Come Back to Me

sustained me. In fact, I was convinced it was yours – although I still wouldn’t come home. Looking back, I’m sure that somewhere in my subconscious I knew that if I did, I couldn’t keep alive the spell I’d woven around myself – there would be too many questions.

‘Then, when I was eight months pregnant, I called home…’

Another raw, crippling memory. Her mother, the calm, practical one, had been hysterical. Her dad had already been dead three days from the heart attack. Her mum was alone. She had begged Amy to come back.

‘In the emotion of it all I promised I would come home, but I knew I couldn’t. Even if I’d wanted to, no airline would have let me on a plane – I was enormous. I was in a state of terrible grief, I was inconsolable. And alone. I don’t remember much about the week after that phone call.’

Bangkok, a dirty, bare-walled room with a faint smell of sewage. A bed with a grey sheet, on which she had lain all week. The concerned owners – an old, hunched Thai couple – whispering whenever they saw her…

‘My waters broke one morning about a week after I heard about Dad, and the hostel owners took me to hospital. The wife even stayed with me, and held my hand, and gave me instructions in faltering English when I didn’t understand what was going on, and calmed me down when I tried to push doctors away from me.’

And cooed over the baby when it was born, and looked quite upset when Amy wouldn’t really look at the child.

‘The birth itself was horrific. But that night, after I had her, I couldn’t help myself. I looked at her, and, beyond my expectations, the whole mother-love thing happened. She was beautiful. Actually, I was enraptured for five whole days while I was in hospital…’ She paused; took a slow, deep breath.

‘Then, when we were leaving, they gave me her medical records.’

She had taken them so readily, just a form listing a few details. Her eyes had scanned once… and then again, more slowly, everything inside her shattering in a blast of grief as the truth had torn through her.

‘Do you remember my dad making us find out our blood groups before we went on our trip, just in case?’

Alex nodded. He knew what was coming, and closed his eyes as he listened.

‘She was A negative. We were both O. She wasn’t yours.’

Alex’s eyelids flicked open after she’d said it and he stared at her. She held his gaze.

‘I took her away anyway, but I was in terrible, terrible shock. I couldn’t live in denial any more – I couldn’t ignore such concrete evidence, I couldn’t un-tell myself the truth.

‘That night I tried to persuade myself I could keep loving her, but something had changed and I couldn’t turn it back. God, it was awful; in a way I loved her beyond anything I’d imagined, but I was in turmoil and I knew – I just knew – I couldn’t keep her. What if she looked like one of them? What if she asked about her father when she got older? It’s hard even to describe what was going on – it was like my head was full of demons whispering relentlessly, and I was just fighting to breathe. I was insane at the time, crazy with choices that all appeared to lead to terrible consequences.

‘I had a bath in my room. I hadn’t had a proper wash in the hospital. I filled it with water…’

Her voice was cold and almost alien to him.

‘Amy -’ Alex began, eyes widening in alarm. ‘Don’t. Please stop. I don’t want to hear any more.’

‘I thought about it,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘She was sleeping, and I thought about gently putting her in the water and letting her sink to the bottom. Only for a fraction of a second, but I was horrified at myself nevertheless. After that, I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t be trusted around her. And this beautiful little thing deserved a chance. But she couldn’t stay with me. I couldn’t even take her home to my mum and ask for help, not with every millimetre of that space screaming out the absence of my father.

‘So I did the only thing I thought of at the time.’

Trembling, the scissors on her penknife moving towards her soft, vulnerable head, taking a small lock of downy hair, a tiny keepsake.

Alex braced himself, tensed, waiting.

‘I wrapped her in a shawl, then put her in a cardboard box. And I left her on the doorstep of a nearby Buddhist monastery.’

The spot behind the wall where she had stood for what felt like hours – though it was probably only minutes – watching that box until the door opened. Stray dogs sniffing at it, chickens running next to it, her heart thundering.

‘So many times I nearly ran back. In fact, I was about to, when the door opened and a monk stood there…’

He had been blinking in the early light, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Wrapped in orange robes with his alms bowl under his arm. Middle-aged, bald, bespectacled. Kind- looking.

‘He just peered into that box, picked it up and carried it inside and closed the door, like he was collecting the post, no emotion showing on his face at all.

‘And then she was gone. And I left.’ Amy released all the breath in her lungs with a huge sigh, then covered her eyes with her palms and mumbled towards the ground.

‘And that was that.’

81

Alex had no idea what to say. Amy looked at his face and could see that he was stunned.

‘Amy,’ he breathed eventually, still incredulous about what he had heard.

She had been so calm as she told him all this, but now her voice cracked. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘It’s awful. There have been so many times I’ve wanted to go back and ask about her, but I don’t dare. I abandoned my baby girl – the only way I can get through it is that in my daydreams she’s living a happy and secure life with people who love her. Otherwise…’

‘What did you do after that?’ he asked quickly to distract her.

‘I left Thailand. I went to Europe. I pretended it had never happened. It wasn’t too hard, in a way – my whole life became surreal very quickly. The baby began to feel like a strange dream. My nomadic existence became normal. And the years slipped by. I did lots of different things, went to lots of different places – hell, once or twice I was surprised to find I was beginning to enjoy something. Many times I thought about ending it, often just after an unexpected high, when the low that inevitably came next was all the more crushing. But I had made a promise to Mum and it stuck – something in me felt I owed it to her, I guess.’

‘Or maybe you just didn’t really want to die,’ he added.

Amy looked taken aback. ‘I wanted to die,’ she said.

‘Maybe you just wanted the pain to go away,’ he continued. ‘And it was the only way out of it you could think of. But it’s not the same thing.’

He could see she had never thought of it like that before. ‘Well,’ she said, after a pause, ‘now you know just how evil I am.’

Alex moved closer to her, and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Nothing you’ve told me has been evil,’ he told her. ‘Tragic, yes. But that’s all.’

‘I abandoned my baby, Alex,’ she said.

‘I know.’ He kissed her hair. ‘God, Amy, what you’ve gone through – it’s unimaginable. And I let you down, right from the start. I should have kept you close, helped you to -’

‘I don’t feel like that,’ Amy interrupted. ‘I’ve been angry at you, sure – when you walked out of the hospital, I felt I hated you for a while. But I’ve had a lot of thinking time since, and I understand. It wasn’t your fault either, we were both caught up by circumstance. If it hadn’t been for the baby, I’m sure I would have come back a lot sooner.’

Alex’s heart surged with affection for her as he took in her softly spoken words. ‘Well, everything is changing