4

It was a warm, sunny day when they brought baby Christopher home from the hospital. Despite the warmth, she’d put him in a padded blue suit that was several sizes too big, his pudgy pink face almost lost in the cushion of it.

They were terrified: this tiny human was completely reliant on them and they had no clue what to do. Thomas only admitted this later. At the time he projected confidence. It’s a baby, he said. Millions are born every year. If other people can manage, so can we.

She was weepy, her body adjusting to the trauma and the blessing of childbirth, while her mind fought to come to terms with the enormity of it all. This was her baby. What if she got it all wrong?

Christopher started wailing the minute they walked in the door. Paula tried to shush him, placing a hand on the down that covered his soft skull. Already she’d forgotten everything the nurses had shown her.

‘The wee soul’s probably roasting inside that suit,’ Thomas said with a calm that caught her in a contradiction – she felt simultaneously soothed by it, and worried. Thomas was already showing capability here; could she match it?

‘And he’s probably needing a wee feed, honey. You up for it?’

‘But…’ She’d fed him several times already, but in the hospital with a capable and caring nurse on hand.

‘C’mon up to his bedroom…’ And Thomas gently took her hand. With the other he was holding the baby in his car seat as if it was something he’d been doing every day for the last year.

They’d bought a huge wing-backed chair especially for the nursery. In the latter days of her pregnancy Paula had fantasised about spending dreamy afternoons there, feeding her child, a radio playing Mozart or something in the background – she’d read an article that said the sound of it could raise a child’s IQ.

Now they were going to do it for real. ‘What if…?’

Thomas stretched over and kissed her. ‘You’re going to be the best mother this little boy could ever dream of,’ he smiled. ‘I have no doubt in my mind of that, Mrs Gadd.’

With trembling legs she allowed herself to be guided up to the room and onto the chair. She settled herself on the inflated ring Thomas had jokingly bought her – In case you need stitches, honey, he’d said. Now she was hugely grateful for that moment of thoughtfulness. Thomas made for the changing table, lifted Christopher – still wailing – onto it and took him out of his padded suit.

As if any sudden movement might break something, Thomas cradled their son in the crook of his arm and made his way across the room to where Paula sat on the chair.

‘Ready, honey?’ he asked, and looked pointedly down at the front of her blouse.

‘Oh. Right.’ She looked up at him; at their red-faced child in his arms.

‘If you just…’ He motioned with his free hand. Following his instruction, she unbuttoned her blouse and fidgeted with her nursing bra to allow her child access to her milk.

Then he handed the baby down to her and … it was as if she’d been doing this all her life. Christopher’s hot little mouth tugging at her nipple, drinking furiously. She felt a tingling trickle as the milk flowed, and a sudden calm. Thomas crouched at her feet looking up, watching them both in wonderment, his cheeks wet with tears.

Your husband was not the man you thought he was.

Exhausted, Paula fell to the floor, her mind unable to grasp what she had just read. Her husband; the man she was with for three decades was up to … what? A young, pretty woman had given her this. Was Thomas having an affair?

Nonsense. She threw the note away from her.

Thomas was a lot of things, but a philanderer? Sure, they’d grown apart the last few years, but he was always truthful with her, or so it felt. Her Thomas? Having an affair?

The ground tilted.

But why else would that young woman go to all that trouble? Attending his funeral, slipping a note into her pocket? She tried to think of all the things those three sentences might be about, but that was all she could come up with. They’d been having an affair. That was it, surely. And then her mind began to run away from her. Perhaps she’d had a child with him?

She could see a desperate mother going through those actions at a funeral if it meant getting something for her offspring.

If only the drugs weren’t cloaking everything in a heavy veil, she might be able to make sense of all of this.

In a few hours the sun would rise and the streetlights would be switched off. People would go about their day, locked into the hamster wheels of their own thoughts. Mindless people working for stuff they didn’t really need but wanted with a desire that was unholy, probably viewing everything through the lens of a smartphone, because only then could it exist.

And how much she wanted to be one of them. Not to have this ache.

Nobody does anything real anymore, she thought. Strength is nothing more than a display: an act. Nobody wants to be vulnerable. Nobody wants you to be vulnerable. Your son and husband die and nobody really cares. The world shifts but stays the same and your home, your anchor, isn’t where you left it.

She was still there, back against the wall, buttocks numb and cold from the wooden floor, hours later when the light shifted from artificial to natural. The world was waking up to another day and she was here, weak, exhausted, and unsure of whom and what to grieve for.

At some point Paula made it through to the sofa in her front living room. There she curled up on the soft leather, bolstered by a small mountain of fat cushions and was feeling herself drift into something approaching sleep when there was a knock at the door.

She groaned. Felt the weight of her fatigue. She considered answering it but ignored the impulse and turned to face the back of the sofa, pulling her knees up to her chest.

The knock sounded again. Firm and loud. The caller was obviously confident that she would grant them entry.

She heard the squeak of the small brass hinge of the letter box and a male voice.

‘Paula? Sorry, doll. It’s only me.’

Kevin Farrell. Her husband’s business partner.

She sat up. Groaned again. He was the last person she wanted to see, but he was always coming round, and she was sure he’d persist until she answered the door.

Fixing her robe, she mustered up the energy to get to her feet and pad through to the hall.

‘Paula?’ Farrell’s voice sounded from the letter box.

She paused before answering, looking in the hall mirror to check if she was decent. She was about to fluff up her hair, then thought: to hell with it, the widow does not care. She pulled the door open.

‘Hey, Paula,’ Farrell said, his eyes roaming. Enough of his reaction leaked into his expression, just momentarily, for Paula to see that he read the state she was in and felt sorry for her. ‘How are you today, sweetheart?’

‘Mmmm…’ was all she could manage. She’d always found his attempts at being sociable cloying – so false in their sweetness that she could barely resist running her tongue over her teeth. He’d gone to school with Thomas, but she never could quite work out how he and her husband were friends.

His face was full and round like a football, the skin dotted with acne scars. His hair was already almost white and, regardless of how new his suit might be, he always managed to make it look like he’d just come off a twenty-hour flight.

‘The kettle on?’ he asked. ‘Thought you might like some company.’ He held up a small brown bag. ‘Got some croissants from that posh place down Hyndland Road. I thought you might want a late breakfast.’ He took a step inside the door and Paula felt a flare of irritation at his presumption. Then gave in. She didn’t have the energy to back it up. Besides, although it was the last thing she wanted, she supposed company would be good for her.

The note she’d been reading the previous night still lay on the floor. She bent down and picked it up before he could get a look at it.

‘What’s that?’ he asked.

‘Just some kind of flyer,’ she said as she tucked it into the pocket of her dressing gown.

‘Always someone trying to sell something, eh?’ He brushed past her and she trailed after him like a pup in its new home.

In the kitchen Kevin said, ‘Ah, right, you guys got that new coffee machine. Cool.’ He walked towards it. ‘Easy to work, is it?’ He pushed at a button and the machine whirred into life.

Paula pushed past him, lifted a mug from a cupboard and placed it in front of the spout. ‘Here, let’s not drown the kitchen in coffee.’

She looked at him. Squinted at a recollection. ‘You weren’t at the funeral yesterday, Kevin. How come?’ She handed him the filled mug, not bothering to ask about milk. Today he would have to take it how he got it.

‘Shit excuse, I know…’ He accepted the mug and took a sip. Then he placed it back on the worktop surface before holding both of his hands out, palms up. It occurred to Paula that he looked as if he really didn’t care how she might feel about his answer. ‘I’m allergic. Hate funerals. I’ve never been to one. Not even my mother’s.’ Then he gave her a smile that had a whiff of apology pushed through it.

Paula often wondered if Kevin had tried to learn how to behave with other people from a book. He clearly didn’t really care if Paula was upset that he hadn’t been there.

‘’Sides, I said cheerio to Tommy in my own way.’ There. A flash of sadness. A suggestion that there was a little more to this man than had met her eyes over the years.

‘I’m sure you did,’ said Paula, and caught Kevin glancing at the opening of her robe. ‘What do you want, Kevin?’ She pulled her robe tight and held it at the throat. ‘I barely resemble a human this morning.’

‘Just wanted to see how my wee pal was doing. Offer you my support. I’m happy to listen if you want to talk…’ His face formed an expression of sympathy, like a stranger had just taken possession of his brain for a moment.

‘Jesus, Kevin, did you just google how to behave around the bereaved? I prefer it when you do your remote-human thing.’

‘That’s harsh.’ He looked offended, and Paula felt a rush of conscience.

‘Please get to the point, Kev. Why are you really here?’

‘A man can’t check on his friend’s widow?’ He held his arms out. But it was there. Paula’s mind wasn’t too addled by grief that she couldn’t see there was something other than Thomas’s death that was bothering him. There was a tightness in his face, an edge to his apparent concern, and he shuffled from one foot to the other.

She put her hand in her pocket, felt the corner of the note and considered showing it to him. But she quickly decided against that. Perhaps his evident nervousness was transmitting itself to her.

‘Mind if I ask you something, Kev?’ She needed to ask, even though she was pretty sure he wouldn’t tell her.

‘Sure. Anything.’ His expression was open, but there was an underlying apprehension in his tone. Farrell might be grieving, in his own way, but there was something else there.

‘Was Thomas having an affair?’