Greenwich Park, Katherine Faulkner [ereader android .txt] 📗

I’m glad she’s gone. I don’t think it was good for us. Her being here.’

I look at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. It’s just – I don’t think we need any extra stress. Look, I’m sorry, you were right about the party. I should have been firmer with Charlie. I had no idea he would invite all those people into our house.’

‘What’s that got to do with Rachel?’

‘Nothing. I know you didn’t want to have the party, that’s all. I’m sorry I said yes to it. I’ll clear everything up.’

I pull at a loose thread from my jumper sleeve. The seam inside is unravelling.

‘Do you think we should report her missing or something?’

Daniel looks at me. ‘What? Why?’

‘I don’t know … I mean, it’s weird, her just disappearing. Isn’t it?’

Daniel shrugs. ‘Although you did ask her to leave, didn’t you?’ He puts his hand over mine again. ‘I just think we need to get back to normal. Focus on us, and the baby.’ He pauses. ‘I can repaint that room, now, can’t I, if it’s empty? If you still want me to.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course.’

Daniel pulls his T-shirt over his head, throws it on the floor and heads to the bathroom for a shower. As I listen to the sound of the water, I lie down on the bed. The room is spinning. I close my eyes, try to remember exactly how I left things with Rachel. But my mind isn’t working. It’s like when you wake up and you can’t quite remember a dream. Every time you try to snatch at it, it edges further out of reach.

Daniel emerges, rubbing his hair dry. When he sees my expression, he stops, throws the towel into the laundry basket and comes to sit beside me.

‘All right,’ he says. ‘I can see you’re worried. But first things first. Why don’t you just send her a text, asking if she’s OK? She’s probably fine. You might be worrying about nothing.’

I nod. ‘Sure. Good idea.’

Daniel rotates his neck. He still looks pale. ‘You know what? I think I’m going to head out for a run. Will you be OK?’

I blink at him. ‘What?’

‘I won’t be long.’

‘But you just showered. And you don’t look all that well, Daniel.’

‘I’m fine.’

My vision wobbles again. ‘All right,’ I mutter. ‘I’m going to lie down here for a bit.’

I hear the front door close behind him, the soft pat of his trainers on the path. I take off my coat, curl back under the covers. I tap out a message to Rachel, hit send. To my relief, ten minutes later, she replies – an unusually long reply for her. She is fine, she says. She is sorry about the row, and she has decided to go and stay with her mum for a while. She hopes we are still friends. She wishes me luck with the baby.

I try to feel relief. She is fine, I tell myself. She is fine, and she is gone. She is really gone. But for some reason, deep down, I know that this is not the end of it.

HELEN

Mummy’s illness started when we were little, and kept coming back to her all her life, like the circling birds we watched together in the park. It never went away for good. And gradually she slipped under the water of it, like a bath filling up that she couldn’t control. She got cold in it, from the inside out. So that when she turned the wheel that day, into the central reservation at ninety miles per hour, the most surprising thing to all of us was that she hadn’t done it years before. That, and the fact she did it with Daddy in the car. That was the hardest part to understand.

The water that came for Mummy nearly came for me, too. A few times, when I was younger. I came pretty close. That’s why Mummy and Daddy wanted me to study where my brother was, so I would have someone watching over me. And why they were so happy when I met Daniel. I suppose I became less of a burden to them once he was in the picture.

I was all right for a while. But the water came again when, just a few months after we lost Mummy and Daddy, I lost the first baby, as well. I’ll never forget how they took him away, a ripped piece of blue NHS towel over a silver kidney dish. Like he was nothing. Like he was rubbish. They told me that I wouldn’t want to see. But I did, I did. I told them I didn’t care what he looked like. That he was mine. That to me, he would be perfect.

But they shook their heads and gave me a liquid that tasted sickly sweet, and I drifted away on a papery pillow and when I came back again it was all still the same, the square white lights, the beeping machines, the hard bed, the empty feeling in my body. Except there was a tube in my arm this time, and somehow, I didn’t have the strength to feel as bad about it all any more.

When we got back from the hospital, I lay in our bath for hours, the door locked behind me. Daniel stopped knocking and gradually I chipped away all the flakes of peeling white paint on the windowsill with my fingernail. They fell into my bathwater, floated on the top like snowflakes. Through the window I saw London, the dark cloak of night over the river. I looked away from my reflection. I let the water go cold and I willed it to go over my head.

Later, Daniel had to collect his ashes from the crematorium. He asked me what I wanted to do with them. I didn’t know. I didn’t want to do anything with them, then. I felt so dark, so broken. I wanted to be asleep, in the earth. To be with my baby. I didn’t want