‘When something so utterly vile happens to you, it feels like a new person has taken over your body – like you’ve been possessed by this stranger. And you’re forced to live with them and get to know them, and respond to their wants and needs and desires, because they are you… and yet, they are not you. And while this walking ghost takes over your life, you are desperately trying to find ways to exorcise it – but you never can, because a living, breathing memory has given birth to it, and unless you can get rid of every second of that memory, you can never regain full control of yourself. So I’ve been wandering like a lost soul within the confines of my own body, hoping beyond all reason that one day I might come back and be myself again. And I’m still waiting, Alex. I’m waiting and hoping and praying… I don’t know how much longer I -’
Her voice rose and was absorbed into the wind. She couldn’t go on.
Alex’s arms wrapped around her, and he pulled her close. She clung on to him desperately, crying, not noticing until her tears began to subside that his body was heaving too.
‘I’m so sorry, Amy,’ he whispered into her hair.
After what seemed like a long time, they were both calm and quiet again, staring out across the water. Something had shifted in Amy, and, remarkably, it felt a little like a brief snatched moment of peace.
‘Are you going to get in touch with your mum?’ Alex asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think you should.’
She looked at Alex. He was still watching the water. ‘I’m not sure she’ll want to talk to me after what happened with Dad.’
‘Amy, your dad was an old man -’
She interrupted, ‘Who had a heart attack because of stress. I’m sure of it. If I hadn’t – if it hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t have died.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No, I don’t, not for sure, but I’m pretty certain. I ran away because I was desperate, but I was so selfish – I didn’t think about the effect it might have on my poor dad. I just knew that people love to gossip, and when you’re the victim everyone looks at you and feels so sorry and sad for you, and then they go home and curl up on the sofa and feel so grateful and smug that they’re so lucky. I used to do it – I didn’t know that what I was doing was so hurtful, but I did it. And I didn’t want the sadness of my life to be the prop in someone else’s self-esteem, for people to be looking at me and thinking, Well, it could be worse, I could be Amy Duvalis.’
She was expecting Alex to object to this, but he didn’t say anything for a while. The silence between them was heavy, but not uncomfortable. Finally, he said, ‘Amy?’
‘Hmm.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘Please tell me about the baby.’
She knew that there was no going back after she told him. She knew he might well judge her. But she also knew it had to be said.
‘I didn’t know for ages,’ she began. ‘My head was so messed up, I didn’t notice I’d barely had a period for months – I presumed it was all part of the trauma. There was no reason for me to think that… they had done a test in the hospital, and given me the morning-after pill. Twice, if I remember rightly, because I kept being sick and they were worried I was throwing it back up. Obviously, they were right. When I finally twigged, it was just from seeing myself in a full-length mirror one day – big boobs, rounded tummy. It suddenly dawned on me – it’s crazy, I know.
‘At first I wanted to get rid of it. I was in Thailand at the time, and I went to a doctor…’
Telling it also meant reliving it. The dirty waiting room. The wrinkled doctor touching her stomach, nodding, gesturing for her to take off her underwear. His impatience when she refused, grabbing her arm, causing her to run out of the place without even paying, the sounds of his unintelligible shouting chasing her down the street.
‘I was in denial till I was about six months gone. I was checking in with Mum and Dad most weeks, telling them I was okay, not mentioning it to them at all. I was bracing myself to come home, but also putting it off.’
She closed her eyes, remembering how her dad would plead every time for her to come back, or at least tell him where she was. How she wished now that she hadn’t refused him.
‘After I began to accept what was happening, I wanted the baby to be yours,’ she said, not daring to look at him. ‘I dreamed of presenting you with your child, and your overjoyed face when you saw us, and the dream sustained me. In fact, I was convinced it was yours – although I still wouldn’t come home. Looking back, I’m sure that somewhere in my subconscious I knew that if I did, I couldn’t keep alive the spell I’d woven around myself – there would be too many questions.
‘Then, when I was eight months pregnant, I called home…’
Another raw, crippling memory. Her mother, the calm, practical one, had been hysterical. Her dad had already been dead three days from the heart attack. Her mum was alone. She had begged Amy to come back.
‘In the emotion of it all I promised I would come home, but I knew I couldn’t. Even if I’d wanted to, no airline would have let me on a plane – I was enormous. I was in a state of terrible grief, I was inconsolable. And alone. I don’t remember much about the week after that phone call.’
Bangkok, a dirty, bare-walled room with a faint smell of sewage. A bed with a grey sheet, on which she had lain all week. The concerned owners – an old, hunched Thai couple – whispering whenever they saw her…
‘My waters broke one morning about a week after I heard about Dad, and the hostel owners took me to hospital. The wife even stayed with me, and held my hand, and gave me instructions in faltering English when I didn’t understand what was going on, and calmed me down when I tried to push doctors away from me.’
And cooed over the baby when it was born, and looked quite upset when Amy wouldn’t really look at the child.
‘The birth itself was horrific. But that night, after I had her, I couldn’t help myself. I looked at her, and, beyond my expectations, the whole mother-love thing happened. She was beautiful. Actually, I was enraptured for five whole days while I was in hospital…’ She paused; took a slow, deep breath.
‘Then, when we were leaving, they gave me her medical records.’
She had taken them so readily, just a form listing a few details. Her eyes had scanned once… and then again, more slowly, everything inside her shattering in a blast of grief as the truth had torn through her.
‘Do you remember my dad making us find out our blood groups before we went on our trip, just in case?’
Alex nodded. He knew what was coming, and closed his eyes as he listened.
‘She was A negative. We were both O. She wasn’t yours.’
Alex’s eyelids flicked open after she’d said it and he stared at her. She held his gaze.
‘I took her away anyway, but I was in terrible, terrible shock. I couldn’t live in denial any more – I couldn’t ignore such concrete evidence, I couldn’t un-tell myself the truth.
‘That night I tried to persuade myself I could keep loving her, but something had changed and I couldn’t turn it back. God, it was awful; in a way I loved her beyond anything I’d imagined, but I was in turmoil and I knew – I just knew – I couldn’t keep her. What if she looked like one of them? What if she asked about her father when she got older? It’s hard even to describe what was going on – it was like my head was full of demons whispering relentlessly, and I was just fighting to breathe. I was insane at the time, crazy with choices that all appeared to lead to terrible consequences.
‘I had a bath in my room. I hadn’t had a proper wash in the hospital. I filled it with water…’
Her voice was cold and almost alien to him.