Thoughts swirl in my head, each eager to be noticed. ‘What happened? Most children recover from meningitis, don’t they?’
Again, Stephen darts a swift glance at me as though there is danger in holding my gaze. ‘He deteriorated very quickly, overnight. You weren’t to know.’
‘What do you mean, I wasn’t to know?’
Stephen’s eyes widen. ‘I mean we weren’t to know. Neither of us could have done anything. He’d had a fever. He’d been tired and irritable and off his food, just for a day. He didn’t have a rash or anything when you put him down for the night.’
I try to imagine it – my baby, hot, tired, irritable – but cannot unlock the memory. ‘And then what happened?’
Stephen blows a stream of air out through a small circle in his lips. ‘When you woke up in the morning . . . he was already dead.’
His words are hazy, as though I am viewing them through extreme desert temperatures. ‘But he was only four months old. Surely he needed a night feed?’
‘No. He was tired and poorly. You wanted to let him rest. You did what you thought was for the best.’
I am struggling to absorb it all, but I need to know more. ‘What happened in the morning, when we found him?’
Stephen avoids my gaze, and it is there, writ large in his evasion: a chapter of the story he is reluctant to share.
‘What is it? What aren’t you telling me?’
He looks at me and I see it in his expression as clearly as if it were tattooed on his skin: the pre-emptive apology for what he is about to say. ‘I wasn’t there. I was away for work that night. I wasn’t there to help you.’
The words tilt in my head, unable to find their balance. ‘So it was all my fault?’
‘Of course not. It was my fault for not being there. You told me before I left that he wasn’t well and I still went away. I should have stayed.’
‘But that doesn’t change the fact that I didn’t check on him all night. What kind of a mother doesn’t check on their baby when he’s sick?’
Stephen takes hold of my hand. ‘You wanted to let him rest. You thought that’s what he needed. He had a temperature and was a bit off-colour, that’s all. No parent would have sat vigil by their child’s bedside all night just for that. And anyway, you were exhausted. You hadn’t slept properly for weeks by then.’
‘So I was too tired to check on my own baby?’
Stephen squeezes my hand. ‘That’s not what happened. We went through all this with the doctors at the time. You weren’t to know how quickly he’d deteriorate. It wasn’t your fault. Millions of parents would have done exactly the same as you.’
‘But some wouldn’t. Some would have been able to save their child.’ The truth roars in my ears.
I shut my eyes, think of the little boy in the photographs – my little boy – and guilt clutches my heart in its fist.
I think of him lying in a cot beside my bed, becoming weaker and weaker through the night, as I slept through his suffering.
I imagine waking up in the morning, finding his lifeless body, knowing instinctively what had happened before the paramedics arrived.
I think about the brevity of his existence, suspended in time at four months old, a sliver of a life that will never be fully lived.
My throat burns as sobs claw their way from my chest.
‘I’m sorry, my love. This is why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d have to grieve all over again.’ Stephen envelops me in his arms, and I do not resist. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You have to believe that. It was a horrific, unspeakable tragedy.’ He holds me tight as though he is aware that I am drifting away, into my own world of pain. ‘We’ll get through this. I promise you.’
I hear his words, but I cannot believe them, cannot conceive that there is life beyond such a loss.
I am aware of deep lacerations scoring my heart, inscribing on it the name of the son whom I will now never get the chance to know. The little boy I was supposed to protect but whom I failed so egregiously that I know I will never be able to forgive myself.
LIVVY
BRISTOL
‘Do you really need to keep all these photo albums? You’ve got enough here to fill a small museum.’
Livvy looked across their basement office to where Dominic was rifling through a cardboard box she’d brought from her old flat. ‘It’s only one box. Of course I want to keep them.’
‘You keep saying that about everything.’ He smiled. ‘Honestly, I had no idea you were such a hoarder.’ He picked up an album with a faded blue hessian cover, opened it at random, flicked through a few pages where the plastic film was peeling away from the page, photos slipping out of place. Peering at one and then another, he turned the album towards Livvy, eyebrows raised. ‘I mean, do we really need to keep all these photos of your ex-boyfriends?’
Livvy looked at the pictures, taken during her university years – at parties, in the halls of residence, in pubs – her arms around the shoulders of various young men whose names she’d long since forgotten. She laughed. ‘Trust me, none of those were ever my boyfriend. Those photos are twenty years old. I don’t think you’ve got any competition.’
Dominic snapped the album shut and slid it back in the box.
Livvy turned back to the old CDs she was sorting through – （What’s the Story） Morning Glory?, Different Class, Parklife – and thought about her conversation with Bea a fortnight ago, when she’d told her they were leaving Bristol. She’d anticipated resistance from her sister but not outright hostility. ‘I really don’t think you should go. You’ll be separated from everybody you know. Just because Dominic hates all his family and doesn’t have any friends doesn’t mean you should have to be cut off from yours. And what about your career? Are you supposed to give up your promotion, just like that?’
‘What about all these books?’ Dominic held up a couple of tattered paperbacks, Elizabeth Taylor in one hand, Elizabeth Jane Howard in the other.
‘They’re some of my favourites. I can’t get rid of those.’
Dominic turned them over, scrutinised their jackets. ‘Come on, they’re a bit trashy. We don’t need to keep them, do we?’
Livvy took one from him, thumbed through it. ‘They’re not trashy. They’re modern classics.’
Dominic raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Well, we can’t take everything with us – there won’t be room. And you can’t care about them that much if they’ve been stuffed in a box for the past fourteen months.’
Livvy decided not to remind him that it wasn’t her decision for her books to have been stashed away all this time. When she’d first moved in and unpacked some of her best-loved novels – Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Agatha Christie, Patricia Highsmith – Dominic had looked at his bookshelves, already full, and turned to her apologetically: ‘I’m not sure there’s going to be room for these in the sitting room. Do you mind if we store them in the office for now? We’ll find some space after you’ve settled in.’ Somehow, the space had never been found.