made the scene before me as misty as a Monet painting,
I thought she was mine. I even reached toward Maddy to pluck the baby from her arms and into mine, jolting myself back before
she noticed.

“Emma, my love,” Maddy whispered. “Emma, my sweet, my precious gift.”

Emma. The title of Ruth’s favorite book.

• • •

Emma is asleep in the Perspex hospital cot, swaddled in a soft white satin-trimmed baby blanket. Maddy is still numb from
the epidural but smiling from ear to ear.

“Why do you keep looking at your watch?” she asks me. “Do you have another appointment?”

“Of course not,” I stutter. “I’m just thinking you might like a little quality time with your baby.”

“What do you think of my baby?”

“She’s perfect.”

“And again.”

“Perfect.”

“And one last time . . .”

There’s a knock at the door, followed by the sound of someone fumbling with a doorknob. A sweating, panting man with his jacket
wrongly buttoned stumbles through the door like a drunk, clutching a vast bouquet of red roses that almost obscures his face.

“I had to drop off the twins at school . . . and then I raced straight here . . . but the traffic was awful . . . and . .
. Maddy . . . Maddy, my love, are you all right . . .”

Maddy didn’t look at all frightened before giving birth. Now she looks terrified. Her eyes dart from Ed to me to Ed and back
to me again.

“Hope, what the hell . . .”

“Maddy,” says Ed, “I know everything. I know . . .”

“What have you done? What have you fucking done?” Maddy’s eyes pierce me with such contempt that it hits me like a physical
blow. “How could you? How bloody could you?”

“Maddy—” I begin.

“Not a word. I don’t want to hear a single word.”

I feel dazed, as if from a blow to the head. In slow motion, I reach for my bag from the floor, raise myself from the chair
next to Maddy’s bed, and turn slightly to lift my coat from the armrest. I look again at Maddy. She is wild-eyed, and her
face is clenched like a fist.

“Can’t you see what you’ve done? It’s as much a betrayal as my betrayal of Ruth. We’re the same, us two. Despicable.”

“Maddy, please . . .” says Ed, but he’s looking at the floor.

“I’m so sorry, Maddy,” I say. “I thought it was for the best, I thought it would bring you together. I thought it was the
right thing to do.”

“You’ve ruined everything. Everything. I hate you.”

The baby has started to cry. Ed is standing at the foot of the bed, head bowed, roses in hand, like a supplicant. Maddy is
screaming. “Get out of here. Get out of here. You, too, Ed. I’m sorry, but I can’t have you here, not now.”

“But she’s my baby, too,” says Ed. It’s more of a plea than a statement. “Isn’t she?” he adds, as though having been told
by me that he’s the father, he’s no longer quite sure.

The baby’s howls are no match for Maddy’s.

A nurse bursts in. “Everything all right? I’ve just come on. Says on my chart that you’ve had the baby, but from the racket,
it sounds like you’re in labor. What’s up?”

“I want them out of here,” sobs Maddy. “I want to be alone with my baby. Surely it’s my right to be left alone with my baby.”

As I flee down through the main maternity ward, the lower right-hand side of my stomach, around the site of the operation,
is cramping in agony.

“Hope, wait,” calls Ed after me. “Wait.”

But I don’t. The other day Maddy said to me, “The day my baby is born will be the most important day of my life. Nothing before
or after will ever mean as much.”

However much Maddy hates me right now, I hate me even more.

O
lly’s gone. Jack’s gone. Maddy’s out of my life. I can’t talk to anyone about Maddy because no one knows the story, and it
would only be heaping betrayal upon betrayal. I call her, e-mail her, put notes under her door. She won’t respond. I’ve left
messages for Ed, too. It would appear I’m on his blacklist as well. I thought of standing in wait outside Maddy’s home until
she came out with the baby in the stroller, but that would amount to harassment, which she surely doesn’t need. I should be
with her, helping her, shopping, cooking, practicing my rusty nappy-changing skills, anything to see her through these first
few weeks alone with her baby. I feel impotent and a failure. Jack is my only conduit to Maddy.

“What the hell has happened between you?” he rang to ask me.

“I can’t talk about it,” I said.

“Maddy won’t talk about it, either,” said Jack. “You’re like children, you two. She’s on her own and in dire need of help.
Why don’t you just turn up?”

“Because she wouldn’t open the door. Or if she did, she’d slam it right back in my face.”

“So you’re talking to her, but she’s not talking to you. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“That’s about it.”

Jack emits an odd sort of grunt.

“How’s she doing?” I ask. “And Emma. Is Emma okay?”

“The baby’s thriving. Maddy looks exhausted, as though she hasn’t slept a wink. Her neighbor has been getting her some shopping,
as she can’t lift much after the cesarean. Stanko takes the dog out twice a day, and the same saintly neighbor who does the
shopping walks it once around the block in the evening. Home for a whole week, and so far Maddy and Emma haven’t left the
house.”

I grimace. “Jack, you have to believe me, I was only trying to help. I thought I could wave my magic wand and everything would
be wonderful.”

“There’s not much point in you telling me what you hoped to achieve if I’ve no idea what you’re talking about and if I can’t
be let in on the big secret. All I know is that you went into the delivery room as Maddy’s best friend and came out as her
worst enemy. I don’t get it. Anyone would think you’d tried to steal the baby.”

“Maybe one day I’ll tell you, Jack, if ever this awful business gets resolved, which I doubt.”

I can hear Jack’s sigh down the phone. Another reason for him not to come home to his dysfunctional wife. I seem to have lost
the knack of hanging on to what’s precious to me.

“You probably think it’s all my fault, don’t you?” I ask.

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You didn’t have to. But actually, you’d be right. It was all my fault.”

“Olly texted me last night.” Jack’s voice is lighter now, the mere mention of Olly lifting a burden from his vocal cords.

“Me, too. Says the school is modeled on an English public school, only they eat curry instead of turkey twizzlers. Do you
miss him?”

“Not yet, he’s only been gone a week. I was just happy to hear from him.”

“I missed him even before he’d left.”

“You’re impossible, Hope.”

“I know. Are you free for dinner?”

“Sorry, no. I’ve already made arrangements.”

“Oh. Anyone or anything special?”

“Hope, you promised not to do this.”

“I know I did. But I slipped up.” I can’t help the sarcasm creeping into my voice. If only Jack knew how well behaved I’m
being. I still haven’t mentioned Sally once to him. I’m not sure if I can hold out much longer.

“Better be going,” says Jack awkwardly. I can feel him itching to get away from me.

“Just one small favor. Pleeease.”

“Go on.” The heaviness has crept back into his voice. It’s what I do to him. Weigh him down.

“Will you look in on Maddy every couple of days? Just to make sure she’s okay and has everything she needs. Honestly, I’d
be there round the clock if she’d let me.”

“I was planning to anyway, so no favor required. Don’t forget, she’s my friend, too. Funny how I used to think I was in touch
with my feminine side. Now I realize I don’t understand women at all.”

“Me, neither,” I reply. Was that a chuckle I heard faintly down the line? Or just wishful thinking on my part?

• • •

After putting down the phone, I wander upstairs into Olly’s room. I suppose I should have tidied it up, stacked all his magazines
into neat piles, put his books and CDs into some kind of order, stripped the mattress bare to air it. I’ve done none of these
things. I want this room to stay how it was when Olly left it until I’ve gotten used to the idea of him not being here. Like
a shrine, albeit a disheveled one in desperate need of a dust. Or a crime scene in which nothing must be moved until all the
forensic evidence has been gathered.