The coastal cottage is perfect, the end terrace in a row of three, nestled into the hillside overlooking the Needles in a location almost entirely abandoned at this time of year. The other two cottages stand empty, and when we return from our walks we barely see another soul on the path, save for the occasional walker or cyclist, too busy in their own solitary pursuits to take much notice of an ordinary mother and child on an afternoon stroll. I always smile and say hello, and most often people are friendly and return the greeting as they carry on by. It’s nice; being outside is good for me and I know I could be happy here. The cottage itself is simple, small, and perfect for the two of us, and even though there are two bedrooms we’ve chosen to be together in the one at the front, with Chloe sleeping in a cushion-padded drawer I’ve placed between the two single beds that dominate the room. There’s a little kitchen, perfectly adequate for our needs, and a small lounge with an open fire and television, although I’ve draped a throw over that as I know it’s not good for me to spend too long gazing in at the sadness of the wider world. Initially I booked for a fortnight, and it felt like a stroke of luck when I phoned ahead and the owner agreed to hold the reservation without a bank deposit. He was happy to accept cash on arrival, what with the holiday season being so far away and the cottages standing empty. He’s a quiet sort, lives alone in the farmhouse a mile or so along the coast; he says we won’t see hide nor hair of him, unless we call needing anything. This weatherbeaten high point on the island is all but deserted. At night-time, the wind howls around the building, whistling down the chimney and channelling along the courtyard that runs the length of the cottages. When the wind drops, the quiet is more eerie still, and I take comfort in the sleeping form of my girl, as I reach down to touch the curled fingers that rest like a delicate stack of slipper limpets on the pillow beside her face.
How could his mother think I wasn’t fit to look after her? Of course, she never said as much, always made a good show of helping out, of caring, and James would never hear a bad word said about her. And, when I really concentrate on those memories of Alicia now, I can’t be sure if I was right or wrong, whether my feelings towards her were fair or clouded by illness. I know I wasn’t always reliable, wasn’t always focused, but that was the medication, not me. And even then, my erratic behaviour never impacted on Chloe, not at first anyway. In the beginning it was simple things, like losing my house keys or leaving bags of paid-for shopping on the conveyor belt at the supermarket. I was so tired all the time; those errors were just drifts of concentration, small mistakes. But everyone made so much of them. ‘Oh goodness, you’ll poison everyone!’ I remember Alicia saying to me as she scraped an entire chicken casserole into the kitchen bin before I even had a chance to serve it up to James. Her small hand moved in a brisk, efficient motion, scrape-scrape-scrape into the bin. ‘You can’t eat that now, dear!’ I’d been preparing it – and myself – all afternoon, desperate to make an effort to pull myself together, to show him I was all right. As Alicia lowered the bin lid I felt foolish to be wearing the dress James had once loved me in, ashamed of the time I had wasted on applying make-up, when all the while the meat was spoiling on the sun-drenched worktop downstairs. James must have seen I was upset, because he had tried to defend me – tried to say it’ll be fine, I’ll eat it – but she wouldn’t let him. ‘No, James, you really mustn’t risk it. That chicken was out on the side all morning, on a hot day like today! I’ll never forget the time I made the same mistake when I was young. Your poor father, James. He was sick for days.’ She turned to me with her gentle blue eyes and said, ‘You must be exhausted, dear,’ and she reached for the mixing bowl and whipped up some omelettes.
I started to worry more and more about the things I was getting wrong, grew paranoid about poisoning Chloe, and so I decided I’d breastfeed her for as long as possible so I wouldn’t put her at any risk. But, when Chloe got to ten months, Alicia and the health visitor suggested it might be better for me if I moved on to the bottle, and, incapable of resisting their power, I embarked on a fortnight of weaning that left Chloe fretful and me swollen with mastitis and anxiety. My dreams became increasingly disturbed. I imagined Alicia, creeping into Chloe’s room on tiny shiny shoes, standing at her cot-side as she inhaled the baby’s life force until she was no more than a wizened sack. From a distance I watched James in a passionate embrace with a strange woman, and when they stepped out of the darkness I screamed without a sound when I saw it was her. I knew these were only dreams, but equally, I knew it meant something. It meant I shouldn’t trust Alicia, and I told James so, told him his mother was a harbinger of bad things, that she had to go if we were to thrive.
I never should have said that, because then the doctors came with their stethoscopes and adjusted prescriptions and softly examining voices, and Alicia stood in the doorway beyond them nodding sadly throughout, but I could see the victory shining in her narrowed eyes.
‘You must rest now, dear,’ she told me when James walked the doctors to the front door, and she kissed me gently on the forehead and smiled with warmth, but I wasn’t fooled. Even if James was.