The Telling

against the end of the work surface. He stuffed his hands in his pockets. He looked at me; he had paled, as if nauseous. I didn’t know it was like this, he said. How long has it been like this. And he didn’t hold me. And that was just before the talks, and more talks, and more tears, and him forgetting how easy it was to hold me and stop me crying. And the phone call that brought me to the peeled man.
    *
     
    They arrived late Friday evening, the headlights sweeping down the village street, the engine noise a tear through the silence. I went out on to the steps; the stars prickled above. The street was cool and quiet; there was a soft leafy smell, the odd birdcall in the dark. The car – his mum’s, a silver Mazda – had pulled up at the grass verge. He got out.
    He was creased and tired from driving. He was still in his work clothes, a grey-blue shirt, faintly striped suit trousers, the jacket hanging in the back of the car. I came down the steps in bare feet. The stone was granular beneath them; grit pressed into my soles. My skin felt strange in the evening air. I’d showered. I’d washed my hair. I’d put on a little make-up. I was ignoring the static hum in the air. I was trying to do normal.
    I went to him and put my arms around his neck. He reached around me and pulled me close. The warmth of his body against mine. I had forgotten it.
    ‘Hi,’ I said.
    ‘Hello.’ He mumbled it into my hair.
    Cate was sleeping in the back seat. Her face was turned away, so that all I could see was the smooth curve of a cheek and dark curls of hair. She was wearing her stripy pyjamas; her strawberry-patterned blanket was rumpled, half kicked off. Mark ducked past me to open the back door, leaned and fumbled with the car seat. He lifted her out, and she curled up in reflex, whimpered. He handed her to me, and I took her. She was heavy, limp, and hot. She’d grown. She whimpered again, nuzzled into my shoulder. Her smell: musty, appley; milky and ammoniac. I rested my cheek against her head, stood there just a moment, turning slightly from side to side, soothing her, a haziness coming over everything.
    ‘C’mon,’ Mark said, a hand pressed on the small of my back, steering me. I carried her up the steps and indoors. I sank into a chair and leaned back to let her lie against me. Her warmth and weight and scent, the soft puck of her lips unsticking. In the hospital, newborn, curled and pink, her bald head squashed into a mitre, she had lain on my chest, her ear resting on my heart. She had weighed almost nothing, breathed butterfly breaths, radiated heat. Her ear on my heartbeat, me counting her breaths; we were keeping tabs on each other, me and Cate; we were making sure.
    I was becoming drowsy with her sleep.
    Mark carried in the travel cot. I gestured for him to take it upstairs.
    ‘Room on the left,’ I breathed. ‘There should be space.’
    He nodded, took it upstairs. I heard him up there, in the twin bedroom, setting it up. He came back down and slipped his arms around her. I let her weight be lifted from me, blinked the haze and dampness from my eyes.
    Normal. Normal normal normal.
    I got up and went into the kitchen. I opened a bottle of wine, made a sandwich for Mark. Goat’s cheese, vine tomatoes, rocket. Poppy-seeded bread.
    He sat on the sofa and I sat on the hearthstone, watching him. The room smelt of woodsmoke, vacuuming, good tomatoes. I liked that shirt on him. He was absentmindedly biting at his sandwich as he looked around the room. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple rolled down his throat and back up again. I could have got up, and gone over to him, and sunk down in his lap, and nudged my cheek in to rest against his throat, and breathed in the warm musky end-of-day scent of him. He looked back at me, pulled a sadly comical sympathetic face.
    ‘Not fun,’ he said.
    ‘The estate agent says this kind of property is really shifting,’ I said deliberately. I heard the breath hiss in between my teeth. ‘You should have seen it when I got here. I’ve taken loads of stuff to Oxfam.’
    ‘You’ve got someone coming for the furniture?’
    ‘Yep.’ I stood up, walked past him, into the kitchen, started wiping up the crumbs. ‘There’s this great charity. It’s all under control.’
    *
     
    Cate woke us in the night, wailing at the unfamiliar dark. Mark had lunged out of bed before I’d even really surfaced. I could hear them from across the landing; his shush, shush, shush, her wet