Close My Eyes (6 page)

Then the doctor suggested I should give birth naturally, and both Art
and
I insisted that we wanted a C-section. Art was a whirlwind on this. At the time I felt grateful to have someone
fighting my corner for me.

Now, I can’t help but look back and wonder why he was so insistent.

We left the soft surroundings of the consulting rooms to enter the steel-and-antiseptic world of the operating theatre. I was so scared before the general anaesthetic, my hands were shaking. I
remember Art’s warm fingers curling over mine, covering the raw torn skin around my nails, his eyes gleaming wet.

‘I’m here, Gen,’ he’d said. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

And then the silence in the recovery room as I came round. My eyes so heavy, struggling to open. Trying to focus on the clock on the wall, wondering where I was for a split second, then catching
a glimpse of a nurse scurrying past outside the room, her face turned away. Shifting my gaze a fraction. Seeing Art sitting beside me, leaning forward, his face lined with pain. No baby. No baby.
Dr Rodriguez walking over . . . a shadowy figure behind Art . . .

‘I’m so sorry we lost her,’ Art said. And his words sent me spinning and falling into darkness.

After that it’s a blur: I remember the view from my window – a willow tree sweeping across a patch of grass with the curving glass roof of the birthing pod in the distance, a harsh
reminder of the labour I had hoped for. I stared at the tree and the grass and the glass roof for hours on end, trying to take in what had happened. Dr Rodriguez explained his suspicions –
later confirmed by the tests into Beth’s DNA – that she had a defective chromosome. We got the details weeks later. Full Trisomy 18, a random genetic condition that isn’t
hereditary and which can be suffered to varying degrees. It killed my Beth before she could live.

I was numb for days, way past Beth’s funeral, way past the test results. And then, slowly, stealthily, Grief crept up on me. A monster, fighting me inside my head, where no one, not even
Art or Hen or my mum, could reach me. And with the grief, the anger. The unreasonable fury at perfectly nice people with babies and well-meaning women who tried to empathize by telling me about
their miscarriages.

Unthinkable, uncontrollable, this pain seeped through me, gradually becoming a part of my life, absorbed into its reality. Wanting to move on and yet not wanting to leave Beth behind. No baby.
No writing. Just drifting. For the past eight years.

I get up from the sofa. It’s still early afternoon. Art won’t be back until the evening. I wander listlessly into the kitchen, but have no appetite, so I wander out again. As the
afternoon wears on, doubt creeps over me again.

I meander around the house, unable to settle to anything. In the end I find myself at the top of the house, in Art’s office again. I don’t want to look but I have to. If
there’s any paperwork on my stay at the Fair Angel still in our possession, it will surely be in this room.

I stand in the doorway, looking around at the large desk and the rows of shelves and filing cabinets. Light strikes the wooden floor in stripes. I have no idea what I’m even looking for.
Immediately after the stillbirth Art took charge, making all the arrangements, signing whatever needed to be signed. I was glad at the time but, looking back, it’s like that set the tone for
the years that have followed, with Art increasingly in control of who and what he wants to be and me floundering. It’s ironic that the differences that brought us together – me drawn to
Art’s energy and sense of purpose, and Art attracted to my creativity and, as he saw it, unpredictability – are the very things that have driven us down parallel paths since Beth.

The floorboards creak as I cross the office floor. They need to be re-laid – have done since we bought the house. I promised this year I would finally get around to sorting them out, but
it hasn’t happened yet. Art, bless him, has never complained about this or any other of my administrative failings.

I don’t know where to begin, so I start opening drawers at random. Art’s filing system is highly organized, but unlabelled. He has a phenomenal memory and knows – or claims to
know – exactly where everything is. Apart from the cupboard in the corner, which is locked, everything is accessible, so there’s a lot to get through. I could, of course, call him again
and ask where the Fair Angel info is, but he won’t understand why I want to look. Anyway, he’ll still be in his meeting, not to mention in another country.

After a while I work out the logic to the layout. Everything to do with his personal tax affairs in one cabinet, personal investments in another, household stuff, contractors . . . I stop at a
section of the cabinet that seems more haphazard than the rest. I pull out a few papers. Certificates. Licences. Diplomas.

Half an hour later, I’ve been through every official document Art has stored here, from his childhood swimming certificate for 50 metres (‘You have now achieved Flipper
level!’), through various school reports from City of London Boys – to which he won a scholarship – to his degree cert. in Economics, finding nothing relevant to Beth.

I start again and work systematically through every single file in each of the four cabinets. There are business records going back years and letters from various financial advisers too. I flick
through a sheaf of paperwork from one of Art’s old accountants . . . business loans . . . overdrafts . . . VAT . . . It’s overwhelming and largely incomprehensible.

I come to a folder marked: ‘Personal’. Inside there’s a small sheaf of bank statements for an account I didn’t know Art had. The account covers the year after Beth died
and is in the name of ‘L. B. Plus’. As far as I know, this isn’t a Loxley Benson trading name, though Dan, the finance director, has set up various business accounts for the
company. But the folder says ‘personal’. I can’t stop myself from looking down the list of transactions, a slightly sick feeling in my stomach. I know Art loves me. I know he is
devoted and faithful, and yet I can’t help but wonder what I might find here. The suggestions shriek inside my head: Evidence of meals in romantic restaurants? Payments to prostitutes? I tell
myself not to be stupid.

And there’s nothing that looks out of the ordinary. The running balance on the account is high – it never seems to drop below £10,000 – and there are several outgoings in
the thousands: a few online payments to the wine store that Art uses for the office, deposits for business trips to the places Art regularly visits . . .

And then I notice a lump sum . . . £50,000 paid in on 16 June eight years ago, one week after Beth died, and paid out again a few days later.

What was that for? The payee is named as ‘MDO’. I don’t recognize the initials. I think back. Eight years ago, Loxley Benson was already well-established and generating a
decent income, with hundreds of thousands of pounds going through the books every month. Art and I were planning to buy a bigger house soon after Beth was born – a plan that ended up being
shelved for two years. It is entirely possible Art could have spent 50k from the business that I didn’t know about, though I can’t believe he wouldn’t have told me if the money
was used for something personal.

I flick through more bank statements, searching for additional payments to MDO. But there isn’t anything.

I sit back on my heels, my heart thudding.
Stop it, Gen, you’re being stupid, paranoid, crazy.
This money could be for anything. It certainly isn’t enough to pay a doctor to
fake a baby’s death.

Another couple of hours pass and I’m exhausted. There’s info here on holidays and business trip, plus copies of both Art’s and my birth certificates. But there is
nothing
here on Beth or my time in the Fair Angel hospital.

I rub my eyes. They’re sore from staring at all the fine print and my head is aching too, so I put all the files back and, after a quick look to check nothing appears too obviously
disturbed, I go downstairs, get into the car and drive to M&S. I spend an hour shopping in a daze, stocking up on party snacks and mixers. I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts I almost
walk out of the store with my unpaid trolley of goods, realizing my mistake just inches from the door.

I drive home, eat several cocktail sausages and a handful of salad leaves straight from the bag, then switch off the phone and go to bed. I don’t normally nap in the daytime, but today I
feel utterly exhausted. Our bedroom is a mix of our tastes. Simple, uncluttered and plain for me, with splashes of the strong, bold colours that Art loves.

I lie under the duvet, but sleep doesn’t come. Instead, memories wash over me like the sea crashing over the shore – unstoppable.

My dad died long ago, when I was a little girl. I don’t remember him well – just snatches out of time – but from what people tell me he and Art had a lot in common. Like Art,
my dad was charming, driven and talented. And in a sense he was equally successful.

But Art is on top of his life in a way my dad never was.

My dad was a musician – a brilliant guitarist who played with every major seventies band from Pink Floyd to The Rolling Stones. He was away from home a lot, but when he was around he made
everything a party. He would always bring me exotic presents and greet me with a huge smile and some silly song he’d made up for me.
My Queen
, he called me, all mock serious –
or
Queenie
when he
really
wanted to tease me. He had long, dark hair that fell over his face when he played his guitar, and hands that always shook in the morning.

I hold out my hands in front of me. Mum says they are like his – slim, with long, tapered fingers. And my mouth. That’s like his, too. Bottom lip thin, top lip full. I think Beth
would have had our mouth. I wonder what Dad would have been like as a granddad.

I close my eyes, remembering how his breath smelled sweet when he kissed me goodnight. I didn’t realize until I was older that the sweetness came from vodka. He had bottles hidden all over
the house. I tried some once, when I was about six – a bottle I found under some towels in the bathroom cupboard. Just a little sip. It made me feel sick, like a liquid version of the way
Mum’s hairspray smelled.

They called me Geniver after a character in a movie they’d watched during the trip they made to India together before I was born. I can’t imagine Mum – even the young, hippyish
version I know from photos – enjoying the rough freedom of India, but I loved Dad’s stories of how they wandered together through village festivals and markets, the scents of cardamom
and cumin heavy in the humid air.

Dad drank himself to death just before my ninth birthday. He was on tour – back in India, ironically – with a now long-forgotten group called Star Fire. You can hear Dad’s
guitar solo on their only hit: ‘Fire in the Hole’. Apparently, the day he died, he recorded the song then argued with the band’s manager. That was the start of a ten-hour drinking
session that ended with him choking to death on his own vomit in an alleyway outside a nightclub.

They found a little salwar kameez he’d bought for me in his hotel room. I still have it.

On an impulse I get out of bed and head for the large walk-in closet that leads off our bedroom. Art’s stuff takes up less than a third of the space in here. The rest is crammed with my
own clothes, mostly things I no longer wear – or that no longer fit.

I rummage along the bottom shelf, looking for the pile of old clothes I brought from Mum’s house when we moved here. I find my Brownie uniform, covered in badges, then my school tie with
its blue-and-maroon stripes. The salwar kameez lies underneath. It’s red silk. I never wore it. It only fitted me for a few months after Dad died, when the idea of actually putting it on was
too painful. Suppose I tore it? Or spilt something on it? I kept it pristine, a treasure, a precious memory. And then one day I went to dress up in it in front of my bedroom mirror and had grown
too big for it. I wept then, thinking about Dad dying alone, missing him.

It’s funny, I have no memory of him ever being drunk around me. Sometimes I even wonder if he was really as bad as Mum likes to say. After all, musicians are allowed a little licence.
Partying goes with the territory.

One of the things that drew me to Art was that his father wasn’t around when he was a child either. He understands what it’s like to be without a parent when you’re young and
to idolize them while somehow, somewhere, thinking you must be to blame for their absence.

I reach under the salwar kameez and take out what I know is there: a small, white babygro. It’s the only item of Beth’s baby clothing that I kept. I let Hen have everything else
– it seemed only fair, she had so little money for Nathan back then.

I take the babygro and hold it to my face. After Beth, I carried it with me everywhere for a year, I even slept with it. I packed it away the day we scattered Beth’s ashes. It’s
years since I’ve seen it and, as I feel its softness against my cheek, I realize that it no longer has any power over me. It’s just a piece of cloth. Never worn, never used. That I
invested it with the significance I did seems amazing to me now.

Could Art have lied to me about Beth?

The question ricochets around my head.

Ridiculous. Impossible. Even if he were capable of such dishonesty, what possible reason could he have for colluding in a plot to take our child – our first and only, much-wanted baby
– away from us?

I put the babygro and the salwar kameez away, run a bath and soak in it.

I strain my memory, trying to bring back the moment Art told me Beth was dead.
We lost her.
Suddenly the words sound ambiguous. Lost her to whom?

I close my eyes, remembering how Art had cried in my arms and how I’d wept in his. How each day brought a new reminder that, although we had no baby, no one had informed my body, so that
my belly sagged and ached under the long purple gash of the fresh C-section scar, while unneeded milk leaked from my nipples. Art walked every morning along the river, hands in his pockets,
shoulders hunched. I saw him from my window and everything in his body spoke of his despair. He went to pieces at the funeral, too. I watched him from behind the numb wall of my own grief as his
legs gave way under him and Morgan helped him stumble red-eyed out of the crematorium.