The Other Woman(100)

He pushed me onto my back and sat astride me, pinning me to the ground. ‘But that’s okay, because now I know you’ve been screwing around too.’

He’d reminded himself why he was so mad, and he bore down on me, putting his hands around my throat.

My eyes searched his, trying to find a way back from this madness, looking for a sliver of light to make this all stop. But they were as black as night, his pupils so dilated that they almost filled the colour around them. I tried to get my fingers between his and the skin on my neck, but his grip was too tight. He wasn’t squeezing yet, he was just enjoying the fear it provoked.

‘I didn’t, we’ve never . . .’ His grip around my throat was getting tighter with every word I uttered. I felt like I was going to another place, somewhere other than here, but in the distance, I could hear a cry, faint at first, then growing louder. I snapped my eyes open at the realization that it was Poppy, and Adam, stopped by the same sound, started to lift himself off me.

‘No!’ I screamed, making a grab for him, pulling on his hair, his shirt collar, anything I could get traction on. He hit my hand away, but as he went to stand up, I launched myself at him with all my strength. I couldn’t let him near Poppy. I hung onto his back, clawing and scratching at any part of him. I reached around to his face, my thumbs blindly searching for his eyes, all the time his bulk was trying to shake me free, but I clung on. I would not let him near my little girl.

He reared up and smashed me into the architrave of the living-room door as he went towards Poppy’s room. ‘No!’ I wailed again. I pulled him back with all my might and he lost his footing, stumbling on the landing, with me underneath him. He got to his feet as I manacled myself around his leg, trying to hold onto him, but I lost my grip. Poppy’s cry was getting ever louder or we were getting ever nearer, sending my senses into overdrive. I could hear her tears, could hear my screams, but there was something else, another noise I couldn’t decipher.

Blinded by blood and tears, I waited for Poppy’s cries to stop as her daddy picked her up. She wasn’t to know that the man comforting her was as far away from a father as anyone could possibly be.

‘It’s over,’ said a voice. A woman’s voice.

My brain banged against my skull, as I willed myself to make sense of what was going on. I looked up, through the slit of an eye that was fast closing up, and saw a figure standing in the doorway of Poppy’s room. I dragged myself up to a sitting position and forced myself to focus. I saw my baby first, nestled in the arms of this unknown entity, her little body being gently rocked back and forth. A fear that was almost tangible shot through me as I took in the face of the person holding her. Pammie.

I couldn’t make sense of it. Were they in this together? Is this what they had been plotting all along?

‘Give me my baby!’ I scrabbled to get up, but Adam, standing between us, pushed me back down.

‘It’s over,’ Pammie repeated, her voice shaking.

‘Give her to me,’ I cried out again, desperate to feel her in my arms. My mind fast-forwarded to see Pammie running down the stairs and out into the street with my baby. To where, I didn’t know. My heart felt like it had stopped beating – a dead weight in my chest.

‘Please,’ I begged, holding my hands out towards her.

‘Mum,’ said Adam, his tone suddenly calm. ‘Give her to me.’

‘I know what you did,’ she said. ‘I saw you.’

‘Mum, don’t be stupid,’ he said, as if warning her. ‘Give Poppy to me.’

The front door banged again. ‘Mum, Emily . . . the police are on their way,’ called out James, breathlessly, as he came up the stairs to the landing. He took one look at me through the banisters and said, ‘Jesus.’

The four of us just froze, as if holding our positions, weighing each other up. Pammie was the first to speak, but when she did, it was the last thing I expected to hear.

‘Emily, come and take Poppy,’ she said. I looked from her to James, and then up at Adam, who still loomed above me. I crawled on my hands and knees towards Pammie and, once I was sitting up against the wall beside her, she gently handed my baby to me. I held her to me and breathed her in.

‘I saw you, Adam,’ Pammie said. ‘And you saw me. It’s over.’

‘What the hell is going on?’ said James.

‘I was at the house that night,’ she said to Adam. ‘When Rebecca died.’

Pammie’s shoulders shook as she gave in to her tears. ‘I heard you goad her as she struggled for breath . . . I watched you deny her the inhaler.’

I gasped, as James uttered, ‘What?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Adam defiantly. His shoulders back and jaw set.

‘Adam, I was there. She begged you to help her, and you could have. You had her life in your hands. All you had to do was give her the inhaler. But you just stood over her, watching her die. How could you do that?’

‘You’re crazy,’ Adam sneered, although I saw there was a panic in his eyes.

‘And when you disappeared and took yourself back to the train station to start your walk home again, I was left there, desperately trying to save her life.’ Her voice broke as she sobbed. ‘I will never forgive myself for not being able to.’