Her One Mistake(24)

Charlotte’s friends would rally around her. They’d line up outside her house with warm casseroles in Le Creuset dishes and Tupperware boxes of homemade muffins. It was no surprise Charlotte had so many friends, but it widened the trench between them now. That Harriet had not received one call from a worried friend was evident. Angela must have noticed she had no one else in her life.

She wondered what Angela thought of Charlotte. Did she feel sorry for her? Harriet knew her tears were real, but she couldn’t bear to look at them. If she’d looked into Charlotte’s eyes, she would have seen her pain and she couldn’t bear to take that on too. “Charlotte feels guilty,” Harriet murmured to Angela. “I can’t tell her not to.”

“Of course you can’t. No one expects you to.”

“Do you think she wasn’t watching the children properly?”

“I’m sure she was,” Angela said. “But she could never have expected this to happen.”

Harriet rolled over on her bed. She hated to think that Charlotte hadn’t been looking after her daughter, yet none of that really mattered anymore. Nothing but Alice’s safety mattered.

“Brian said something earlier,” Angela said. “Something about this not being the first child she’s lost.”

Harriet inhaled deeply and shook her head as she nestled into the pillow. “It was nothing like that,” she said, and despite everything else she was feeling, Harriet was still ashamed that she’d betrayed Charlotte by telling Brian.

How she wished she hadn’t listened to Brian about Charlotte coming to the house. It wasn’t a good idea like he’d insisted it would be. If he did it again she would have to refuse. There was no way she could bring herself to see or speak to Charlotte again.

Angela eventually left, and when Brian came up to the bedroom, he found Harriet lying in semidarkness. The only light that filtered into the room was from the moon, slicing through the small gap in the blinds. Harriet preferred it that way. Suddenly, the ceiling light flooded the room with its harsh white bulb as Brian flicked it on and slumped onto the edge of the bed.

Neither of them spoke until he got back up and paced to the window, where he peered through the slatted blinds onto the street below. “The journalists are still outside,” he said. “Is there nothing I can do to get rid of them?”

Harriet said nothing.

“There are two of them right outside our wall. What the hell do they think they’re going to get doing that? Angela told them we had nothing to say. They just want to look at us, like we’re animals.”

Harriet buried herself deeper into the covers, hoping he would either turn off the light and get into bed or preferably go back downstairs. She didn’t want to talk.

Brian remained a while longer and then let the slats flick back, running a hand through his hair that now sprang out wildly from his scalp. Then he strode into the bathroom, leaving the light on. Every sound he made echoed harshly through the walls. Harriet covered her ears but could still hear the splash of him urinating into the toilet, the toilet flushing, faucets being turned on, water violently splattering into the basin.

“Why didn’t you tell me about the class?” Brian reappeared in the doorway.

Harriet held her breath until her throat burned. She didn’t want to have this conversation. “I thought I had.”

“You definitely didn’t. I would have remembered something like that. Why a bookkeeping class, of all things?”

“So I could do something when Alice starts school,” she said. If he went on to ask why, she would tell him she knew they could do with the money. She’d seen the final notices hidden in his bedside drawer in the hope she wouldn’t come across them.

“Did Charlotte put you up to it? Tell you that you needed to earn some extra money?”

“No. Charlotte never—”

“Is it because she’s a career woman?”

“She works two days a week.”

“But that’s still not a full-time mother,” he said. “And you know that’s what you want to be, my love. She’s trying to do both and be good at it, and you know you can’t do that,” he went on, his voice rising higher. “Christ, we both know that now, don’t we?” he cried.

“Brian,” Harriet pleaded. “Stop it, please.” She couldn’t deal with this. Not now. Not tonight. Surely he must see that? “The class had nothing to do with Charlotte.”

“I worry,” he said evenly. “That it’s happening again, Harriet. You—you trust people too easily.”

“I don’t, Brian,” she said in no more than a whisper.

“Just promise me you’ll forget about this bookkeeping idea,” he said, sinking onto the bed beside her. “You must know how it makes me so uneasy that you’re even considering it.”

“I’ll forget about it,” she told him. It’s not like she ever believed it was a real possibility anyway.

“I care about you,” he said, inching closer. “You know that, don’t you? You know I’m only thinking of you. After what happened before—well, I just worry we’ll go down that path again.”

Harriet sighed inwardly. How many times would he bring up the same thing?

“I hate to bring this up,” he said, looking at her with angst. “But you have been taking your medication lately, haven’t you?”