Meanwhile my arms ached with emptiness – literally ached. I’d heard the phrase a thousand times and thought it was just a saying. But the muscles on the insides of both my arms actually hurt. Worse than that, though, much worse, was a suspicion that this was all my fault. As soon as the first prickles of alarm about Yara had begun, a familiar inner voice had piped up, telling me that I didn’t deserve good things. As a person I was too flawed, too defective, to attract and keep anything pure. Or maybe I’d done something in my old life, in active addiction, to guarantee that my body wasn’t a safe place for my baby.
On the second day of our new life, Luke said, ‘Do you think you should go to a meeting?’
It was the obvious thing. No matter what happens in the life of a recovering addict, good or bad, a meeting is always important to maintain emotional equilibrium.
But I felt strange about leaving the apartment, about going out into the world when I was so altered, so he called my sponsor Olga Mae, who took me along.
Sitting on hard chairs in an anteroom belonging to a church, Olga Mae kept elbowing me to share. Eventually I did, saying the bare minimum. ‘My baby died. I’m going out of my mind, but I won’t take anything to kill the pain.’
Afterwards, I was besieged with well-meaning types reminding me that other addicts had endured unbearable losses and didn’t relapse. They were adamant that I could survive this and stay clean, so long as I asked for help. Over and over I was told, ‘Don’t forget that you’re an addict.’
‘I won’t.’ But their intensity was exhausting.
Back home, in the bathroom, I said to Luke, ‘We’re going to have to …’ I indicated the bath, the toys. ‘We can’t keep these, can we?’
‘Sure we can. We’ll put them into storage … because won’t we … I mean, we’ll have another?’
But how could we have another when we loved her so much? And how would I survive another pregnancy and the certainty that it would happen again?
50
In Sarina’s sitting room, I sat on an armchair, my body folding in on itself, getting as far away from Luke as possible. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. ‘Sorry.’ My voice was thick. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too. I’d never have brought you in here if I’d known about the photo.’ He was on the edge of the couch, leaning far forward, right into my space, but he didn’t touch me.
I just needed to stop crying, then I could leave.
‘Stay there,’ he said. ‘Don’t move.’ He sprang upright, left the room and moments later returned, tearing sheets off a roll of kitchen paper.
I pressed them to my salty skin.
‘I wish I could cry,’ he said.
I met his eyes. ‘I wish I could stop.’
We both managed a weak laugh and I dropped my gaze.
‘Rachel?’ His tone made me look up. ‘Just because I’m not crying doesn’t mean that I don’t feel it.’
‘I didn’t. I don’t think that.’
‘You probably think that I … I know you must hate me.’
Startled, I said, ‘Well. I mean …’
‘You have to know that losing her changed me forever.’ Suddenly there he was – the man I used to know, in pain but recognizable. ‘I had no say in any of it. I was powerless.’
‘Oh …’
‘Please believe me.’ His look was deadly earnest and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled. This, I suddenly understood, was his apology, the one I’d waited six years for. There was sincerity in his eyes – and guilt. ‘If things could have been different …’ He stopped and began again. ‘I wish I could have been different.’
The longed-for admission of remorse hadn’t gone anything like my wildest fantasies, but he’d given me a credible reason for why he’d stopped loving me.
‘I’ve often wondered …’ he said. ‘You know how it –’
But something was going on outside the window, something that couldn’t be ignored. ‘Luke. Hold on a …’ I hurried to shift the sheer curtains. ‘It’s a rainbow! Come here.’
I turned to him. ‘Rainbows are her. I see them at important times in my life – I know it sounds mad but that’s her, she’s here.’
‘Are you serious?’ He sounded surprised. Wrong-footed, almost.
‘Totally.’
He frowned. ‘So, you don’t –’