‘Okay, so if this were true,’ says Adam. ‘If we didn’t see it, why didn’t you tell us? We’re good friends to you, Romilly. We wouldn’t have ignored it, however we feel about Marc.’
I nod. I’ve asked myself this, a thousand times.
‘I know how idiotic it sounds now …’ I murmur, embarrassed.
Adam shakes his head. ‘Nothing does. Just tell me.’
‘I was convinced a baby would be a reset. That we’d have a new start. This would all fall away.’
It’s hard to explain to Adam how all-consuming pregnancy was.
‘I thought … we would be parents. How can you not have your shit together when you’re parents, right? Ha. How naïve I was.’
In fact the more pregnant I got, the worse my husband became.
The bump grew and so did the anger The exposing of parts of Marc’s personality that had peeked out from under the covers before, but tucked themselves back in. The resentment. The drip, drip, drip of comments and instruction during the day; roaring, heaving rage at night. The love bombing that had happened when we first met and used to rear its head every now and again was like a first hit of a drug and I tried to get back to it, if I could just say the right thing, do the right thing.
Everything shifted.
I wanted to find out what gender the baby was but Marc wouldn’t let me and a part of me thought good, good. Put it off. Because if I knew I was having a girl I would have to face up to something. While I never feared he would hurt a daughter of ours as a child, once she grew up, became an adult woman who could answer him back, stand up to him, get it wrong … Yes. I feared that.
I look at Adam. Try to make something ring a bell.
Does he remember times when we weren’t ourselves, Marc and I? When he phoned Marc and his friend’s voice was hoarse from the way he had screamed at me, furious about this thing, that thing, and I was too drained and scared for my baby to argue back?
Does he remember that I ignored Steffie’s calls, often – Marc telling me our dependence on each other was odd, that she was too clingy?
Does he remember that row Steffie and I had when she made that flippant comment about my engagement ring not being the one she would have thought I would pick, and I didn’t speak to her for a week? She was right, see. It wasn’t the one I would pick: it was the one Marc would pick. Sometimes I stared at it and wondered if he had picked it before he met me even, for someone else entirely.
If he picked it for Ella.
Another thought I blocked out. You had to block out a lot of them, to survive.
In our house, where the sound used to come from Marc’s old record player blaring David Bowie on vinyl, now it came from doors slamming, from glasses smashing. From Marc, forcing his fist through the wall.
And then, silence. As I bandaged up my husband, as I cried as quietly as I could, as I counted kicks again, lying on my left-hand side and making sure that the venom that was growing on the outside hadn’t penetrated. Hadn’t got to our baby.
But of course he didn’t notice. Any energy I had left went into painting a picture for the outside world: all is fine here. Fine, fine, fine.
In reality, I was living in a private hell that I – a talker – couldn’t share at a time everyone thought I was happiest.
Now, here, I can’t believe how much I managed to convince myself that the stuff Marc did during my pregnancy wouldn’t follow us through into having a baby. And that the last person I would need on my team would be this man.
Steffie has always commented on it; the way society holds up parents as the real adults; every other over-eighteen simply play-acting, consumed with the frivolity of a non-parenting life.
I did that. And look where it led me.
‘I grew up with a single parent, Ad; I told myself that none of this was important, compared to keeping my baby’s family together.’
Do I say this, what comes next?
‘Not even when he crossed uncrossable lines.’