Page 66 of Days You Were Mine

The moment the front door has closed behind Alice, Hannah says, ‘What the fuck is going on?’

I sit slumped over my beer, head in hands.

‘Why do I think you’re following Alice in your lunch hour?’

‘Because that’s what I am doing.’

‘Why? For God’s sake, Luke.’

‘I don’t know. Something about her is making me uneasy. Don’t you feel it? Can’t you tell how obsessed she is with Samuel?’

‘And that’s why you’re stalking her around the park? Your mother and your son. Can you hear how that sounds?’

I sit scrunched up, arms wrapped around myself, a primal curl.

She reaches across the table for my hand.

‘Babe,’ she says, ‘this whole Alice thing has really taken a toll on you, hasn’t it? I wish we’d never asked her to look after Samuel in the first place, but he adores her. And we feel safe with her looking after him. That counts for everything, doesn’t it?’

‘Does it?’

‘I think we need to find someone for you to talk to. I think this situation has triggered some kind of …’ she breaks off to choose her words, ‘psychological collapse.’

‘You’re not listening to me, H. Alice is taking our baby away and you can’t even see it.’

Then

Alice

I have learned so much about Jake in these weeks and I understand how to look after him. I am watchful, like Eddie, but I never mention his depression or the shadow of his childhood. There’s a new comprehension between us, that’s all. I encourage him to avoid alcohol and to take up exercise and he obliges, most days he runs in Hyde Park. When he is quiet, when a look of sorrow falls upon his face, I am quiet too. Silent but present, that’s my intention. I can soften his solitude, I can show him that he never needs to feel alone. And we are happy again, the blip of his five-day drinking binge, almost, but not quite, forgotten.

I am six months pregnant by the time of my show and the dress I choose to wear at the opening, a long, silky thing in vivid poppy red, clings to my swelling stomach. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror admiring my profile while Jacob blind-shaves in the bath.

‘Definitely pregnant now,’ I say, and he laughs.

‘Why, were you thinking you might not be?’

‘I like that it shows. I like people knowing.’

‘Me too,’ he says. ‘But there will be press tonight and that means photos …’

He trails off; no need to say the rest. For I still haven’t told my parents that I, an unmarried girl of nineteen, am expecting a baby in May. This shouldn’t matter in 1973, but to my father it will be the worst of crimes. I am jolted back to one of his more cringeworthy lectures, post-church, mid-wine, during a lunch to which I had foolishly invited a school friend. The wine, as always, was just for him, the morality sermon custom-designed for the two teenage girls at his table. The most odious part, I recall, was his slurred, clichéd repetition of an old biblical verse: ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies’, or words to that effect. The friend, Matilda, dropped me soon after that and I never invited anyone home again.

Even so, I feel a little melancholy getting ready for the biggest moment of my life knowing the woman who gave birth to me, who brought me up to the best of her beleaguered ability, will not be there to share it. And Jake, as always, knows what is in my head.

‘Soon we’ll have our own family,’ he says as we set off for Robin’s gallery, ‘and that’s what matters.’

In both of us, a deep desire to give this unborn baby of ours everything we didn’t have ourselves. Beyond words, beyond bone; he will be confident, loved, listened to, encouraged, allowed to veer from any path. Choice, freedom, unequivocal support, oh we can get really quite evangelical on the subject of what makes for a perfect childhood. The opposite of ours is the shortcut.

How to describe the feeling of walking into a gallery where my painting of Jake and Eddie hangs in the window, where my name is spelled out against the white walls in huge capital letters: ALICE GARLAND. As instructed, we are half an hour early, yet there are already several people walking around, glass in hand, observing the art. It makes my stomach swoop just to see them.

‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ I say low-voiced to Jake.

‘You’ve already done it,’ he says, with a brief kiss to my cheek.

He throws his arms open to take in the gallery, its walls covered in my art.

‘Your time has come,’ he says. ‘And you, Alice Garland, are one hundred per cent ready for it.’

---