Page 72 of The First Time I Saw You
‘Charlie, I think that maybe . . . maybe you should see someone? A doctor?’
‘A doctor can’t bring them back.’ He looks into his glass of water and swills it around in circles.
‘No . . . but a doctor might be able to bring you back.’
‘What if I don’t want to be brought back?’ he asks.
‘You must do, otherwise you wouldn’t have come here.’ I reach for his hand. ‘Let me help you.’ His hand feels cold to my touch and he moves it away from me.
‘My wife . . .’ he dips his finger into the water and circles the rim of his glass with his finger, ‘could get a can of Coke to balance on its edge when she took her hands away. It was her party trick. Jack used to think it was magic, but it was more to do with having the balance levels right.’ He doesn’t smile as he says this but his face changes, like the memory is hidden just below the surface. It evens out a few of the lines in his face, but it doesn’t quite reach a smile. ‘And she could hula-hoop.’
‘Hula-hoop?’
‘Yeah, she did it on our first holiday together.’ The memory irons out the tension around his eyebrows, around the deep crevices that surround his eyes. ‘There was a huge pile of them in the kids’ area. She picked them up and began looping them around her arms and her waist; she could do it for ages at a time without dropping them, all the kids on the campsite loved it.’ Pain returns, digging itself back into the muscles around his mouth, pulling back the softness that had formed in his lips. ‘She did it when she was pregnant, too. She was about four months gone and Jack was only just starting to show, but the hoops still glided around her, Olivia’s hips were barely even moving.’ His head lifts involuntarily and his gaze is almost challenging, as if he’s daring himself to look at me while he is saying the words. ‘She was wearing a bright pink crop top and it kept riding up, her bump was sticking out beneath it.’
‘She sounds like an amazing woman.’
‘Not really, not to anyone else. But she was to me. And now she is gone and no amount of trips to the doctor can change it. No trip to the doctor’s is going to change that she decided to have a drink when she knew she had to drive later. She was pregnant . . . thirteen weeks.’ The words are barely a whisper, but they taint the atmosphere, their meaning dulling the light in the room, sending it scampering away.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘If I’d have known, I would never have asked you to come to the hospital.’ He shrugs as if it was no big deal.
‘Was she over the limit, Charlie?’
‘No, but—’
‘Then was it really her fault? I’ve had a glass of wine while I’ve been pregnant, lots of women do. If she wasn’t over the limit, then maybe it was just an accident.’
The word ‘just’ fires around the room, his face changing from hurt to anger in the time I realise I shouldn’t have said it.
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you meant.’
‘No, Charlie, I don’t think you do. I know that “just” isn’t the right way to describe what happened . . . it was an awful, awful tragedy. But an accident means that it wasn’t anybody’s fault. It was just an accident. Maybe you need to forgive Olivia before you can start to get better?’
I have said enough. I may have said too much, but if I’m going to help him, I need to be the one strong enough to say the things that maybe he doesn’t want to hear.
Bean is getting bigger by the day. My stomach is starting to feel larger and I catch it on the side of the table as I stand. I walk to his side and reach for his plate, but he takes my hand. The feel of his skin on mine jolts the stillness of the room. The shock of this connection holds my feet to the ground; it makes the noises inside the kitchen louder than they were. The hum of the fridge is a loud vibration; the sound of his laboured breathing fills my ears; the dripping tap is so piercing that I wonder why I have never heard it so acutely before. My hand finds his hair as he lifts his head and looks at me. I meet Charlie’s eyes, which are scanning my face. They follow the shape of my nose, my cheekbones; they are watching the way I’m biting my lip; they trace the shape of my neck, and they don’t stop until they reach my stomach.
His hand begins to move, a small twitch at first. His eyes look back up at mine, an unspoken request, an unspoken answer; it reaches for Bean. His is the first hand to touch my child other than a midwife or a doctor. His warmth radiates through my skin and Bean squirms beneath it. A flicker of a smile pulls at Charlie’s mouth as he begins to move his head towards my stomach. I want to tell him that it is too much for me, but as I watch his smile, as I watch him close his eyes and slip into the past where he has his hand on Olivia’s stomach, where he has his family in his arms, it makes me stand still. He reaches his face forward and lays the side of his head on Bean. I close my eyes and join him in this precious moment and let myself pretend that it is Samuel who has his hand around my waist, Samuel’s head leaning against our child, Samuel’s lips that are giving my unborn child its first kiss. I run my fingers through Charlie’s hair and pretend that his coarse waves are softer and finer; as I run my hands down towards the nape of his neck and twirl his hair around my finger, I let myself believe that I’m a normal woman, who is holding the man that she loves, while he embraces me and kisses our child.
The gate outside slams and reminds me that the real world is carrying on outside, but we keep our eyes closed and we pretend that our lives are just the way they should be, that Charlie is holding his pregnant wife and that Bean and I have Samuel.
All of us waiting for our lives to begin again.
Week Twenty-Eight
Samuel
Wales is a much darker place than I was expecting, but inside I feel light. Checking in to the small B&B had been a blast from the past. The elderly lady who had probably run this since the fifties still uses a carbon copy credit card machine. Da jumped into a conversation about how things should stay as they are, much safer, these things, than all of this contactless malarkey. We were asked if we would like a full English breakfast in the morning and Da smiled; that would be grand, he replied.
While he guides me by the arm to the room, he moans about three things: firstly, that he can barely understand her accent and why does Britain have to have so many? I roll my eyes and Michael taps his way up the stairs, while Da moans about the Geordie accent, the Cockney accent, the Manchester accent and that’s before we’ve got into our room.
Michael and I are exhausted, and so we lie back on the bed and close our eyes. With my eyelids shut, the full expanse of the room widens; I push the walls of the tunnel away and I fill in the blank spaces. Da continues to prattle on and so I picture the small window that looks on to the seafront; I widen it, making it so large that it almost fills the wall. Outside, the long stretch of Aberystwyth promenade stretches alongside the Irish Sea; I squint and wonder if I can see the coast of Ireland. The day is so clear, the sky so blue that it looks as though I could swim to its shores.
