One Step Too Far (28 page)

I must have dozed off because now it’s 7.30, I really must get up, but my mind keeps drifting – I think it’s the sunshine, I swear it’s rained solidly for a week, and today’s the first proper Spring day after a cold hard winter. I can’t stop feeling ridiculously grateful to the whole entire world, maybe it’s my hormones, I was like this last time. I’m not even worried about my nutty family for a change, they seem to have all settled down at last, with Mum climbing mountains and Dad finally picking himself up after the shock of the divorce, and taking up badminton of all things. And Caroline is perhaps the greatest surprise of all. Yet another stint in rehab seems to have worked this time, thank God, and she seems at peace with herself at last. She has a nice partner Bill, and OK he might not be as glamorous as her previous boyfriends, but he’s real and decent and seems to love her. I’m so pleased for her. We don’t see her much now she’s in Leeds, but when we do it’s fine – she seems to have taken to Ben finally, and adores our darling child. Best of all, I've stopped worrying about upsetting her at last – my fretting about getting married or pregnant in case I offended her used to drive Ben mad. In fact I feel all right telling her about this new baby, hopefully she'll be pleased from the start this time, she seems to love being an auntie.

I sometimes wonder how amidst all my family’s dramas I’ve turned out so normal, how I’ve been able to cope with Caroline’s various crises and my parents’ divorce without any of it affecting me that badly. It’s not that I’m hard-hearted, or at least I hope I’m not, I just seem to have a very solid core somehow. And of course I was lucky I met Ben, and he has been that person who complements me in every way, and to this day makes my heart soar and my flesh sing, and I wonder whether other people’s marriages are like ours.

The sing song cry comes at last, and I am glad of it, can’t wait to see his little face still crumpled from sleep explode into a smile of love, for me, his mother. I pull back the duvet and almost run from the room.

It’s just gone two now, I’ve given Charlie his lunch and we’re dressed and
finally
ready to go, only 10 minutes later than planned. I’ve collected all the paraphernalia you need to take a two year old to the park – nappies, wipes, snacks, change of clothes in case he jumps in the puddles, bread for the ducks. Although I adore being a mother, I’m not great at the practicalities, am in no way one of those super-mums who finds time to purée freezerfuls of organic food whilst holding down a directorship. Never mind,
love is all you need
, that’s what I tell myself anyway, how I make myself feel less inadequate, and love is what I have tried to give him, from the moment they handed him to me in the delivery room. My only child has been adored from the start.

As we’re about to leave there’s a knock at the door, and I assume it’s the postman, but instead I’m shocked to see Caroline, looking pale and uncharacteristically scruffy – it’s a Thursday afternoon, shouldn’t she be in Leeds?

“Hi, Caz,” I say, flustered. “How... how lovely to see you." She stares at me, mute, so I say, "Are you OK?” and go to hug her but she shrugs me off. Although it's true we were closer for a while, more like you’d expect twins to be, when she turned to me after the bombing, it didn’t last long, I guess we’re just too different. In fact I’ve long since given up trying with her, and I feel guilty now. She still hasn’t said anything, and I wonder again what’s wrong.

“What are you doing here, Caz?” I say carefully. “Is everything OK?”

“I’m fine,” she breezes, but I don’t believe her. “You off out?”

“Yes, it’s such a lovely day we’re off to the park." I pause, and although for some reason I don't really want to, find myself asking if she'd like to come.

“Ooh, happy families, how super,” she says, but then she smiles and I’m not sure if she’s being bitchy or just being Caroline. “Sure, why not?”

So she takes Charlie and I take the buggy, it’s a long way for a two year old to walk there and back, and we set off down the sun-filled street. The blossom on the trees is pink and tissue-like, as if God stuck it on in the night, and it contrasts with the flat mid blue of the sky, and although I still think the world is a fantastic place a sense of unease has wormed into my day.

Charlie is dawdling, checking out every tree, every puddle, every gate, and Caroline lets him, it seems she’s in no hurry either. I’m in front, pushing the buggy, and the rhythmic bumps of the paving stones under the wheels sooth my nerves. I feel slightly calmer, less anxious now. I’m a few yards ahead of them, near the junction and I’m daydreaming, planning our route, trying to decide whether to go to the swings or the duck pond first, it’ll be nice to show Caroline. Maybe we could pop into Unicorn later and get something for tea, she’d like it in there, perhaps even have coffee afterwards at the new cafe opposite. I’m oblivious to what she and Charlie are up to behind me, I'm distracted by my plans. So when above the noise of the traffic I hear something behind me, a crash and a splintering of glass, I don’t know what’s happened but I just know it’s not good, and I turn and look back up the road, towards my sister and Charlie.

A half bottle of – what, vodka? – lies smashed on the ground.
She must have had it under her coat, she must have dropped it, she’s still drinking, she’s drunk.
The thoughts come all at once. Great jags of glass soar up from the pavement where the base of the bottle is still intact, and the angles catch the sunlight and glint menacingly.

“Mind Charlie’s paws,” I shout, but I’m too late, the puppy steps on a shard and lets out a pitiful prolonged howl. It makes holes in my soul. Caroline just stands there, looking down at the glittering pavement as Charlie whimpers, his paw held aloft, like in evidence.

I start to run towards my sister and my poor bewildered puppy – and then I remember Daniel, I’d just let him out of his buggy so he could walk a while, but again I’m too late, I know I am. I turn and see my son, just ten yards away from me, standing,
teetering
, on the edge of the pavement, outside the off-licence at the end of our street, right where it meets the busy main road.

“Daniel!” I scream, and my little blonde boy, so vivaciously alive, so full of potential, turns around and gives me the biggest cheesiest smile of utter utter joy, he loves buses. Then he turns back and looks across the road at the people standing at the bus stop opposite. Their expressions are horrified, their arms are waving in windmill patterns of helplessness.

Time slows down, as if the wind has dropped. I see the beautiful blue of the sky, like a backdrop, the gesticulating arms and mouths, slow and silent. I see a cyclist slide past, this side of the road; watch him look back at my son, over his shoulder; see him wobble, push his bike to the ground, but I know there’s no point, he won’t get there either, and I can’t bear it. I watch a bird fly across the scene, so slowly it might fall out of the sky. I see Ben this morning, kissing Daniel goodbye, ruffling his hair, saying, “See you later, little man,” but he won’t, he was wrong. I watch myself as they put Daniel to my breast, the flood of love thumping through me. I see the back of my son, his cobalt blue puffer coat, his little beige cords, his new navy shoes, his golden blonde hair. I notice the colours somehow, and they are gorgeous in the sunshine.

And then I pull myself together. I start to run towards my boy as the blood drains down my body and leaves my limbs shivery, but before I can get there Daniel waves cheerily at the people at the bus stop and takes one more step, into the road.

There is no room in my heart for anything other than silence. The quiet is oppressive, it is grief distilled, and it is unbearable. It is universal, I suppose, that moment of bereavement. It makes the whole world stop, for how long I cannot tell you, an excruciating respite from all that’s to come. And then the screaming – within me or outside of me? – starts, and it doesn’t seem to stop.

Ben takes me in his arms now, in our anonymous hotel room so far from Chorlton, and we weep together for our son, perhaps for the first time. Although here is the only place I want to be I still feel lost and desperate and as if the world has turned on the wrong axis somehow and day has become night and good has become evil. I’ve never vocalised what actually happened before and the sobs resonate out of the room and down the corridor, the horror is as big as a bus, as big as the number 23 that hit my beautiful boy in front of my very own eyes, that turned his blonde hair and blue eyes into blood and mush and unravelling brains.

Ben says nothing and holds me and we cry and cry and we’re both weeping for our dead son and for our own ruined lives, just when everything had all felt so utterly perfect. I was never superstitious before but maybe Daniel’s death was a sign – don’t wish for too much, don’t expect too much, life doesn’t work like that. Eventually we lie down together on the hard white bed and somehow we manage to fall asleep, still wrapped in each other’s arms, still wrapped in misery.

66

They must have drugged me but still I wake up screaming. I shriek and shriek, it’s horrific but I can’t seem to stop. Ben rushes to my side and his face is ashen and the grief hangs around his eyes, and even in my delirious state I realise I’ve broken his heart too.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” I sob and then I continue shrieking again. It seems my mother is also in the room and she rushes off to fetch the doctor, to give me another shot of something I suppose. When I cry and say, “Where’s Caroline?” everyone looks at me like I’m mad, and then I remember Daniel’s little smashed body again and I howl like an animal. The doctor comes eventually with his glinting needle and the image recedes again into the inky depths of my consciousness, to be lodged there forever.

It is three days later and I’m no longer in hospital, no longer sedated, and Ben tells me gently that I need to talk to the police, have to make a statement. “Will Caroline have to go too?” I say, and again Ben looks confused, and says, “What’s Caroline got to do with it?” I think then that perhaps I imagined it all, maybe I wasn’t watching Daniel anyway, maybe my twin sister is in no way implicated,
wasn’t even there.
And then my sanity kicks in and I know that of course she was there, but it seems no-one saw her behind me, they must have been too fixated on the excruciating scene in front of them – the annihilated toddler, the maniacal mother, the distraught bus driver – to clock a clone of myself bolting in the other direction. When I notice Charlie limping ever so slightly I dully check his paws, and there in the front left one, gleaming like a diamond, is the end of a tiny sharp shard of glass. I pull it out and Charlie yelps, and I decide there’s no point complicating things, what difference does it make now, it won’t bring Daniel back, and I put the shard in the bin.

I wake up early and my belly aches and my world feels empty, although Ben keeps telling me, quietly, sensitively, that we mustn’t give up hope, we have another life to think about. I shuffle to the toilet and as I sit down something feels wrong and I stand up again and screamingly bright blood is gushing down my legs. I screech for Ben and he comes running and I unlock the toilet door and stare up at him, naked yet gaudy, painted with pain. He looks at me with such devastation that I realise I’ve let him down again now, that now I’ve taken both his children from him.

How I make it to the funeral I don’t know. I’m still bleeding and can barely stand but I make it there somehow, I have to say goodbye to my boy. Everyone looks at me as if
what was she thinking, not holding his hand by such a busy road
, and the shame feels livid. No-one can comfort me. When I see my little boy’s coffin, white and gleaming like a brand new shoebox, draped with flowers – someone had thought to get pink, Daniel’s favourite colour – I grab Ben’s hand for support and squeeze it hard. His hand doesn’t respond, not for at least half a second, and I realise with a shock that
he
blames me too. I feel like I’m going to pass out but we get through the service and when the coffin starts moving away from me, travelling ominously behind the curtain, that’s all I can cope with and I scream and scream and as Ben tries to restrain me I run down the aisle towards my boy, and then I change my mind, what good will it do, I’m too late, again, and I turn on my heel and run the other way now, out of the chapel into the grim grey world where the sun will never shine again.

67

On a rainy and blustery June morning, just over four weeks after his son had died, Ben went back to work. He didn’t have to, his boss told him to take as long as he needed, but he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t reach his wife, she seemed lost to him now, and he found that he seemed to annoy her somehow, whatever he said, whatever he did, and he thought maybe it was better to give her some space for a while, let her have some time to herself. He simply didn’t know how to cope with her, his own grief was so agonising, and he found he needed the distraction, craved the safety of the neat columns of numbers, the debits and credits that he was meant to balance, as if any of it mattered. Going to the office was painful: not the work itself, but the pitying looks from his colleagues who meant well but didn’t know what to say, and so pretended instead that nothing had happened and said nothing about any of it. Even worse, they would try to censor their own conversations when he was around – would chat about what they’d been up to at the weekend, and studiously fail to mention their own kids, and Ben knew they were doing it for him, but he wanted to yell at them that it didn’t make it any better and to stop being so bloody stupid, but of course he didn’t.

He was lonely, wherever he was, whoever he was with. He felt the anger build inside him, and more often than not it was aimed at his wife. She still refused to talk to him about it, tell him how it had happened, and although he never wanted to push her, he couldn’t help sometimes wondering what the hell she’d been doing, how could she not have been watching their son on the Manchester Road – it was so busy, he was only just turned two – and the more he tried to suppress the thought the more it grew inside him, creeping and insistent and insidious, like moss under a dank dead tree. It didn’t help that Emily seemed to hate him now, seemed glad that he’d gone back to work, and he wondered what he was doing wrong – after all he had no blueprint of how to look after the mother of his dead child.