Page 41 of A Midlife Marriage

‘Ben!’

Like a nail through glass, the scream shattered her daydream. She felt a brush at her shoulder, a drip of water on her face as Libby flew past, crossed the living room in one stride and scooped Ben from the stool he’d climbed on. The stool he’d placed beneath an open window, forty feet above the ground.

Helen stood, her stomach cold, her legs like string. ‘I’ll hold him,’ she stammered. She should have offered … Libby shouldn’t have opened the window … ‘I’ll hold him.’

‘I never open the windows.’ Libby slammed it shut. ‘It’s just so hot.’ She was crying, a look of wild bewilderment on her face, small as a child herself as she clutched her baby to her chest like a favourite teddy bear.

‘It’s OK.’

‘I shouldn’t have opened it … what if ––’

In the pan behind, the meat sizzled and spat.

‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’ She had her arms out, reaching for Ben.

‘What if he had ––’

‘He didn’t.’

‘But if he had … I …’

‘Libby.’And when Libby looked at her, Helen could have cried. Twenty-three years old and her daughter’s face held the burden of a woman a decade older. ‘This happens,’ she said. ‘It happens to all of us.’ Whether Libby believed her or not, she didn’t know, and it didn’t matter. One day she would, but for now all that was needed was some forward motion, away from the window, away from the horror ofwhat if… ‘You finish dinner.’ She urged Libby back towards the kitchen. ‘I’llwatch Ben. They all needed to eat, sit down, calm down, and be thankful.

But Ben was heavy and sweaty, squirming his body and twisting his head. And although she was looking for somewhere to put him down, nowhere presented itself. The kitchen was too small. Two tottering steps and he’d be close enough to reach for the pan, if he tottered in the other direction, he’d fall down the steps to the living room.

‘I’llsit with him.’ She set about moving a pile of laundry, and a stack of paperwork from the small two-seater sofa. Libby was at the end of the first year of a two-year masters. Twenty-five hours a week, plus Ben, plus all the housekeeping that goes along with keeping a house, no matter how small. Helen piled the laundry to one end of the sofa, put the papers on the coffee table and sat down, wedging Ben between her knees. ‘There,’ she whispered. ‘Get out of that one, Houdini.’

In response Ben picked up the top piece of paper and stuffed it in his mouth. Helen smiled. She didn’t blame him really; he was probably as hungry as she was.

‘Ben!’And now Libby was back again, manically tearing the paper from his hands. ‘Those are my revision notes,’ she cried. ‘He can’t eat them!’

Ben’s face crumpled, he opened his mouth and let out an ear-splitting wail.

Nerves frazzled, Helen watched asorange sauce dripped from Libby’s wooden spoon, onto the papers she was frantically sorting.‘I didn’t realise,’ she said then, ‘we could go out to eat, Libby? If it’s easier?’ Breaking point was near. She could feel it. For Libby, for Ben, for herself.

‘No!’ Libby straightened up. ‘I invited you to dinner, mum. We’re not going out.’

‘I just thought it might be easier …’ And watching her daughter blot tears away, Helen’s voice trailed off.

‘It’s impossible, there just doesn’t seem to be anywhere he can’t reach now.’

‘I know,’ she said, and could have added,I understand, Libby. I’ve been there too, Libby.Something stopped her, and as Helen looked around her daughter’s tiny flat, she understood what. She hadn’t been there too. Not like this. Libby’s flat was on the fifth floor of a block, where the lift didn’t always work. There was no balcony, no dishwasher and only one tiny bedroom. To Helen, the space got smaller every time she visited. God knows what it was to live in it with a toddler. And she had tried. Before Libby had signed up for her degree, she had tried to explain the difference between a baby you can put down and find in the same place five minutes later, and a toddler that you can’t. She’d tried suggesting that Libby put the studying on hold until Ben had started pre-school, but Libby hadn’t listened, just as she hadn’t listened to her own mother. And that was just the way of the world. ‘You finish dinner,’ she said, when what she really wanted to say, but didn’t dare, was how on earth do you manage, Libby? How long can you keep this up for? At least she’d had Lawrence to pay the bills and share a bottle of wine with on a Saturday night. Libby was on her own, wholly naive to the toll of the workload she had heaped upon herself. This was going to be her reality for a while now, because the flat wasn’t shrinking, and Ben was growing. And short of locking him in a padded cell, Libby was going to have to learn to manage, in the same way that every other mother before had learned.

Confident that she had her grandson contained, she put her hand on Ben’s head and brushed his hair back, it was fine as spun silk, damp and warm and the urge to scoop him and his mother up, to take them back home with her, look after them and make everything alright again was a spark that lit a flame that grew into a bright light. She looked up. If she took the job, her flat would be empty, her lovely modern new-build, with itsopen-plan layout, and easy clean cabinets. The park opposite, the lift that worked. It was the perfect solution, so prefect that five minutes later when Libby presented her with an insipid looking plate of spaghetti bolognese, Helen barely noticed, eating quickly, impatient to get to her news, feeling herself inflate all over again.

28

‘Red mite.’

Dazed, Caro turned to see Tomasz holding up a strip of sticky paper. She frowned; she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be looking at.

‘I’m going to have to take them all out and disinfect.’

It was only as he put the paper on the garden table that she saw. Where there should have been white, the paper was black, covered in the carcasses of hundreds of tiny red mites.

‘Does it have to be done now?’ she said. The last twenty minutes, sitting in the garden listening to the hum of bees by the lavender had been such a respite, such an unexpected sanctuary from six days of self-inflicted torture, she did not want to leave the sunny spot she had found. She didn’t want to break the spell.

On Friday evening she had arrived back at Hollybrook close to midnight showering for a full half hour before creeping into bed next to Thomas. Hoping he wouldn’t wake, she had barely ruffled the bedcover. But he had woken, and his warm arm across her stomach had left her unable to move, stiff with regret, pinned down as surely as if she’d been felled by an oak. And although she had been sure she would never sleep again,within a few minutes she was snoring, her body capitulating to exhaustion.

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