Because I have been particularly high-strung of late – what Stephen calls unstable and, if I am honest with myself, what I also would call unstable – I slept last night with the children like so, one to my left and one to my right. It’s the only way I could recover after Daniel’s tantrum. I needed him close to me – quiet, peaceful, loving. I needed to feel connected to him. I don’t think Stephen understands this – I don’t think anyone understands – and so I’ve woken this morning feeling slightly ashamed of myself, as though my behaviour makes me feeble and pathetic. Stephen has spent the night in Emily’s bed, which is a proper single bed, quite comfortable, but not where he wants to be. Getting ready for work he is crabby, remote, gathering my attention now as I stretch into this new day, limp in one of his old rugby shirts, not quite able to face the morning.
‘I don’t have a babysitter for tonight, Stephen, I’m really sorry.’
‘Did you call a babysitter?’ he asks, dressing in front of me. He is crisp as a new banknote, his hair springs up from where he’s combed it wet from the shower. He pushes his leg through the elastic of his boxer shorts, gathers his suit trousers at the waist, loops the belt. Bowing his back like a sprinter at the starting block, he turns the laces of his shoes.
‘Of course I did. I called several.’ This isn’t true but I have no other excuse. He wants us to go to some sort of business dinner party thing tonight and there is no way – no way whatsoever – that I’m going with him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I am sorry, too, but not because I don’t want to go out tonight. The truth is I feel self-conscious. I don’t want people to see how fretful I am, how troubled. I used to love to go out, but now it is as though I’ve lost all capacity to speak to other people at such things as dinner parties. They always seem so well adjusted and normal to me, making me feel even weirder. ‘I’m not myself lately,’ I tell Stephen.
Stephen sighs. ‘What I want to know is what this guy is doing for sixty-five pounds an hour.’
‘Who? Jacob? He listens. I talk to him,’ I say. ‘Don’t blame Jacob because I don’t want to go out tonight. It’s not his fault.’
‘See, I knew it. You don’t want to go.’
Oh damn, I’ve blown it. ‘I do,’ I say, trying to smile.
Stephen gives me a long look, then shakes his head. He works his fingers down his stiff, immaculate shirt, weaving the buttons through their holes. ‘You can talk to me for a lot less than sixty-five pounds an hour,’ he says.
‘I’m getting him to prescribe something. Maybe Valium. Maybe Prozac. I haven’t decided. They keep coming up with new drugs, it’s getting harder and harder to choose among them all.’ I try laughing, but it doesn’t work. I’m so exhausted it sounds like a grunt.
Stephen goes to the closet and extracts a tie, flipping the silk through his fingers until it forms a perfect knot. Then he goes down the short flight of stairs to where his coat hangs on the banister. I can hear him now, pushing his hands in and out of the pockets, disrupting his keys which give off tiny, musical notes as he tosses them in the satin lining of his coat. He comes back upstairs with a small brown vial.
‘I told a friend of mine at work what you’re like these days and he gave me these,’ he says, lobbing the vial on to the bedclothes. ‘Antidepressants or something. Now, are you coming out with me tonight or not?’
‘Not,’ I say, but I stash the pills in my nightstand.
The pills are long and thin and white. Just one sends my head into a fuzz and makes it so the radio song I heard five hours ago is still crystal clear across every thought, raining down into my ears. Like this I cannot play My Little Pony correctly because I cannot make up the stories Emily needs in order to use the ponies’ new kitchen and their new glittery tiaras. I keep saying, ‘They are making a pie to take to the party.’ And she keeps saying, ‘But then what?’
‘Then they make the pie?’
Emily’s big eyes turn to me, heavy under her furrowed little brow. ‘Mummmmy!’ she says impatiently.
‘OΚ, it’s not a pie. Give me a moment. It’s a … uh … it’s a cake?’
I wander off to look for Daniel, but discover I cannot find him. In my ears is a terrible girl band and I cannot make them shut up. Not only do I hear them singing, but I also see them dancing. It’s like a sound and light show inside my head. Poking my fingers into my ears makes no difference, nor does covering my eyes with my hands and spinning, which is exactly what Daniel does when he is distressed. I call for Daniel but, of course, he doesn’t answer. He never answers. I am hoping that he will reappear, drawn by my voice, but he does not. I look in my bedroom, in all the closets and cupboards. It feels as though the house has swallowed him. He is Houdini, disappearing before my eyes. Downstairs, I search behind chairs and curtains. With every second that passes my panic rises. I cannot find him. I am searching for open windows, for some part of his body lying on the floor, dead from choking or poison or a sudden, inexplicable collapse. My mind is a kaleidoscope of unspeakable images: small, still limbs; eyes like marble, like glass. He is dying, my baby, and I cannot find him no matter how fast I run through the house or how loud I yell his name.
‘Daniel! DANIEL!’ I still can’t find him, but now it’s Emily who has my attention. She wears an expression as though she’s been scolded, sticks out her lower lip, preparing for tears. I scoop her up, balance her on my hip and keep searching. After many minutes I find Daniel inside the shower, rolling his Thomas the Tank Engine along the ledge of the pan. His face does not register surprise when I fling open the shower door. Parking Emily on the sink ledge, I reach into the shower for Daniel. When I pick him up he does not look at me, but stretches toward the train, his hands clasping and unclasping.
‘You said you’d talk to me, so talk to me!’ I tell Stephen. I’ve sat both children in front of the television to watch Teletubbies, an inane programme that I am sure is not good for them, but Emily likes the way the custard machine flings pink glop, not to mention all those oversized French rabbits. Daniel, on my lap, sits with a fixed expression, staring at the television, often leaning forward so that his face is way too close to the screen. Emily, taking my advice to sit further back, occupies the armchair along with a dozen or more plastic ponies from her collection. Between episodes she sings the Teletubbies theme tune while her ponies dance in her hands.
‘I don’t understand the problem,’ says Stephen, speaking to me from his office. ‘You looked for him, you found him. He was in the shower but there was no water running, so no danger of drowning –’
Among my many fears is that our children will drown in the tiny, ornamental pond in our garden. Before I consented to move into this house I insisted workmen arrive and cover it with three layers of metal wire. They did as I asked, but kept sneaking glances at each other. When I made cups of tea for them they said, ‘This is just tea, right? Nothing in it?’ Similarly, I had the lid for the septic tank in our summer cottage buried under half a dozen paving stones. I was told by the septic tank emptying service that this was not folly on my part. It would take thirty seconds for a child to die in a septic tank, the lid opening easily with one finger. He, the man from the septic tank service, drank his tea without any questions at all.
‘Please,’ I beg Stephen. ‘Come home now. Turn off the computer, get up from your chair, put on your coat.’
My