The Other Child Read Online Free Page B

statements were inseparable.
    They were on the late train back from London, maybe a month after they had met; the carriage was empty and he held her chin and looked into her eyes. ‘I’m completely in love with you,’ he said. And it hadn’t seemed ridiculous, because she felt it too. They fitted together beneath the surface; she already knew that she belonged with him and nobody else. Then he said, gently but firmly, ‘I’m happy to have Joe in my life but I don’t want another child. Is that going to be a problem for you?’
    She’d kissed him and reassured him that she was happy just with Joe too. When Joe was smaller she’d wanted another baby – she felt guilty that he didn’t have a sibling; she didn’t want him to feel the sort of loneliness or responsibility for a parent that she had felt as a child – but then David left, and gradually that longing passed and then they’d been content, just the two of them. But sometimes, now, she wonders what would have happened on the train if, instead of kissing Greg, she had pulled away, shaken her head, said that she did want another baby, that she longed for one – that she wanted his baby. Would he have pulled away too? Changed his mind? Stopped loving her?
    She thinks of the twelve-week scan, when they held hands while the sonographer picked out a hand with tiny, identifiable fingers, the tight plait of a spine, a jawbone, a nose, two sharp leg-bones and then, in the darkness, the squeezing knot of a heart. As she watched the map of their baby take shape on the screen all her doubts evaporated and she felt a rush of pure love – of joy. But Greg said nothing. She wanted to believe that he was overwhelmed too, feeling the same things, but she wasn’t sure. When the sonographer zoomed in on the baby’s heart again, clicking, taking stills and measurements, Greg stepped closer, scrutinizing the images for abnormalities.
    He will come round when he holds this baby in his arms for the first time. He has held thousands of infants but never his own – he has no idea how powerful it is to look down at your baby’s face for the first time. She hears her phone beep in the kitchen: a text – Nell probably. Joe will be waiting for a bagel. She walks back down the deck, keeping her eyes fixed forward. Her neck tingles as she steps inside. She knows she is being watched.
    *
    After breakfast, she goes onto the front porch. Greg said there were families in the street, but it is the end of the summer holidays, gone eight in the morning, and the lawns are empty and silent except for the whirr and hiss of sprinklers. There are no flower beds, only shrubs and rockeries and mown grass. Theirs, she realizes, is the only house with a fence.
    A lawnmower buzzes nearby and sunlight bounces off the windowpanes. She lifts a hand to shield her eyes. Perhaps the neighbours are looking out at her right now – but it is impossible to tell. She walks over to the fence and peers back at the house next door. It is a proper New England Arts and Crafts home with wooden cladding painted a subtle green, a full-length porch and – yes – a porch swing. Just the sort of house she’d imagined living in. All the blinds are drawn.
    Then the front door bursts open. She shrinks back so that she is almost inside a tall shrub, then parts the branches and peers through. A man is on the porch, with a satchel, cropped brown hair. ‘Girls!’ he yells over his shoulder. ‘Now!’ His voice is unmistakable, but it is more impatient than angry today. She watches him hop down the steps, pulling out a mobile and scrolling through messages as he beeps open the locks of a car she can’t see. He is wearing a pressed blue shirt and khakis, no tie. He is average size, attractive, clean-cut. She wonders what time he came back last night, and where he went after yelling at his wife.
    He glances up, as if he has sensed her, and she shrinks back. The leaves are prickly, a branch is digging into her ribcage and