Playing Nice

I was getting hardly any sleep. “Sleep when the baby sleeps,” people said. But what if I couldn’t sleep? I felt compelled to be Theo’s monitor, to check on him every few minutes. When I lay down, my brain raced; when I got up, the fog descended again and I could barely function.

Pete left for Scotland at the end of July. It was a cool, settled summer—perfect cycling weather. And although cycling from Edinburgh to London sounded arduous, I knew it wasn’t, not really. The route followed car-free cycle paths and old railway lines most of the way, and the group had a coach with a trailer that met them every afternoon and took them and the bikes to a hotel. They were planning to cycle about five hours a day, with every fourth day off. I didn’t blame them for making it as pleasant as possible, but I did get annoyed by the endless self-congratulatory updates on social media. After all, if you could stop to take a group selfie with a whole gang of other grinning young men in cycle helmets and Lycra every time you came to a nice view, you weren’t exactly doing the Tour de France. So pretty soon I stopped attending to what they were up to and retreated into my own private hell.

I felt as though I had to be doing something every moment. Sterilizing bottles. Washing babygrows. Cleaning the house. Checking the baby. Did I turn on the sterilizer? Did I turn off the washing machine? Was Theo breathing? I was shaking and fighting nausea, a captive animal pacing up and down, full of unfocused dread. Without Pete, there was no one to make me eat, no one to interrupt my inner monologue. The stream of thoughts in my head got louder and shoutier. What had begun as my own internal voice became an intrusive, deafening authority figure. I even gave it a name: the doctor. What if you let the baby get dirty? the doctor yelled at me. What if you let the baby suffocate? What if you drop the baby on the floor and smash open his head? I was too afraid to go for walks in case a car hit Theo’s stroller. I became obsessed with watching him, but I stopped touching him in case I did something bad to him. My heart raced constantly and I was short of breath. When the health visitor came, I demanded to know if she thought Theo’s eyes were crossed, and if so, whether that meant he had brain damage. She looked at me strangely and I heard her thoughts as clearly as if she’d spoken them out loud. This woman is a useless mother. After that, the health visitor joined the doctors in the chorus of voices all shouting at me that I was doing a terrible job.

And that’s when the doctors started spying on me.

Later, the psychiatrist spent a lot of time trying to unpick whether I’d been experiencing actual hallucinations, or simply delusions. It mattered for the treatment, apparently. Had I actually seen the doctors on the TV or the screen of my phone, telling me, Not like that, you’re doing it all wrong, or had I merely believed they were in there? Both, I decided. Why else would I have hurled one of Theo’s full nappies at the TV to shut it up? Why else would I have flung my iPhone at the wall? In any case, it was a relief not to have to worry about Pete’s increasingly concerned texts—U still angry with me? Pls call—but then the bits from the broken phone must have gotten inside the wall because the doctors started using it as a big screen to project their messages on instead. I worked out that if I turned the microwave on to the maximum setting, the radio waves spun out by the revolving turntable would block the messages and give me some relief, and they did.

And then Pete came back.

He’d abandoned the ride in York and boarded a train to London. He found me curled up on the kitchen floor, lying on sheets of tinfoil to protect myself from the doctors’ messages. Theo was on his back a few feet away, nappyless. Nearby, I’d lined up twenty full bottles of milk, ready to feed him with. The radio was on to drown the sound of his crying, and I’d hooked up a calculator to the microwave so I could monitor his vital signs.

* * *

—

WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THAT is fuzzy. It didn’t take Pete long to realize he had to call an ambulance, and the paramedics arranged an emergency mental health assessment. I was admitted to a psychiatric ward and given antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. There were no spaces in a mother-and-baby unit, so Pete looked after Theo until I was well enough to come home. It took three weeks, and even then they only let me out when I agreed to join the support group I’d spurned before and do a course of cognitive therapy. When I got home, tired but calm again, I found the house full of flowers and a banner over the front door that read WELCOME HOME MUMMY. Pete had tidied and cleaned—he told me later it had taken two bottles of bleach to get rid of the smell of the soiled nappies I’d been storing under beds and sofas in case the doctors needed to examine them—and even bought Theo a bigger set of babygrows. When I lifted him from Pete’s arms into mine, he smelled of fabric conditioner and warm milk and love.

“I’m sorry about the bike ride,” Pete said softly.

I shook my head. “Don’t be. Besides, how could you have known what was wrong with me? Even the health visitor didn’t realize.” I looked around. “This place looks great.”

“We’ve been having a good time.” Pete stroked Theo’s cheek, now plump and full like a baby’s should be. “Though he’s missed his mummy, of course,” he added quickly.

“You don’t have to tiptoe around me now, Pete. I left Horrible Angry Maddie back in the psych ward.”

He nodded. “I’ve arranged to work from home for a while, even so.”

“Won’t Karen mind?” Karen was his editor, a woman Pete professed to admire but who I always thought sounded petulant and passive-aggressive when Pete described their interactions.

“She’s really supportive. It’ll mean doing more roundups, but…” Pete shrugged. As newspaper budgets were cut, lists—as opposed to actual assignments—were taking up more and more of the travel section. There was even a weekly feature: Twelve Traveltastic…In the past few months, Pete had compiled “Twelve Traveltastic Beaches,” “Twelve Traveltastic Christmas Markets,” “Twelve Traveltastic Tapas Bars,” and “Twelve Traveltastic Tuscan Villas.” There was no actual travel involved, of course—the recommendations were sourced entirely from the internet, reviews from TripAdvisor lightly disguised with the word expect, as in “Expect pale-cream rooms and a poolside barbecue,” to cover the fact that the journalist hadn’t actually been there. It was dispiriting, mechanical work, and the fact that Pete was volunteering to do more of it in order to spend more time with me and our baby filled me with gratitude.

“Saint Peter. Bronagh was right. I’m so lucky to have you.”

“I’m the lucky one, Mads. I’ve got you and Theo.” He stroked Theo’s head, then glanced at me. “One of the dads who organized the ride—Greg—isn’t going back to work. He’s planning on being a stay-at-home dad.”

“That’s brave.”

“Funnily enough, he says everyone uses that word. He said to me when we were cycling, ‘What’s brave about it? No one calls a woman brave when she stops work.’?” Pete paused. “He and Kate are in a similar position to us, actually. She earns more than he does.”

I frowned. “I’d always assumed we’d both have to work. The mortgage is pretty steep.”

“Well…I did a few rough calculations, and it’s not impossible.” He added quickly, “But look, now isn’t the time to go into all that. I just thought it was an interesting idea, that’s all.”

17

Case no. 12675/PU78B65, Exhibit 14C: email from Miles Lambert to Peter Riley.

Dear Pete and Maddie,

Lucy and I just wanted to say what a pleasure it was meeting you this morning—and of course, Theo too. To be honest, we’d been somewhat apprehensive about what sort of family our birth son would turn out to be living with. I think we can say for sure that both Theo and ourselves have been incredibly fortunate. We really feel we haven’t lost a son but gained some new friends.

We were deeply touched by your suggestion that we become Theo’s godparents. That’s a definite yes from us, if you’re sure.

And Pete, I meant to say—let’s go out for a beer sometime. Maybe this Wednesday after work? I think Lucy is going to get in touch with Maddie, too.

Very best,

Miles

18

PETE

THE EMAIL FROM MILES was waiting next time I checked my inbox. It had been sent at two P.M., just a couple of hours after we’d left them.

“He’s keen,” Maddie commented when I showed her.

“Should I? Go for a beer with him, I mean?”

“Why not? You always say you miss going out with your mates after work. And Wednesday evening’s a good time—I can be back by six, so you won’t need a sitter.”

* * *