Out of My Depth (29 page)

‘It’s only worth it for you because Sam’s fine.’

‘It would be worth it anyway. Sam is so great, such an enormous source of joy, that even if the unthinkable happened to him tomorrow, I would never, ever wish that he hadn’t been born.’

I shook my head.

‘What did you call your daughter?’ Izzy asked. She looked nervous, as if she were asking a deeply personal question, which she was.

Here was another word I avoided. I took a deep breath.

‘Natasha. Though I’ve almost never talked about her. I told my parents that I didn’t want them to mention her, ever. I cut ties with everyone I’d known in my pregnancy-everyone except Janet. I still see Janet. I don’t tell people.’ I looked at Izzy. ‘Until now. I never imagined that this would surface. If anything, I would have thought I’d be confiding in Amanda. But Amanda’s completely nuts, isn’t she? Poor thing. You know, I like Tamsin. I’d really like to get to know her again. But I can’t.’

‘We don’t need to tell her,’ Izzy said, with conviction. ‘It would stir things up. It wouldn’t accomplish anything. I can see that you feel you need to confess, but you don’t. Tamsin’s coped, hasn’t she? At the moment, she’s probably the most balanced of all of us.’ I started to speak, but she stopped me. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she said, firmly. ‘But did you say you haven’t told Roman about Natasha?’

‘That’s right. I just . . . I don’t tell people, you know? It’s just not what I do. I thought about it when he moved in. I decided not to. Roman likes life to be fun and easy. He likes freedom. He doesn’t go in for dead babies. I was sure that it would scare him off. He doesn’t have any interest in kids, so that works out fine. If he’d wanted children, I’d probably have told him.’ I drew a breath and thought about telling Izzy that, just lately, I had been half wondering whether I might still want children. I decided not to. I had to stick to my line, or anything might happen. And Izzy didn’t know Roman. I knew that nothing would send him running in the opposite direction faster than my mentioning the word ‘baby’.

‘And you feel that it’s OK, having such a big secret?’

I was pleased to be on firm ground. ‘Yes I do,’ I said, as briskly as I could. ‘I have lots of secrets. You must have noticed that my life is about image. It’s all pretence, Izzy. I shouldn’t talk about that, but you know it and I know it. Your life is real. That’s what struck me yesterday, when you were talking about Martin. Your life is real and flawed and honest and that counts for more than you can possibly imagine. You wouldn’t think that I’d envy you, but I do.’ I looked her in the eyes. ‘I really do.’ I was trying so hard not to cry that my face was screwed up in a bizarre grimace. ‘I don’t even like living here. I only do it because it goes with my image.’

‘Susie,’ said Izzy, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand. 'My life is crap. You have no idea how fucking awful it can be. I work full time at a rubbish job, I look after Sam, I miss him when he’s with his dad. I’m a whale next to you and Tamsin, I eat badly, I don’t exercise. I don’t have space to breathe. I never have two pennies to rub together. Being a single mother is rubbish.’

‘Well, at least I avoided that.’ This was empty comfort, and we both knew it. We smiled at each other, sadly, and turned back.

‘I think I’m going to call the police,’ I said suddenly. ‘In England. Try to do the right thing for once. If Sarah Saunders is telling the truth, if this man’s threatening her, I have to do something.’

‘Good idea. Just tell them what each of them has said. It won’t take much detective work to find out if they’re married.’ Izzy paused. ‘Something just moved in that field,’ she said. ‘I saw it, it rustled. There’s something big in there.’

I waved a dismissive hand. ‘Deer. They drive the farmers mad. That’s why they all get shot. They go out hunting every weekend round here and deer are one of the top targets.’ I looked at the forest of maize. The only way to see a deer was if it emerged. The crops were too thick. ‘It’s a shame it didn’t come right out. Often they run right across the road. I see them when I’m running. They’re beautiful. But the farmers don’t agree.’

‘Poor old deer.’

‘Yeah. You can’t be too sentimental about animals round here. Animals are either pests, or they’re food on legs. Deer are both.’

‘Still, poor things.’

‘I know.’

Jake and Freya crept away, hidden by the maize, which was over six foot tall. It was like a scary film, Jake thought, but he didn’t tell Freya because he knew she was a bit scared already. They had both heard a lot of what Susie and Izzy had said. Freya was starting to cry.

‘Susie had a dead baby, didn’t she?’ she said, looking to Jake with teary eyes for confirmation. ‘That’s so sad. That’s what stillborn means, isn’t it? Otherwise the baby wouldn’t have been blue.’

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Think so.’

‘Poor Susie. I’m going to tell Mum. Then Mum can cheer her up.’

‘Don’t tell Mum, Frey,’ counselled Jake. ‘Mum’s mad today. She wouldn’t cheer Susie up at all. And Susie said she hadn’t told anybody, not even Roman. So you can’t tell because it’s secret.’

‘Oh. OK.’

They trudged on, along rows and pushing through the strong stems of the maize plants. They had already noted that most had one corn cob on, and a few had two. They had each picked one to take back to show everyone. Now they were heading away from the road, to the middle of the field.

‘They said Mum was completely nuts,’ Freya remembered, as she trudged along.

‘They got that right.’ Both of them laughed.

Twenty minutes passed. Jake was leading a random, zigzag path through the plants. It was extremely hot and they were tired. Every time Jake wanted to move between rows they had to squeeze between tall, thick stems. The leaves shaded them from the sun, but the air that was trapped between the green leaves and the cracked earth was baking. Freya was finding it hard to breathe. She thought she might be suffocating.

‘Let’s go back, Jake,’ she said. She held the stem of a maize plant, because she was starting to feel dizzy.

Jake looked round at his sister. Her fair hair was plastered to her head, and she was very red.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Good idea.’ He looked around. There were endless maize stalks in every direction. ‘This way,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll just walk in a straight line and that’ll take us to the edge of the field. Even if it’s the wrong side of it, we can go back to the road and walk round. Come on. Just think about getting back to Susie’s house and drinking lots and lots of cold water. We’re going to follow this row so we know that sooner or later we’ll get to the edge.’

Freya nodded. She was still feeling a bit faint. But she instructed her feet to move, one after the other. And they did, slowly.

Izzy and I dawdled back to the house. I felt strangely peaceful. I had never shared that story with anybody who didn’t already know it.

‘It’s not something to be ashamed of,’ Izzy said quietly, as we approached the house. ‘Have you thought about why you keep it a secret? From Roman, in particular?’

I looked up. Amanda’s window was still open.

I shook my head and tried to answer her question. It was hard to think about it, and I felt myself closing up. I tried not to.

‘It’s not “shame”, exactly,’ I said, stiffly, and very quietly. ‘It’s because I don’t want it to be a part of me. I want to be a successful, rich woman with a gorgeous lifestyle. I want to be childfree-’ I looked at Izzy, and we both laughed at the memory of Amanda and Roman’s stand-off — ‘as a choice I have made. I want to be too selfish to have children. I don’t want to be “poor old Susie whose baby was born dead”.’ I looked at Izzy. ‘It is terrifying to be talking about it. Liberating, in a way, but scary. It makes me see that I’ve kept everyone at arm’s length, ever since it happened. The hospital arranged all sorts of counselling for me afterwards, and I went along because they told me to, and I was a bit dazed, but I didn’t join in. This woman just sat there asking open-ended questions in a soft voice and I answered as briefly as I could, with one eye on the clock. I just didn’t know what to do, so I tried to shut it away. So you can imagine that when Janet came along and told me I could be rich and successful, and leave everything bad behind me, I leapt at the chance. And when she said I could be whoever I wanted to be, well, there was my escape route. So here I am.’ I looked at her. ‘I always thought about looking you up but I was scared. The only person I’m in touch with from school is Alissa.’

‘Alissa McCall?’

‘She’s good. She’s been a good friend to me, even though she doesn’t know any of this stuff.’

Izzy looked almost hurt. ‘Really? But you and Alissa are so different.’

‘Not really. Not now.’

‘Do you think you and Roman will stay together for ever?’

I thought about it. ‘I don’t know.’ I looked at Izzy and wondered what to say. I wanted to be honest. ‘The correct answer is yes. But I’m not sure. I hope so. I love being with him. We have fun and we understand each other and we never run out of things to talk about. I feel completely comfortable. But I have these two big secrets. And I think we could only really stay together for ever if he knew them. And I don’t know what he’d think of me, then.’ I tried to imagine it. Roman would be horrified by the fact that I had once had a baby; and he would be horrified all over again at the fact that I hadn’t told him.

‘What about you?’ Tasked Izzy. ‘Would you marry again?’

Izzy laughed, then stopped abruptly. ‘I would, Susie, if anybody was interested in me. I should start internet dating or something. God knows.’

I was barely listening. I knew that Izzy’s story was going to end well. I had read it in books and seen it on television often enough. She was going to meet someone new, someone who would recognise her wonderful qualities, and she was going to live happily ever after. She would probably marry somebody with wild hair, or with a beard; someone who did not judge on appearances. Someone who would consider me to be tiresome and shallow, who would ask Izzy why I was her friend.

I hoped that, at that point, I would still be her friend.

We walked in through the kitchen door, and out to the terrace. I stopped still in the doorway, so suddenly that Izzy walked into my back. Patrick and Tamsin were sitting where we had left them, laughing. He touched her arm. She patted his leg. They were flirting: Sam was nowhere to be seen.

Izzy and I exchanged alarmed glances, and together we walked to the table as loudly as we could, which, in flip-flops, was not particularly loudly We watched them move slightly apart.

‘Where’s Sam?’ Izzy asked, as I clattered plates together accusingly.

‘In the garden,’ said Tamsin, waving a hand in the direction of my studio. ‘He went off to look for Jake.’

Izzy set off across the grass. ‘How long ago?’ she asked, over her shoulder.

Tamsin shrugged. ‘Five minutes? Sorry, I should have gone with him, shouldn’t I? Patrick says Jake’s just behind that barn so I’m sure he’s fine.’

I stood still and gazed after Izzy as she set off to find her son, slightly anxious, hot, resigned, and completely at home with her responsibility for another life. I remembered that Jake and Freya hadn’t been behind my shed when I had been in there, half an hour ago, and I hoped Sam had managed to find them. For a moment I allowed myself to wonder what it would be like if I still had Natasha. I pictured my eleven-year-old daughter, playing with the younger children. It was too easy to imagine. Yet if I’d been allowed to keep Natasha, I wouldn’t be here now. I would probably be stuck in a deadend job in a bad part of London, claiming benefits. I would be poor and unfulfilled, reading celebrity magazines and dreaming of fame and fortune.

I would have cared for Natasha like Izzy cared for Sam. I would have been the person my daughter turned to, for ever. I would have swapped lives in an instant.

Izzy was huffing in the heat, and she was a world away from the elegant, head-turning teenager she had once been. I envied her fiercely. I often wished I was no longer young enough to have children. I looked forward, in a perverse way, to the menopause. If pregnancy were not a possibility, I would not have to consider it, to feel the time running through my fingers.

I turned indoors and decided to make that phone call.

I had Neil Barron’s address, so I found the number of his local police station from international directory enquiries, and phoned them. I felt silly, but the woman on the end of the phone did not tell me to stop wasting their time. She wrote it all down and said they would look into it when they could. I smiled as I hung up, and then left the phone off the hook again in case Neil Barron tried to ring me. I had done my bit, now. It had taken three minutes. I decided to try to do the right thing more often.

I was angry with Tamsin, and frowned as I cleared lunch away. Neither Patrick nor Tamsin got up to help. They didn’t even seem to notice that I was glaring. I rarely frowned. I had consciously stopped doing it when a woman from a glossy magazine had told me, at a private view at Tate Modern, that I could give myself ‘DIY Botox’ by keeping my face as still as possible. ‘It’s fabby,’ the woman had insisted. ‘Once you get in the habit, it’s easy and it gives you this wonderful air of mystery’

Since that conversation, I had tried not to frown, and not to smile. I did not want lines of any sort appearing, so I wore my face like a blank mask, and sometimes sellotaped my forehead smooth at night, but only if Roman was away. Right now, though, I was pulling my eyebrows together and pursing my lips slightly at Patrick and Tamsin’s joint behaviour. They were ignoring me.