Silent Child(40)

“It wasn’t that bad,” I pointed out. “They made out like I was a bad mother for being so young.” And I had hated them for it. But I never remembered them calling me anything derogatory like a slut. Was Jake making it up? Did he read more into the papers than what I remembered? I wasn’t sure.

“No, no, no, you’re remembering it all wrong. They made you into a little whore and it wasn’t right. You were a good girl at school. It wasn’t right.” Jake paced up and down the kitchen. Beads of sweat gathered just above his brow, even though it was a particularly chilly day. Why was he so warm? He’d already taken his boots and coat off.

“Jake, have you been drinking?”

He spun to face me, wobbling slightly and clutching the top of the chair as he moved. “No.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I had one on the way home from school.”

I shook my head. “A few more than one, I think. Maybe you should go to bed and sleep it off. We’ll talk about all this in the morning.”

But Jake wasn’t listening anymore. He was pulling old bottles of whiskey from the kitchen cupboards. Most hadn’t even been opened. They were neglected Christmas presents, the kind you allowed to gather dust at the back of an old liquor cabinet.

“I never laid a finger on that girl. Not in that way, anyway. The newspapers, they twist things. They make them dirty. You know what I mean? I was congratulating her, that’s all.”

“Jake,” I said, with a warning in my voice. “I don’t think the whiskey is going to help anything, is it? Sit down and I’ll make you a coffee.”

“Not a chance. You’re the pregnant one. You sit down and I’ll do it.” He banged the cupboard door shut. “I’m the man of the house. I’m the one who helps his wife. Need to look after my pregnant wife, carrying my child.”

“You don’t sound well. You sound stressed out and drunk. Sit down, just for a minute. They you can give me a foot rub. How does that sound?” I tried to coax him into a chair, but just as I thought it had worked, he stood up again and began pacing the length of kitchen.

“I provide for you, don’t I? I had this kitchen built especially. I bought the house for you, you know, because I imagined what it would be like to live here and raise our kids. It was always for you.”

“I know, I know.” I put my head in my hands. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not now. My rock had cracked. He’d been busted open like an egg.

“We were so close. So fucking close. And then…”

“Don’t say it,” I begged. “Don’t tell me you resent my child. If you say it now, you can never unsay it.”

I raised my head and our eyes locked. He didn’t need to say the words because they were written all over his face. He was ashen, with clammy skin and a red flush working its way up from his shirt collar. His hands were clenched by his side. His eyes were wide and wild. When he breathed, spittle flew from his clenched teeth.

“You hate him. You’ve hated him since we first brought him home,” I said miserably, feeling a chill work its way up my arms and legs.

“Just shut up, I can’t think. I need to think.” He took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose, and commenced pacing again. “I need to think.”

“What do you need to think about?” I was on my feet, anger and frustration bubbling to the surface. He was supposed to be the man who had saved me. But here he was, with these secrets and badly hidden animosity towards my own son. Here he was, and I couldn’t stand the sight of him.

He spun to face me. “Don’t you remember that day?”

I lifted a hand to cut him off. “Of course I do. I don’t want to talk about it though.”

“There were two knives. One you had stuck through the painting, and the other was slitting your wrist. Remember that? Remember how I found you in your mother’s house? That was what you were before I saved you. I saved you. If it wasn’t for me you’d be dead. You wouldn’t even be with Aiden right now.”





20


My most shameful day had started with a glass of Pinot Grigio. Back then, I’d thought that if I drank wine, it wasn’t like being an alcoholic. Vodka or whiskey was the drink of choice for alcoholics, not wine. Not white wine. That was civilised. You don’t put a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in a brown paper bag and sit in the park.

I was at home on my own. My parents had been dead six months. I sat on the floor in the living room of Mum and Dad’s cottage with a smorgasbord of disgusting items littering the floor. Leftover cartoons of Chinese food that had barely been touched, crusted over with congealed grease along the rim. Bowls of cereal strewn across the carpet heavy with clotted milk. Half-eaten sandwiches attracting flies. I sat in the middle of the mess and I drank my wine. Who was I kidding? I knew what I was. I saw the mess and I knew that I was at rock bottom; despite the Pinot I’d bought from the Bishoptown newsagent with a pair of sunglasses over my smudged, shadowed eyes, I was an alcoholic. A depressed mess.

After draining the last of the wine, I wandered into Aiden’s room. It was untouched. Every now and then I’d come in and dust away the cobwebs. I’d sit on his bed, lift up Walnut and still smell the faintest scent of my son. But I hadn’t cleaned his room for a long time and there was a thick layer of dust along the windowsill. Worse still, a large, fat spider sat on top of his pillow. The sight of it was so wrong, so jarring, that I lunged forward, punching the pillow. The spider scuttled away before my fist connected, probably running under the bed. But I kept going. I punched the stuffing out of Aiden’s pillow, and then I threw back the duvet cover and threw the mattress to the side. A roar built up from my chest as I ran my arm along the window sill, knocking away his trophy from sports day—third in the egg-and-spoon race—and a framed photograph of when he’d met his favourite footballer.