Dirty Secrets by Janice Frost

Author:Janice Frost
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JOFFE BOOKS
Published: 2018-06-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Ruth woke to the sound of Cam wailing. She waited a few minutes, hoping her mother might come and take him downstairs, but for once, Val must have been sleeping soundly. When Cam’s cries became more insistent, Ruth tossed her bedclothes aside and padded across the room to his cot.

Ruth didn’t even try to soothe him back to sleep. He was already standing up with his arms raised to be lifted. Ruth took him into her arms and caught a sharp whiff of ammonia. With a sigh, she gathered what she needed to change him and set him down on the mat to remove his wet nappy. He was gurgling now, content and wide awake, his eyes bright and full of mischief.

“Oh, Cam,” Ruth said. “Won’t you go back to sleep for Mummy? She’s so tired.”

“Dadadadada,” Cam babbled, his eyes searching the room for Fin.

“Daddy’s not here,” Ruth whispered, despairing. Cam continued to babble, louder now, and Ruth kept expecting her mother to appear in the doorway. Would she ask Ruth to quieten him, or take him downstairs herself to let her daughter sleep? But Val did not appear.

Ruth picked Cam up and carried him downstairs, shuddering as they passed the study. In the kitchen, she warmed some milk in the microwave, hoping it might make Cam sleepy.

Hand in hand, they walked across the wide hallway and into the big airy lounge. Through the windows overlooking the garden, she could see that the moon was out, casting its silver light across the lawn. At least it wasn’t cold like it was in her house in Cambridge when she had to get up in the night.

Val had tidied Cam’s toys into a big plastic tub, and he made a beeline for this, while Ruth sank, exhausted, into the sofa. Her depression wasn’t as bad as it had been, during those endless dark days after Cam’s birth when she’d felt drained and empty, going through the motions of new motherhood without enthusiasm or even love. Fin had been the one who coped with it all.

Cam wasn’t the only one who missed Fin. Ruth pushed herself up from the sofa and went into the kitchen to make a cup of camomile tea. She could hear the clock tick on the wall, and the tinkle of a toy Cam was playing with in the lounge. Otherwise, the house, enwrapped by the walls of the old hall, was hushed and still in a way that their little Cambridge house never was. The silence felt like a pause. As if she had no past or future, only that moment in the middle of the night. Some lines from Eliot came to her mind. “A still point in a turning world.”

The tinkling was in the room with her now. Cam tottered over to her and clung to her leg. She stroked his head. He rubbed his eyes, fighting sleep.

“Come on,” Ruth said, and they returned to the sitting room. Ruth carried her mug of tea, though she knew she shouldn’t.

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