Over You (29 page)

She backed away from him. ‘No, don’t “Oh Jose” me,’ she said bitterly. She glared at him, hating him. ‘Don’t you dare! I’ve just had the worst, scariest time, and you tell me I’m ridiculous?’ She shook her head, daring him to come any closer. ‘You carry on,’ she told him. ‘
I’ll
go and sit with Toby.’

Downstairs, Sam was staring at Toby with interest when Josie came back in to the living room. ‘I thought you was dead,’ he was saying, looking at his brother as if he were a particularly fascinating museum exhibit. ‘Really and truly dead. Cos you were going like
this
.’ He lay on the floor and started jerking his arms and legs around on the carpet. ‘And me and Mum were saying—’

‘Sam! Stop it!’ Josie snapped. ‘That’s not funny!’

‘I was only showing—’

‘Well, don’t,’ Josie said. She sighed, feeling as if she might fall apart any minute. Deep breath, come on. Don’t freak them out any more by shouting at them. ‘I’m just going to put the oven on for tea. I’ll be back in one second, all right?’

‘I nearly
was
dead,’ she heard Toby boasting as she left the room. ‘Very very nearly. And then you would have had to bury me in the garden!’

Josie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she turned on the oven, then filled the kettle. She leaned against the kitchen worktop as she waited for it to boil, gazing dispiritedly at the sink. The washing-up bowl was dirty. The draining board was smeared and there were pools of cloudy water at the back. The windows needed cleaning . . .

Out of habit, she looked up as she heard the chittering of the magpie outside. And there, to her disbelief, was a second magpie on the lawn, pecking at something in the grass. Two for joy. Yeah, right.

Yeah,
right.

Pete came downstairs ten minutes later with a couple of over-stuffed sports bags. Socks snaked out of the zip of one of them. A paperback book poked out of the top of the other. Josie was watching a Tyrannosaurus Rex tear a smaller dinosaur into bloody shreds on the telly as she sat on the sofa, one arm around each boy.

‘I’ll be off then,’ Pete announced, dropping his bags on the floor and letting his arms dangle by his sides as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Was he waiting for the boys to rush into his arms for a farewell hug?

Neither boy moved a muscle in response.

‘Say bye to your dad, then,’ Josie ordered them.

‘Bye,’ they droned, eyes still glued to the screen.

‘Cool,’ Sam breathed, as the smaller dinosaur fell limply to the ground and the T-Rex chewed into its side.

‘That is so
gross
,’ Toby said, his eyes delighted at the bone-crunching noises that ensued.

‘So, boys, do you fancy coming out with me at the weekend?’ Pete said, with a rather forced air of joviality.

No reply.

‘Do I have to switch it off?’ Pete asked. ‘Boys?’

‘Don’t turn it off, this is the best bit!’ Sam protested.

Pete turned to Josie. ‘Shall I pick them up on Sunday morning, say, ten o’clock?’ he asked. ‘It
is
Father’s Day, after all,’ he added lamely.

‘Sure,’ Josie said sarcastically. ‘Can’t miss
Father’s
Day, can we?’

Pete hesitated. ‘OK. Take care, then. Ring me if you need me to do anything, yeah?’

Josie nodded, turning back to the screen. The small dinosaur gave one final whimper as the T-Rex crunched through its leg, and then lay still. Josie leaned back wearily as she heard the front door close. Goodbye and good riddance, she thought. He’d been no help at all to her in the hospital. She didn’t need him.

She blinked at the revelation. She didn’t actually
need
him.

On screen, the T-Rex licked its lips and thundered away, alone.

A feeling of anxiety settled upon Josie that she couldn’t shake off. It weighed her down, worries constantly goosing her. Was Toby getting another temperature? Was he too hot, too cold, too anything? Was he looking flushed, pale, blotchy? Would it happen all over again?

The responsibility – the sole responsibility – for his health and happiness lay around her neck like a millstone. If he had another convulsion, it was up to Josie to spot it, nobody else. There was no way she could trust any other single person to monitor him with the same fierceness that she could. Pete didn’t even come into it. Not after the Radio 5 clothes-packing episode. It still made Josie clench her fists whenever she thought about that. It was as if Toby and Sam had slipped off his radar now that he’d walked out. And that hurt Josie more than anything, knowing that one day the boys would realize that for themselves, see that they’d plummeted straight down Daddy’s list of priorities like a stone down a well. God. How did a child deal with something like that anyway? It was crappy enough for an adult to discover they weren’t loved as much by another person as they’d thought. But for a kid . . .

It was all too much. Josie felt as if she couldn’t face the rest of the world any more. It was enough for her to worry about, Toby and Sam being under her own roof just breathing and existing without anything bad happening, let alone venturing out there, in the wider world, with germs just waiting to attack them, cars waiting to knock them over, psychos waiting to steal them away and molest them . . .

No. None of that. She simply would not let that happen.

Instead, Josie ordered in her supermarket shopping online from the safety of the desk in the spare room, and set up the camp-bed in the boys’ bedroom so that she could bunk in with them at night. She told them playgroup was closed for the rest of the week even though that was a complete lie, and joined in every game they thought up so that she could watch over them.

It was as if she’d been bungeed straight back to the newborn days, Josie thought, where she was continually checking her babies were still breathing, still alive. She slept badly on the camp-bed every night, lying there listening to them breathing, unable to fall asleep for fear that she’d miss the last breath. How would she know if Toby had another convulsion in his bed? How would she
know
?

Each time one of them whimpered or muttered she was bolt upright, wide awake with anxiety, anticipating a dash downstairs to call an ambulance. Then, as they quietened again, she’d lie back, staring up at the ceiling through the velvety darkness, her heartbeat as loud as a clock.

By day, she was washed out and stressed. The shock was slamming through her now. She’d thought he was
dying
. She’d thought it was all over. Her son, lying there in her arms, dying. It had been so terrifying, so awful. She’d felt so out of control. She could hardly bear to think about what would have happened if—

No. Stop. It
hadn’t
happened, she had to keep reminding herself. Toby hadn’t died. And luckily, within just a few hits of the penicillin, he was running about, as cheeky and funny as ever, temperature down and staying down. He was fine. Sam was fine. It was only her, Josie, who was finding it hard to pick up the pieces and carry on.

The one and only thing that made her feel better was cleaning the house. God, it had never looked so spotless, not ever. She’d Dustbustered the corners of all the rooms, and wiped down each and every grubby skirting board. She’d scrubbed out the microwave. She’d disinfected the entire bathroom and kitchen. She’d even alphabetized all the books and CDs,
and
cleaned their shelves.

The whole house looked and smelled like a Flash advert. Her fingers were wrinkled and sore from the chemicals. But she didn’t care. She didn’t stop. It soothed her to scrub and scour and wipe away all the dirt and dust.

No more germs. No more bugs. No more ear infections. No more terrifying siren-shrieking ambulance rides to the hospital. No more misery. She hoped.

Pete came at the weekend to take the boys out, and Josie seized up with tension as he led them away to the car. ‘Can’t I come with you?’ she begged. ‘I just . . . I just don’t want to let them out of my sight. Not yet.’

‘But they’ll be with me!’ Pete countered, palms up. ‘I’ll be looking after them!’

That’s what I’m worried about, Josie thought desperately, watching him drive away. That’s the problem, pal.

No doubt he already had the radio yapping in the car, he’d be concentrating on the cricket scores rather than his own sons – his own flesh and blood! – in the back seat. It was terrifying. It felt like letting them go off with a stranger. She’d lost all faith in Pete; in fact, she could hardly believe she’d ever trusted him in the first place – to be a faithful husband, to be a diligent father, to tell the truth.

She spent the first hour they were away cleaning the hob and oven. She used a baby wipe to bring the surface of the hob up to a silvery sheen. And then she remembered someone in a magazine who’d advised using cotton buds to clean around the outside of the stove, so she did that, too. It was amazing, the grease and dirt you could get off that way. Then she put her arms into the oven and squatted there, on her haunches, scraping the charred bits of food off its black bottom and scrubbing the wire shelves free of their burned-on fat drips, and then the grill pan, and then even the oven door.

And then she phoned Pete for the fourth time to check everyone was OK.

‘We’re still fine,’ he said with an aggrieved note in his voice. ‘No, no one’s injured themselves since you last phoned, half an hour ago. We. Are. All. Fine. OK?’

She moved out into the garden next, feeling white and pasty as she stepped, blinking, into the sunshine for the first time in days. She’d hardly been out there lately, save to hang out the washing, or supervise the boys on the climbing frame.

Pete had never been interested in the garden, other than as another place to sit and read the paper. It was Josie’s territory, always had been, right from its early incarnation as a rectangle of turf.

The first summer she’d been too bound up in baby-world to do much else, and the garden had stayed a rectangle of turf. But by the following autumn, she had found the occasional burst of energy to dig in flowerbeds and put in a few bulbs. A rowan tree had gone in next, and an apple tree, then four or five low-maintenance shrubs. The summer after that, she’d really got stuck in. Every weekend she’d found time to weed and plant and water, adding in perennials and annuals, putting up trellises for the climbing plants . . .

She gazed around critically, wondering where to start today. She’d neglected it over the last few weeks, and the ground was parched and cracked. The delphiniums were just stumps where the slugs had got at them. The rock rose, which was usually covered in flowers by now, looked yellowy-leaved and droopy.

She’d let it all die. Her lovely garden, which she’d nurtured like a third child, had withered away neglected. Even the grass was patchy and brown.

She went to fill up the watering can, the sun hot on her face. She felt like a murderer.

The boys returned rosy-cheeked and in high spirits, having gorged themselves on fast food and sweets at a wildlife park all day. Sam had a new elephant mask that he refused to take off, even while he ate his tea. Toby had a Hyena Blasta, a horrible gun-shaped toy that made an awful cackling hyena laugh whenever you squeezed the trigger.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!

It set Josie’s teeth on edge within five minutes of them being home. And Pete knew damn well she wasn’t keen on the boys having toy guns. So what was he doing, buying Toby a Hyena Blasta? Was he bent on finishing off her nervous breakdown?
I’ve started so I’ll finish . . .

‘They’ve been fine,’ he said casually at the door. ‘We’ve all had a great time, haven’t we, boys?’

‘YEAH!’ they cheered, kicking off their shoes and racing past her, Sam trumpeting, Toby cackling along with his hyena toy.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!

‘Well, thanks,’ Josie said uncertainly, lingering at the door. ‘And Toby was OK? No temperatures? Did he have plenty of water to drink? Did you remember to give him his antibiotics?’

‘Oops – I knew there was something. What did I do with it?’ Pete held his hands up. ‘Must still be in the car, hang on.’

‘What, you forgot his antibiotics?’ Josie shouted after his retreating body. He didn’t answer – pretending not to have heard, no doubt – and she felt a fury whirling up inside her like a tornado. Unbelievable, that he could be so cavalier about his own son’s health after what had happened. Unbefuckinglievable!

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!

Pete came back, the bottle of penicillin in his hand. ‘Slipped my mind,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Not to worry.’

She glared at him. Not to worry? Not to bloody worry?

‘Great,’ she said tightly, snatching the bottle from his fingers. ‘That’s probably wrecked the whole course now, and it won’t work. Thanks a lot, Pete!’

‘Hey – no need to—’ he started, but she’d already slammed the door in his face.

‘Toby!’ she called along the hallway, striding down it in search of the boys. ‘Tobes – you need to have your yellow medicine now. Daddy said he
forgot
,’ she added in a bellow, just in case Pete happened to be listening through the letterbox. ‘The incompetent moron,’ she added under her breath.