‘Maybe,’ I said uncertainly.
Rachel shrugged, threw me a wolfish grin. ‘You don’t want to look now?’
I find myself blushing at the memory of it. How I’d pointed Rachel to places upstairs – away from the building work – where the floorboards might be loose. How I’d pulled up Mummy’s rug, turned the sofa over, both of us giddily intoxicated with the idea of finding hidden treasure. Rachel was so convinced – she’d insisted on looking for loose floorboards in the bedrooms, in the bathroom, all over the house. But of course, we didn’t find any that would come up on their own, and we couldn’t work out how we’d get them up without making a huge mess, so we didn’t bother in the end. Rachel seemed to lose interest in us having coffee after that. By the time Daniel got home, she was gone, and I hadn’t had the energy to put the furniture back.
‘She sounds perfectly normal to me, Helen,’ Serena says loyally, casting a wry look at Daniel. ‘I’m glad you met someone nice.’ She is so good at this: smoothing things out, like wrinkles in a tablecloth. Daniel smiles at her, then turns to me, speaks more gently.
‘I wasn’t annoyed. I was just a bit surprised about the furniture.’ He is slurring his words slightly, which makes me even more cross.
‘The sofa thing was one time,’ I hiss at him. ‘I don’t know why you keep going on about it.’
‘Oh, relax, Helen,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m teasing.’ But the anger is gathering in my throat, and somehow I can’t let it drop.
‘It’s not as if our living room is a very pleasant place to be. Moving the sofa was hardly going to make much of a difference.’
‘Oh, here we go,’ says Daniel. He is cross now, too. ‘The building work. All my fault.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘It’s all you ever say.’
Our words jab back and forth at each other and Rory and Serena start to avert their eyes from us, sitting in a tactful silence. I realise, to my mortification, that I have seen them do this before, when forced to witness one of our marital spats.
I hold my tongue, determined not to let it escalate. Only when the heat dissipates do I risk a glance over the table. Daniel has filled his glass again, then pretends to study the label on the wine bottle. When I catch Serena’s eye, I grimace, mouth ‘sorry’ at her. She furrows her brow in a ‘don’t be silly’ gesture, shakes her head, telling me not to worry. Fills up our water glasses, and Rory’s.
Later that night, Daniel passes out, drunkenly, on the bed, his eyes closed over flitting eyeballs. Soon he is making the little whistling breathing noise that means he is sleeping deeply. His glasses sit on his bedside table on top of his pile of books, as if keeping watch. Without his glasses on, Daniel’s sleeping face looks untethered, incomplete, sort of like a child’s drawing.
I unfold the note I found in the bathroom. I press out the creases with my thumbnail, and stare at it for a long time. RRH. I wonder if W could be a nickname for Serena? But somehow, I know that’s not it. I have found something bad, something I shouldn’t have ever seen. Oh, Rory, I think. What are you up to?
I stare and stare until the letters start to swim in front of my eyes, until they are not like letters any more, just shapes, symbols. Eventually, I give up. I slide the note into the back of the book I’m reading, turn the bedside light out.
I listen to Daniel’s breathing, deep, rhythmic. I listen to the little bursts of laughter in the night, the hum of the washing machine on downstairs, the wind blowing on the hill, how it whistles past our window glass. It takes me a long time to fall asleep.
30 WEEKS
HELEN
I seem to be bumping into Rachel all the time – in the market, or at the bandstand cafe, or walking across the scorched grass of the park. I suppose it’s no great surprise. She lives locally, and we’re both off work. But I never bump into Serena that much. Or Rory. Or even Daniel. But then, I suppose I have never been off work before. I’m constantly surprised by how many people are around in the day. What are they all doing?
This time is odd in itself, this strange no man’s land between pregnancy and birth. I find myself constructing my entire day around a medical appointment, a trip into town to buy a baby monitor or a TENS machine. On the Tube, everyone else is glued to their smartphone, emailing and messaging, organising fuller lives than mine. Quite often no one looks up to see whether there is a pregnant woman needing a seat. I always feel too embarrassed to ask. Everyone keeps telling me to make the most of the time, to enjoy myself. I’m not sure what they mean. It feels like a dead time to me. A time defined by absence, by waiting.