The Girl in the Red Coat

42

2 YEARS 210 DAYS

My new anatomy books had shiny, brightly coloured covers. I sat with Lucy on her sofa and scoured them for information about the baby swelling in her stomach. ‘Look, look,’ I said, ‘there’s the umbilical cord, see how it attaches.’ She ran her fingers over the lines of the diagram in wonder.

‘I don’t want to know the sex,’ she’d said before her scan. I didn’t have to ask why. Secretly, I’d sighed with relief when their child was born a boy. Jack: a healthy squalling savage package of strong limbs and early-sprouting teeth. I searched his little face for clues; as if he might bring news from the primeval soup from which he came, that unseen land where babies spring from and little girls disappear into. But all I found was more mystery.

‘She doesn’t have any relatives close by,’ Paul had said. ‘Having you around will fill the gap.’ It wasn’t just kindness this time, the way they drew me in. That day, I rolled up in my clapped-out car with the emergency calendula cream in my glove box. Lucy had sounded desperate on the phone.

‘Thank God,’ she said, answering the door. ‘He won’t stop screaming.’

Jack was on the floor on a plastic changing mat and the room smelled faintly of sick.

‘Take his nappy off and put some of this on,’ I said. ‘And let him kick with his skin exposed. That’ll calm the rash down.’

She leaned over him and stripped off his babygro and plastic nappy and smeared the cream on the red angry rash.

‘It’s awful, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, just needs some fresh air.’

The room was unkempt, scattered with teething rings, a tower of clean baby clothes not yet sorted and a baby bath half full of cooling water, the surface slightly scummy from cream and talc. Lucy’s hair was frayed at the ends now there wasn’t time for fortnightly visits to the hairdresser and she was still in her dressing gown. It wouldn’t bother Paul, this new Lucy — but I imagined it would bother her, who’d always been so smooth and tidy.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘This is so hard, he’s teething badly too.’

‘Any time. You know that.’

She slumped onto the sofa with a towel still tucked over her shoulder. ‘Lorna was around last week. We used to be such mates but I don’t seem to have much in common with them all now. Jack threw up down my back and she couldn’t wait to leave. I feel much more comfortable with you.’ She laughed. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’

‘Baby sick is nothing now compared to what I see in my job.’ Jack had quietened and was kicking his legs, the rash already turning from red to pink.

‘I bet.’ She paused. ‘Graham was asking after you again.’

‘Oh yeah?’ I looked out of the window. I hadn’t told them of my one night with him and was sure he wouldn’t either. Maybe for me, I was ashamed — I didn’t want them to think I’d treated their friend badly.

Jack started to cry again. ‘He needs taking out,’ I said, ‘a dose of air will sort him out.’

‘Probably.’ She was quiet for a minute. ‘Would you have time to do it? I’d kill to get my head down for half an hour.’

Instantly I was on my feet and the room was tipping around me, threatening to slide Jack from his mat. ‘I don’t think so, Lucy.’

‘OK, OK. That’s fine, it was just a thought — you probably have things to do.’

‘No, it’s not that. It’s …’ I fumbled around for words, my hands hanging uselessly by my sides. What I wanted to scream was: I lose children, don’t I? Instead, I pressed my lips together and stood mute.

‘Beth, it’s fine, either way.’ She’d guessed. ‘If you like we could take him out together.’

‘You’d trust me, you really would?’ I burst out.

‘Yes, of course. Gladly.’ I saw the gesture she was making — it wasn’t your fault, Beth — and I wanted more than anything not to fail.

I took a deep breath to ease the fluttering in my stomach. ‘I’ll do it.’

Lucy wrapped him up in a quilted jacket and hat and pulled and adjusted the knobs and levers on the impossibly expensive bucket-shaped pushchair.

‘You sure you’re OK?’

‘Yes, yes. You get your head down. Look,’ I gripped the handles of the pushchair, ‘we’re great. Aren’t we, Jack?’

Then I found myself outside with the front door clicking shut and me and Jack contemplating each other in the cold grey light. It had been raining and the ground was still wet.

Outside, he stopped crying, like I knew he would. Once in the fresh air he forgot his niggling pains and gripes and calmly watched the world go by his pushchair, the wheels making two lines on the wet pavement. I spoke to myself in my head, saying reassuring things — ‘There we go now, nice and easy. We’re just out for a walk to help your mummy. She’s tired.’ All the time trying to drown out that other voice, the one that was saying: ‘You’ve lost one, you could lose another. You have to blink — it could happen in that moment.’

Two, three streets away, all the newbuilds started to look the same. I thought of making my way back. ‘Stop it, you’ve only been gone five minutes,’ I scolded myself. Jack liberated a hand from his blankets and waved to me. His mitt had dropped off and was dangling from his sleeve by a thread. Up ahead I spotted the bright blue railings of the park Lucy had mentioned.

I’d never been there before — it was brand new, chunky play equipment in Lego colours. As I wheeled him in I tutted at the dogshit bagged up and hanging from the railings: ‘Why do people do that, Jack? Naughty, isn’t it?’ I was muttering anything, to keep calm.

The playground was deserted and I wheeled him over to the slide, wiped the rain off it with my scarf, and sat on the end. Jack waved madly and grappled with his straps like a prisoner. Dare I? I stood and did a 360-degree turn. We were alone. My fingers shook slightly as I unclicked the buckles, lifted him from the pushchair and cradled him in my hands on my lap.

‘Hello Jack.’ I smiled down at him and he gurgled and reached for my hair, delighted at last to be free.

I tried to discern Lucy and Paul in his blue eyes, his strong little nose but could see neither.

‘You’re yourself, aren’t you?’

How strange, I thought. This new little boy who is almost part of me through Paul; he doesn’t know Carmel. There’s no mark of all this on him. As he grows up her name will be that of a girl from a fairy tale. He’ll grow up and the world moves on, and on and on. I glimpsed something, the future moving in a blur ahead.

‘Perhaps I should call Graham,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’ He seemed to point at me and I laughed. ‘No, I don’t think so either.’

‘You two look happy,’ said Lucy as we returned. She’d got dressed and put her hair up in a ponytail.

‘Yes, yes — we are. I’ll do it again soon,’ I said, ‘if you like. Give you a break.’

Climbing into my car to leave I had a kind of singing energy that was almost a discomfort. The feel of Jack in my hands had unscrambled something in my heart, tugging at its dense knot, and a strand had come loose.