Putting Alice Back Together (23 page)

You were a whisper…

And I closed my eyes and I closed my mind and I tried to hear it.

They say that when you die, life rushes past you.

I disagree.

I think, if you are lucky, you get a glimpse at the truth.

I feel that I nearly died at seventeen with my daughter, or rather that I glimpsed it with her, because she was too fragile to do it alone. So for that moment I held her tiny fingers and I pressed my lips to her cool soft cheek and I whizzed to the white light with her.

I went beyond music.

I went beyond.

I saw time.

I saw my music practice timetable beside my piano.

My alarm clock.

My future.

My goals.

Mum’s goals for me.

This race to get there that was life.

Fi’s race to get home.

I saw my future if I could ever catch up.

Or my demise.

I could see the luxury I had in this moment—and all that had been denied you.

I sped through differences as you slipped away from me, through so many different scenarios.

Different father.

Different year.

Different mother.

But it was here and now and I was the mother you
had and then, though I tried to reclaim it, I knew that you had gone.

My lips were on your cheek and I never wanted to let go.

You did.

You were ready.

You were so fragile and tiny, but you know what? You were so much stronger than me—you were ready to go.

You left me.

Don’t go.

Don’t leave me.

I could taste my tears but they didn’t matter because at least I could still feel you. There was a bit of your back that was still, not warm, but tepid. I don’t know if it was from the way I’d held you, but there was still warmth there and I held it.

Don’t leave me.

And then she had to go.

Fi, I mean—because you had gone already.

I felt it.

I felt the feeling I would feel, diluted a million times over in the years to come, but I felt it first today.

Saw Fi glance at the clock.

Heard the whisper from the day staff who came in to check we were okay, and who quietly questioned why Fi was still there—and I understood that she had to be back for her shift tonight.

I felt her leave before she said it.

‘You can hold her for as long as you need.’ I didn’t hear the rest—I just knew that Fi had to go.

And so had you.

I knew I could sit in this bed; I could hold you; I could
rest here with Fi; I could stay till tomorrow, till next week, next month, next year, but nothing could change the fact your time had run out.

And the best, the absolute best, I could do for you was to end it now.

‘Take her.’

‘Sweetie.’ Fi was uncomfortable, as if she’d speeded up the end—but it had already happened.

I
wanted
Fi to do this.

I didn’t want to be on the next shift; I didn’t want it to be anyone other than Fi who took you.

I wanted her to be the one to take my baby.

To take Lydia.

And so she did.

Forty-Nine

No…’ It was four in the morning and poor Roz woke to my sobbing. ‘That’s not it.’

‘Alice?’ I could hear the worry in her voice; hear her talking to someone about Alice not being able to breathe again. ‘No, Roz, that’s not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing that can happen is if your kids can’t talk to you.’

‘Alice, what’s going on? I’m coming over.’

But I was not listening, I was rambling on, trying to make her understand, that that wasn’t it, that wasn’t the Worst Thing That Can Happen. ‘Because you can be gay or straight, or sleeping around, or pregnant or depressed, but if that’s how you feel and you can’t tell your parents, how can they help you?’

She was over in minutes.

With… wait for it… Karan too!

Even in my self-absorbed, totally devastated state, I did manage a flicker of—ohmygod so Karan’s gay too.

Am I the only straight one?

How did I not see?

Her hot date hadn’t been with Trevor, it had been with Karan.

So that was why Karan had been so shirty that Sunday she did my hair and I bitched about Roz.

All of that I thought for a second.

Then I got back to woe is me.

Fifty

‘What did Bonny say?’

Lex had come into the room as they prepared to move me from the birthing suite to the ward. I didn’t look at him; instead I looked at the wall.

‘Bonny hasn’t rung back. I’ve rung a few times—you know what she’s like, she never has her phone.’

I had accepted that they knew now, had assumed he had told them. It had been hours, after all; then I glanced at the clock and saw that it was only eleven a.m. And it wasn’t like now—there was no Twitter to record your farts, no texts to demand where you were. Or maybe there were, just not in this family.

Bonny never turned on her phone.

You had been born, lived and died and it was still only eleven a.m. and no one else knew.

‘You don’t have to tell her.’ I didn’t argue the point now, I just said it. I wasn’t even scared of them knowing—there was just no point.

‘You can’t go through this alone, Alice.’

‘So stay in England,’ I said. ‘Because if you tell
Bonny, that’s what will happen, and you know what, Lex? It won’t change a single thing.’

I was moved up to the ward.

Oh, the joy of the NHS.

I was on the maternity ward, though I did get a side room—not that it silenced the lusty cries of the other babies.

They almost could have been her—they just didn’t quite hit the note.

My heart leapt each time I heard one.

But it was always too deep, or too soft. It sounded like Lydia as much as a G sounded like a G.

Every time it’s different.

It was perfect music.

It just wasn’t mine.

Where was she?

Where was that energy?

I don’t think it’s fair.

Not on me, I hasten to add, on those poor bloody babies, because they’re all ten years old now and walking around not knowing that there had been a mad woman a few yards away who’d felt like taking a pillow from her hospital bed and shutting them the fuck up.

Permanently.

Oh, yes, I thought about it.

It was torture and the nurses thought they were being nice.

I hated Big Lip, who took me up and then gave a handover out of my earshot. I mean, what the fuck could she say had happened that I didn’t know already?

I hated the awkwardness of the student midwife who
came in and took my temperature and checked my pad and had no idea what to say.

Then lunch came around.

Lunch.

I was an emergency admission so I got a cold lunch. I lay on my side and gazed at a club sandwich as a woman next door said lunch was late and she was putting in a complaint.

She had her baby.

I wanted to wee—and it would have been so much easier to let go, to lie there, to let someone change me.

I nearly did.

But I couldn’t.

With massive effort I staggered to the toilet, but I got dizzy.

‘You shouldn’t have got up on your own. Why didn’t you ring the bell?’

I’ve no idea who she was, but she found me on the loo and told me off.

Not nastily, she said she was worried, that I could have fainted. She told me off for getting up, for not ringing the bell, for not asking for help.

She shoved a flannel between my legs, wiped me, tucked in a pad and then pulled up my paper knickers.

She dealt with my bodily functions.

I dealt with breathing.

I hated that place.

I hated the social worker who called me Alex instead of Alice and made a lot of notes, despite the fact I said absolutely nothing.

Lex came in then.

He’d been crying, I could tell, and I hated what I’d done to him.

The funeral director could take care of everything, apparently.

I should, of course, have counselling.

Like that would change a thing.

They had already taken photos and they would make footprints and whenever I was ready I could make an appointment.

‘I don’t want my mum to know.’ It was all I said to the social worker.

‘You’re eighteen soon, Alex,’ she replied. ‘That’s your decision.’

‘Her name’s Alice,’ Lex sneered. ‘And can I suggest she’s in no fit state to make any sort of decision?’

‘I’m just telling her her options.’ Her pager went off and she excused herself, and then Lex’s phone rang and he stared at it for a long time before answering. I could hear Bonny’s voice in the still, silent room, hear her cheerful and laughing for once, even asking why he’d rung so many times. I saw Lex’s face screwing up as he braced himself to tell her.

What?

The drama was over.

I wasn’t in labour.

There was no chance.

Hurry home, darling—we need to squeeze in a funeral before we head off
.

‘I just miss you.’ He forced himself to smile so that the words would sound truer. ‘But I’m glad you’re having a good time.’

They chatted for a moment longer and then he clicked off the phone and walked out of the room.

The lie was born.

When I wanted to go home from the hospital at three p.m.—when I demanded to go home—they didn’t try too hard to dissuade me. My placenta had been delivered intact, I had seen the social worker, and I had someone to take me—and the
paperwork
for her was taken care of. So I got to go.

I got to sit in the car with Lex.

Who silently drove.

I got to walk into my home.

And I saw the mug and the wine and I wanted to say that I hadn’t had any but I just stood there.

‘Go to bed.’ He was picking bits of china out of the sink, throwing them in the bin. ‘They said you should rest.’

‘Lex…’ I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t know how I felt, but unfortunately I wasn’t numb enough not to notice the contempt in his eyes when he turned his face to me.

‘Alice, please go to bed. I can’t talk about it.’

‘Lex…’

‘I
can’t
talk about it!’ He stared at me. ‘I can’t even tell my wife, Alice. The worst fucking thing in my life and I can’t share it with her.’

There was nothing I could say. I tried ‘Sorry’ but he didn’t nod, he didn’t accept, he just stared. So I went to go.

‘Who was he?’

I carried on walking.

‘Surely I deserve that?’

I kept on walking.

‘Do you even know?’

I stopped at the bottom of the stairs—and realised that, yes, he did deserve that.

‘Gus.’

I couldn’t look at him so I didn’t turn around.

‘Your piano teacher?’

‘He’s not a teacher.’

‘Yes, Alice.’ His voice followed me up the stairs. ‘He is. He’s married, isn’t he?’ I could hear his feet behind me on the stairs. ‘Wasn’t he the one with the pregnant wife…?’

‘Leave it, Lex.’

‘Did he know?’

‘I told him.’ My teeth were chattering. ‘He told me to sort it, said that he didn’t know it was even his—but it was only that time. That was the only time I’ve…’

He stopped the barrage of questions then. He drooped, as if all anger and fight and fear had gone out of him. His face was putty-grey, his lips were white, and without another word I went to bed.

I lay there. I could hear Lex throwing up in the bathroom. And then I heard the poor bastard trying to sound upbeat when Bonny rang.

Fifty-One

‘I’m sorry.’ I stared up at the best friend I had ever had—a woman I’d treated like dirt when I’d found out her secret. The same woman who had raced round in the middle of the night to find out mine. ‘I was so mean. I was so embarrassed that you were gay…’

‘My own family hated me.’ Roz gripped my hands. ‘At least you kept talking to me, so talk to me now.’

And I did.

I told her; I sat as she held me and I told her—about the wedding and then about Gus and then about the baby. I told her my shame, how scared I had been, and she understood, because she had been seventeen and scared and pregnant too.

‘You told someone, you got help. You did the right thing,’ I said to her.

‘And fucked up so many lives…’

It was Roz who cried and I felt like it was me. ‘I didn’t want to be gay,’ she howled loud enough for the neighbours to hear. ‘I couldn’t tell her,’ Roz said. ‘Alice, I couldn’t tell my mum either. She was a little bit relieved,
I think, that I was pregnant. I think she’d been worried that I wasn’t girly enough, and then when she found out about Andrew, well… I think she was actually relieved. And Andrew did the decent thing. He said he’d marry me straight away. How could I turn around and say that I didn’t want that—that I didn’t fancy him, that the only reason I’d slept with him was to get rid of the rumours, to somehow prove to myself that I wasn’t different?’

And we both cried some more.

‘We were seventeen,’ Roz said, ‘and scared.’

We spoke all night; I thought we would never stop talking.

We spoke through till the next morning and then Roz put me to bed, and when I woke up that evening, when I stared at the devastation, quite simply I couldn’t talk any more.

Roz took two days off work.

My phone rang a lot. Dan, Roz would say when she looked at it, but I didn’t pick up, and a couple of times it was Bonny, but I didn’t pick up for her either. I didn’t once jump or lurch in hope that it was Hugh.

She answered the house phone too.

Told them all I was sick and that, yes, she would pass on the message, but I was unwell and would get back to them just as soon as I was able.

I lay in my bed and occasionally got up for the loo.

I wasn’t hungry and I wasn’t thirsty and I didn’t want to talk any more—I felt like I was staring down a long cardboard roll and looking at my life and my past and watching it but not feeling it.

Of course Roz couldn’t ring in sick for ever, and she
had an important class tonight. I knew soon I would be left alone—and for the first time I wanted to be.

I just wanted to lie there and close my eyes and sleep.