Page 45 of The Women

She stands. The strength has gone from her legs. Was it the front door or the back? She waits a moment until she feels able to move, then walks slowly towards the living-room door. It is awkward, with Emily still attached. It takes her a second or two to lean out into the hallway. The black and white diagonal tiles run to the front door. The front door is closed. In the dimness, the coats are a shadowy mass. The shape makes her tremble despite herself. She trains her ears against the silence, hears the soft hum of a car passing on the street. She feels like she did when she was a child, alone in her bed, listening for the knock of the chestnut branch against the kitchen window. It only happened when the wind was strong and the worst of it was that the knocking came intermittently. Just as she felt herself drift to sleep once more, another bang would come, muffled through her bedroom floor.

She hobbles, cradling Emily, to the end of the hall and pushes the front door. Shut, definitely. The Yale lock should be enough. But still. Her keys are in her coat pocket. Christ, this is ridiculous, trying to lock the front door with Emily at her breast. Somehow, she manages the mortice lock. Peter will have a key for it.

She stands in the dark hallway a moment, cursing herself. It has taken little to reduce her to this frightened child. She checks the back door. It is locked. Her satchel is on the kitchen table, so she grabs it and settles on the sofa once again. Emily sucks, at peace. Samantha’s heart slows. She needs to calm down. This whole poem business is nonsense and it’s taking on way too much importance.

The heating clicks.

Samantha half laughs.

‘That was the noise, Emily,’ she says to her little girl. ‘It was the radiator, not the door. Mummy’s a scaredy-cat, isn’t she? A silly scaredy-cat.’

She wriggles out of her coat and pulls up her legs to cross them. Once she’s comfortable, she calls her mother, who asks if it’s her.

‘Of course it’s me. That’s why my name and my picture come up on your phone.’

‘All right, sarky. It’s just a figure of speech. Everything all right?’

Samantha sighs. ‘Everything apart from being a nervous wreck.’ She tells her mother about the suspicious poems, plays the whole thing down. ‘I mean, I’m not going to let it get under my skin – it’s pathetic – and anyway, there was nothing today, so with any luck they’ve given up. I suppose I’m just stressed because of tiredness. And getting used to Peter.’ She stops. She has said too much.

‘What d’you mean, getting used to Peter?’

‘Oh, nothing. He’s a bit night and day, you know? Blows hot and cold. I suppose sometimes it feels like I don’t know him, or we don’t know each other.’

‘That’s understandable,’ her mother says. ‘It takes a long time to really know someone, and after everything with your dad, I wonder whether you ever really do.’

‘But for most of it, with Dad, you felt OK, didn’t you?’

‘I did. And I think for most of it, itwasOK. It was just the last few years. Midlife crisis, money worries. I wonder sometimes if he had a bit of a breakdown. And even if he didn’t, he wasn’t the first daft bastard to follow his you-know-what and he won’t be the last. It’s just a shame we lost the farm.’

It is more than her mother ever usually says. Nothing is solid, Samantha thinks. There is nowhere to feel safe. This house should feel safe, but one click from the radiator and she’s a gibbering wreck.

‘You’ve had a lot on,’ her mother is saying. ‘You’ve gone from student to mother in such a short time. You’re so young, though I know you don’t like me saying it. And now you’re teaching as well. Maybe you should take a step back. Let Peter look after you and go back to work when Emily’s a bit older.’

Samantha nods, even though her mum can’t see her. ‘I know, but Peter wants another child. He told me the other night when we were … talking.’ When they’d been in bed. He’d been inside her and she’d had to manoeuvre herself off him, insist that he used a condom.But you’re still breastfeeding, he’d said.You won’t be fertile.She’d reached for the bedside cabinet drawer, told him it was a myth. They would have another baby next year, but not yet. Strange, she thinks now. It’s not as if he is hugely interested in the baby itself, not really; more in the idea of making her pregnant. She wonders sometimes if when they conceived Emily, he did it on purpose.

‘Plenty of time for another,’ her mother says. ‘Maybe get married first, eh? The law won’t protect you if Peter … I mean, if anything were to happen to Peter. He’s a bit older than you, isn’t he?’

‘Oh for goodness’ sake, Mum. He’s hardly at death’s door!’

‘People have heart attacks at forty.’

‘Mum!’

The cackle of her mother’s laughter comes down the line. ‘I’m not saying he’s going to cark it next week, love. Just that if anythinghappens, you’d get nothing. If you get married, what he has goes to you, unless he stipulates otherwise. That’s all I’m saying.’

By the time Samantha rings off, Emily has reclined, her eyelids heavy as a heroin addict’s. Not a very nice comparison, she thinks, Tommy’s red-ringed, heavy-lidded stare coming to mind, but yes, Emily does look drugged. On milk, Samantha thinks. On love. This love is what her mother feels for her, always has. It is a love that cannot be understood unless experienced. From nowhere at all, her eyes prick with tears. There are people who cannot, who will never, experience maternal love, for whatever reason. The only saving grace is that they have not experienced it, so perhaps they are spared the knowing. Although the longing must be so painful. Maddening. Dangerous, even.

Carefully she shifts Emily to her shoulder and carries her upstairs. Lays her in her white cot, pulls the cord for her lullaby mobile. Outside, the garden is a jumble of hulks and shadows, as ever. She shivers, pulls the curtains. These evenings without Peter are long, even if she feels oddly at peace in other ways. She is more carelessly herself, perhaps, though she can’t say in what way.

She crosses the landing to close the curtains in her bedroom. On the street, at the edge of the halo of the lamp post, stands a man.

A ball tightens in her chest. She pushes her face to the window. His hood is up, his face obscured. She tries to see if he’s holding a bike helmet, but the hedge is in the way.

‘No,’ she says, to the silent window. ‘No, no, no.’

She runs down the stairs. Pops the latch and pulls.

‘Shit.’ She has double-locked the front door. She rummages in her coat pocket for the keys, unlocks the door, pulls it towards her so fast it flies out of her hand and shudders against the doorstop.

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