The baby’s cry pulled her from their room and into the upstairs landing. She stood outside the nursery not daring to go in, not daring to look.
Would it ever end she asked herself? Would this nightly torment ever let up?
No, she knew it wouldn’t, for this was her penance; her own private hell for taking a life, for committing the mortal sin of murder.
A tear welled up for all she had lost, how could she have been so stupid?
Would it really have been so bad to be a mother?
She pressed her hands over her ears in an attempt to block the sound out, but she could still hear the heart wrenching sound of her baby demanding attention; attention she would never be able to give.
In their bedroom her husband slumbered on, sleeping the sleep of the innocent.
She resented the easiness with which he coped with what had happened but what had she expected? Men are like that. It had been her decision and hers alone. She hadn’t spoken with him about it because she knew he would never understand. Men never do, how can they? They go to work, come home and expect everything to be done for them.
A housewife is on the go from dawn to dusk and when, God forbid, a child comes along then she’s looking after two people, or maybe three or more. Men just don’t see it that way, they want a family, they want to play daddy but it’s the women who carry the burden, not the bloody men.
At the time she had thought she would never cope, that it would just be too much for her to bear. The decision hadn’t been easy but she didn’t see another way out. But now, now it was done, she felt different.
The baby’s cries grew louder, echoing around her head and she closed her eyes in guilt ridden grief and self loathing. Why did she do this to herself every night, why?
The moon shone bright through the window, illuminating her hand hovering over the handle but she didn’t dare touch it. She would never go in, she knew that; even though she stood there every night, listening to her lost baby crying, weeping for what might have been.
They could have been a family, they could have been three, but not anymore; she had seen to that.
Suddenly the door to their bedroom banged open and Mark walked out, half asleep and mumbling.
She stepped back to let him pass. She was invisible to him at this hour; in the day he sometimes talked to her, or to himself, but mostly he ignored her.
In the cold, silent moonlit corridor she watched mutely as he opened the nursery door.
She knew it would be best to go now but she couldn’t move. She watched as he bent down and picked up the screaming bundle, cooing softly to it.
“There now Sarah, there now,” he hushed into her ear. “I know, I know you want your mummy but she’s in heaven now, she left us to be with Grandma and now it’s only you and me.”
She turned and left, as she always did when he started to cry.