23
I made my way home and straight upstairs to the studio. Painting was the very last thing I felt like doing. My head was aching. A hundred and one things were thrashing around my brain, a hundred and one things I couldn’t bear to think about, especially why I was so upset about Matt going to live in Spain. But I had an exhibition to prepare for and a free weekend to paint in. So, I painted.
It was pretty much like the last time I’d been in the studio—a sort of protracted art-therapy session that left me feeling exhausted—but at least it was something, and on Monday morning I went back to work feeling as if I hadn’t totally wasted my time off. Even if I couldn’t use anything I’d produced this weekend, at least it had stopped my mind blowing up.
I was working at the hospital that day and was pleased to see Beryl the botanist sitting up in bed when I did my rounds. Every day I was rostered onto that ward, I half expected her bed to be empty, the sheets turned down. Either that or occupied by someone new.
“Hello, dear,” Beryl greeted me. “You look tired again, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
I smiled. “Shh. I’ve only just got to work. I’m supposed to be full of energy.”
She smiled back. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t. Were you painting?”
“Yes, getting ready for my exhibition, or trying to. How are you feeling?”
She flapped a hand. “Oh, like someone on her way out. All very dull. How’s that friend of yours? The one who had the baby?”
I pulled a face. “Feeling the strain of doing it all by herself a bit, I think.”
Beryl nodded. “I know just how she feels. I brought my son up on my own too. It’s tough being responsible for making all the decisions, always being the one to have to sort things out because there’s no one else to do it.”
“Well, you did a good job, from what I’ve seen of your son.”
“I did my best. Even though I did drag him with me around the world. Still, he didn’t know anything else, so I don’t suppose it did him any harm. Do check up on your friend, though, won’t you? Postnatal depression can be as dark as the Veryovkina Cave. That’s the deepest cave in the world, by the way, in case you were wondering.”
“Thanks, Beryl, I will,” I said, starting to move on to the next bed, thinking, as I always did after any interaction with Beryl, how sad it was that such a bright life force was about to be extinguished. Someone else precious to me soon to be gone from my life.
“And take care of yourself, too, dear,” Beryl called after me. “All work and no play makes Jill a dull girl.”
I looked back. She smiled at me, her eyes twinkling. “Or something like that, anyway. I can’t quite remember exactly how it goes. But the message is the same, isn’t it. Go out dancing, or for a walk by the sea. Let your metaphorical hair down a little.”
I laughed out loud at that. “Okay, Beryl. I promise to try.”
“You do that, dear. You do that.”
It was a long shift, so I didn’t get the chance to call Inga until the next morning. I knew Inga would laugh when I told her about Beryl’s metaphorical-hair advice, and I was smiling myself when I dialled. But Inga didn’t reply. So I tried again half an hour later, and half an hour after that. Still no reply. Was something wrong? Blast. I would have to go round there to give myself some peace of mind.
I could hear Noah crying right up the street. Or at least, I assumed it was Noah, and Inga’s neighbour—who was outside putting a bag of rubbish in her wheelie bin—confirmed it for me when I reached Inga’s flat.
“He’s been crying for hours on end, he has, poor little mite. I did try knocking, to make sure everything was all right, but she didn’t answer. I wouldn’t mind, but my Ted will be home soon from his shift, and he’ll be needing his sleep.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. “ Thank you for your concern? Babies do cry, you know? ” So, I just smiled, glad when the woman went back into her house.
There was no reply to my knock, so I phoned. But once again, it went to voicemail.
Jesus, Inga hadn’t just gone off somewhere and left him, had she? No, she would never do that. Inga was a good person. She wasn’t wilfully neglectful and cruel. She wasn’t like my mother.
Inside the house, Noah’s cries were getting increasingly frantic. Just when I was considering breaking a windowpane, I remembered the time Inga had once left a key for me under a plant pot in the garden. Maybe it was still there? It was. Seconds later, I was letting myself into the house.
“Inga?”
I found Noah in his Moses basket in the sitting room, red faced, wet through, his eyes red slits of distress.
“Here, little fella,” I said, picking him up. “It’s all right. You’re all right.” Although clearly it wasn’t, and he wasn’t.
Clutching his wet little body to me the way I’d held Violet’s all those years ago, I went in search of Inga with a sinking sense of dread and, thank God, found her in bed. Her head, or what I could see of it beneath a pillow, was turned towards the wall, but she was here. She hadn’t left little Noah on his own.
“Inga? Are you ill?”
“Make him stop, Lily,” she said, her voice muffled. “Please, make him stop.”
Noah was rooting around against my chest. There was no mistaking what he wanted. “He needs you to feed him, Ing,” I said, as Noah, no doubt sensing his mother’s proximity, began to cry even louder.
“I can’t, Lily,” Inga said, sobbing. “I just can’t. Please, can you do it?”
Jesus, she really did need help. Not because she was neglectful the way Mum had been, but because she was clearly ill.
My brain clicked into overdrive. “Have you got any formula?”
“No.”
“I’ll go to the corner shop and get some,” I said.
“Please take him with you,” Inga said. “Please.”
Noah’s cries were so loud now that panic was pummelling at my chest the way it had done when I was a child. But there wasn’t time to think about that now, and I pushed the memories away.
“Come on, baby,” I said to Noah. “Let’s get your nappy changed, and then we’ll go and buy you some lovely formula, okay?”
At least there were nappies. And cream to soothe Noah’s red, raw skin.
The buggy was in the hallway. I strapped Noah into it and fastened the straps, reversing it out of the door and down the front step.
Inga’s neighbour was outside again, washing her front windows. “Everything all right, is it?”
I gave her a tight smile, hoping she wouldn’t be straight on to social services as soon as I got down the road. “Yes, all fine, thank you.”
I walked quickly away, unable to dismiss her as an interfering busybody because Noah had obviously been lying in hours of accumulated wee, crying to be fed, and it was all absolutely bloody terrifying. Inga needed to get some help and fast. But right now, Noah was my priority. Getting some milk inside the poor little bugger.
Inside the shop, Noah’s desperate crying drew the glances of other customers our way. Formula, formula. Where was the bloody formula? Please, God, let them have some. Bingo. Two brands. God only knew which was the best, but in the circumstances, I didn’t suppose it mattered much which one I chose.
I’d paid and was heading back out onto the street when it occurred to me that I had no idea whether or not Inga possessed any feeding bottles or teats. God, I hoped so. I’d have to go to the city to buy those, and Noah was absolutely starving hungry, his cries five hundred times worse than when we’d gone to the park, causing me to panic, sucking me right down into the past, to a place of abandonment and helplessness I wasn’t sure I’d ever properly recovered from.
“Lily? Is that you?”
I looked up, startled. The woman smiling at me outside the shop was familiar, but, in my current whipped-up state, I couldn’t for the life of me remember who she was.
“Gillian?” she said. “From the art workshops?”
At the women’s refuge. Last time I’d seen Gillian, she’d had a huge bruise on her face, badly covered up by concealer.
“Of course. Hi, how are you?”
She nodded, smiling. “I’m good, thanks; really good. You had a baby! We wondered why you disappeared on us.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “He’s not mine. I’m looking after him for a friend. I just came out for some formula.”
“He does sound hungry, poor little chap.”
“He is.” Noah’s desperation made me more forthcoming than I’d probably have been in other circumstances. “And I’m not a hundred percent certain my friend has any feeding bottles at home.”
“Well, listen, I’ve got some if you need some. I mind my friend’s baby when she has appointments to go to. I’m at number sixty-eight, just round the corner from here. I’ll only be a couple of minutes in the shop if you want to come round?”
I didn’t have to think twice about it. “That would be amazing. Thank you so much.”
“No problem. Back in a minute.”
While Gillian went into the shop, I called Inga to let her know what was happening, leaving a voicemail when she didn’t answer. Sent a text for good measure, hoping she was managing to get the rest she so clearly needed. Minutes later we were at Gillian’s flat, and she was popping the kettle on. “May as well feed him here, Lily. Give me the formula, I’ll make it up.”
It was good to be taken care of; to feel confident enough to leave Gillian cuddling Noah while I popped to the loo. And finally, finally, the bottle was ready, Noah was in my arms with the teat at his mouth, and I was praying he would take it. God, the relief when the crying finally stopped. I wanted to burst into tears, and I wasn’t his mother. Poor bloody Inga.
“Thank you, Gillian,” I said with a weak smile. “Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver.”
Gillian smiled back. “You’re welcome. It’s magic when the crying stops, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “It really is. How’s your little boy?”
“Sam? He’s doing all right, yeah. At school, you know. Getting into a routine. Making some mates. We liked your classes. Pity they stopped. That teacher who came instead wasn’t the same. Too ... formal, you know?”
I smiled. “You mean she didn’t dye your kids’ hands green?”
Gillian laughed. “No chance of that. She never got any of us doing anything as adventurous as tie-dye. To be honest, most of us stopped going.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I really was. The art classes had been a chance for the women to forget about all the heavy stuff going on in their lives, exactly the way painting and drawing in my bedroom had always been a source of escape for me when I was growing up. “Do you still see any of the others?”
“Not really. Most people don’t want to be reminded about those times when they move on, I suppose. Me, I don’t want to forget. If you start forgetting what happened to you, there’s always a danger of drifting back, isn’t there? Or at least, that’s the way I see it.”
I wasn’t sure any longer what camp I fell in regarding forgetting the past. Always, before, I’d done my best to stuff bad memories away, unwilling to relive them in case their poison seeped into the new life I was making for myself. But just lately that was getting harder and harder to do, and in a way, perhaps Gillian was right. Maybe you did need to have old scars on view to remind you of how far you’d come. Not that, sometimes, it seemed as if I’d come very far at all.
Noah was still suckling, but less urgently now, his mouth stopping every now and then as he dozed, before starting up again. I gazed down at him, seeing Inga in the definition of his features, wondering what she saw when she looked at him herself; what she must be going through to have ignored him the way she had.
“Your friend’s not coping so well, then?” Gillian asked, reading my mind.
“She doesn’t seem to be, no. I’m worried about her, to be honest. I’d better get back there as soon as he’s finished his bottle.”
“She’ll get through it, don’t worry. She’s one of the lucky ones, having a friend like you to look out for her.”
My phone rang inside my bag. I was grateful for the interruption because Gillian was being so bloody nice I was really close to blubbing.
“Shall I fetch your phone for you?”
“Could you? It might be my friend.”
But it wasn’t Inga. It was Amy.
“Amy, hi. You’re back.”
“Hi, yes, I just got in. Lily, will you be home soon? Only your sister’s here.”
“Violet?” It was a stupid thing to say—I only had one sister. But I just couldn’t believe it.
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’s ...” I looked down at Noah. Amazingly bad timing was what it was, even though it was a relief that Violet had turned up, seemingly against all odds. “Is she there? Can you put her on?”
“She’s showering at the moment. She seems ... well, in a bit of a state, if I’m being honest.”
What kind of a state? I wanted to ask, but now wasn’t the time to quiz her, not with the teat slipping from Noah’s mouth and Gillian looking on, not eavesdropping, but unable to stop overhearing the conversation.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I said. “But I’m dealing with a bit of a crisis at the moment, so I might be a few hours.” My mind raced as I tried to picture the contents of the freezer. It had been a while since I’d been shopping. “I think I’ve got a frozen lasagne she can have if she’s hungry. I’m really sorry to dump all of this on you, Amy.”
“That’s okay,” Amy said, but her voice sounded rather flat as she ended the call, and I prayed Violet hadn’t said or done anything unpleasant.
“More problems?” Gillian asked as I tried to get Noah to take the teat again.
I sighed. “My sister’s turned up. Which is great, because we didn’t part on good terms last time we saw each other, but she can be a bit of a pain in the ass, and my flatmate’s there on her own with her.”
“And you’re here, dealing with another crisis.”
“That’s about it.”
Noah was still resisting the teat. I put him over my shoulder to burp him. “I’d better get this one home. Thanks again, Gillian.”
She flapped a hand. “No problem, anytime. It was great to see you. Oh, and Lily?”
“Yes?”
“Make sure you’ve got someone to take care of you while you’re sorting everyone else out, won’t you?”
I did almost blub at that. It was sound advice, but right now, I just couldn’t see who that someone might be.