Time was passing and it was healing the pain, just a little. Nula started to live for when Harlan was out of the house. Charlie was still away most of the time. Milly, who was now a teenager and seemed embarrassed by her own mother, spent all her time at Belle’s. Leaving her all by herself, with only the cleaner, or the gardener for company. And the men on the door – these days there were always men on the door.
Nula had no friends now. None of her old mates from the manor were interested in keeping in touch. They thought she was happy here, living among the country nobs and thinking herself better than the Londoners she’d once happily mixed with. Which wasn’t the truth, not at all. She thought of those old grey grimy streets and longed for them, longed for the old safe, settled life in her parents’ modest two-up two-down. But it was too late to even think of building bridges with them now.
So mostly she was stuck here, and then Harlan would come home and say nothing, but he would smile that secret smile of his and her flesh would literally crawl. Everything she suspected about Harlan haunted her, filled her every waking moment. She went to the local library and read books on reactive attachment disorder, sat there for hours poring over them, and it was as if it was Harlan they were talking about.
Without a primary caretaker, the books said, a baby passes through several phases: from protest to crying to a sad stage and then to a deep, desolate state of resignation. Thinking of Harlan’s dead-eyed stare, Nula wondered about his mother. Everyone had a mother, after all. A birth mother, anyway. So where was Harlan’s? Had she voluntarily put him into care, or – Nula thought of Charlie’s irritation, his rage when she’d questioned him about this – had he never been cared for at all, and was that why he never seemed to respond appropriately to anything or anybody?
On the way home from the library, Nula always went to Jake’s grave to tend it. She went there every week, pulled out weeds, refreshed the flowers. The girls came here too, Milly and Belle – they brought little posies of buttercups, daisies, cow parsley, which was sweet of them. Harlan never bothered. She thought of her baby, her precious child, lying cold and long-dead in the soil. And she cried. Oh, how she cried. Then she had to go home. Although she detested Charlie, she didn’t like him being away, because of the crying.
She’d heard it again, and again. So many times. But maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe it was only in her head. She’d caught Charlie looking at her oddly more than once. And then . . . ah Christ, what a fool she’d been. She’d told him about the crying. She shouldn’t have done that. Well, she’d better just get a grip. That’s what Mum had always told her: get a grip. Pull yourself together. Worse things happen at sea. That was the only useful thing her mum ever did teach her. Dear old Mum. She missed her so much now, missed her like a limb.
Nula didn’t think there could be anything worse than losing her baby. She wondered when it would stop hurting, when all the madness would go away. When the crying would stop. Maybe it never would.
When she got home, there was an unknown car on the drive. Paul, her driver, parked up beside it and she let herself into the house. Young Sammy was on the door today. So many people they had to have around them now. To her surprise, when she walked into the sitting room, there was Charlie. And there was her doctor, a tall bespectacled man with thick black hair, and there was a woman with him, petite, blonde, with harshly indented cheekbones and dark circles under her big cornflower-blue eyes.
‘Here she is,’ said Charlie, jumping to his feet.
Doctor Benson stood up. ‘Nula,’ he said in greeting. ‘This is Sophia Burnett, one of the clinical psychologists attached to the surgery, I believe you’ve met before . . . ?’
They had met. Lots of times. Sophia came forward and shook Nula’s hand. The last time they’d spoken had been well over a year ago, when Nula had told her for the hundredth time about her dead baby crying, and the fact that Harlan had tried to kill her.
‘Hello, Nula,’ said Sophia.
‘We’ve come out to see you because your husband asked us to,’ said Dr Benson.
‘Oh? Why?’ Nula looked a question at Charlie.
‘I’ve been concerned about you, doll,’ said Charlie, looking sheepish. ‘Worried, you know? When you started on about still hearing the crying . . .’
‘I did hear it,’ said Nula. I still do.
‘I know. I know that. And when you started ripping my desk apart trying to get information about Harlan, and saying he’d tried to kill you, nonsense like that . . .’
‘It’s not nonsense.’
‘Babes, it is. It’s . . .’ Charlie hesitated, groping for the right words. ‘It’s not your fault. You’ve had a tough time and it’s all been playing on your mind. The stress of losing the baby, it’s upset you, I understand that, and what I think . . .’ He glanced at Dr Benson, at Sophia Burnett. ‘What we all think is that you need some time away. Someplace where you can rest up and recover. You know?’
‘What, a holiday?’ Nula asked, agog. Charlie hated holidays.
‘No, more like a retreat. You know the sort of thing. Like that place where the film stars go when they need a . . . a rest?’
Charlie stood there looking awkward.
Nula gazed at her husband, at the two others standing there, and the penny dropped at last. They wanted her committed. They thought she was losing her mind.
‘What?’ she said, dry-mouthed. Then she thought, oh God – to get away from this place. From the echoing empty halls, the eerie sighing of the wind around the eaves, the sobbing from the empty nursery. From Harlan.
‘If you would just agree to taking some time out, babes. To getting a rest. We all think you need it. We really do.’
Nula stared at them. You had to agree to be committed. She knew that.
Charlie shuffled his feet. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He was embarrassed by her. And she was so tired, so sick and so tired of it all. Him. And this place. This awful fucking place.
‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘I agree.’