Something in Common (41 page)

Something was terribly wrong, pain knifing through her body as the too-bright lights flashed by above her head, as the trolley was pushed through doorways and turned down new corridors, as something was announced over a speaker that she couldn’t make out, as she cried for Neil but he didn’t come.

And then more doors opening into a room, and the trolley stopping and now Christine was gone, Sarah’s hand suddenly empty. New people rushed silently about, nobody at all meeting her eye, and she could hear beeping and the pain came again, worse, making her cry out – and here was her doctor, the bottom of his face covered with a mask, the top part creased with worry as she begged him, weeping, to save her baby, grabbing on to his green gown and screaming again with the terror and pain of it—

And then a stinging jab into the back of her hand, just before the doctor slid with everything else into the darkness.

A
s
the taxi pulled away from the kerb, Helen turned to Alice. ‘Bring Granny in, I’ll follow you.’

Alice looked at her. ‘Where are you going? Are you OK?’

‘Fine, I just want a minute.’

She watched them walk up the steps of the registry office, her mother leaning on Alice’s arm, smart in the navy coat and dress she’d picked up in the July sales. At the top of the steps Alice glanced back, and Helen smiled and waved, and waited until they disappeared inside.

She stood on the path as people brushed past her. She pictured Frank sitting on some chair, or pacing the floor maybe, wearing the dark grey suit he’d bought a few weeks ago, his white beard neatly trimmed. George would be there too with his matching buttonhole, the garden centre closed for the day, both partners otherwise engaged.

She thought of Sarah and her husband somewhere inside, sitting apart from the others, or maybe having already introduced themselves – yes, Sarah would be friendly, eager to make herself known to them. And she couldn’t miss Frank: she’d recognise him straight away.

She checked Alice’s watch and saw that it was twenty past two. The restaurant was booked for three, the guests who were meeting them there probably en route by now. Everyone’s day disrupted, everyone gathering to celebrate the occasion of Frank Murphy and Helen Fitzpatrick finally getting married.

She
thought of Breen, recently widowed. She looked down at the bunch of white roses she held, pictured it sitting all night in the blue bowl his hyacinths had come in … and she knew she couldn’t go through with it.

She walked a few metres up the path and laid the bouquet on top of a litter bin. She stooped and removed her new black shoes one by one – already starting to pinch – and set them carefully side by side on the edge of the path, and she walked barefoot to the end of the street. She took her mobile phone out of her bag and scrolled through her short contact list until she found him.

Future husband
, he was listed as. Already there in the phone when he’d given it to her, and for the laugh she’d left it unchanged.

He’d taken her out and bought her countless presents. He’d held umbrellas over her in the rain, and looked after her when she’d been sick. He’d filled her house with plants and been kind to her mother. Every Valentine’s Day he’d given her a dozen red roses. He’d sent Alice fifty pounds when she’d moved to Edinburgh, told her to spend it on something totally frivolous.

She couldn’t phone him. She couldn’t talk to him, because whatever she said would come out wrong. She couldn’t let him know that she was breaking his heart; he’d have to figure that out all by himself.

She replaced her phone in her bag. She turned the corner and kept on walking, ignoring the ringing when it started.

I
t wasn’t
like before, it was a million times worse than before.

‘Talk to me,’ Neil begged, but she turned away.

He had a beautiful pursed little mouth and a cap of damp black hair, and perfect tiny toes and fingers. He was the size of a rabbit and he weighed nothing at all and his skin was paler than paper. He never made a sound, never opened his eyes. Never looked into his mother’s face.

Christine didn’t demand that she talk, just sat by Sarah’s bed weeping quietly, a tissue pressed to her eyes, her free hand resting lightly in Sarah’s.

They’d wrapped him in a white blanket and laid him gently on her chest, and she’d slid her hand inside the blanket to cradle the curve of his skull, and she’d lifted him up to press her lips to his soft forehead, to each of his eye sockets, to his cheeks and his chin and his throat.

His tiny fingers, his adorable little fingers, broke her heart.

‘Drink the tea at least,’ a nurse had urged, but Sarah had left it beside the untouched slice of toast.

He had grown cold and stiff in her arms as she’d gazed at him, memorising his blue-veined eyelids, his long dark lashes, his elfin nose, the adorable squiggles of his ears. They named him Luke, a name she’d always loved.

‘I’m so terribly sorry, Sarah,’ the doctor had told her, hands thrust into the pockets of his hospital gown. ‘The umbilical cord had become twisted, it had interfered with the oxygen supply, and by the time we were able to get to him it was too late. It was nobody’s fault, there was no warning.’

No
warning. He’d died all alone inside her, the air choked out of him by the cord that joined her to him, that was supposed to keep him alive. They’d cut her open, they’d lifted him out, they’d disentangled the cord, but his heart had already stopped. They’d done all they could, but he stayed dead. Her baby was dead.

For six days she lay in bed, forcing down food to make the nurses stop asking. On the seventh day, when they let her go, she sat silently as Neil wheeled her to the car, she remained silent as he drove her home, the children blessedly absent, still at Christine’s. She stood under the shower and let the hot water mingle with her tears. She climbed into bed, her hair still dripping, and closed her eyes.

And the following morning, when Neil woke her with tea she didn’t want, she said, in a voice rusty with disuse, ‘Let Helen know what happened.’

N
obody
understood. Everyone demanded an explanation.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ Alice said. ‘I can’t believe you just walked away. How could you?’

‘I hope you’re ashamed,’ her mother said. ‘You made a fool out of that decent man. What have you got to say for yourself?’

‘I expected better of you,’ George said. ‘Frank worshipped you. You’ve destroyed him.’

But when Helen tried to explain, none of them would listen.

‘What do you mean, you don’t love him?’ Alice asked incredulously. ‘You were living together for years. You seemed perfectly happy. That makes no sense.’

‘You sound like a teenager,’ her mother said. ‘You’re fifty-three – you think your knight in shining armour is still on the way? Grow up.’

‘How can you say you didn’t mean to hurt him?’ George asked. ‘What else did you think you were doing?’

The only one who didn’t look for a reason was Frank. He didn’t show up at the house: it was George who came to get his things, George who stood with his arms folded while Helen packed them up, who refused Alice’s offer of coffee as he told Helen what he thought of her.

And six days later, when the house was empty of Frank’s possessions, when his ring had been slipped into an envelope and handed to George, who’d accepted it wordlessly, when Alice had gone back to Edinburgh after a stiff hug for her mother at the airport, there was nothing left to do but sit alone in the living room and try to make sense of it.

But
what sense was there to be made? She hadn’t loved him, that was all there was to it, however much she might wish it otherwise. She hadn’t loved him, and he deserved better.

And of course she’d done it badly – waited till the last possible minute before running away, made him believe that he was going to have his happy-ever-after before snatching it away from him – but in the end it had been the right thing to do, and now it was done, and she must remember that. She’d done the right thing.

In time she’d be forgiven by Alice and her mother – and possibly even by George, who’d looked at her like he hated her as he’d shoved the ring into his breast pocket. Frank was another matter. By him she might not be forgiven, and that was something she would probably never discover.

As she was climbing into bed in her ancient and much-beloved Alice Cooper T-shirt, which Frank had for some reason christened Prudence, she thought again of Sarah and her husband – and the thought was accompanied, as it had been since the aborted wedding day, by a pang of guilt.

They hadn’t introduced themselves. According to Alice, nobody had come forward to make themselves known, although Sarah must have identified the wedding party. She would surely have known it was them.

Helen pictured them sitting apart from the small gathering, wondering when she was going to appear, maybe witnessing the growing unease when Helen hadn’t shown up, and wasn’t answering her phone.

She imagined them watching the group leaving, and wondering what was going on. She thought of them finally deciding that they’d had a wasted journey and making their way back to Heuston station for the train to Kildare.

She recalled Sarah’s delight when she and Neil had been invited to the wedding, how excited Sarah had sounded at the prospect of them finally meeting up. Helen remembered her own misgivings, particularly as the day itself approached, and her doubts about the wisdom of getting married had been growing silently. She’d regretted her impulse to invite them then, and wished it undone.

She’d
write to Sarah tomorrow, she’d try to explain, and hope that Sarah would understand. She’d apologise, and maybe send something as a token of how sorry she was – and knowing Sarah, and her infinite capacity to see the best in everyone, Helen would be forgiven by her too.

But the following day an envelope arrived, stamped with the Kildare postmark. There was no return address in the corner and the handwriting wasn’t Sarah’s, but it rang a faint bell. She tore it open and pulled out the single sheet within.

Helen reread the words, trying to take them in. Not sitting in the registry office then, no wasted journey because they’d never made it to Dublin. Sarah had gone into labour too early, and their baby had died. While Helen was taking off her wedding shoes and walking away from a life with Frank, Sarah was losing her baby.

She
laid the page and its envelope on the hall table and picked up the phone and dialled Alice’s number. When the answering machine came on, she listened to her daughter’s voice and waited for the beep.

‘It’s me. Maybe you could ring me back when you get this. I have news.’

***

‘I
t’s
only been a month,’ he said. ‘You’re still upset. It’s understandable. You don’t know what you’re saying.’

But she knew exactly what she was saying. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I know you don’t want to hear this, but I can’t go on living a lie any longer.’

Neil searched her face. ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘love, you’re still hurting after … what happened—’

‘Luke,’ she said. ‘We lost Luke, that’s what happened.’ Every word ripping her into pieces. The wound still raw and bleeding, the image of his tiny white coffin being lowered into the ground still obscenely vivid.

Neil flinched, his eyes closing briefly.
Jesus
… Do you think I don’t know what happened? Do you think I can bear it any more than you can? But turning against me won’t help things: we need to support each other now.’

She shook her head, searching for the words that would hurt the least, because she didn’t want to hurt him any more than she had to.

‘This isn’t about losing our baby, this is about me … changing. I’ve changed towards you. I’ve fallen …’ and here she faltered, because there was no kind way to say what had to be said.

‘Sarah, don’t do—’

‘I don’t love you any more,’ she said loudly, the words trampling over his. ‘I’m not in love with you, so I can’t stay married to you. It would be wrong, and dishonest.’

She
watched his face twisting, his forehead creasing, his head shaking from side to side. ‘Don’t say that, you don’t mean that. You’re—’

‘It was wrong to get back together,’ she said. ‘It was wrong for me to take you back. I did it because I was lonely and I missed you, I missed being married, and I thought us being a couple again would make me happy, but it didn’t – or not for long.’

‘We
were
happy,’ he insisted. ‘
You
were happy, I know you were—’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I thought I was, I told myself I was, but I wasn’t. I was happy when I found out I was pregnant. That was what I wanted, that was
all
I wanted. I didn’t admit it, even to myself, but when Luke died …’

She stopped, struggling against the tears that still tried to pour out of her whenever she dropped her guard enough to let them. She usually managed to save them for the times she was alone – cycling to and from the nursing home, lying in the bath, waiting in the car for Stephen and Martha to come out of their joint piano lesson. Snatching a few minutes to sit in the nursing-home garden, overgrown and wild again now without Charlie or Martina to look after it.