Late spring is pretending to be autumn. Perhaps it gets bored of being all full of promise, burgeoning new life, and needs a break from all that cheerfulness. I feel a bit like that at the moment as I watch a huge barge make its way along the gravy-brown Thames in the sheeting rain. Iona is sleeping and the radio is on in the kitchen, playing a song about summer holidays. I think I would like one of those; after all, I have been back in this place for nearly four weeks and the grey weight of London is crushing me, killing me little by little.
I take a breath and remember that I did try to be upbeat and positive with Simon. But that lasted about a week and then I started crying unexpectedly for no reason, or at least not one I could articulate. Of course, it was all to do with Ruan, but in a way I didn’t expect. I think again about the night I woke suddenly, covered in sweat, shaking with the certainty that Ruan wasn’t dead after all. I’d woken Simon, told him he wasn’t dead – couldn’t be, because he was so real to me. Simon comforted me, told me it was natural to have these ideas. Grief did strange things to a person’s state of mind… but I could tell he was worried about me. Then, in the morning, I reasoned that I must be on the edge of losing it, because my baby was dead. Of course he was. I’d seen his photo – we’d sprinkled his ashes into the Atlantic the day we left Cornwall. I had sobbed my heart out.
Iona cries and I hurry into the bedroom. There she is, my beautiful girl, pink from sleep, bright-eyed, a smile already forming when she sees mine. I pick her up and breathe in that indefinable baby scent on her hair, her skin, and the darkness in my head shrinks a little. If it wasn’t for this baby, God knows where I’d be. Simon’s still on about the happy pills, at least just for a while, but I have refused so far. That’s not the answer – but I’ll be buggered if I know what is. I’m afraid my telling him I’d been convinced that Ruan was alive helped him make more of a case for antidepressants. I told him that if I went on those I’d feel numb. I don’t want to feel numb, even though reality is so painful sometimes. So hard to accept. On the whole, he has been so lovely, but I can’t respond… Jowan has much to answer for. I wish I’d never set eyes on him again and whenever my thoughts open up to him, I slam the door shut on them.
Iona loves her play mat and all the brightly coloured dangly things just out of her reach. I kneel and extend the cord on a soft, squeaky toucan and touch it to her hand. Her little fingers immediately wrap around it, and she makes a contented coo as the bells above the toucan’s head jangle. I wonder if Ruan would have liked the play mat. I imagine him lying next to Iona, kicking his feet at the blue-legged, green-bodied spider hanging at the other corner. Is all this thinking about Ruan really a good idea? Why can’t I just let it go…
The doorbell rings and I tell Iona I’ll only be a second. Silly really, she’s not going anywhere and doesn’t have a clue what I’ve said. I think I say it to reassure myself that I’m being a good mum – whatever that is. There’s a man outside who looks vaguely familiar, but I can’t place him really. He is tall, balding, mid-forties. My mind puts him in the supermarket behind a till, but no… that’s not it. He smiles, though his eyes won’t engage with mine.
‘Mrs West?’
‘Yes?’
‘I have a letter here for you. I was under strict instructions to give it to nobody but you. Mrs Holly West?’
I sigh. ‘Yes.’ Is he some kind of a charlatan who’s about to say I’ve won loads of money, if I just give him all my personal details? God knows how he got past security.
‘Okay then.’ He hands me a brown envelope. ‘Bye, now.’
I watch him hurry towards the lifts and look at the envelope. No stamp? Across the middle in capital letters and red ink is:
HOLLY WEST – IMPORTANT AND CONFIDENTIAL.
I go back inside, lock the door and kneel back down beside Iona. I stroke the down on her cheek. She’s still yanking the toucan’s legs and seems fine. I look at the envelope and don’t want to open it. It’s all a bit mysterious and if it’s bad news I’m not sure I could take it right now. The whole thing is unsettling me. Why was it hand-delivered? No point in wondering, just open it. After a few more minutes dithering, I quickly slide my finger under the flap and pull out the letter:
Mrs West, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’ll just say it. Your baby boy didn’t die.
The letter slips from my fingers and I put my hand over my mouth. There’s a scream in my throat and I can’t let it out because it will scare my baby. Perhaps I have imagined it – perhaps my brain is playing tricks on me due to the trauma I have suffered, just like it did the other night when it woke me and convinced me Ruan was…
I watch my fingers pick up the letter and turn it over but I don’t read the rest yet. I direct my eyes at the wall and inhale through my nose and out through my mouth a few times, as Simon has taught me to do when I’m feeling anxious. Then I look back at the letter and the scream builds again.
I was paid for my silence, and I kept it until now. But I couldn’t live with myself, or look at my face in the mirror any longer. So there it is. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more, because I don’t know anything. Though I do know that your boy is safe with new parents.
I had a reason. A very important reason for doing what I did. Please know that I am very, very sorry.
Two hours later and I’m watching Iona sleeping. I keep coming back into her room every five minutes to check on her. It is all I can do to function normally, because the letter in my pocket keeps making me take it out to read it again. I have to keep doing that, because that’s the only way I can believe I haven’t imagined the whole thing. I have to see that it’s still there, that the writing hasn’t disappeared, and it’s actually just an old shopping list or something. I need to keep checking on Iona too, to make sure she’s still there. I am beginning to worry that I have imagined her.
Worry and anxiety are growing with every thought. In fact, inside my head there’s an ocean of worry and confusion, a storm of darkness. I want to calm it down, make the sun come out, have a smooth crossing to some logical answers. There are no logical answers to these questions though, are there?
My boy is gone, so why would someone write a letter like that?
What would they get out of it if it wasn’t true?
Is it a cruel joke from someone who has a grudge against me? Against Simon? I shudder, rub my arms briskly. Unthinkable.
My mind goes to the time when we’d said goodbye to Ruan. He and I stood hand in hand, me in hysterics, him shedding a tear at the water’s edge as we watched the waves take the ashes out to sea.
But if the letter is true, they weren’t ashes. If he isn’t dead, how could they be? So the letter can’t be true, can it?
In the end I’m convinced that the person who wrote the letter is some sick bastard who just wants to hurt me – us. Is she someone Simon was having an affair with who wants revenge because he ended things?
Was he sneaking out to see her those nights when I’d woken to find him gone, around the time I had the scan and he told me Ruan was on the small side.? Had Simon blamed me for it all because of the way I’d abused my body in the past? Had he taken his revenge on me by sleeping with someone else behind my back?
The blue bear on Iona’s coverlet looks too cheerful. Bears don’t grin inanely, do they? This one does and I can’t be around grinning things. I need to act. I need advice. I need to talk this through, because the storm inside my head is raging so hard that my thoughts can’t hang on for more than a few seconds before they’re tossed to the four winds. I can’t make sense of any of it. Who do I talk to? My mum? No. That would be a disaster. She would say I was overwrought, imagining things, like she said last week when I stupidly let slip that I thought my boy was still alive. She might even phone Simon and that is the last thing I want.