What's Yours Is Mine (19 page)

Tom taps smartly on the glass. A doctor seated next to one of the incubators looks up. She has wild Titian curls like rusty bedsprings pinned haphazardly on top of her head with a pencil, and extraordinary eyes.

The woman mouths “Five minutes!” to Tom before returning her attention to the little mite in the incubator. Tom smiles and relaxes against the window, his arms folded, not taking his eyes off the woman.

So that's how it is
. I can taste my disappointment. I didn't expect this of Tom; Tom, of all people. Safe, comforting, predictable Tom.

The door opens, and the redheaded doctor gives Tom a warm hug. I don't want to witness this sordid little scene any longer. I would rather think myself anywhere than here. I don't know what I expected to discover when I followed Tom, but I'm hard put to think of anything worse than this.

I turn to leave, and then, for a fraction of a second, I hesitate.

When I hear what Tom says next, I'm glad I stayed.

“GRACE IS RIGHT,”
Susannah muses, lolling against the end of my hospital bed. “I
do
bloody look like you.”

Actually, she doesn't. I haven't seen my daughter look as pretty as this since she was about fourteen. The piercings have gone, the tattoos are covered, and her lovely strawberry-blond hair hangs to her waist in a smooth loose sheet. She doesn't look at all like me. She looks like a princess.

She comes around the foot of the bed and perches on the edge next to my still body. “We're on our way to see Davey and Donny,” she says. “I'm fucking terrified, Mum.”

I stroke her cheek, though of course she can't feel me. “Oh, darling. There's no need. It'll be fine.”

“Grace didn't want me to go,” she says. “I think she's a
bit ashamed about the boys being in care. It must kill her that I'm even going to be related to the kid.”

She tucks my cold hand beneath the covers, and smoothes my hair back from my face, as gentle as if she was the parent and I the child. They've cut my hair short; to help with my care, I suppose. Hard for the nurses to wash it, given that I'm trapped in my bed, tethered to machines. It's gone very gray since I've been in here. I look very old.

“She thinks I'm scared the boys won't like me,” she adds, picking fretfully at her nails. “She's right, but that's not the worst bit. I figure I can take it if they get mad. I'd flip out, if I was them. I mean, I
left
. I don't mind if they yell. I think it might make it a bit easier, actually.”

I ache to put my arms around her. Susannah could have made a good mother if she hadn't been born in Grace's shadow. Of the two of them, she's the one I thought would have the happy marriage, the nice home, the car full of children. Grace was the most undomesticated child imaginable. She hasn't
earned
a family life.

Susannah gets up and paces restlessly towards the window. “What if I don't like
them
, Mum?” she says hoarsely. “What if I see my boys again and nothing happens? I don't feel anything? What do I do then?”

Her hand shakes as she pulls out a cigarette and lights it, in contravention of every rule. I wish I could tell her there's no need to worry. I wish I could tell her the real irony: that Grace's biggest fear, the dread that has her tossing and turning all night, and waking before dawn,
drenched in sweat, the real reason she didn't want Susannah to see her sons is precisely the reverse of what Susannah fears: Grace is deathly afraid Susannah
will
love her sons. She's frightened her sister will want to reclaim her boys, and put her family back together.

I wish I could tell her that Grace is too terrified even to ask herself the question that must come next, the one that's been consuming her for weeks:
what if Susannah wants this baby back, too?

LESS THAN THREE
hours later, I'm with her when she collapses at her sons' house. I don't leave her side as the ambulance races her to the nearest Emergency Room, which just happens to be at the same hospital where my useless body is lying. We are only one floor apart.

I can't even bear to look at my other daughter as she harangues the triage nurse and demands that Susannah is seen now!

This is Grace's fault. She was the one so insistent on having it all, the one who dragged Susannah into this nonsense, this
stupidity
. Another baby, after all we went through last time! But Grace doesn't know how sick Susannah's previous pregnancies made her, because she wasn't there to see it. She was too busy being the successful high-flying career girl who made Daddy proud. Susannah didn't tell her, because she doesn't want to admit that having babies isn't quite as easy for her as she pretends. She chooses not
to remember that after Donny was born the doctors told her that another child might kill her.

Grace creates so much furor that Susannah is taken straight into an exam room, but I don't fool myself that she's doing it for her sister. Her anxiety is all for the baby. Susannah is conscious now, but her skin is the color of sour milk, and her lips are blue. She won't let go of Grace's hand.

A nurse comes in to set up an IV, because Susannah is dehydrated and they're worried about the baby. As soon as she sees the needle, Susannah recoils, shaking so much the nurse can't begin to find a vein.

“Come on, Zee,” Grace says. She takes her sister's jaw lightly between her thumb and forefinger, and turns her face away from the nurse. “Never mind her. Look at me. Do you remember when I used to ring the doorbell to make you think the shot nurse had arrived?” she says cheerfully. “You screamed the place down. I couldn't believe you got so upset.”

Susannah grimaces as the nurse finally finds a vein, but doesn't flinch. “Mum made such a fuss when she found out it was you. God, she was overprotective. I was fucking
glad
you teased me. It made me feel a bit more bloody
normal
.”

That's not how I remember it.

“I still feel a bit bad about it,” Grace says.

“Well, there's no need. You must have got really sick of me being ill all the time. Do you remember when Mum
forgot your birthday? And you never said a word, you just got on the train and came and brought me a piece of cake the next day?”

Grace sighs. “Mum made a fuss about that, too.”

The nurse moves the IV pole to the head of the bed, and then whisks the curtain shut around us. Susannah closes her eyes again. Her face is swollen and filmed with sweat. I'm so angry with Grace, I could scream.

“How are you feeling?” Grace asks, after a few moments.

“Like shit,” Susannah mumbles, without opening her eyes.

Grace snatches the curtain back open. “Where's the damn doctor? I told them you're pregnant. They should be prioritizing you! You need an ultrasound. There might be a problem with your placenta, it could be pre-eclampsia, early labor, you could bleed out or—”

“Stop panicking, Grace. My water hasn't broken, and I'm not bleeding. I'm sure the baby's fine.”

“Don't be ridiculous. Look at you! Your skin is yellow! You
collapsed
, Zee. How can I not panic?”

“I told you, the baby—”

“Never mind the baby for a minute,” Grace says fiercely. “I'm talking about you. I don't want anything to happen to
you.
”

She waits another ten minutes, and then marches back out to the front desk. Within another twenty, a doctor has been to tell us what Susannah and I already knew, but is news to Grace: Susannah's kidneys are failing. She was born
with only one functioning kidney; the other was shriveled and useless, a dried prune instead of a full, ripe plum. The good kidney wasn't even that good: only one half was properly healthy, and instead of one tube draining into the bladder, she had two, both of them too narrow to do the job properly. It worked well enough until she got pregnant the first time, and then the growing baby pressed on the tube and blocked it, forcing toxins to back up in her body. Davey was born six weeks early, and Donny was nearly eight weeks premature. Each time, it gets worse. Susannah isn't even halfway through this pregnancy. If the antibiotics don't work, if the doctors can't jump-start her kidney into working, they'll have no choice but to put her on dialysis until the baby is born.

“Why didn't you
tell
me?” Grace demands, when the doctor has gone. “How could you offer to do this when it was going to make you so ill?”

“I
wanted
to,” Susannah says thickly. “It's not that bad. I wanted to give you a baby.”

Grace picks up her bag. “I'm getting you a private room, I don't care what it costs. You're not going on some Crimean mixed ward. I'll be back in a while.”

Susannah nods wearily. She waits until Grace has left and she is all alone, and then turns her face into her pillow. Her shoulders shudder, and I realize she's crying. “Oh, fuck. What the hell have I done?” she groans, her voice muffled by the pillow.

Even though I know it's pointless, I sit on the bed next to her and smooth her hair back from her forehead,
reversing our roles from just a few hours ago. “Please don't cry, sweetheart,” I soothe. “It's going to be OK.”

Suddenly she twists away from me and flings herself violently onto her back, nearly pulling out her IV. Her eyes are unexpectedly dry and hard. “I have to keep this baby,” she says furiously, her fists clenched by her sides. “I'm going to keep it. I
have
to keep it.”

“It's OK, darling,” I repeat. “You're not going to lose it. You got to the hospital in plenty of time. They've got you hydrated again, and the doctor said the baby's heartbeat is strong. They'll do an ultrasound tomorrow to make sure. You mustn't worry. The baby will be fine. You're going to keep it—”

And then I realize what she meant.

Tom begins, as he so often does, by kissing my face and stroking my breasts. It's not that it isn't nice, or that I don't enjoy it. It's just that it's how he always begins these days.

Without exception.

He strokes my legs, from my ankles, up my calves, to my knees, and then back down again. It's Saturday night, so I shaved my legs this morning in readiness. Because we always have sex on Saturdays.

After a short while, Tom eases the straps of my cream negligee off my shoulders and gently sucks my nipples. Cursorily, I stroke his back and twist my fingers in his hair—when did he get it cut? I rather miss the boyish curls—but the truth is I'm not really concentrating. I have to get up early tomorrow to collect Susannah from the hospital, and I want to finish off the nursery first. It's freshly painted a pale primrose, and the oak floor has been newly sanded and varnished, but I still haven't unpacked the boxes that arrived from Harrods this morning. I want
to have it all ready so I can surprise her when she gets home.

I'm jolted back to my own bedroom when Tom puts his hand between my legs, opens my lower lips and inserts his middle finger to check if I'm wet. Clearly he thinks I'm ready, since he pushes himself up on his forearms, but I wince at the thought. Quickly, I find his penis with my hand and start to squeeze, partly to see how ready he is, but also so that he doesn't push inside me just yet. Tom moans softly, and halfheartedly tries to return the favor, missing my clitoris by at least an inch. We used to be so much better at this.

Susannah talks about sex all the time. In detail. I didn't think some of the things she's described were even possible, never mind legal. I've only ever slept with one man, with Tom, but I used to think our sex life was quite adventurous. Not recently—not since we were married, really—but certainly in the beginning. We did it in all sorts of positions, and not always in bed. There was one time, years ago, at a friend's summer wedding, when we did it in full view of everyone on the front lawn. No one actually knew, of course; I was sitting astride Tom's lap on the grass, my long formal gown hiding the fact that his trousers were unzipped and he was inside me, but still. It makes me excited just thinking about it, even now.

Tom feels the sudden wetness between my thighs, and takes it as a green light. He stops manhandling my genitals and shifts his body into the tried-and-true missionary position. I imagine the closest Susannah has ever come to missionary
is seducing a Jesuit priest when she was backpacking around South America.

I don't let go of his penis, to stop him entering too hard and too soon, but I can only keep him at bay for so long. He pushes inside me, and I realize I'm still not really moist enough. He thrusts for several minutes before I'm wet enough for him to get going properly.

Once he finds his rhythm, my mind drifts again. I'm so relieved Susannah's coming home. For the past two weeks, while she's been in the hospital, I haven't slept. Worrying about her, about the baby; and of course about Mum.

I've seen Mum every day, at Susannah's insistence—“Give me a break, Grace, you can't come to see me and not bother to walk ten feet down the corridor to her?”—and it's made everything a hundred times worse. When I was only visiting her for an hour every week, I was able to compartmentalize it. It was almost like she was still at home, still running her committees, still doing her Meals on Wheels, still dead-heading roses and composting tomatoes. But now, after a fortnight of making the same small talk with myself while the machines breathe for her and feed her and collect her urine, I can't ignore the truth. Mum's not getting better. She doesn't even look like herself anymore: in fewer than six months, she's aged ten years. Sooner or later, Susannah's going to suggest we tell them to switch off the life-support machines. And I can't let her do that. I can't lose Mum. Not with everything still unresolved between us.