‘She was OK, but Max didn’t feed, and I got engorged and then I was crying all the time and he started losing weight, and Tom was working such long hours and I found it so hard having twins with a toddler already . . .’ She broke off and wrinkled her nose, embarrassed.
I felt myself stiffen, the old dragging in my limbs, but I tried to smile normally.
‘Basically I got a form of postnatal depression. If you ask Tom, he’d say I had a mental breakdown, the complete psychotic full-on craziness, but that’s not true. It’s chemical with me. The pills help – though I’ve stopped taking them. They make me feel blurry.’
Perhaps I should have focused on the delicacy of her mental state, not his response to it. Perhaps it was foolish not to have probed deeper.
This morning, as I watched Delilah walk away, into my head came a memory of an incident earlier this year. I had been in Ailsa’s kitchen helping Max with his homework while she was trying to find someone to collect Melissa from a hockey match. No one had picked up her texts or answered her calls; she was getting increasingly anxious and tense. Finally she rang a parent she hardly knew. ‘Could you . . . OK. Never mind at all. Thanks so much, babe, another time.’ Her voice was sweetness and light; you’d have had no idea how angry she was if you hadn’t then seen her hurl the phone on the table and scream: ‘Fucking unhelpful bitch.’
Chapter Seven
Four 10g sachets of Heinz Tartare Sauce
Neologism, noun. A word or phrase which is new to
the language, one which is newly coined.
I saw little of Tom during this period, though I was aware of him. Our walls are quite thin. He was loud in the morning, the first up for a shower, his voice echoing over the gush of the water in their en-suite, his laugh – a guffaw, almost like a shout – particularly penetrative. Once or twice, I felt his presence. I’d be in the kitchen and I’d see thrashing in the undergrowth outside the window. Not squirrels, as I first thought (Mother’s Squirrel Nutkin having a play), but Tom Tilson on the other side of the fence, tugging violently at the ivy, trying to see what he could yank down.
Sue told me at the pub quiz she’d seen him having a row with Gav, a local care in the community, who is often out asking ‘for a couple of quid for a cup of tea’. Tom, she said, was laying into him, telling him he was going to call the police if he didn’t clear off. We didn’t like that, me and Sue. He was a bully, we told each other, the kind of person who was threatened by anyone who was different. But I saw him myself once from Mother’s window, in a scene in which I was forced to feel sympathy. He was in the street with an elderly couple who must have been his parents. Both were smartly dressed, the woman blonde and pearled, the man tall, with the sharp bend between his shoulders that suggests scoliosis. ‘This is us,’ I heard Tom say, and his tone was both declamatory and hopeful. He was seeking approbation and, despite myself, I found this grown man’s need for approval touching. I winced when I heard his mother’s reply, sharp and querulous: ‘Busy road.’
It wasn’t until the end of May that I spent any time with him. He had been away – Cannes, for the festival. Just a few days before, Ailsa had asked if I would be an angel and tidy up my front garden while he was gone, ‘to keep him off my back’. I’m afraid to say I put it off, and it wasn’t until the Sunday that I found myself out there, having a little go. Ineffectual, I’m afraid. I’m not very good at getting down to things.
I heard them, but didn’t see them due to the height of the hedge. Tom was first through the front door, clearly back from his trip. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ he called back into the house. ‘Do it later. It’s not the end of the world.’ Ailsa’s voice next: ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Other snippets: ‘For God’s sake, what’s going on now?’ And then: ‘At last.’
They were in the process of having their drive-in turntable thing installed and their off-street area was closed off behind a corrugated-iron hoarding. Otherwise, they’d