Ironically part of her feels hurt and angry by his reaction, but it only serves as affirmation that she’s doing the right thing.
‘I… I don’t know exactly… I… I wanted to talk to you first obviously.’
He has his back to her again and she stares at it, dumbfounded.
‘I suppose you had to come clean really,’ he says. ‘Giving the police a false alibi about where you were this morning… you could get into trouble for that, Beth.’
‘How do you know it was false?’ The rush of adrenalin pumping through her veins is making her feel light-headed.
‘Just a guess.’ He turns round, gives her a thin smile.
She’s momentarily lost for words.
‘I want us to be as amicable as possible for Lily’s sake,’ she says. ‘I want us to try and work things out as fairly and kindly as we can, Evan.’
He nods. ‘Fairly. Yes. What would you say is fair, Beth?’
‘Um… well… I don’t know… I mean, as far as Lily is concerned… I won’t stop you having access or anything, of course not…’ She’s tripping over her words. ‘I was thinking weekends and holidays… whatever you like. We’ll share responsibility for her; she’ll always have a mummy and a daddy. You’ll probably get to spend more quality time with her now…’ She doesn’t mean this to sound the way it does and inwardly winces. Evan is being so calm – too calm – and she doesn’t want to say anything that might light the touchpaper.
‘And you’ll want maintenance, I assume, plus half of everything? The house, cars, my pension?’
Beth hadn’t really intended this conversation to get to the stage of agreeing finances. All she knew was that she had to leave their unhappy marriage – the rest she assumed could be discussed in due course, dealt with by solicitors.
‘I don’t know… I… I thought we could talk about that later. I…’
Nick has asked her and Lily to come and stay with him while things were finalised between her and Evan and she’s agreed. It was this part she dreads telling him the most. She knows how it will look – not just to Evan, but also to everyone. She’ll be the most heartless harlot in Buckhurst Hill.
‘I’m… we’re going to stay with Nick, for a while anyway, until things are resolved.’
‘Resolved… yes…’ He nods and she’s not sure if it’s a facetious nod or one of acquiescence – either way it’s unsettling.
‘She’s only four years old, Evan. I want her to grow up loving both her parents, knowing us both, knowing that we both love her. It’s best we do this now, while she’s young enough not to remember, not to be damaged by it.’
‘Whatever you think is best, Beth,’ he says coldly. ‘I’ll speak to my solicitor in the morning – get the ball rolling.’
His reaction has completely blindsided her. Is he humouring her? She wonders that perhaps he isn’t taking her seriously, that he doesn’t believe that she will really leave.
‘Right then. OK. Well… thank you for being so understanding, Evan,’ she says awkwardly. ‘You know, I just want to be happy at the end of the day… I want Lily to be happy, and I want you to be happy too, Evan – I really do.’
He looks through her, like she isn’t even there, like the past seven years of their lives had never taken place.
‘I’m sorry you’ve been so unhappy, Beth,’ he says in his measured tone. ‘I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy, to make you happy.’
She swallows back the lump that’s lodged in her oesophagus. She wants to scream at him. To ask him how, how has he tried to make her happy? By throwing money at her? By giving her cars and Pandora jewellery for birthdays and Christmas? If he’d known her, if he’d ever spent time with her, he’d know that she doesn’t even like Pandora jewellery. But she figures there’s no point trying to explain.
‘I’m sorry too, Evan,’ she says, her voice cracking like the embers on a bonfire.
He makes to leave the kitchen then mutters something as he walks past her. She can’t quite make out what he’s said, but she’s sure it was something like, ‘You will be, Beth…’
Five
Cath
April 2019
‘Cath, Catherine… can you hear me? You need to push now, OK? I’m going to ask you to push in three and I want you to squeeze my hand… OK? Catherine… Catherine, can you hear me, love? One…’
The first midwife, the Irish one with the round smiley face, is leaning over her, her large bosom almost touching her dry lips. Simultaneously, the other midwife, Carol she said her name was, with the comparatively thin and pointy face, is dabbing her forehead with a damp towel. Bizarrely they remind her of a female version of Laurel and Hardy.
She can smell the sweat mixed with cheap body spray on the larger midwife’s clothes as she bends in closer to her – vanilla, she thinks. The smell reminds her of her sister’s house; it’s a small comfort.
She tries to say something but can’t answer through the pain; the noise in the room sounds like it’s coming from someone else, only she realises it’s coming from her, noises she didn’t know her body could make, strange low growls followed by high-pitched piercing screams that sound disjointed and alien. She has never experienced pain as intense as this – not physically, anyway. It was never like this with Kai – at least she doesn’t remember it being that way – and she wonders if this is somehow her punishment – punishment for all the mistakes and bad choices she’s made.
The midwife offers her the gas and air again, some pethidine, but she refuses. No drugs. She wants to feel every second of this pain, every agonising moment, so that she never forgets, accepts it as her due for letting her baby down, for not protecting him like a mother should. She didn’t deserve to be his mother, or a mother at all.
She can feel the sadness and pity coming off the two midwives in waves, like sonar, as they go about their professional duty. The registrar, an Asian man with spectacles, had broken the news to her with a kindness that had felt scripted and false when she had arrived in A&E that night. The beating had been the worst he’d ever given her; injuries she couldn’t hide or blame on a fall. Her eyes were black, her lip split open, a cracked rib and three of her fingers shattered, sustained when she had tried to protect herself – and her unborn baby. The attack had been frenzied, violence and aggression on a level most people couldn’t comprehend, the sort you watch through one eye framed between your fingers during a particularly gruesome film and don’t imagine ever happens in real life.
She’d told them she’d been in a car accident and they seemed to have believed her; her injuries correlated, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch of the imagination. She’d come to them broken and smashed, clutching her swollen stomach containing her baby, a baby who at thirty-eight weeks was ready for the world. She had instinctively known that something was very wrong. He had squirmed and wriggled during the attack; she had felt him turn inside her, felt the pull of his tiny body as it had tried to remove himself from harm’s way. Then afterwards there was nothing, no movement at all, just a strange stillness inside. She had known then, as she lay there, unable to move, that he was gone.