5
For the next few days, I followed the same pattern. If I’m honest, by the Monday I was physically much improved. The stiffness and ache in my limbs and neck were easing, the bruises fading into tie-dyed green and yellow splashes decorating my head and chest. Realistically, if I took it slow, I could probably manage to drive the 180 miles or so to Windermere.
But as the physical pain retreated, it seemed to increasingly expose the deeper pain that lay beneath my bumps and scrapes. My chest squeezed with anguish whenever I thought about Charlie, my emotions wading through denial, shock, bitter regret and deep, deep sorrow.
My phone lay abandoned and out of charge where I’d dropped it somewhere under the bed. Lucy would have been dealing with the emails coming through, sorting any posts or invitations that needed responding to. Vaguely, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that the longer it took me to tell her that I was letting her go, the longer I’d have to pay her for. I ignored the faint buzz of guilt about not calling her back. We were usually in contact at least once a day, sometimes ten times that many, and my ambiguous message was hardly sufficient to explain what was going on. I knew she’d be worried. But petty issues like my employee, my money, my preposterous job, my life in London, seemed like a hazy hallucination caused by the strong painkillers I was still scarfing in some vain effort at dulling my heartbreak.
Even the threat that had driven me to bolt in the middle of the night seemed unimportant, a thousand miles away.
And surely they’d never find me here, anyway?
Finding it impossible to care, or worry about any of it, instead I lay in bed, crying, sleeping, staring at the stains on the ceiling, picking at the meals Daniel brought me and sinking further and further down into a pit of self-loathing and shame.
I needed to snap out of it. Or at the very least find the gumption and the grit to begin to slowly heave myself out.
Fortunately, Daniel and Dr Ziva agreed.
On Thursday, nearly a week after I skidded into a ditch, Daniel woke me with a mug of tea and a chipped bowl of porridge. A while later he came and retrieved the empty mug and still full bowl but this time he was carrying Hope, and before he took the tray away he plonked her on the bed and left her there.
It was a single bed, probably as wide as it was high. Hope looked as surprised as I was as she sat up and goggled at me, automatically cramming one hand into her mouth.
‘Hi,’ I managed, sounding like some sort of child-eating troll before I cleared my throat and tried again. She tucked in her chin, eyeing me warily. I tried to think of something else to say.
‘How’s things? Enjoyed any good bananas lately?’
Okay, apparently not, because her enormous eyes filled up with tears, and her lip began wobbling precariously.Oh, no. Oh, crap.Please don’t start crying. There’s been enough of that in this bed for the both of us lately, I promise.
She looked just like Charlie when discovering that yet another man had deceived her, or she got fired, or when she felt the evil brain-death demons of darkness stirring.
‘Please don’t cry!’That’s better, try saying it out loud, Eleanor.‘There, there. I know this room is distressingly ugly, and you’ve been dumped here with a slightly unhinged woman who hasn’t showered in several days, but I’m sure your dad will be back to fetch you soon.’
Only he wasn’t. And when, a couple of minutes later, I ran out of small talk and Hope broke into full-on screams, wide open mouth revealing two tiny teeth as she scrunched up her miniature fists and let rip, he still didn’t come bursting in to save her. Galvanised by how the pitch of her cries seemed to jab right into the bruise on my forehead, I upped my game. Pulling faces, singing jumbled snatches of nursery rhymes and patting her head did no good at all. And when I tried to take hold of her hand (that always made me feel better) she reacted with an instantaneous increase in both pitch and volume, while simultaneously diving for the edge of the bed.
Crap!
I instinctively jerked forwards and grabbed her around the tummy, pulling her up close as I sat back against the headboard. That seemed to help. The wails faded to a warble, and her body visibly softened as we adjusted ourselves to find a comfortable position.
‘There we go, then. Is that better?’ I mumbled more meaningless platitudes, leaning my cheek against her downy head as we gently rocked from side to side. After a while, Hope’s sobs became sniffles which then dissolved into disconcertingly loud hiccups. She smeared a load of snotty dribble across her face and then batted her hand about, daubing it across my shoulder and pyjama sleeve. Letting out a long sigh, she then slowly tipped her head forwards, conking her chin on her chest as she fell asleep.
After a brief panic while I checked that she was still breathing, I settled back and closed my eyes in solidarity, listening to the sound of our twin breaths. Her heavy warmth nestling against my cracked heart was probably the best cuddle of my life so far. I know she was only a baby, and potentially not that great a judge of character yet, but I felt honoured – astounded even – that Hope trusted me enough to sink into a snuffly oblivion in my lap.
Her father, however, who had all the wisdom and common sense of an adult, also trusted me, it seemed. Not only had he left Hope here in the first place, he sent me a text casually letting me know that he’d ‘popped out for a couple of hours, back around 12’ and that there was a bottle of milk in the fridge.
It took everything I’d got. All the tattered shreds of courage and determination that had probably not been that courageous or determined to begin with, but from some previously untapped reserves, as midday rolled around, Daniel returned to find me sitting at the kitchen table chopping an onion, Hope burbling in her chair. Showered, hair brushed anddressed in clothes suitable for leaving the house.
‘Okay, so I can’t bear another sandwich and tin of watery soup. Having searched every cranny in your kitchen, and what I presume is meant to be a pantry, the best I can come up with is an omelette.’
‘Great.’ Daniel went to give his daughter a kiss. ‘Did you have a nice morning, Hope?’ He stopped then, and looked around. ‘You’ve cleaned up.’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve made a start. Hope helped.’ I nodded to where she was banging a clean sponge onto the table.
It had been an exhausting start. After taking an absurd amount of time figuring out how to extricate Hope and me from my bed without waking her up, I’d gently placed her in the cot I found in what must be Daniel’s room, and taken it from there (Daniel’s room, unsurprisingly, followed theshabby unchicdécor of the rest of the farmhouse, it was a health and safety hazard just kicking my way through the debris on the floor to reach the cot). By the time she’d woken up, I was clean and dry and had put my bedding and pyjamas in the washing machine and sorted through the rest of my stuff. I fed her the bottle, following the instructions Daniel had left on the kitchen countertop about how to warm it up first, then I stuck her in the baby chair and took a survey of the surroundings.
I thought about the sparkling kitchen in the Tufted Duck and shuddered at the comparison. I had reached a point in my life where I’d little idea of who I really was, apart from someone I didn’t like very much, but one thing I did know was that before all the madness started, I was a woman who knew how to get on my hands and knees and clean.
So that’s what I did for the next hour and a half. I demolished the mountain of greasy pots in the Belfast sink, first scrubbing until I revealed the beautiful white porcelain beneath the grime. I wiped every crumb and unidentifiable sticky stain from the oak worktops, moving the microwave, toaster and everything else onto the tiled floor before I was satisfied. I then cleaned them all before placing them back again. Next, I wiped the cupboard doors, which turned out to be a pale cream instead of the yellowy-beige they’d been before.
At that point, I ran out of hot water and energy, so I gave up and started looking for some lunch.
