There is a weighted silence, heavy with anticipation.
‘It’s always the same, isn’t it?’
Stephen’s quietly accusatory tone throws me off balance, a misstep from which it takes me a moment to find my footing. ‘What do you mean?’
He turns to me, eyes flickering with something between disappointment and contempt. ‘They always come first.’
He pauses, as if waiting for me to speak, but there seems to be a lag between my ears and my brain.
‘Can you imagine what it’s like, coming home from work to discover you’re with them yet again? Just wanting a bit of time and space with my wife and child but always having to share you with your bloody family?’
His words are like glue in my ears. ‘What are you talking about? Just tell me where they are.’ My voice is steadfast, unflinching, and I do not know where my courage is coming from. All I can think about is that photo, my baby in my arms, my desperate need to find my way back to him.
Stephen continues as though I haven’t spoken. ‘You were so unhappy when I met you. You don’t remember, do you? Dumped by your last boyfriend, desperate for a baby, biological clock ticking loudly in your ears. I’ve given you everything you wanted – everything – and still it’s not enough.’ His voice is bitter, and it evokes something in me, an instinctive tightening in my chest, like a muscle memory learnt from experience.
‘Do you know what it’s like, always feeling like you’re second best? Always feeling like you’ll never be enough, however hard you try? Have you ever stopped to think what that’s like for me?’
He is unrelenting now, his grievances all-consuming, and I do not know what he is talking about, what has prompted this tirade, only that it seems futile to try to stop him.
‘Your family always breathing down our necks. Your sister muscling in, so sanctimonious, so bloody jealous that we were happy when her life was so small, so lonely. And yet you couldn’t see it. You just wouldn’t see it.’
His accusations are dense in my ears, but I try to find my way back to the only question that matters. ‘What about Henry? He’s still alive, isn’t he?’
There is a pause. A slight twitch at one corner of Stephen’s lips. ‘Henry? You mean Leo.’
The words are spoken dispassionately, as though they have no greater significance than the correction of an item on a shopping list. And yet they strike me as if I have been physically assaulted, as if someone has thrust a knife deep into my stomach and twisted it full circle.
Leo. The name resonates in my ears and with it comes a mighty heave of longing: a primitive connection to my little boy through the simple truth of his name. Something shifts inside me, every muscle in my body focused with singular ferocity on the well-being of my son. ‘Just tell me where he is.’
Stephen glares at me, frustration tunnelling into the lines around his eyes. ‘Why has everything got to be about Leo? Has it ever occurred to you that we’re a couple first and parents second? Our son doesn’t have to be the centre of our entire lives. But even now, even after everything that’s happened, that’s all you want to know.’
Thoughts stagger in my head. ‘He’s my son, Stephen. I want to know he’s okay.’
The corner of Stephen’s top lip curls with condescension. ‘He’s fine.’ The words are flat, impassive, as if of no consequence at all.
I try to grasp hold of those two short syllables, allow myself to ingest their meaning, but it is as though I am being buried beneath the rubble of too many revelations. ‘Why did you tell me he was dead?’
‘You shouldn’t have put me on the spot like that.’
I think about the lies Stephen’s told, about the heinous web of deceit he has spun. My head reels, fingers curling around the edge of the bench to stop myself from falling. ‘How old is he?’
Stephen scowls, irritation striating his forehead. ‘What?’
‘Leo. How old is he?’ It takes every ounce of my self-control not to pummel Stephen with my fists.
Stephen sighs as though my questions are testing his patience. ‘Nine months.’
Nine months. The photo on Facebook must have been taken just days after Leo’s birth.
My son is almost a year old and yet I do not remember him.
‘So Henry never existed? We never had a son who died?’
Stephen rolls his eyes as if I am stating something so obvious it’s barely worthy of a response. ‘Of course not.’
My heart stutters as I pull the Facebook photo to mind, try to fast-forward time, imagine what Leo might look like now. Whether his hair is still dark, his eyes still bright. Whether he has begun to walk or talk. Whether he is missing me. ‘Where is he? Where’s Leo now?’
Stephen raises his eyebrows, looks at me with disdain. ‘So now you’re suddenly concerned about Leo, are you?’
‘What are you talking about? You told me our son was dead. That he died two years ago. How could I be concerned about him when I didn’t even know he existed?’
Stephen exhales slowly, and it takes every scrap of self-restraint not to scream into his face. Whatever twisted game Stephen is playing, I know I have to keep hold of my anger, that he is the quickest route back to my little boy.
‘For weeks before your accident all you talked about was going back to work. As though some tinpot think tank was going to change the world. And yet now you want to play the part of the devoted mother.’ There is derision in his voice, like a smear of grime on a pristine windowpane.
As though some tinpot think tank was going to change the world. A think tank, not a library. There is too much to take in, an avalanche of information I fear may bury me beneath its weight.
‘Where is he?’ I do not know where the ferocity in my voice comes from, only that it is blazing and will not be extinguished.
Stephen does not reply, gazes at me unperturbed.
The rage in me is so sudden, so violent, I know that if Stephen doesn’t tell me, right now, where my son is, I may do something I’ll live to regret.
ANNA
LONDON
‘Where’s my son?’ My hand grabs the sleeve of Stephen’s jacket, yanks at his arm.
Stephen shakes me off, hisses in a low whisper. ‘For god’s sake, stop being hysterical. You’re embarrassing yourself. Leo’s fine. He’s with your parents.’
Relief floods my veins. I think of my son, safe with my parents, and it is as if prayers I hadn’t known I was reciting have been answered.
And yet there is something niggling at me, like a concealed splinter, tender to touch but invisible to the naked eye.
And then, suddenly, it reveals itself. ‘Why haven’t my parents been to see me? Or my sister? Why has nobody come to visit?’ It is three weeks since my accident. It doesn’t make sense that none of them have come, that they haven’t brought Leo back to me.
‘They know you want to settle into the house, start building our new life together.’
‘What are you talking about? What new life?’
Stephen gazes at me with something approaching pity and I feel myself squirm beneath his scrutiny, like a specimen in a Petri dish.
And then I think of the photos I saw on Facebook. As if I need any other reason to love being a born and bred Bristolian. I think about the boxes unpacked in the spare room, about Stephen’s justification for them: I know, you don’t have to say it. How have we still not got around to unpacking all these boxes despite having lived here for over a year? . . . Every weekend we promise ourselves that we’ll finally tackle all this . . . and every weekend we somehow manage to find something more interesting to do. I recall the sense of disorientation I had coming home to our house, as though I had never been there before.