It wasn’t until Imogen was standing on the path that Livvy finally dared let go of the breath she’d been holding.
‘Perhaps, when I come back, I could bring some photos of Dominic as a baby, and you’ll be able to see the resemblance for yourself.’
Livvy managed to pull her lips into an approximation of a smile, a silent voice in her head telling her to agree, say whatever was necessary to get this woman away from her house.
Imogen looked at her, trusting, expectant. ‘I really would like a chance to get to know my grandson. He’s the only one I’ve got.’ She paused for a moment, gazing at Livvy intently. ‘Is Dominic good to you?’
The question swerved through the air, landed in Livvy’s head with a thud, so unexpected that she didn’t know what to say.
‘I only ask because Dominic hasn’t really had . . . as far as we knew . . . there hadn’t been anyone serious before. It was just a shock to find out he’d got married and become a father.’
Livvy felt the muscles across her shoulders tense, made a conscious effort to restrain her impatience. ‘To be fair, you’ve been estranged from Dominic for a long time. It’s hardly surprising that you don’t know what’s going on in his life.’
Imogen gave a small shake of the head. ‘Don’t get me wrong. I’m delighted if he’s happy and settled. It was just . . . a surprise. He hasn’t always found relationships easy. But if he’s . . . if he genuinely makes you happy . . . ?’
Livvy bristled at Imogen’s invasiveness. ‘I really do need to go.’
‘But you’ll talk to Dominic, about me seeing Leo?’
Livvy nodded, the lie tight in her chest.
She closed the door, stood still for a few seconds, hand on the Yale lock as though a part of her feared Imogen might yet try to force her way inside.
The smell of Imogen’s perfume lingered in the hallway, cloying in her throat, sweet and sickly.
She waited for a minute and then another, before finally taking her hand from the lock, slipping the metal chain across, tiptoeing into the sitting room and creeping towards the front window. Peeking through the edge of the shutters, she heard herself exhale when she found the front path empty.
Turning to Leo, she lifted him out of his activity seat and into her arms, tried to calm her sprinting heart.
In four weeks’ time, they would be in London, at an address where Imogen would not be able to find them. All Livvy had to do was to keep her mother-in-law at bay for another month, and then she would never be able to turn up on their doorstep again.
ANNA
LONDON
I do not know how long we have been sitting in silence in the semi-darkness, the only light a tangerine glow from the street lamps filtering through the window.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ The flesh around my eyes is taut, salt from my tears tightening my skin.
Next to me, Stephen shakes his head with short, jarring movements. ‘I couldn’t do it to you. Not when I’d already had to tell you about your parents. You were already so heartbroken . . .’ Anguish burrows into the crevices at the edges of his eyes.
‘But everything you said . . . about the infertility, about IVF? Why make all that up?’
He wipes his palms on the thighs of his charcoal-grey trousers. ‘I don’t know. I just panicked. When you asked why we didn’t have children . . . I couldn’t bring myself to tell you the truth.’
I open my mouth to say something – to weep, to grieve, to tell him he should never have kept something so fundamental from me – but nothing comes. Every part of me feels anaesthetised.
‘I know it was wrong, but I didn’t know what to do for the best. Those deaths – your parents and Henry – they happened over fifteen years apart. But if I’d told you the truth when you asked me on Tuesday, you’d have been grieving them all in a matter of days. I couldn’t do it to you. It would have been too cruel.’ He knits his fingers, presses them tightly together. ‘I couldn’t bear watching you go through all that again—’
He stops abruptly, and even though I am scared of the answer, I cannot stop myself asking the question. ‘What were you going to say?’
Stephen breathes slowly. ‘Henry’s death . . . it almost destroyed you. It almost destroyed both of us.’ He pauses, swallows, takes another deep breath. ‘In the past few months there’s been a glimmer of hope that you were starting to feel better. Not recovered – I know neither of us can ever fully recover. But better than you had been. I was worried it would set you back months in the grieving process. I hated the idea of you mourning all over again, from the beginning, just when things were starting to improve. You’re already dealing with so much.’ He cups a hand over the cap of my knee and I do not shift away, even though it feels alien, unfamiliar.
Neither of us speaks for a few moments. There are so many questions circulating in my head I do not know where one ends and another begins.
‘There’s something else I haven’t been honest with you about.’
The air stills, like the hush of birds before a storm.
‘You didn’t get made redundant a year ago.’ His eyes dart towards my face and then away again. ‘After Henry died, you took extended compassionate leave and then decided not to go back. You haven’t worked since.’ He glances at me once more, so brief I would have missed it had I blinked. ‘I’m sorry. I just couldn’t bear to dredge it all up for you again. I knew I’d have to tell you at some point, but I just wanted to protect you a bit longer.’
I try to compute this new information, to locate the neural pathways along which it needs to travel to become part of my history, but it is like trying to navigate my way through a maze without a ball of string to guide me home.
‘It’s why we’re a bit isolated. You haven’t wanted to see much of friends for the past couple of years. We’ve lost touch with quite a few people.’ He pauses, and I sense him balancing on a wire, assessing whether he can make it to the other side without falling. ‘We’ve just tried to support each other through it.’
I think about the silent house phone, the lack of friends paying visits, the absence of a social life, and suddenly the insularity of our marriage makes sense: the contracted lives we must have been leading since the death of our son. I imagine what the past two years must have been like, wonder how we have managed to survive with our sanity intact. ‘How old would he be now?’ The question springs from my lips without any warning.
Stephen closes his eyes slowly, then opens them again. Time feels thick, as if we are traipsing through dense fog. ‘Almost two and a half. Twenty-eight months.’
My breath catches in my throat and something inside me seems to come undone.
There is another question, one I know must be asked, but courage stutters in my chest and I have to breathe deeply against the fear. ‘How did he die?’
My words hang heavy in the air like a cumulus cloud before the first deluge of rain. Outside, the street lamp flickers, plunging us into a split second of darkness.
‘He had meningitis.’
I wait for Stephen to say more, but he looks down at his hands, kneads his knuckles as if grinding them into submission.