Page 40 of The Fall-Out

I hadn’t meant to, but I realised I sounded spiteful, like I was rubbing her face in all the things I had and she didn’t.

‘I understand. Take care, Naomi.’

I said goodbye and left, the camera slung over my shoulder with my battered leather handbag. Before I reached the bottom of the stairs, I became conscious of the familiar, creeping feeling of guilt. I wished I hadn’t come – I felt as if I’d opened a door that should have remained closed.

SIXTEEN

For the next couple of weeks, my life was just the same as it had been before Andy’s death. It just felt different.

Although I hadn’t heard from Zara or seen her again, my visit to her was preying on my mind. I was furious with myself for the way I allowed her to wind me up – to manipulate me, to make me behave in a petty, spiteful way that wasn’t like me. I was angry with her for what she’d told me about Andy, and the way she’d turned my anger around to make me feel like she was the victim. And – entirely unreasonably – I was annoyed with Patch. I’d made the effort to pick up his camera, which had involved an unpleasant encounter with Zara, and he’d merely glanced at it when I handed it over, mumbling a ‘Thanks,’ before chucking it in a drawer.

I felt on edge all the time, as if whenever my phone rang or there was a knock on the door, it might be her. When I passed a woman with a dark bob while walking the children to nursery, I’d had to stop and look back over my shoulder, only to realise that it was a complete stranger. I’d asked Bridget if Zara had visited her again and felt my whole body tense when she said she had, but in the next sentence her visitor had become Niamh, Patch’s sister, so I couldn’t be sure whether it had actually happened. After her non-appearance at the last Girlfriends’ Club meet-up, Kate had begun posting on the WhatsApp again, although her messages were briefer, less frequent and somehow more distant. When I’d apprehensively asked whether her cocktail date with Zara had taken place, she’d vaguely replied that they were both really busy, which when I thought about it was no answer at all.

And now, the next meet-up had come round, a month later. It was in Patch’s and my diaries, a three-line whip: the second Wednesday of every month. As soon as the children had been old enough for me to leave them, we’d reached an agreement that childcare on that night was his problem and his problem only. If he needed to work late or otherwise couldn’t be home, he organised a babysitter, not me.

Because on the second Wednesday of the month, I. Was. Going. Out.

Sure, there’d been times when our meet-ups hadn’t taken place. During lockdown, when we’d tried the first time to drink champagne and talk on Zoom, but found it too depressing and reminiscent of the grim work socials that everyone was enduring at the time, so abandoned the idea until we could meet in person again. When everyone had been away on holiday one summer. When – totally coincidentally – Abbie, Rowan and I had all come down with flu at the same time, and Kate had said she was damned if she was going to drink cocktails and eat crisps on her own like some kind of tragic loser.

Almost always, though, it went ahead. Sometimes, when life was getting me down to an even greater extent than usual, I found myself looking at my diary a week or even ten days ahead, counting the sleeps until the second Wednesday like a small child looking forward to Christmas. Once, I’d even caught myself leaving the house to go and meet my friends and feeling a shadow of sadness because after just a few hours it would be a whole month before next time.

But as it turned out, fate derailed my plans. I was woken just after midnight by a plaintive call of, ‘Mummy,’ closely followed by the unmistakeable sound of Toby being sick. As night follows day, Meredith woke up and puked about half an hour afterwards – just as I’d got her brother settled and his sheets changed.

And so the rest of the night passed in a kind of vomit relay – one of them threw up, I sorted them out, then the other did. Rinse – literally – and repeat until six in the morning when Patch woke up, looking so healthy and rested I almost vommed myself.

Except I didn’t – not until he’d left for work. By that stage I’d rung nursery and told them the kids were ill, started a boil wash with all the soiled bedding, given the children glasses of flat Coke (their dentist would have had a coronary if she’d known, but it was what my mum had always done and therefore so did I), and made myself a coffee.

It tasted funny. What should have felt like a healing wave of caffeine entering my exhausted bloodstream was more like ingesting poison. I paused, the mug halfway to my lips.

No fucking way. I’m fine. I’m going out tonight.

But my body had other ideas. Within seconds, my stomach had given a horrible lurch, my mouth filled with saliva, and I sprinted upstairs to the bathroom, just making it in time.

The rest of that day passed in the seventh circle of parenting hell: trying to look after sick children when you’re as sick as a dog yourself and all you want – literally all, ever – is to lie down and concentrate hard on not dying. But as soon as I did, a plaintive voice would call out, ‘Mummy,’ and the whole cycle would begin again – one would be sick, then the other, then me. My entire world shrank to a relentless treadmill of buckets and bleach and the inside of the toilet bowl.

I’d have happily died, only it wasn’t an option.

At some point, I managed to focus on my phone for long enough to send a WhatsApp saying:

Naomi:

Struck down by stomach bug from hell. Not going to make it tonight. Pray for me

My friends’ loving messages gave me some degree of comfort, until the next wave of nausea hit me.

To his credit, when Patch arrived home he sprang into action like some kind of United Nations rescue force arriving in a disaster zone. The children had been able to keep water down for a couple of hours, so he made them dry toast and that stayed down too. He got the tumble dryer going on overdrive. He offered me toast too, and when I replied, ‘Are you trying to fucking poison me? Go away,’ he just stroked my hand, turned out the light and departed, leaving me with my sick bucket for company.

I pinged awake at four the next morning. For a moment I wasn’t sure what was happening – I could hear no sounds from the children’s room or elsewhere in the house. Somehow, my internal calendar informed me that it was the second Thursday of the month – the day after the Girlfriends’ Club meet-up. But I didn’t have a hangover, which I’d normally have expected. I felt fine. In fact, I felt absolutely brilliant.

Then I remembered – I’d been ill and so had the kids. Maybe I was still ill. Maybe the children were too, and needed me. I lay motionless on my back for a minute, then cautiously sat up. But I still felt well – the kind of well you only feel when you’ve been really sick and now you’re better. I had a vile taste in my mouth and I was thirsty and hungry, but it was nothing compared to the horrors of the day before.

I was alone in bed. Patch must have decided to spend the night downstairs, either because he didn’t want to disturb me or for fear of catching whatever it was the twins and I had had. I strained my ears, but I couldn’t hear a sound. Everything was peaceful.

I turned over, pulling the fresh-smelling duvet up to my chin and closing my eyes. But just as I felt myself drifting into sleep, a thought woke me as suddenly as a cry from one of the children would have.

I’d kept hoping Patch would take out the camera I’d collected from Zara, but it remained in his bedside table. And now he wasn’t in the room.

I remembered handing it to him and him barely looking at it, then putting it away in the drawer where he kept his passport, cufflinks and an unopened box of handkerchiefs his mother had given him for Christmas a few years back.

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