Less than three hours before you and Anna were thrown off the bridge in a car rented by a woman whose body has never been found, you spoke to Annabel. This Annabel who lies in the next room, who that night wandered the choked roads with nowhere to go and came knocking on our trailer door. Annabel who collapsed sick and helpless in front of me the next morning and after that never left, and has never said who she is. She attached herself to me as if her arrival did not need explaining, and by the time I thought to ask her about it, she told me that she stayed with me to help me. If I shook her awake now she would say the same thing, in her flat, lazy way. She says she found the trailer by accident. But the trailer was not in a place she could have found by accident. I calculate quickly.
I’ll never know all the small turns in the story that brought you to be in her car, but I can work out enough of it. I know her dates. Did she pick you up in the White Hart, over New Year? Was she there for the holidays, with the husband? There is an argument with the husband, is that it? Then she flirts with you and you’re drunk and angry with me, angry enough to give her what she asks for, a fuck against the wall? That’s what happened. I know what you can be like. That’s why she came back in February, it’s why she’s been hiding from the husband who can’t keep away from the bridge. She came back to get you for herself, and when she couldn’t, she made you give her money instead. The money she’s so generous with is our money. Maybe you took her car, left her stranded somewhere, I don’t care. You wouldn’t have been in it at all but for her. What happened is her doing. She killed you, and she killed our daughter. She left me with nothing. And she is carrying your child.
Now there is a wet, smug snoring coming from her room. This fat and greedy taker of all the space and air and all my careful provisioning in this place also took you from me. My legs shake, and vomit rises from my stomach. My baby girl in that car, you twisting and trying to reach her, the pocket of air bubbling away while you push at the door against the weight of the river, the dense water swallowing you. You were too late to hold my baby in your arms.
There’s a cough, the bed creaks. She’s heaving the great bulk of her body around, shifting the living flesh of your child inside her. My child is dead, and this one is alive. It kicks and squirms and presses down on her; she whispers to it, she pats it, she tells it she loves it.
I stand in the kitchen and think of the times we sat by the river and spoke of the next child we would have and, God willing, the children after that. We talked of Anna being a big sister to them all, how they would go to school and squabble and play and grow up. Now this woman who stole my child lies with another in her belly. It, too, is a child stolen from me, and from you.
I remember all the other nights when Ron was here, the soft shufflings at Annabel’s door, their voices, a needle of candlelight gleaming through a split in the partition wall. They must think I am stupid. Then utter darkness and stillness within the cabin, and outside, the river under the moon running silently seaward on the ebb tide.
On Sunday, Ron was on call for extra transport runs. Two weeks ahead of the bridge’s completion date, more workers were being brought in to work more shifts, seven days a week. He was pleased to have a real reason not to see Annabel that day; he needed some time to think. He sent her a text message to explain why he could not come. Then he sent another saying he would no longer be able to come to the cabin every evening, but he would be there whenever he could. There was no reply. He sent another message reassuring her that he would still go off-duty the moment he was needed, to get her to hospital. She or Silva had only to call and he’d be at the cabin within minutes. Even from the farthest point on the opposite bank, it would take him less than half an hour to reach her. He ended the message with “Hope you’re ok. Don’t worry about anything.”
She didn’t reply. He called her number. Silva answered and said that Annabel was resting. An hour later, he got a text message from her.
Missed yr call sorry. If evenings busy no problem don’t come. Will call you when it’s time for the hospital. I’m fine. A.
On Monday, Silva called him. “She’s fine, but she’s got to that stage, she doesn’t really want a man around her. She doesn’t want anyone to see her, she doesn’t want to go out. It makes her feel awkward. It’s how women are, just before. She needs to be with other women. When the labor starts, that’s when she’ll need you.”
It was the natural way of things, Ron believed, that no man was capable of understanding this fully, and it would be pointless for him to try; it was important only that he accept it. This was a time for Annabel, for any woman, to be as fickle as she chose. The only proper response was to hope for nothing more than to be of service to her, on her terms, when the time came. He had never before been so close to this most female and ancient mystery, and was, in fact, a little afraid of it; the secrecy surrounding a woman soon to give birth both entranced and repelled him. He understood now, he felt, the sentimentality and awe of fertility worship. Though Annabel with her slatternly ways was unlikely goddess material, he was not really surprised to find that he was ready to do absolutely anything for her.
“I can still come,” he said to Silva, “just not so often. I’ll talk to her and see what she wants.”
“No. She said she doesn’t want to tell you herself, she doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. But she definitely just wants me around, for the last few weeks. Maybe it’s because I’m a mother.”
“Well, but what will you do for food? You’ll need to go shopping.”
“We’re fine. I can get up to the road and into Netherloch. I’ll let you know if we need anything.”
“Well, okay. I’m on call for anything, all right? Tell her that. Tell her she can call any time, just for a chat. Or text. And if she changes her mind-”
“I’ll tell her. Must go, bye,” Silva said and hung up.
I have no shoes.
I got up late and couldn’t find them, even though I knew I’d taken them off sitting on my bed, as usual. I must have kicked them underneath, I thought, and the size I am now I couldn’t go scrabbling about hunting for them, so I went on bare feet to the cabin door, which was open. From there I smelled burning and saw Silva a little way down the shore poking at a fire in the barbecue, and I yelled at her I’d lost my shoes and would she come and help me find them. She turned away, took the tongs, and lifted one of my shoes out of the fire. She was laughing. She held it up high to show me. Flames were licking through the rope sole and canvas. Ashy shreds and melting drops of rubber were falling off it.
Even though it was really too late to save it, I had to get down there to stop her. But I couldn’t get farther than the concrete at the doorway. The stones surrounding it were sharp and cold, and slippery. I yelped and stepped back and burst into tears. “What are you doing? Those are my only shoes!”
“They don’t fit you,” Silva called. “And they stink!”
She dropped the shoe she’d been holding back in the fire and lifted the other. There was less than half of it left, only a blackened piece of the sole with a rag of burnt fabric attached.
“You’re insane! What am I supposed to wear?”
She dropped it, too, and stirred the fire around, then put down the tongs and walked calmly back. “They’re not worth crying over. They were bad for your feet. And you lie around all day, you don’t need shoes,” she said, walking past me.
“Of course I need shoes! I can’t go out without shoes!”
“Well, there might be flip-flops in Netherloch. I’ll get you some. If I go.”