My Husband's Wives Read Online Free PDF Page B

child, someone else’s life. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, sometimes she felt as if she couldn’t move, but she had to. Paul, on the other hand took to it like oil to canvas. ‘You’re just tired, darling, go and rest. It must be exhaustion, that’s all, let me,’ and he’d whip Delilah out of her crib and whirl her about the floor, singing Frank Sinatra songs she never heard him sing otherwise. Grace could swear that the baby actually knew the difference. She had a terrible feeling. What if Delilah wouldn’t, maybe couldn’t, love her because she knew how Grace felt? Sometimes the grip of anxiousness tightened in her gut and her thoughts turned to a dark place that she knew she couldn’t go. She wondered if she should tell someone, but what could she say? That her thoughts had taken on the personality of a bystander or that her emotions seemed to be spilling over so they were more real than the baby was? Was this what her father felt before he took his life?
    â€˜Post-natal depression. It’s just a touch of the baby blues,’ Paul said one morning when she could hardly look at the child. ‘You need to get it sorted.’ So he dropped her at the doctors and, sure enough, she returned with a prescription for antidepressants. ‘Ah well, there goes the breast-feeding, maybe it’s for luck,’ he said with a shrug. The breast-feeding had all but gone out the window weeks ago; Paul knew it, maybe it bothered him, but he hadn’t mentioned it before. She couldn’t bear it, couldn’t bear any of it. She hated the forced intimacy, the wretchedness of the baby’s cries because one way or another she was failing. Worst of all was the feeling that she was being slowly, purposefully trapped. There was no sign of her ever getting back to work, and even if she did, she wasn’t sure that she had anything left to put into paint. She felt emptied from the inside out, as though a vacuum had opened up deep inside her and she would never be a whole person again. This growing, living thing that was part of her and part of Paul had managed to steal a huge slice of her. She felt a bubbling resentment. Each day, it seemed to grow. A small shadow at first, it started as a tendril of smoke, just creeping into her life.
    â€˜I need to get back to the studio.’ She said it one morning while Paul ate his toast and cooed at the baby from behind his hands.
    â€˜Not yet, surely not yet. We haven’t even talked about what we’re going to do,’ he soothed, but he wasn’t really speaking to her. It felt as though he never did anymore. He said the words all right, but his focus was the baby. Always the baby.
    â€˜Well, then we need to start talking about it sooner rather than later.’ She dumped her plate and knife noisily into the sink and walked from the room. Behind her, she heard the baby begin to cry and Paul comforting her gently, just as he did if she woke in the night, or stirred in her pram.
    That was the day when everything changed. The world, as Grace knew it, took one more peg on its axis to bring it just a little closer to where it was meant to be.
    *
    â€˜It’s a gift,’ Patrick said, but his voice was playful. ‘You know I can’t keep a secret, so I’m hanging up before you wheedle it out of me. Just meet me at the studio.’ She could almost imagine his bottom lip, curling petulantly. Damn it, she was intrigued. She peered at Delilah, sleeping soundly in her car seat. The midwife said she should be lying in her basket during the day, but it was impossible to get her to sleep, unless you sung or rocked her, as Paul had a habit of doing, until she drifted off. She checked her watch. One hour. That was all it would take. One hour and she’d be back. No-one would ever be any the wiser. Delilah slept most days until after four, why would today be any different? Grace grabbed the spare car keys