His Wife, Her Sister, Their Secret novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Name

The wristband says Ewan. Marianne walks out on her husband and her sister, and at midnight Poppy turns up at Pauline's door with the baby.

I got as far as the nurses' desk.

The midwife had come out behind me with a clipboard and a sticker sheet, and she was writing a label for the cot.

I read it upside down.

Baby Holroyd. Ewan.

I stopped walking.

"Mari." Joss's boots came up the corridor behind me, fast and heavy. "Mari, wait."

"That's his name?"

"Yes."

"You gave him my son's name."

"I gave him a name." He stood in front of me, close enough that I could smell rain and engine oil. "I need you to understand why."

"Why," I said. "Right."

I looked at his face, and it was the same face as always, tired and square and closed.

"Understand what?" I said. "That a woman buries her baby, and six years later her husband hands the name to somebody else's?"

"It wasn't somebody else's."

"Then whose?"

His mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

"Joss," I said. "You asked me to take the photograph."

"I know."

"I stood at the end of that bed and took it. I framed it. I made sure you were both in it."

"I know, Mari."

"Do you?" My voice cracked and I hated it. "Because you could have told me in the car, in the kitchen, in the bed. Eleven years, and you picked a room full of people."

"I didn't pick it." He glanced over my shoulder. "Not like that. Please. Give me an hour. I'll explain it."

"Explain it now."

He didn't answer.

A hand landed on his shoulder.

Dennis had come out of the ward in his stocking feet, his boots in one hand, because the sign said no outdoor shoes.

"Let her go, lad," Dennis said gently. "Pride's a hard master. Give her the night."

I watched my husband's shoulders drop.

He had never in his life stepped back for me, and he stepped back for that.

"I'm sorry, love," Dennis said to me, and his eyes were wet. "We all love you. You know that. Whatever's happened, we'll see you right."

I said, "Don't."

I took the stairs instead of the lift, because I couldn't stand in a box with any of them.

Pauline caught me in the car park.

She was still in her slippers, her coat pulled over her pinny, and she held out her hand for my car keys.

"I'm not asking," she said. "You're coming to mine."

"I have a house."

"You've a house with a cot in it that you paid for, and a husband who's no right in it." She took my elbow. "Give me the keys, Marianne. You're shaking."

She drove with the carrier bag of flapjacks on her knee and didn't say a word the whole way across Halifax.

The rain had stopped.

The hill was grey and shining, and the Royal got small in the mirror.

At Pauline's, she put me in the spare room, the one with the sewing machine and the bed with the lumpy mattress, and gave me a mug of tea so sweet it made my teeth ache.

"Drink it."

"I can't."

"It's not for the taste." She sat on the end of the bed. "I've known that lad since he was fifteen, with a bike he'd built from skips."

"Pauline."

"I'm saying I'd have bet my pension he wouldn't."

"Well," I said. "You'd have lost."

"Aye."

She said it in the flat way she says everything, and didn't argue, and I loved her for it.

She took my ring hand and held it.

Then she saw the pale stripe where the ring had been, and she let go and went to find me a nightie.

I lay in the dark with Ewan's blanket, which she'd knitted, and which I'd taken out of my bag by habit and could not put down.

It was yellow, and it smelled of nothing now.

I did not cry.

I lay there running through it all.

Eleven years. A window left open. Nineteen days.

Poppy's January.

Joss at the garage until two, every night this winter, and the Sundays at the club.

Joss, saying, "Is she eating?" and, "Has she had her scan?" and once, at the sink, "She's not to be on her own, Mari, not at the end."

I'd thought he was being kind.

At ten to midnight, someone knocked on the front door.

Not a bike. Not a fist. A small, quick knock, three times, then three again.

Pauline was already on the landing in her dressing gown.

"Stay there," she said.

I didn't.

I came down in the nightie, barefoot, behind her, and she opened the door on the chain.

My sister stood on the step.

She had a coat over her hospital gown, and her yellow socks, and no shoes.

She was holding the baby against her chest with both arms, and she was shaking so hard the blanket shook.

"Mari," Poppy whispered. "One night. Please."

She looked over her shoulder at the dark street.

"Don't tell Joss."

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