Trouble (12 page)

Baby.

I thought it would feel different knowing what it looked like, but I still can’t believe it’s inside me.

Baby.

Maybe I do feel different.

My
baby.

FRIDAY 25
^TH
DECEMBER
CHRISTMAS DAY

HANNAH

I’m dozing on the sofa, listening to Lola play with her second favourite present, a doll she’s named Kooky. Her first favourite present (her words, not mine) is the little black rabbit that Mum and Robert managed to keep a secret even from me. It turns out he’s the reason I was kicked out of the house yesterday, the little bastard.

Lola didn’t know what to call him and she asked Robert to choose, so the rabbit’s called Fiver. He’s now sleeping in his hutch in the utility room, which I know because I just went to check on him. I always wanted a rabbit and, if I’m honest, I’m a bit jealous – although give it a week and I’ll be the one checking his water and changing his straw anyway. Still. If he was my rabbit, I wouldn’t have named him after his price tag.

What will I call the baby? I guess it’s a bit early to start thinking about it – seems like it’s bad luck or something. I don’t want any of that. Seeing it on the screen yesterday made me realize just how much I want everything to be OK. With the baby, I mean. I’m not so stupid to think that everything’s going to be OK with my family.

I watch Lola reach over and take Robert’s new mobile off the coffee table, bored of Kooky already. I shut my eyes again and snuggle further into the cushions. I want this for my baby: cosy fireside family Christmases and big dinners, a pretty twinkly glowy tree and Disney movies…

I think I drifted off.

“… Hannah’s asleep,” I hear Robert say and Mum sighs. I suspect I am about to be summoned for dishes so I keep my eyes tight shut and breathe quietly.
So
not in the mood for dishes right now.

“Careful with that, Lolly – it’s not a toy,” Mum says.

“I am being careful,” comes the reply.

There’s a pause and I can imagine that Mum’s still there, watching Lola to make sure she’s not about to break something.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m using Daddy’s phone to take a picture,” Lola says.

“What of?”

“Kooky’s baby.”

It takes every little bit of control I have to stop my eyes from snapping open. Instead I lift my lids, just a crack, to see that Lola is holding Robert’s phone over Kooky’s tummy as the doll lies back on a cushion.

I shut my eyes and pray for a Christmas miracle.

“How’s Daddy’s phone going to help?” I hear Mum step further into the room.

“It’s going to take a picture of Kooky’s baby inside her tummy.” I kind of glossed over the details on how the nurse got a picture of my baby and Lola definitely thinks mobile phones have something to do with it.

“You are?” Mum asks.

“So we know the baby’s OK,” Lola explains.

Please shut up, Lola…

“And is her baby OK?”

“Yes.”

There’s a short silence, then, “Lola, where did you learn about this?”

“Hannah.”

I pretend my hardest to be asleep, like a little kid hiding under a bath towel thinking no one can see me if I can’t see them.

“Hannah told you?” Robert chimes in, disapproval ringing in his voice.

“No. She said not to say…” Lola’s not sounding so certain now and I can imagine she’s looking over at me.

“Hannah?” Mum says my name in a way that’s meant to wake me up.

Keep your eyes closed.

“I know you’re awake.”

I open my eyes. They’re both looking at me: Mum curious; Robert cross.

“You were telling Lola about making babies?” Mum obviously thinks this is her area of expertise, not mine.

“I—”

“You shouldn’t be talking about it with her. She’s too young.” Robert weighs in a bit louder than he means to because he’s had a little too much wine.

“Robert. Volume,” Mum says sharply, as she has been doing all evening.

“Stop shouting!” Lola interrupts. “You’ll scare her baby.”

Oh, Lola…

“What?” Robert and Mum don’t seem to realize what’s going on; they’re looking at Kooky still.

“Hannah’s baby. You don’t want to scare it by shouting.”

AARON

I’m sitting on the stone bench that overlooks the sloping front garden. It’s cold, but my cheeks are still burning hot from being shut inside close to a log fire and too many relatives, and there’s a white heat in my mind that’s so intense it’s almost consuming me.

I breathe, watching a little of it disappear in the air.

One breath at a time, little by little, heat out, cold in, until I’m there.

Uncles Matt and Dave were talking to Zoë, Matt’s wife, about me. About how pale I looked. About how my parents hadn’t come to them to talk about the problem. About how they shut out the Family. That was no way to deal with these things – we’re family, we share our problems, we share the
burden
of our children’s woes. We don’t hide and pretend everything is all right.

But did you hear? They sent him to counselling
.

Counselling? Well, of course, he would need that after—

I heard Gran walk in, sensible clops of sensible shoes on the flagstones.

It didn’t stop them.

He only went to three sessions
. (Wrong, Uncle Dave. I went to four.)

Well
.

Well
.

Well
.

Stephanie told me she’d set him up with visiting
.

Visiting? Who?

At one of the old folks’ homes her company do the supplies for
. (Gran does not put herself in the category of old folks because her back’s still straight and her mind sharp.)

How’s that supposed to help?

No answer. I imagine there was a lot of shrugging. (Mum’s logic was that I need some perspective – a bit of purpose. Which is true.)

Little Lynette told me he’s very withdrawn
. (Of course, I forgot, brattish seven-year-olds are experts in psychoanalysis – I should have gone to Zoë’s daughter for counselling.)

It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to watch
.

Mm
.

Mm
.

Mm
.

Goes to show
.

I walked past the door. You could almost see the shared thought bubble:

How long has he been there? Did he hear us?!

“We’re leaving on Monday,” I said, looking back. “Best to finish the conversation then.”

Then I came out here.

There’s a swell in the volume of voices as someone opens the back door and crunches down the path towards me. Dad sits down and holds his hand out flat then grunts.

“Snowing.”

It’s winter. We’re in Yorkshire. I am not entirely blown away by this turn of events.

“Your mum is currently tearing strips out of Zoë and the uncles.”

I say nothing.

“They feel pretty bad about it.”

Still have nothing to say.

“Talk to me, Aaron.” He pauses. “Please.”

I turn and look at him. He’s staring at me, eyes a little bleary from the smoke and the alcohol and yesterday’s four-hour drive.

“There’s nothing to say.” I watch him watching me, looking for signs of mental instability. “I think they’re unwise to talk about me whilst I’m in the house. And rude. But then, y’know, your family…”

I crack a smile to show I’m joking but Dad’s echo of the same is weak. Our timing’s all wrong these days.

“Come back to us, son.”

I stare at the ground between my feet and focus on the fuzz of frost on the blades of grass.

“It’s hard. I’m trying.”

But I wonder whether I really am.

Dad puts his arm around me, pressing his face into my hair. “I just wish I knew what was going on in here.”

“Guilt, Dad.”

There’s a silence between us. This is old ground.

“We’re all guilty of something,” he says and I know he’s thinking that there was something he could have done to help. That my parents’ love is so strong they’d rather see a flaw in their parenting than a flaw in their son is overwhelming.

It’s too much to be forgiven when all you want is to be blamed.

HANNAH

“I can’t tell you who the father is” sounds a lot like “I don’t know who the father is” to an already hysterical parent.

“How many have there
been?
” The look that crosses my mother’s face shames me more than anything I’ve ever done with a boy – and yet it’s still easier to let her think I’ve been knocked up by a nameless random than tell her the truth. I think that would be one truth too many after learning that not only am I over three months pregnant, but that I turned to Gran for help.

Robert tells me to leave the room. We will talk in the morning. As I turn to shut the door, I see Mum burrow into his big broad shoulder, pressing her face into the cheesey Christmas jumper he wears every year. I watch as her shoulders shake and he wraps his arms around her, protecting her from the hurt I’ve caused.

I shut the door and slide down the other side. Mum has Robert. I have no one.

And it’s all my fault.

AARON

Sleep is dangerous country. You relinquish control of body and mind, hand over everything and leave yourself vulnerable for those unwaking hours.

I never used to have problems sleeping. Not before. Now sleep and I are uncomfortable bed companions, with me lying frigid beneath the sheets waiting to feel its arms slip around me, then giving in to the inevitable. Sleep cannot be trusted. Sometimes it takes you away for what feels like a lifetime to deposit you awake and alert mere minutes after it claimed you. Sometimes it snatches seconds and gives hours in return. And when you slip behind that black curtain there’s no telling what waits on the other side…

Sometimes I’m living my dreams, sometimes I’m aware that I’m dreaming, but there’s a special kind of dream that is a living nightmare. I know what’s coming, I’m aware of what I’m being dragged inexorably towards, but I’m also living it, like it’s something I’ve never experienced before, so I get to feel the horror and the dread every time, as if it’s the first. How does my brain allow this to happen? What stupid short circuit has been set up so that I get to experience apprehension and surprise at the same time?

And why is it that this dream can strike at any time, turning innocuous fun, or satisfying sexy time, or even calming blankness into something that erases every bit of good feeling I’ve ever had and forces me to face the worst of myself?

It starts with the rain.

In my dreams I get 3D, surround sound, smell-o-vision… I also get wet. IMAX has nothing on me.

First I feel the drops splatting one by one. But it’s just me – no one else around me is getting wet. Every time I ask them, I point to the sky and to the wet drops on my arms –
Look, I’m wet
– but after I’ve shown a couple of people I start to notice that it’s not water that’s falling on me. It’s blood.

That’s usually when the sky darkens and the rain starts to fall properly. Whoever else is in the dream starts to melt away, they get lost in the torrents of rain falling from the sky, because it’s rainwater falling from the sky – it only turns to blood when it lands on me. I’m getting wet, and cold and scared.
Where is everyone?

Then I hear a voice calling me.

Ty!

This has been confusing me recently, because I’m getting used to being called Aaron now but, still, my dream self recognizes my name and starts to follow the sound. It’s not easy, the rain is loud and there’s thunder in the air.

Ty!

Only when I’m already walking towards the silhouette of the person calling my name do I start to wonder who it is, but I never guess. I both know, and don’t know.

It’s Chris.

I point to my bloodstained clothes. “It’s raining blood, dude.”

“It’s not raining,” he says. “It’s me.”

There’s silence. Everything stops: the rain, the thunder. A perfect moment of stillness.

Then he’s ripped open from the inside out, blood spraying over me and there’s this noise. A
whumph
and a crunch and a sound that I only ever heard once, but I’ve listened to again and again and again…

And I’m listening to it now, watching him fall to the floor in front of me as I stand there in the rain, covered in blood – his blood – watching my best friend hit the floor and he’s screaming in pain and writhing around and I’m sobbing but there’s nothing I can do because I can’t move towards him – every time I try I’m moving further away.

But no matter how far away I get, I can hear him screaming and sobbing as if he’s right there inside my own head.

Because he is. That screaming and sobbing? That’s me.

SATURDAY 26
^TH
DECEMBER
BOXING DAY

HANNAH

“Ivy.”

“Paula.”

I give Gran a kiss on the cheek and go through to her kitchen to put the kettle on, passing the tiny fake Christmas tree in the corner. There are some presents under it waiting for me to share the fun in opening them. There’s one for me from Dad. At least I hope there is – there wasn’t one under our tree.

Something tells me there won’t be any present-opening today or, if there is, it won’t be joyful.

I take the teapot over to the table in Gran’s dining area where Mum and Gran are sitting awkwardly upright like two people on a stage, set to start a performance they haven’t rehearsed properly. There are two more chairs: one near Gran; one near Mum. I sit on the bed.

“You know why I’m here,” my mum says.

Gran nods and gives me a sad look. I called her this morning to tell her what happened, but Mum caught me, took the phone off me and invited herself to Cedarfields.

“I understand that you’ve been helping Hannah through all this?”