I’d woken in the early hours, our house dark and silent, and had listened to Lily’s soft breathing from her cot beside our bed. Alex’s parents were forever telling us we should have her in her own room by now, but I can’t bear to be apart from her. She’s not even six months old. Still tiny. She’ll be in her own room soon enough, and for long enough.
For now, I need to know she is safe and secure. I need to feel the security that having her close to me brings me, too. The coming day will be hard and I need to remind myself there is good in the world. It’s two days since Joe was brought back to Marie’s house. Two days of mourning. Of stilted conversations. Of awkwardness. Of walking on eggshells. I’m exhausted to my very soul by it all. Exhausted by the paranoia and trying to fend off the negative thoughts that swoop in on a regular basis, making me want to hide.
I want it to be over. I want to be back to my life, my family. This child who means so much to me.
The golden rule, of course, is never to wake a sleeping baby, but when I had woken, I’d needed to hold her. I’d crept out of bed and lifted her, warm and soft, her breath sweet with milk, and had placed her in the bed beside me. She’d fussed – ‘fissled’ as my mother used to call it – but didn’t wake, and I allowed myself the luxury of holding her, stroking the soft skin of her cheeks, kissing her tiny fingers and marvelling how I had any part in making something so pure and so innocent. I’d drifted off at some stage, only waking now, Alex standing at the bottom of the bed in the half-light of the room, panicking about where Lily is.
‘She’s here, Alex,’ I say, shuffling over a little so that he can see where she is, lying safe and sound beside me.
‘In the bed? Jesus, Heidi. Why is she in the bed? And you were sleeping! You could’ve rolled over …’
‘I didn’t, Alex. She’s fine. I was awake most of the time. I just needed a hug.’
‘But what if? Heidi, we agreed no co-sleeping. You know how scared I am that she’ll overheat or get smothered.’
He seems really panicked, even though I’m showing him evidence of a perfectly healthy baby beside me.
‘She didn’t, though. She’s safe. Look, she had no duvet over her and plenty of room to stretch. She was fine, Alex. I can be trusted to keep her safe, you know.’
I’m not sure where the tone in my voice has come from, but as soon as the words are out I know that they say more than I thought. They’re accusatory. Defensive. I feel on edge, my hackles already rising before I’ve even got out of bed.
He sits at my feet and reaches up and lifts Lily, waking her from her sleep and prompting a wail of hunger in return.
‘You know I’d die if anything ever happened to her,’ he says. ‘We can’t take risks, Heidi. Not with Lily. She’s not one of your dolls!’
He kisses the top of her head, holds her close to him as if I’ve just held her dangling out of the window, or committed some other such heinous crime against her.
‘Of course I know she’s not one of my dolls,’ I snap back at him. ‘Christ, Alex, I just needed to be close to her.’
Can’t he see how hard all this is for me? I feel tears spring to my eyes. This whole episode is a nightmare. When I do manage to sleep, my dreams are filled with terrible images from my past, and visions of police officers hauling me away from my family, never to see them again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Alex says, not entirely convincingly. ‘We’re all on edge. I’m on edge. Of course I know you wouldn’t hurt Lily. That was stupid and cruel of me to compare her to a doll,’ he says.
He hands her to me and I see it as a gesture that he trusts me, that his panic from earlier has passed.
‘Will we get this day over and done with?’ he asks. ‘The undertakers are coming at nine thirty. We need to get up and ready and go round to Marie’s.’
I nod. In a matter of hours, Joe McKee will be in the ground. One half of this ordeal will be over. We will just have the police to face then. Just the police … ha! If I say it fast enough maybe it won’t sound so scary.
‘Grand,’ he says, pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt. ‘I’ll go and get started on breakfast. Why don’t you jump in the shower? I’ll have something ready for you when you’re done.’
Although I’m hungry, I’m not sure I can eat. My stomach is unsettled. Nervous.
‘I’ll probably just have a piece of toast or something,’ I tell him. ‘Don’t go to any trouble for me.’
He kisses the top of my head and takes Lily from me again, stops for a moment to look at me; really look at me.
‘Nothing is too much trouble for you, Heidi. One day, you might believe that.’