rented with had never been close, and although she had friends at university in her first year, falling for Jude meant she’d let them slip away. Even before uni, growing up in her parents’ isolated house meant she’d had few friends – and part of her liked it that way.
As the train rattled along the tracks, she placed her hands on her stomach, imagining her child with Jude’s curls and cute nose, rather than her straw-like hair and sharp features. But it would have her blue eyes – an amazing child that Jude wouldn’t be able to resist, once he’d had time to reflect. He would love their baby. They would be happy. The three of them.
‘Your mother’s gone,’ the nurse had told her when she reached the hospital. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’
A crushing numbness took over. She’ll never love me now. Her eyes ached, but no tears came. She’d dreamt that one day she would be close to her mother – that they might even become friends. It had been a ludicrous dream.
The nurse touched her arm gently. ‘Would you like to see your father?’ she said, after a few moments. ‘Although I must warn you, he’s in a poor way.’
The week that followed had been long and painful. Her father was attached to drips, and the beeps of the monitor penetrated Laura’s head, making it ache. He had been an arrogant man – so vain. Yet now he was swollen and bruised, and she cursed the wicked thought that invaded her head, as she sat by his side. You deserve this.
But still she visited each day, waiting for it all to be over.
‘Why?’ she asked him on day five, a question that spanned so much. But he never woke.
Why did you always drive so fast? Had it been for Mum? Her mother had loved the wind in her hair, as he treated back roads like racetracks.
Laura had been told the woman coming the other way had died instantly. That the child strapped in the back had survived. A child lost her mother because of you.
It was on the seventh day she asked, ‘Why didn’t you want me?’ A tear finally rolled down her cheek, and she imagined for a moment that he squeezed her hand – that he was saying he was sorry. But there was no way he could have. He’d died ten minutes earlier.
And now, Laura stood in her parents’ house, her hair damp from a shower and loose about her shoulders, her feet bare on the cold wooden floor. She knew she wouldn’t go back to university – to the room her parents had paid for. It was time for her to get off the merry-go-round of life, pause time until she had the strength to climb back on – and what better place to come to terms with her parents’ death, her pregnancy, and Jude letting her down, than here in this isolated house in the middle of nowhere?
The phone blasted, bringing her out of her reverie, and she raced to pick it up.
‘Jude,’ she said, twirling the phone cord around her fingers. He was the only one she’d given her parents’ number to.
‘It’s Abi.’
Laura froze. She’d been friendly with Abi in her first year, but she didn’t need her right now.
‘I just wondered if you’re OK,’ Abi went on. ‘Jude told me about your parents. He gave me this number – I hope you don’t mind me calling.’
‘I’m fine, Abi. Honestly. I just need some time out, that’s all.’
‘Well, give me a call, won’t you, if you need anything. I can come up and see you at the weekend, if you’d like me to.’
‘No.’ It came out too sharp. Abi was a good person. ‘Sorry. It’s just I’m fine. I don’t need anyone right now.’
‘Well, OK then. But you know where I am …’
‘I do. Thanks.’
Laura ended the call. The only person she needed right now was Jude.
She cupped her hand over her eyes, and peered through the window, and into the woods, her nose touching the glass. The lake where she’d swum as a child was visible through the glade. There had been some happy moments, hadn’t there?
She narrowed her eyes. Someone was out there, by a distant tree. She blinked. She was tired, imagining things. The area had been deserted when she first arrived, and the nearest life a farm half a mile away. It was the shadows – the shapes of the hedgerow playing tricks.
She lowered the blind and spun round, her eyes skittering around the room. An oil painting of her parents filled the wall above the fireplace. That would have to go. In fact she would bag up most of their stuff and give it to charity. Her father would die again if he knew.
She grabbed her holdall and climbed the twisting staircase, and then stood in the doorway of her old room for the first time in two years. When she’d gone off to the University of Dublin to study art, she’d never looked back, never called – not once. Deep sadness consumed her.
She padded into the room, lifting books from the shelves. They were all educational – no Noddy or Famous Five. Her parents had expected so much of her. It was probably for the best they’d never known about the baby – that she’d made the decision to drop out of university.
Laura had begged her parents for a toy rabbit when she was a child, like Jenny’s at school. ‘Babyish,’ her father had said. She’d been seven at the time.
My child will have toys – all the toys they desire.
She flopped onto the bed, eyes wide and looking at the ceiling, imagining her parents’ awful accident on Devil’s Corner – and how the poor woman had died. Had it been instant? Had the little girl in the back seat witnessed it, or had she been sleeping? How would such a young child cope without her mother?
She felt suddenly cold, and pulled the duvet over her. She curled into a tight ball, cradling her knees.
‘We’ll be OK, little one,’ she told her unborn child, her eyes growing heavy. ‘When Daddy comes, everything will be all right.’
February 2018
‘It’s a bit weird, that’s all.’ I stared at the kettle, urging it to boil, feeling cross with myself for making too much of the friend request, and for showing it to Angela. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Just someone having a joke.’
‘Jokes are meant to be funny, Rachel. Aren’t they?’ Angela heaved herself onto the kitchen stool, and rested her elbows on the breakfast bar, gazing my way.
She’d moved in next door about a year ago, and we’d hit it off immediately. I liked to think it was because we both liked Imagine Dragons and drinking rhubarb gin, but sometimes wondered if it was more than that. She was around my mum’s age. Was I looking for a replacement mother figure, or perhaps a gran for Grace? I certainly couldn’t rely on Lawrence’s parents to fill that role; they’d started a new life in Australia before I met him, and he rarely spoke to them.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, guilt
