Another week drips past. Rose is four months old. She can roll, flipping over and over, looking delighted when she winds up somewhere new. Still doesn’t blinking sleep though and sometimes, when I’m trying yet again to settle her, I realise why they use sleep deprivation as torture. Then I feel bad that I blame her for not sleeping more, but it’s hard not to take it personally. She’s trying to push herself up on her arms already and reach for toys. I take this as a sign that she’s clearly a genius, then tell myself off for being like Mum with Tammy.
Rose is growing as I shrink.
At night, Nia seems to expand and fill the room, swooping, her wings like they could almost reach down and smother me.
You’re disgusting, she says, and I lie there, trying not to listen, holding the pillow over my head, attempting to drown her out with Rose’s deep sighs and grunts, but the only thing that works is getting up to pace round and round, or exercise, falling into an old routine as I count push-ups and lifts and crunches. I get the sense again and again that there’s a giant clock ticking through me, that Nia is growing alongside Rose.
I haven’t heard from Laurel.
I dream about money and things chasing me through empty streets. Of wandering the aisles of a deserted supermarket where everything is too bright and hurts my eyes, but the checkout keeps getting further away so I can never find what I need and get out of there. When I wake, my heart feels faint and jerky. Temporary. The two ridiculous books I got out of the library the day after I found out about Robin are now overdue and I can’t afford the fine. At least they don’t fine you for overdue kids’ books.
There’s no word from Dad. It’s as though he’s melted away, like he was never really there.
I speak to Mum a couple of times on the phone.
‘How’s Rose?’ she says, and I tell her about the latest cute thing Rose has done, like when she laughed at a teddy bear, but it’s as though someone else is speaking, and somewhere inside I understand I’ve crossed the tipping point and now there’s no way back.
White noise starts to crowd the edges of the room.
The more I try to eat, the less I can manage.
The nappy situation is getting desperate; I’m almost out again. I switched to a new, cheaper formula and it doesn’t seem to agree with Rose. She’s done about twenty poos in one day. I put the last nappy on her before I go to see Felicity.
I let myself out of the flat as quietly as possible, so I don’t annoy the man next door. I think about his hard knuckles, his face that pushes out into a dark frown whenever he sees me and Rose. I glance at Robin’s door as I shut my own, then look away fast. The other day when I looked out of the window, I noticed all the flowers he planted have gone brown and brittle through lack of water. It scratches at my heart, but I won’t give in, I won’t knock on their door.
Off we go on the long walk to the unit. By the time I push Rose across the car park, past the usual cohort of girls smoking outside, I’m panting. I give them a proper look, comparing, but they don’t even see me, their ranks closed into a different, private world. I want to run and join them, to tell them I’m one of them, and I want to run away too.
I tell this to Felicity, sitting in the same chair I’ve sat in a thousand times, with the same books and pot plants, and ticking clock. ‘I want to go and give them a shake, you know?’
‘Why?’ she says.
‘I don’t know. To tell them to stop. To make them understand getting back isn’t as easy as you think it is. To ask them to let me in. Who knows?’
Felicity considers me. ‘You’re losing weight.’
Rose is on my lap. She’s getting so big. She coos and stuffs her fist in her mouth, chewing so hard I worry she’s going to hurt herself, but every time I pull it away, sticky with drool, she calmly and firmly slots it right back.
I nod. I’m tired of the BS. ‘It’s not on purpose.’ OK, maybe I am still a BS factory. I meet Felicity’s eyes. ‘It’s half on purpose and half … like it’s coming from outside of me. It’s Nia. She won’t shut up.’ I find I’m crying, tears plopping on to Rose’s head. She carries on chewing her fist. ‘I just want … Sometimes I want her – it – to … to leave me the hell alone!’
Felicity hands me the tissues.
She’s smiling, a small smile. But her eyes are sad and worried.
‘We talked about control last time,’ she says.
I give a laugh at that, a strangled sound. ‘You know what? I always thought it was me, or that Nia and me, we were a team. Both in control. But these days, I don’t know who I love more, Nia or … or …’ I don’t want to finish that sentence. ‘Hate is another form of love, isn’t it?’
Felicity is silent.
‘Well, I guess it’s safe to say when it comes to who’s in charge, all bets are off, because … I don’t think it’s me,’ I say.
Finally admitting it gives me a feeling like there’s a chasm inside. With sharp spikes at the bottom. I’m not in control. I haven’t been for a while. And for the first time I want to scream, to make it stop. The fear rises all around, filling up the room, beating me down in my chair, battering Rose’s head.
‘I used to be so sure,’ I whisper. ‘When Rose was inside me, I was doing it, I was eating, for her. Why can’t I do the same now she’s out? I do love her.’ I breathe in Rose’s smell, feel the weight of her fitting just right in my lap. ‘I do,’ I whisper.
‘I don’t doubt you. But, Hedda, have you considered that being well needs to be about you too, about loving yourself, if it’s going to be sustainable?’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
Right now, I don’t know if I can even do it for Rose, let alone me, and the unfairness of it all threatens to choke me.
‘She’s so small,’ I say. And what I mean is: too small to hold me up. How can I even make her try? How can I put that on her? And Nia has grown so big.
Felicity looks at Rose, happy in my arms, not knowing any of this. Yet.
A shadow goes over Felicity’s face, one whose meaning I refuse to interpret.
In the morning, there’s a faint tap on the door and I know it’s Robin.
When I open it, I see he’s come to say goodbye. Jade is at his shoulder with Ellis. I know it’s wrong, but I want to smack the sympathetic look out of her eyes.
‘I just wanted to say goodbye, and good luck,’ he says.
I thought this was going to happen, but still, it’s a shock.
‘Yeah. OK. Bye then,’ I say it fast, so it hurts less.
‘We’re going back to Leeds,’ Robin says.
I nod.
We hold each other’s eyes.
‘You look … Are you OK?’ he says.
I keep still.
Robin reaches out and puts a finger on Rose’s cheek and it’s like he’s touching mine. ‘I called the council, about the damp in the flats,’ he says.
Jade coughs. ‘I’m going to wait in the car. Take care, Hedda.’
I nod, say ‘Thanks’ so quietly I’m not sure she heard me. Then I look at Robin and try to keep myself steady.
‘So … I guess you made your decision then,’ I say.
Robin’s eyes have dark semicircles underneath them. My heart is going fast. I think again about what Felicity said about feeling emotions. I stand by my previous thought; I don’t see what’s so great about this.
‘Yeah.’
I swallow hard. ‘But you don’t love her.’
‘No,’ he says and holds my eyes for a long time and I read a whole universe there. Then he sighs and says, ‘But I love Ellis. He’s my son. I have to try.’
I put one hand up in front of my face, like I can block out the path we might have taken, together.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
I look up at him, at his silly glasses, his eyes, which are shining and so tired. Why did I never stop to think he had stuff too? I try and think of a way to tell him that I’m sorry, that I should have asked properly, not just skimmed over the surface of things for the sake of it, but in the end I just say, ‘Good luck. I hope it works out for you.’
He touches his fingertips to mine, then lifts up my hand and runs one finger along the bones of my knuckles. ‘I’m worried about you. Will you be all right?’
I want to say, ‘No, I won’t be.’ Because I don’t think I will.
But he has Ellis and Jade to worry about. Rose is my responsibility.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘I made you something.’ He leans down to pick up a box at his feet. ‘It’s the spicy chicken you liked.’
I don’t know how to tell him it’s too late, that I can’t eat it, so I take it from him.
‘Keep in touch?’ he says.
I nod then shut the door before he can see the tears in my eyes.
I put the box of chicken into the empty freezer and then look at the damp that’s spreading on to the ceiling now and remember what Dad said about the winter.
That this is no place for a baby.