Katie sighs.
My heart sinks as soon as I see the look on her face, and I know what the next words will be, even before she says them.
‘It’s about Rachel.’
HELEN
My train pulls in and out of breeze-block tunnels through the alien city landscape, the huge ghostly towers of blue and green glass. The waters of the docklands are grey and flat. There are endless apartment blocks around the water, backing onto the railway line, outdoor furniture cramped onto tiny balconies. One has a plastic car and a child’s tricycle. In the giant glass office blocks, the lights are still on, the glow of computer screens, people working, even late on a Friday night.
I hadn’t planned to come here. I had planned to hear whatever it was that Katie had to say then head home, have a long bath, get into my pyjamas, see if Daniel wanted to order a takeaway when he finally got home. But I ended up staring at the photo, the one Katie had found in the club. And before I knew it, I was here. On my way to Charlie’s. Texting Daniel to tell him not to wait up.
At South Quay the track starts to bend, taking my stomach with it. I haven’t done this journey in a while. I can’t say I enjoy it much. Reflected in the wobbly mirror panels of a skyscraper, the train looks like a toy in its primary colours. It shudders past the no man’s lands of Mudchute, Westferry, Limehouse. There’s a change at Shadwell, a steep flight of stairs. I can feel sweat under my arms.
On the Overground to Dalston, the landscape changes. Scrappy allotments, low-rise housing estates with long brick balconies. Parks with playgrounds in garish colours, hooded youths lingering among the swings. Teenagers, BMX bikes, dangerous-looking dogs.
Finally, we reach Charlie’s stop. There’s no way I’ll get a taxi here. I try Uber, but it says fourteen minutes. I might be able to find a bus, maybe, but I think better of it. The last time I did that, I went the wrong way, wheeling round and round the estates, one indistinguishable from another. I decide I’ll have to walk. My feet are sore, my ankles swollen. I can feel the pressure at the bottom of my pelvis, hard now, sometimes like a shooting pain. Don’t come now, I tell the baby silently. Not tonight.
I wonder if Charlie will have Ruby this evening. I find myself hoping he doesn’t, and immediately feeling guilty at the thought. I think back to the last time I saw my little niece, in the spring, when Charlie came to see us in Greenwich. Charlie and I sat in the foyer of the Maritime Museum having an awkward coffee while she bounded around with the other children on the Great Map, her little spotty tights on, pink shoes going slap, slap, slap across the continents, her footsteps echoing around the high ceilings. She made her rabbit bounce from the Gulf of Mexico all the way to Nova Scotia.
She hadn’t been that interested in the Cutty Sark, despite Charlie’s attempts. He lifted her under her arms so she could steer the ship’s wheel, pretended to throw her overboard, which made her giggle. But when I tried to show her the storybook of the legend she squirmed in my lap, asked if we could play zombie ships instead. I didn’t know how to play zombie ships, or any of the other games she liked. I would never admit it to Daniel, but I dread the thought of having a child like Ruby – loud, boisterous, with the sort of confidence I have never had. I haven’t the first idea what to do with her.
I walk past discarded McDonald’s cups, their straws sticking out at angles, burst Happy Meal balloons. Mobile phones behind glass cases, neon signs flashing – MOBILE PHONE UNLOCKING REPAIRS – LYCAMOBILE – CALL HOME. The window of one shop is just mannequin heads. Western hairstyles, with a lacquered finish. Another shop window is filled with rolls and rolls of colourful fabric. Saris, block prints, Indian silk, piled up at the front of the windows, like a cross section of a riverbed. Next door the shops spill out onto the street with crates of vegetables I wouldn’t know how to cook. Yams, okra, plantains. Their names are written on neon cardboard stars. There is a smell of fried chicken. My hospital notes are heavy in my bag. What am I doing? I think to myself again. What am I doing here?
When Katie first told me, I could hardly take it in. Not only had she tracked down the address where Rachel was living in Hackney, she’d already been there and spoken to one of Rachel’s flatmates.
‘What did she say?’
‘She said that when she saw Rachel a few weeks ago, just before she moved in with you, she hadn’t looked pregnant. She said she had looked basically the same as normal.’
I shook my head. ‘No one would fake a pregnancy. Why would she want to? Why would she want to do an antenatal course?’