The Love of My Life(83)

Charlie checks his phone. He’s a lot more concerned about this paracetamol than his father.

‘But it means we at least know she is there. We’re going to drive up tomorrow morning, after I finish work.’

‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Leo says, politely. I can see him wondering why they’ve turned up here in the middle of the night to share this with us, but he doesn’t ask.

‘Look,’ Charlie says. ‘The reason we’re here is that – er . . .’ He takes a breath. ‘Well, the first thing to say is that I know why Mum disappeared.’

I look up, surprised, but not shocked. I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me earlier.

‘Dad didn’t know. I should have told him before, but I promised Mum I’d . . .’

Jeremy rubs Charlie’s arm.

‘I promised Mum I’d keep it to myself. But I’m worried now. Dad’s probably right that the paracetamol thing is harmless, but – I don’t like it.’

He stops talking for a minute, takes another breath.

Jeremy removes the absurd baseball cap and puts it on his knee. ‘What Charlie’s about to share with you is very difficult.’ He leans back on our sofa, into the light of Leo’s reading lamp. He looks dreadful. ‘Please don’t be angry that he didn’t tell you earlier. He’s been put in a very unfair position.’

Charlie makes as if to speak, then stops again. He looks at his dad, who gives him an encouraging nod, and I have a flash of relief – of gratitude – for the trust and love that clearly exists between my son and his adoptive father.

After a pause, Charlie reaches down for his rucksack. He takes a small pile of notebooks out of his bag, each a different size. All are well-thumbed – diaries, I think, with a spark of admiration. I’ve often thought journalling was something that would have been good for me, but in nearly forty years have failed even to buy a notebook for the purpose.

Then: ‘These are my mother’s journals,’ Charlie says. ‘I’ve been reading them over the last few weeks.’

‘To work out where she is?’

A complicated look crosses Charlie’s face. ‘Sort of.’ He rearranges the diaries. ‘I actually started looking at them before she disappeared. A big part of the reason she took off was that she found out I’d read them.’

‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Jeremy says, quietly.

A terrible smell creeps across the room. John, the culprit, watches us all, nose between his paws.

Charlie is too polite to say anything, but Jeremy wrinkles his face in disgust. ‘I only started reading the diaries because I was so worried about her,’ Charlie’s saying. ‘I wanted to work out how I could help her.’

Then he looks at his hands, and says, ‘I know about the smothering.’

I try to maintain eye contact, but it’s too hard, the shame’s too searing, and I have to look away.

‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am, Charlie,’ I say, after an age. ‘What an awful, awful thing to have read.’

Charlie doesn’t respond. He just looks down at the diaries again, needlessly tidying and re-stacking.

I add, ‘I hope you know that I was dangerously ill. If I hadn’t have gone to that unit they’d have taken me there under section.’

‘I know about postpartum psychosis. I read about it a few years back, when I found out you’d been ill. Mum and Dad said my birth mother had “briefly had thoughts” about harming me. They didn’t tell me anything actually happened.’

My skin crawls. What can I say? Sorry? It doesn’t even begin to cover it. The memory of that pillow, pressing down onto his smiling face. Years of guilt like an acid burn. The self-loathing, like a daily uniform.

The number of times I’ve had to run to Ruby’s room, in case karma is waiting for me in the corner of my younger child’s bedroom, and she’s somehow suffocated or stopped breathing.

‘If it helps, I’ve never come to terms with it,’ I tell him. ‘No matter how much therapy I’ve had, courses I’ve been on, groups I’ve joined, it never goes away.’

Charlie rests his forehead on his hands. John does another fart and Jeremy, without comment, gets up to let him out into the garden.

‘The smothering is why I came tonight,’ Charlie says, when his father returns.

Silence.

Then: ‘You didn’t do it,’ he says. ‘Mum made it up.’

After a second, I close my eyes. Of course Charlie wouldn’t want to believe that of me.

‘I’m afraid she didn’t make it up,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry, Charlie – I don’t want to believe it either, but it happened. I remember it. Every awful moment.’

He doesn’t respond.

‘I replay it in my head every day, and it’s a living hell. But it’s real, it happened, and I can’t allow you to tell yourself it didn’t.’

He watches me, almost sadly, and then shakes his head. ‘No. Mum made it up. It’s all here, in her diaries.’

I glance down at the diaries, the cracked spines, dog-eared corners. The top one bears a drink ring and tight, circular pen doodles. Charlie pulls out the third book down, and flicks through to a page near the end. It falls open naturally, as if it has been read many times. He hands it to me.