My mind wakes up, but I leave my eyes closed. It’s so hot. I’m on a beach, lying on sand in a cove that only I know about.
‘Debbie.’
Was that a voice in my head? I open one eye to find a nurse bending over me.
‘Oh God,’ I say. ‘The baby.’
I sit up as quickly as I can. How could I be so careless falling asleep so heavily? The nurse rests a cold hand on my wrist.
‘Baby’s fine,’ she says. ‘There’s a phone call for you.’
I swing my legs so they’re dangling over the side of the bed. The nurse pushes the payphone towards me and gives me the handset.
‘Debs, it’s me.’ It’s Peter. ‘How’s Annie? Did she wake much in the night? I wish I could be there. Shall I ask if you can come home early?’
It takes a few moments to digest Peter’s words. He must’ve thought of them during the night, to be saying them all at once. Being with children does that; makes you go over things in your mind, with no adult to talk to. He’s not used to it being just Bobby and him.
‘No, no,’ I say. ‘It’s fine. She’s being as good as gold.’
Good as gold? I sound like my mother.
‘I can’t make the afternoon visiting times today,’ he says, ‘but I’ll be there at seven tonight. I’ll drop Bobby off at school, then I’ll work straight through. Is that all right? I have to make sure I can spend at least a week at home when you both come out.’
‘That’s fine. Monica’s visiting this afternoon.’
‘Good, good.’
‘I have to go now, though. They’re bringing lunch round.’
‘Really?’
‘Bye, Peter.’
I place the handset back into the cradle. I hate making small talk, especially while a whole maternity ward can hear me shouting down the payphone. The nurse doesn’t say anything, even though when I look at the clock on the wall it’s only eight in the morning, and four hours from lunchtime. I suppose she’s seen everything, so I don’t feel as embarrassed as I should. I’ve spent so long lying to Peter – Yes, I’m fine and Yes, I’ve always wanted two children – that it comes naturally to me.
Why is he taking a whole week off? He’s branch manager now at Woolies – surely they can’t be without him for that long. I’m sure he didn’t with Bobby, though that time is a blur. I don’t think I can remember anything – I might’ve forgotten how to look after a tiny baby.
The woman in the bed next to me is snoring so loudly, it’s like being at home. A silver chain her boyfriend bought her is dangling off the hospital bed. ‘I can’t wear necklaces at night,’ she said yesterday, ‘in case they strangle me in my sleep.’ I was about to tell her that I was afraid of spiders to make her feel better, but I remembered Mum saying I shouldn’t make everything about me. ‘It’s called empathy,’ I said. ‘Ego,’ she said. She’s too humble for her own good. I blame Jesus – she loves him more than life itself.
Yesterday, she whispered, ‘Mothers are so much older these days.’ (Some of her opinions aren’t as Christian as they should be.) ‘Women want everything now,’ she said. ‘They all want to be men.’
It was, of course, a stupid thing to say in a maternity ward. And she was an older mother herself.
An assistant is coming round to change the water jugs.
‘It’s good that you’re dressed,’ she says to me. ‘Makes you feel a bit more together, doesn’t it?’
I look down at my Frankie Says Relax T-shirt and red tartan pyjama bottoms. My mouth is already open when I say, ‘Yes.’
She looks at my birthday cards, displayed on the cabinet. I can’t even remember opening them.
‘Happy Birthday, lovey,’ she says.
It’s only then I realise that Peter forgot my birthday.
At last, Annie makes a feeble sound as though she can’t be bothered.
‘I know, little girl,’ I say. ‘Sometimes it’s more effort than it’s worth, waking up.’
I pick her up and out of the plastic fish tank (that’s what Bobby called it when he visited yesterday) and put the ready-prepared bottle to her lips, settling back into the pillows. She suckles on it – probably going too fast, too much air – but I let her. She’s going to be a feisty little thing, I can tell.
Everyone else wanted me to have a girl. No one believed me when I said I didn’t mind, that healthy was all that mattered. But I would’ve been happy with two boys, I’m sure. It seems longer than nearly six years since I had Bobby – I was only twenty-one, but I felt so grown-up. He’s so loving, so sensitive. ‘Perfect little family now,’ said Mum. ‘One of each.’ And I should feel that, shouldn’t I?
But I don’t.
Anna
I used to have dreams that Debbie was dead and had come back to life. Sometimes she would be rotting, sometimes she would be an unwelcome guest as the family was sitting around the table for Sunday lunch. I don’t remember seeing her happy in my dreams. When I was eight, I used to have the same nightmare, over and over. I still remember it now. Our house was burning down, and a woman stood at my bedroom doorway screaming. Robert came to my side that night and sang ‘Hush, Little Baby’. I thought it childish the morning after, but at the time it soothed me. He said that Debbie sang it to me in the middle of the night a few times when I wouldn’t sleep.
I can’t sleep now. My mind won’t be still.
If Debbie were alive, then it would mean it was my fault that she left. She was fine until I came into the world. Not that anyone has said as much, but Dad, Robert – they all probably think it is down to me that she isn’t here any more. Perhaps I was a mistake.
I can’t stop thinking about her. I wish I hadn’t put all of Debbie’s photographs in the loft. Jack would call me crazy if I got the ladder down at three o’clock in the morning.
What would she look like now? Would she still hate me?
Random thoughts like these always come into my head when I try not to think of her.
A few years after we married, Jack told me I was obsessed with her.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘It’s not enough that you’re aware of it,’ he said. ‘You have to change it.’
Yesterday, he came home after Dad and Robert had left, and Sophie had gone to bed. Dad asked
