His Wife, Her Sister, Their Secret novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: One Night

Poppy asks for one night and won't say why. Joss waits outside until dawn, and when he leaves Poppy goes with him.

Pauline took the chain off the door.

"In," she said. "Both of you. Now."

Poppy stumbled over the step, and I caught her under the arm and felt how hot she was through the gown.

She had walked out of a maternity ward a day after giving birth.

"I'm ringing the ward," Pauline said, already reaching for the phone in the hall.

"Ring them," Poppy said. "Tell them I'm here. Tell them I'm not going back."

"You'll have the community midwife at eight, then, and she'll have a word."

"Fine."

Pauline lowered herself onto the stairs with the receiver and started explaining to a stranger in her schoolroom voice.

I took my sister into the front room and put her on the settee, and she let me take the baby, because her arms had finally given out.

I had not held him.

Joss had held him. Dennis had reached for him. Everyone had had him but me.

He weighed almost nothing and almost everything, and he smelled of milk and new skin.

His eyes were shut.

His fist had come out of the blanket, and it opened on my finger.

"Hello," I said.

I couldn't say the rest.

Poppy watched me.

"I didn't pick it," she said quietly. "The name. I want you to know that."

"So Joss picked it."

"Mari."

"Did you sleep with my husband?"

I'd said it in a low voice so the baby wouldn't hear, which was stupid, and it came out like a stone.

My sister looked at the carpet.

"He was the only one who stayed," she said.

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I've got."

"When?"

"Don't ask me when." Her face crumpled. "Don't ask me anything tonight. I'll tell you what I can, and I can't tell you that."

"Poppy."

"One night, Mari. Please. Then I'll go wherever you tell me."

I should have pushed.

I looked at her in her duck socks, with her hair stuck to her forehead and her lips cracked, and I did not push.

I told myself it was because she was bleeding and sore and a day old as a mother.

I put the baby between us on the settee, and she lay down next to him and was asleep in under a minute.

I sat on the floor and watched them breathe.

At half past three I went to the window.

I only meant to check the street.

At the bottom, under the lamp by the postbox, there was a motorbike on its stand with the engine running, and a man sitting on it with his hands on the bars.

He wasn't looking at the house.

He was looking at the road, up and down, up and down.

It was Joss.

I let the curtain fall.

I thought: he's followed her.

I thought: he can't even leave us the night.

At five he turned the engine off, and the quiet seemed worse.

By six the sky had gone grey, and I went out in Pauline's anorak with my arms folded.

He had moved the bike.

He was standing by his truck now, in the gutter outside the gate, with the passenger door open.

The seat in the back had a baby seat strapped into it.

It was brand new. The tags were still on the straps.

"You fitted that," I said.

"Last week."

"Last week."

"Mari, I can explain."

"Five questions," I said. "I've counted. You answer all five or you go."

He nodded.

I held up a finger. "How long?"

He looked at the pavement and said nothing.

"Second question," I said. "Did you love her?"

His head came up fast. "Not like that."

"Like what?"

He shut his mouth.

"Three. When did it happen?"

I watched him choose his answer.

"June," he said. "You were on nights."

It landed in my stomach.

June. Poppy had come home in January, at seven months. June was before that.

June was when she'd lived in Leeds and rung me every Sunday and said she was fine.

"You drove to Leeds," I said.

"Mari."

"Four. Why the name?"

"Because it's the only one," Joss said, and his voice went rough, "nobody would dare touch."

"That's not an answer, either."

"It's the one I've got."

It was my sister's sentence, word for word.

I only heard that he'd used my son to say it.

"Five," I said. "Look at me."

He did.

His eyes were red and he hadn't shaved, and he'd been sitting in the cold for three hours so he could watch a door he wasn't allowed to knock on.

"Are you sorry?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

"For all of it."

That wasn't an answer either.

I turned round, and the front door was open, and my sister was standing in it.

She had the baby in her arms and Pauline's spare cardigan over her gown.

She looked at me.

She looked at Joss.

Then she walked down the path, past me without a word, and climbed into the back of his truck beside the new seat, and held out her arms for the strap.

Joss shut her door.

He did not look at me again.

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