The Aftermath, Gail Schimmel [sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt] 📗

Helen

I wake up with a slight hangover from Lizette’s dinner and I have to down two painkillers before I can even think of going to work.

But before I do that, I have a mental word with Jack. I’ve been doing this every few days since that terrible nightmare four months ago, when Julia arrived on my doorstep and put an end to my suicide plans.

‘Mummy remembers you every day, baby,’ I say. I wish I could take out a photo and keep it next to my bed. But it is too late to explain it to Julia. I pause, remembering how happy Jack was when Julia was born. It was only a two-year age gap – but Jack was completely delighted by the baby. He wanted to hold her the whole time and touch her and kiss her. When she cried at night and I went to her, Jack would sometimes wake up too.

‘Mummy, baby cry,’ he would call.

‘I’m going, sweetie,’ I would answer, and he’d go back to sleep.

People warned me that they would fight when they got older. But it never happened. Jack doted on Julia until the day he died. When we dropped her off at my parents’ that day, he’d said, ‘Is Julia okay here, Mummy? Won’t Julia be lonely?’ But we’d explained that she was too young, and that we’d take her on other holidays.

‘We have hundreds of holidays with Julia ahead of us, Jackie,’ Mike had said. ‘This one is for Jackie and Mummy and Daddy.’

I feel my eyes filling up with tears thinking about it. I never used to cry about Jack. I used to hold it all in. But now I cry the whole time. It should make me more depressed, but somehow, it doesn’t.

I wipe away my tears, and get ready for work. It’s strange not having to wake Julia. I glance into the room, and her head is back and she’s gently snoring. Her child will be born any day now. Julia will be okay when the baby is born, I tell myself.

When I get to work, Ewan is already there.

‘Have we had the baby yet?’ he says as I walk in.

I laugh. ‘We’ve been through this, you dummy. I will message you as soon as the baby is born. And there’s a good chance I won’t come into work the next day if the baby is born in the night.’

Because Julia has asked me to be at the birth. She has reluctantly agreed that Daniel can also be in the room. But she wants me there. I was blown away by her asking me that. I’d never have imagined it. In her teens, Julia spent a lot of time casually mentioning how cold and distant I was, and she was right. So I never thought of myself as the sort of mother who would see her grandchild being born. And be excited about it.

But now here I am, the sort of mother who gets invited to the birth of her grandchild. Julia and I have even been to classes together, where she learns to breathe and I learn to give her ice chips and hold her hand. I feel a bit sorry for Daniel, actually. He’s been more than happy to come to the classes to support Julia. She lets him come, but she makes him sit in a corner, and he’s not allowed to touch her or really speak to her. Sometimes he speaks to me in the tea breaks. He seems sad and confused.

But when I tell Julia that, she gets very cross.

‘Sad and confused is his thing,’ she said to me last week. ‘He’s so sad and confused that he doesn’t even care who he gets back, me or Claire. And he’s so delusional that he doesn’t even realise we know.’

When she put it like that, it was hard to argue. And I am angry at how he hurt her – I wanted to kill him when it happened. It’s just hard to maintain the anger when he looks up at me with those sad eyes of his, like I might have the answers.

‘Be careful of those eyes, Mum,’ Julia said when I told her this. ‘Look where those goddamn eyes got me.’

And then we both started giggling until Julia almost wet herself, and she looked at me and said, ‘That was the best. It was worth having an affair with a married man and getting pregnant with a half-wanted baby just to laugh with you like that.’

And my eyes filled with tears, and I turned away, because nobody has ever said anything that wonderful to me before.

It’s halfway through the morning that I get a call from Edward.

‘Hey, you,’ I answer. ‘How’s the hangover? Mine’s a shocker. Never thought I would feel like this again.’

‘Helen,’ says Eddie, and his voice is serious. ‘Helen, something’s happened.’

‘Is it Julia?’ I say, panicked. Although almost immediately I know that would make no sense. Why would Eddie know if something had happened to Julia?

‘No,’ he says, not particularly confused by the question. ‘It’s Miriam. She’s woken up.’

The words hang between us. I must have misheard.

‘You mean she moved again?’ I ask now.

‘No,’ he says. And I realise his voice isn’t serious. It’s something else. Flustered and excited and scared and happy. ‘She’s woken up. She woke up at six this morning, pulled the ventilator tube out of her nose and asked for a cup of tea.’

‘Tea,’ I echo, unable to believe what I’m hearing. ‘She woke up and asked for tea.’

‘Isn’t it amazing, Helen? Isn’t this the best thing that has ever happened?’

‘The best thing,’ I echo.

‘I knew you’d be happy for me. I knew you’d be the only one who understood.’

‘Yes,’ I say, because I don’t know what else to say, and we are silent for a moment. ‘Did they call you right away?’

I have always wondered about this: would they call me right away if Mike woke up?

‘Well, it seems they first