‘I gave you a round Vitamin C tablet, two cod liver oil tablets and a multivitamin. But when our relationship started, I started giving you another one.’
It was pale pink, small.
‘That was the pill.’
For a second, I just blink at him before horror slivers through me.He changedmy body,my chemistry. The entitlement. The audacity. The insidious control.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to worry you.’
I don’t believe him. He didn’t care about worrying me. He didn’t want me to see the consequences of what we were doing. He couldn’t risk me saying no.
‘They didn’t work obviously, perhaps I missed a day when I gave them to you, I don’t remember now—’
But I remember. I didn’t take the pills he gave me, not always. It felt like seeing Alex or going swimming, important to do theopposite of what he wanted, perhaps I sensed what he was doing and rebelled. But it backfired. I search for the sofa behind me, cannot find it. I sink to the floor.
‘I should have told you, I know that now.’
I bury my face in my hands.
‘But darling, don’t you see what this means? There was never a plan to trap you.’
Behind my palms, things slowly click together. He is owning up to this transgression to absolve himself of a greater one. And then the scientist in me takes over from the frightened hurting child, recognises the sense in what he did, his scalpel-sharp efficiency. Because, he’s right, isn’t he? If I’d taken the pills, I would have never got pregnant, I would never have had an abortion. If I’d just done what he asked, none of this would have happened.
‘I think that’s the tragedy of all of this. If I hadn’t become so possessive towards the end, you’d have come to me when you found out, not him. I wouldn’t have lost my mind trying to find you, I wouldn’t have gone to prison. It wouldn’t have been the end of us.’
Misunderstandings. Possibilities. Counterfactuals. There have been so many mistakes.
He presses the side of the glass against his lips. ‘One last thing before you go, I need you to listen to this, it’s important. The thoughts you had about your baby, that you lost her because you’re a bad mother, because of the abortion, none of that is true.’
I stare at him in the dark. No one has ever said that to me before. No one has stood before the whirlwind of guilt and shame that has always swirled inside me and simply told it, ‘No,’ and I don’t understand how it ishimwho’s saying it, the man who’s ruined my life, the man I hate more than anyone in the world.
‘The reason you’ve found everything so hard – being a wife, a mother, losing the baby – is you’ve kept so many secrets. And, when you were most vulnerable, on that delivery table, they overtook you.’
Tears stream down my face.
‘Your secrets are my fault, I admit it, I did something very wrong, I committed a crime, it’s my fault you could never tell anyone. If you came to show me that, you’ve done it, I see it now, the harm, I’m sorry, truly. But . . .’ His voice quivers. ‘I am also hoping, praying that during these last few days, you’ll have realised something else. Because of all the things you’ve told me and I’ve told you, there are no secrets between us anymore. Which means now, more than at any other time, we have a chance. To make something out of this.’
I cannot breathe.
‘I love you. You must know that.’
‘You can’t say that,’ I whisper.
‘I’m theonlyperson who can say that. Because I’m theonlyperson who knows you.’
I put my hand out to silence him but it’s too late, his words roar inside me.
‘I know why you find childbirth hard, motherhood hard, being a wife—’
I press my knuckles to my mouth.
‘—I’d be there for you helping you through, unknotting, untangling you, I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again.’
A case of colour pencils. Primroses. A thyme field, golden with dusk.
‘Don’t you see? We can still have it. Our rare, astonishing life.’
I try desperately to hold on, I think of Millie and Kit but they flitter away, there is too much pain there – Millie thrashing on the floor, the look on Kit’s face when they took Faye away. Daniel says, ‘Darling,’ and the word rings in my head, I could bethat,his darling, not who I am now, everything that’s happened is no more than a bad dream, and then he whispers, ‘Lolly,’ and at my old name – forbidden, transgressive – the fourteen-year-old girl I’ve shackled for eighteen years, sick and wrong and wanting him from the start, breaks free.