My phone rings from far away. I open my eyes. White tiles overhead and a dull pain spreading across the back of my head. It takes me a while to realise I’ve fainted, the unreal aftermath like a familiar song. It’s the first time since I was pregnant with Rose …
Rose.
I roll over and push myself up in panic, and immediately there’s a sound like when you put a seashell to your ear filling my head and I have to wait it out, helpless, my heart going because I can’t hear Rose.
I finally manage to stagger to the bedroom and she’s still in her cot, fast asleep, her face serene. I lean over and kiss her, very gently so I don’t wake her up, then go and drink some water and try to get my heart rate under control, but I’m too panicked for that. Rose is already pushing herself up, and can move across the room by rolling. What will I do when she’s crawling? Walking? Can open the door?
Will she eventually become yet another person begging me to eat?
My phone goes again. I reach for it, and miss.
I blink a few times, trying to clear my head.
It’s Mum.
‘Hi, Mum, how are you?’
It’s quiet on the other end.
‘Mum?’
‘Sorry, Hedda, love …’
Love? Why is she calling me ‘love’? And why is her voice so muffled? Cold prickles run down my arms.
‘Are you all right, Mum?’
There’s a sound of her nose being blown and then her voice comes again, steadier now. ‘I apologise. I didn’t mean to worry you. I wondered whether your father has been in touch at all? And also how you and Rose are, of course.’
‘We’re fine,’ I say, trying my best to keep my voice steady and ignoring the fact we are, apparently, an afterthought. ‘I haven’t heard from him. Actually …’ I take a breath, then say it as fast as I can, ‘I had a little issue with the benefits people and I was trying to get in touch with Dad. I was hoping he might be able to give me a loan until it all gets put right.’
Mum gives a bitter laugh. ‘I wouldn’t bother asking your father for any money. I’ve just got off the phone to the bank. He hasn’t paid the mortgage in two months. And …’ she pauses again and I sense her fighting to keep herself under control at the other end of the phone, ‘he filed divorce papers.’
‘Oh crap.’
‘Hedda! Language,’ Mum says. Which is sort of reassuring.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Well, if you do speak to him, tell him … tell him he can contact my solicitor,’ she says, and for a second I almost laugh because she sounds like me when I go in to bat in my Felicity sessions.
I get off the phone, feeling stranger than ever.
Then I ring Dad’s phone and leave him six different messages.
Later, when Rose is awake, I sit in front of a plate of food. It’s safe food, it’s impossible food. I take a mouthful.
Nia whispers at me: Fat bitch.
‘Shut up,’ I say out loud through gritted teeth.
She laughs, the sound of it a roar.
Rose rolls over on the mat and turns large, bright eyes up to me.
Another mouthful.
I’ve been here forever.
I finish what I can and pick Rose up, trying to find comfort in the weight of her.
She watches me exercise from her place on the mat. When she cries, I ignore her and carry on, until I’ve completed everything Nia is telling me to do, listen to her voice insisting, More. Do more, so that I feel safe, and then I pick Rose up and scatter apologies all over her silky hair. They slide off and hit the floor; cheap, plastic, worthless.
I’m too tired to get to the library, so instead I tell Rose a story.
Once there was a little girl who lived on a page in a tiny dot. She sat curled up looking at her round arms and her scruffy hair. The dot was small and it stayed in one place, surrounded by an ocean of white. The corners of the page were far, far away, in another realm. Sometimes, she would catch the faintest glimpse of their long, hard edges and wondered what lay over them. When she was hungry, she ate black ink, bitter and hard. There was no day or night inside the dot, but a many-layered warm darkness. She lived for years in her dot so it got hard to see where the dot ended and she began. Ages passed. Over time she became obsessed with the edges of the dot world and the wide space beyond. In her dreams she saw the clean lines and longed to know what she might find there. She spent many days and nights in her warm dot, wondering how she could cross the white sea. She pushed at the inky blackness, and it pushed her hand back.
One day, after she had pushed harder than usual, a finger of ink pulsed into the white and then spread out to form an oar. She did the same again and another sprang up, and then, laughing, she took hold of the oars and began to row across the whiteness. But though she rowed and rowed, she found she only went in circles.