Try Not to Breathe (6 page)

J
acob had spent an hour in the ward and it hadn’t been enough. Time is not a good healer. Time is a blank page on which the left behind scribble their regrets and their confessions.

This weekly trip to medical purgatory was taking its toll.

Jacob had sat with Natasha Carroll as his final patient. He had held her expensive porcelain hand in his and felt his eyes grow watery and heavy. She had kept her peaceful expression, a sacred statue with its face up to someone’s god.

Natasha Carroll was in a better place. Not philosophically, or religiously, but mentally. Her thoughts were elsewhere, a summer’s dream, set somewhere far more cheerful than this clinical tomb.

Jacob, on the other hand, was very much stuck here. After saying goodbye to Natasha and waving to the nurses, he had stumbled out of the hospital and into the bright sunlight. He was not sated but utterly spent by his time with Amy.

Jacob caught sight of his wrung-out reflection in the window. His sandy hair was speckled with a new gray, the skin around his squinting eyes shriveled like burnt plastic. Guilt was rotting him from the inside out.

He’d staggered just a few feet and then sat down heavily on the gravelly, uneven floor outside the old hospital block, which loomed over him like a prison tower.

Cross-legged and perfectly still, shoulders slumped, Jacob felt his lower back brush the cool of the crumbling brickwork building. His spine felt anchored. So rooted that if an ambulance suddenly veered toward him, he’d be incapable of moving out of its path.

The morning before the hospital visit had been tough. Fiona was allowed half days off work for midwife appointments, and she’d wanted Jacob to take her for brunch after they went for the checkup. The checkup would finish around 10:45 a.m. and the surgery was at least ten minutes by car from the hospital, not including parking time. If he’d had brunch with Fiona, he’d not have had any time left to visit. It was that simple. Fiona or Amy.

He had decided that he would avoid the hospital this week. He would avoid Amy. He told Fiona that, yes, it would be lovely to go for brunch together before they both returned to work.

But in the midwife’s room at the surgery he had watched Fiona’s tummy shiver as the cold gel was dolloped onto the bump; he had held his breath in the half second before the Fetal Doppler whooped into life; he had felt his eyes prickle at the runaway heartbeat of his unborn baby.

With a room filled with the very sound of life and potential, he had thought of Amy.

He had thought of Amy’s heartbeat, weak and whispering. He thought of her years ago when her broken body was threaded with wires and drips and sustained by great hunks of machinery. Back then her heartbeat was barely audible, the needle that recorded it skittered so sporadically up and down the lined paper that every pause seemed like an end.

Right now, Jacob’s unborn baby was gearing up for life, armed with this thundering heart, determined little fists and unspoilt mind. Meanwhile Amy lay trapped, souring like milk on a windowsill.

Jacob’s phone trilled, scattering his thoughts away. Fiona. Jacob shook his head, slapped his face a couple of times and answered.

“Hi, sweetheart, what’s up?”

As he spoke, the liquid-gold sunshine prickled all over his bare arms.

“I’m sorry to bother you, I was just a bit worried.”

He cleared his throat. “You’re not bothering me, Fi. Why are you worried?”

“You just seemed so choked up at the surgery this morning, and then when you rushed off you were so funny with me. I’m not accusing you or having a go, I honestly don’t mind about brunch but you were off. It was like you needed to be away from us as quickly as possible.”

Jacob swallowed hard. None of this was Fiona’s fault but at least she was an adult, what kind of man was he to run away from his tiny son or daughter?

“Fiona, I’m so sorry. You’re right…” He slowed down. He had to remember to pick his words carefully.

“It really got me this morning,” he continued, slowly, “it was the heartbeat, it was so strong. I was so amazed and so scared at the same time. I don’t know why. The closer it gets to the due date, the more I worry that I’m going to let you both down.”

Gray clouds swooped out of nowhere and rushed the sun away, like minders. Shadows raced across the hospital yard and Jacob heard Fiona’s voice. “Jacob…J, don’t cry, it’s okay, don’t cry.” Before he realized it, he was gargling on huge, salty sobs and wiping his gritty eyes with his free hand.

“I’m so sorry,” he heard himself burbling. “I’m so sorry.”

Jacob had a scheduled face-to-face in half an hour’s time at a client’s office, near the Sussex border. As he made his way into the hospital car park, coughing away the last of the sobs and wiping his eyes with the flesh of his thumb, he called Marc, his colleague—his junior—and asked him to call the client to postpone.

“Thanks for doing this, mate. I owe you,” Jacob told him. Marc didn’t ask what was wrong—of course—but Jacob knew he’d assume it was something to do with Fiona and the baby and Jacob didn’t put him straight. Another guilty notch on the cot bed.

He called Fiona again as he was about to start the engine. He told her to blow work off that afternoon—that he was coming home. She sounded so genuinely concerned that Jacob started sobbing again, head on the steering wheel, and had to wait another five minutes before turning the key.

Jacob turned slowly into their road, his black company Audi purring its low whirr. He could see that Fiona’s car—their car—was already in the driveway. A big black shining example of another expense they didn’t really need and couldn’t afford. A seven-seater Volvo XC90, bought on hire purchase the day after their twelve-week pregnancy scan.

They were only having one baby, he’d protested; they were future proofing, she argued. And before he knew it, he was signing the hire purchase agreement while she stroked her barely-there belly and smiled adoringly at the huge car.

His job in field sales for a specialist software company was well paid, but not as well paid as their spending would suggest.

When Jacob and Fiona bought the house, before the baby was a twinkle in its mother’s eye, they just took care of respective bills. He earned more, so he paid a few more. A few months after that, imbibed with two-for-£10 white wine, Fiona had caused an almighty row, bemoaning the unromantic financial arrangements.

The marriage and the mortgage were not, Fiona had declared, worth squat. The real mark of a lifelong commitment was a joint account. Jacob had argued that this would obliterate the romance of secrecy. That he couldn’t buy her a present without it coming off their shared balance, printed clearly on a shared bank statement.

“When was the last time you bought me a present?” she’d yelled. “You just don’t want me to see your bank statements!” and with an adolescent flounce, she’d run upstairs, thrown herself on their bed and howled dramatically.

At the time, Jacob was terrified. Who was this woman in their house? The Fiona he’d first met was so cool and in control, and would have rolled her eyes at anything resembling a tantrum. If she ever cried, she cried in secret, in the bath. Only her eyes would give her away and it took him a long time to learn that. Was that other woman, the Fiona he had fallen in love with, just a siren, drawing him onto the rocks?

After a while, the tantrum had died down and he had heard Fiona moving frantically around their bedroom. He heard drawers open and close, heard the wardrobe sliding open. It took a few minutes to realize that she was going through his things: she was looking for a bank statement.

Jacob had been mystified. He regularly gave her his bank card to get cash with, or pick something up for him, she could have easily checked the balance or got a mini-statement, so why would he hide his bank statements?

After pouring himself a large whiskey from the expensive Christmas bottle his father, Graham, had given him, Jacob had thrown it to the back of his mouth and trudged wearily up the stairs. He wasn’t a whiskey man and the spirit had burst across his forehead and fogged his thoughts.

He had seen Fiona on the floor on her knees in their bedroom, surrounded by bits of paper, old receipts and bills.

“Where the fuck are your bank statements?” she’d demanded, with eyes so fierce he’d had to look away.

“Fiona, look…” he’d begun, trying to shake the whiskey mist.

“Don’t say anything! Don’t tell me anything other than where your fucking bank statements are!” Her eyes had burned red and her face was so wet with tears that her shining auburn hair had stuck to it.

He had walked out of their newly decorated bedroom and into their smaller spare room, which had been appropriated as a makeshift office. Slowly, so that he didn’t make any mistakes, he wrote down a web address, username, password and PIN.

He walked back into the bedroom, placed the piece of paper next to Fiona’s foot and said carefully, “I haven’t been sent paper statements for years ’cos I get them online. Here are my Internet banking details so you can see my statements for the last few years and can check my account anytime. If that’s what you need to do, then that’s what you need to do.”

Jacob had hoped this would snap Fiona out of it. Put a stop to it and have her realize how sad an end to their honeymoon period this would represent.

It didn’t work.

For the next three weeks Fiona had audited his every transaction, calling him over to the screen frequently so he could explain every pound and penny. They got a joint bank account after that.

Financially at least, Jacob had nothing to hide.

Jacob didn’t know how long he had been sitting outside his home, staring at the back of the big Volvo and gripping his steering wheel with white knuckles. Eventually, he eased himself out of the car and trudged toward his house.

He knew that Fiona was waiting inside. Jacob opened the front door and walked slowly into the hall. The Fiona on the phone earlier had sounded like his Fiona. Now, with her back to the door so her bump was invisible, she even looked like the old Fiona.

Jacob stayed standing in the hallway. Fiona spun around a little unsteadily so that the bump swung into view.

“Hey,” he called quietly, and as she walked to his open arms he saw that she had been crying.

“Fi…” he started, pulling her into a hug.

“Don’t,” she answered quietly, “just cuddle me.”

They stayed locked in a tight hug for a long time, saying nothing.

“Y
ou’re very quiet, Amy.”

“I feel really bad.”

“You don’t need to feel bad, no one will blame you.”

Amy closed her eyes and turned her head toward the passenger window. Her shoulders faced the door and the seatbelt cut into her chest. No hand on her knee, no murmuring in her ear. Tears began to form and she struggled to hold them in.

“He shouldn’t have been there, why was he there?”

No answer came.

“I shouldn’t have done this. You won’t be able to help me now,” she started to sob again.

“You’re overthinking this.”

Sniffing, she scrunched her eyes as tight as she could. These could be her last few hours before the shit hit the fan and she wanted to sink into the darkness of them as much as she could. What would the others say when they heard? Everything was about to change. No one would keep her secrets for her.

She should never have got into the car. She should never have gone there and she should never have had sex with him. So many things she shouldn’t have done in such a short space of time.

Amy opened her eyes and saw the dull brick outskirts of Edenbridge falling away.

“Where are we going? I need to get home.”

“Somewhere nice, you’ll like it.”

“I have to go home though—please, can you just turn the car around?”

“That would spoil the surprise.”

His voice was once the source of such dizzying excitement. That voice, her hanging up the phone with seconds to spare as Bob’s key clattered in the lock. Leaving her so flustered she had to skirmish to her room to hide.

Now the voice just sounded mean and patronizing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, turning to face him but unable to make eye contact. “I don’t want to spoil whatever the surprise is, but I really have to go home. You can just leave me here if you have to, I can walk.”

“I can’t do that, Amy,” he said, and turned to flash her the briefest of smiles.