I’m trapped by all my unwise past choices. As much as I hate what Camilla (and Nina) did, Greg doesn’t have the right to make that decision. One thing makes perfect sense: I cannot allow Greg to break my promise to Nina. She trusted me to protect her reputation for the sake of her (now my) family. If Camilla is investigated for this, she’ll pin all the blame onto Nina because she isn’t here to defend herself. Clearly, she’s spun Greg a version where Nina played a greater role than she did.
An accomplice indeed! Jack does not need to be connected (however loosely) to something so negative and potentially harmful so early on in his life.
I take several walks a day, sometimes with Jack in his buggy, but mostly in his baby-sling, which slows me down as I stop every few minutes to check that he’s breathing. This morning, after school drop-off (it’s wonderful to be back into some kind of routine), I’m braving a longer walk with Goldie by my side. As I head toward the main part of the village, a bird thrashes in a beech tree, making me jump as I exit the pathway.
I bump into Clare and Ellie from my prenatal classes pushing a designer buggy with a beige canopy. They both look tired, yet so normal. They had a boy, too, also named Jack.
It’s the first time I’ve met their Jack and vice versa, so we are all obliged to go through the baby introductions and the obligatory sharing of sympathy when it comes to sleep deprivation.
“Let’s catch up properly next week,” says Ellie. “Florence from the group is going to organize a picnic in the park.”
“Sounds good,” I say automatically.
Ellie looks completely fine, serene, even. She does not look traumatized by something as natural as giving birth. Which means that there’s definitely something wrong with me. I turn back.
Camilla is sitting on our back doorstep, waiting for me, clearly desperate for yet another furtive chat.
“I feel like a sitting duck,” she says.
I open the door and we walk into the kitchen. “We do need to do something. He blamed Tamsin for the creepy messages, but something Emily said makes me think it was him all along.”
I outline my plan.
“Have you gone out of your mind?” Camilla says. “This will make things worse! We’ll never get away with it.”
I quite like the fact that she doesn’t watch what she says around me. Everyone else avoids certain words which may imply that I’m not coping as well as Nina did. Camilla does no such thing. It’s strangely refreshing and comforting to be around someone with no filter, someone who doesn’t treat me as if I’m fragile.
“All we have to do is threaten him, make him see that he really has no choice but to shut up.”
“It’s blackmail,” she says.
“Well, come up with a better idea. I’m trying to help. Surely you can think of a reason you need to go round to his office? How hard can it be? I’ll come out of this situation mostly all right. You, on the other hand...”
“Yes, I know. He’s trying to have me investigated for murder.”
“Well then, even better. You have a perfectly valid reason to visit him. Persuade him he’s got it wrong. Use your imagination.”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” she says. “I don’t have a choice. What am I looking for?”
“Client records we could threaten to leak to make his business lose credibility or, better still, proof that he was behind all the threatening cards. We received a ridiculous plaque-type thing as an anonymous wedding gift. While not threatening, it may help prove something.”
“Greg is not stupid,” she says. “If he’s gone to all the trouble of executing some malicious campaign to scare you, he’s not going to use a traceable debit card to buy them or nip down to the local convenience store to be served—and remembered by—Mrs. Miller, is he?”
“Fair point, but he’ll have slipped up somewhere.”
I hope.
“I doubt it. He wouldn’t be so keen to run off to the police if he thought he’d get caught, too. He’s a private investigator. He must have loads of nifty techniques.”
“Didn’t he ever share any information with you?”
“No. And why would he want to scare you?”
“I think he was more in love with Nina than he admitted to and he felt betrayed by her. I think he is getting back at me because he can’t and couldn’t with her. Or he felt that he was looking out for her by frightening me away.”
Camilla shakes her head but doesn’t tell me that I’m wrong.
“It’s creepy to think that I slept beside that man and didn’t suspect a thing.”
“It is.”
But not as creepy as Camilla admitting that she has no choice but to carry out the plan. There’s no way she’d be this desperate if she’d made it all up as she now claims.
We agree to meet the following afternoon.
“We can surprise him at his mate’s fishing lodge with our findings. He goes nearly every Thursday,” says Camilla. “We can talk to him without interruptions or being overseen.”
“Well, it’s either that, or we set the place on fire with him in it.”
“Sometimes, Marie, I can’t tell whether you’re serious or not.”
Mess with my family, mess with me.
It’s another day for visitors, as no sooner does Camilla leave than the doorbell rings. I spy through the camera (the one I insisted in installing myself) and spot Tamsin clutching an actual mini olive tree in a cream plant pot.
“Congratulations,” she says as we politely sip Assam tea. (Another gift, from whom, I can’t remember.) It crosses my mind that I’ve never drunk as much tea in my life as I have since I’ve had a baby.
“Jack’s gorgeous,” she continues.
Everyone tells me that my baby is gorgeous before they can move on to what they really want to talk about. It’s the rules. I’m not complaining. Jack is gorgeous. I realize that my mind has drifted. Tamsin is speaking.
“I’m sorry that I haven’t got round to visiting until now. Please let’s start again. I’m sorry I lashed out. It was just brutally unfair that Nina died so young. My sister had a health scare around the same time and it frightened me. I took some of it out on you. We miss you at the book group.”
“Thank you,” I say. “How’s the online dating going?”
She pulls a face. “You wouldn’t believe some of the creeps on there! Do you know, one of them asked me to pay him back for the meal he insisted on paying for because I wouldn’t go back to his place! The cheek!”
I pull a sympathetic face.
“I have something awkward to ask you,” I say. “It’s very awkward, which is hard because we’ve only just made up and you know...” I nod at the olive tree standing on the kitchen counter.
She looks nervous.
“The nasty cards you’ve been sending...”
She frowns and tilts her head. “Cards?”
“Yes, and the creepy flowers?”
She looks over at the olive plant as if she’s made an error and brought flowers instead without realizing. The thing about lies is that if you’re not a bloody good actor, it’s deceivingly hard to act surprised. She doesn’t ask for any details, which is another giveaway. Perhaps I should give her lessons in how to lie.
“Why are you asking me?”
I take a risk, run with my hunch. I need to know, was it Greg or Tamsin?
“Just something we caught on camera,” I say, keeping it vague. “But I don’t want to report it to the police because I’d hate to do that to a friend. I just want them to stop,” I say. “I understand if people initially disapproved, but it’s time to move on, live and let live, don’t you think?”
“Very wise,” she says.
“I’m prepared to leave it at that,” I continue. “Although I will keep the footage. I hope I won’t need to use it.”
Tamsin holds a smile in place, clearly trying not to give away her relief, but it’s visible to me nonetheless.
So, Greg wasn’t lying.
I’m happy to play the let’s-pretend-it-never-happened game. I’ve bigger things to worry about as long as she behaves in a less Midsomer Murders-like fashion in future. If I hadn’t thrown out the wedding gift plaque, I’d return it to her now. I should feel angrier, but I’m too tired, and it’s quite fun watching her discomfort as she sips her cold tea, then glances at Jack, asleep in his baby chair as if willing him to wail. He remains chill. Well done, Jack!
She opts for another tactic by rummaging around in her bag.
“I also came round to invite you to this,” she says, handing over a leaflet, which opens out into three sections. “It’s to raise money for new sports equipment for the school.”
I study it. It’s an art exhibition with small photo samples of some of the exhibits. Greg (no surprise there) is taking part, and there are pictures of his photos.
“Did you decide which photos he’d use, or did he?”
“We selected them together, actually. He said he’s going to help me sort out my own collection. They’re all just saved to my laptop and I never look at them.”
“How long have you been friends?”
I’m trying to figure out if she had access to the photo he took of Nina and the children. Tamsin appears oblivious, seemingly grateful that she’s off the hook.
“Oh, ages! We matched on a dating app a long while ago—don’t tell anyone, please—but we both agreed that there was no way. I mean...Greg. He’s just, well...Greg, don’t you think?”
I don’t trust myself to reply. Instead I give the leaflet further attention. The samples of Greg’s photos are of a bluebell wood in among shades of mauve, blue, green, purple and brown. An easel holding a canvas stands among the bluebells. A woman with long, dark hair, her back to the camera, is painting the woodland scene, capturing it perfectly. It is Nina’s unmistakable style.
I shiver. Is Greg about to go public with his affair with Nina? If so, it means he’s beyond caring and his threats are real.
The urge to see Christian is overwhelming. I tell Stuart that I need him to watch Jack while I go to a medical appointment alone. I catch a bus, which takes an age, but I enjoy staring out the window at the passing forest scenes with nothing to do and only myself to think of.
All therapy rooms are the same but different, I know that, yet Christian’s should feel familiar by now. It doesn’t. Something has changed. I look around the room, at the throws over the chairs, the jade cushions, the books on the shelves. Same titles, same human problems. I half considered going to seek the help of a new therapist, start afresh. But I can’t face repeating the bland facts detailing my early life.
So, here I am, back with Christian. It’s comforting. I’m out of sorts and I can’t seem to find the right words, despite his familiar presence making me feel safe. I’m vulnerable, so much so, that if someone is too nice to me, I will crack. He isn’t the overly sympathetic type, and I need that right now.
I tell Christian about the helplessness I felt during Jack’s birth, the anger at losing control, the avoidable indignities, the rage that won’t go away, the pregnant women I want to warn, yet can’t because I don’t want to frighten anyone. How I feel duped by the classes I went to prebirth that misled by discussing calming playlists and aromatic oils. There was no mention that some women will have no choice but to accept drugs and medical intervention. No balance, however well intended. How I’m amazed that the human race continues, how any woman has more than one child.
“But,” I say, desperate to lift my mood, “my dad visibly melted the moment he met Jack, despite his reservations about the father. The best thing out of all of this, the actual moment that has totally erased my doubts, is that the day I placed Jack in my mother’s arms, she smiled. She lit up. It was genuine joy and recognition. I won’t have anyone tell me that it was anything different. Everything I did to have my baby was worth it.”
He smiles. We drift into silence, and for once, I don’t rush to fill it. He does.
“It sounds as if you may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder or birth trauma. It’s not uncommon, apparently. There is more understanding and recognition surrounding it now,” he says. “I’ve encountered a few cases. The guilt is silencing because everyone knows someone who hasn’t been fortunate enough to have their own child or has lost one, so naturally, they keep quiet out of consideration, out of fear of appearing ungrateful, making a fuss or even the fear that social services will deem them an unfit mother and remove their child.”
He must’ve felt passionately about it as he breaks one of his own unspoken rules by sharing a rare snippet of personal information: that it affected his wife after their third child.
When there are mere minutes left of the session, during the usual time when Christian disengages and wraps up our conversation as best as he can, the urge to confess that’s been building all session, the desire for release, is so overwhelming that I blurt out, “I aborted Charlie’s baby.”
Apart from what I shared with Camilla, I’ve never said these exact words out loud to anyone. Deciding to trust Christian has (at times) felt like being given a key to unlock my subconscious. Although painful, telling the truth, the real story, isn’t as frightening or as exposing as I feared. Strangely. I already feel better than I do when I lie or mislead.
I recall an ex-friend telling me that people feel as if they are wasting their time and energy on a liar. I understand a little better now what she meant, although I was furious with her at the time because clearly she was having a go at me.
Discovering who Louise was—it was such a monumental punch in the gut. I was hurt when Charlie started to distance himself from me, even before the holiday. I thought that he—we—were too young, unprepared, too everything-wrong or not-ideal-circumstances. I thought he’d feel trapped, pull away further. I’d read this article in a magazine about attraction that stated that people could sense neediness, that it acted as a subconscious repellent. A part of me felt I’d done the right thing, or so I thought. But, of course, afterward, during the horrendously shocking aftermath and the months that followed, it dawned that I’d killed a part of him, too.
If only I’d known about Camilla’s pregnancy, I’d still have felt pain, of course, but it wouldn’t have been as all-consuming.
It’s not until after I leave that I realize it wasn’t the room that was different. It was me.
The session leaves me feeling disconnected, my mind crammed full of disturbing thoughts. A part of me had hoped before the session that Christian would somehow sense that I’m on the edge of doing something dangerous and desperate. I wanted him to intuitively see beneath the chitchat, to push and probe beneath the look how well I’m coping veneer and save me from myself.
In my darkest moments, I regress to a childlike state and want someone to give me permission to silence Greg.
There’s a side of me emerging that scares me; the desire to protect what I’ve given so much up to attain is so overwhelming, so powerfully strong that I feel frightened of what I might do and how easy it would be to lose sight of what’s right and what’s wrong.