HOLLY MADE A pot of tea and sandwiches: cheese and Marmite, butter and jam. They were Rosie’s favourites. She cut the crusts off, arranged them on a plate and put everything on a tray. The tray she carried upstairs. Her slippers almost slipped on the carpeted steps but she regained her balance without spilling a drop, and arrived outside Rosie’s bedroom door. She put down the food. She knocked.
‘Rosie?’ she said, her voice almost a whisper. ‘It’s Nana. It’s your nana. Can I come in?’
There was no lock on the bedroom, but Holly understood that the closed door had to be respected. She wouldn’t step inside until invited. But she would no longer wait to be called, and she wasn’t above listening in either. She moved the tray out of the way so she could position her ear a little closer to the door.
‘Rosie?’ she whispered again, louder this time, and prepared herself for the sound of her granddaughter’s sobs.
But she couldn’t hear a voice inside, or any crying. All she could hear was a very faint tapping like … she didn’t know what it was like. She couldn’t place the sound. It was rhythmical, or perhaps like scraping. She leaned closer to the door.
‘What are you doing, Mum?’
Daphne was standing behind her on the stairs. Holly straightened her back, groaning, and turned to face her daughter. Daphne had been the only one of them who didn’t break down in the hospital, who had not screamed at the doctors or demanded answers, but silently held Rosie as she wept. When they’d come round earlier, talking about an autopsy, Daphne had dealt with them – she’d invited them in, thanked them for returning her car, made coffee, sat with them at the kitchen table while Rosie and Kaz forced themselves to make a decision upstairs.
Holly hadn’t been a part of that conversation, she didn’t know who said what, but she knew that eventually they’d both spoken with the FullLife director. Rosie had refused to leave her room since and Kaz had come down, red-eyed and vacant, to tell them they’d decided to proceed with the autopsy. When he returned from FullLife he hadn’t gone up to Rosie’s room. He’d gone outside and started on her silver birch.
She prided herself on being the one to open her arms to all her family, to help her children and grandchildren through everything they had to go through. If Rosie fell over as a girl, it was her nana’s comforting hug she ran to. If she was in trouble at school, her nana would hear about it first. After Kaz proposed, Rosie had offered to cook dinner for the whole family, to bring everyone together for the announcement, but before dinner she’d crept up to her nana’s bedroom and told her what she was going to tell the others – that she was in love, and she was getting married, and Kaz was the sweetest, kindest man she’d ever met. And funny, she’d said, and musical – have you heard him play, Nana? Holly had smiled; she’d heard him at school concerts over the years. She knew, and liked, the man that her granddaughter loved.
‘I just wanted to tell you first, Nana,’ she’d said.
It had meant more to Holly than she realised at the time, being told first – she hadn’t appreciated it fully because she’d expected it. It’s easy to be there for someone when they want you to be there for them. Easy to be your favourite’s favourite.
But now, she didn’t know what to do when her outstretched arms were ignored.
‘I thought she might like some tea,’ Holly said, looking to Daphne for confirmation.
Daphne shrugged, dry-eyed. ‘She’s not come out for hours. Enough is enough.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll just go in.’
‘Wait, Daphne.’ Holly blocked the door. It would be too much of an intrusion. Rosie knew they were here if she wanted them – she’d find her way back to her nana’s arms when she was ready. ‘She’s doing something, listen.’
Daphne put her ear to the door, then stepped back, shaking her head.
‘She’s wearing her headphones,’ she said, and with that she pushed the door open and strode in.
Holly stood back, lingering in the doorway. She wondered if there’d be an argument now – mother and daughter were so different. Daphne sat down on the bed, next to Rosie. Her back was straight where Rosie’s was hunched, her expression calm where Rosie’s was lost. She pressed stop on the screen that was held in Rosie’s hands, and Rosie didn’t resist – she just pulled the headphones from her ears.
‘Oh, Mum,’ she said. Her lower lip wobbled the way it had done when she was a child and Holly felt the same sensation that she’d felt in that hospital room. She leaned on the door frame as Rosie crumpled into her mother’s arms.
She was trying to say something through the sobs, but Holly couldn’t hear the words. Daphne gave her a slight nod, as if to say, I’ve got this. You can go. But Holly had no intention of going.
‘I think …’ Rosie stammered. She was trying to stop crying. Holly knew that moment, when you’ve had enough but your body hasn’t caught up yet and you can’t stop the sobs. She wanted to join the hug on the bed.
‘I think it was … I think it was my fault,’ Rosie managed, very quietly, the words separated with deep breaths.
Holly held on to the door.
‘It was no one’s fault,’ Daphne said as she rocked Rosie back and forth in her arms. ‘Shhh, sweetheart. It was no one’s fault, I promise you that. Especially not yours.’
Holly took a step back.
A chill was passing through her body, she could feel it snaking down her spine. That woman who had arrived this morning, who had wanted to talk to Rosie and Kaz in private, she’d said in private, what was it about their conversation that had to be hidden from Holly herself?
She was still standing on the threshold of the bedroom, but she walked inside now, invited or not.
‘What did they say to you?’ she said.
She hadn’t meant her voice to sound harsh, but she could tell from the way Daphne’s eyes reprimanded her that it had. Her family were used to her being the cuddly one – the one who never told anyone off, who pretended to fall asleep in her comfy chair to avoid the smallest family argument. Well, she was not pretending to fall asleep now.
‘You need to tell me what they said to you,’ she repeated.
Rosie was shaking her head, burying her face in her mother’s arms, and the crying had started up again.
‘Get a hold of yourself,’ Holly said. ‘This is important.’
‘Mum,’ said Daphne, ‘this isn’t helpful. Go downstairs, OK? Just give us some time.’
We need more time.
The conversations collided. It was as if days separated by years had reached through to touch one another, leaving Holly reeling. She was back there, and it seemed more present than ever before, more vital.
‘We need more time,’ Freida said.
‘What are you talking about?’ Holly held Aarav in her arms – he was still a baby, six months perhaps – while Daphne and Leigh ran between the chairs and the legs of the dining table, giggling. Holly saw Freida’s eyes watching them and wondered, just for a second, if Freida was jealous.
‘It’s moving too fast.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, it’s everything you wanted,’ Holly said. ‘It’s perfect.’ Although sometimes it felt like she’d had an awful lot of kids. She was knackered, Will was knackered, the children were inexhaustible.
But Freida looked old. She was only in her fifties, but she looked in her sixties at least, tired, worn out.
‘Look, maybe you should retire,’ Holly said. She didn’t intend to be cruel, she was just shattered, and busy, and didn’t have time for a crisis of confidence. Freida was supposed to be strong.
‘You don’t understand,’ said Freida.
‘What’s going on with you?’ Holly snapped. ‘Is this about your job? Is this about pride?’
Freida looked hurt, and Holly softened.
‘I know you don’t get on with Sylvia but … Look, everything is beautiful,’ she said, trying to be kind now. ‘The pouch is perfect. Thanks to you. What FullLife are doing is good, and they’re good at what they do. Believe me – I should know.’
‘I’m going away,’ Freida said. Holly didn’t realise she meant for ever, of course she didn’t think that, but … Freida’s moods were dragging on her, dragging her down when she didn’t have space for philosophy – this was her life.
‘A holiday,’ she nodded. ‘Good idea.’
She didn’t ask where she was going. Didn’t ask when she would return. They’d been through so much together, taking that first leap of faith that changed the world – that was how it had seemed – and now Holly had built an entire life and she didn’t want to hear Freida questioning it, or questioning her motives. There was no point.
Holly stood ready to say a brisk goodbye and get back to her children – Daphne had pinned Leigh to the floor and was intent on tickling her feet until she screamed, one sock already peeled off – but Freida held her shoulders and looked into her eyes as if searching for something there that she couldn’t say out loud. Holly looked back, confident and happy, and just smiled. Aarav was starting to squirm, but Freida reached around awkwardly to give her a hug that seemed now to have lasted longer that it felt at the time.
‘There we go,’ Holly mumbled, putting Aarav into his baby bouncer then kneeling on the floor to untangle her other children. ‘You should visit your daughter,’ she called over her shoulder, as Freida lingered in the hall. She hadn’t meant anything by it, except that everyone needed their family, didn’t they?
‘Perhaps it was my fault,’ Freida said softly, turning back just for a second before she left.
Holly didn’t reply, because it wasn’t spoken as a question. Besides, she had no idea what Freida was talking about.
‘The babies are dying,’ Eva said.
If Piotr found her too blunt, he hid it well.
‘I only know of one.’
‘There have been others.’
He blew out his breath like a sigh and leaned forwards. They were sitting either side of the kitchen table, which was large enough to keep some distance between them. Eva had been caught off balance by the hug. She’d thought he’d come bursting into her home with ideas; she’d assumed he would try to take control. But he didn’t. If anything, he seemed less confident. A diminished version of himself. Fatter, though.
‘They don’t know why it’s happening,’ she said.
‘I think they’re trying to blame the parents.’
‘You spoke to Rosie Bhattacharyya?’
He shook his head. ‘Kaz.’
She didn’t ask how he was doing. How Kaz was doing. Or how Piotr felt. There was no need – she could see it clearly. And she knew how Rosie would be feeling too. Though, she couldn’t help thinking, that didn’t work both ways. Rosie didn’t know the full extent of how she had felt, wouldn’t be having to cope with the excruciating blood, the deep ache of it. Her body wouldn’t still be trying, uselessly, to mother. Would the emotional trauma be the same? She wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But she realised, as she sat not quite looking Piotr in the eye, that her plan was flimsy, to say the least. Write an article. That’s all she had. Go public. Suddenly it seemed callous. Superficial.
There had only been three hospitals left in London that catered for natural births by the time Eva was pregnant. All were private of course – the government hadn’t funded any kind of health care for years – and more expensive than FullLife. But Eva could afford it. They’d chosen the hospital together, she and Piotr, after visiting maternity wards and midwives. ‘Although there’ve been no recent medical advances,’ their doctor explained with a smile, visibly pregnant herself, ‘we women have been doing this for a long time. We have everything we need.’ Piotr had been full of questions, of course: what happens if, and how do we know, and what other options. Eva was so happy she just put her arm around his waist as he quizzed the doctors and inspected the facilities. His questions showed how much he loved his baby. He was protective, nervous. Though Eva wasn’t nervous. She wasn’t looking forward to the pain, but she’d never really believed the pain could be all that bad anyway. It was natural, as her mum said, it was what our bodies were designed to do. And to Eva it had felt right, being pregnant. She’d felt healthy, grounded – the world made more sense than it had done before. Where was the sense in the world now?
Piotr’s chair screeched back against the tiles and he stood up, exhaling loudly. He stared at the kitchen wall, his eyes resting on the unadorned paintwork before turning to her. He looked tired. Tired, and older.
‘I want to prove it’s not the parents’ fault,’ he said. ‘That there was nothing they could have done differently.’
It looked like his hands were shaking, but that must have been an illusion of the light. It was shimmering through the late mist outside, the low-lying cloud that seemed to be clinging to her home.
‘I have a contact,’ she said. ‘One of the scientists. High up. He has proof it’s happened before.’
‘And that the pouch is at fault?’
She hesitated. ‘They don’t know why it’s happening. They don’t know—’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘You believe that?’
Suddenly the old Piotr was back, was looking for an angle to the story, for someone to blame. But, she realised, she did believe FullLife – or at least, she believed James Quentin.
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting him tomorrow, and you’re coming with me. He’ll go on the record.’
‘Does he have proof? Or is it just his word against theirs?’
‘I’m … I don’t think it’s quite like that. But he’s bringing evidence that they knew there was a risk. That they’ve known for years.’
They needed to search carefully, methodically, through her mum’s old notes. Avigail had known James when he was a student, he could have given her all sorts of information without thinking. She’d not wanted to do it before, not fully. She’d been putting it off, even though it was her most obvious source of information. It had felt too intimate, going through her mum’s desk. She didn’t know what else could be hidden. Would Piotr help, she wondered, without needing to criticise?
‘So there was a cover-up,’ he said.
‘They’ve been keeping things quiet, away from the public.’
‘And now a very public baby …’
‘They must be heartbroken,’ Eva said. She didn’t mean for it to come out sounding as cold as it did.
Piotr looked at her, his gaze penetrating.
‘That’s why we can’t bring them into this.’
‘What?’
‘I think we should keep Kaz and Rosie out of this. Let them grieve.’
‘But that’s …’
She looked at him in astonishment.
‘What?’ he said.
‘That’s the story.’
He shrugged. ‘Then we’ll tell a different story.’
They stared at each other for a moment, both only just realising that their voices had been raised. Then Piotr sat down again. Looked at his hands.
‘They’re just kids,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘It’s …’
‘It’s OK,’ she said. If Piotr had developed a professional conscience Eva didn’t want to be the one to break it. Besides, he was right. ‘We’ll focus on the cover-up. Hiding the risks from the public, misleading parents. Making them feel responsible. We won’t mention any names.’
Piotr nodded.
‘And we need to work out exactly how long this has been going on.’
He didn’t say anything for a while, and Eva wondered if she should put the kettle on for some tea, just to break the silence. Perhaps he’d changed more than she realised. She shook her head, not wanting to see him, however fleetingly, as a broken man. She had never wanted that.
‘What is it that you’re trying to achieve?’ he asked eventually. ‘Is this about bringing down FullLife? About stopping the pouch from being used altogether?’
Eva didn’t answer straight away. She hadn’t yet asked herself the question, and she didn’t know how to respond.
‘I just think people should know the truth, that’s all,’ she said, looking into his eyes without turning away for the first time that evening. He looked back. For a moment, they allowed themselves to hold each other’s gaze. ‘There are risks,’ she said. ‘I want people to know that, either way, there are risks. There is no easy choice. There never was.’
By the time James arrived home, he felt like there was something inevitable in the way his life was about to fall apart. It didn’t feel like his choice, although he knew he would be the one saying things, and doing things, that would cause the destruction.
But he loved his wife. He kept telling himself that he loved his wife. They had shared … well, not dreams. They had shared a home. They had built a home together. They’d raised their children together, shared the joy and the sleeplessness, the birthdays, the chickenpox. She had helped him wash when he broke his shoulder, and she’d done so without ever making him feel like he needed help at all. And when her mum died, he’d been able to sit beside her and ask: how can I help? And she had replied that he couldn’t, not really, but at the same time that he had helped already.
They had never even asked him to lie.
For years, he had been lying to his wife about the work he was doing, hiding his fears from her, his suspicions – telling no one what was really going on. He had decided to keep the way he spent the majority of his time, the questions he thought about every day of his life, a secret. Why?
He’d thought it was because FullLife were making him lie. But they weren’t.
Yes, everyone knew it would be frowned upon to talk to a journalist about company policy. Everyone knew that their research was confidential – they’d all signed the forms when they took their first job there. That would have been the same in any research post. Even at a university your research belonged to the university, not to you – you were not free to give it to anyone you chose. But it had been him, James Quentin, who he’d always thought was a decent kind of man, who had decided to lie to his wife. To pretend he was still working on audio and visual connections to enhance brain development, when for three years the only research he had done into brain development was to ask if the lack of it had caused a stillbirth.
Perhaps it was the reality of letting everyone down that he couldn’t stand. All those people who loved the pouch, who trusted it so completely – himself included, Julianne, his children … He had let everyone down.
He rang the doorbell.
It was an odd thing to do, given that he had his keys in his pocket, but he already felt unwelcome. This was no longer his home. He didn’t deserve it.
Julianne answered the door.
She was wearing smart black trousers and a navy shirt with red birds on – in the shape of swallows, he thought, but red. Red swallows, flying. And a red silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. He looked up at her face.
‘Did you forget your keys?’ she said.
He shook his head, and followed her indoors.
They sat side by side on the pale green sofa, facing the bay window. The light was lower now – it made the tracks on the windows glitter like snail’s trails. Sometimes he wished that the sun would just go away. It felt like every corner of London had the power to blind. He remembered history lessons about the smog, the yellow-grey cloud of pollution that had once darkened the streets. Hard to imagine.
He took Julianne’s hand in his, and she let him, though he felt her resistance. Perhaps it was obvious what was coming. Or obvious that something was coming.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said.
She pulled her hand back, and waited.
‘There are two things, actually.’
He wanted to do this logically. To explain. He might not get another chance.
‘There’s been something happening at work,’ he said.
She frowned, but didn’t interrupt. Had he wanted her to interrupt?
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. But there’s a problem with the pouches. A baby has … actually, over the past three years five babies have died during their birth. We don’t know why. I think the numbers will increase. And now I’ve been fired.’
‘You’ve been fired?’
‘No, that was another lie. I don’t know why I said that. I resigned.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I couldn’t do an autopsy on a newborn baby.’
‘Oh, James …’ She reached forward to take his hand now. ‘Of course you couldn’t, that sounds—’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘It’s been happening for years. I’ve been lying about my job for years.’
‘Are you sure?’
He stared at her.
‘I mean, we’d have heard about it, surely?’
And so he sat back and started at the beginning, told her everything about his job, from the first time a birth had gone wrong, the way the pouch was delivered to him, the way he accepted it and didn’t tell her when he got home, and the way he’d told no one and had kept on doing his research, studying the faulty pouches, ever since.
‘That’s awful,’ she said. ‘Those poor parents. No wonder they don’t want to talk about it.’
She looked a little upset, but didn’t seem as horrified as he’d expected. Perhaps it was too abstract – the idea of a dead child is different to the reality of seeing a child, dead. Human empathy doesn’t extend that far. It needs personal experience. But even so, he began to feel a little worried she simply didn’t believe him.
‘Do you believe me?’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she replied.
He didn’t know what to say next.
‘I’ve got proof of everything,’ he tried. ‘So we can make it all public. I’ve got records of when the babies died, which pouches failed, internal reports showing that everyone knew what had happened. Standard memos sent every year reminding us that our research was confidential. It’s all on my computer, saved on the hard drive somewhere. I’ll sort through it all. I’ll show you everything.’
She shook her head.
‘What?’
‘It’s just that, well – they are trying to fix it, you said. And that’s good. They’ll work out what’s happening, and if the pouches are faulty they’ll fix them. There are thousands of healthy births every year, though. Hundreds of thousands …’
‘But people are being lied to,’ he said.
She smiled at him then, as if she found him naive.
‘People are always being lied to, one way or another. I’m sure it’s not a conspiracy.’
‘You’re missing the point.’ He was irritated now. He stood up, strode away from the sofa, then turned and sat down again. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s just—’ But how could he tell her about his fear, about what all this really meant? Because James Quentin was born via the pouch. And James Quentin’s daughters were born via the pouch. And he knew, deep down, that if third-generation babies were at risk, then his children would suffer too. It could be the body of his grandchild that would, one day soon, be delivered through a series of cleanroom hatches to the scientists working in the research lab on the fifteenth floor of the FullLife birthing centre.
‘What’s wrong, James?’ she said quietly.
She sounded like she was still trying to coax the truth out of him – as if everything he’d said about work, about the pouches, had been some kind of midlife crisis and she’d help him through it. He was finally telling the truth and she didn’t believe him.
‘I’m having an affair,’ he said.
‘No you’re not.’
‘Fine, I’m not.’
He sighed, ran his hands through his hair.
‘What is going on with you?’
‘But I was,’ he said. ‘I did, I mean.’ He took a deep breath. This was happening now. After the initial burst it was harder to continue than he’d expected. ‘I had an affair.’
He hadn’t wanted it to come out like a punchline in an argument. But it was wrong, being lied to. And he had been lying to everyone. He had to put all that right.
Her posture hadn’t changed, but her expression had. Somewhere behind her eyes she knew the conversation had changed from something that could be fixed to something that might be broken.
‘So that’s what all this is about,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘No, not all of it. Everything I said about work, that was true. I’m sorry I lied.’
‘When?’
He looked at her, momentarily confused. His glasses were dirty. There were smudges in his field of view.
‘When did you have the affair?’ she said, as if clarifying her question to a child.
‘Thirty-six years ago.’
‘We weren’t married thirty-six years ago.’
‘No, it was before we got engaged.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she said.
‘When I asked you to marry me,’ he said, ‘I was in love with someone else. I was running from someone else. She was … I … No, sorry, it’s not about her, but I was …’
‘And this continued for how long?’
‘Oh no, it stopped. I mean, I didn’t see her after we were married.’
‘So you were sleeping with someone else, while we were engaged?’
‘No, it was never like that.’
‘What?’
‘There was no sex.’
She closed her eyes, and the way she was breathing made her sound like she was trying to be patient. It reminded him of when the twins were babies and they had screamed, screamed night after night, and when she went to help them, picked them out of their cots and rocked them one by one, they would go quiet, but when he did it – which was half of the time, they took turns – they wouldn’t stop. He tried everything. He begged them. He rocked them and sang to them, offered toys and milk bottles but it hadn’t helped. And eventually, as any hope for sleep was abandoned, Julianne would come in to the babies’ room and take the children from him, and she would breathe slowly and deliberately until they stopped crying.
It was the same kind of breathing she was doing now.
‘Why are you telling me?’ she said.
‘Because it’s the truth.’
‘Why now?’
‘Because I can’t stand lying any longer.’
‘But there’s no point,’ she said angrily. There wasn’t the pain in her eyes that he’d feared there would be – instead, she seemed furious. ‘What is the point in telling me this now? Do you want me to forgive you, is that it?’
‘No.’
‘Do you want to hurt me?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Then there was no point.’
‘But I still love her,’ he said.
‘Then walk out the door and be with her.’
‘She’s dead.’
‘Then you’re a fool.’
‘And I still love you, Julianne.’
He looked up at her, suddenly feeling it again, believing in their marriage, and simultaneously feeling that cold, bitter chill that told him it was over.
The results of their search were piling up on the floor around the walls. They had emptied Avigail’s desk, and now they were emptying Avigail’s house, from attic to cupboard and drawers in their search for anything they could use. While Eva’s research was ordered and filed and told them nothing new, Avigail’s was chaotic, everywhere, in every part of her life; the randomness itself seemed to hold a potential clue. They couldn’t stop until they had searched every possible hiding place, and neither of them needed to say so to the other. Eva worked silently, and Piotr respected that need for silence.
Bags were filled for charity, other boxes for the dump – Eva was brutal, even with this – while papers, notebooks, and letters were piled in the living room. She pushed her sleeves up to the elbows, and he knew he was lucky to be allowed to stay and observe, let alone help. He wasn’t needed, but it’s hard, going through the remnants of a life. He hoped, perhaps selfishly, that having him there was a kind of support.
It felt strange to Piotr that Avigail wasn’t still around. He and Eva had broken up two years before she’d died, and so not seeing her – not thinking about her, if he was honest – was something he’d become used to. She had been absent from his life before she became absent from the world. And she’d never liked him anyway.
He’d liked her, though. That was his first thought when he heard about her death. There was an email from Eva, and a brief report online. He’d tried phoning. She hadn’t answered. Why would she? But he wished he had told Avigail, just once, how much he liked her.
After his ill-judged exposé, Avigail’s reaction was unexpected, especially given that he was meeting her again as the new boyfriend of her daughter. She’d looked at him, standing there on the doorstop – he’d gone to some trouble, in his new suit, his brushed hair, his beard trimmed and almost neat – and as he’d waited, his hand outstretched in the formal offer of a shake, she’d laughed. Not a curt laugh, quite the opposite. A big, full-bodied, fully enjoyed laugh. Then she’d grabbed his hand and used it to lead him into the front room, instead of accepting the handshake.
‘I don’t mind telling you, Piotr,’ she’d said, the laugh still playing about her lips. ‘I have not the faintest idea what my daughter is thinking.’
‘Nor do I, to be honest.’
‘Precisely!’ she’d replied, taking wine from the rack, turning over her shoulder to glance at him with the bottle of red held high.
And now she was gone. It was like her death had just happened for him. How awful, the way we can push things out of our minds. So easy not to face something unless it is standing in front of you. And while he was sitting on the floor, thinking about death, Eva was searching through cupboards, and he saw flashes of colour, caught glimpses of fabrics that were so reminiscent of Avigail it felt like she was there. I always liked you, he wanted to say. I liked you. Does that help, at all?
Eva handed him an old calendar, some notes for essays that had never been written. He read them then carefully added them to the right pile. He didn’t interrupt her with suggestions about what to do next. She showed him Avigail’s descriptions of the care homes she’d visited – details of their funding, too, from private investors whose money had long since dried up to the more liberal pro-life groups while their movement was splitting down the spine. After the pouch was invented no one had known which way they would go. After all, if what you really cared about was the life of every foetus, then the pouch gave you a way to save every one of them. But some believed that women were supposed to give birth, that women only existed to give birth … Thankfully society had turned away from that. The result was the rapid acceptance of the pouch, in the UK at least. And as for the care homes … He knew they were struggling.
He read it all in silence, then looked up at her.
‘This one,’ she said, glancing away from him as she took the papers back and added them to her file. ‘That was where I lived. But it’s not going to help us today.’
He just nodded and left her the space to talk if and when she wanted to. Twice today, he had managed silent support. And it must have helped – why else would Kaz have talked to him, or Eva let him stay?
‘More letters,’ she said. ‘Just read some of these.’
And there were loads of them, the letters, some genuine, some offering help, some that sounded like they’d been written by deranged fans. Then there was one, handwritten on yellowing paper, and Piotr wasn’t sure but he thought it was different to the rest; it hadn’t even been signed. ‘Have you seen this one?’
She looked over her shoulder and waved her arm impatiently. ‘Mum had friends all over the place,’ she said. ‘She was always going off somewhere. Just put it on the pile with the others.’ Then she stopped, stood still, and Piotr knew she’d found something else. Slowly, she sat down next to him.
‘Mum’s old photographs,’ she said.
They were in a white envelope. Eva showed it to him without opening it. He knew, from the look on her face, that this was the moment when he could help. They sat side by side, their backs leaning against the wall, their shoulders not touching. Then Eva opened the envelope and pulled out the printed photos that Avigail had decided to save.
The one on top was a photograph of their house, taken from the back garden looking in, on a summer’s day when the yellow rhododendrons were in bloom. The French windows leading into the living room were thrown open and the angle of the shot led you inside, through the long room of wood floors and flowing light. Eva glanced at him, lifted the photo from the top of the stack to place it at the back.
There were group shots next – old and unfamiliar to Piotr, but Eva seemed to recognise them. She smiled, softly, reached out a finger to touch her mum’s face, the decades-old images of her mum’s friends who had made her childhood so colourful.
‘That’s Ina,’ she said, showing him one. ‘She was my mum’s best friend.’
Piotr smiled at the photo of them, arms round each other, Avigail and Ina, both with long flowing hair, Avigail’s red and Ina’s grey.
There were photos of Eva when she was a teenager, dressed in tie-dye like her mum, with dangly earrings and frizzy hair. In one she was wearing faded denim shorts and thick black tights, a flowery purple shirt tied in a knot at the waist, DM boots laced halfway with orange laces and graffitied with swirls of bright paint and glitter glue. And then the images became more recent.
He’d known it was coming, of course.
First there was a photo Eva had taken one Christmas, Piotr and Avigail sitting either side of the dining table with paper hats on – Piotr’s balanced precariously on top of his head. It was too small to fit on properly; his head was too big. On the table were the remnants of pulled crackers, Christmas pudding half eaten and swimming in brandy. Eva touched the image, passed it to him. He took it, held it, and waited.
A photo they’d taken in Norfolk, both of their faces too close to the lens, behind them a view of the beach, white satin, windswept and overexposed. It looked like there were smudges, like something had been spilled on the picture. She passed it to him by the edges and he took it too eagerly – his thumb went into the frame, leaving a clumsy thumbprint on the paper. He kept hold of it though, placing it neatly on top of the Christmas dinner before looking up for the next photo.
And then his heart stopped. He’d been expecting more of them, or more of Eva and her mum, but it wasn’t that. It was a printout of their first ultrasound. He heard Eva swallow. She hadn’t been expecting it either.
‘I didn’t know she’d kept this,’ she said, her voice quiet but even. Perhaps, after what they’d been through, a small picture didn’t have much power to hurt.
She passed it to him, and he took it. His hands were shaking but he made himself look. Hardly recognisable at all, at that stage. But he recognised his daughter the way you do a tune you haven’t heard since childhood.
Eva was standing up. He couldn’t. He just looked up at her from the floor, his eyes pleading.
‘You can keep those,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘I don’t need them any more.’
The pain of it knocked the breath out of his lungs.