I stare at Marc as he drives the three of us to some unknown place. His phone is on his lap; he is following directions being spoken from its screen.
I keep glancing at him.
Who the hell are you? I think. And whoever it is: were you always him, on some layer of your Marcness?
Markness.
I know there were bad times when he was young. Severe bullying. The kind that forms you. Being laughed at, mocked, mercilessly by girls who wouldn’t give him a second look.
And then there was his mum, who was supposed to fix it, instead compounding it.
Laughing too. Laughing harder.
‘What are you looking at me for?’ Marc smiles. His tone is light.
I look away. Out onto a road that winds sharply but then falls with grace; dipping down low onto the olive groves, the grapevines.
‘Beautiful, hey?’ says Marc dreamily. He glances out of the window.
I grip the seat tightly so that Marc can’t see my hand shake. I focus on the kestrel that’s policing us from above. I try to remember what the word miel is declaring to me is available from a handwritten sign on the side of the road. Anything, anything, anything to quiet my mind. Avoid another panic attack. Keep Marc calm.
I glance back when we get stuck behind some cyclists and I am winded by the sight. A baby, asleep in our back seat. Yes, he has even sorted the car seat. You can’t travel with children without a lot of planning, I know that from Loll. The fact he has got himself here is a miracle to me. But wasn’t he ready to be a dad? Didn’t he tell me this was all he wanted?
Marc mutters to himself. I don’t ask him to clarify, knowing it is an irritation based on the mountain bikers in their Lycra who are up ahead of us, slowing us down, the bends far too tight here to take them on. I shiver, imagine him swerving out around them on a blind bend. I remember myself that night, eyes closing. Opening only just in time to swerve away from the fence.
And then I imagine sitting on that bike. Flying down the hill, away from him. The blast of air, the blast of freedom.
Finally, we get round the cyclists and pick up pace.
It’s at the very last minute that he takes a sharp left into a dirt track. And here we are.
‘I knew we would need some space,’ he says, upbeat. ‘You can’t deal with something like this in a tent. We were lucky this place had last-minute availability when I decided to come last night. I guess it’s not peak season yet.’
I don’t answer but he answers himself. Loquacious, a monologue about how pretty the house is, the area, a potted history for me.
I drift away. Picture trying to reverse this.
I picture me zooming backwards out of that queue in the airport. I picture my feet going back back back to the taxi, and to Loll’s house then in the lift up to the ward and I picture that long, wailing chunk of time starting with sunset and ending with pitch-blackness, just me and my baby as I took in what lay ahead for me.
What he seemed to be taking in his stride as he messaged me to ask if I wanted a bacon McMuffin sneaked into the hospital tomorrow morning. To see if I’d had any more thoughts on those names he had suggested for the baby. As though everything was normal. As though our relationship hadn’t become the most toxic, cruel state of being. As though we weren’t now about to bring another person into that. As though I hadn’t been crumpled in a ball at the bottom of our stairs a few days ago. As though I hadn’t hidden the truth from doctors. As though I wasn’t a broken form of myself. As though he hadn’t tried to kill me. As though he hadn’t threatened to take my baby away; to lie about my mental health to keep her from me.
I had lain there that night in hospital and tried to block it all out.
But instead of subsiding, the reality grew so big that it filled the room.
The baby stopped crying eventually and I laid her down in her hospital crib. And then I stared at her.
How can I show you, tiny woman, that living like this is okay? Will I even get chance to, if your dad does what he threatens?
And he does most things that he threatens. I have learnt that.
I was establishing too that there was a pattern in who Marc hated. From the ones who had laughed at his skin, his belly when he was sixteen, to his mum, to Ella, to me. We had something in common.
My daughter had it in common too.
Too young to answer back now, what happened when she did?
A midwife popped in.
‘How are you doing?’ her soft, kind voice said. She glanced at the baby. ‘Looks like your window to sleep. I’ll leave you to it. I’m clocking off now so I’ll maybe see you tomorrow night.’
She grinned.
‘Hopefully not though. You’ll probably have been discharged by then and be off home to start your new life as a family of three.’
My stomach lurched.
Two, I thought. What if this family had two people in it? I preferred that picture. That picture didn’t frighten me.
‘What if I need help?’ I asked.
‘Oh, you can call your community midwife, lovie,’ she said. ‘And you and your husband will figure it out between you, most of the time. A little team.’
I didn’t mean help with the baby.
She smiled. I knew she was picturing that man who spurred me on through labour; cracked jokes with the midwives. Who knew where the snacks were and got them out whenever I needed a boost. This enthusiastic new dad, eyes wet when he held his baby for the first time. Eyes bright when he bounded back down the hall with a coffee. My Marc. Big kid, lover of life.
My eyes widened at his duplicity.
And then it went wrong.
My baby, trapped with the man we were meant to be fleeing. In the end he hadn’t needed to do anything to take her from me; I simply handed her over.
I lived inside my grimmest nightmare.
The worst irony.
I stayed at Loll’s and I healed, physically, a little. I rested. But my mind was torture.
I knew I couldn’t be away from my baby any longer, no matter what the alternative was, so I packed my sad little bag and I changed my giant pants and I was about to go home, I was, I was, whatever I would walk into.
Then my phone beeped.
You abandoned our baby, the first message said. They’ll put you in prison. Do you realise what you’ve done?
He followed it with a link.
Baby dumping: When a mother or father leaves a child younger than twelve months anywhere with the intent of no longer taking responsibility for that child, it said.
This falls under child abuse statutes and is punishable as a felony. Following charges, this parent gives up their parental rights over the child, ending their relationship with them.
It sounded like American wording but surely I thought, heart thumping, the principles would be the same.
I had lain in a bed that wasn’t my own, reading that over and over.
But I didn’t do that. I didn’t abandon her.
Did I?
Marc messaged again. Tens of them, possibly hundreds. Links. Warnings.
About this. About my mental health.
Who the hell would believe me about anything he had done, when I was the woman who abandoned her baby?
I needed something. I messaged Ella from Loll’s never-used Facebook account but she blocked that one too. Nobody in their right mind would believe me – the woman who abandoned her baby, who everyone thought had postpartum psychosis, who had never said a word about it to anyone before – that Marc had abused me. But if there were two of us? And I knew there were two of us. I knew in the mist that came over Marc when her name came up. I knew in the way she shut down when I contacted you. I knew, and I was desperate.
That’s why it didn’t matter that she lived in France.
From my phone in Loll’s bed, I booked a flight.
One day, one conversation, and I would have an ally, a team. Someone to take down Marc with. A route to get my baby back. A route to get my life back.