Every Little Secret Page 9

  ‘Maddy,’ Max whispered, trying to rouse her. He could understand her need for sleep. It had all been going so well until Emily’s heart rate began to fluctuate. In a matter of moments Maddy had been surrounded by doctors and nurses and bright lights.

  Maddy opened her eyes a fraction.

  ‘They asked if you want to breast-feed,’ he said.

  She hesitated then shook her head.

  ‘Are you sure? You said you really wanted to try.’ He knew how disappointed she’d be.

  Maddy shut her eyes.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said and kissed her forehead. ‘What formula milk do you want her to have?’

  ‘You choose.’ Her voice was croaky.

  Max sat in the corner of the dimly lit room while Maddy went to sleep. The midwife showed him how to feed his daughter with a bottle. After, as Emily slept, he watched the sun rise across the rooftops until the transformation from night into day was complete.

  * * *

  Max brought them home the following lunchtime and encouraged Maddy to rest while he saw to Emily. He enjoyed feeding her, listening to her faint snuffling sounds and smelling the soft powdered freshness. Maddy hadn’t taken much interest in her, all she wanted to do was sleep. The midwife told them Maddy had a touch of baby blues, that she needed time to adjust and how lucky that Max could be around to help.

  * * *

  On Saturday, Maddy was first out of bed. Max heard the grating noise of her pulling back the garage doors. When he looked out of the landing window, he saw her dragging out an old Chinese rug wrapped in plastic. It was one he’d taken up from her mother’s bedroom when he first moved in. It needed a good clean. He banged on the window but she didn’t hear him, so he ran downstairs and out the front door.

  She wheeled out a Silver Cross pram full of rusty birdcages and planks of wood. Everything smelled dusty and mouldy.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he called, stopping the pram with both hands. ‘You should be resting.’

  ‘I’m sick of resting, it feels lazy.’ She stomped back into the garage and came out carrying a string-less guitar.

  ‘Let me take that,’ he said grabbing it from her. Behind her were oil paintings, an old Belfast sink and stacks of newspapers tied up with rope.

  ‘Go and get some clothes on,’ she said, snatching the guitar back. He looked down at his boxers.

  ‘All right, but you need to wait for me.’

  By the time he came back out, Maddy had stacked each item on top of the other in a straight line along the driveway. Max stood on the front doorstep, watching her. She stopped to acknowledge him standing there.

  ‘Everything must go,’ she said and disappeared into the gloomy depths of the garage.

  ‘What do you want to do with it all?’ he said as she emerged again, this time with a brown ceramic bowl that said ‘Dog’. ‘And why now?’

  Out of the bowl she lifted a scruffy leather collar. There were tears in her eyes as she handed them both to him. ‘We need to get a dog.’

  ‘Whatever you want but are you sure about getting rid of all these things?’ He didn’t know how to stop her building this wall.

  ‘What else should I do with it?’ She held out a set of long-handled paintbrushes. ‘Do you want these?’

  ‘I might be able to use them.’ He took them from her and flicked the hairs. ‘Come in and have breakfast.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said.

  He took hold of her wrist as she turned away. ‘Maddy, stop…’

  ‘There’s Dad’s old Morris Minor at the back there. It’s a wreck.’

  ‘Please…’

  ‘What’s wrong? I’m clearing out some old things; it needs to be done. They kept every little thing.’

  ‘You’ve not held our daughter for two days.’

  ‘You’re managing.’ She was facing him now.

  ‘But I need to go back to work on Monday.’

  ‘You can’t leave me on my own.’

  ‘You won’t be. Sarah is across the way and the midwife is coming over again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve asked her to. You’re a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘I’m fine, really. I just don’t know how to look after a baby.’

  ‘Hold her in your arms, feed her. She’s a good baby, she’ll sleep.’ He led her indoors. Emily was crying in her crib.

  ‘See, she keeps crying and I don’t know what’s wrong.’ She gripped Max’s arms. He gently peeled her fingers off him and guided her to sit on the bed. Then he lifted Emily out of her crib and she stopped crying. He handed her to Maddy and helped her hold the baby in the crook of her arm.

  ‘You stay sitting there and I’ll go and make up her milk.’

  When Max came back a few minutes later, Maddy was standing by the window, gently rocking Emily in her arms.

  ‘That’s the way.’ Max put his arms around them both.

  ‘I was showing her the garden, telling her that she’ll have lots of fun playing in it when she’s older.’

  ‘And I’ll build her a playhouse with all that old wood.’ Max kissed Maddy’s hair. ‘See, you’re going to be a wonderful mother.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Max: May 2012

  Max turned off the road and into their drive. Emily was three months old already. Everyone warned him it would go in a flash. He wondered how Maddy had got on at the health centre, if she’d even gone. She kept making excuses about it not being necessary for Emily to be weighed. But he liked to encourage her to go. She still wasn’t completely herself. The health visitor told them she was suffering from mild postnatal depression and any contact and conversation during the day would help her. He wished she’d mix with the other mums a bit more. She’d refused to take antidepressants when the GP offered them to her. Sometimes he didn’t know what to say or do. This wasn’t how he’d imagined parenthood to be. He tried to call her at least once every day. But today he hadn’t been able to. It had been one of those days he’d rather forget. A nightmare house John had sent him to renovate. It would be quicker and less hassle to knock it down and start from scratch.

  As he got out of his car, the shriek of an ambulance siren startled him as it roared into the street. Max expected to see it turn into another road, but as it reached their house it slowed down and pulled into the drive.

  At that moment, their new neighbour, Sarah, opened their front door to let the paramedics in. ‘Thank God you’re here. Come quickly, Max, please!’

  In the sitting room he tried to take in the scene in front of him. Maddy standing with her hands clamped across her mouth, eyes bulging, and three paramedics leaning over the sofa. Beneath them, a miniature pair of feet, the skin mottled blue and grey. Maddy’s denim shirt was dark and patchy with water. He’d never seen her look so pale. When she saw him, she let out a whimper and rushed towards him, arms outstretched, her face crumpled with all the pain and anguish he felt too. He shivered despite it being a warm day. Words he wanted to say were stuck in his throat and came out as a pitiful groan. Everything around him appeared to be floating. He lunged forward but someone pulled him back. He watched their mouths open and make shapes, but he couldn’t hear a thing, like being under water.

  Then the muffled silence broke with a familiar cry and he saw Emily’s tiny feet moving. Thank God she was still breathing.

  A paramedic crouched by him on the damp carpet and in a quiet voice she explained that Maddy had left Emily in the bath for a second or two to answer the telephone. The suckers on the bottom of the bath-seat had come unstuck and Emily had fallen out and slipped under the water by the time she came back. They weren’t sure exactly how long for, but they were going to take her to hospital.

  Max stood up and took Maddy’s hands as they watched a paramedic carry their baby daughter to the ambulance.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Maddy: October 2019

  After Maddy has dropped Emily at school, she checks Facebook and Instagram. Alison has already pos
ted a selfie at the charity shop she works in, showing all the bags of people’s stuff she needs to sort through that morning.

  Without hesitation, Maddy jumps in the car and heads straight to their house again. She waits in the adjacent road to see if anyone else goes in or comes out. Part of her is willing Max to turn up so she can have it out with him. She can’t believe she’s here again snooping around, but the urge to know why this bitch is with her husband is overwhelming. There’s not a minute of the day when she’s not thinking about them together. His lies are gnawing away at her, constricting her chest as though, between the two of them, they’re squeezing the life out of her. How could she have been blind to his deceit? She believed they were comfortable and happy together, that they trusted each other. What a fool thinking any man could be any better than her cheating father.

  Once inside, she knows her way around. The layout is similar to hers, so he didn’t make too many mistakes no doubt. She closes the front door quietly, empties her pocket of biscuits for Poppy. Such a beautiful dog, but he seems neglected. She carries Max’s ironed T-shirt and jeans upstairs and hangs them on the back of the bedroom door. See what little miss perfect makes of that. Hopefully her reaction will tell her where she thinks Max is, if she’s expecting him home. Can he really be living here while pretending to be dead to her? It’s still so hard to take in the enormity of it. But from all his unopened post in the kitchen, he’s not been here for a while either.

  She wonders when they bought the house. Must be what he used her money for. She grinds her teeth together and tries to pinpoint when all this might have begun.

  Methodically, she goes around the house, opening every drawer and cupboard, searching for paperwork to give her some answers. She cannot rest until she knows how he got into this situation, if he spent the money she gave him on buying this house. It wouldn’t have been that difficult for him to get a mortgage as her house was automatically paid for when her father died. She’s glad now that she hasn’t bothered putting Max’s name on the deeds. Maybe that’s the only sensible thing she’s done.

  Next to the bathroom she finds a cupboard with shelves full of bedding and towels haphazardly piled up. On the floor is a short filing cabinet with the key left in. She opens the top drawer and flicks through the files. Mobile phone statements, gas bills, store card statements, water rates. The mortgage statements seem to be the only ones missing. She opens the bottom drawer. Inside is a pile of unopened envelopes hidden behind a few SkyWatch magazines. She rips them open and checks each date. The muscle below her eye starts to twitch. The oldest is dated December 2017. The house cost £179,000 with a tidy deposit of £20,000, of her money. The mortgage is in both their names. She clenches her jaw and stuffs the papers back in.

  In the boxroom a crib has been set up with blankets and a Disney character mobile clipped to the side. Packs of disposable nappies are stacked under the dressing table, a baby bath propped up in the corner. Maddy thinks of all the things she has ready for her baby: Moses basket, new linen cloths and packets of baby wipes she’s collected when they’ve been on offer. She smacks the mobile making it jangle awkwardly. She should chuck the whole lot of this stuff out of the window. How dare this girl think she can have a baby with her husband?

  She yanks open a drawer on his side of the bed and finds half a tube of cough sweets, a Spotter’s Guide to The Night Sky, a handful of screws, coins and a used-up tube of KY Jelly. She smirks, imagining him trying to get it in, her like a dried-up flower. She laughs out loud. Her voice sounds strange in the empty house. The dog shifts positions downstairs. She guesses he’s leaning against the under-stair’s cupboard because the door rattles. A few moments later, the house is quiet again.

  In Alison’s bedside drawer, she picks up a leaflet for a local beauty salon, a nail file, sparkly gold nail varnish and a pair of diamante hoop earrings. She catches sight of herself in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with a natural look, it’s one of the things Max said he loved about her. Or was he lying about that too, and a tart is what he really prefers? Underneath, she finds a folder of maternity notes for Alison Jane Wood. She reads through the details of her antenatal appointments, birth plan and the hospital she’s booked in with, noting that the baby is due six weeks earlier than hers. She wants to rip them to shreds but she slams them down on the bed. A piece of paper flutters out. A handwritten list of mostly boys’ names with numbers ranking them from one to ten. She shudders and in a blink it’s the page torn out of a notebook on her father’s desk, beneath a jar of barley twists. She shudders at the memory of their taste.

  She’d been looking for a crossword puzzle but came across a sheet of lined paper instead. On the left-hand side was a list of women’s names she recognised: Judith, Jayne, Linda, Caroline, Barbara, Lisa and Bunny. Bunny was their babysitter. Linda was her mother’s friend. All neighbours in their street. On the right-hand side each was scored from one to ten on their looks and, in another column, their performance in bed. She thought she would be sick right there on his ebony writing desk. Picking it up, she vowed that her mother must never know. She had to burn it. But in that same moment, she felt someone’s presence behind her. Spinning round, her father was standing there, looming over her, frowning. He snatched the piece of paper out of her hand, a nasty grin distorted his face as he tapped the side of his nose.

  That was the first time she realised she didn’t know her daddy at all. She wished he’d dropped dead on the spot to avoid all the heartache to come.

  The phone next to the bed rings, making her jump. The dog grumbles and gives a half-hearted bark. The phone rings off. She peers out of the window at a woman approaching from the house across the road. Blood drums in her ears. Moments later she can hear a key slide into the lock and the front door is opening. Maddy freezes.

  ‘It’s only me, good boy,’ the woman says in a gruff smoker’s voice. The dog’s nametag jangles. Then silence. A foot on a stair, then another. Maddy glares at the papers strewn over the bed, the drawer hanging out like a tongue. The footsteps stop and go back down in heavy stomps. Maddy tries to swallow, but her mouth is so dry her lips stick like flypaper. She listens to the squeak of the under-stairs cupboard being opened then closed. After a long minute the front door rattles open then slams shut. Maddy lets out a breath and leans towards the window. The woman is waddling across the road holding a full laundry basket. She disappears around the back of her house. Maddy tidies everything away and, checking there’s no one outside, she leaves the house as quickly as she can.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Max: October 2014

  Max lay the baby in Emily’s lap and Maddy took a photo. Another daughter. His heart could burst with joy. They’d both liked the name Chloe straight away. They didn’t disagree about much at all and he was all for an easy life.

  Maddy passed the camera to him and picked Chloe up. Time to feed her again already. He’d forgotten how relentless it was at the beginning. He’d enjoyed bottle feeding Emily and wished he could help more with Chloe. Maddy was breast-feeding this time. She promised to express some milk so that he could do the next feed. Wonderful how she’d taken to it so easily. Shame she hadn’t been well enough when Emily was born. It had taken several weeks for them all to get over the accident. Once Maddy was receiving treatment for postnatal depression, she slowly got better. Thankfully she wasn’t showing any signs of it this time.

  Now he’d finished renovating the house he’d found a big contract doing up new houses in nearby Hillingdon. There were estates popping up everywhere. Even the old RAF camp in Uxbridge was going to be developed. As long as there was plenty of local work for him so he could be near his family, he was happy.

  He took Emily’s hand and led her into her newly painted bedroom. She’d only just started walking. They’d been worried about her slow development because of the accident, but the doctors didn’t think there was anything to worry about. He sat with Emily in her play tent and they took turns dropping the brightly coloured bal
ls down the slides. Her laugh and the surprise on her face every time the ball appeared at the bottom, was a picture.

  This was the life he’d dreamed of. He’d proved to himself he could be a better person and stay out of trouble. The blokes at work ribbed him all the time for sticking at home with what they called his pipe and slippers, and yeah maybe he did miss going out and having fun sometimes, but those carefree days were over. He’d grown up and was a responsible family man now. He was sensible and straight like Maddy, nothing like his useless father. He had a lot to thank her for.

  When he thought back to the flat he’d shared with Gran, he pictured damp walls and curtains that were falling down, no double glazing, draughty windows and stick-on carpet tiles. The fridge was never packed with food like it was here. Now he earned a good wage and someone to share the bills with. They were lucky not to have a mortgage; by the time Maddy inherited the house the insurance had paid it.

  ‘Are you ready to go?’ Maddy called out.

  ‘We’re coming.’ He scooped Emily up and carried her down the stairs. It was almost lunchtime and a few of the mums that met at the library for story-time and crafting were meeting at the park for a teddy bears’ picnic.

  He strapped Emily in the car and grabbed the hamper of food and drinks. Maddy brought Chloe out in her pram car seat and strapped it in the front facing backwards. Emily had chosen the blue fluffy teddy bear they’d bought her for her first birthday. She called him Beau although she meant Bow because of the large bow around his neck. It was the source of endless jokes between them.

  ‘Can you drive today, Max, I’m feeling tired.’

  ‘Of course. We don’t have to stay too long if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’ll see how I feel. It’s such a beautiful autumn day and I didn’t want to let Diane down. She’s been organising this for weeks.’