The Soulmate(43)

‘I’m sorry,’ Gabe says. ‘I had things on my mind.’

Like trying not to be imprisoned because of you.

And there it is: the reason I can never yell at him again.

Gabe’s gaze flickers to the bathroom doorway. I turn around. Two naked girls stand there, eyes wide. Their parents fighting is something new to them. They appear more curious than frightened.

‘Bath time!’ I say, in a ridiculously cheerful voice. The stress of the situation has sent me mad.

Asha’s gaze travels to the bath and she shakes her head. ‘More water! And bubbles!’ Then she tears off back down the hallway with Freya at her heels.

Gabe picks up the bubble bath and pours it in, turning the bath a sickly pink colour. He turns the tap back on.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says again.

I close the lid of the toilet and sit on it. My anger dissipates as fast as it came on. ‘I don’t care about the vaccinations.’

‘I know.’

My shoulders slump and I hold a palm against my forehead. ‘If Max has been asking around about us, it means he knows you were the one with Amanda before she died. Which means it’s only a matter of time until –’

The doorbell rings. The girls squeal. I hear the thunder of feet as they streak to the door.

Gabe turns off the tap again. ‘Wait!’ he and I shout in unison. We grab a towel each and race after them.

‘Mummy!’ Asha calls, as Gabe and I arrive in the hallway. The front door is wide open and Detective Tamil is standing there. ‘The police are here!’





40


PIPPA

THEN



I‘d just got out of the shower when I heard the thump. It sounded distinctly like a body hitting floorboards.

It was early, just after 6 am. Asha had been with us nearly a week. It hadn’t been a terrible adjustment, considering. Asha had not been overly distressed. She hardly ever cried. She played with the toys we put out and ate the food we offered. She allowed us to care for her. But there was a guardedness. She didn’t smile. I hadn’t once heard her laugh.

We’d fallen into a bit of a routine, the way you did with a new baby. Everything was trial and error. We knew that she liked pasta and strawberries. She’d commandeered one of Freya’s stuffed frogs, which she carried with her everywhere, and we’d already developed a hearty fear of losing Froggie, the way any parent worried about losing that one toy that would soothe their child. We knew that she hated daytime naps but would fall asleep at 6 pm and then sleep right through till the next morning. During the day, I was her primary parent, the one she went to instinctively to have her needs met. But this early hour, this short period of time before Freya woke up, had somehow become Gabe’s.

When I heard the second thud, I grabbed my robe and raced out of the bedroom.

In the living room, I found Asha sitting up in her highchair. Gabe was on the floor, face down, his arms and limbs splayed like the police outline of a murder victim. But I barely registered that because of what else was happening.

Asha was laughing.

Gabe saw me. ‘Watch!’ he said.

He jumped up and took a few steps, acting super casual. Then he pretended to catch his foot on the corner of the rug. ‘Whoa!’

To his credit, it was a good fall. He didn’t brace himself or land lightly. He threw himself across the room and landed on his face. I was certain he’d have a bruise tomorrow.

Asha lost it. She threw her head back, slapped her hands against her tray. I’d never heard a laugh like it. It was a dirty laugh, deep and husky and from the soul. She held her stomach. It was the kind of laughter that ends wars, cracks you open, makes everything okay.

Gabe’s eyes were glistening with tears. I assumed they were tears of mirth, but then his chin quivered. ‘She’s laughing,’ he said. ‘I’m so happy that she’s laughing.’ He pressed his lips to Asha’s mop of dark hair and just stayed there for a moment, breathing her in. I forgave him in that moment, as I always knew I would. It was impossible not to forgive this man. Even though I knew that, eventually, this would probably be my downfall.



Asha’s arrival into our family was complicated in many ways. The love part, though, was simple. We all adored her. We adored the crevices in her belly, the pads of fat on the backs of her hands. We adored the way she nestled against my chest when she was tired.

My family knew how she came to be, of course, and they didn’t miss a beat. If anything, they worked harder to prove their love for her, to make up for the fact that I was afraid it wouldn’t come naturally. They needn’t have worried, just as I needn’t have. The love was fast and fierce.

If there was a book about adoption, I read it. I knew about reactive attachment disorder. I was on the lookout for signs of trauma, behavioural issues and hidden disabilities. We followed the professionals’ advice to the letter. How else did one follow advice?

We did the cocooning. Stayed home and kept our world small. We carried Asha around in a baby carrier. Gabe and I were the only ones who held her for months on end, the only ones to feed her and put her to bed. She needed to understand that we were her parents, so she would attach to us in a healthy, appropriate way.

For a year, I braced for Asha’s regression – the anger, the sadness, the behaviours my books told me to expect. They didn’t come. She attached, primarily to me but she liked Gabe too, from afar. She adored Freya, and Freya adored her back.