‘05.09.1975… Can we get on with this please? I’m going out of my mind here!’ I push my hand through my hair, my eyes stinging through lack of sleep.
‘For the tape, I’m going to state what the purpose of this interview is…’ DC Lawrie strings a sentence of words together which my brain fails to process.
I glance around the room, no bigger than a store cupboard, the white walls stark and slightly scuffed at chair level. A heavy-duty wooden desk separates the officers from myself. I haven’t bothered asking for representation. Surely to do so would only make me look guilty?
‘Tell us about your wife’s state of mind leading up to last night.’
I pause. ‘Look… I don’t think it really matters.’
‘We’ll be the judge of that.’ DC Kennedy places both elbows on the desk and leans forward, clearly the first move in the officer’s game of chess.
‘She wasn’t in good health,’ I say eventually, realising that the sooner I answer their questions the sooner I can get away. ‘It only seems like yesterday that we came home from the hospital. There were some complications during the birth. The cord was wrapped around my son’s neck and for a moment we thought we might have lost him.’
‘And that affected your wife’s mental state?’ DC Lawrie smiles but her eyes remain hard.
‘Yes, no, I don’t know, quite probably. But she was fine for a while. I mean, she’s always been highly strung but…’
‘In what way?’ interjects Kennedy.
‘You know, panicking over things. Always worrying that something might happen to Cory.’ My voice breaks as I say our son’s name out loud.
‘Your wife suffered with depression?’ I can’t be sure if DC Lawrie is asking me a question or stating a fact. I nod my head. ‘Correct.’
‘When did it begin?’
‘When she was very young. She found her mother hanging from her bedroom curtain pole on Christmas Day. Which also happened to be Louisa’s sixth birthday.’ From the corner of my eye, I catch DC Kennedy’s eyes drop to the floor. If he’s been assigned as the ‘bad cop’ he isn’t doing a particularly good job of it.
‘How was your relationship with your wife?’ he asks, as if genuinely interested in knowing the answer.
‘Good,’ I say a little too quickly. ‘It was perfect. I loved her.’
‘Loved her?’ DC Lawrie’s eyes widen.
I feel the blood drain from my face. ‘Love her. I dunno. I think she must be dead. I mean, there’s just no way she would…’ Tears clog up my throat, stopping me from continuing. ‘She wouldn’t have just disappeared like this. But there’s no way she’s done what you’re accusing her of. I won’t have it. She…’
‘We’re not accusing your wife of anything, Mr Carter. That’s not how we operate.’ DC Lawrie cuts across me. ‘We are trying to gain an accurate picture of her mental health, that’s all.’
‘I don’t know what to tell you.’ I hold my arms out in front of me. ‘Yes, she was saying and doing some pretty crazy stuff towards the end. I suppose I first started to notice things weren’t right a few weeks ago when she came home from having coffee with her friends. She’d fainted in the market on her way home and I guess I did suspect postnatal depression. And then of course there were the secrets she’d been keeping from me. I found out about one in particular and well… I suppose I could have handled it better.’
‘And what secret was that?’ blurts out Kennedy, glancing over at Lawrie who rolls her eyes ever so slightly.
I explain the best way I can, still unable to fully process what I now know to be true. Why didn’t you just tell me, Louisa? Why did I have to find out in the way I did?
‘You had trouble conceiving, is that correct?’ DC Lawrie cuts through my ramblings once again, as if trying to catch me off-guard. It seems as if she’s now taken the bad cop role off Kennedy and I can’t say I blame her – poor bloke’s making a right cock-up of it.
‘We tried for a baby for a long time,’ I begin, unsure just how much I want to admit to. ‘Fertility tests revealed I have a low sperm count caused by a condition known as varicoceles – similar to varicose veins, only in the scrotum.’ I look up, notice the slight flush in DC Kennedy’s cheeks. ‘A pregnancy was always possible but deemed unlikely. I had surgery to remove the varicoceles but it was only mildly successful so we proceeded to play IVF Monopoly, failing to pass Go on our first round. My sperm didn’t even manage to fertilise Lou’s eggs, which was disheartening. But the second attempt… well, we transferred two decent embryos and were hopeful of a pregnancy.’ I take a breath, the memory of that morning momentarily snatching away my words. I can see you in my mind’s eye, throwing back the duvet and diving out of bed.
‘James! I need to pee. Like now!’
I opened my eyes and looked over at the window where weak light seeped through the closed curtains, tinging the room a hazy blue. Tall shadows clawed their way up the walls. I was frightened. If this attempt failed, I’d lose you. I knew I would.
I made a show of yawning, as if I had just woken up, when in fact I hadn’t slept all night. ‘Go pee then,’ I tried to say matter-of-factly, but my words were slanted, almost rehearsed.
At 6.45 a.m. the bedroom was dark. The bed was warm and still smelt of sleep. It didn’t surprise me when you climbed back into it a moment later, admitting that you were too terrified to find out if the IVF had worked. You edged closer towards me and I wanted to comfort you, really I did. But I didn’t know how to. The communication had broken down, I suppose, both of us fighting the best we could through a battle we never asked for. When I turned my back on you, I knew you would cry.
‘This may be our time,’ you whispered through your tears, lightly tracing a love heart on my back. ‘Let’s go and find out if we’re going to be parents.’
I loved you for tracing that heart on my back. Even if I knew it would soon fade away.
Once in the bathroom, everything happened quickly; a blur of fumbling and clattering as you flung the toilet seat up and pulled your pyjama bottoms down. You grabbed the pregnancy test off the windowsill and ripped open the foil packet, the sound causing my stomach to stiffen. I think I’d developed some sort of PTSD, reacting to the noise of the wrapper like an ex-army veteran would to a gunshot.
Your hands shook so badly that the pregnancy test almost fell down the toilet bowl. I stood with my back against the closed bathroom door, almost as if I was barricading us in against an evil eternity which lurked on the other side. I watched through wide eyes as the sound of your pee hit the basin. You looked down between your legs, positioned the pregnancy test in the stream, as if you were playing a Wild West fairground game. I looked around the bathroom by way of distraction, noticed a chipped tile which I hadn’t previously seen, a new shampoo which promised ‘velvet luxury’. I couldn’t bear to meet your eye, to see the hope which rested there.
The steady stream of pee finally reduced to a trickle, like the tail end of a storm. As it finally came to a halt, you made no attempt to get up off the toilet. Instead, you brought the test close to your face and stared at it, defiant, your eyes unblinking. I noticed your knuckles whiten as you clutched it tightly, as if the heat from your hands alone could give a positive result.
‘What does it say, Lou?’ The question lodged in my throat, so much so that I wasn’t sure if I’d managed to speak at all.
You beckoned me over and I didn’t want to see but a part of me knew I had to. I stood by your side, watched in awe as your pee started to creep along the absorbent strip, leaving a solid blue line in the control window as it continued steadily on to its destination, like the tortoise in the famous children’s book The Hare and the Tortoise. I loved that book as a child. Dad used to read it to me and David when Mum was out at the Bingo and I hoped that one day I too would be able to read it to my son or daughter.