me who wanted him, not you.’
‘That isn’t fair, Mike. You have no idea what it’s like to be pregnant, let alone give bloody birth. I was as sick as a dog, in and out of hospital with the vomiting. It was bloody awful but I did it for you. Because you had some stupid hang-up about wanting a son. How do you think the girls would feel if they knew that they weren’t good enough for you, just because of their gender? We live in the twenty-first century for God’s sake, women are equal and our girls are wonderful.’
He turned his head and stared at Olivia. He could feel a throb in his temple. ‘That’s crap and you know it. I wanted another child, Olivia. Another child. It might have been a girl, and that would have been great.’
‘But it was a boy, Mike, and you couldn’t conceal your delight, could you? It was written all over your face when they told us, your son and heir, just what you always wanted. Until that moment I didn’t realise how much I’d disappointed you with mere daughters.’
Part of Mike wanted to shout. Part of him wanted to take Olivia by the throat and shake the unfairness of her words out of her. But instead he dropped his head, the cold despair he’d felt for months seeping through his body, dispersing the heat. ‘Don’t you dare say that. You’re not being fair. I adore my girls, you know I do.’
They sat for a moment and listened to the gentle thrum of the traffic from the far-off motorway.
‘Then why the total withdrawal and the silent treatment for so long?’ Olivia asked quietly.
He looked at her then. The harshness had gone from her face. Her pale eyes were sad, soft, concerned. He was hurting her. He was hurting himself. He understood this and yet he knew he had to push ahead through the numbness, to at least try to focus his mind and put his thoughts into words.
‘Because try as I did, I couldn’t put it him to rest, Olivia. I’ve spent months asking myself why. Why did our little boy die? No one had a reason, he wasn’t Down’s or disabled. He was perfect, wasn’t he?’
Olivia nodded, her head propped on her knees, her fingers playing with the quilt and so he continued, trying to marshal his thoughts and frame them into words. ‘And because we got no answers from the hospital or the consultant, my mind has tormented me with its own.’
‘And they are?’ Olivia asked slowly, turning her head to look at him.
Mike was silent for a while, but he had come so far, he knew it had to be said, to exorcise those ugly pestering thoughts, if nothing else. The frequent picture he had in his mind of Olivia with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other flashed before his eyes. She hadn’t touched a drop of alcohol when pregnant with the girls. Prawns and eggs and all manner of other foods had been off the menu too. ‘That you did something. God, I don’t know. It sounds so stupid now, but I felt that by thought, or by word or by deed you did something. Something to cause the miscarriage.’
For a moment Olivia didn’t move, her unfathomable gaze fixed on his face. Seconds ticked by as he waited for an answer, a reaction. The moment he had voiced his innermost ugly thoughts, he knew how unworthy and pathetic they were.
She eventually stood from the bed and walked into the en-suite bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her. He watched and waited, numb, wretched and unbelievably tired. He had wanted to say it for so long that the desire to confess had become overwhelming. But now the words were out, he felt bereft and empty. As though someone had put their hand in his chest and pulled out his heart.
He’d started to drift off by the time Olivia returned to the bed. ‘You bastard,’ she said, quite clearly, as she turned off the lamp.
The unmistakable and sickening sound of two cars colliding on the busy main road outside Mike’s office building jolts him back to the present. ‘You bastard’, he still hears, but he knows it’s time to go home.
‘When you’re feeling sorry for yourself, remember there’s always someone worse off,’ his grandpa often said when life had gone awry and little Michael sought him out for a hug. Same words as the priest, but delivered so much more kindly. Mike nods in acknowledgement, hoping that no one has been hurt in the collision below. He collects his jacket from the back of his chair. But still he can hear the tip-tap of the dog’s claws on the laminate behind him as he turns off the light and heads for home.
Olivia smooths the clean sheets on the bed, then stares into space for a few breathless moments before trudging wearily down the stairs. She waits for Mike in the lounge, her head resting on the sofa’s curved arm. She’s exhausted; complete physical and mental exhaustion. Anger has sapped her and she wants to sleep. But at least it’s gone, or even if not completely, it has receded, to be replaced by that old, familiar feeling of self-loathing.
As a small child her temper was the family joke, her tantrums legendary. ‘Short-fuse Olivia,’ her dad regularly teased with his soft Geordie accent. As much as she tried, she was unable to count to ten, to bite her tongue, breathe deeply or any of the other things she knew she should do to control it. But coming down south to university in Manchester changed her. By writing, debating and using self-styled anger management, she stopped her knee-jerk reactions, she put her sharp mind and sharp tongue to good use.
But ‘short-fuse Olivia’ is still there, she fears, increasingly pestering to break free. She hates being a cow, even when she’s being a ‘justifiable’ cow, she hates it. She despises herself for allowing short-fuse Olivia and her knee-jerk reactions to escape.
She checks her mobile again. Still no word from Mike. He always sends a text when he’s leaving the office. Perhaps he’s still working; perhaps he’s angry; perhaps he’s buggered off forever. It’s difficult to judge. Last night she was a cow. Last night they were strangers.
She’s tried to make amends with the girls by buying Hannah a chocolate cake from Morrisons, undoubtedly full of hyperactivity-inducing additives which they’ll pay for tomorrow, and then covering it with sweets to make it look home-baked. She’s given Rachel a ‘don’t tell Dad’ expensive mascara. But with Mike it’s more difficult. Now that she’s calm she knows everything is fine, actually. He said some crazy things last night, but he was honest. Wasn’t that what the couple in the wedding photograph used to do? Be honest and open and talk? Talk for hours. About everything. Sometimes all night. She needs to say sorry, to get things back on track. ‘Sorry, Mike,’ she should say. As simple as that. And as difficult. Olivia struggles with that word. She always has.
She feels the vibration of her mobile under the cushion. Holds her breath as she opens the message from Mike.
On my way home, it reads.
‘Mum’s driving over on Sunday. I thought we could eat out. Catch a bite in the village,’ Sami shouts from the bathroom.
Sophie marks the page of the book club choice with a bookmark from Waterstones. She hates it when people fold the corner of the page. It’s just about the only thing she’s fastidious about and she vaguely wonders what that says about her.
She stretches and yawns, still sleepy from her afternoon nap. ‘You know she’ll think I’m not looking after you if we do that,’ she calls back. ‘She’ll think I’m a bad wife.’
‘No she won’t. Mum likes to go out.’
Sophie reaches for her glasses and regards Sami as he rubs his hair dry with a thick stripy towel. She’s pretty sure he has no inkling of how much his mother dislikes her. Martha made it clear from the start that she didn’t approve of her beloved only son’s choice of wife. Sophie doubts any woman would have been good enough, but a neat, compliant and privately educated posh girl might have done the job. ‘I know what you are,’ she once hissed when Sami’s back was turned. ‘You’re a fraud and you’re not good enough for my son.’ And the hostile relationship has continued unabated in private ever since.
Sophie