Some Old Lover's Ghost by Judith Lennox Page A

all to be washed. Lawrie howled inconsolably as Jane rinsed his rabbit in the sink. He howled throughout the entire cycle of both washing machine and tumble-drier, and he howled and fought as Jane and I changed his nappy and dressed him in clean clothes. All attempts at distraction were rejected – his suck-cup was pushed away, his dummy was batted to the floor. Only when Boffy, untypically clean and fluffy, emerged from the tumble-drier did Lawrie curl up on Jane’s lap, and the sobs begin to lessen.
    Jane looked down at him, and wearily stroked his curls. ‘Poor old boy,’ she whispered. ‘Poor old boy.’ There was no colour to her skin; it seemed transparent. She looked up at me. ‘Do you know, Becca,’ she said quietly, ‘that I’d sell my soul for an uninterrupted night’s sleep?’
    I didn’t doubt her. Lawrie, on Jane’s lap, still hiccuped, but his lids had closed.
    ‘Couldn’t Steve help more?’
    She shook her head. ‘We need the overtime. We have negative equity.’
    I glanced at her, shocked. ‘I hadn’t realized.’
    ‘We bought this house at the wrong time. And there’s only two bedrooms, and the boys fight terribly. I don’t know when we’ll be able to move to a bigger place. I envy you your freedom, sometimes.’
    It had been a long time since I had considered myself an object of envy. Not since Toby.
    Jane managed a watery smile and, very gently, I scooped Lawrie out of her lap. He didn’t stir. I told Jane to go back to bed, and promised to see to Lawrie if he woke in the night.
    I carried him upstairs, but did not immediately put him into his cot. Instead, I stood there for a moment, with his warm, velvety head cradled against my shoulder, looking down at the small, perfect curves of his face, at the violet-tinged eyelids, and the fine skin still blotched pink from crying. My own eyes were heavy with tears, but I did not allow them to fall. At lastI touched my lips to his forehead and laid him carefully in his cot. He shuffled about a bit, ending up with his knees tucked under his bottom, his rabbit pressed against his face, snoring. I watched him as he slept, and I tried to imagine Toby scrubbing yucky baby clothes in the sink, Toby putting aside his work to run to attend to a sick child. And I couldn’t. The images just didn’t fit. He would have worried about spoiling his suit. He would have worried about losing a case.
    I sat down on the chest of drawers beside the cot and felt, for the first time, a sober regret instead of grief and anger and a need for vengeance. I began to recognize that my relationship with Toby had been based on mutual fantasies. That Toby had been looking for a young, pliant partner to mould into the sort of wife who would be an asset to him in his career. That I had been searching for a family to replace my own flawed, fractured clan. The child had been a part of our fantasy. My initial disbelief that someone like Toby – handsome, cultured and well-off – might love me had never quite gone away. I had believed, I suppose, that a child might bind us together. As for Toby himself, perhaps he had been attracted to that caring, early-Nineties image of masculinity reinforced by fatherhood: the man in the adverts with the beautiful wife, the adorable child, the fast car. The adverts don’t tell the truth, of course: the shiny new car cluttered with carrycots and disposable nappies and baby toys; the brilliant career put on hold by too many sleepless nights.
    I stayed another three days with Jane, until she was on her feet again and Steve was back from his conference. Then I drove to Tilda’s. As I shut the gate of The Red House behind me and started up the path, I felt a sense of release. The high walls of the box trees, pearled with raindrops, embraced me, and I could smell the heady, hypnotic scents of hyacinth and jonquil. And for a moment, standing there on the pathway, enclosed by the hedges, I closed my eyes, breathing in the perfumed air, elated by