Rose is gone.
Gonegonegonegone.
This is your fault, you stupid cow.
Nia.
Why won’t my brain work?
Rose is gone. Where is she?
I take a step towards the girl in front of me.
‘I’m Jade and this is Ellis.’ She smiles down at the baby on her hip, his arms clinging to her.
I nearly push her to the floor. It’s only the baby that stops me. The baby that’s not mine.
‘Where’s my baby?’ I practically scream in her face.
She steps aside and behind her I see Robin putting out a hand with a warning look. In the bend of his other arm, fast asleep, is Rose.
I run to him and snatch her out of his arms, pulling her close to me. She wriggles, opens her eyes and gives me this chilled-out look like she’s not at all bothered I’ve been gone, then settles back down to sleep.
‘What the hell is going on?’ I hiss.
Robin takes off his glasses and passes a hand over his eyes. ‘I could ask you the same question,’ he says, but it’s weariness rather than anger in his voice.
‘Laurel had an accident. I had to go with her to the hospital and I left my phone … It all happened really fast. I’m so sorry. Did I leave any formula? She must be hungry.’
Jade speaks from the corner. ‘No need. I gave her one of Ellis’s bedtime bottles.’
I look at Robin. ‘I don’t … Who’s Ellis?’
He pushes his glasses back on, avoiding my eyes, then says, ‘Hedda … there’s something I need to …’ He can’t seem to finish.
Jade is watching us both.
Jade, I realise now, is beautiful.
Jade is also thin.
Thinner than me?
Perfectly shaped legs. Hip bones peeking over the top of her leggings, framing the flat space where her top doesn’t quite meet them. Huge dark-lashed eyes – falsies? I don’t think so – and a shaped top lip, braided hair. She looks like she almost feels sorry for me.
‘Ellis is our son. Mine and Robin’s,’ she says.
Sometimes, I think my heart will stop. At night, I wake up with a start and lie there feeling the way its beats change rhythm, like Molly’s jazz. It does it now, thudding, faltering, speeding back up. I keep hold of Rose and try to make my brain process properly, but all I can hear is a rumbling sound.
I stare at Jade. She has studs in her ears that reflect the light bulb in tiny glints. I put one hand up to my own bare ear. Did I even brush my hair today? My teeth? I stink of hospital and sweat.
My arms ache from holding Rose so tight. My heart is squeezing in on itself. I imagine it in my chest, like a shrivelled walnut after years of Nia, hard and dry. Except there’s a spot somewhere in there that’s warmed and expanded these last few weeks, for Rose, and partly for Robin too.
‘Robin’s just been telling me about you,’ Jade says, and I see the mixture of vulnerability and jealousy in her eyes. How in other circumstances I might quite like her.
She still loves him. I can tell.
I knew it. I knew he wasn’t telling me something, that I shouldn’t have thought … My face starts to heat up. Why didn’t I listen to myself, to Nia?
‘Me and Ellis, we’ve come to bring Robin home,’ Jade says in this firm voice, gazing at Robin like she’s confirming something they’ve been talking about. Then she gives me a long look, like she’s working something out about me, and adds, ‘He doesn’t belong here.’
I turn to Robin. I need him to say something, anything, to tell her she’s wrong. But he can’t meet my eyes.
I sway, Rose still in my arms, and lean back to steady myself against the wall. Jade hands Ellis to Robin and he takes his son smoothly, with that practised air he had when he first picked up Rose. I remember thinking how good he was with her, how natural he was.
Well, it makes sense now.
I’ve been so stupid.
As Jade stands back, I realise she’s wearing an engagement ring and the little splinters of pain wriggling under my skin seem to sharpen and multiply until I’m crawling with them.
Robin is still sitting there, and I think that hurts the most. Why didn’t he tell me? He leans forward, opens his mouth, but I shut him up with one look.
‘Thank you for looking after her,’ I say with as much dignity as I can, and then that’s it, I’m out of there, keeping my back straight though my arms are killing me.
Nia chants in my ear all the way back, and I let her words comfort me in a familiar chatter, like she’s narrating my life for me.
Open the door.
I’m going.
Shut it, quietly, behind you.
Going, going, going.
Don’t you dare think about crying.
Gone.