THREE

Angela

TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2012

She knew she was going to cry. She could feel it welling up, thickening her throat so she couldn’t speak, and went to sit on the bed for a minute to postpone it. Angela needed to be on her own when it came. She’d tried to fight it over the years—she never cried, normally. She wasn’t the sentimental sort—nursing and living the army life had trained that out of her a long time ago.

But March 20 every year was the exception. It was Alice’s birthday, and she would cry. A private moment. She wouldn’t dream of doing it in front of anyone, like the people who stood there and wept in front of cameras. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like, to be on show like that. And the television people kept on filming as though it was some sort of entertainment.

“They should turn off the camera,” she’d said to Nick, but he’d just grunted and kept on watching.

It made her feel uncomfortable but apparently lots of people liked it. The sort of people who tried to be part of everything in the news.

Anyway, she didn’t think anyone would understand why she was still crying all these years later. Decades later. They’d probably say she’d hardly known the baby. She’d had less than twenty-four hours with her.

“But she was part of me. Flesh of my flesh,” she told the skeptics in her head. “I’ve tried to let go but . . .”

The dread would begin in the days before the baby’s birthday and she’d get flashbacks to the silence. That bone-chilling silence in the empty room.

Then, on the day, she would usually wake up with a headache, would make breakfast, and try to act normally until she was alone. This year, she was talking to Nick in the kitchen about the day ahead. He’d been complaining about the mountain of paperwork he had to deal with and about one of the new lads in the stores who kept taking days off sick.

He ought to retire. He could have done it two or three years ago. But he can’t let go of the business. Neither of us can let go of things, I suppose. He says he needs a purpose, a routine. He doesn’t give any sign that he knows what day this is.

Nick used to remember—in the early days. Of course he did. It was never far from anyone’s thoughts.

People in the street used to ask about their baby. People they didn’t know from Adam would come up to them, squeeze their hands, and look tearful. But that was then. Nick was hopeless with dates—deliberately, Angela thought. He couldn’t even remember their other children’s birthdays, let alone Alice’s. And she’d stopped reminding him. She couldn’t bear the flash of panic in his eyes as he was forced to revisit that day. It was kinder if she did the remembering on her own.

Nick kissed her on the top of her head as he left for work. And, when the door closed behind him, Angela sat on the sofa and let herself cry.

•   •   •

She’d tried to train herself to put the memories away. There wasn’t much help at the beginning. Just the family doctor—poor old Dr. Earnley—who’d patted her shoulder or knee and said: “You will get through this, my dear.”

Then, later, support groups, but she’d got tired of hearing her own and other people’s misery. She felt they were just circling the pain, prodding at it, inflaming it, and then crying together. She upset the group when she announced that she’d discovered it didn’t help to know other people hurt, too. It didn’t take away her own grief, just added layers to it, somehow. She’d felt guilty, because when she’d been a nurse and someone had died, she used to give the grieving family a leaflet on bereavement.

I hope it helped them more than it did me, she said to herself as she got off the sofa. Mustn’t be bitter. Everyone did what they could.

In the kitchen, she filled the sink with water and started preparing vegetables for a casserole. The water was too cold and numbed her hands so she found it hard to hold the knife, but she continued to scrape mechanically at the carrots.

She tried to summon up an image of what Alice would be like now but it was too hard. She had only one photograph of the baby. Of her and Alice. Nick had taken it with his little Instamatic but it was blurry. He’d taken it too quickly. Angela braced herself against the kitchen counter, as if physical effort could help her see her lost baby’s little face. But it wouldn’t come.

She knew from the photo that Alice had a fuzz of dark hair, like her brother, Patrick, but Angela had lost a lot of blood during the delivery and she was still high as a kite from the drugs when they put her baby in her arms. She’d asked Nick afterwards—after Alice was gone—but he couldn’t tell her much more. He hadn’t studied her as Angela would’ve done, memorizing every feature of that face. He’d said she looked lovely but had no details.

Angela didn’t think Alice looked like Patrick. He’d been a big baby and Alice had been so fragile. Barely five pounds in weight. But she’d still studied Paddy’s baby photos and the pictures they took when their second daughter, Louise, came along, ten years later. “Our surprise bonus baby, I call her,” Angela told people—willing herself to see Alice in them. But she wasn’t there. Louise was blond—she took after Nick’s side.

Angela felt the familiar dull ache of grief round her ribs and in her chest and she tried to think happy thoughts like the self-help books had told her. She thought about Louise and Patrick.

“At least I have them,” she said to the carrot tops, bobbing in the dirty water. She wondered if Lou would ring her that night, when she got in from work. Her youngest knew the story—of course she did—but she didn’t talk about it.

And she hates it when I cry, Angela said to herself, wiping her eyes with a piece of paper towel. They all do, she thought. They like to pretend that everything is fine. I understand that. I should stop now. Put Alice away.

“Happy birthday, my darling girl,” she murmured under her breath.