On the sofa, my indent has remained and I slot back into it. Ah.
Loll and I let Summer’s cousins, who have been desperate to meet her, have time for a cuddle earlier.
‘Finally,’ muttered Keira, hand on hip.
Loll had got new glasses.
Now the baby and I are alone, getting to know each other.
With Summer snoozing and attached to my front in a sling as I potter round the house, I go to open the window. Stuck. Panic rises in me; I need air. Thanks, Marc, I think, irrationally, like he did it deliberately. After a few seconds I push it hard, harder, harder again and finally it gives in.
Sometimes brute force is the only thing.
I go into the kitchen. Put the kettle on. Lean against the work surface and sigh.
A spotlight has broken, flickers on, off, on, off, enough to make you lose your mind. In the bathroom, I can’t stop the tap from dripping.
We will take some warming back to each other, this house and me, not least too because of the reminders everywhere of Marc.
Back in the living room, I stare at the wall.
Something’s missing.
The photo of my favourite beach, the one with the swimmers in the distance.
What did you do with it, Marc?
I stare at the absence.
That, the window … they feel like points scored, even when he can’t score points anymore, and I swear at him under my breath.
I go to my bag, dig around and take a postcard of beautiful Lac de Peiroou out, a little crumpled. I had bought it at the campsite; intended to send it at some point to Steffie. I find some Blu-Tack and stick that up there instead – I’ll frame it properly later.
That lake got me back in the water. It deserves to be remembered.
Summer snores lightly on my chest and I slip her out and lie her in the Moses basket. She makes it clear that’s not happening and I smile, happy for her to come back to my chest, this time draped in a blanket.
Our Henry Dog lies next to us in his spot. Some things are the same.
I sit back on the sofa. With a baby and no husband, it’ll be a while before I am back at the café but it will happen. They’re family there too; the baby will doze in the pram, everyone will be happy to grab a cuddle with her on their breaks.
‘We’ll figure it out,’ I say to Henry, who is part teddy, part cushion, 100 per cent comforter. A light hand on his sturdy back. He is strong, this dog, but with no idea of his power. I pat lightly. God, I missed you.
I hug him close. Is he missing Marc? Baffled to see me again, wondering if we are now working to a one-in, one-out policy? When he saw the baby he jumped on and off the sofa, his tail wagging like a workout. It took about five seconds before her cousins found their old groove with him too, pulling his ears, opening his mouth up to examine his teeth. I smile, thinking about Keira and my Lucy who has been so worried about me.
Mid-morning tomorrow, Steffie will be over with granola from the café.
Loll, of course, will be here often. She will drop a mac and cheese in, whip the duster round, let the girls pile in again for hugs with the baby.
What Loll can’t move past is how Marc used our own family pain, the one that has sat so deeply in all three of us for years, for his own ends, and to shift the blame from himself.
Loll brought her notebook to my appointments and asked the follow-on questions. Requested I had a private room when I gave birth; told the midwife that she had read it could help, if I had a little more sleep. It’s the same reason she used to call to make sure I was getting an afternoon nap in when I was pregnant. Rest, she said. That was important.
Loll pored over my care plan. Studied it – and me – like a textbook.
She was more knowledgeable than most medical professionals I saw. Muttered about their lack of knowledge on postpartum depression often.
She cared, more than anyone could ever care.
She stored the numbers to call, if, if, if in her phone.
My sister watched, eagle-eyed, all the way through my pregnancy. We talked, checked in.
Then there were those days after I had the baby, when I hid away at hers, my holding pen, my steppingstone, like a university, teaching me the ropes before I headed out into the real world.
Forty-eight hours for Loll to confirm her thoughts plus the calls from France that followed: there were many, many things I needed to figure out, but a postpartum psychosis diagnosis was not one of them.
She had her checklist, yes, given to her by the midwife. But she also had a deep personal experience of it and she was clear in her mind, she tells me: that was not what was happening to me.
When the others sat in the path outside our Airbnb, Loll – having finally got out of my house and met Jake at the hospital – messaged me from her ex’s phone: Do not listen to him. You do not have postpartum psychosis. Remember it.
I read the message, as Marc sorted Summer’s milk out at the house.
And then a second message.
He tried to kill me, Romilly. I am in hospital now getting the once-over. Don’t take chances. Don’t let him manipulate you one more time.
Something in me surged; eddies that started at my stomach and surged outwards and upwards to my brain.
Stopped the doubts.
I didn’t have postpartum psychosis.
He was lying.
Outwards and upwards, outwards and upwards.
All the way to the edges of my body, landing at my tightly clenched fists.