The Secrets That Haunt Us

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

6.13 a.m.

David Reynolds reached across the bed to wrap his arm around his wife and pull himself close against her back. There was a depression where her body had been, but it was cold to his touch. He grabbed the white flannelette sheet and the nylon bedspread and thrust his portion down to the end of the bed to join its other half. A tumble of printed pink flowers now lay together in a heap, which was more than he and Julia had done for months.

Where was she this time? He flicked on the bedside lamp and squinted at the clock, his eyes taking exception to the artificial light. Almost a quarter past six. What the hell was she doing at this time of the morning at the start of the one Saturday in months he’d wangled off work? It had been one hell of a struggle to persuade his boss, and he’d had to explain – at least to some extent – that there were issues with the pregnancy. He’d told him no more than he needed to know, though. And then there was his mother-in-law, going on and on that Julia would be better if he could keep a closer watch over her now. He didn’t like to disagree with Emmeline. Deep inside him, he would always remain grateful for all she’d done to help him.

He went for a wee. Not as easy as it seems when you awake with urges for the woman you love but that you can’t satisfy. Adjusting his Y-fronts, he yanked a clean t-shirt over his head, and went down the stairs. Would she give him another lame excuse for not being there to cuddle up to so he could run his hands over her expanded belly, or even get a bit more if he was gentle and she’d let him? His sigh was long, falling on no one’s ears but his own. He already knew the answer to that one.

His heart began to beat just that little bit faster as his bare feet padded down their narrow, staircase. He paused on the middle step. It always surprised him that this was the only one to have developed a tell-tale creak, considering the house had reached its century the previous year. A realisation that it was totally freezing hit him as he spied his slippers through the many-times painted bannister. He noticed several more spots where his paintbrush hadn’t quite caught the spindles and where dull, sanded down cream paint teased him through his beautiful, pristine white gloss. Something else that wasn’t quite right. Oh, well, he was a carpenter, not a painter.

He listened. A feint sound in the kitchen. Unrecognisable, yet in some way familiar. What was she doing?

He tip-toed down the remainder of the stairs and spun a semi-circle to catch his rogue slippers before his toes fell off. Creeping down the hall, every step started taking longer. Breathing had become a pounding in his chest. There was that sound again. Water. Something going on with water. What was she doing?

Long before he saw them, the lilies overpowered his nostrils. He’d bought them during his dinner hour the day before and had presented them to her that same evening. Lilies; they never failed to make her face light up. Not once had he ever told her about the cash-in-hand jobs or the rolls of wire that ‘couldn’t be found’ on the building site, so that he could keep on buying them every Friday.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen-diner, David leant his hand on the extended leaf of the Formica dining table. The arm underneath that held it up moved and the leaf collapsed, crashing against the table legs. The vase of lilies wobbled, teetered on its narrow base. His stomach lurched towards his throat and he grabbed the vase, pollen tainting his hand. i***t! He hadn’t wanted to creep up on her and frighten her out of her wits. She would hardly come back to bed then, would she? He mopped blindly at the pool of spilled water with the bottom of his t-shirt, his eyes on Julia who was leaning up against the sink, her back to him. She didn’t look round. She didn’t move at all. Except her hands.

David shivered. Why hadn’t she put the heating on? It was March, not August. For some bizarre reason, it had begun snowing. And the kitchen was an ice box. He was ruing not putting on a jumper and jeans now.

She must be frozen. His head told him to go and wrap her up, but he just stood there, incapable of knowing what to do next. He flicked on the heating switch, his slippers making shuffling sounds on the lino. Not once did she look up. Her body was bent awkwardly forward in her efforts to reach the bowl. Even from across the room, he could detect a ‘dead-too-long-in-the-water’ sheen to her hands, ghostly rubber-white.

Julia scrubbed. The cream lace around her cap sleeves bobbed up and down with the reverberations through her arms. That nightie always stirred memories of their wedding night for him. He’d wanted her so badly and he’d shown her just how much. And she’d let him. She really had. That was the night he was sure everything would be fine. She’d kissed him hard when he’d said, ‘I love you.’ The nightie was shabby now. Her belly stretched it to its limits. He wanted to show her he loved her today like he did then. The feeling overwhelmed him.

David took a couple of steps closer, so that he stood level with the archway which separated the brown swirled carpet of the dining area from the black and once-white lino of the kitchen, both remnants of the previous occupier. His toes touched the lino and he shivered again. Still Julia scrubbed, displaying no inkling of recognition that he was even in the room, or the house. Or her life. What was she scrubbing?

A couple of steps closer still. The floorboards under the lino creaked. He held his breath, expecting her to spin round, startled, and create a crescent of soap suds across his t-shirt as she’d done every time he’d surprised her from behind at the sink. He braced himself for the wide-eyed, terror-stricken millisecond in her eyes until she realised that it was only him behind her. Only him.

He was right behind her now. He tried to piece together the jigsaw of bubbly froth, opaque skin and – what was it? A row of press-studs revealed themselves through the suds, distorted to bulbous eyeballs in the bubbles. Julia continued to scrub. Little sleeves, legs with inbuilt feet. One solitary babygrow.

David’s eyes burned bright. Finally, there it was – one tiny signal he could cling to that said it was all right, that she’d accepted what was happening to her. That she wanted the baby. Wanted it. At that moment he was desperate to just hold her there and never let her go. His beautiful wife. So thin, so pale, despite the swollen belly. Right then, he wanted to go to the doctors and the midwife who had scolded Julia for not ‘bulking herself up’ because she was ‘eating for two now, you know’ and tell them she was better, that she ate more this day than the day before, that she must have just been feeling more and more poorly this last few months as the baby got bigger; that everything was working out fine. But he would tell them nothing, he knew that. They didn’t need to know what went on here. They didn’t need to see her staring out of the window for hours on end. He would lose her to some scientist. Some clinic. That was never happening to her again.

He brought himself to within a hair’s breadth of her nightie. His chest forced warmth into her shoulder blades, the front of his pants brushing her spine. When had she fetched the babygrow? She certainly hadn’t said that she’d been out. Sally usually came around to see her now, while he was at work. He was sure she’d taken it in when he’d told her that he wanted her to stay at home. Only so she could rest, he said. He didn’t want to mention how insistent Emmeline was being about it, too. It would only cause yet more difficulties between them. It wasn’t because he wanted to control her. He’d been insistent about that. He wasn’t her mother.

The temperature rose in his body. His face flushed, hot. She was hot; all his friends said so. But she was his. His wife. His child. His life. All he had ever wanted in this room – or the promise of it – standing in front of him. Impulse overtook him and he pulled her hips against him. His right hand rested at the top of her thigh as his left sought its way across the frustrating fabric of her nightie; down, fingers sliding, inching up the material until he had the lace trim in his hand. Nearly there. Julia’s hands had stopped scrubbing, and she stood there, letting him… His right hand groped its way. He slid it onto her belly, held it there a moment, then took it between her legs. He was happy.

It was then that she screamed.