1

2017

IT’S POSSIBLE TO LOVE SOMETHING too much. It’s even possible to love something to death, and when Sam was seven weeks old and screaming himself scarlet with an existential fury particular to small babies, Orla McGrath stood over his cot and thought, I love you so much I could kill you. It was only a quick thought and it passed into that humid night soon enough, but from time to time over the years she would remember that she had once had it, and adrenaline would race up her spine.

As Sam grew older, he grew less angry, and, gradually, silent. His early infant babble never really formed past a few words and soon those sounds, too, ebbed away out of his red mouth full of pearl-barley teeth, until one day, when Sam had just turned three, it occurred to Orla and Nick that their son hadn’t spoken a single word for almost a week.

‘Should we take him to the doctor?’ Orla peered into his mouth as he stood obediently in front of her in the kitchen.

‘I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him, really.’ Nick, arms folded, leaned against the oven and looked interested but not exactly worried.

‘Sam, darling, can you tell me if your throat hurts?’ She cupped his cheek in her palm. Sam shook his head. ‘Do you mean you can’t tell me, or that it doesn’t hurt?’ Sam nodded. Orla sighed, frustrated, and pulled her son on to her lap so that his little head rested against the hollow between her breasts and she could feel the heat of his blood through her shirt.

‘I suppose an appointment couldn’t hurt,’ Nick said. ‘I’m not here much next week, though; I probably won’t be able to come with you.’

When Orla was pregnant with Sam, heavy and slow and cow-eyed, she developed a thirst that couldn’t be put out. She drank no more than usual, but would descend into a panic if she found herself without water to hand, and so she developed a habit of collecting. Her nightstand became a fortress of half-filled tumblers, the boot of the car perpetually weighed down by cases of bottled spring water. Litres of sparkling water filled the cupboards, gathered dust stashed neatly behind the toilet cistern, rolled about beneath the sofa. Outside, buckets and pots stood in rows to catch the rain and slowly turned green. Sometimes, when she felt the thirst, just looking at her water suppressed the need for it, and she’d smile and touch the bottles lightly with her fingers. The biggest saucepan was called into service as a doorstop holding open the French doors from the living room into the kitchen, full of beautiful water and serene as a mirror.

Her mother-in-law came to visit during this time, saw the depths of Orla’s sickness and took her to the GP to test for gestational diabetes. Nothing – she was perfectly fine. Her GP, a kind man who looked a little like a heron, held Orla’s hand and said, ‘If it makes you feel better, you may go on collecting.’ Orla smiled and was grateful.

When Sam came, tearing his way into the world, Orla and Nick brought him home to their house full of water, where Orla saw it all and decided she didn’t need it any more. Out it went – the buckets splashed into the grate in the garden, the endless green bottles in their creaking plastic cases given away to neighbours. Orla stood with her son in her arms and emptied all the places in which she had collected herself.

Bridie, three years later, was an easier pregnancy. She was such an undemanding foetus that Orla occasionally forgot she was pregnant at all, especially in the early months, and when she finally delivered a hefty baby after a gasping ninety minutes of labour, she was almost startled by the appearance of a living thing. Although Bridie was a more relaxed baby, Orla found her less rewarding than Sam had been at that age. Nick said it was only natural, that first babies were always special, and Orla nodded along.

Orla worried that Sam might take against the new arrival – she’d heard enough horror stories of toddler siblings putting babies into the washing machine on the spin cycle, or pushing them out of prams. But Sam was enchanted by his sister – by her dark duckling fluff and satin lips and the way she lay curled up like a woodlouse on its back. He stroked her toes when Orla bathed her in the sink and insisted that he be the one to hold the bottles when Orla finally gave up on breastfeeding, after six exhausting weeks of under-producing a thin and unsatisfying milk.

The GP, after a thorough examination through which Sam sat patiently, declared that he couldn’t see anything obviously out of the ordinary and referred them to a child psychiatrist. Orla and Sam endured three sessions, during each of which Sam grew more and more cross, until Orla put an end to it. The woman sent them away with a diagnosis of ‘selective mutism’ and a shrug: ‘Honestly, I can’t find anything wrong. Most children who are silent around strangers are rather chatty at home. That’s not the case here, but I can’t see any reason for it.’

Orla looked at Sam, sitting placid on a chair in the waiting room, swinging his legs. ‘So, what do we do?’

‘Not much, really. At the moment. For most children, it’s a manifestation of severe anxiety. I see no evidence of that in Sam.’

‘I thought perhaps, with the new baby –’

‘How does he seem with her?’

Sam adored his sister. He communicated with her without words – he dressed her carefully and picked up her abandoned socks and petted her cheeks while she slept. Sam appointed himself Bridie’s faithful custodian and loved her beyond language, and Orla was faintly jealous.

‘He’s been great with her, honestly. But, you know, the disruption.’

‘Perhaps. But in my opinion? It seems to be entirely stubbornness. Likely he’ll grow out of it.’

‘What if he doesn’t?’

‘Mrs McGrath, there’s nothing physically wrong with your son and you should be grateful for that, at least. Right now, I suppose he just doesn’t feel like talking.’

So Orla was left to wonder, and she watched her son with an intensity that made them both too aware of one another and a friction developed between them. Only a slight rub, but it was there. She was conscious that her hovering and worrying was exacerbating the problem. She couldn’t help but encourage him to use words when he wanted lunch, rather than patting the fridge, and would hold up his bright T-shirts in the morning out of his reach, so that he’d have to tell her which colour he wanted to wear that day. Stubbornness, indeed. Orla, privately, thought of it as a ‘mute-iny’. Sam sailed on his beatific silence; he pointed and smiled and circumvented Orla’s attempts at conversation with a wry ease that made him seem much older than three.

On a Tuesday night, while Orla rinsed the plates from dinner, her husband seated himself on a kitchen chair and said, ‘I’m worried about Sam.’

‘What?’ Orla stripped off her rubber gloves and turned to lean against the sink.

‘It’s not getting any better.’

‘Nick, we just need to give him time. Give him space.’

‘Exactly.’

‘What?’

Nick popped the caps from two bottles of Italian beer and handed one to his wife. ‘Space. I’ve been thinking – how would you feel about a new house?’

‘What?’

‘Stop saying what. A new house!’ He grinned, excited.

‘Do we need a new house?’

‘I think so. I’ve been thinking about it for a while.’

‘Why?’

He took a couple of long swallows. ‘We’ve always talked about moving to the coast. Nearer my parents. I think maybe it’s time. The business is doing well, we can afford it. And I want the kids to grow up like I did. Free, you know? Countryside, all that. My parents would like it; you know they want to be closer. And Sam loves it down there – we all do.’

His parents lived in Dorset, not far from Poole, and their family did love it down there. The rocky coves, the scallop-edge of hidden beaches. She liked Nick’s parents, too, and how easily they’d folded around her and brought her in. Eva had been so kind to her when she was pregnant with Sam. It was Eva who held her hand in the doctor’s waiting room, Eva who admonished Nick, gently, when he shouted at Orla for spending almost fifty pounds in one go on cases of bottled water: Orla would always be grateful for that. And Sam loved his grandparents so much, Bridie too, in her limited way. Who was she to stand in the way of so much potential happiness? Orla recalled the rule-bound household of her own childhood, the constrictions that had choked her.

‘Are you sure it would be the right thing?’ Orla framed her opinion as a question, because she knew that Nick would have an opinion of his own. Nick’s opinions were never compromised by question marks.

He stood and put his hands on her waist. ‘Definitely. Sam needs it, I think we all need it. I don’t want to be in town any more.’

They spent a few companionable evenings on various property websites, teasing one another about their differing priorities, setting the upper price limit at outrageous amounts. One million, one point five, two. Of course, they weren’t really going to end up somewhere like that, but it was fun to look; even Orla had to admit that. And Nick was right, there were some beautiful properties up for sale. Orla thought about gold summers and turquoise beaches and relaxed into the inevitability of moving, decided that she probably didn’t mind after all.

A benevolent summer turned gracefully into a warm autumn, and when Nick came home one day and told her, smiling, that he’d found them a new house, Orla was feeling generous enough to listen properly. The sun had made her limber, relaxed, and she’d spent a happy day in the garden with the children, watching Sam dig for worms and Bridie kick her fat feet under the shade of the parasol clipped to her pram. It was as if Nick knew that her day had been nearly perfect, and that in turn this was the perfect time to announce change. He’d always had a good read on her moods, although lately he’d used that to his advantage rather than hers.

‘Right in Dorset. Like we talked about.’ Nick sat back in his chair and took a long mouthful from a gin and tonic. He’d brought one out for her, too, with a segment of grapefruit, the way she liked. The citrus oils from the fruit sparked against the gin and turned the tonic cloudy.

‘Which part?’

‘About three miles east of Lulworth, just outside a village called Holmesford.’

‘That’s far.’ She drove the route mentally, looping around Bath across the downs, the straight shot south into national parkland, past the Regises and the Minsters and the Magnas.

‘I saw it on the way back from Mum and Dad’s. Remember I went down the other week? Got diverted on the way back and saw a sale sign, so I thought it would be worth a look. Orla, this place. I’m telling you, it’s the one. Absolutely gorgeous, right on the top of a hill. Amazing views and honestly not half bad, price-wise. We’ve got a viewing at the weekend, thought we could make a bit of a holiday out of it. Leave the kids with Mum, go and have a look around.’ He waved his hands in the approximate shape of a square. ‘It’s huge – amazing for the kids, and you’ll have so much room to paint. Great local primary.’

It startled her that they would soon have to think about primary school. They’d never put Sam into nursery – at first because what was the point? Orla was at home anyway, so why spend the money? And then because of his speech: they didn’t want him to feel left out or teased, and so the need to protect him within their family circle outweighed any benefit gently hinted at by the psychiatrist, who made a pointed little aside about socialisation in their final session. Orla took him to various activities and classes instead, and hoped that was enough.

Nick pulled up the property listing on his phone and cupped his hands against the screen so she could see. ‘And the garden! Sam’s going to get such a kick out of it. And maybe, you know, a change of scenery –’ He gestured towards their son, sitting on his haunches and peering intently at the grass. Sam was turned away from them, his face shadowed by a blue sun hat with a brim. For a moment he looked alien to Orla, as though he could be any child.

‘He’s not broken – he doesn’t need you to fix him. Moving house isn’t the magic answer, Nick.’ She hated having to defend Sam against his own father. Nick’s main concern always seemed to be what other people thought of Sam: how they responded to him, how they would treat him. Sam didn’t seem to mind much, he adored his father, but Orla minded on his behalf. She understood that Nick saw their children as an extension – reflection – of himself, and that deviation from expectation troubled him.

‘I’m not saying it is. Christ, Orla, why does everything have to be an absolute with you? I didn’t say it was the miracle cure, I just think it’ll help.’ He smiled and touched her arm across the table. ‘Will you at least try to like it?’

‘Of course.’ Orla drained her gin. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t wait to see it.’

Did she want this new house? Perhaps. She mulled on the topic with the same amiable ambivalence she once gave to getting pregnant. And because she didn’t know, she was happy to be led. Nick had so much purpose, so much focus, that she allowed him to gently position her as she ought to be. He turned her this way and that, looking towards or away from the things he decided were worth it or not, and she was grateful for it. Most of the time. Orla knew, really, that the decision had already been made.

She shrugged out of her old life, skinning herself, and slipped into the new.