‘On one occasion you broke into Mr and Mrs Watson’s home and took their child, their newborn baby.’
A black hole opened up in the centre of the room and swallowed me. ‘That is not true!’ I said. ‘I didn’t take … It didn’t happen like that, that’s wrong. I didn’t … I didn’t take her.’
I got very upset then, I started to shake and cry, I said I wanted to leave. Riley pushed her chair back and got to her feet, shrugged at Gaskill and left the room. Gaskill handed me a Kleenex.
‘You can leave any time you like, Ms Watson. You came here to talk to us.’ He smiled at me then, an apologetic sort of smile. I liked him in that moment, I wanted to take his hand and squeeze it, but I didn’t, because that would have been weird. ‘I think you have more to tell me,’ he said, and I liked him even more for saying tell me rather than tell us.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, getting to his feet and ushering me towards the door, ‘you would like to take a break, stretch your legs, get yourself something to eat. Then when you’re ready, come back, and you can tell me everything.’
I was planning to just forget the whole thing and go home. I was walking back towards the train station, ready to turn my back on everything. Then I thought about the train journey, about going backwards and forwards on that line, past the house – Megan and Scott’s house – every day. What if they never found her? I was going to wonder forever – and I understand that this is not very likely, but even so – whether my saying something might have helped her. What if Scott was accused of harming her just because they never knew about B? What if she was at B’s house right now, tied up in the basement, hurt and bleeding, or buried in the garden?
I did as Gaskill said, I bought a ham-and-cheese sandwich and a bottle of water from a corner shop and took it to Witney’s only park, a rather sorry little patch of land surrounded by 1930s houses and given over almost entirely to an asphalted playground. I sat on a bench at the edge of this space, watching mothers and childminders scolding their charges for eating sand out of the pit. I used to dream of this, a few years back. I dreamed of coming here – not to eat ham-and-cheese sandwiches in between police interviews, obviously – I dreamed of coming here with my own baby. I thought about the buggy I would buy, all the time I would spend in Trotters and at the Early Learning Centre sizing up adorable outfits and educational toys. I thought about how I would sit here, bouncing my own bundle of joy on my lap.
It didn’t happen. No doctor has been able to explain to me why I can’t get pregnant. I’m young enough, fit enough, I wasn’t drinking heavily when we were trying. My husband’s sperm was active and plentiful. It just didn’t happen. I didn’t suffer the agony of miscarriage, I just didn’t get pregnant. We did one round of IVF, which was all we could afford. It was, as everyone had warned us it would be, unpleasant and unsuccessful. Nobody warned me it would break us. But it did. Or rather, it broke me, and then I broke us.
The thing about being barren is that you’re not allowed to get away from it. Not when you’re in your thirties. My friends were having children, friends of friends were having children, pregnancy and birth and first birthday parties were everywhere. I was asked about it, all the time. My mother, our friends, colleagues at work. When was it going to be my turn? At some point our childlessness became an acceptable topic of Sunday-lunch conversation, not just between Tom and me, but more generally. What we were trying, what we should be doing, do you really think you should be having a second glass of wine? I was still young, there was still plenty of time, but failure cloaked me like a mantle, it overwhelmed me, dragged me under and I gave up hope. At the time, I resented the fact that it was always seen as my fault, that I was the one letting the side down. But as the speed with which he managed to impregnate Anna demonstrates, there was never any problem with Tom’s virility. I was wrong to suggest that we should share the blame; it was all down to me.
Lara, my best friend since university, had two children in two years: a boy first and then a girl. I didn’t like them. I didn’t want to hear anything about them. I didn’t want to be near them. Lara stopped speaking to me after a while. There was a girl at work who told me – casually, as though she were talking about an appendectomy or a wisdom-tooth extraction – that she’d recently had an abortion, a medical one, and it was so much less traumatic than the surgical one she’d had when she was at university. I couldn’t speak to her after that, I could barely look at her. Things became awkward in the office; people noticed.
Tom didn’t feel the way I did. It wasn’t his failure, for starters, and in any case, he didn’t need a child like I did. He wanted to be a dad, he really did – I’m sure he daydreamed about kicking a football around in the garden with his son, or carrying his daughter on his shoulders in the park. But he thought our lives could be great without children, too. We’re happy, he used to say to me, why can’t we just go on being happy? He became frustrated with me. He never understood that it’s possible to miss what you’ve never had, to mourn for it.
I felt isolated in my misery. I became lonely, so I drank a bit, and then a bit more, and then I became lonelier, because no one likes being around a drunk. I lost and I drank and I drank and I lost. I liked my job, but I didn’t have a glittering career, and even if I had, let’s be honest: women are still only really valued for two things – their looks and their role as mothers. I’m not beautiful, and I can’t have kids, so what does that make me? Worthless.
I can’t blame all this for my drinking – I can’t blame my parents or my childhood, an abusive uncle or some terrible tragedy. It’s my fault. I was a drinker anyway – I’ve always liked to drink. But I did become sadder, and sadness gets boring after a while, for the sad person and for everyone around them. And then I went from being a drinker to being a drunk, and there’s nothing more boring than that.
I’m better now, about the children thing; I’ve got better since I’ve been on my own. I’ve had to. I’ve read books and articles, I’ve realized that I must come to terms with it. There are strategies, there is hope. If I straightened myself out and sobered up, there’s a possibility that I could adopt. And I’m not thirty-four yet – it isn’t over. I am better than I was a few years ago, when I used to abandon my trolley and leave the supermarket if the place was packed with mums and kids; I wouldn’t have been able to come to a park like this, to sit near the playground and watch chubby toddlers rolling down the slide. There were times, at my lowest, when the hunger was at its worst, when I thought I was going to lose my mind.