From the edgy, nervous bombshell of a girl she’d always been, she suddenly oozed calm femininity. She seemed more powerful somehow, and for a while at least, more centred. It was as if conception had infused her body with some ancient Mother Earth magic, and my love for her, which had all, I now saw, been about sex, became transformed into a deeply felt respect for her womanhood, the power of which was demonstrated by the fact that she was carrying our child. In a way, I suppose you could say that I fell in awe of her.
She gave birth to Ben on the eighth of December, and almost immediately I began to worry something was wrong. It will sound as if I’m criticising her, and that’s totally not my intention – I really am just trying to describe how things felt . . . But she seemed uncomfortable in her role as a mother. She looked awkward when she held him, as if he didn’t fit properly in her arms. Breastfeeding, she said, was too painful, and so she expressed her milk into bottles instead. And when he cried, sometimes she didn’t seem to notice. She’d be staring into the middle distance, looking sad, while he was screaming in his cot beside her. And not one of her features would move in reaction to our son’s obvious distress – it was truly as if she couldn’t hear him. When prompted, she’d appear to wake up, as if from a trance, and snatch him from the cot.
She did the best she could, don’t get me wrong. She fed him, changed him, cradled him, and if anyone was watching she’d mutter sweet nothings in his ear. But it always looked a bit as if she was acting. She always seemed to be playing a part.
I tried endlessly to get her to talk about how she felt, but all I ever got was more of the same. She was fine, she insisted. She was enjoying being a mother. She was happy.
Only once, because I caught her actually crying – her tears dropping on to Ben’s forehead – did she ever admit anything was wrong. But even then she didn’t give much away.
‘I didn’t think it would feel like this,’ she told me, through sniffs.
‘Like what?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a shrug. ‘I suppose I didn’t think it would feel so ordinary.’
Six months in, I’d convinced myself she was suffering from postnatal depression, but as Amy wouldn’t even discuss that possibility with me, I eventually phoned one of her mates to ask if she’d intervene.
Wanda turned up the following Sunday and, while I nursed the baby downstairs, she lay next to Amy and chatted quietly. They were together all afternoon.
‘It’s her sister,’ Wanda told me, as she was leaving.
I was flummoxed. Amy had never once mentioned the existence of a sister.
‘She died when they were kids,’ Wanda continued. ‘And Ben’s birth has dredged up painful memories.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘So what do we need to do to help her get better? I’m assuming she needs some kind of thera—’
‘It’s all agreed,’ Wanda said, laying one hand on my shoulder to interrupt me. ‘She’s going to start counselling this week.’
The problem – and I do blame myself for this – was that Wanda was the wrong person to have called. And the therapist Wanda advised – a devotee of an online guru called Benito Mungaro – was the worst possible kind of therapist for Amy to consult.
She became less unhappy almost instantly – that much, even I would admit. And she got up and started doing stuff again to prove it: joining me for yoga, cooking, cleaning, running . . . within three months, she was back teaching Pilates.
She was, as Dad would say, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; she was enthusiastic and optimistic about everything. And that’s precisely what made it so hard to name the problem. For how can you tell your previously miserable partner that she’s too happy? How can you explain that being optimistic, nay, having utter faith that all life’s situations are going to work out for the best isn’t natural? That a smidgin of misery is part of being sane?
She saw Melissa, her ‘Pure Being’ therapist, twice a week, and on ‘off’ days she’d spend at least an hour watching Mungaro.
I took a peek at one of his videos while she was out, one time. He was Italian and younger and better-looking than I’d imagined. He gave off a vibe of enlightenment that was indisputable, but I found his mock-revelation delivery of what I knew were age-old platitudes more irritating than inspiring. At least now I knew where all the tripe Amy was spouting – her moments of ‘pure God-like being’ or the need to ‘cease thinking in order to exist’ – was coming from.
To check I wasn’t overreacting, I chatted to Dad about it at length on the phone. But even he agreed that this Mungaro guy sounded dodgy. ‘There are plenty of ancient philosophies around if she needs more sense in her life,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure why anyone would want to pay money to listen to some youngster winging it.’
‘Do you think you could give your Mungaro guy a break for a bit?’ I asked her that evening. ‘I’m not sure putting all your eggs in his spiritual basket is . . . well . . . healthy, really . . .’
‘I’m thinking of giving up eggs, actually,’ she said, smiling at me beatifically. ‘I think we need to go properly vegan.’
‘Um, OK,’ I said. ‘Maybe. But all this Benito Mussolini stuff. It’s not healthy. What d’you say we give it a break?’
‘What do I say?’
‘Yeah. What do you say?’
‘I say you’re suffering from the classic jealousy of an unenlightened heathen!’ Amy exclaimed. ‘That’s what I say, honey.’ And then she stood and, more
