‘I know that even you believe what you’re saying to me. But this is all part of it; it’s a … a delusion.’
He sighs.
‘The more you speak, the more you check the symptoms. Everything points to it. Everything.’
I have no cards. He’s right: everything I have told him ties in to Marc’s narrative.
‘I was there on your wedding day, Ro. I know you were besotted with each other.’
‘We were! Infatuation or something. But things changed.’
‘That fast?’
I grab Adam’s shoulders then. He jerks away. Looks alarmed at my physicality. I mutter my apology.
‘Look,’ I tell him, eyes on eyes, pure desperation. ‘You know me. But what you decide is happening here is up to you. There isn’t a lot I can do to influence you. And if you do tell Marc then I’ll have no choice but to face him.’
When I speak again my voice sounds steelier. ‘Make no mistake though.’
He looks up, shocked again, this time at the change in my tone.
But I am fighting now.
‘This is on you,’ I tell him. ‘If you tell Marc, what happens next, what he does is on you.’
Adam bites his lip. Pulls his hoodie sleeves over his hands. Even I can feel it now. The cool has set in.
He doesn’t say a word.
Then he reaches up from his place on the ground; hands me his phone.
‘Call Loll,’ he says, putting his head in his hands. ‘Tell her all of this. See what the hell she thinks I should do.’
But when I call my sister, she doesn’t answer.
Adam looks confused.
‘Try her again,’ he says. ‘There’s no way she’d miss a call from my number when she knows I might be with you.’
But she misses the next one and the next one and after six tries, we give up.
Something eats at my insides.
Where would Loll be?
She never switches her phone off, especially at the moment when she is staying at my house to keep eyes on Fleur; her own kids with Jake.
‘Speak to Steffie then,’ he says. ‘I need someone else to hear this story.’
Story. But still, I do. It’s my only shot.
By the time I’ve told Steffie everything I’ve told Adam, I am weepy with the need to sleep.
‘Can we carry on talking in the morning, Romilly?’ asks Adam, wiped out too. I stare at him. Try to gauge things.
I believe he won’t tell Marc where I am; not yet anyway.
I’ve bought myself some time.
At 7 a.m., I am wide awake and alert.
When I crawl out of the tent, the sun is up and so is Adam, dressed and waiting for me.
I blink into the day; so bright already. This time of year when daylight always wins.
Adam shouldn’t be up this early. Not after how late we talked.
What’s he doing?
And then I see his face and in my insides, something expires.
‘I spoke to Marc,’ he says.
Marc told Adam last night, of course, that we were happy. Excited about our baby. That he is broken by this; by the idea that he would hurt me, belittle me. Marc loves me. Poor slandered Marc wept down the phone, inconsolable.
I have a dull headache from a lack of water and three beers as I listen to Adam tell me this.
I look away from the sun, just risen.
‘He was sad, Romilly. Devastated.’ He sighs. ‘But he understands. Knows you’re not … in your right mind.’
Across the campsite, people are starting to rise. Tents unzip. Cars are packed. Paper bags come back filled with buttery croissants and rich pain au chocolat. Kids couldn’t wait; faces are already smeared with flakes.
My heart’s snapped open, again.
It begins to hammer, hard.
‘You didn’t believe me.’
Adam holds my hand and I remember now, him doing it the same way at points last night too, the lightest touch, wary of me, tentative.
He bites his lip; pulls at it.
‘Romilly, mate, it’s not that. I think that you 100 per cent believe what you’re telling me.’
He puts his hands to his face, rubs an angry patch of a few days’ old stubble.
‘I spoke to Marc, and he explained how postpartum psychosis works. It’s …’
‘I know how it works, Adam. We talked about it last night. It’s not that.’
‘But very few women can diagnose themselves, Romilly!’ counters an exasperated Adam, the least likely amateur psychiatrist you could ever imagine and now here, diagnosing me.
I stare at him. Yes, I fucking know.
‘Do you want to speak to my mum?’ I say. Epiphany. How did this not occur to me before? ‘She had it! She’s why I was being monitored. She knows I don’t have it.’
‘But she doesn’t know Marc,’ he says. Quiet. ‘How many times has she met him, living abroad? Two, maybe? I know Marc.’
‘No, you know a version of him,’ I say, snapping now, going over and over this. ‘He deletes my playlists, my films on the planner. He cut my hair off while I slept.’
I hear it: desperation in my voice.
‘Sometimes it feels like he’s trying to fucking delete me, Adam. And I don’t want to be deleted.’
Nothing.
‘You’ve been living with him this week,’ I beg. ‘Have you honestly not seen glimpses of anger, of a rage that was a bit too much?’
‘What’s too much, Ro? He had just lost his wife. He was looking after a newborn alone.’
‘What about Steffie?’ I say, desperate. ‘Did you speak to her after I did?’
He nods. ‘Of course I did. I wanted her opinion on what she thought was true.’
I see it again in his eyes: pity.
Oh.
My best friend believes Marc over me. Even after she spoke to me. Even after I told her the whole story.
And it’s then that I know it’s over for me. There is no point trying to persuade anyone anymore.
How can I do it convincingly anyway?
Because if Steffie doesn’t believe me, and Adam doesn’t believe me, I have to face up to something: doubt is creeping in; everything is feeling foggy.
I don’t know now if I believe myself.