Silent Child(6)
He noticed my searching gaze and flashed me a questioning look. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I shrugged. The stressful afternoon washed away and was replaced by a feeling akin to real happiness. Sure, I’d had glimpses of happiness over the last decade, but they’d never remained, not like the spreading feeling I was getting now.
Could it be that my life was coming together? Was my happiness overtaking my grief for Aiden and my parents? They say that time is a healer, but I never believed them. I considered myself irrevocably broken after the flood. But it seemed that at last, those pieces were binding together.
Or so I thought.
*
Jake carried the presents into the house and I poured water into a vase and trimmed the stems of the roses. The kitchen came alive with the sounds of our movements, and the plastic bags rustled as Jake put the presents on the dining table. He began unpacking them one by one.
“Was Jane there?” he asked.
“No, she’s hurt her back.”
“Again?” Jake shook his head. “I guess that’s what you get when you let yourself get into that state. How did she do it?”
I bristled at his callous remark. Jane was middle-aged and overweight. She’d missed half the previous term with constant health issues. It was hard not to think that most of her problems would disappear if she’d just lose the weight, but Jake had a brain-to-mouth problem sometimes. He said what other people didn’t dare to. “She twisted her back putting her bra on.”
Jake let out a loud guffaw. “You’re kidding!”
“Hey,” I said, “it’s hard putting a bra on when your skin’s all damp from the shower.”
“Yeah, but still.” He shook his head and carried on removing the presents from the bag. “So Amy bought you this doll then? And you… like it?” He held up the box with the delicate doll inside.
“Yeah, why?”
“You don’t think it’s a bit… creepy?” He lifted the package higher as I stood with my hip resting against the kitchen counter, scissors in one hand and a rose in the other. His fingers dug into the plastic and I wanted to tell him to stop squeezing it like that. The plastic crackled as he moved it about, setting my teeth on edge.
When he put it down the tension abated and I managed a laugh. “Are you one of those people who cried when they had a clown at a birthday party?”
Jake pushed his glasses further up his nose and gave a half-smile. “Only psychopaths find clowns funny. It’s a fact. Just look at John Wayne Gacy.”
I shivered as I plopped the final rose in place and gathered up the wrapping from the flowers, the trimmings caught within the folds.
“Don’t forget to wipe the side down,” Jake said, nodding towards the slight puddle of water I’d left on the counter.
I rolled my eyes but collected a tea towel from the rack to soak up the mess. It was a running joke that Jake had needed to train me to pick up after myself when we first moved in together. He said he used to coach me with praise and slight nudges in the right direction. If I’d been good he’d take me out for dinner. For the first six months I hardly noticed at all. I’d never been concerned with mopping up a little spilled water or picking up my socks from the night before, not until I shared a living space with a neat-freak like Jake. Perhaps I’d been coddled too much by my parents after Aiden died. After all, I did remain living with them until they died. Then, when things became serious with Jake, I sold my parents’ cottage and moved into Jake’s luxurious three-bedroom property on Fox Lane, a stone’s throw from the school.
It was the opposite of my parents’ higgledy-piggledy cottage. My parents’ place was as quaint as an English cottage could get, with a thatched roof and narrow stairs filled with piles of books and old pieces of art. Jake’s house was colourless and neat. The ceilings were high and airy. My parent’s house had been painted in various shades of reds and browns, with low ceilings but plenty of windows to let in light. The kitchen had been filled to the bursting point with cast iron pans hanging from the beams and stacks of letters on top of the fridge. Jake’s kitchen was minimalist and stark, with white modern cupboards and a hidden fridge.
I set the roses on the table and took a step back, thinking how it was nice to have some colour in the kitchen for a change. Sometimes I missed the red walls of my old bedroom and the patterned duvets that inevitably lay in a tangled heap at the bottom of my bed. These days I slept—or rather tossed and turned—on crisp Egyptian cotton sheets in either ivory or white.
“Let’s go sit on the sofa and watch a box set.” Jake wrapped an arm around me and led me gently towards the living room.
“Don’t you want to read my card?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” he said enthusiastically. “Bring it with you. How have you been today? Any back pain?”
I almost laughed out loud. Of course there was back pain. And ankle pain. And then there was the baby ramming her foot against my internal organs. When I was pregnant with Aiden I’d been really squeamish about the thought of my baby sharing space with my kidneys and intestines and everything else squashed alongside the womb, especially when I learned that the body moves and adapts to make room for the baby. This time around I’d been determined to embrace all the joys of being pregnant. That had lasted until my first bout of morning sickness.