Chapter 39
THIRTY-NINE
KARA
Jack had left without saying another word.
I waited downstairs for a while, thinking he would come home.
Eventually, I came to bed on my own. Now, as I lie awake watching the hours on the digital clock click over, part of me wants to call him.
After all I said, though, I’m not sure he would even answer his phone.
He hadn’t seemed drunk, but then functioning alcoholics often don’t, I’m well aware of that.
I wonder whether I should drive over there and check on him – the industrial estate is only ten minutes or so away.
The Portakabin office he’s renting is not that well insulated and will be freezing at this time of night.
Truthfully, though, I’m too scared to. My stomach churns with the same sick dread I’d experienced as a child, when I would hide under my duvet, waiting for the pop music playing downstairs to stop and my father’s mood to switch from hyper-happy to maudlin or aggressive.
There would be no reasoning with him. If Jack was in his office drinking, there would be no reasoning with him either.
Rolling onto my back, I place my hand protectively over my tummy.
As I listen to the sound of pipes clunking and wood creaking, familiar sounds, the old timber-framed building settling, I stare into the darkness, feeling lonelier than I’ve felt since losing Mark and my precious little boy.
My mind turns to Lina. Should I have got her head wound checked out at the hospital?
It’s possible she might have a concussion.
But she seemed fine when I left her, and Evie said she would keep a careful eye on her.
Evie wouldn’t look at me though. Her gaze was studiously averted the whole time I was in the annexe.
She was clearly worrying herself sick about both Lina and her father.
With no hope of sleeping, I reach for my phone to read on my Kindle app, only to realise the phone isn’t on my bedside table.
With my mind distracted and feeling so nauseous and lethargic, I must have left it downstairs.
Sighing, I pick up a book I was halfway through but couldn’t get into.
Attempting to read it does nothing to relax me.
I’m skimming the pages, barely digesting the words.
As I hear the first sounds of the dawn chorus, the flutey twitters of song thrushes and the melodious call of the blackbird, I find myself drifting, sleep mercifully beckoning, and I float on the cusp of it until a sudden petrifying feeling of plummeting jolts me awake.
After taking several calming deep breaths, my heart settles back into its mooring and I close my eyes again, desperate for even an hour’s sleep after feeling so utterly exhausted.
The pleasant floating feeling envelops me once more and I sink into it, dreaming of soft summer days, strolling down the lane pushing my baby before me.
I twitch as the mellow breeze turns frigid and the skies darken.
Salty spray lashes my face and suddenly I’m lost, tossed and disorientated in the pitch-black sea, my body buffeted by crashing waves, my screams cut dead, choked in my throat by foul-tasting water.
My heart bangs, my blood pumps, whooshing so fast past my ears I can hear it.
No! Desperation gripping me, I’m flailing hopelessly when a dull thud from somewhere outside my nightmare snatches me to the surface.
Gasping, I bolt upright. Sweat wetting my body, saturating the sheet beneath me, I strain my ears as another sound reaches me, one that doesn’t belong here, but to another life.
A child’s laughter, drifting from downstairs.
I’m sure of it. My eyes shoot to the bedroom door and I blink hard, trying to focus in the thin light of dawn that filters through the curtains.
It comes again, a shy giggle, turning to a breathless chortle and then a delighted ‘Mummy!’
‘Kai!’ My chest booms and I throw back the duvet, scramble out of bed and race to the landing.
Then stop dead as nothing but silence greets me.
‘Kai?’ I whisper. Staying where I am, I listen.
Still there’s nothing. No sound at all but the frenetic beating of my heart.
Swallowing back the hard lump of emotion clogging my throat, I walk quietly to the top of the stairs, grip the rail hard and venture down, my eyes sweeping the lounge below as I go.
There’s no one there. I didn’t expect there to be, prayed with my whole broken heart and soul that there might be, that my beautiful little boy would run to greet me.
He can’t. I squeeze my eyes closed, try to vanquish the image of his small body lost on a hospital trolley made for an adult, monitors beeping and pinging around him, a flurry of medical staff attending him, trying desperately to resuscitate him.
He looked so small, so fragile against the vast expanse of white sheet.
His little face wasn’t damaged. He still looked perfect. My perfect, innocent little boy.
Folding my arms tightly across my midriff, I feel the pain, as unbearable as it was then, rip right through my heart, feel the tug in my womb where I’d carried him, kept him safe and warm until he was grown enough to come into the world.
I hadn’t kept him safe. I was his mother, and I’d failed him.
He wasn’t grown. He was tiny. He was hurting, dying, and I couldn’t make his pain go away.
I’d blamed Mark. I’d blamed it on his drinking.
Guilt rises inside me, my mind screaming what I already know.
It wasn’t his fault. It was mine. All of it, my fault!
Tears explode from my eyes, cascading down my cheeks, and I sink to my knees, sobbing for the child whose life had been snatched away because of me.
This is why my dream of a new life is crumbling.
I don’t deserve one. I don’t deserve happiness, to be able to listen to the dawn chorus greeting a new day when my little boy will never hear the melodic sound of birdsong again, never feel the sun on his face.
Did I imagine that if I stuffed the pain deep down, I could forget about him, put him in a box along with my dead husband and bring them out only whenever I felt strong enough?
Grief doesn’t work that way. Guilt doesn’t.
It crashes over you out of nowhere when you least expect it, leaving you winded in its wake.
I miss them. I miss my little boy so much it’s unbearable.
I long to see him, to hold him, breathe in the special smell of him.
I can’t, no matter how much I want to. His favourite T-shirt, which I have carefully preserved in a shoebox along with his Jellycat cuddle toy, still smells of him, but it grows fainter with time.
I can’t cling to the ghost of him, nor can I let him go.
And what of my unborn child? My hand strays to my tummy and a new guilt kicks in ferociously.
I can’t just give in, roll over and let my life slip away.
I have to fight. I have to keep my baby safe.
If that means ending my relationship with a man who might be a threat to me, and ultimately the life growing inside me, then I have no choice.
Determinedly, even though I’m breaking inside at the thought of losing all I thought I had, a strong relationship with someone I imagined cared for me and who I could trust, I pull myself to my feet.
I will have to deal with Lina, make some calls.
She can’t be here. I have no idea how I stand legally now that she is, the effect it will have on Evie if she has to go into a care home.
But the influence she is having on Evie now has to be detrimental to her mental well-being. I can’t let this go on. I won’t.
Wiping the tears from my face, I glance around for my phone.
I don’t see it in the lounge, so I head towards the kitchen.
Then come to a halt, my heart stopping dead in my chest as I hear it again: a child’s laughter, innocent and sweet.
Kai. Terror gripping me as I consider that I must be going out of my mind, I stay stock-still for a moment.
It’s not a figment of my imagination. I’m not dreaming.
I can hear it, right here in this house.
Jolted from my stupor, I fly towards where it emerges from the kitchen.
As I go in, my eyes swivel to the worktop, where light flickers from my phone.
It’s a video, playing on a loop, I realise, hurrying across to it.
There on the screen is my little boy, laughing gleefully as he splashes about in the pool at his water-play birthday party.
Who did this? Fear twisting inside me, I glance frantically around.
That’s when I feel it, the cool draught as the wind whispers through the gap in the patio doors.
But I’d locked them. Someone must have opened them and slipped inside. Lina.