My Husband's Wife(109)

‘Quick,’ said Joe, soon after we’d finished. ‘Someone’s coming.’

I scrambled to my feet.

Only then, when I saw the disgusted look on the face of the approaching dog walker, did I feel the shame I should have felt before. Shame that might have saved me from this situation had I felt it sooner.

‘Go away,’ I said, my fingers trembling over my buttons. ‘Go away and never come back.’

Then I ran. Ran across the Heath, aware that I must have looked a mess. Ran down pavements and into the Tube, pressing myself against other sweaty bodies, conscious that I was smelling of ‘wrong’. Desperate to get back home for a shower. A long, hot shower to wash Joe Thomas away.

‘We must celebrate!’ Ed said when I got in. ‘Open a bottle.’ His face tightened. ‘Then we can have that talk you’ve been promising.’

The very sight of my husband’s face had filled me with such guilt that I insisted on going out for that bottle, just to get away.

Then there was the argument with Tony and Francesca outside in the corridor. That’s why I was so hard on him. Of course I felt sorry for Tony’s poor wife. But I lashed out at Tony because I recognized my own frailties in him. I despised him just as I despised myself.

The following night when I couldn’t put off that talk with Ed any more, I sat in the bathroom and tried to decide whether to leave him or not.

If I opened on a page with an odd number, I’d leave.

If it was even, I’d stay.

Page seventy-three.

Odd.

The page showed a picture of a happy family sitting round the table. The picture and the print swam before my eyes. Sunday suppers. Normal life. The kind that my parents and I should have had. The kind that Ed and I could still have if we stopped lying.

I don’t have to take the odd number fate has given me. Just as Daniel often rejected the heads. ‘You know deep down what you want, before the coin comes down,’ he used to say. ‘That’s why it’s such a great way to make a decision.’

And I knew, deep down, that despite Ed’s behaviour and mine, I still loved my husband. Joe had been lust. I shouldn’t have let myself go so far. Ed was my chance to turn my life around.

Yet sometimes you have to do something wrong before you can make things right.

That’s what I had to do now, today, just in case Joe’s tiny seed was already growing inside me.

So I came out of that bathroom and took Ed’s hand, leading him to our bed.

The following month I found I was pregnant. With a child that might belong to either man.





52


Carla


‘Carla? Can you hear me?’

It only seemed like a few minutes since someone in the ambulance had asked her the same question. But this was a different voice. This was Ed’s.

Carla’s first thought was that he had discovered the note with the spidery writing. She had put it in her bag, hadn’t she? But he might have gone through it. Ed had done that before on the pretext of ‘looking for change’.

‘It’s all right, Carla. I’m here now. And we’ve got a beautiful baby girl.’

A girl? Please no. If she had a girl it meant she might make the same mistakes that she and Mamma had. It would never end.

‘She’s very tiny, Carla. Just a few pounds. But they say she should be completely fine.’

How was this possible? She couldn’t even remember giving birth. Ed was lying.

He’d done it before to Lily. So why not to her?

His face was coming into view. He was bending over her. Kissing her cheek. His touch made her skin crawl. ‘You gave us all a terrible fright, darling.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ she managed to say.

There was an edge to his voice. ‘I could have lost you both.’

‘What happened?’ she murmured.

‘Baby decided to come early.’ This voice was different. Carla tried to turn round to see where it was coming from, but everything hurt. ‘Just as well for us that she did. Turned out you had a low-lying placenta, dear, so we had to give you an emergency Caesarean. Caused quite a stir, you did! Would you like to see your baby, now?’

What baby? Carla couldn’t see one. She couldn’t hear one either. She knew it. Something had gone horribly wrong.

‘Intensive Care is just round the corner, dear.’ A nurse in green uniform came into focus now. ‘Legs still a bit wobbly, are they? Let’s ease you into this wheelchair, shall we? That’s the way.’

‘Is it healthy?’ asked Carla faintly.

‘She,’ said Ed firmly, ‘is a fighter.’ But she saw the look he gave the nurse. It spelled fear.

‘Here we are, dear.’

That was a baby? Carla stared at the incubator. A little rat lay inside. Its skin was so pale and translucent that it reminded her of a dead baby bird she had once found outside the old flat when they had lived near Lily and Ed. (‘Leave it alone,’ Mamma had squealed, before walking her briskly on to the bus stop.)

This ‘thing’ was not much bigger than the width of Ed’s hand. Wires were sprouting out of it. Its eyes were closed. A mask was covering the rest of its face, if that’s what you could call it.

‘She’s on oxygen at the moment, dear,’ said the nurse gently. ‘Hopefully she’ll be able to breathe for herself in the next few weeks.’