Try Not to Breathe (20 page)

A
lex had her plan. Her new plan. Self-devised and not exactly on doctor’s recommendations, but a plan nonetheless. Baby steps. She’d written it down although she really didn’t need to. Thirty minutes later each day, 100ml servings, one day at a time. She’d bought a new measuring jug for the occasion, a personal talisman chosen after nearly an hour of wandering around the sprawling kitchen shop in the posh Pantiles part of town.

It was 12:30 p.m. and overcast. Alex wrapped a cardigan around her pajamas and opened her bottle of Faustino VII. She poured it slowly into her new jug, 100ml precisely, then transferred it into her favorite black wineglass.

After all this time, the central heating still followed the temperature and timings that her mother had set up, it was stone-cold and would be for several more weeks. Alex drew a blanket up over her legs and settled into the sofa dip. Moleskine in her lap, she closed her eyes and tried to do her deep-breathing exercises. Just knowing that she would be leaving a third of her second bottle of wine tonight was making her heart race. What if she forgot when that time came? What if she couldn’t stop herself? If she couldn’t leave a third of a bottle untouched tonight then she would never be able to stop.

She breathed out and counted:
two…three…

Alex woke early and dry. Her cardigan lay next to her under her duvet, and an empty water glass lay on the bedside table. The morning was crisp with a sharp yellow sun-streak underlining the curtain’s edge.

Busting for the loo, she threw the cover back and paced into the bathroom for a wee. She trotted downstairs, trying to contain her pride.

In the kitchen, with a perfect purple ring sitting under it and a tatty drip-covered label, stood her second wine bottle from last night. The cork had been left out and there wasn’t quite a third of the liquid, but there it was. Wine. In the morning. Left from the night before.

Alex allowed herself a wide smile as she pulled the tap on to a full gush. After filling the coffee machine and flicking it on, she picked up the bottle of wine cautiously. She moved it onto the draining board and spritzed a stern burst of kitchen cleaner onto the drip stain. She scrubbed the whole time the coffee machine burbled, working the stain away until only she would know it was there. As she wrung the cloth under the warm water, without giving herself thinking time, she emptied the cold, stale wine down the plughole. She watched the water destroy the purple trickle of Rioja and drag it away.

As she drank her coffee and pondered a run, Alex flipped open her notebook to the penultimate page. She ticked the line marked 12:30 p.m., 100ml servings, leave one-third.

Today’s line read “1 p.m., 100ml servings, leave one third.”

She had a lot of time to kill.

She hadn’t written next week’s plan down yet, though it was there in her head, looming large. The thought of leaving half a bottle of wine made her chest sweat and her temples beat, so she tried not to think that far ahead.

Alex left the bed unstripped and pulled on her running things. She tucked her key into her sports bra and popped in her headphones. With renewed faith in her willpower, she kicked herself out of the door and into a slow, steady run.

She ran past the tight terraces and out into the open spaces of Mount Scion—the “village” of Tunbridge Wells—with its blocky white villas, fraying at the edges despite their grandeur. She paced toward the welcoming green of the Calverley Grounds and up toward the hospital.

How dare I consider not running?
Alex thought as she imagined Amy’s legs, DVT stockings covering the light downy hair that grew like baby moss.

It was Wednesday. Jacob would be there soon, holding Amy’s hand like it was made of glass and worrying about who was watching. For a moment, Alex thought about going in, buoyed by runner’s adrenaline and the success of last night. But she ran straight past and out toward Southborough, wind behind her and brain clearing with the breeze.

J
ake came to see me earlier and while he was here he brushed my hair. It felt like he’d done it before, but I don’t know how he could have. Whose hair would he have brushed? He doesn’t have any sisters and I’m his first girlfriend. Unless he’s been lying to me about that, but we’ve been friends since year seven, I would have known. And he’s a rubbish liar.

He knew what to do this morning though. Holding the hair in clumps and working the knots from underneath so it didn’t pull. I didn’t like it. We’re not that kind of couple. When we hold hands on the field, I’m always painfully aware of our skin being crushed together, our fingers tangled up and sweaty. We’re still working out how to be physical and it’s so intimate, having your hair brushed. Even my mum has barely brushed my hair in the last few years, apart from when we tried and failed to make it look like Björk’s hair, or the handful of times when she’s blow-dried it dead straight and shiny for a school disco.

When is the disco? We haven’t had the letter yet. They’re cutting it fine an’ all, it’s nearly the end of term, I think. I can’t have slept through summer, after all. I need to get hold of Jenny and Becky, work out what we’re going to wear. It seems like an age since I’ve even spoken to them. I hope they’re not phasing me out.

J
acob woke up in his childhood bed. His feet dangled off the end of the mattress and his arm hung out of the bed frame like a shipwreck survivor.

For a moment, he forgot where he was and why. When he remembered, he sat up with such a start that he nearly snapped his leg again.

His mother rushed in to his exclamation. “Are you okay?”

Jacob rubbed his leg gingerly and pulled the duvet up over his bare chest.

“What time is it, Mum?”

“It’s about 9:30.”

“Nine-thirty? Shit! Sorry, sugar! Why didn’t you wake me?”

“I thought you needed the sleep. Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s fine.” He attempted a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Mum.”

He wondered if the nurses would notice. If they would remark on it next week. It’s not like Amy would know. He hoped.

“I’ll bring you a cup of tea. Do you fancy a dippy egg or some toast?”

“Tea would be good, thanks, Mum.”

He was surprised he’d been left to sleep in. As a teenager, it was probably the only thing they had properly rowed about. He was a natural night owl who could happily have slept the day away, but his mother had taken huge umbrage to any “wasting” of the sunlight.

She’d disallowed it right up until Amy had been found, and then Jacob had been left to stalk the corridors at night, making himself endless cups of tea into the early hours, drifting between his bed and the sofa, letting the television screen dance around in front of him, then sleeping through lunch. Doing his A-levels at night all but formalized the arrangement. He was the night and Tom was the day and they rarely overlapped.

He hardly remembered seeing his father during this time. Perhaps, under normal circumstances, Jacob would have been invited to fill the void left by Simon, his father’s sidekick. If he was honest with himself, it was always Tom that more closely resembled Simon, but even he’d stopped putting himself forward. Perhaps no one could have filled those shoes, and Tom had just been doing an impression.

And so from a household full of people just a few years before, their numbers had been slashed until the silence was exhausting.

Jacob looked around the kitchen. The same kettle, the faded basket of wheat on the same toaster, the ceramic hen egg holder with the dent at the back.

“It’s amazing how powerful hormones can be,” Sue said. “It’s easy to underestimate the effect they can have on a woman. And pregnant women are completely at the mercy of the changes in their bodies.”

Sue reached over and stroked Jacob’s cheek. “I was horrible to Dad at times.”

“It’s not that she’s horrible, or even that she’s being completely unreasonable.” Jacob shrugged. “It’s bigger than that. She says she doesn’t know what’s going on in my head. She reckons I shut her out.”

“Do you shut her out?”

“I don’t share every thought that runs through my head but I talk more than Dad does.”

“Your dad’s from a different generation, I’d like to think I raised you to talk about your feelings when you need to.”

“We do talk, don’t get me wrong. I guess maybe I do live in my head a bit but it’s not just me either. We seem to be bickering and misunderstanding each other all the time. She’s more emotional now she’s pregnant but this has been building for a while and getting stuck at home after my accident has just accelerated things.”

“I wish you’d called me when you fell, I could have come to help.”

“I’m a grown man, Mum.”

“Not to me. You’ll always be a little boy to me. Even when you have your own little one.” She smiled into Jacob’s frown.

“Both of you are new to this, love. You’ve not dealt with a pregnancy before or the changes it brings. I know things will get better and it will all be worth it when the baby’s here,” Sue said. Jacob stared at his tea.

“And if it helps, it was very different the second time, with you. I was more relaxed, Dad was more relaxed and we knew what to expect from the pregnancy and from each other.”

“Right now,” Jacob sighed, “I honestly don’t know if we’re going to sort this out, let alone have more kids. I just thought we were more solid than this, but it’s like even when things are good, they can crumble really easily.”

“Jacob, that’s marriage. That’s life. It takes work. Even when you have a family, it doesn’t mean things can’t be rocked or shaken by what comes along. That’s why you keep trying, you have to put the work in.”

Sue poured them both another mug of tea. “You’ll sort this out. You have to, for the baby. Just give yourselves a couple of days and make sure Fiona knows you’re not going anywhere.”

Jacob took a biscuit and ate it slowly, without tasting a crumb.

“Are you looking forward to being a grandma?”

“So much, J. Although I’m struggling to accept that my baby is having a baby. I know it’s a cliché but it feels like only yesterday that you three were little and I had you all safe and snug, tucked up where I could see you and look after you.”

Jacob brushed crumbs from his hands and onto the plate of other biscuits.

“Have you heard from Tom since he canceled on lunch the other week?”

“No, not since then, but I’ll give him a call soon. I speak to him when I can, but he’s so busy with work. He’s really excited about meeting his nephew or niece though.”

“Really?”

“Of course he is. I know he’s not one for talking about his feelings, but you can tell how much he cares. You remember how much he looked up to you and wanted to be just like you. He always wanted to have everything that you had.”

“I don’t know, Mum. I think you’ve got rose-tinted spectacles on a bit there.”

“Maybe.” Sue smiled. “I can certainly remember a lot of wrestling too. But he does love you and he’ll love being an uncle.”

“Hmn, it feels like he’s been off with me for a long time. I hope he doesn’t cancel on his niece or nephew like he does on us. I’d find that hard to forgive.”

“You know Tom, he dances to the beat of his own drum. I’m sure it’s not about you.”

“He could already be an uncle of course, so could I.”

Sue snapped her head around to look at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if Simon had left a couple of reminders behind—”

“Jacob!” Sue half laughed but shock crinkled her forehead skyward. “Don’t be so crude!”

“And I’m sure he’s met his fair share of pretty volunteering angels out there.”

“Oh stop. He’d have been in touch if there was any news to share, thank you very much.”

The key rattled in the sticky lock, then the door squeaked open.

Moments later, his upright father appeared around the door in his pristine whites. A surprising amount of dark hair, framed with distinguished gray, sat above those familiar unreadable green eyes.

“Hello then, you’re still here?” Graham said. Then came the light clinking of ice falling onto thick cut glass. Amber liquid swilled in the tumbler, swallowed in one.

When the youngest brothers were little, the clink of ice had been an early warning system, telling them that they should immediately stop wrestling and dismantle the den made from sofa cushions.

“I think I might need to stay a few more days,” Jake told his father’s back as it retreated to the freezer. More clinking of ice.

“You can stay as long as you need, Jacob. Fiona will calm down though. It’s just her hormones. It’s best to stay away and wait for her to sort herself out.” Two swallows.

Sue looked away from her husband. As Jacob watched Graham open his mouth to continue, his mother cut his father off.

“Dad,” she said. “Would you two mind picking up some wine for dinner? I completely forgot.”

As Jacob limped out of the front door after his father, he heard his mother in the kitchen opening up the teapot.