have a bad effect on a small child?’
Dear God, dear God, how had he…
I wrung my hands as I hovered over my child, a bad angel.
‘Please don’t worry,’ he went on calmly. ‘You can stay with your daughter, but I think we will keep her in overnight for observation.’
What was the doctor doing now? The studious young man was examining the fresh red mark on Poppy’s forehead. It had been easy and quite painless: it only meant rubbing gently with a sheet of sandpaper, backwards and forwards, and the tender baby skin roughened and tiny blood spots appeared. She didn’t cry – if she’d cried, dear God, I would have stopped. It looked as if she’d had a knock and she was sleepy anyway after three teaspoons of Benylin.
I closed my eyes against the stark lights, feeling sick.
My teeth, I couldn’t stop them from chattering.
To see my baby lying there so sweet and defenceless broke my heart. Poppy whimpered in her sleep and I couldn’t hold back the tears. I sobbed with relief that no real damage was done, but more than that, I wept at the evil act prompted by my obsession. Martha’s threats of total withdrawal had thrown me into a panic. There was no forward planning. The idea had taken hold of me suddenly and before I came to my senses I’d done it.
In just the same impulsive way, I had staged that threatened miscarriage months ago.
Before I knew it, that mark was there on Poppy’s head and the medicine had been given.
The frenzied regret came seconds later. I screamed for Martha, more stricken with horror than I would have been if the highchair story was true.
I had turned into a monster.
God help me. For my child’s sake I should seek help and confess. NOW NOW NOW. Tell them, my conscience screamed at me. Martha was right – what next? If I could do this hellish thing to Poppy, the one I cared about most in the world – except Martha – then I was capable of anything.
And all this – for what?
Martha’s attention?
The certainty that she would forgive me?
A small measure of her pity?
What was this demon that possessed me? What in God’s name was living inside me? And this in the name of love.
If only we had been able to talk to somebody wise.
TEN
Martha
I F ONLY WE HAD been able to talk to somebody wise.
Tina Gallagher might not be wise but she was a damn sight wiser than Sam, who wouldn’t have known what I was talking about if I’d turned to him for advice. I confided in Tina Gallagher, the brassy popsie who lived next door, on the day she found me hunched and demoralized, quite overcome in my kitchen. I had confided in Tina before – she was nice – about the times I was suspicious of Sam and the despair I felt at being trapped at home. I’d even told her about small irritations, like when Sam was being deliberately unhelpful and refusing to call at the nearest Spar on his way home.
Feeling particularly ugly and bloated on that fatal day (Lawrence’s birth had played havoc with my weight), I played straight into Jennie’s hands. And the self-contempt caused by my feeble reaction has bugged me ever since. Not so much because of what happened, but because I allowed it to happen, knowing how fragile her warped state of mind was.
I let Jennie down. I should have been stronger.
Somebody wrote that to experience the whole spectrum of life’s emotions you must spy on your country, commit murder and make love to someone of your own sex.
Oh yes? A pretty rounded sort of person is what I thought myself to be at the time.
And up until that fateful day, I had missed out on all three of those highly charged activities.
Jennie despised Tina and Carl, the Gallaghers – my neighbours. In the morally superior manner of her mother, she considered them the wrong friends for me. And now, when I think back to the way I allowed her intrusion into my life, I have to wonder at my own sanity. But when you’re marooned at home all day, surrounded either by blubbering kids or women trying to
Dear God, dear God, how had he…
I wrung my hands as I hovered over my child, a bad angel.
‘Please don’t worry,’ he went on calmly. ‘You can stay with your daughter, but I think we will keep her in overnight for observation.’
What was the doctor doing now? The studious young man was examining the fresh red mark on Poppy’s forehead. It had been easy and quite painless: it only meant rubbing gently with a sheet of sandpaper, backwards and forwards, and the tender baby skin roughened and tiny blood spots appeared. She didn’t cry – if she’d cried, dear God, I would have stopped. It looked as if she’d had a knock and she was sleepy anyway after three teaspoons of Benylin.
I closed my eyes against the stark lights, feeling sick.
My teeth, I couldn’t stop them from chattering.
To see my baby lying there so sweet and defenceless broke my heart. Poppy whimpered in her sleep and I couldn’t hold back the tears. I sobbed with relief that no real damage was done, but more than that, I wept at the evil act prompted by my obsession. Martha’s threats of total withdrawal had thrown me into a panic. There was no forward planning. The idea had taken hold of me suddenly and before I came to my senses I’d done it.
In just the same impulsive way, I had staged that threatened miscarriage months ago.
Before I knew it, that mark was there on Poppy’s head and the medicine had been given.
The frenzied regret came seconds later. I screamed for Martha, more stricken with horror than I would have been if the highchair story was true.
I had turned into a monster.
God help me. For my child’s sake I should seek help and confess. NOW NOW NOW. Tell them, my conscience screamed at me. Martha was right – what next? If I could do this hellish thing to Poppy, the one I cared about most in the world – except Martha – then I was capable of anything.
And all this – for what?
Martha’s attention?
The certainty that she would forgive me?
A small measure of her pity?
What was this demon that possessed me? What in God’s name was living inside me? And this in the name of love.
If only we had been able to talk to somebody wise.
TEN
Martha
I F ONLY WE HAD been able to talk to somebody wise.
Tina Gallagher might not be wise but she was a damn sight wiser than Sam, who wouldn’t have known what I was talking about if I’d turned to him for advice. I confided in Tina Gallagher, the brassy popsie who lived next door, on the day she found me hunched and demoralized, quite overcome in my kitchen. I had confided in Tina before – she was nice – about the times I was suspicious of Sam and the despair I felt at being trapped at home. I’d even told her about small irritations, like when Sam was being deliberately unhelpful and refusing to call at the nearest Spar on his way home.
Feeling particularly ugly and bloated on that fatal day (Lawrence’s birth had played havoc with my weight), I played straight into Jennie’s hands. And the self-contempt caused by my feeble reaction has bugged me ever since. Not so much because of what happened, but because I allowed it to happen, knowing how fragile her warped state of mind was.
I let Jennie down. I should have been stronger.
Somebody wrote that to experience the whole spectrum of life’s emotions you must spy on your country, commit murder and make love to someone of your own sex.
Oh yes? A pretty rounded sort of person is what I thought myself to be at the time.
And up until that fateful day, I had missed out on all three of those highly charged activities.
Jennie despised Tina and Carl, the Gallaghers – my neighbours. In the morally superior manner of her mother, she considered them the wrong friends for me. And now, when I think back to the way I allowed her intrusion into my life, I have to wonder at my own sanity. But when you’re marooned at home all day, surrounded either by blubbering kids or women trying to
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