The Family Next Door(42)

How had she let this happen to them? Nigel had made mistakes too, but his mistakes were out on the table. It was her that was hiding things. The irony was that if she had less of a conscience, everything would have been fine. She would have put it in the past and moved on. Instead, it ate away at her.

She wandered over to the water fountain to fill her bottle. There was the undeniable fact to consider, of course—they had at least one child together. And Rosie was happy. Fran tried to imagine telling Rosie that Mummy and Daddy weren’t going to be married anymore. Rosie would want to live with Nigel. As the mother, Fran might still get primary physical custody of her, but at what cost? She’d be breaking up Rosie’s life, and her own, to clear her guilty conscience. What kind of mother would that make her?

But what about in fifteen or twenty years, when Ava found out that the only father she’d ever known wasn’t her father? When she found out her mother had kept the secret all this time?

What kind of mother would that make her?

Fran grabbed her stroller and was heading out of the park when the door to Lucas’s studio burst open and a sweet little girl came out, running. Her mother ran after her and tickled the girl until she squealed. Lucas watched them from the doorway smiling—he must have just done a shoot with them. Fran continued walking but pulled up short when she noticed Ange’s car just a few meters away. Ange, it seemed, was also watching the little girl and her mother. There was something about the way she was staring at them that made Fran pause. Her eyes didn’t look right.

Fran looked back at the woman and the child. At Lucas, smiling over at them. And suddenly, she understood Ange’s outburst earlier.

Suddenly, she understood it all.




“Is it a boy or a girl?” I asked.

The doctor and nurse exchanged a glance.

“Your baby was a girl,” the doctor said finally.

I smiled. A girl. I knew it.

The doctor cleared his throat. “But, as I said, I’m afraid your baby didn’t survive. It was stillborn.”

Stillborn. I turned the word over in my head. Still. Born.

I pictured her little face. She’d be wrapped up in a blanket now, probably wearing a little knitted hat. What did she look like? They said all babies’ eyes were blue at first. But would they eventually be brown like mine?

“Can I see her?” I asked.

Silence. Then the doctor looked at the nurse. “Have you managed to contact her husband?”

The nurse shook her head.

I felt like I might explode. Under my hospital gown, my breasts were tingling. I’d already waited this long. Why were they making me wait longer? “I want to feed her as soon as possible. That’s good for the baby, right?”

The doctor’s expression baffled me. Did most mothers not want to see their babies? Perhaps they were too exhausted. I found that reassuring. I was a special kind of mother. I wanted my baby more. I loved her more.

He stood. That’s right, I told him silently. Go get my baby. Finally!

He walked to the door. The admission paperwork was still on the bedside table, untouched. I couldn’t have cared less about paperwork—I wanted my baby. The anticipation was unbearable. From my bed I could see the doctor in the corridor, talking to the nurse. Another person in a white coat had joined them. I felt like I was in a dream. It must be the drugs. Oh well. If they weren’t going to get my baby, I would.

I lowered myself gingerly off the bed. I felt the coldness of the floor under my feet, which meant I had some feeling back in my legs. Good. Clutching the metal railing on the side of the bed I hauled myself to standing. There was a hospital-issue robe on a hook on the back of the door. I took a step toward it but all at once the floor came up to greet me, hitting me with a smack. Suddenly the little crowd that had gathered outside my door rushed into the room. I started to shake.

“Bring me my baby!” I began to scream. “BRING ME MY BABY!”

I continued shaking and screaming until a needle went into my arm and everything went black.





28


ESSIE


“Mum, it’s me again. Can you call when you have a chance? Thanks so much.”

Essie hung up. Polly, bleary-eyed, let out a sob of exhaustion.

“Go to sleep if you’re so tired,” Essie begged.

She might have been imagining it, but it looked like Polly was steeling her jaw, saying, Oh yeah, try me.

Essie’s baby book said Polly should have been having three naps per day, each an hour to two hours long. Two hours! It was like the book was just trying to taunt new mothers, make them suffer. For the last week, Polly hadn’t slept more than twenty minutes at a time during the day, and today, she hadn’t slept a wink. To add insult to injury, Mia had decided to decline her afternoon nap as well and had just had a huge meltdown because Essie had given her pasta for lunch and she “hated pasta.” (She did not hate pasta. Two days ago she’d declared that she wanted spaghetti for breakfast because it was just sooooo good.) Now Mia was watching cartoons and Polly was attached to her hip, a pathetic, sobbing mess. Meanwhile, all Essie wanted was to eat a bowl of pasta and go to sleep.

Essie walked to the front window and looked out. Her mum’s car wasn’t in her driveway. Where on earth was she? For the past week, she had been around constantly, staying all day and only leaving when Ben arrived home at night. But today, she was nowhere to be found. Rationally, Essie knew it wasn’t reasonable to expect her mum to be available every time she needed her, but Essie wasn’t feeling logical right now. All Essie wanted was for her mum to arrive on her doorstep and put both girls (and Essie) to bed. Then, in an hour or two, she wanted to wake up to find the laundry done and dinner on the stove.