Watching Edie: The most unsettling psychological thriller you’ll read this year

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Yes. OK. Thank you.’ Reluctantly I hang up and begin to wait. It’s nearly noon by the time I call the cab and begin the journey to the hospital.

Her name is Maya and her skin is a pale, rose-tinted brown. Her hair is thick and black and her father’s large dark eyes gaze back at me from beneath long black lashes. She’s perfect. And from the moment I meet her, from the moment the nurse hands her to me, I know that I can’t love her.

It seemed, in the delivery room, as if the panic and confusion had come from nowhere. I remember sudden shouts for backup, being wheeled at speed down corridors, the midwife’s urgent explanations about the cord wrapped around the baby’s throat. And then an operating theatre, people in masks, a large Scottish woman shouting that it was all going to be OK, to try to relax, to breathe deeply, that there was nothing at all to worry about, nothing at all, but that I must stay perfectly still.

A strange dislocation had beset me, as though I was entirely divorced from whatever was happening to me in the lower half of my body, which was numb by then and shielded from me by a blue screen. A calm, dream-like state engulfed me, half hypnotized by the bleeping machines, the doctors’ tense exchanges, the air of urgent concentration. When one of the masked figures held aloft, like a rabbit from a hat, the bloodied, blue-tinged creature, when I heard its weak, scratchy cry, I felt with complete certainty: that is not mine, that did not come from me. ‘A girl!’ the Scottish voice announced. ‘Look, hen: a lovely wee baby girl!’

The ward I’m on is busy, with several other new mothers squashed in here beside me. When my baby is brought to me I smile, I hold her to me, I nod and listen to the nurse when she shows me how to put her to my breast. And then she is left by my bed, sleeping, while the horror washes over me in icy waves: this is not my child. She did not come from me.

I wake an hour later to feel hot burning pain spreading from my pelvis. I watch the other mothers, their exhausted triumph, their loving smiles, the congratulating visitors gathered around their beds. My baby lies in its clear plastic crib, staring back at me, mewling helplessly.

Uncle Geoff visits the following day and sits by my bed on a plastic chair, too big and too male amidst all the nightgowned women with their smells of milk and babies, averting his eyes in horror when my neighbour unfastens herself to offer her child her breast. He holds Maya in his large, tobacco-stained fingers, her head lolling awkwardly against his old leather coat, and tries to think of something to say. ‘Tiny ears,’ he offers eventually, and we both nod. When she begins to cry he thrusts her back to me. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asks anxiously.

‘She wants feeding, I think.’

His eyes fall to my chest and he jumps up in alarm. ‘Well, then, I’d best leave you to it, shall I?’

I take Maya from him and try to smile. He pauses and says, ‘I’ll tell your mother, shall I?’ His eyes meet mine and he adds gently, ‘I mean, she’d like to know, I expect, that you’ve had her.’

Mutely I nod. He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Well done, love, she’s a little belter, you’ve done me proud.’ He leans down and gives me a hug, my face crushed against his chest, breathing in his aftershave and leather smell, and the lump in my throat threatens to choke me.

‘See you soon,’ I say.

‘Aye, see you soon,’ he smiles, and I manage to make it until he’s left the ward before I begin to cry.

When I’m finally discharged the cab drives me through the London streets, Maya asleep in the seat next to me. Peckham and Nunhead slide past, the sun shines, people and traffic go about their business and yet nothing seems real, substantial, trustworthy. The cab stops at the lights and I have to fight every instinct in my body not to open the door and run. And when the two of us are alone in the flat for the first time, fear – shocking, overwhelming, gutting fear – almost knocks me off my feet.

I look at her beginning to stir in her car seat on the kitchen table and I’m paralysed by indecision, unable to remember what I’m supposed to do with her, how I am to begin. In the hospital, because of her difficult birth, she was regularly taken away and monitored, only given back to me when it was time to feed. It seems incredible, mind-boggling that they have entrusted me with her, that they deem me capable of keeping this creature alive and free from harm.

But the minutes pass, and then the hours and the days. We fall into a sort of nightmarish routine, she and I, tinged by lack of sleep and the feeling that I’m only seconds away from losing my mind. Through the constant, exhausting panic I manage somehow to change her and feed her when I need to; I sleep, fitfully, when she does, but when she’s fed and changed and still she cries, wanting something else, something that I can’t give, I can only lie and listen to her, waiting for it to stop.

I try hard to breastfeed her at first, but with every passing day it seems to get more difficult. She roots endlessly, painfully at me and when at last she latches on it seems to take an age before she’s satisfied. Afterwards she sleeps fitfully, waking far too soon, demanding food again. I cradle her small head, horribly fragile and alien in my hands, while her neck lolls uncomfortably, and she cries and cries and cries.

The health visitor, a small, very pale girl named Lucy, comes the following Tuesday. I don’t tell her that I fantasize about running away and never coming back, that every day the feeling of dread gets worse and worse, that most days I don’t get dressed or washed. Instead, Lucy sits on my sofa and drinks my tea and weighs and measures Maya and checks my scar and talks about how the traffic’s bad today and where she’s going on holiday and insists on calling me ‘Mum’. I listen to her in a kind of stupor, watching her efficient white hands as they dart to and fro like mice.

‘How’s the feeding going, Mum?’ she asks. ‘Any problems there?’

I look away, it already having been drummed into me on the maternity ward how dimly I’d be viewed if I didn’t feed her myself.

‘OK,’ I mumble, though clearly not very convincingly, because her eyes narrow and she immediately pounces on my words.

‘Would you like to feed her now, Mum, so I can check her latch?’

I shake my head. ‘She’s fast asleep and I don’t want to wake her. It’s fine, honestly.’ The truth is I don’t want her to see how bad I am at this. The softly smiling, dreamy-eyed women in the breastfeeding leaflets pressed on me at the hospital, those loving mothers with their contented, suckling infants who seem to be everywhere suddenly, are such a far cry from my reality that I can’t bear for her to see it. I don’t tell her about the tin of formula I bought in desperation only this morning, the blessed relief of feeding Maya from a bottle, not having to have her gnawing at me or listen to her ear-splitting frustration.

Little by little I slide, deeper and deeper each day. ‘I’m going to go and stay at my mum’s for a while,’ I tell Lucy the next time she comes. Harassed and overworked, she gratefully signs me off, with a vague promise to phone in a few weeks’ time. When Uncle Geoff next visits I see that he has no idea that when he leaves I’ll sink exhausted to the floor, my face a mess of snot and tears, while Maya wails alone from across the room. Gradually I stop replying to his texts, or answering his calls.

I’m so tired that I have begun to see things that aren’t there: from the corner of my eye black spiders scuttle across the ceiling; objects roll silently along the floor. Exhaustion has left me with a permanent sense of seasickness, of the ground being always unsteady beneath my feet. It isn’t often that I leave the flat, but it’s on a day that I’m forced out to the corner shop to buy more nappies that I see my new neighbours again. As I queue I spy the two lads from the window, walking across the street, their heads bent, their hoods all but obscuring their faces, their dog strutting leadless and collarless in front of them.

Maya, who had slept peacefully the entire way there and back, waits until we’ve returned to my building and I’m standing in the communal entrance, trying to muster the energy to carry both her and the buggy back up the four flights of stairs, when she wakes and begins to cry, loudly and unceasingly.

It’s like a thousand crows are cawing in my head, scratching and pecking to get out. I lean against the banister and close my eyes, summoning every ounce of strength I have not to leave again by the front door, to walk away without her and never come back. I don’t know how long I stand like this before I realize that I’m being watched and I look up to see the woman staring at me from her open doorway. I start guiltily, but before I can say anything she comes over to Maya’s buggy and, without looking at me, takes the handles. ‘Grab the other end,’ she tells me.

I do as she says and, at her nod, begin the climb. On the way up I steal glances at her, the small face with its hard bright eyes and fine lines, the red hair and map of tattoos on her scrawny arms, the thick gold rings on her knuckles, but we don’t speak – even Maya has lapsed into vague half-hearted grumblings now – and it’s not until we reach the top that I thank her. She has started back down the stairs when I hurriedly say, ‘I’m Edie, by the way,’ and at first I think she’s not going to respond, but at the last moment she turns and smiles briefly. ‘Monica,’ she replies, then disappears from view. I stand and stare after her and, though I can’t explain why, I’m oddly comforted by the thought of this tough-looking stranger living her life only a few floors below, a glimpse of shore lights from the midst of a dark and choppy sea.

A few weeks later, passing a church hall in the pouring rain I notice a sign for a mother and baby group. I pause, glancing down at Maya who, for once, is lying quietly beneath her rain cover. I’m soaked, yet I can’t quite bear to return to my cramped, messy flat. On impulse I open the door and peer in. The hall is large and packed with women sitting around drinking tea and eating biscuits, while in the centre what seems like hundreds of toddlers stampede through a sea of brightly coloured plastic toys. The noise is overwhelming. I’m about to back away when a woman in her sixties, wearing a vicar’s collar, strides towards me. ‘Are you coming in?’ she says briskly. ‘That’s right, in you come. Close the door behind you, we don’t want any escapees, do we?’ Dazedly I do as she says. ‘Pushchairs over there, that’s the way, well done.’

Obediently I lift Maya from her buggy and park it with all the others then edge into the hall, looking around myself uncertainly. I notice a small group of women in the corner, balancing babies on their knees. I make my way over to them and, finding a seat, shift Maya in my arms, hoping desperately that she’ll keep quiet for a while longer. Out of the corner of my eye I watch the other mothers, noticing enviously how relaxed they seem, their children slung casually over their shoulders or being jiggled on knees, the women paying little attention to them as they chat amongst themselves.

Eventually one of them turns to me and smiles. ‘Hi,’ she says and nods at Maya. ‘Oh, isn’t she lovely. How old?’

‘Six weeks,’ I tell her. ‘Yours?’

‘Eight months now.’

I hesitate, then blurt, ‘Does it get easier? It’s just, she just … she never stops crying. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know. I suppose they’re all like that, are they? Is yours? Does yours cry all the time too?’

The woman tilts her head sympathetically and blinks. ‘No, he’s a cheery little thing, this one. So easy! Always smiling.’ She pauses then says, ‘I think it’s because my husband and I are such laid-back people, you know?’ She gives a self-congratulatory smirk, and adds, ‘Maybe you need to try and chill out a bit? Babies sense it if you’re stressed. Have you tried yoga?’

I shake my head and murmur faintly that I’ll give it a go, and she turns back to her friend just as Maya opens her mouth and lets out a piercing shriek. As quickly as I can I gather up my things and leave.

The sky clears as I reach the park at the top of my road and I sink gratefully on to a wet bench, Maya asleep now in her buggy next to me. The park has a panoramic view of London but I close my eyes to it, exhaustion carrying me to the edges of consciousness. I don’t know how long I doze before I wake with a start, sensing a shadow fall in front of me, another presence near. I shield my eyes and look into a face that takes me a couple of moments to recognize as the man who sold me the cot before. I notice his peroxide tufts have gone, his black hair now closely cropped.

‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Edie, right?’ He stands by Maya’s pram, smiling down at me. ‘James. I sold you the cot. I thought it was you!’ His son is a few feet away, poking at the grass with a stick.

I nod, conscious suddenly of my hair sticking greasily to my face, and the fact that I’d picked up the nearest clothes from the floor before braving what seemed like this monumental expedition. I realize I can’t remember the last time I washed. ‘All right?’ I say.

‘She’s a beauty.’ He’s looking into the pram now, and I do my best to arrange my features into the expected smile. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

‘How’re you doing?’ he asks. ‘Everything going all right, is it?’ and I’m horrified when my eyes fill with tears. I look down, willing myself to stop.

A silence falls while he tactfully glances away. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, doing it by yourself,’ he says after a while, then adds, ‘Me and Stan’s mum split not long after he was born.’

I nod, staring at my hands.

‘It gets easier,’ he says. ‘It sounds like bullshit, but it’s true, it really does.’

I’m too embarrassed to meet his gaze; using every ounce of strength I have to keep the tidal wave of hopelessness at bay. At last to my relief he takes his son’s hand, and begins to move off. ‘Well, better go,’ he says, ‘lunch and so on.’ I nod, swallowing hard. ‘Take care,’ he adds, and, with a final sympathetic smile, he goes.

It’s at this moment that Maya wakes and starts to cry again. Any willpower I had managed to muster until that point entirely deserts me, and burying my head in my hands I give in to the tears. It’s the endlessness of it all I can’t stand: the awful knowledge that this is going to go on and on and on, except every day I will be that little bit more tired, that little bit less able to bear it. Maya continues to scream and yet the thought of picking her up is entirely beyond me; I am too exhausted to even lift my head.

And then, my face still buried in my hands, I feel the bench beside me sag with a sudden weight, the warmth from the sun that had been shining on my right side vanishes and a familiar, oniony smell fills my nostrils. A thick arm rests upon my shoulders. I look up to find Heather sitting beside me. ‘There, there,’ she says gently. ‘Shush now.’

I don’t think about how or why she found me, or what this means. Something inside me breaks at the sight of the old, familiar face, and I drop my head on to her shoulder and feel myself sink into her large, soft body. After a long time, she pats me on the back, gets up and, taking the handle of the buggy, holds a hand out to me as if I were a small child. ‘Let’s get you both home, shall we?’ she says. ‘And have a nice cup of tea.’

This is how Heather comes back into my life. This is how it begins.

PART TWO (#ulink_7237304a-0c48-58d2-8ab3-6d376e690923)