The Secrets She Keeps Page 3

  “You’re lucky with that one,” my mother says.

  “Pardon?”

  “Jack.”

  I smile and nod, still looking into the garden, where flames are leaping from the barbecue.

  “I have no idea what I’m going to do with him,” says my mother, referring to Daddy’s retirement.

  “He has plans.”

  “Golf and gardening? He’ll be bored silly within a month.”

  “You could always travel.”

  “He keeps wanting to go back to places we’ve been before. They’re like pilgrimages.”

  She reminds me of when they went back to the hotel in Greece where they spent their honeymoon. They were woken at three in the morning by a Russian waving money around and demanding sex.

  “The place had become a brothel.”

  “Sounds like an adventure,” I say.

  “I’m too old for that kind of adventure.”

  When the meat is suitably cremated we sit down to eat. Lachlan and Lucy have their own little table, but I finish up sitting with them, coaxing food into Lucy and stopping Lachlan from drowning his sausage in ketchup.

  There are toasts and speeches. Daddy gets maudlin and thick-voiced when he talks about how much his family means to him. Jack keeps making wisecracks, but it’s not the time or the place.

  At ten o’clock we each carry a sleeping child to the car and make our farewells. I drive. Jack dozes. I wake him at home and we repeat the kid shuffle, carrying them to their beds. I’m exhausted and it’s not even eleven.

  Jack wants a nightcap.

  “Haven’t you had enough?” I say, wanting to reclaim the words as soon as they come out.

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, I heard you.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “Let’s not fight. I’m tired.”

  “You’re always tired.”

  Too tired for sex is what he means.

  “I wanted to have sex all week, but you weren’t interested,” I counter, which technically isn’t true.

  “Can you blame me?” asks Jack.

  “What does that mean?”

  He doesn’t answer, but I know he’s saying that he doesn’t find me attractive right now and that he didn’t want another baby. Two is enough—a boy and a girl—all bases covered.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” I say. “It was an accident.”

  “And you decided to keep it.”

  “We agreed.”

  “No, you decided.”

  “Really? Is that what you tell your mates at the pub—that you’re so pussy-whipped that I bully you into having children?”

  Jack’s fist tightens on his glass and his eyes shut, as though he’s counting to ten. He takes his drink into the garden and lights a cigarette from the packet he keeps on a high shelf beside the kitchen clock. He knows I hate him smoking. He also knows I won’t complain.

  Our fights are like this. We snipe rather than throw plates. We go for those tender spots, the weaknesses and embarrassments that we have each learned how to find in the course of a marriage.

  Once we made a point of never going to sleep angry at each other. I don’t know when that changed. I keep telling myself that everything will be fine when the baby is born. I’ll have more energy. His doubts will disappear. We’ll be happy again.

  AGATHA

  * * *

  Sometimes I feel as though my past ticks inside me like a phantom clock telling me what dates must be acknowledged and what sins need to be atoned for. Today is such a date—the 1st of November—an anniversary of sorts, which is why I’m traveling north under a bleak gray sky on a National Express coach that hugs the inner lane of the motorway.

  Rolling my forehead against the glass, I watch cars and trucks overtake us, their wheels spitting water and wipers swaying back and forth. The rain seems particularly apt. My childhood memories do not involve endless summers, long twilights, and crickets chirruping in the grass. The Leeds of my youth was eternally gray, cold, and drizzling.

  My family home is gone, bulldozed to make way for a bulk-goods warehouse. My mother bought again—a small terrace not far from our old house—using money my stepfather left her. He died on a golf course, having sliced his drive into a pond—a heart attack. Who knew he had one? My mother rang to tell me the news, asking if I would come to the funeral, but I told her I’d rather gloat from a distance.

  I won’t be seeing my mother today. She’s “wintering in Spain” as she likes to call it, which means roasting like a chicken beside a swimming pool in Marbella, drinking sangria, and being rude about the locals. She’s not rich, simply racist.

  From Leeds coach station I head to the nearest florist and have her make three small crowns of baby’s breath and greenery. She wraps them in tissue paper and puts them in a polished paper box that I tuck into my shoulder bag. Afterwards, I buy myself a sandwich and a drink before catching a minicab along the A65 as far as Kirkstall, where it crosses the River Aire. The minicab drops me near Broadlea Hill, where I climb over a stile and follow a muddy path through the forest.

  I can name most of the trees and shrubs, as well as the birds, thanks to Nicky, my ex-husband. He thought I wasn’t listening when he pointed things out to me, but I loved listening to his stories and marveling at how much he knew.

  I met Nicky a month after my thirtieth birthday—just when I thought time was running out to meet Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong, or any old Mister. Most of my friends were married or engaged or in long-term relationships by then. Some were pregnant for the second or third time, wanting big families or more welfare or not planning at all.

  Living in London, I worked for a temp agency doing short-term secretarial placements, mainly for women on maternity leave. I had a bedsit in Camden above a kebab shop that served up fights and doner kebabs when the pubs shut their doors at night.

  It was Halloween. Gangs of witches, goblins, and ghosts knocking on my door, holding out sacks and baskets. Having made another donation to British dentistry, I found myself standing barefoot in the kitchen, feeling like a container of milk that had been left for too long in the fridge.

  My laptop was open on the kitchen table. On either side were piles of typewritten pages. For three months I’d been transcribing tapes for a writer called Nicholas David Fyfle, who penned biographies of famous soldiers and war histories. He would courier me tapes and I would send back the transcripts. Our only other contact came via the quirky notes he wrote in the margins if he wanted me to retype certain sections.

  I wondered if he was flirting with me. I wondered what he looked like. I pictured a quiet, tortured artist creating beautiful prose in his garret, or a wild-haired, hard-drinking war correspondent living life on the edge. I knew him only from his notes and his voice on the tapes, which sounded gentle and kind, with a slight stutter at certain syllables and a nervous laugh when he lost his place.

  I made a decision. Instead of posting the transcripts, I delivered them by hand, knocking on the door of his house in Highgate. Nicky looked surprised, but also pleased. He invited me inside and made tea. He wasn’t as handsome as I’d hoped, but he had a nice enough face and a skinny body that seemed to be growing into his clothes.

  I asked him about his books. He showed me his library. “Do you read?”

  “I used to read a lot when I was little,” I said. “Nowadays I struggle to choose.”

  “What sort of stories do you like?”

  “I like happy endings.”

  “We all like those,” he said with a laugh.

  I suggested I transcribe the tapes at his house to save on the cost of couriers and speed up the process. I would arrive every day at 9 a.m. and work in his dining room, breaking occasionally to make us tea or microwave something to eat. It took weeks of flirting before Nicky kissed me. He was a virgin, I think. Tender and considerate, attentive, but not skillful. I wanted him to moan or cry out when we made love, but he was always silent.

  Around his friends he acted like a typical lad, enjoying a pint and a punt on the horses, but with me he was different. He took me on long walks in the countryside, investigating ruined castles and spotting woodland birds. Nicky proposed to me on one of our “expeditions” and I said yes.

  “When am I going to meet your parents?” he asked.

  “You’re not.”

  “But they’ll come to the wedding, won’t they?”

  “No.”

  “They’re your parents.”

  “I don’t care. We have plenty of other guests.”

  Even after we were married, Nicky kept trying to negotiate a reconciliation. “You can’t just stop talking to them,” he said. But I could and I did. It was like any relationship—if both parties cease to make an effort it will wither and die.

  The ground slopes gently away from me as I follow a riding path dotted with puddles. Periodically I look over my shoulder. Nobody is following. My pregnancy is hidden beneath an overcoat, but I can feel the weight of the baby in my hip joints and the pressure in my pelvis. Clumsily, I climb an embankment, using saplings as handholds. Twigs and dead leaves snap and crumble beneath my boots. I come to a ditch and jump across with all the grace of a leaping hippo.

  The sun has steadily strengthened and I’m warmer now, sweating beneath the coat. Following a zigzagging track, I reach a clump of trees next to the ruins of a farmhouse. I hear water falling into a deep pond at the base of a weir that is farther down the slope.

  Kneeling on the damp earth, I clear away vines and weeds, pulling out clumps of vegetation and clods of earth. Slowly, I reveal three small pyramids of stones, spaced at equal intervals around the clearing. When I’m satisfied, I take off my coat and lay it on the ground as a makeshift picnic blanket, leaning my back against the crumbling wall of the farmhouse.

  I found this place long before I met Nicky. I must have been eleven or twelve when I rode my bicycle along the towpath past Kirkstall Abbey and the forge towards Horsforth. Pedaling in my cotton dress and sandals, I remember waving at the canal boats being maneuvered through the locks. As I turned a corner I glimpsed the remains of a chimney just visible through the trees. Fighting my way through brambles and vines, I found the ruined farmhouse, which felt almost enchanted, like a fairy-tale castle that had been put to sleep a thousand years ago.

  Much later I brought Nicky here and he fell in love with it too. I said we should buy the land and rebuild the house; he could write and we’d have lots of children. Nicky laughed and told me to hold my horses, but I was already trying to get pregnant.

  Unprotected sex was like buying a scratch-lotto card every twenty-eight days, waiting to win a prize. I won nothing. We visited doctors and fertility clinics and alternative healers. I tried hormone injections, vitamins, drugs, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, Chinese herbs, and special diets. IVF was the obvious step. We tried four times, using up our savings, and each failure became another heartbreak. A marriage of hope had turned to desperation.

  Nicky didn’t want to try again, but did it for me. On our last throw of the dice one embryo clung to my womb like a limpet on a rocky shore. Nicky called it our “miracle baby.” I worried every day because I didn’t believe in miracles.

  Weeks passed. Months. I grew bigger. We dared to choose names (Chloe for a girl and Jacob for a boy). I was thirty-two weeks when I stopped feeling the baby moving. I went straight to the hospital. One of the midwives hooked me up to a machine and couldn’t find a heartbeat. She said it was probably just in a weird spot, but I knew something was wrong. A doctor came. He did another ultrasound and couldn’t find any blood flow or heartbeat.

  I had a dead baby inside me, he said. Not a life. A corpse.

  Nicky and I cried for the longest time, grieving together. Later that day they induced the birth. I went through the pain and the pushing, but there were no baby cries, no joy. Handed a bundle, I stared into the eyes of a still-warm baby girl who didn’t live long enough to take a breath or grow into her name.

  This is where we brought her ashes, Nicky and I, burying Chloe beside the crumbling farmhouse, above the weir, our special place. We promised to come back here every year on Chloe’s birthday—which is today—but Nicky could never bring himself to visit. He told me we had to “move forward,” which is a term that I’ve never understood. The planet turns. Time passes. We move forward even when we’re standing still.

  Our marriage didn’t survive the fallout. Within a year we had separated—my fault, not his. My love for a child will be greater than my love for an adult because it is a singular love that isn’t based on physical attraction, or shared experiences, or the pleasures of intimacy, or time together. It is unconditional, immeasurable, unshakeable.

  The divorce was simple and clean. Five years of marriage ended with the stroke of a pen. Nicky moved away from London. Last I heard, he was living with a schoolteacher in Newcastle, a divorcée with two teenage boys—an instant family, just add water and stir.

  Taking out the roast beef sandwich and soft drink, I open the plastic triangle and eat slowly, collecting the crumbs in my cupped hand. A robin hops between the spindly branches of a shrub and perches on the top of Chloe’s cairn, pivoting from side to side. I toss the crumbs onto the grass. The robin jumps down and pecks at my offering, occasionally cocking his head to look at me.

  Today is Chloe’s birthday, but I mourn all of my babies—the ones I’ve lost and the ones I couldn’t save. I mourn them because somebody must take responsibility.

  Before I leave the clearing, I unzip my backpack and take out the small floral crowns, trying not to crush the petals, and place one on each of the cairns, saying their names.

  “I am having another baby,” I tell them, “but that doesn’t mean I will love you less.”

  MEGHAN

  * * *

  I’ve been painting the baby’s room and putting stencils on the walls. I’m not very adventurous when it comes to home decorating. I blame my parents, who didn’t believe in allowing children freedom of expression. Trees had to be green and roses red.

  I’m also trying to keep one eye on Lachlan, who has already put handprints on the door and a paintbrush in the wrong tin. It’s all good material for my blog, I think as I clean his hands in the laundry-room sink.

  Lachlan isn’t exactly thrilled about me having another baby. It’s not about sibling rivalry or being usurped as the youngest. He wants someone his own age to play with—either that or a puppy.

  “Why can’t the baby be four, like me?”

  “Because he wouldn’t fit inside my tummy,” I explain.

  “Can’t you shrink him?”

  “Not really.”

  “You could grow bigger.”

  “I think Mummy is big enough.”

  “Daddy says you’re fat.”

  “He’s only teasing.” The arsehole!

  Speaking of Jack, he phoned earlier, saying that he’d be home tonight instead of taking the train to Manchester. He sounded in a good mood. For months he’s been fleshing out ideas for a new TV show where big-name stars discuss the hot-button issues in sports. Jack wants to be the anchor. He’s written a pitch but is waiting for the right time to approach the “powers that be.”

  “Make sure you stay up,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I have news.”

  I decide to make us something nice for dinner—steak, new potatoes, and an endive salad. Typical French. I’ll even open a bottle of red wine and let it breathe. I’ve been rather lazy in the kitchen since I fell pregnant. I couldn’t ever think of food for the first trimester.

  I go upstairs and shower, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Turning side-on, I examine my butt and boobs, ignoring the stretch marks. Leaning toward the mirror, I notice a strange curly hair corkscrewing out of my left temple. I look more closely.

  Oh my God, I have a gray hair! I take a pair of tweezers and pull out the alien strand, examining it, hoping it might be paint. No, it’s definitely gray. Another indignity. I pen a blog piece.

  I found a gray hair today and freaked out a little. This particular hair was devoid of color and wiry near the tip. I’ve always been kind of smug about the fact that I didn’t have any silver (yet) when others I know have been plucking and dyeing since they were twenty-one.

  Now the ravages of time are beginning to show. What next? Wrinkles? Varicose veins? Menopause? I refuse to panic. I have friends my age who are living in complete denial, refusing to contemplate turning forty, telling everyone, “Nothing to see here! Move along!”

  I used to laugh at them, but now I have a gray hair. I want to put it down to the stress of pregnancy, but according to Google there is no evidence that stress causes gray hair. Nor does trauma or spending too long in the sun. The good news is that I can pluck it out without fear of three more growing in its place. The bad news is that I now have roughly ten years before gray becomes my natural color.

  Yeah. Right. Over my dead body.

  When I’ve posted the piece, I begin reading some of the recent comments. Most of them are nice and supportive, but occasionally I get trolled by people who don’t like my “mindless babbling” or tell me to get off my “mummy high horse.” I’ve been called a skank, a whore, a whinger, and a slut. Worse still, I’m a bad mother for putting Lachlan into child care and I’m guilty of “lording it over” women who can’t have children and I’m personally responsible for global overpopulation because I’m having a third child.

  Last week someone wrote, “I love the sound you make when you shut the fuck up.” Another said, “Your husband must like waking up with fleas.” I delete the abusive comments, but I don’t touch the negative ones because apparently everybody is entitled to an opinion, even the ignorant and foul-mouthed.