‘Why did you do it?’ said Octavia. They were sitting, she
and Louise, in her car, just down the road from Rookston.
Louise had met her on the doorstep: for that at least she
admired her. She was looking terrible. ‘You can’t come in,’
she had said, ‘we can’t talk here. It would be dreadful for
Daddy, for Dickon.’
‘I don’t care where we talk.’
‘Let’s go for a drive.’
‘I couldn’t help it,’ Louise said simply. ‘I just — fell in love
with him. I’d never felt like that before. I really hadn’t. It
was just—’
‘Don’t tell me. It was bigger than both of you. You
betrayed me, your best friend, and your own husband,
simply because of some romantic fantasy you felt you had to
live out. You always were strong on all that stuff. Jesus,
Louise. How old are you?’
‘I’m thirty-six. Same as you. That’s the whole point.
Time’s passing, isn’t it? We haven’t got that much time left,
have we?’
‘Oh, the biological clock. That old thing. Next thing
you’ll be telling me is you felt you had to have another
baby.’
‘Well, I did. That as well.’
‘But you’re not pregnant? With Tom’s baby? Tell me
that at least isn’t true?’
Louise looked at her. Her blue eyes were very dull and
heavy. ‘No, I’m not pregnant,’ she said finally.
In spite of everything, all the pain, that was somehow
better.
‘How — how did you know it was me?’ said Louise.
‘He knew about the abortion. I only told one person in
the whole world: your mother. And then she told me you
found out. Nobody else knew, nobody at all. So it had to
be you. There were other things. But I ignored them. I
knew it couldn’t be you. Not you. Not my best friend.
Why did you tell him about that? Hadn’t you betrayed me
enough?’
‘Because it was so awful. So unfair. I’d lost Juliet. One
day I had a lovely, warm, smiling, breathing little girl, and
the next day she was ice cold, dead. I had to put her in a
coffin, I put her in myself, you know, and kissed her and said night night, sleep tight, and then … then …’
Octavia felt her eyes fill with tears in spite of everything,
felt her heart literally ache. ‘Oh, Louise.’ She put out her
hand, tried to take Louise’s.
She snatched it away. ‘No! Don’t touch me. And what
do you do? You just carelessly throw a baby away. Chuck it
out. Oh, I don’t think I want that one, you said to the
doctor, it’s not quite perfect, pull it out, would you, pull it
out and throw it away, down the sluice, only be quick, I’ve
got a meeting later this morning. It was safe in there,
Octavia, safe and warm; it trusted you, it was alive; my baby
was dead. You had a choice; I had no choice.’
‘That was it, was it?’ said Octavia slowly. ‘You were so
angry with me, so jealous, you had to hurt me the way you
most could?’
‘Oh, no,’ said Louise, and smiled at her, her sweet, gentle
smile. ‘No, we’d been sleeping together long before I knew
about you. About your baby. Until Mummy was ill and I
found that letter you’d written her. How sweet, you
coming to her for advice. Why did you do that, exactly?
Why not talk to Tom about it?’
‘Tom was away. In the States. He didn’t even know
about the baby. He’d been more or less commuting for
weeks and weeks, working on some new account or other.
I tried to tell him, but we had a row about something
stupid; then he went back, and I had the test. And you
know the rest.’
‘If someone had said to me,’ said Louise, ‘“Your baby has
spina bifida,” do you think I’d have cared? Do you think I’d
have thrown her away, put her in an incinerator? That’s
what they do, you know, with those babies, those aborted
babies. They burn them, they—’
‘Shut up!’ said Octavia. ‘Just shut up. And don’t try to
compare the two. Juliet was a child, a person, she was nine
months old; my baby was — was just a fertilised egg.’
That’s what she’d kept telling herself, that it was only a
fertilised egg, not a baby at all, not really, not something growing in her, being nurtured by her, not something she’d betrayed. That was what she had hung on to: what had kept
her from cracking.
‘Why didn’t you tell Tom? It was his baby too, he might
not have felt the same, he might have thought it was
actually worth keeping, caring for …’
‘I thought it was best not,’ said Octavia, very quietly. ‘I
knew he wouldn’t want it. The whole thing was a mistake,
he’d said there was no way he wanted any more children,
and illness, any kind of deformity, sickens him, he really
can’t cope with it. He can’t even bear the children being
sick. Everything has to be attractive for Tom, perfect, clean,
wholesome. There was no way he’d want to keep a — a
deformed baby.’
‘But you didn’t actually know that. Not for sure. You
didn’t give him the option even to think about it.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Octavia again. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut
up. Don’t you start preaching morals at me. Don’t you try
and tell me I’m wicked. What you’ve been doing was
disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. I can’t bear to look at
you, knowing you were screwing my husband. You. My
best friend. And then pretending you were sorry for me,
wanted to help. Asking me if I knew who it was, if we were
still sleeping together, for Christ’s sake. That is truly sick.
What you did was a total, utter betrayal. Of years and years
of affection and trust and sharing of everything — oh, God, I
don’t want you in the car with me, even. Get out, Louise.
Get out and walk. I’m going home. I absolutely loathe you.
And it hurts more than I can tell. Far more than when I first
found out about Tom. The very last thing you said to me
this afternoon, I can hardly bear to think about it, the very
last thing, “Remember I love you.” You said that. You told
me you loved me. God! You don’t know what love is. You
have no idea. No idea at all. Get out. Go away. And don’t
ever come near me again. Ever.’
Louise got out of the car and walked. She walked back to
the house and went in and smiled at her father and said she
was fine, that the little walk with Octavia had done her
good. And then she went upstairs and read a story to Dickon, who said he had a tummy ache. She went and
chatted to her father for a while, about her mother, and
how he was coping and what his plans were, and about
Sandy’s business, and about Dickon and how he would
soon be at school and that he seemed to be much better and
happier these days. After that she kissed him good night and
went to have a bath, and lay in it for a long time, and
looked at her legs and decided they needed shaving and she
went to find a razor and spent quite a long time doing that,
and then she massaged her favourite body lotion into herself
and brushed her hair and put on a nightdress, one of her
favourites, white lawn, trimmed with lace, and then she
went down to the kitchen and made herself a hot drink and
filled a carafe with water, and lay in bed, reading magazines
until she fell asleep over them.
She woke up with a start, a few hours later, and looked at
the clock. It was already half past two. She’d wasted a lot of
time.
She sat up in bed and reached for the small hoard of
sleeping pills she had found in her mother’s medicine
cabinet, and the four which Dr Hodgen had left for her,
and started to swallow them, very carefully, one by one …
Dickon woke up feeling horrible. His tummy hurt, he felt
sick and he was rather cold; when he sat up, he felt dizzy.
He stayed in bed for a bit, hoping to feel better and go back
to sleep, and then realised he felt sicker than ever, slithered
out of bed and made for the bathroom.
Halfway there, he realised he wasn’t going to make it; he
stood on the landing, alternately vomiting and crying.
Charles appeared looking anxious. ‘Oh, dear, bad luck,
old chap. Look, let’s get you into the bathroom, that’s the
ticket, get those off — oh, whoops, not again, poor old
soldier.’
‘Janet said I shouldn’t eat so much ice cream,’ said
Dickon, through chattering teeth.
‘Well, she was right. She usually is. Come on, off with
the jacket as well. Good boy. Now shall we put you in the
bath, do you think?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Dickon, ‘and get Mummy.’
‘Oh, we don’t want to bother poor Mummy. She was so
tired. Let’s just get you cleaned up, and then back to bed.’
‘I want Mummy,’ said Dickon and started to cry.
‘Maybe. When you’re all cleaned up. Come on, now,
hop in here. Was it Janet’s own ice cream? Yes, I thought
so. Very rich. Your uncles used to make themselves sick
with it too. That’s better, lie right down, in the water. Now
where are we going to find you some clean pyjamas, I
wonder …”
Dickon sat in the bath, shivering; he felt much better, but
he still wanted his mother. Surely she’d want to look after
him if she knew he was ill, however tired she was?
His grandfather came back into the room, helped him
out of the bath, and snuggled him dry in a towel. ‘Feeling
better?’
‘Yes, much. Thank you. But I do want Mummy—’
‘Look, tell you what,’ said Charles, ‘you get into my bed
for a bit, and we’ll see …’
‘Yes, all right.’
When Charles came back to his room, Dickon was asleep,
breathing steadily, his colour much better. He looked at the
clock: almost half past four. It would soon be light. He’d
have trouble getting back to sleep himself now. Two hours
of wakeful misery, remembering, missing, longing for
Anna. He decided a tiny, second nightcap would be a good
idea; he went downstairs and made himself his second hot
toddy of the night. As he passed Louise’s room, he stopped,
turned the handle and peeped in; she was sleeping soundly,
quite heavily even. Good. That was exactly what she
needed. Charles eased himself into bed beside his grandson
and fell asleep with surprising speed.
Tom woke up at five with a start; he was still on the sofa,
the screen was a whining white-out, and he was almost
unbearably cold. Where was Octavia? She must have come
in without him hearing her, probably realised he was there
and went on up to bed, not wishing to speak to him. He’d
better check.
Rubbing his eyes, he staggered out to the hall: the chain
wasn’t on the door, but she was always forgetting it. He went
up to their room, but the bed was empty; he checked both
guest rooms, even the small spare bed in the corner of the
nursery. He stood there for a while looking at Minty,
determinedly asleep, her bottom thrust into the air, her rosebud mouth working gently round her thumb. Thinking of the other baby, the one before Minty, the one Octavia had
discarded: how could she have done that without consulting
him, discussing it, how could she have not told him she was
pregnant even? Whatever the reason, Minty was actually the
result. Strange to think that she might never have been born,
never existed. And now, oh, God, now there was another
child of his, waiting to be born. A child Louise had taken from
him by stealth - he had read somewhere that was the female
equivalent of rape — trapping him viciously, more efficiently.
What was to become of that child, who would care for it? Its
half-insane mother? Its hapless, amoral father?
Tom made a sound that was half-sigh, half-groan, walked
quietly out of the nursery. More important at this very
moment to find Octavia. He was beginning to feel uneasy.
Perhaps the cottage: yes, that wasn’t so far from Rookston. He
phoned it: there was no reply. He left a message, just the same.
She might be on her way there. But — where was she? Where
had she spent the night? Surely, surely she wouldn’t have done
anything — anything stupid? Or had an accident, driving in a
distressed, exhausted state? Maybe he should phone the
police. Or the hospitals …
Dickon wondered what the awful noise was: thunder?
Something falling downstairs? No, of course, it was snoring.
Loud snoring. Right next to him. His grandfather. He
turned his head, looked at him. Charles was lying on his
back, his mouth open. Each breath sounded louder than the
last. It wasn’t a very nice sound. Dickon sighed. Maybe he
should try and go back to his own bed. If he went back to
his room, he could at least look at the Thomas the Tank
Engine book his mother had been reading to him.
Very carefully, he edged his way out of the big, rather
high bed, tiptoed across the room. He let himself out,
closed the door very carefully and walked down the
corridor towards his own room. He looked longingly at his
mother’s door, but Grandpa was right, she was very tired,
he shouldn’t wake her up. Specially not now he was better.
He went into his own room, rather pleased with himself;
and then realised that the book wasn’t there. Of course; his