Page 2 of Someone in the Water
‘Yeah, you’re right. Thanks, Mum.’ I try to take deep breaths, but quietly, so that Mum doesn’t pick up on my anxiety – she’s had more than enough of that to deal with over the years.
‘And you’ll keep an eye on your phone, just in case Lola can’t get hold of me?’ I continue. I can’t trust my behaviour at this time of year, which is why I go away by myself, to somewhere remote, so that no one I love is exposed to it. We’ve been following this routine for fourteen years now, so both Lola and Mum are used to it. But Lola has never been out of the country during this period before. I hate to think that she might need me, and I won’t be there for her. But I know there’s no better stand-in than my mum.
‘Of course. I’m used to being here for her at this time of year, aren’t I? And I guess this will be my last rodeo as her responsible adult with her eighteenth birthday only days away,’ she adds, her voice turning wistful.
I ride the crashing wave of guilt that is so familiar now. All those childhood birthdays I’ve not been here for. And now it’s too late to ever make amends. ‘I owe you a lot,’ I say quietly.
‘She’s my granddaughter. You’re my daughter. I do it because I love you both; you don’t owe me anything.’
When I found out I was pregnant with Lola, I thought it was a sign. After two years of nightmares, delusions, and insomnia – peppered with drinking binges and topped off with a four-week stay on a psychiatric ward – I felt I’d been given a second chance at life. I’d only hooked up with Lola’s father that once – a free-spirited traveller from New Zealand’s South Island on a global journey of discovery (his words) – and I had no plans to ask him to stick around to help. But a baby. An amazing, innocent new life. I stopped the booze, the pills, the partying with people I barely knew. I moved out of London and back to my childhood home in Southbourne on the south coast, took up yoga, and rediscovered my love of the sea. And I slept. Blissful eight-hour periods when my brain stayed quiet.
But then the sonographer at my twenty-week scan told me that Lola’s due date was 31st July. It was a cruel joke by some higher power I don’t believe in, but it still sent me spiralling.
I told myself over and over that it was just a coincidence, that there was no way my baby’s upcoming birth could possibly be connected to what happened in a different country three years earlier. But as the date got closer, and I got bigger, my hormones raged, and the nightmares returned with a vengeance. And with them their trusted companion, insomnia.
My beautiful, thoughtful Lola held on for one extra day – her birthday is the 1st of August – and at the time I hoped that would be enough. But it wasn’t. And three years later, on Lola’s third birthday, I was reminded just how tight a vice those memories held me in.
‘And anyway,’ Mum continues, ‘I’m sure Lola won’t need either of us. I’ve transferred three hundred pounds into her Revolut account as an early birthday present, so hopefully there’ll be a gushing message of gratitude, but otherwise I doubt we’ll hear from her. She won’t be short of money, and those girls are all smart cookies.’
I try to soak up Mum’s reasoning. Because she’s right. Lola is with her three best friends, girls who have been in and out of each other’s houses and lives since primary school. They’ll look out for each other. And she deserves to have a holiday after working so hard at her A levels, much harder than I did – although in my defence, I had only buried my dad two months before my exams started.
‘What would I do without you?’ I whisper.
‘The feeling is mutual, my love. So you go away, do whatever you need, safe in the knowledge that Lola will be having the best time ever without you, and I’ll have my phone by my side the whole time.’
I catch my reflection in my bedroom mirror and notice that I’m smiling. Which is as it should be. Lola has had to spend her birthday with my mum since she turned four, never quite understanding why I wasn’t there to celebrate with them. This is the first time we’re going to be apart on her terms. ‘Thanks, Mum. You know, I really think you’d make more money as a therapist.’
‘And I think I’d be the one needing therapy if anyone dragged me away from my workshop,’ she counters, making my smile widen even more.
We say our goodbyes and I lug my holdall down the stairs. It’s ten forty-five. I have access to the rental cottage in the New Forest from eleven o’clock this morning.
And maybe the sooner this purgatory starts, the quicker it will be over.
Frankie
25th July
I drive slowly through town, checking for potential hazards, cyclists weaving in and out of the traffic, tourists scooting past each other on the pavements. When I hit the A337, heading north away from the coast, I speed up, but stay under the sixty-mile-an-hour limit. Of course Lola isn’t in the car with me today, and thanks to taking a sleeping pill at three this morning, I slept for a solid four hours last night, so I’m feeling rested enough. But some memories run too deep.
Being the mother of a newborn is much more than exhausting. It removes every morsel of energy from your muscles, bones, brain, and eyes. Which means, in the first few months after Lola was born, I finally felt normal. This state of fatigue that had become so familiar to me during the summer months, was suddenly being experienced by my new friends at antenatal classes. And that sense of belonging gave me hope that I could turn the tide on my insomnia.
But it wasn’t to be.
Lola was slow to sleep through the night – perhaps she could sense me twitching and fidgeting in the room next door – so I was still living the tired mum routine on her first birthday. But by the time she turned two, she was a better sleeper than me. We spent her birthday at the beach in Southbourne. It was a beautifully sunny day, so it should have been idyllic, but the warm sand proved too comforting and I dropped off. My mum was with us – thank God – so when Lola waddled to the water’s edge, Mum was there to whisk her to safety. But I was left with the guilt of knowing I hadn’t protected my daughter.
Mum didn’t come to the play zone with us on Lola’s third birthday. There’d been a storm the week before, taking a load of windsurfers by surprise, and Mum was too busy fixing ripped sails in her workshop. So when my head drooped on the drive home after a couple of hours’ climbing through inflatable tunnels, there was no one to shake me awake. And when the car veered into a field, not even Lola’s calls of ‘Mumma’ could drag me back to consciousness.
I hit a tree and flipped the car. The airbags saved us, and neither Lola nor I was physically hurt. But I still spent three weeks in hospital, on the psychiatric ward. With the trauma of ‘what might have been’ rocketing around my brain, I couldn’t stop my mouth from gabbling about being possessed by an evil spirit, and the doctors deemed me a risk to myself and others.
From that point on, for the two weeks when the worst of my insomnia hits, around the anniversary of those two tragedies, I have left Lola with my mum. Not being with her on her birthday has been a heart-wrenching sacrifice, but always worth it to keep her safe.
I turn the radio on – Bruno Mars’ ‘Just the Way You Are’ – and look out of the window. There’s a burst of deep purple heather spreading over dark green shrubs and two wild ponies are grazing in the distance. Lola and I moved to Lymington twelve years ago, when I got a job at the local college, and it’s one of the things I love most about this area. Being in a coastal town one minute, and deep into English countryside the next. Lymington is surrounded by the New Forest, and I drive deeper into the woodland until I reach the hamlet of Linwood. I spot the dirt track from the rental company’s website description and crawl down it at a snail’s pace. The further I go, the more isolated it becomes, and the better I feel. Finally, I reach a narrow gate and park up on the verge. The name of the accommodation is inscribed on a wooden plaque – The Wolf Den – and it makes me shudder. But I knew this when I booked, and I’m not going to let a name put me off.
I find the padlock code on my phone, then open the gate and appraise my home for the next fortnight. It’s a converted shipping container on the edge of a field, its location so isolated that the owners have installed a roll-top bath outside on the deck. In different circumstances, it would make a beautiful romantic getaway. But for me, it’s a refuge. A place where I can mutter nonsense about evil spirits, and no one will hear me.
I head back to my car and open the boot. I grab the holdall and a handful of canvases. It takes three more trips to unload everything – food for a fortnight, paints and brushes, laptop and speaker – and another half hour to find a place for them all in the small living area. When I’m done, I make a cup of tea and sink into one of the two sheepskin-lined bucket chairs on the deck. Beyond the small garden, there are fields, trees, fences, and more fields. Not a single human being. It’s perfect.
But I still can’t relax.
