These were the streets and houses of his childhood landscape, the environment that had shaped him. It couldn’t be more different to her own. Was that why she’d been so easy for him to cast off? Had there always been an undercurrent that she’d failed to notice, an innate sense that they were simply cut from a different cloth?
Her own childhood had been spent in a house unbowed by aesthetic considerations. Once in a while her father had rolled up his sleeves and given the place a perfunctory clean, but the two of them had generally lived perfectly happily among the old tins of paint, broken vases and suppurating coffee mugs. It hadn’t seemed all that much like her friends’ homes but there had been plenty to like about growing up with a parent who absent-mindedly treated you like a miniature adult. Keith would rarely remember to usher her to bed at a sensible hour, so during her formative years Eva had been able to enjoy plenty of boisterous dinners punctuated by drunken arguments about Hegelian dialectics, one of which, she vividly recalled, had descended into a punch-up that had left a media studies lecturer named Geoffrey with a bloody nose. She hadn’t often dwelt on the fact that it was just the two of them. One parent seemed fine, plenty even. Anyone else would surely have felt like an intruder. And yet she could see now that something had been missing. Keith had never seen her point of view or understood her decisions, and they never really talked about their lives or how they felt about anything. She’d always seen it as a strength that they were the sort of people who didn’t need big soppy heart-to-hearts, that they cared about loftier, more important things, but his political beliefs seemed to her now suspiciously like something to hide behind to avoid any emotional connection; now that her world, not some abstract ideology but her real, actual life, had fallen apart around her, all he wanted to do was score political points. And when she looked at her own life now, it too seemed defined by the things that were missing: a mother, a career, a home. Benedict. A cluster of black holes exerting their irresistible gravitational pulls, warping and distorting all that remained.
And then, of course, there was the other loss, not even really her own but nevertheless the one in front of her every day. Eva had fallen in love with Allegra right alongside Sylvie, and the baby had seemed to blossom with their love, making progress even as the doctors warned them not to expect too much, slowly but surely learning to eat and take a few steps and say a few words. But even as they celebrated each milestone, they both knew that the loss was profound. At the moment of Allegra’s birth, they had lost a part of her that would prevent her from ever growing into the person she should have been, and in private they each grieved for the Allegra who would one day have reached her full potential without the agonies of learning difficulties and cerebral palsy, the Allegra who should have been looking forward to a life of first kisses and first days at university instead of leg braces and Statements of Educational Need.
*
The sky darkened and the rain began to fall, softly at first and then harder as Eva turned and headed for home along the edge of the Heath. She paused to fix the rain cover over the buggy, ensconcing Allegra in a warm, dry bubble. The raindrops hit the ground as she walked, splashing into puddles and rustling into piles of leaves and sliding onto the tarmac under the roaring wheels of the cars that were making their way up East Heath Road in ever-increasing numbers as rush hour took hold. The watery symphony prevented Allegra from hearing Eva crying quietly, the sound instead floating up into the sky unheard and out into a universe in which babies were born disabled and mothers died and people were deserted by those they loved.
28 Hampstead, Winter 2008–Spring 2009
Eva opened unenthusiastic eyes and peered out into another new day. What to do with it? On balance, she thought, she would spend it in bed just like she had the day before, and if she was honest, like quite a few more days over the last month.
It had started with a cold, a bad one with burning eyes and a hacking cough and a throat so sore she could barely speak.
‘We’d better quarantine you,’ Sylvie said after taking a look at her. ‘There’s no way you’re giving that to Allegra, she’d be back in hospital in an instant.’
So Eva had gathered some supplies and stayed in her room. After a few days, the bug had subsided but the days were getting short and cold and every morning it was harder to motivate herself to get out of bed. The world outside was full of noise and friction and the streets were crowded with people smiling and talking on phones, people with things to do and places to go. Eva, by contrast, walked through the streets like a ghost. Whenever she went out, she wanted nothing more than to be back in her room where there was no reminder of what she was or what she should be. She never felt hungry, so she was shrinking and that felt right too, that she was occupying less space. The layer of residual fat from her trading years had melted away. Sometimes she fantasized that the process would continue until she disappeared altogether.
*
‘That’s enough now,’ Sylvie said from the foot of the bed the next morning. ‘You’re going to have to pull yourself together, because if I have to look at your miserable face any longer I’ll jump off a fucking bridge.’ She paused then continued when no reaction was forthcoming from Eva. ‘You’ve lost your job and a boyfriend you didn’t particularly like, not the use of your legs. It’s only a job. And a boyfriend. You can get another one of each. You just need to get out of bed and pull yourself together.’
Eva stared up at the ceiling. ‘I can’t get another job, not in the City, anyway. And what the hell else can I do? Go off and become a yoga teacher?’
‘I don’t know,’ snapped Sylvie. ‘But you’ll get another job eventually and everything will be fine. So what if Julian left you? He should have done it ages ago, you never loved him and frankly it showed.’ She sat down heavily on the edge of the bed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Look, I’m sorry if this sounds harsh but, to be honest, it’s quite hard to stomach when all of your problems are temporary. In a year’s time they will probably all have disappeared. I face far bigger challenges than you every single day, and do you know what I do? I get on with it.’
‘I know you do. You’ve been really brave,’ conceded Eva.
Sylvie shrugged. ‘Brave? Everyone loves going on about how brave I am and isn’t it great that I’m coping so well, because they need a narrative that tells them everything’s okay. And guess what? Everything’s not okay, and it’s not going to be okay, and I still get out of bed every morning and stick a smile on my face even if I feel like my heart is breaking, because what’s the alternative? That’s life. You play the hand you’re dealt.’ Sylvie stood up and moved over to the door, adding as she left the room, ‘There used to be more fight in you than this. Pull it back, Eva, because we still need you.’
The irritation Eva felt at Sylvie’s lecture was the strongest sensation to pierce her listlessness in weeks. Sure, Sylvie had problems, but she didn’t have a monopoly on them. One person having a very bad time didn’t nullify everyone else’s troubles. And hadn’t Eva been right there beside her every single step of the way? Yes, Allegra was Sylvie’s daughter and it was hardest for her, but she wasn’t the only one who loved her, had been devastated for her, fretted about the future.