Climbing into the back of the cab, I give the driver our address, staring out of the window as we head back down the King’s Road. Andy didn’t say this would never have happened on Louise’s watch, no matter how chaotic her week, but he didn’t need to. We both know that’s what he was thinking.
Chapter 4
Louise
‘You reminded Dad about tomorrow, right?’ Bella asks.
I set Tolly’s plate of spaghetti hoops in front of him, and whip Bella’s cheese on toast out from under the grill. Until I get paid at the end of the month, it’s this or baked beans. ‘I told you, darling. Dad’s out on a story all day, his phone went straight to voicemail, but I texted him and left a message with his secretary.’
Bella flops into a kitchen chair, the long black sleeves of her sweater trailing across her plate as she pokes suspiciously at her dinner. I don’t blame her for being wary: no cheese is meant to be this yellow. ‘Have we got any Worcestershire?’
I pass her the bottle. ‘You need to call Caz and tell her to remind him,’ she adds, smothering her food with sauce. ‘He’ll forget otherwise.’
‘I spoke to her yesterday, and reminded her. Dad’s not going to forget, darling.’
‘And she definitely said they were coming?’
‘She promised they’d be there.’
Bella shoots me a look. ‘You were nice to her, weren’t you, Mum?’
I hesitate. I’m civil to Andrew’s second wife when I have to be, but Andrew and I always make arrangements for the children’s weekend visits ourselves. Voluntarily picking up the phone, asking Caz to make sure my daughter’s father didn’t forget her school play, stirred dark feelings I thought I’d put behind me. I may not have been quite as civil to her as I should have been.
‘Of course,’ I say.
‘Can you call her again now? Just to make sure?’
‘Absolutely.’ I unplug my phone from its charger on the counter. ‘Make sure Tolly eats the sausages as well as the hoops. I’ll be back in a minute.’
I go outside and walk down to the vegetable garden, where I can be certain I won’t be overheard, and pace up and down between the broad beans, my mobile in my hand. Every time I call Caz, it feels like another surrender, the yielding of yet more precious family terrain. Asking her for her co-operation legitimises her role in the parenting of my children. But Bella needs her father to be at the play. Our divorce came at the worst possible time for her, when she was on the cusp of adolescence; every relationship she has with a man going forward will follow the template set by the one she has with Andrew. I don’t want her to grow up attention-seeking and needy because he failed her.
My fingernails dig half-moons into my palms. This woman didn’t even know my daughter for the first twelve years of her life. She broke up my son’s family before he’d even said his first word. And yet now she has a legitimate claim on them, a half-share of their precious, swift-flowing childhoods. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ve lost my husband to this woman, but the thought of her mothering my children cuts straight through to my soft underbelly.
I pull up her number, but to my relief, the call goes to voicemail, and I hang up without leaving a message. I’m still seething over the fact that Caz will be the one celebrating Bella’s big night with her, and I remind myself firmly that this isn’t about me. Andrew will be there for Bella, which is all that really matters.
When I go back inside, Bella has disappeared upstairs, leaving her plate of untouched cheese on toast on the table. Tolly is crawling around on the floor, trying to feed his sausages to Bagpuss.
‘Leave him alone,’ I scold, rescuing the cat and depositing him on the ancient, hair-covered sofa by the back door. ‘He’ll be sick if he eats those.’
‘I’ll be sick if I eat them,’ Tolly says.
‘They’re hot dogs, not sausages. You like hot dogs.’
‘No, I don’t. They look like willies.’
‘Bartholomew!’
Tolly giggles, covering his mouth with dimpled hands that have yet to lose the fat of babyhood, his brown eyes dancing with mischief. I try to hold my stern expression, but it’s impossible. Tolly scrambles to his feet and launches himself at me full throttle, and we tumble back onto the sofa, laughing, as Bagpuss leaps out of the way. My little boy snuggles into my lap and I stroke his wild mop of russet curls, filled with overwhelming love for my son. Tolly, my unexpected, glorious autumn baby, squeaking in under the wire just before I turned forty.
I’d never expected to have another child after the problems I had with my first pregnancy. I’d had two miscarriages before Bella was conceived, and then my waters broke at just thirty-five weeks. After seventy-two hours of stop-start contractions and drugs and exhortations to push, to pant, to breathe, to give it one more try, I was finally rushed into theatre for the emergency C-section I should have had two days earlier. Bella was absolutely fine, a healthy six pounds two ounces; after her initial check-up, she didn’t even have to go to the NICU. But I’d lost a lot of blood, and all that pushing and trying had all but torn me inside out. No more babies, the obstetrician warned. Not that it was likely to happen anyway.
I had a healthy, beautiful baby girl in my arms, and whenever I felt a lingering sadness at the rabble of children I’d never have, I only had to look into her deep blue eyes to be overwhelmed with gratitude for what I did have.
And then, five years ago, I skipped a period. I didn’t pay it too much attention at the time; the Post was undergoing some major restructuring – for which read redundancies – as it attempted, like every other legacy media institution, to compete with online news sources, and what with everything else that was going on in my life, my stress levels were through the roof. But then I’d missed another cycle, and suddenly I couldn’t stand the smell of eggs. My silhouette went from Olive Oyl to Jessica Rabbit overnight. I had been thrown a miraculous lifeline, just at the moment I thought I’d drown.
I’d known from the beginning the odds of a successful pregnancy were stacked against me. My age and previous history didn’t bode well, and then I started spotting at ten weeks. My obstetrician insisted I give up work, and rest as much as possible. Leaving the Post had been a risk, even for just a few months, with so many jobs being cut and hungry young freelancers willing to work for half the pay and no benefits; but I didn’t hesitate. All that mattered was my baby. And somehow I managed to keep Tolly safe. I reached my second trimester, and then my third. Everything looked good. The baby seemed healthy, all my scans and tests came back normal. I got to thirty-five weeks, then thirty-six, and thirty-seven.
At thirty-eight weeks, I was dropping Bella off at school when I collapsed in the middle of the playground. Had it not been for the quick thinking of another parent, a doctor who recognised the signs of pre-eclampsia, both Tolly and I would almost certainly have died.
There’s very little I remember about the next ten days. I have a few hazy memories of the ambulance ride to hospital, of sirens and lights and Andrew, white-faced, rushing along the corridor as they wheeled me into theatre, gripping my hand so hard I thought he’d break my fingers. Tolly had been hastily delivered via Caesarean, safe and well, but they’d struggled to stabilise me as my blood pressure soared and my blood refused to clot properly. At one point, as my organs started to shut down, the doctors told my parents and Andrew to prepare for the worst. He even brought Bella in to say goodbye. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for her, a twelve-year-old child, facing the loss of her mother.