Adele Parks - Lies Lies Lies

I hear the grocery delivery guy cough loudly. It’s not subtle but it is fair. I dash into the kitchen and apologise. I throw my groceries onto any available surface in order to be as fast as possible with the unloading, I accept all substitutes and then bundle him out of the door. I start to clear out the food in the fridge that is out of date and past its best. I consider washing the plastic vegetable drawer because a tomato has been squashed in to the back corner and already looks like a science experiment. I pull out the bulky drawer and look around with faint desperation because the sink is full of breakfast pots that should be in the dishwasher, but the pots in the dishwasher are clean, so they should be in the cupboard. Right. I need to set this place straight. I start to move about the kitchen. First I unload the dishwasher, then refill it with the dirty pots that are scattered about. Then I wash the vegetable drawer and only at this point am I ready to find homes for all the new groceries. I am just beginning to enjoy the sense of order I’m restoring to the room when I suddenly hear Millie scream. It’s loud and convincing, not a playful shriek but a scream that’s full of pain and panic. I launch myself upstairs, dashing two at a time and explode into the bathroom.

My first thought is that she’s crying so not drowned, not dead. Relief. Then I notice the blood. There’s a lot of it. Panic. It’s smeared on the back bathroom wall and all over her hands and face. I pull her out of the bath, she’s wet and slippery but I hold her tight. Examine her quickly. ‘What happened? Where did you get hurt?’

‘I slipped. I banged my head.’ She points to the back of her head. My stomach lurches. There’s a nasty cut, and she’s losing a lot of blood. I grab a towel and put it over the wound, trying to stem the flow of the bleeding. I realise that the blood on her face comes from her hands, where she’s touched her own wound. I can smell iron in the air. I want to be sick, but I must stay focused, useful. I wrap another towel around her and pick her up. She sobs into my shoulder. I can feel her entire body hiccup with stress and pain. ‘We need to go to A&E,’ I tell her. ‘The doctor will take a look but don’t worry. It’s going to be OK.’

I call to Simon, but he doesn’t reply. I haven’t got time to look for him. I swiftly dress Millie in pants and a long T-shirt then carry her to the car and drive her to the hospital.

When we get back from the hospital, the house is in darkness. Millie’s head is glued, and she has a sticker declaring her bravery. She’s fallen asleep in the back of the car. Usually when she sleeps I’m relieved. She has a lot of energy and by the time she is ready for bed I’m begging her to go. However her sleep makes me slightly uneasy now. It’s deep and terrifying. I have been given a leaflet that tells me what to look out for: drowsiness, dizziness, forgetfulness, headaches. I feel queasy just reading it. A close call. The friendly young doctor called it a ‘nasty bump’. I was asked a lot of questions. ‘Who was supervising her when she slipped?’ ‘Her father,’ I lied. I couldn’t bring myself to admit she was on her own. We’d failed her. It isn’t a concussion, but you can never be too careful with head injuries. I will wake her every couple of hours tonight. She’ll be grumpy, but I don’t care.

I lift her from the car and carry her into the house. Her feet trail low, down past my knees, she’s too big to carry but I want to hold her close and tight. I lower her into bed, she rolls onto her side as her injury is too tender to allow her to sleep on her back. That thought causes a twinge in my belly. I’d take her pain if I could. I kiss her forehead and she murmurs, ‘Don’t worry, Mummy. It doesn’t hurt now.’ Then her eyelids drop heavily, like a metal shutter over a shop window.

I wander into the bathroom. The water is still in the bath. It’s pink with her blood. I’m shocked again as I see her blood smeared on the tiles. It’s obvious where she fell, the blood is most concentrated there. It’s dried hard. There are also small bloody hand prints on the bath edge. I pull the plug and use the hand-held shower to sluice it away.

‘What’s going on here?’ Simon is stood in the doorway. He wipes his eyes, clearly he’s been asleep for the entire time we have been at the hospital, four hours. He must have been asleep when she fell.

‘Millie slipped as she tried to get herself out of the bath,’ I snap.

‘Daisy!’ I hear accusation in his voice. He thinks this is my fault and maybe it is. I can’t trust him. I glare at him.

‘I asked you to bath her, or if that was too much, at least to watch her whilst she bathed. She could have drowned.’

He looks a little shamefaced and then defiant. ‘But she didn’t.’

‘She’s badly hurt her head. It’s been glued.’

‘Glued?’

‘They do that instead of stitches now.’

‘So she’s OK?’

I know what he’s asking but I can’t give him that glib reassurance yet. I’m too angry. ‘No, she’s not OK. I’ve just told you. She cut her head, banged her elbow. She was really upset. There was a lot of blood. A lot of painful bruising.’

‘I need a drink.’ He leaves the bathroom and goes downstairs. I’m furious. That was not the response I wanted. But then I sigh. What response did I want? What could he say or do now? I finish cleaning the bathroom. I want it to look spotless by the time Millie sees it next. After washing away all evidence of her fall I also put her dirty clothes in the wash basket. I pop my head around her bedroom door just to check on her, before I go downstairs and join Simon in the kitchen. He’s stood by the breakfast bar in semi-darkness. He has only bothered to put on the small light above the hob. I don’t flick the switch for the overhead lights. I think it would be too garish. The dimness offers us both a cloak which, for reasons I can’t explain or even understand, I feel we need.

‘Do you want something to eat? I’m hungry,’ I say. We missed supper. This offer is as conciliatory as I’m capable of being right now. I feel I can’t blame Simon for the fall, at least not entirely. I knew he was less than sober and in a weird mood. I should have unpacked the shopping and then bathed Millie myself. I shouldn’t have allowed her to try to manage and I shouldn’t have relied on him. I’m telling myself all of this to try to stop feeling angry with him, but I just find I’m angry with him for a different reason. Not for the fall but because I can’t rely on him.

Simon reaches for a bottle of red wine from the wine rack. He slides it out. The sound of the glass bottle scraping against the wooden shelf is a familiar one. Like opening the fridge or the sound of the back door closing, the TV jumping to life; a domestic sound, familiar to our home. ‘Do you want a glass?’

‘No, it’s too late for me,’ I say pointedly. Then I dare to add. ‘Don’t you think you’ve had enough?’

‘No, I don’t.’ He says firmly as he unscrews the cap and reaches for a glass.

Simon has had enough to drink. Too much. Why can’t he see it? Why can’t I say it?

This happens from time to time in our marriage. Simon likes a drink and then there comes a point where he drinks too much. Usually I wait it out. After months, maybe a year, he’ll notice he’s over-doing it and cut back. No one is perfect. We all have stuff to deal with. He drank heavily when we were trying to conceive. He drinks heavily if things are stressful at work. I wonder what’s on his mind now? I fear it’s something to do with wanting another child. The visit to the fertility clinic was so peculiar. The way he ran out of the place. Odd. When I asked him what the doctor had said to upset him, he said he never even got the chance to speak to the doctor, that he’d just been left waiting in the consultation room. He said that was what had annoyed him, the lack of manners. The arrogance. ‘I knew you didn’t want to be there, Daisy, so I just gave up. I thought, forget it.’ I don’t really believe him. I suspect it had something to do with his drinking, nearly everything does. Maybe he felt woozy or nauseous, maybe the doctor commented that he didn’t seem quite sober, maybe he suddenly just wanted a drink more than he wanted a baby; he did bolt straight to a pub.