The Hand That First Held Mine Read Online Free PDF

silence of the editing suite. He must be on set. ‘How are you?’ his voice says from out of the din. ‘Are you OK? How’s it going?’
     
    Elina has no idea how she is, how it is going. But she says, ‘Fine.’
     
    ‘What have you been up to?’
     
    ‘Um.’ Elina looks about the room and catches sight of the laundry basket, full of wet washing. ‘I did some laundry. And I spoke to my mother.’
     
    ‘Uh-huh. What else?’
     
    ‘Nothing.’
     
    ‘Oh.’
     
    There is a pause. She considers telling him about the lapses, the holes. How would she begin? With the story about the record player? Or would she just say, Ted, I have these moments where life disappears into a hole and I can’t remember what happens in them? I can’t, for example, recall the small matter of having had a baby?
     
    ‘I . . . er . . .’ she begins, but Ted interrupts.
     
    ‘Have you eaten anything?’
     
    She thinks about this. Has she? She might have. ‘I can’t remember,’ she says.
     
    ‘You can’t remember?’ Ted repeats, and his voice is full of horror. Someone close to him is shouting loudly about the catering van. Elina tries to comb her hair flat with her fingers and, as she does so, she catches sight of a yellow leaflet beside the phone entitled Coping With Blood Loss . She picks it up. She holds it to her face and looks at the printed words.
     
    ‘Elina?’ Ted’s voice startles her.
     
    ‘Yes,’ she says. She drops the leaflet. It swoops and slides under a chair. She’ll get it later.
     
    ‘You need to eat. The midwife said so. Have you eaten anything? Can you remember eating anything?’
     
    ‘I can,’ she says quickly, and lets out a little laugh. ‘I mean I did. I mean I can’t remember what I was going to have for lunch.’
     
    But she still isn’t getting it right. ‘Lunch?’ Ted says. ‘El, it’s three thirty.’
     
    She is genuinely surprised. ‘Is it?’
     
    ‘Have you been asleep?’
     
    She looks round the room again, at the place where she was lying on the rug before he rang. The thick pile of it is imprinted with the shape of a body, like a murder scene. ‘Maybe. Yes. I probably was.’
     
    ‘Have you taken your painkillers?’
     
    ‘Um.’ She casts her eyes around the room again. What would the right answer be here? ‘Yes,’ she says.
     
    ‘Listen, I have to go.’ There is a pause. ‘I think I’m going to call my mum.’
     
    ‘No,’ Elina says quickly. ‘It’s OK. I’m OK, honestly.’
     
    ‘Are you sure?’
     
    ‘Yes.’
     
    ‘You’ve got her number, haven’t you? Just in case. I’ll be back around six, I think. We’re pretty much finished here.’ His voice is placatory, wary. ‘I’ll cook us a nice dinner then. But eat something now, OK?’
     
    ‘OK.’
     
    ‘You promise?’
     
    ‘I promise.’
     
    She is sitting in a chair near the back door, looking at her studio again when the doorbell rings. Elina freezes, one hand pressed to the window. She waits. Ted’s mother? Did he call her after all? She’ll just stay here in the kitchen. Whoever it is will think no one’s in and go away. She turns back to the garden. The doorbell shrills again, for longer this time. Elina ignores it. It goes again, for even longer.
     
    Still at the window, Elina begins to imagine a scenario in which Ted’s mother calls him to say that Elina isn’t answering the door. And then Ted will worry that something has happened and he’ll have to leave work and come home. Elina raises herself out of the chair, carefully, carefully, and, leaning her weight on the wall, goes through to the hall. The baby, she sees, is back in his pram, asleep.
     
    When she opens the door, the person on the doorstep – not Ted’s mother, but a woman with frazzled yellow hair, her large body squeezed into stretchy blue trousers – doesn’t wait to be invited in. She doesn’t even wait for Elina to speak. She pushes past her, muttering about the rain, marches down the hallway