Czytaj książkę: «The Mother»

Chapter 2
Tuesday 7.20 a.m.

Lucas noticed the red marks on Noah’s face as soon as he came into the kitchen. He crouched down beside the baby’s bouncer, stroking Noah’s cheek with his thumb. ‘What happened to you, kiddo?’

Maddie busied herself with Jacob’s Weetabix so her husband couldn’t see her face, too afraid to admit she’d flaked out last night with their baby in her arms. Thank God Noah was none the worse for wear, apart from the marks, which were already starting to go. ‘I think he got himself wedged in a corner of his cot,’ she fibbed. ‘He must’ve pushed his face up against the bars.’

‘Poor little bugger.’

‘It’ll fade.’

Lucas dropped a kiss on Noah’s head, then straightened up and started emptying the dishwasher. Maddie surreptitiously watched him as she stirred Jacob’s cereal. She never tired of seeing her husband do simple domestic tasks like make coffee or empty the bin. Part of it was sheer novelty; her mother, Sarah, had raised her alone after her father’s death when she was two, so she wasn’t used to seeing a man help out around the house.

She also found it strangely erotic to watch her big bear of a husband wipe down a kitchen counter or neatly fold tea towels. At six-feet-five, he dwarfed everything he touched; the plates seemed like toys from Emily’s tea set in his huge hands. She and Lucas were a marriage of opposites on many levels, not least of them physical. She barely scraped five-feet-two, the top of her head just level with his broad chest. He was dark-haired to her sandy blonde, brown-eyed to her blue. He could have picked her up and tucked her under one massive arm. She couldn’t even get him to roll over in bed when he snored.

But despite his mountain-man appearance, Lucas was actually a cerebral, dreamy, indoor sort of man; his weekdays were spent at a drawing board, designing buildings for a small, local architectural firm, and in his downtime at weekends he did crosswords or read obscure Russian novels. For Maddie, on the other hand, there was no ‘weekday’ or ‘weekend’; she ran an animal sanctuary, which was a twenty-four-seven commitment. She didn’t have time to worry about what to wear, never mind what to read; most mornings she flung on the same filthy jodhpurs from yesterday and dragged her hair back into an unwashed ponytail. Her hands were callused from years of mucking out stables and lunging ponies, her fingernails broken and dirty. If she put on a skirt, it was a noteworthy event.

No one who met Lucas and her separately would match them as a couple. And yet theirs had been a whirlwind romance, love at first sight. Four months after meeting in the jury room at Lewes Crown Court, they were married. Six years on, in defiance of the friends who’d said she had no idea what she was rushing into, they were as much in love as ever.

She’d known, of course, that Lucas must have baggage; as her best friend Jayne succinctly put it, no one got to thirty-four without a few fuck-ups along the way. But, recklessly, she hadn’t been interested in his past; only in their future, together. Even now, she still knew very little about his life before they’d met. He rarely talked about his childhood or adolescence, for good reason. When he was just thirteen, he’d rescued his four-year-old sister Candace from the house fire that had killed both their parents. Looking back now, Maddie wondered if their shocking bereavements had been part of what drew them together. She understood better than most that to survive tragedy, sometimes you had to close the door on the past.

But her first instincts had been right. He was a good husband, a wonderful father and stepfather. He brought her a cup of tea in bed every morning and rubbed her feet at night when she was tired. And they’d made beautiful children together, she thought fondly, as she put Jacob’s breakfast on the high chair in front of him. Both their sons were a perfect blend of the two of them, with ruddy chestnut hair and hazel eyes. Only Emily looked like she didn’t belong. She was growing more like her biological father with every passing year.

As she stirred the lumps out of Jacob’s cereal, Maddie felt an unexpected rush of tears. She blinked them back, cursing the pregnancy hormones that left her so vulnerable. Emily’s father, Benjamin, had been her first boyfriend, a veterinary student in his final year at the same college as she when they’d met. Quiet and painfully shy, Maddie had always found it hard to make friends, having been raised by a widowed mother too busy with her charitable causes to have time to show Maddie how to have fun. At twenty-one, she’d never even been on a date until Benjamin asked her to join him at a lecture about animal husbandry.

Somehow, Benjamin had got under her skin. Theirs had been a gentle, low-key relationship, a slow burn born of shared interests and companionship. It wasn’t love, exactly, but it was warm and reassuring and safe. Eight months after they’d met, she’d lost her virginity to him in an encounter that, like the relationship itself, was unremarkable but quietly satisfying.

The pregnancy a year later had been a complete accident. To her surprise, Benjamin had been thrilled. They’d both graduated college by then, and while she made next to nothing at the sanctuary, he was earning enough as a small animal vet to look after them both. He bought dozens of books on fatherhood and had picked out names – Emily for a girl, Charlie for a boy – before Maddie had been for her first scan. He was so excited about becoming a father, his enthusiasm was contagious.

He’d died in one of those stupid accidents that should never have happened, skidding on wet leaves on a country road one dark November afternoon. No one else was even involved. Maddie herself had been out shopping for baby clothes when it happened. She would never forget turning into their street and seeing the police car parked outside their flat. She’d known, instantly, that Benjamin was dead.

She hadn’t fallen apart, because she’d had the baby to think of. She’d put her head down and concentrated on Emily and the sanctuary, never permitting herself to think about what could have been. She had her daughter, and her horses. For four years, it’d been enough.

And then she’d met Lucas, as unlike Benjamin as it was possible to be. Their relationship had been a coup de foudre, stars and fireworks and meteor showers. She fell in love not just with him but with the person she became when she was with him: confident, witty, amusing. When he asked her to marry him, she didn’t hesitate. Lucas had saved her, in every way a person could be saved.

Maddie spooned a mouthful of Weetabix into Jacob’s mouth and wiped his chin. She’d been so excited at the thought of having his baby, of seeing what the combination of his and her genes would produce. When Jacob was born, three years after they married, she’d expected him to slot into their lives without a ripple, the way Emily had. But from the start, he’d been hungrier and more fretful than his sister. He’d refused to latch on properly and had quickly lost weight. Then she’d developed mastitis. At the midwife’s insistence, she’d switched to formula, feeling like a failure, her anxiety and exhaustion unsettling Jacob even further in a vicious circle. And then, just as suddenly, her agitation and nerves had been replaced by an emotional numbness that was far more troubling.

It was obvious, even to her, that there was a huge difference between not caring about anything and not being able to care. But she found herself incapable of doing anything about it. There’d been days when Lucas had left to take Emily to school in the morning, kissing her cheek as she sat on the edge of the bed, only for him to return home from work ten hours later to discover her still sitting there, Emily at a school friend’s and Jacob screaming in his cot.

Her mother had recognised her postnatal depression for what it was and done her best to help, encouraging her to get out more, to relax; she’d taken care of the children and sent Maddie to the hairdresser, for a massage, a girls’ night out. But months had oozed by, and she hadn’t got any better. In the end, her mother had forced her to see the doctor. For a long while, even Dr Calkins hadn’t been able to help and there had been frightening talk of inpatient care and electroconvulsive therapy. But finally, finally, just as Jacob reached his first birthday, the counselling and the pills had begun to work. Her feelings had gradually returned; mainly negative emotions to begin with, like hate and self-loathing and sadness, prickling sensations returning to a limb that had been numb for a long time. She’d been angry for quite a while, too, but everyone had been so glad to see her feel anything, they hadn’t minded. There had been tears, lots of tears, but eventually the good feelings had come back. Things had started to matter again. She started to care.

Through it all, Lucas had been steadfast in his support. Many men would have given up on her, but not Lucas. She liked to think of herself as independent and self-sufficient, but the truth was, she didn’t know what she’d have done without him.

His competence with the baby had surprised her. He’d been a hands-on stepfather with Emily from the very beginning, taking her to nursery school and teaching her to tie her own shoelaces. But Emily was a little girl; babies were a different kettle of fish. Lucas was so bookish and academic, Maddie hadn’t really expected him to get his hands dirty when Jacob was born. But he’d changed nappies and soothed tears, as if born to it. Even now, he was the one who comforted Jacob when he had toothache, sitting beside his cot and stroking his back for hours until he settled. On the nights Noah was truly inconsolable, it was Lucas who strapped him into the back of his car and drove around for hours until he fell asleep.

He ruffled Jacob’s hair now as he crossed the kitchen to put the milk away. His son slammed the palm of his chubby hand against the tray of his high chair, impatient for his breakfast. Maddie jumped and stirred the bowl of Weetabix again as Emily appeared in the kitchen doorway, still wearing her nightdress.

‘Why aren’t you dressed?’ Lucas demanded. ‘We have to leave in ten minutes or you’ll be late for school.’

Emily ignored him, lolling against her mother’s chair and chewing a rat-tail of long blonde hair.

‘Lucas asked you a question,’ Maddie said sharply.

Imperceptibly, Lucas shook his head. Not now. It was an argument they’d had more than once over the years. She was loath to admit it, but the truth was, the joins in their blended family showed, however much she tried to pretend they weren’t there. Emily had had her mother to herself for the first three years of her life. Together with her grandmother, Sarah, they’d formed a tight little family unit. And then Maddie had met Lucas and brought first him, and then Jacob and Noah, into their feminine circle. Sarah adored Lucas, she thought he was the best thing that could have happened to her daughter, but Emily had been slow to thaw. Even now, her relationship with him was painfully polite at best. Lucas accepted it for what it was, but Maddie bridled on his behalf every time her daughter snubbed him.

‘Go and get dressed,’ Maddie said, giving her daughter a chivvying push. ‘You’ll make everybody late.’

‘But I don’t feel well.’

‘What sort of not well?’ Maddie asked.

‘I feel hot, and I’ve got a headache,’ Emily whined. ‘And I’m so itchy.’

‘Don’t scratch,’ Lucas and Maddie said simultaneously.

She handed the cereal bowl to Lucas so he could take over feeding Jacob. ‘Come here, Emily. Let me see.’ She peered down the back of her daughter’s nightdress and immediately felt guilty for her brusqueness. ‘Chickenpox. That’s all we need.’

Lucas looked alarmed. ‘Shit. Am I going to catch shingles?’

‘Don’t panic,’ Maddie said. ‘You can get chickenpox from shingles, but not the other way round.’ She tugged Emily’s nightdress back into place and made a quick decision. ‘I’ll see if Jayne can have her today.’

‘Can’t I stay home with you?’ Emily asked.

‘Sweetheart, I wish you could, but we have a new horse arriving today and I have to be there. You could come with me, if you like?’

Emily shook her head. She was terrified of the horses: their sharp hooves, their huge yellowing teeth, the sheer size of them. Maddie blamed herself: when Emily had been two, she’d put her on the back of one of her most tranquil sofa-ponies, Luna, a wide-backed, sweet-natured grey who’d taught a generation of children to ride. But that particular day, something had spooked her and she’d bolted and thrown Emily off. Her daughter hadn’t been hurt, but the episode had given her a lasting fear of horses.

‘Do you think Jayne could keep Emily overnight?’ Lucas asked Maddie.

‘I doubt it. It’s Steve’s birthday and Jayne’s taking him out for dinner to celebrate. Maybe Emily could spend the day with her and go to Mum’s tonight. I really don’t want Noah getting sick, especially when it’s only his second week at daycare. He’s just got used to his new routine, and I don’t want to disrupt it if we can help it. When you drop the boys off this morning, Lucas, tell them to keep an eye out for spots and call me if either of them run a temperature.’

‘I can sleep over at Manga’s?’ Emily said, brightening. ‘Can I stay there till I’m better?’

‘Yes, good idea,’ Lucas said hastily, thrusting Jacob’s breakfast back into Maddie’s hands. ‘I can’t be getting sick, not with all I’ve got on at the office.’

He was already halfway out of the door. Maddie suppressed her irritation. Lucas was irrationally phobic about illness. A single sneeze was enough to send him into meltdown. Maybe it had something to do with what had happened to him as a child, an association with doctors and hospitals. A trauma like that had to have left emotional scars. Generally speaking, her husband had emerged from the tragedy remarkably sane and well-balanced, but Candace had fared less happily, even though she’d been so much younger when the fire had happened. Lucas was naturally very protective of her, but there was only so much he could do. Maddie didn’t resent their closeness, of course; as an only child, she actually rather envied it, and she adored her eccentric sister-in-law. But Candace had cost her husband many sleepless nights over the years, and there were times Maddie felt that her marriage was rather crowded.

Guiltily, she pushed the thought away. Despite his issues, Lucas had been undeniably supportive when she’d had postnatal depression; she could hardly turn around and complain about his loyalty to his sister now. It was one of the things she loved about her husband: once earned, his support was absolutely steadfast.

But there was only so much any man could take, even one as devoted as Lucas. Maddie had already put him through the wringer once. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him about her strange memory lapses and have him worry he couldn’t trust her with the children. She was sure the doctor was right, anyway. They were bound to stop once Noah started sleeping through the night.