Missing Pieces

PART I

1

5 AUGUST 1985 – 21 DAYS AFTER

The coffin was too small. Too small to contain what it did, which was not only Phoebe’s body, but a large part of Linda, too.

At the funeral parlour, a man touched Linda’s arm and asked, gently, whether she wanted to see Phoebe, and even as she was nodding her head, she knew that it was a mistake.

‘Are you sure?’ Tom asked.

Linda knew that this was a decision she couldn’t unmake. Knew, instinctively, that she was wrong. She would wish, later, that she hadn’t seen their daughter like that, because no matter how peaceful she looked, she was still gone. Knew that the memory of her lying there, surrounded by silk and dressed too immaculately, would interfere with the memories she held of Phoebe laughing and running. Alive. And still, she nodded her head and followed the man down the corridor towards a lifetime of regret.

Linda looked back, once, at Tom and Esme. They were standing hand in hand, quite still, dark heads bowed. Esme’s fringe needed cutting; it was covering her eyebrows and, when she looked down at the thick carpet, her eyes too. This is my family, Linda thought. This is what’s left of my family. And then she looked down at her swollen belly, touched it as her baby flipped over like a fish, and felt nothing.

When they reached the room, the man told her to take as long as she needed. He opened the door for her and then disappeared down the corridor like a ghost. And Linda approached the coffin slowly, looked in at the girl who couldn’t possibly be Phoebe. Who was too small, and still, and quiet, to be Phoebe.

And Linda felt like getting inside it, curling up with her daughter and going to sleep.

But the coffin was too small.

2

13 AUGUST 1985 – 29 DAYS AFTER

Linda set her hands on her rounded stomach, interlaced her fingers. Tom was beside her in the sparse, white waiting room, and neither of them reached for a magazine, and neither of them spoke. The receptionist was eating her lunch, and the smell of her egg sandwiches made Linda feel sick. She unlaced her fingers and gripped the sides of her chair, willing the waves of nausea to pass. She’d given birth to both of her daughters in this hospital, had sat in this room waiting for numerous scans, and she’d always found it cold. That day, though, it seemed stuffy. She thought about standing and opening a window. She lifted her thick hair from the back of her neck, rooted in her bag for a band to tie it up.

When her name was called, Linda stood. Tom held out a hand for her to take, but she didn’t reach for it, and he let it drop, followed her down the corridor. When they opened the door, the doctor stood and offered them a kind smile.

‘I’m Dr Thomas,’ he said.

‘You were here when Phoebe was born,’ Linda said. ‘I remember.’

He smiled again, but didn’t confirm or deny it. He’s seen hundreds of babies being delivered, Linda told herself. He wouldn’t remember hers. She sat down on an uncomfortable blue plastic chair and crossed her legs. She couldn’t look at Dr Thomas, and she couldn’t look at Tom, and so she set her eyes on the abstract painting that hung on the wall to the left of Dr Thomas’s head. Every time she blinked, she kept her eyes closed for a fraction too long, trying to ignore the strong smell of ammonia that hung in the air.

‘I heard about your daughter. I’m so sorry.’

Linda wanted to ask why he didn’t say Phoebe’s name.

‘Thank you,’ Tom said. ‘It’s been very hard.’

Since Phoebe’s death, almost everything anyone said seemed ridiculous to Linda. She wanted to shake Tom, to punish him somehow for reducing their pain like that.

‘Of course,’ Dr Thomas said. ‘That’s why we wanted you to come in today and have another scan. The stress of something like this can be very tough on a baby. We just wanted to have a look and check that everything’s all right. Try not to worry, though, I’m sure it will be. Now, Linda, would you like to get up on the bed?’

Linda did as she was told. As she pulled her legs up, the paper that was covering the bed tore a little, and it sounded loud in the quietness of the room. Six weeks ago, they’d come here for her twenty-week scan. Esme and Phoebe were being looked after by Maud, their next-door neighbour. Tom had closed his travel bookshop and they’d driven to the hospital, and Linda had felt a clutch of excitement in her throat, like she had on the day they’d run away from their families, when Esme was growing inside her. On the way to the appointment, Tom had turned the radio up loud and they’d sung along, the car windows open and the breeze whipping Linda’s dark hair against her face.

It was hard to reconcile that memory with the question that wouldn’t go away. The question that had come to Linda, formed and ready to be spoken, a few nights before, that was rising up in her throat, like bile.

‘Dr Thomas?’

He turned to her, and she met his eyes for the first time.

‘Yes, Linda?’

‘Is it too late to have an abortion?’

Linda heard Tom’s intake of breath and saw the flash of shock that Dr Thomas tried to hide. She wouldn’t back down, or retract the words. How could she? How could she be expected to have this new child, and love it, when her love for Phoebe had brought her to this? When she could barely take care of her remaining daughter, barely look Esme in the eye?

Dr Thomas cleared his throat and the sound brought Linda back into that room, and she glanced at Tom. He was looking at her like he didn’t quite recognise her. Squinting slightly, as though trying to work out whether he’d seen her somewhere before.

‘It is too late,’ Dr Thomas said. ‘But if you don’t think you can care for this baby, there are options we can discuss.’

‘Adoption?’ Linda asked.

She considered this, briefly. Going through the labour, feeling the baby emerge from her like a miracle, and then handing it over. Would she hold it first? Would she be told the sex, be given a chance to think about a name? No, she decided. That option wasn’t for her. But before she could speak, Tom spoke for both of them.

‘No,’ he said, his voice soft but firm. ‘We’re having this baby, and we’re keeping it.’

‘Let’s get this done,’ Dr Thomas said. ‘And then we can talk some more.’

He smeared the cold jelly on Linda’s stomach and she almost laughed at the tickling shock of it. She waited to be told what she knew: that the baby was fine. She was aware that Tom was worried that her grief, her refusal to eat properly, and her inability to sleep, had caused the baby harm. But she could feel it moving, turning and probing. And more than that, this baby was a part of her, and she felt sure that she would know instantly if there were anything wrong. Just as she had known, that night, that something had happened to Phoebe.

And so, when the image appeared on the screen and Dr Thomas said the heartbeat was strong, Linda wasn’t surprised. But she saw Tom, saw his hand fly to his mouth in pure relief, saw the love in his eyes that was ready and waiting. It was simpler, somehow, for him.

Despite what Dr Thomas said about it being too late, she knew there were ways to rid yourself of a baby. Ways that women had relied on for centuries. Painful and dangerous ways, but possible. But she wouldn’t do it, because of Tom. She closed her eyes briefly, tried to imagine herself as the mother of a newborn again. Tried to imagine them being a family of four again. But it didn’t feel right, when Phoebe wasn’t one of them.

‘Well,’ said Dr Thomas, ‘everything looks fine here. Come and take a seat at my desk again, when you’re ready.’

He wiped the fluid from Linda’s belly and she pulled her clothes back into position, pushed herself up and off the bed. Tom waited until she was ready. When she stood, he placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her the few steps back to the waiting chair. Linda anticipated a lecture, a talking to about how she would get through this. How other women had. You don’t know, she wanted to scream. She wanted to open the door and let her voice bounce and echo along the empty white corridor. None of you knows.

‘I’d like you both to think about having some counselling,’ Dr Thomas said.

‘It won’t change anything,’ Linda said.

‘Not the situation, no. But I really think it might help you to come to terms with things. To accept what’s happened, and start to move on. I’m not asking you to make a decision today. Just think about it.’

Linda took the leaflets he was holding out to her and stood, ready to leave. When she was at the door, she felt Tom’s breath on her neck, and she was sorry, for a moment, that they were leaving together. That they would have to suffer the car journey home, and then the evening, and the days and weeks to come in that too-empty house, with the words she’d spoken hanging there in the air, like a threat.

Tom didn’t speak until he was behind the wheel with his seatbelt on. He reversed neatly out of the parking space, and Linda watched him, waiting for the accusations and the blame. He was handsome, this man she’d chosen. His profile was strong. They were both still young, him thirty and her twenty-eight, and yet small flecks of grey were starting to show in Tom’s neat, dark hair. Once, he’d mentioned colouring it, and she said that she liked it as it was, and Esme commented that he looked like he’d been caught in a tiny snowstorm, and he left it. Tom must have felt her eyes on him then, and he glanced at her. It was his eyes that she’d noticed first. Green in some lights, grey in others. Kind, open. There was kindness in them still, she saw, even though she expected to be met with disgust.

When Tom did speak, it wasn’t what she expected at all.

‘I do understand,’ he said, his voice calm. ‘I lost her too. Just⁠—’

His voice cracked, and Linda watched his face, saw the tears welling.

‘—Just try not to shut me out.’

‘I’ll try,’ Linda said, because she wanted to offer him something other than hurt.

That night, after Tom fell asleep, Linda lay awake beside him, listening to the occasional sounds of people and cars on the street outside. Sometimes, even before Phoebe’s death, Linda woke up wondering how she’d ended up here, in an unassuming semi on a residential road in Southampton, so far from home. The night before she’d left Bolton with Tom, they had sat in his car with a map of England spread out on their laps. Linda’s eyes were drawn to the edges, to the places beside the sea, and she’d pointed at Southampton, smiling. She had known almost nothing about the place. Her grandparents had holidayed there once. It was where the Titanic had sailed from. Linda had pictured a crumbling sort of house by the sea. Fish and chips, walking along the beach, her hair salty, being lulled to sleep by lapping waves. And when they had arrived, and it was nothing like she imagined, she hadn’t cared much, because it was still a fresh start, a new life. But almost a decade had passed now, and that freshness had long since faded.

Linda was aware of the sound of her breathing. She watched the clock crawl through half an hour, and when it got to one o’clock, she sat up carefully, trying not to wake Tom. She took her white cotton dressing gown from the hook behind the door and left the room, looking back once to check that he hadn’t been disturbed. He was lying on his side, his breathing deep and slow, his mouth open.

She didn’t turn the light on in the kitchen. After almost eight years in this house and two babies, she knew her way around in darkness. The kitchen had always been her favourite room. When they had come to look at the house, weary with unsuccessful viewings and the knowledge that they couldn’t afford the kind of place she would choose, Linda had gone to the kitchen first. She’d looked around, at the drawings on the fridge that were held in place by colourful magnets, at the old pine table in the corner still messy with breakfast crumbs. The walls were painted a bright yellow and the cabinets were a pale wood, chipped and marked in places. It was the kind of room where a family gathers at the beginning and end of each day. And she’d known, then, that it didn’t matter that the bathroom was small and the garden was a bit wild. This was the house where she would have her family.

For a while, Linda stood at the window, watching the stillness of the dark garden. It was mid-August, late summer, and although she was hot with the weight of her pregnancy, she wasn’t ready for the season to change. Because when that summer had begun, she’d still had Phoebe. And it still seemed impossible that she was gone for good.

Linda opened the narrow cupboard in the corner of the room, stared at its contents. And then she took out the bottle of vodka and unscrewed the cap. She did it quickly, as though afraid of being caught. The bottle was three-quarters full, and she calculated that it had probably been there since the previous Christmas, when they’d had a party for some friends and neighbours. That night, she’d taken the drinks Tom had handed her, and she remembered feeling light-headed, feeling that the room was spinning slowly, as girls in bright dresses darted in and out of the small groups that had formed. She remembered catching sight of Phoebe, and dropping to her knees, catching her youngest daughter’s wrists and kissing her forehead. Phoebe had wriggled from her grip, dashed off after her sister and the other older girls, and Linda had poured herself another drink.

Now, alone in the dark while Esme and Tom slept upstairs, Linda longed for the edges to blur a little, to take a break from the heaviness of her thoughts, and alcohol was the only way she knew. She lifted the bottle to her lips, tipped it, gulped. The baby inside her kicked, a quiet protest. And Linda tipped the bottle again, swallowed, and put it back in the cupboard. She sat down at the kitchen table, waiting for something to change, for some of the darkness to lift.