Sam Carrington - The Missing Wife

Ultimately, Noah was a mistake. Perhaps that explained why she was struggling.

Louisa lowered her chin and nestled against Noah’s soft, creamy skin, breathing in the distinct smell of baby, blocking his cries from her tired mind. Even contemplating him as a mistake sent a stabbing pain through her womb. Of course she shouldn’t think that way. He was perfect, beautiful – there were women who’d kill to have what she did.

It was because she was almost forty. The thought of reaching the milestone was an overwhelming one. Her mind flooded with anxiety. She was too old to be doing all this again. Sleepless nights, endless days. Nursery, pre-school, junior school, comprehensive, college.

College.

For a moment, Louisa’s memory displayed a vision – but it was lost as quickly as it appeared. She didn’t like to think about the period of her life when she was seventeen and studying for her A levels. There were too many gaps during her second year, and mostly her mind refused to fill them – apart from the odd occasion when an image burst into her head. Random images; unrecognisable faces. Ones she knew she didn’t want to, or need to, grasp hold of. There was little point in trying to piece together a past that wanted to be forgotten.

Noah’s screams finally penetrated her thoughts again – her ability to block them only temporary. All the things she was going to have to experience again. All those ‘stages’ she’d assumed were long gone. But here she was beginning the journey all over again, and with such a big age gap. It petrified her.

Not only that, but she had the other end of the scale to deal with at the same time. Teenage angst, moodiness, rudeness, the pushing of boundaries. It was becoming too much. Even Brian: safe, dependable Brian, who’d been the doting dad when Emily was a baby, had shown less of an interest in Noah. He often came home from his shifts at the prison exhausted and irritable. Sometimes it was as though she had three children to look after, but no one to look after her.

Louisa strode up to him, thrusting Noah out towards his chest.

‘Hang on, Lou. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he said as he whipped the phone screen away from her so she couldn’t see the display, his body turning away from their son.

‘Funnily enough, so am I. And I’ve had this constant screaming pounding my ears for eight hours. Give me a bloody break and take him! I assume you do want to eat tonight?’

‘Mum!’ Emily’s voice, loud to compete with her baby brother, burst into the lounge. ‘What’s for tea?’

Louisa closed her eyes, taking a moment before she offered an answer. Too soon and her response would come across brusque, unreasonable. Aggressiveness was not a quality she wished to show to her daughter.

‘When I get five minutes to look in the fridge, I’ll be able to tell you.’

‘Oh,’ Brian piped up, his phone finally in his pocket. ‘You don’t even know what we’re having?’

‘No, love. Why don’t you rustle something up? Or take Noah. Like I’ve been trying to get you to do.’ A pain shot through her jaw as she clenched it forcefully. She gave a tight smile, then held Noah out at arm’s length for a second attempt.

‘No problem,’ he said, taking the noisy creature from her outstretched arms as though he was contaminated. He squinted his eyes as the noise came in close contact with his ears.

See how he likes it.

Louisa turned away from them and quickly slipped into the kitchen to make the most of her reprieve, closing the door to block out as much of the noise as possible. She hunched over the granite worktop, hanging her head and closing her eyes tight. God, her head ached. It was like having a hangover twenty-four hours a day, every day. Louisa reluctantly opened her eyes again. She stared at her lank, brown hair, which had splayed on the dark granite – split ends upon split ends, like branches on a tree, reminding her she hadn’t been to the hairdresser for almost a year. Straightening, Louisa contemplated what she could rustle an evening meal out of. It would have to be something with chips. Until Brian took her shopping, there was very little in the fridge, and mainly bags of breast milk in the freezer.

That reminded her.

She pressed a hand to each breast. When had Noah last fed? Both breasts felt relatively soft, yet she couldn’t remember feeding him; that could account for his screaming. But if it had been too long ago, her breasts would’ve become engorged and she’d be desperate to empty them. She tried to think back over the day: she usually fed Noah while sitting in the armchair in the corner of the lounge – what was once her favourite reading chair, before it became the feeding chair – and she always put the TV on while he suckled because it helped take her mind off the stinging sensation of her cracked nipples. What had she been watching the last time she fed him?

Worryingly, nothing came to her. The night-time feeds were always hazy, but not usually the daytime ones. The pounding pain in her head worsened the more she forced herself to remember, the pressure threatening to rupture her brain. Yanking open the bottom drawer of the kitchen cupboard unit, Louisa reached in, pulling forward the tea towels to reveal the rectangular packet she stored at the back. She turned it over and over in her hands before popping two pills from the foil pack. She stared at the capsules as the fear gripped her insides. A fear she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Was it happening again?

‘What are you doing?’ Brian asked, his words slurred from tiredness. He threw the duvet off and sat on the edge of the bed, his head resting in his hands. The room was dark bar the illumination of the digital alarm clock’s blue glow.

‘Getting dressed.’ Louisa zipped her jeans and, using her phone light to see, pulled at the soft-pink jumper under the mountain of discarded clothes on the tub chair in the corner of their bedroom, sending the rest tumbling.

‘But it’s five past five, Louisa?’

‘Oh, is it? It feels later. I’ve been up half the night with Noah.’ She tutted as she absently piled the clothes back up on the chair. She banged her hip against the dressing table as she stumbled towards the door. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit on the clumsy side this morning, didn’t mean to disturb you. You’ve got another hour yet, so go back to sleep.’

‘You’re clumsy every morning lately,’ Brian mumbled as he sank back into the pillow.

Despite the strong urge to tell him he would be too if he’d been the one up every night for the last three months, Louisa said nothing and just closed the door quietly behind her.

Noah was sleeping now. Louisa crept past his nursery, barely daring to breathe in case she woke him. Emily’s room, with a poster of P!NK adorning the door, was silent too. She seemed to sleep through Noah’s cries. Just as well – she was moody enough without lack of sleep impacting on her. Her schoolwork was suffering. It had been prior to Noah’s arrival but Louisa didn’t want her daughter, who was as bright as a button, to go downhill further because an unexpected baby had disrupted the equilibrium. Louisa trod carefully on each stair, avoiding the edge of the squeaky middle one.

In the kitchen, she took her handbag from where it hung on the inside of the larder door and retrieved the packet of Marlboro and a disposable lighter. Standing at the open back door, Louisa dragged on the cigarette. Her head swam for a moment, a light airiness consuming it. After a few more puffs, she relaxed.

She had limited opportunities to smoke without being noticed. Early mornings were the best. As far as Brian was concerned, she gave up long ago. She had given up for four years. But yesterday triggered something. The compulsion to start again overtook her and she was relieved to find her secret packet was still in its original hiding place in the bottom drawer of her mother’s old sideboard in the garage. When Brian was otherwise engaged on his mobile, she’d got them and popped them in her handbag. It wasn’t as if Brian would ever go looking in that. He wasn’t nosy, didn’t check up on her; he’d never think to search through any of her things. He wasn’t like that.