A large bubble develops on one of the egg whites so I pop it with his mother’s spatula and it deflates and sinks and sizzles in the oil. The screams change. It’s a baby screaming now and the mother is quiet. My shoulders ease. Lenn’s just watched a baby being born and that one seems to have turned out all right.
‘Bleedin’ hell,’ he says.
I flip the eggs gently and slide them from the pan onto the plates, three for him and two for me. Ham. I take the chips from the oven and shake them and arrange them the way he likes and place both plates down on the table and pour lime squash for us both.
‘It’s all right,’ he says, plunging his knife into a runny yolk. ‘I knew it’d be nothin’ much. I can do it.’
You can do it?
‘But if something goes wrong,’ I say. ‘If there’s a complication.’
He chews his ham and egg and there’s a sliver of oil shining from his clean-shaven chin.
‘If it mucks up we’ll see to it then. Play it by ear.’
I eat and the baby kicks. A protest.
I thought of a good name for him or her the other day, a good strong name, but now I can’t remember it.
‘You don’t remember nothin’, do you?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Of early days, you don’t remember nothin’ what happened, do you?’
Being driven all the way here in the back of Frank Trussock’s van. Not being told anything. Not being allowed a glass of water. No idea where my sister had been taken. Seeing this endless featureless farmland for the first time. Seeing Lenn for the first time. Being handed over to him at the locked halfway gate like some package.
‘I do,’ I say.
‘You don’t. Where did I take you out on honeymoon?’
I look down at my dinner.
‘You remember it?’
I look at him.
‘Was Skeggie, you remember? Two nights. You loved it.’
‘Honeymoon?’
‘You don’t remember much from good old days, do you, that head of yours.’
‘Good old days?’
It’s not the drugs causing me to misremember. There weren’t any good old days, not with you, not ever, not one single good old day.
I remember the day he installed the cameras and the day he told me about his first wife. Up until that moment I assumed he’d had no other marriages. I remember hearing the phone ring for the first time. How startled I was.
He stands up and pushes his chair back, and the legs squeak on the floor.
I don’t like this. Because he’s not finished his dinner and he’s breaking his routines. He never does this.
I hear him unbolt the door to the half-cellar, the door immediately facing his front door. I’ve never been down there because that was a rule from day one. Also, because it smells awful, or it did the first year I was here, rotten meat and old bins, decay, and because it’s half-height, you can’t stand up straight, not even close, and because there are no stairs leading down, just a steep ladder. He unbolts the upper bolt and then he unbolts the lower bolt. He switches the light on down there. I can see a dim glow between my feet from between the floorboards. He comes back up.
‘Found it.’
He hands me a piece of cardboard. I take it from him and flip it over and it’s a bent cardboard frame with a photo in the centre. Me and him. Mould spores on the edges of the frame. Me in a white wedding dress and a veil. Spots of damp on the image. I’m smiling. The remnants of a cobweb on the cardboard. Him in a shirt and tie. He’s not smiling.
‘Remember it now, do you?’
I say nothing.
What is this?
‘I’ll find honeymoon snaps one day and all, some goodens of you on Skeggie beach. Right windy it was. Gusty.’
I start to ask a question and then swallow the word.
‘We gonna be a family after this, Jane. Three of us here in me mother’s old cottage. I ain’t gonna let nothing bad happen to youngen when he comes out, you don’t need to worry yourself on that front.’
‘Can I see a doctor?’
He takes the photo back from me.
‘We’ll see, that’s all I’m saying. Watched a video just now, a gooden. I think I can do it, bring youngen out of you with no bother. You’re strong, you’ll be fine. Me mother was all right here with nobody about. I’ll give you full pill when it starts to come out, full pain pill if you need it.’
This is the most we’ve spoken in years. I point to the photo.
‘Are you saying that I wanted to marry you?’
He points to my smiling face on the photo.
‘I want to be with my sister when the baby comes, Lenn,’ I say. ‘I want to be with her.’
‘Wait there.’
He goes back down to the half-cellar and I can sense his bulk moving underneath me. I can hear him rummage, he must be bent double, and I can see the light from down there through the gaps in the rough timber floorboards. He comes back up.
‘Found it.’
He hands me a wedding veil. It’s grey and the edges have been gnawed at by mice, but it’s lace and it’s beautiful and I can’t recall ever seeing it before apart from ten minutes ago in that photograph.
I look up at the camera in the corner of the room.
He follows my gaze.
‘Filming’s for your own good, see, and it’ll be safer having the cameras now with youngen coming. What with your bad leg, needed to see you were all right, you weren’t having no bother. Having cameras is same as that YouTube you showed me on computer, same thing.’
‘Lenn, I want to be with Kim-Ly for the birth. I’ll come back, I promise you. Can you let me be with her just for the birth?’
‘Ain’t nothing she can do for you that I can’t.’
Tears prickle somewhere in my eyes but nothing comes to the surface. I lost all hope years ago and this is just fresh misery.
‘I’ll put these back in cellar and go feed pigs, why don’t you run yourself a good full bath while stove’s hot?’
He leaves. As I collect the plates and glasses and cutlery from the table I see lights up the track. There’s a small car up by the locked halfway gate. I set down the plates and stagger to the front door. Can’t fall now, not like this, not with the bump so big, can’t hurt it.
There’s a figure walking towards the house.
Lenn’s gone to the barn, he’s feeding the pigs. He’ll be gone a while, he might not have seen the car.
It’s her, the woman with the red hair and horsey jodhpur trousers. What was her name?
I step to the door so the camera can’t see me, but I keep my right foot out of sight.
‘Hope you don’t mind me dropping in again,’ she says. ‘You’re not in the middle of dinner or anything are you?’
I shake my head and I want to tell her everything.
‘Look at you,’ she says, a broad smile on her lips, new shade of lipstick, dark pink, she’s pointing to my belly. ‘Congratulations, Jane. How many months are you?’
My name is not Jane.
‘About seven,’ I say.
Her smile broadens and her eyes crinkle at the corners.
‘Do you know the sex?’
She’s not nosey, just naturally friendly, her face says she’s delighted for me, she sees me as some sort of friend, some sort of neighbour.