The Fallout

‘Hmmm?’ She watches as Tom stretches out and moves a pale, freckled hand towards the remote.

‘Tom?’ She’s exasperated now. Has he no sense of urgency? She swallows back her ‘nagging’ voice, as he calls it. ‘Tom,’ she continues. ‘I’d really love it if you could go upstairs to Thea while I get her milk. It would be really helpful,’ she monotones. ‘Because you’re so soothing with babies.’

It’s a trick she’d learnt during their stint at Relate last year – after they’d buried Rosie. She still feels resentful that Tom hadn’t been with her, even though she knows that wasn’t his fault. Would it work tonight? Would it fuck.

‘Tom!’ She picks up the remote and hurls it across the sofa.

‘Jesus.’ He leaps up. ‘Sarah. What the hell has got into you?!’

‘Oh God.’ She can hear Thea’s cries getting more intense. ‘I’m sorry. Can you just go up?’

‘Going.’ He stands, his expression bordering on sheer terror at witnessing his wife in such a state. She has no idea why she’s freaking out so much. She’s looked after a baby before. Surely this should be a doddle? She goes to the kitchen and counts out the formula scoops, checking and rechecking the amounts on the back of the blue box.

When she’s satisfied she’s got the right number of scoops, she shakes the mixture in boiling water and places it in a bowl of ice. The crying slows down.

At least Casper will stay asleep, she knows that much. Her one saving grace. She stares at the milk, willing for it to cool. ‘Hurry up,’ she mutters. By the time she goes upstairs Thea’s screams are at full pelt.

‘You calm now?’ Tom gives her a look, as though she’s one of those potty pigeon ladies who cover themselves in breadcrumbs in the park.

‘I’m calm. Look. Today. I …’

‘I know. I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I should have realised how traumatic it would be for you and I’m sorry. Oh love, why don’t you go to bed with Casper? I’ll sort Thea out. Just go and get into your nightie and I’ll do the rest.’

She wants to resist. She feels she owes it to Liza to be the one looking after Thea, but the lure of lying down and ignoring the world is too strong. She pulls out her old grey nightie from the wardrobe – the one that she used to comfort her stonking hangovers – and sits on the bed. She watches Tom angling the bottle into Thea’s mouth, her small, fuzzy head resting in the nook of his elbow.

‘Shhh, there we go,’ he says. ‘All OK now. It’s OK now.’

‘I forgot how good you are at this.’ She nods at Thea. She sniffs at the hem of her T-shirt. Don’t let me think about it. Last year. Please. Not now. But it’s too late and she starts to cry.

‘We’ll be OK, love,’ he says. She knows what he’s thinking. This should be our child. ‘Don’t you worry. You’ve had a long day. No wonder you’re feeling tearful. Now go on. Get into Casper’s bed and try and get some sleep.’

She can’t think of anything she’d rather do less than move from where she is right now. The tiredness has hit her like a truck.

Tom looks down at Thea and smiles. ‘Well done, little girl.’

Sarah pulls down the soft, pink eiderdown and climbs into their comfy king-sized bed from Loaf that they’d saved up for last year.

‘I want to sleep with you.’ Sarah’s sobs subside. She needs to feed off Tom’s calm presence. If she’s near Casper, she’ll start to feel more anxious. What if karma is real? Tit for tat. That kind of thing. What if he fell too? Please, Casper, no. Stay safe.

After Tom has got Thea back down, he goes straight back to sleep. She listens to his slow, rhythmic breathing. Not a care in the world. No lasting adrenaline from the baby crying. How lovely to be him – able to switch on and off at the drop of a hat. She can feel her heart still thrumming from earlier. She tries to still her whirring mind and fall asleep, but it’s no use. She listens to the tick-tock of the bedside clock, her limbs restless. She watches three rectangles of light strobe across the ceiling as a car drives past.

Maybe she’ll feel better when her PMT subsides. Then she’ll be able to rationalise everything. No. It’s guilt, warping into something even worse, says a voice.

‘Tom,’ she hisses. ‘Tom, wake up.’

‘Go back to sleep,’ he murmurs.

‘I never went to sleep in the first place.’

‘Shhh. You’ll wake the baby.’

She goes quiet for a few seconds.

‘Tom?’

A short jab in his ribs has the desired effect and he drags himself up onto his elbows.

‘What is it?’ He squints over to the small Ikea side table. ‘Three in the morning. Oh God, Thea’s due a feed soon anyway. What’s the matter?’

‘Liza. Jack. And,’ she nods over to the Moses basket. ‘I was just thinking.’ She stares at the shutters on their bay window, wondering when they’d last been cleaned.

‘Thinking what? He’s going to be OK. You know that. I spoke to Gav.’

‘No. I know but …’ She takes a breath. If Tom agrees just to this one thing, she knows, in her heart of hearts, that everything can be OK. Not in an OCD, everything-has to-be-in-threes kind of way. Just in a make-her-peace-with-what-she’s-done kind of way. She’ll show Liza just how sorry she is. She won’t say anything at all about what happened, but she is absolutely convinced that if she gives her life over to Liza, just for a little bit, then everything will be OK. She’ll have paid her dues for her wrongdoing. She wonders whether to wake Thea while they’re talking but decides not to. She wants Tom’s full attention and he’s always moaning that she can’t multitask.

‘OK. Well, I was thinking. Our downstairs flat. Well – we’re not using it. I know we were going to Airbnb it before we renovate, but how do you feel about Liza and Jack moving in? With Thea, of course. That way they’ll all be on one floor. Easy access. That kind of thing.’

She holds her breath. Tom’s kind. He’ll always do anything to help out. But before she’s allowed herself to exhale, he shakes his head.

‘No. No way. Not now.’ He throws back the covers with more force than is perhaps necessary and walks over to Thea. ‘I’m going to feed her now. Before she starts screaming. Then hopefully she’ll sleep till seven.’

Tom always has been a stickler for routine and she has to admit that, for Casper, it had worked a treat.

‘Look, I know you want to help. But this is not the way to do it. Besides.’ He lifts up Thea’s small body and places her gently over his shoulder. Sarah watches the paleness of his skin, reflecting against the moonlight.

‘Besides what?’

‘Besides. What about us? Our baby? I need you to focus fully on our situation, Sarah. We can’t put our lives on hold. No matter how awful Liza is feeling. There are other ways we can help. Jack is going to be OK. You know that, don’t you? You,’ he takes a breath, ‘we, we aren’t over what happened to us last year. Please don’t give your entire self over to Liza.’

She wants to tell him she owes it to Liza, in more ways than one. She wants to shout at him that he wasn’t even there when Rosie died, so how dare he try and tell her what Liza does or doesn’t need. But she is too exhausted.

‘How do you know? That Jack will be OK?’

‘Because I know. This bit will be tough for them. But you know what Liza’s like. She’s got it in hand.’

An image of Liza’s pram from earlier floods her mind’s eye. The piles of rubbish. The medicine boxes and the rotting apple cores. She isn’t so sure.

‘OK,’ says Tom with a sigh. ‘How about you move in with Liza for a couple of days? Stay with her just while Jack settles back in. I can take some time off work. Look after Casper. That way you can help out but we can still focus on us. On our baby, Sarah.’ He squeezes Thea tight. ‘You know how much this means to us.’

She opens her mouth. She’s about to tell him about the IVF clinic appointment next week, but something stops her.

‘OK, Sa? Is that OK? Good enough?’

‘Yes.’ She wraps her arms around herself and shivers into her T-shirt. ‘Yes, it’s fine.’

But in her head, of course, she’s thinking something totally different. No. It’s not good enough. It’s absolutely not good enough at all. She doesn’t want to move into Liza’s; with Gav giving them both the evil eye every time they open their mouths. She wants to be right here with Tom and Casper. And she wants to, she has to, do the best by her friend. There’ll be a way to get Tom to agree. And she’s damned if she isn’t going to find out what it is.

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