Behind Her Eyes(61)

‘You’d better get off, shouldn’t you?’ I say. ‘Lisa must be knackered in the car.’ Their delayed Eurostar has meant it’s nearly midnight. They should have been home by nine.

‘Yeah, she is.’ He looks momentarily awkward, and then adds, ‘Thanks for this, Louise. I know it’s not easy.’

‘It’s fine, honestly,’ I say, waving him away, ‘I’m happy for you. Really.’ I can’t decide if that’s a lie or not, and I find that it’s part-lie, part-truth. It’s complicated. I do want him to leave though. After the intensity of the past few weeks and days I don’t really have small talk in me, and this invading return of normality feels surreal.

When he’s gone, I get Adam into his pyjamas and squeeze him tightly, relishing the gorgeous smell of him while he sleepily mumbles tales of his time away, most of which I’ve heard on the phone. I don’t mind. I feel as if I could listen to his chatter all night. I put a big plastic cup of water by his bed and we talk for a little while as he gets drowsier and drowsier.

‘I missed you, Mummy,’ he says. ‘I’m glad I’m home.’

My heart melts then. I do have a life of my own. It might all be wrapped up in the package of this little boy, but I love him with all my heart, and that love is pure and clean and perfect.

‘I missed you too,’ I say. Those words don’t cover how I feel. ‘Let’s go up to Highgate Woods tomorrow if the weather’s nice. Get some ice creams. Have some pretend adventures. Would you like that?’

He smiles and nods, but he’s drifting off to his own world of sleep. I kiss him goodnight and watch him for a moment or two longer before turning the light out and leaving him.

I feel utterly exhausted. Having Adam back has calmed me, and now there’s just tiredness weighing me down. I pour a glass of the rich red wine Ian brought and it eases the final dregs of my tension until I can’t stop yawning. I try to let Adele and David float away. Adele has a phone. If she’s in any real trouble she can call. Unless, of course, she’s too smashed off her face on whatever concoction of pills David has given her. But there’s nothing I can really do. I’ve thought about calling Dr Sykes, but who’s he going to believe? And I’m pretty sure that Adele would lie to protect David – and herself. I can’t understand why she still loves him, which she clearly does, when it seems pretty obvious to me that he’s only there for her money. How much is she worth? How much has he spent? Maybe they’ve been together so long Adele is mistaking dependency for love.

It stings too, that Adele said David had a thing with someone where they used to live. So much for all his I don’t do this angst. It hurts, and I keep replaying how he was that awful night, so cold in what he said. A stranger. The other side to him, like Adele said.

I let out a long sigh as if I can somehow expel them both from me. Adam is home now. I have to focus on him. Him, and trying to get another job. Whatever Dr Sykes says, I can’t go back to the clinic. Even if David left, the place is too full of him now – too full of all this – for me ever to want to work there any more. It wouldn’t be the same. I do a half-hearted job search on the net, but there’s nothing suitable for me, and it makes me more miserable. Thank God I’ve got some savings in the bank to give me a few months’ breathing space, but they won’t last for ever, and then I’ll be back on Ian’s charity. I want to curl up in a ball until it’s all gone away. Instead, I drain the glass and then head to bed. Adam’s back and there’ll be no more lie-ins for me.

I fall asleep quickly. These days the night terrors are barely there, I’m in for a second or two, check my fingers, and then the Wendy door appears and I’m gone. As has become habit, I’m in the garden by the pond, and Adam is there with me, and although we’re trying to have fun it’s a grey, drizzly day, as if, even in the dream I’m controlling, my emotional mood has a say. I know the dream is all only a fantasy, and the fantasy isn’t living up to much with just the two of us here. David is not barbecuing tonight. I don’t want him here. Not with his if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from both of us so clear in my head.

I’m by the pond, but Adam has got distracted from the abundance of tadpoles and fish by the toy cars and trucks that are strewn over the lawn, and he barely looks up. I know that I’m putting him there – if I want Adam by the pond with me fishing for treasure then I only have to will it – but this also isn’t the real Adam, merely an imaginary creation of him, and tonight that’s not enough.

The real Adam is fast asleep in his own bed, tucked up under his duvet and cuddling Paddington. I think of him, sleeping so close to me, and picturing him there back in his room makes my heart glow, and I want to see him and hug him until he can barely breathe. I feel it with a mother’s ferocity, and then, suddenly, there it is again.

The second door.

It’s glowing under the pond’s surface like before, but this time it moves, rising up to stand vertically, and although the edges are still shimmering mercurial silver, the door itself is made of water. I stay still and it comes quickly towards me, and for a second I think I can see tadpoles and goldfish swimming on the surface, and then I’m touching the liquid warmth and passing through it and then I’m—

—standing by Adam’s bed. I feel momentarily dizzy with the change, but then the world settles. I’m in his bedroom. I can hear him breathing, slow and steady, the breathing of the very old or the deeply sleeping. One arm is over his face, and I think about moving it but don’t want to disturb him. His duvet is half kicked off, and at some point he must have knocked his water over and it’s spilled all over poor Paddington, who’s fallen out of bed. I’m glad it’s a dream. Adam would hate that Paddington needs drying out. He won’t even let me put him in the washing machine. I bend over to pick the bear up, but my hand can’t grasp it. More than that, I can’t see my hands. I look at where they should be. I have no hands. There’s nothing there. Confused, I try three times to touch the bear with my invisible fingers, but with each attempt I have the sensation of passing right through the soft, wet fur, as if I’m not there at all, as if I’m a ghost, and then I’m horribly unsettled and I feel an enormous tug from behind as I’m yanked backwards, and for a brief moment I’m terribly afraid and then—