Page 80 of Days You Were Mine

‘We’ll work it out. My mother will help us to begin with.’

This incendiary word,mother. One I have stumbled on so many times. But not now. The difference between Christina and Alice has become starkly clear. One the woman who has looked after me my whole life, the other a virtual stranger. A dangerous one, it seems to me now.

Alice begins to cry, both hands concealing her eyes, but I see how her shoulders tremble. I wish I could step towards her and put an arm around her and make things right between us. But here in this bizarre setting, with my tiny son looking down at me from every wall, I know things have already gone too far.

‘I’m sorry, Alice. But Hannah is completely freaked out. She doesn’t want you around Samuel any more.Idon’t want you around Samuel any more.’

Such hostile words, but I can find no other way to say them. There is a fury in me and it’s not all to do with this blatant idolatry of my small son. For Alice has done nothing but lie to me all along.

‘This isn’t just about Samuel, it’s about the way you’ve treated me. Can you imagine what it feels like finding out who my father is after twenty-seven years of not knowing, only to discover that actually it’s not Rick, it’s someone else entirely and you won’t even tell me his name?’

‘You’re right,’ Alice says, not looking at me, her gaze directed somewhere near the floor. ‘I’ve made some bad mistakes. But I’m trying to fix them. I don’t expect you to understand, but I’vespent my whole life running away from it. It’s so … incredibly painful for me to face it.’

‘Oh Alice,’ I say, and I think that in this moment perhaps there will be a way back for us. But then she blows it, utterly, with her next line.

‘Please don’t take him away from me. I won’t be able to bear it. When can I see him again?’

Not ‘you’ but ‘him’. Not me but Samuel.

‘Goodbye, Alice,’ I say with a callousness I don’t recognise in myself.

Then

Alice

Jake is asleep, curled on his side, facing the window. He has a hole in one of his socks and the three middle toes have broken free. Something about those toes, that sock, breaks my heart. I sit down on the bed more heavily than I intended. I roll my bulk towards him, my arms wrapped right around his waist, our unborn child filling the gap between us, and this is how he wakes.

He turns to face me; instantly he’s crying, tears that will not stop.

‘Oh Jake,’ I say, ‘I love you so much. I wish I could help.’

He doesn’t speak, not for a long time; the sadness in him is just too big. By the time the doctor arrives mid-morning, he has said only one word to me –sorry– and I saw the effort it cost him to speak. So much pain and he has no way of expressing it. He is caged within his body, his mind in torment.

The doctor is with him for almost an hour, and I spend the time pacing back and forwards from the kitchen to the sitting room, making a cup of tea that turns cold as I stare out of the window.

‘Shall we sit down?’ the doctor says, finally coming into thesitting room and gesturing at our brown sofa. ‘I’m sure you must be very anxious with your baby almost due, and so I’m sorry for what I have to tell you. Jacob is very severely depressed. The important thing is that we’ve caught it. We need to get him into hospital right away and on to medication. I’ll be able to organise a bed for him within a couple of hours, probably at the Maudsley.’

‘Not the hospital. Please, Jake hates hospitals.’

‘I’m afraid so. And as a matter of urgency. You do understand, I hope, the severity of this depression?’

‘Will I be able to visit him?’

‘Of course. Perhaps not a good idea for the first few days, until we can stabilise him.’

‘What if he doesn’t want to go? Have you talked to Jake about this?’

‘He knows he needs to go into the hospital for a while. He’s fairly resistant to it. But, Alice, it’s the only way. If he refuses to come voluntarily, then we would have to section him to keep him safe.’

He pats my arm before he leaves.

‘Once the medication starts to take effect, you’ll see a huge change, believe me.’

Jake is staring up at the ceiling when I return to the bedroom, but even from the doorway I can see the constant slide of tears running down his cheeks. He watches me come into the room, he taps the space beside him. I put out a hand behind me and lower myself in stages, a lumbering manoeuvre that would have made him laugh not long ago. He turns to face me and we lie there holding hands, not speaking. Sometimes the baby kicks or shifts position and I’ll capture his hand and hold it to my belly so he can feel it too. He doesn’t smile, but he leaves his hand there long after the baby has stopped moving.

The clock beside the bed is measuring out our time; three hours turns to two and then one and a half. And still we haven’t had the conversation about the hospital. I don’t have the strength for it.

Eventually I get off the bed and start pulling clothes out of his cupboard. Underwear, socks, T-shirts. Are these the right things? I come across his long, skinny scarf, the one emblazoned with a feather design; he was wearing it the day he came to find me at the Slade. I hold it out to him.

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