AFTERWARDS

HMP Bowood

5 November 2019

Dear Helen,

I know you asked me not to write to you again. But you need to know the truth, even if, after all this time, your hands are still clamped over your ears. What did you do that day, after I was taken down? After the knock of the hammer, the soft swish of silk and cotton, as everyone else stood up? I looked for you, wanting to find your face. But when my eyes caught on the blue check of your coat, and I saw that you were staring at the ground, I knew then, as sure as the sound of a door slamming shut. There was no way back.

Do you remember, when they took me away, how just for a moment everything was quiet, and my footsteps were the only sound? I have often wondered what you did after that, while I was jolted against the side of that windowless van. Where you went, what you ate. Who you spoke to. How your life carried on, after I was taken out of it.

When I think of you, as I often do, I always picture you in your kitchen, holding a mug with both hands, staring out of the window into your garden. I close my eyes sometimes, so I can conjure it exactly. I dress you in your green jumper, your hair twisted up on top of your head. Your parents’ paintings on the walls, the crack over the French doors, little pools of light on the worktop where your oil and vinegar bottles sit. I make everything the same, just as I remember. Are there birds in your magnolia tree? Are the roses in bloom? In my dream, they are. I hope so.

I think you would find the food here the hardest thing. The forks are plastic. They snap off in the grey lumps of meat, the piles of powder-made potato. Some days the warders will give you another, if you ask. Other days they won’t, and we have to eat with our hands. I know it is a small thing, but when your life has shrunk as much as mine has, small things take up more space than they should.

I find it difficult, sometimes, to believe I am really here. A danger, someone who is not to be trusted. But then, no one really thinks they are bad, do they? Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done. We all have our reasons, if anyone can be bothered to listen.

Perhaps you’ll never read this letter anyway. Tear it up as soon as you see the postmark, toss it into the fire. I don’t think so, though. It’s always been too much for you, hasn’t it, Helen? The temptation of a sealed envelope. If it weren’t, perhaps we wouldn’t have ended up where we did.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you are to blame. Whatever you did, you didn’t deserve what happened next. I hope you know I never meant for things to end the way they did. I suppose I just lost control. Lately, I’ve been trying to trace it back, a trail of breadcrumbs in my mind. Trying to work out where it all began, where it all started going wrong. And I suppose the real answer is it started years before you could have ever imagined it did.

I wonder if you had any sense then, when you were in it, what that day would come to mean. Don’t be cross, but I always had this sense that your memory of that day had taken on a sort of invented quality. I almost asked you, once, when you were talking about it. Had it really been like that? The sun so warm, the scent of the grass so sweet? Are you sure, Helen? Are you sure?

I wonder if you knew that those technicolour memories could ruin you, forever, by their perfection. That they could cast so many other things in shadow.

I hope you didn’t. I hope you didn’t know then, that nothing would ever be quite the same again, however hard you tried. And I’m glad you didn’t know the truth about that day. I suppose I hoped you never would.

But you need to hear it now, Helen. So here it is.

24 WEEKS

HELEN

At the top of the beer-stained carpet, a sellotaped sign on the door reads NATIONAL CHILDBIRTH TRUST. The doorknob feels like it might fall off if I turn it too hard. Inside there is a semicircle of chairs. A flipchart. Trestle tables with juice and biscuits. The sash windows are jammed shut.

Three other couples are here already. I am the only one on my own. We smile politely at each other, then sit in silence, too hot and uncomfortable for small talk. One bearded husband tries to yank a window open, but after a few attempts, sits down, with a defeated shrug. I smile back, sympathetically, fanning myself with the baby first-aid leaflet I found on a chair. We teeter like bowling pins, our swollen bellies resting on our laps, arching our backs, our knees apart, grimacing.

As the room fills, I glance at the clock on the wall. Gone six thirty. Where are they? I keep looking at my phone, waiting for the flash of response to my messages. But nobody replies.

I’d peeled away from the office early, wanting to get here on time. I hadn’t been the only one. The air conditioning has been broken for days. By this afternoon the place had been half empty, just a few desk fans still whirring limply into the flushed faces of middle-aged men.

When I picked up my bag and flicked my screen off, I had glanced at Tom, but he’d been hunched on a call to building services, complaining about the temperature for the third time that day. I’d tried to catch his eye with a sort of awkward half-wave, but he’d barely acknowledged me, gesturing me away with a sideways glance at my belly, his other hand still clutching the phone to his ear. I think he’d forgotten today was my last day.

Unable to face the slow suffocation of the Tube I’d decided to walk instead. The glare had been blinding. Heat bounced off pavements and zebra crossings, shimmered between cars and buses. Horns honked in sweaty frustration. It is all anyone is talking about, the heatwave. No one can remember a summer like it. We are constantly reminded to stay in the shade, carry a bottle of water. It hasn’t rained for weeks. Shops are selling out of fans, ice packs, garden umbrellas. There is talk of a hosepipe ban.

I decided to cut across the park, between the Observatory and the Royal Naval College. The hazy light seemed to soften the edges around everything. Office workers were spread out on the yellowing grass, shoes kicked off, ties loosened, sunglasses on. They were drinking gin and tonics from cans, sharing Kettle chips, speaking slightly too loudly to each other, the way people do after a few drinks. It had felt like walking past a party, one I hadn’t been invited to. I had to remember not to stare. It can be hard not to stare at happy people. They are mesmerising somehow.

It was hot like this the summer we graduated from Cambridge. We used to punt down the river, the four of us. Serena and I sunbathing. Rory punting. Daniel sorting the drinks out, his pale skin reddening in the heat. We’d veer into banks, get tangled in curtains of weeping willow, the sky cloudless, the sunlight catching sequin-bright on the clear waters of the Cam. It felt as if the summer would go on forever. When it didn’t, I feared we would lose the closeness we felt back then. But we didn’t. Rory and Serena came to live in Greenwich, on the other side of the park. Daniel went to work with Rory at the family firm. And now, there’s our babies, due just two weeks apart.

The course leader is here now. She jams the door open with a folded beer mat, then picks up a sticky label and writes her name on it with a thick green marker: SONIA. She presses the label onto her chest, then dumps a faded shopper and some Tesco carrier bags next to the flipchart. A whiskery plait of hair runs almost the length of her spine.

‘Right,’ says Sonia. ‘Shall we start?’

She begins a practised monologue about labour, pain relief and Caesareans, one eyelid flickering during the embarrassing parts. Occasionally she is forced to raise her voice over a crash of pots and pans, or a burst of expletives, from the pub kitchen on the floor below.

After she has been speaking for a few minutes, I glance down at my phone screen again, just as a message flashes up from Daniel. I open it. Meeting only just finished, he says. Heading home now. Train gets in at 10. He is so sorry again about the class, says again that he wishes he could be there with me. He’ll make it up to me, he says.

I know he would be here if he could, that he is gutted to have had to let me down. That this last-minute crisis meeting just came at a terrible moment. At the same time, I can’t help feeling so disappointed. I’d been excited about these classes, about doing them together, like proper expectant parents. 

Sonia starts to pull objects from the carrier bags: a pelvis – through which she squeezes a fully dressed, plastic newborn – knitted nipples, a pair of forceps, a ventouse cap. The men look horrified, the women sweaty and anxious. We pass the objects around the circle, trying bravely to smile at each other.

The chairs to my left are still empty. The bearded man has to lean right over them to hand me the objects as they come round. I glance down at the name tags I wrote out for Rory and Serena, sitting on their vacant seats. Those two were supposed to be here at least, to keep me company, make me feel less alone. I feel foolish, like a woman who has invented two imaginary friends. Could Serena really have just forgotten?

Another message comes through. It’s from Serena. My heart sinks. Somehow, deep down, even as I tap to open it, I know what it’s going to say.

Hey, Helen! I know it’s the first antenatal class tonight. Hope you don’t mind, but I think Rory and I might skip them after all. I was actually looking online and I found these other ones that look a bit more my thing – beautiful bump classes – they’re supposed to be a bit less preachy, and they meet in the organic bakery. I was thinking I might try those instead. So sorry to cancel at the last minute. Have fun!

Sonia is brandishing a red marker at her flipchart now. ‘So. Can anyone tell me what they know about breastfeeding?’

I try to focus on the breastfeeding discussion. It is not going well. Most of the mothers are staring at the floor. One mutters something about positioning, another offers an anecdote about a friend who kept breast milk in the fridge.

‘Anyone else?’ Sonia is flagging now, half-moons of perspiration spreading from under the arms of her T-shirt.

Just at this moment, a girl walks in, slamming the door behind her. Sonia winces.

‘Fucking hell. Sorry, everyone,’ she announces loudly. She slips a metallic-gold backpack off one shoulder and drops it down on the floor with a thud. It lands inches from my foot.

‘Oops,’ she grins, one hand on her bump.

Everyone stares. Sonia, still standing in front of the flipchart with her red marker pen held aloft, eyes the girl coldly. The only things written on her flipchart so far are 'CORRECT POSITION (NIPPLE)’ and ‘STORE IN FRIDGE’.

The girl points a purple-painted fingernail at the seat next to me, the one I had reserved for Serena. ‘This chair taken?’

I hesitate, then shake my head. I feel the eyes of the other couples on me as I collect the unused name badges in my hands, haul my bags over to the other side, scrape my chair out a little to make more room.

Sonia sighs. ‘Anyone else?’

The flipchart charade continues for a few further minutes. The women begin to shift in their chairs, exchange raised eyebrows, uncomfortable glances. I try to concentrate. The girl next to me, the latecomer, is chewing gum. All I seem to be able to hear is the snap of it between her teeth as her jaw opens and closes. When I glance sideways at her, I glimpse it between her teeth, a neon-pink pellet, an artificial cherry scent. She catches my eye, grinning again, as if the whole thing is hilarious.

Finally, Sonia surrenders, pulling the back of her arm across the moisture on her brow. ‘OK,’ she says. ‘Shall we take a short break?’

A murmur of relief goes up. All the women waddle towards the jugs of juice, I quickly follow them. Soon, they are grouping up, the room filling with the noise of chatter. I am being left behind. I feel a plummeting panic. No Daniel, no Rory, no Serena. How do people make friends? What would Serena do?

I hover on the edge of a group, trying to look casual, waiting to be included. But there never seems to be a good moment to interject. I open my mouth to speak a few times, but on each occasion, someone else speaks first. I end up closing my mouth again, like a fish drowning in air. I feel the trickle of my anxiety begin, the nerve centre at the back of my head start to alarm. I am uncomfortably warm. Can’t someone get that window open?

The girl who came in late appears at my side. She is holding two enormous glasses of cold white wine, clouds of condensation on the side of the glass.

'Do you want one? I thought you looked like you might need a real drink. One a day can’t hurt, surely.’

She holds out the glass in front of me. Her painted fingernails are short and chewed. She looks very young – perhaps she just has one of those faces. Round, dimpled, babyish. Yet when she smiles, there is something wolfish in it, her canine teeth protruding slightly, small but sharp.

‘What’s the deal then?’

I blink at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

The girl places the glasses of wine down on a side table, gestures to the two chairs next to me, the name tags ‘Rory’ and ‘Serena’ still lying on them. ‘Just wondered what the set-up was.’ She shrugs. Then her face snaps back at me, her eyes wide, her fingers pressed to her mouth. ‘You’re not a surrogate, are you?’ She laughs. ‘That would be typical, wouldn’t it? Didn’t even want it, and now you’re left holding the baby!’

The girl hoots. I look over her shoulder, try to catch the eye of one of the other women. But none return my gaze, so I am forced to reply. I clear my throat.

‘No, um. No. I’m not.’ I try to laugh. ‘It’s just that my husband Daniel couldn’t make it tonight.’ I shake my head slightly, as if it’s just one of those things, doesn’t matter.

I pause, before realising she is waiting for an explanation about the two other empty seats.

‘The other couple are my brother and his wife. Rory and Serena. They’re expecting in the same month as us. We’d been planning to do the classes together, as a foursome, but … I think they … obviously decided against it, in the end.’

The girl smiles sympathetically. ‘Hopeless. Never mind, you can team up with me, can’t you?’ She picks the glass up again. ‘Shall we have this drink, then?’

‘Thanks,’ I say hesitantly. ‘But I’m not sure …’

Why am I incapable of completing my own sentences? I should just say, no thank you, I would rather not drink. I mean, I’m pregnant. We both are. Surely I don’t have to spell it out?

'Oh, I know what you’re saying,’ she booms, rolling her eyes and glancing around the room. ‘Ridiculous, isn’t it? All this pressure! The way they change the advice all the time! One minute you can drink, the next minute you can’t, then you can “in moderation”, then it’s basically illegal! Bloody doctors.’

I clear my throat, unsure how to answer. I am very aware now of the gaze of the other women in the room, looking from me to the girl and the wine, and back.

‘Well, fuck doctors,’ she continues. ‘Our mums all got smashed when they were pregnant. We all bloody survived!’ She is speaking far too loudly. The room is silent, and people are starting to openly stare.

The girl looks over at the other mothers, registers their disapproving glances, then raises her eyebrows at me and giggles. She holds the wine glass aloft to toast her own sentiment. She brings the glass to her lips. ‘Fuck the NHS,’ she spits. ‘That’s what I say.’ She tips the glass to her lips and drinks. As she does so, I notice one or two of the other mothers actually wince.

The girl picks up the drink she has brought for me. She holds it out, like a threat, or a dare.

‘Come on,’ she hisses. Her eyes flick down to my name badge. ‘You know you want to ... Helen.’

Later, after everything, I will come to wonder why I act as I do in this moment. For even now, there is something about this girl. Something that makes me want to edge away, to look for a place of safety. Like the feeling of being on a clifftop path, when the wind is just a little too strong at your back.

But I don’t step away. I take the wine. And as I do, the other women turn their heads, as if by taking it I have answered all their questions. I want to tell them I’m just being polite, that I have no intention of actually drinking it. But they are already looking the other way.

‘Thanks,’ I say weakly.

‘Nice to meet you, Helen. I’m Rachel.’

And then Rachel clinks her glass against mine, knocks back another deep glug, and winks at me, as if we share a secret.