Mrs Palmer watched the two children drinking their Cokes at the next table and could feel their teeth disintegrating with every sip. She was tempted to question Harriet on just how often they were given this kind of coloured, sugary drink, and to ask what was wrong with a glass of water or milk for heaven’s sake. But she held back, remembering how she had offended an old friend recently by attempting to give advice on the upbringing of her granddaughter. Children nowadays appeared to be allowed to do exactly as they wished – if she had her way these two would be neatly dressed and sitting upright on their chairs with an apple or biscuit in front of them, instead of lolling about with their elbows all over the table eating chocolate bars. But far be it from her to interfere; it had been made clear to her more than once by those of Harriet’s generation that her advice was not always welcome. She also hesitated to enquire too closely into Harriet’s wellbeing: she even checked herself from opening with her usual gambit of asking after the family’s health, as she had a dim memory of Juliet telling her that Harriet was separated from her husband. The ease with which couples appeared to split up, realign and then split again was another modern phenomenon she found inexplicable and threatening, and not a subject to be brought up without fear of controversy, as once a discussion was opened she found it hard to contain her views, which were definite and uncompromising. In her day one stuck it out; not only for the sake of the children, but also, in truth, because it was the thing to do. And although few of her contemporaries had been what one could call ‘happily married’, it would never have occurred to them that this was a reason to separate. In smart circles, which were the only ones Mrs Palmer had inhabited in her younger days, divorced couples were whispered about behind their backs and considered thrillingly shocking. The matter-of-fact way in which such things were discussed today still amazed her, although there was a part of her that envied the openness of it. She sometimes felt she had years of bottled-up unhappiness stored inside her that would welcome the chance to unburden itself to a willing ear.
‘How is Juliet?’ asked Harriet, stirring a chocolate-sprinkled cappuccino. ‘I haven’t heard from her for some time – I know she was going through a difficult patch even before the miscarriage. Is she coping OK?’
‘Well, yes, thank you, Harriet. She’s fine. She’s a very practical person, as you know, and she’s had the benefit of a good background and family. I’m quite sure she’ll handle this perfectly well. I lost one before I had Juliet, you know. It happens all the time – there’s an awful lot of fuss made, and now you have all this counselling nonsense and so on, but you just have to pull yourself together and keep going, don’t you?’
‘Of course.’
There was an odd silence. Why did Harriet feel the old lady was trying to tell her something more? She seemed unsettled, and was frowning down at her coffee as if trying to decide something. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked directly at Harriet. ‘I have no idea,’ she said briskly.
‘Sorry?’
‘I really have no idea how she is. In fact I suspect you’ve probably seen her more recently than I have. I’m afraid she doesn’t talk to me at the moment. I don’t understand it. Michael told me about the baby – about losing it I mean. That was good of him. I’ve tried to ring her a few times but there’s always an excuse. She’s resting or – oh, I don’t know. She doesn’t want to speak to me. That’s it really.’
Harriet watched the old lady’s face as she spoke. Her cheek moved in soft limp quivers like old velvet around her mouth, where the unevenly applied lipstick followed a smudged, indefinite outline and mingled with drops of milky coffee in the corners. Heavy pink make-up failed to hide the large brown freckles of age that were scattered beneath it, and a dusting of powder was visibly trapped in the fine hairs that covered her upper lip and chin. The cruelty of the harsh light slanting across from the window made Harriet shift in her seat in an attempt to shade her companion’s face from it with her own body.
‘Well, she’s been through a terrible time, hasn’t she? Not just recently, I mean, but for a couple of years now. It’s not surprising that—’
‘That’s very generous of you, Harriet, but I’m afraid there’s more to it than that.’ Mrs Palmer paused and looked out of the window for a moment. ‘I think I failed her, you see. I tried to do my very best for her, but I think something went terribly wrong. Oh dear, I am sorry – do forgive me. How very embarrassing.’
‘No, no it’s not,’ said Harriet. ‘Not at all. It’s good to talk about things sometimes. Look – I’ve got children. I know how impossible it is – the whole business. I used to read every article going; how you should stimulate them and all that stuff. But once you . . .’ She broke Off to glance across at Jessica and Adam, but they appeared too engrossed in their comics to be interested. ‘Once you have them, you realise it’s about all you can do just to get them through life without some ghastly accident. I always pictured myself as Mother Earth – you know, loose home-made sweaters and a ribbon in my hair. Babies on both arms. Wooden toys and word cards, no sweets, wholemeal home-baked bread – all that business. But when Jessica was born and I brought her back from the hospital, I had my work cut out to get her fed and changed and stop her crying. Just getting myself dressed in the morning was a triumph. They don’t warn you, do they? Not properly. What it’s really like, I mean.’
‘Well, I had help of course. We all did in those days. And it seemed much simpler then, I don’t know why. Nanny would put Juliet in her pram in the garden and she’d sleep most of the time. No, I mean later. When she was a young girl. That’s when things got difficult for me. I just wanted her to be pretty, you see. I so much wanted her to be pretty, and I was only trying to guide her. It’s easy to put on weight when you’re young – and I’ve always had to struggle with mine. I thought I’d make it better for her. But now she tells me I was to blame for her problems – you know, the—’
‘Yes, yes, I remember. I knew at school she was getting too thin.’
‘Anyway, I regret it now. It’s always so easy when you look back. And now she’s not even speaking to me. We had a funny sort of incident in Harrods just before Christmas, when I was trying to help her with her maternity clothes, and since then I haven’t heard a word. Michael’s always very sweet when I ring; he makes excuses for her. She’s in the bath or she’s shopping or cooking. But she never rings back. I know. I know what’s going on.’
‘She’s been very distant with me too. You mustn’t blame yourself, Mrs Palmer, you really mustn’t. I’m sure she’ll be her old self soon. Just give it a bit of time. Is she trying again, do you know? Has Michael told you?’
‘Do you think it’s too late?’
‘How do you mean? For her to get pregnant again? Oh, no I’m sure—’
‘No, I mean, do you think it’s too late for me?’
Mrs Palmer leant forward, and Harriet breathed in her sickly sweet perfume mingled with the smell of coffee on her breath.
‘I want to make it up to her, somehow. Oh, goodness! What’s come over me? I don’t usually talk like this, Harriet. What must you think . . .’
‘It’s all right. Really. Go on.’
‘I think I could be closer to her. She’s all I’ve got – oh dear, that sounds like something from a book doesn’t it? But she really is. Since her father died. I do love her so very much. I always have. But I’m not very good at showing it. The trouble is we didn’t really show emotion much in my day; that may sound like a cliché but it’s absolutely true. I was encouraged not to, in fact. Do you think it is too late?’
‘No. No, I don’t. I’m sure it isn’t.’
The children looked up in fascination at the old lady sitting with their mother. She was crying.
‘Andy! Andy, darling!’
Andrea carried on reading Marie Claire. She was lying on the bed with the magazine on her lap and a glass of white wine in one hand, feeling rather pleased with herself. She had continued to enjoy Anthony’s discomfiture over the Evans affair and, having now convinced herself that he was entirely innocent, she was using the situation to her advantage and alternately forgiving and chastising him as the mood took her. The contrast of warmth and hostility was wearing him down, and she was pleasantly aware how the hot and cold of her emotional response to him was bringing him slowly but surely ever more under her control. Like playing a fish she reeled him in and let him out while all the time bringing him imperceptibly closer, sensing that his exhaustion was near.
He burst into the bedroom. ‘Why didn’t you answer me?’
‘Oh sorry,’ she said. ‘I was thinking that’s all. What is it?’
‘Good news. I really think the bloody woman’s out of our lives, darling. I don’t know what’s happened, but Hewlett’s definitely being more like his old self with me. And the Lancet is publishing my paper – I told you they would.’
‘Good.’
She looked down at the article about liposuction on the open page in front of her and wondered if it could be an answer to the bulges that were beginning to appear, worryingly, at the tops of her thighs.
‘Andy?’
‘Yup.’
‘I do love you, darling.’
She left a wonderfully enigmatic pause while she considered how to play it this time.
‘Do sit down, Mr Evans.’
Professor Hewlett gestured him towards the chair in front of his desk. It suddenly felt to Michael as though it were only a matter of days since he had sat in that same upright oak chair, listening with barely allowed hope to the possibilities that the doctor had outlined for successful treatment. So much had happened since, and he could feel in Professor Hewlett’s attitude a reflection of the difficult situation that had meanwhile affected them both. There was a note here that he hadn’t felt before, of something new that had passed between them that couldn’t be ignored, and which would continue to reverberate.
‘What can I do for you? How are you both?’
There was a coldness in the tone of the question that surprised him. Michael was only too aware of the embarrassment and difficulty that Juliet’s short-lived obsession had brought about at the clinic, but he had assumed that, of all people, the professor would be well used to dealing with hysterical patients and therefore the last person to bear a grudge about such problems.
‘We’re all right. Thank you. But I wanted to ask your advice. My wife doesn’t know I’ve come here, but before we take things any further I thought I should have a word with you about the right way to proceed.’
‘By all means, Mr Evans. I’ll help if I can, of course. Fire away.’
Michael felt as if he were back at school in the headmaster’s study. The quiet in the room was broken only by the ticking of a clock, which he registered as a sound very rare in the days of quartz and batteries. It was at the same time reassuring and a little frightening. The professor peered at Michael in a way that made him look more judgemental than avuncular, and his black coat, crisp white shirt and silvery grey tie made the visitor feel awkwardly shabby.
‘My wife is extremely anxious to try again.’
There was a pause, and the professor frowned at him, as if not understanding.
‘To try again for a baby, I mean. Now, obviously I realise that there are—’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Evans. I don’t understand. Are you talking about the resumption of any kind of IVF programme?’
‘Yes I am.’
There was another, longer pause, and Michael began to feel extremely uneasy, as if he had suggested something so extraordinary that it was at best hard to comprehend, and at worst shockingly inappropriate.
‘I’d have thought you would realise that it’s completely out of the question. I am surprised that you would—’
‘No, no, quite. I do, of course, realise that owing to my wife’s mental condition there has been the most unfortunate embarrassment caused to the clinic. I am not suggesting that she should return here. Naturally. I wouldn’t wish that myself, as I’m sure you can imagine. I just thought you might be able to recommend an alternative clinic or hospital perhaps, where she could receive treatment. I thought you could send them her notes and so on. I do feel she is over her—’
‘I am sorry, Mr Evans. I am surprised you should ask me this. I cannot possibly consider recommending Mrs Evans to another IVF programme. I would have thought that was obvious.’
‘Well,’ blustered Michael, feeling more and more uncomfortable by the moment, ‘I have to say I am a little confused. I knew you wouldn’t want her back here, but such a blanket refusal to consider her interests seems a rather odd attitude to take.’
‘What attitude would you expect me to take? Under the circumstances?’
‘I suppose I imagined that you must have quite a few patients who show these sort of – what do you call them – emotional upsets. It didn’t finally do any harm, did it? I’m sure if the pregnancy had continued she would have returned to normal and it would all have been forgotten. The tragedy of the mis—’
Professor Hewlett leant forward so suddenly that Michael stopped in mid-sentence.
The doctor was frowning now, and looking puzzled, as if he had misheard and was trying to decipher what the man in front of him had been trying to say. An expression of astonished comprehension suddenly came over his face, and he sat back a little and blew out his breath.
‘Mr Evans. I am so dreadfully sorry. I fear I have been under a grave misapprehension. I thought you knew.’
‘Knew what?’ Michael felt a terrible sensation of something unspeakable fluttering deep inside him, stealing slowly upwards through his unwilling body.
‘She told us you had made the decision together. Perhaps I was foolish to trust her. It’s so easy to see these things with hindsight, of course. I’m so sorry.’
‘What? Knew what?’
‘Your wife came to me and asked for a termination.’
It took a second for Michael to take in what the professor had said. Realisation hit him like a blow to the stomach, and the implications reached into his heart and hurt so much he felt he would cry out with the pain of it. ‘I don’t understand. I. . .’
His speech petered out as it became clear to both of them that he understood only too well. His son, his beloved son. Not accident, not fate. His baby’s death planned, intended, invited – welcomed.
‘She came to us and asked us to terminate her pregnancy. She said that you and she had talked it over on many occasions and that you both felt you were not after all ready for her to bear a child. As you can imagine, this caused not a little distress among my staff. The statistics of successful pregnancy in IVF are still a great deal lower than I would wish, and the enormous time and effort involved – not to say the financial burden on yourselves – result in the emotional investment by everyone concerned being very high. I think I can say that this is the first time in my years here that I have ever had such a request. I found it personally very upsetting.’
Michael was still too shocked to speak. He sat back in his chair, feeling sick and frightened, not wanting to hear any more but at the same time desperate to know the details, still hoping against all logic that there might have been some mistake, that they were talking about the wrong woman, or that he had misunderstood.
Professor Hewlett went on: ‘I had a very long talk with her. I tried everything I could to dissuade her, but she was adamant. I found her mental state to be apparently quite stable, and also telephoned her psychiatrist, whom of course you know – Professor Field. I could not, naturally, without her permission let him know why I was consulting him; but he assured me that, although she was still under treatment, she was in a perfectly fit state to make rational decisions about matters other than the specific delusion. I advised her that we could not consider taking such a step at the clinic, and that I thought it best if she made such arrangements elsewhere. I didn’t see her again, but understood from one of my staff that she had indeed found someone to carry out the procedure for her. I have to say we were all very sad indeed to hear of it. I have so many desperate women here, Mr Evans, so many unbearably sad stories of longing and regret. I’m sure you can understand how I feel. I can’t possibly recommend to any clinic or hospital that they enrol your wife on their IVF programme. I could not in all conscience advise them that she might not have a similar change of heart again. But I am more sorry than I can say to hear that you were unaware of the nature of the loss of your wife’s pregnancy.’
Michael’s anger rose within him until he felt he would choke.
The pills made their way slowly down Juliet’s gullet but, meeting the dry resistance of its lining, began to stick to its sides and form a plug of semi-dissolved chemicals halfway down its length. As this backlog was joined by yet more pills from above, as Juliet crammed more and more of them into her mouth, her stomach joined in the revolt against the onslaught on her body and began to heave in an attempt to repel the unwanted invaders. The plug was squeezed upwards by the intense force of the cramping muscles around it, but at the same time the efficiency of its movement caused her stomach to throw its contents upwards. This wasn’t much, after the semi-starvation of the last few days, but enough mucus, stomach juices and phlegm became mixed with the upwardly mobile pills to form a slurry of vomit which was ejected into her mouth.
Her conscious attempt at ending her life had so far been unsuccessful, and would have continued to be so; paradoxically it was the instinctive urge to preserve it that led to her fulfilling her wish. As the foul-smelling liquid rushed up into her mouth her body made an automatic and desperate attempt to breathe in, and instead of the oxygen they craved, her lungs inhaled the unwanted and rejected contents of her stomach. Perhaps somewhere deep inside her a message was sent from nerve to nerve, like the last wishes of a dying patient – not strive officiously to keep alive. Certainly her struggle to breathe was short-lived and insufficient, and it wasn’t long before her brain became starved of oxygen and began to shut down. As she made her way down the black tunnel towards the bright light created by its death throes, it was Michael she cried out to in her heart and his dead baby that she hoped to find as she made her way towards it.
‘Juliet! Juliet!’
He found her in the kitchen, making herself a cup of tea. Seeing her turn to look at him in surprise as he shouted her name, he found himself wondering again if there had been some terrible mistake. Could this woman, calmly dipping a teabag into a mug, really have planned to kill their child? This woman who had striven with him for so long and against such odds to achieve the pregnancy they both so much longed for? All through the horrific weeks of her obsession with Anthony Northfield he had still been able to see the old Juliet lurking somewhere beneath the changes that had come over her, but knowing now the level of the deception she had been practising almost took his breath away. All the years of loving her and knowing her, being irritated by her and laughing with her, seemed to be completely nullified. The person who could do this to him – without any apparent degree of guilt or conscience – was not the woman he had thought he’d known. It was all he could do to stop himself grabbing her and shaking the complacency out of her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me you had an abortion?’
‘I never said I didn’t. You just assumed I’d had a miscarriage and it seemed simpler to leave it that way.’
‘But you were so upset; you were – you remember – you were so horribly upset. How could you have—’
‘Yes, well I was upset. It’s not a very pleasant thing to go through you know, and I knew when I’d done it that I’d made a mistake.’
‘Then WHY? For God’s sake, WHY? HOW could you, Julie? How could you do it? After everything – I don’t understand. I thought you wanted our child as much as I did.’
‘Anthony didn’t want the baby.’
There was a terrible silence.
‘But I was wrong you see. I realised that as soon as I’d done it. It wasn’t the baby that was the problem; I misunderstood. It was you. That’s why I need to get pregnant again, before it’s too late.’
Michael knew he should feel sorry for her, he knew he should try to be understanding; that she was ill; that she couldn’t help herself. But at that moment he felt something for this woman that he would never have believed possible; with all his heart and soul he hated her.
He looked at her coldly, then spoke quietly: ‘They won’t consider you for fertility treatment, you know. After what you’ve done. They won’t even think about it. You may have wrecked my life, and finished my son’s, but they won’t let you do it again.’
After a few seconds Juliet slowly put down her mug, walked out of the kitchen and, after picking up her handbag from the hall table and her raincoat from the chair next to it, she calmly made her way out of the house, shutting the front door firmly behind her.
Michael would not see her alive again.
An ambulance and two police cars were waiting outside the house in Streatham as Michael arrived. A policeman ushered him up the steps and into the shabby room on the first floor where, although it appeared to be full of people, his eye was drawn immediately to the figure lying on the floor. Two men in green overalls were squatting on one side of it, and a tall man in a raincoat stood opposite them. They were talking in hushed voices as he entered the room but, on seeing him, they stopped immediately and the tall man came towards him.
‘Mr Evans. I’m very sorry. I’m afraid it’s very bad news, sir.’
‘Yes . . . yes I can see.’
How did he know straightaway that she was dead? He’d always heard that people just looked as though they were sleeping; but Juliet didn’t. As he knelt down beside her, he knew she had gone – not just that she had died, but that she had literally gone, that her essence, or whatever part of her it was that made her ‘Juliet’, wasn’t there any more. Michael had never had any sense of religion, had never entertained the possibility of a benign God as anything more than a fairy story left over from the Dark Ages – to him it had always seemed obvious that on all the evidence He must be either utterly powerless or completely indifferent to the horror and suffering of the world that He had created. So the idea of prayer had always been laughable, but, as he gathered Juliet’s limp body in his arms and cradled her head on his lap, he found himself silently screaming against something or somebody at the cruelty of it all. He rested his head on her forehead and cried quietly to himself.
The detective put a hand gently on his back and attempted a sympathetic pat. As Michael raised his head to look up at him, he became aware of some frantic activity going on to one side of him. A further group of green-coated paramedics was gathered around something else on the floor.
‘Is that . . .?’
‘They’re doing what they can. I’m afraid the baby’s very poorly.’
‘But still alive?’
‘Yes, sir. Just, I gather. Just still alive.’
Michael held Juliet’s body even tighter. He buried his head down into her hair and, clenching his teeth with the pain of it all, whispered into her cold, unhealing ear at the God he knew wasn’t there. ‘Dear God, let the baby live. She only wanted to be a mother, you bastard. She wasn’t a bad woman. Please, dear Lord, don’t let another tiny life be wasted; don’t let her have killed it, she loved the baby. I know she must have loved the baby. Please, dear God, let the baby live.’
‘I think we should let them take her away now, sir. Forgive me, Mr Evans, but I must ask you to move now, so we can let the—’
‘No. Just a moment. Let me be for just a moment.’
Michael held his wife quietly, his head still buried in her neck, then after a few moments he drew back and looked into her face.
‘Don’t worry, sir, you’ll be able to see her again, if you so wish. To say your goodbyes in private.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Michael laid her body back down on the floor very, very gently and then stood up and let the two men move to either side of her. They lifted Juliet carefully on to a canvas stretcher and carried her out of the room. He watched the little procession move into the shadows at the top of the staircase, then looked away from them and over towards where he knew the baby lay, surrounded by the squatting figures of the paramedics. As they moved to and fro, he caught glimpses of tubes, dials, rubber and steel.
Suddenly he saw a brief flash of something soft and human amidst the technology: a tiny, pale face, eyes closed, nose and mouth covered by the clear plastic of an oxygen mask. Michael was transfixed; in this room full of death a bitter struggle for life was taking place in the small limp body, and he willed it on with all his strength.
It seemed like hours as he waited, listening; the only sound that of concentrated effort and the occasional muffled comment from one of the men gathered around Harry on the floor.
A sudden movement by a paramedic made Michael start. He half rose into a kneeling position, his body tense, his senses alerted to what might come next.
‘We have a heartbeat,’ one of the men said quietly.
After a few seconds, a reply: ‘OK, let’s move him.’
The small group stood up and gently and slowly lifted between them the tiny little figure, still attached to tubes, wires and boxes. As they began to walk carefully towards the door, Michael leapt forward and gripped the detective by the forearm.
‘Let me go with the baby,’ he begged. ‘Please let me go with him. Let me do this for her; I can’t let him die. She didn’t mean that to happen – I know she didn’t.’
‘I can’t see why not, sir. But hurry.’
Michael sat in the ambulance watching little Harry’s struggle for survival in almost unbearable tension. Still in shock from the discovery of his dead wife, he felt as if he would be unable to cope if the baby should die in front of him, and that he would implode in a black hole of human misery. It was as if somehow his presence, the projection of all his energy, thought and hope, was an essential part of Harry’s life force: as if the focus of his will was holding the small being suspended above a chasm of darkness, and that if Michael lessened his concentration for even a second, Harry would fall.
By the time they reached the hospital he was exhausted. As the ambulance drew up outside the entrance one of the men put a hand on his shoulder sympathetically. ‘It’s all right, sir. He’s going to be fine now. We’ve got him stable. Take it easy; you’ve had a severe shock. Just try to relax now.’
Michael followed the small stretcher out of the ambulance into the hospital and along the corridor towards Intensive Care. A sudden scream ahead stopped him short. As in slow motion, he saw the pale girl with the jet black hair running towards them, arms outstretched, mouth open.
‘HARRY! OH MY HARRY! HE’S ALIVE! MY BABY’S ALIVE!’
Michael almost doubled up with the intense pain that he suddenly felt in his chest. As if he’d thrust a hand into boiling water and found it freezing, he was incapable of registering whether terrible joy or wonderful pain was filling his heart. He watched as Anna reached the stretcher and bent over Harry’s foil-wrapped form, running alongside it to keep up with the fast walking of the men, her face lit up with so much relief, love and happiness that it made him want to shout out with the wonder of it. He stopped, still watching, spellbound, then bent over and slumped into one of the chairs that lined the corridor and put his head in his hands. A passing nurse stopped and came over to him, leaning down to put a hand on his arm.
‘Are you all right? Can I help you?’
‘I’m fine,’ Michael gasped, leaning his head back against the wall, and trying to catch his breath. ‘Yes, thank you, I’m fine.’
‘You came in with the baby, didn’t you? Shall I show you where they are?’
‘No, no thanks. They just need each other for now. And I have to go. I have to go to my wife.’
‘Oh I see. All right then.’ The nurse looked a little confused, but smiled at him as she straightened up. ‘If you’re sure you’re OK?’
‘But nurse—’
‘Yes?’
Michael stood up and looked at her, his face tear-stained and weary, but with the smallest glimmer of hope lighting his eyes. ‘Could you give the young lady – the baby’s mother – could you give her a message for me, please?’
‘Yes, of course. What is it?’
‘Could you tell her I’ll come back for her? Tell her I send my love to her and Harry, and – please – tell her – I’ll come back.’