The Things We Never Said by Susan Elliot Wright Page A

achingly melancholic quality of others. As he listens, the sound seems to soar up through the floorboards, spilling into the water around him and making his flesh feel raw. It is as though a layer of skin has been peeled off, exposing all the most tender places.
    *
    When he gets into bed, Fiona is sleeping soundly, her cheek resting neatly on the palm of her right hand and her lips parting with a little click as she breathes out. She’d seemed preoccupied tonight, and she’d wept when he told her about his mum losing her first child; perhaps he should have kept that to himself. He thinks about that long-ago baby, his brother. Would they have looked alike? He doesn’t look like his father but people say he has his mother’s eyes. He wants to ask his mum how she’d felt about being pregnant again, how she’d been after having him. Perhaps she’d had post-natal depression. He pictures his father looking down at him, seeing him both as a poor substitute for his dead brother and as the reason for his mother’s suffering. He hadn’t stood a chance of gaining a place in Gerald’s affections, he sees that now. And the strange thing is, he can see the logic. After all, if anything happened to Fiona, would he be able to forgive the baby? He thinks about the Gerald his mother described, the heartbroken husband caring for his grief-stricken wife. She said Gerald had cried.
    He turns over and closes his eyes tighter, but the more he tries to empty his mind, the more impossible it becomes. He turns onto his back and watches the beam of a headlight sweep across the ceiling. Fiona mutters something in her sleep and turns over. It’s no good; he’s wide awake now. Gently, he slides out of bed and pads downstairs.
    He pours a small brandy then unlocks the back door and stands there for a moment, looking out into the garden. The smell of fresh pine cuts through the smoky December air. The Christmas tree is propped against the side of the house, waiting to be dragged in, decorated, then thrown out again a week or two later. The thought triggers a wave of childlike sadness which surprises him. His memories of early childhood are hazy, but perhaps it’s just as well. Briefly, he pictures Gerald holding a newborn baby, and again he finds himself wondering whether, given the chance, his father would have mellowed in grandparenthood.
    Despite the cold, he takes his glass, walks along the path to the bench at the end and sits down. The garden looks silvery in the moonlight, and there’s hardly any sound. He pulls his dressing gown more tightly around him. A movement to his left startles him, but it’s just a young fox, snaffling up the bread and scraps of meat Fiona put out for it. For a moment the creature looks up and their eyes meet. See? it seems to say. You’re not the only thing she cares about. Then it disappears through a hole in the fence and he is alone again.
    Already, Fiona loves their unborn child; she talks to it all the time with tenderness in her voice, even looking down at her stomach as she speaks. He tries to imagine his little son or daughter, curled up inside her, listening to the gentle rise and fall of her voice against the rhythmic beat of her heart, but he can only summon up an idea or impression; he can’t seem to think of his child as a real person, not yet.
    Soon, the combination of the cold and the brandy numbs his mind enough for him to attempt sleep again. He climbs back into bed carefully, so as not to touch Fiona with his icy limbs, and as he sinks gratefully into slumber, his thoughts mangle into dreams.
    He is playing in the garden of his parents’ house when it begins to snow. He goes into the house through the French doors; the room is full of people, and there are two tiny white coffins on stands in the centre. His parents stare blankly through him. He turns back to the garden where he spots something moving. At first he thinks it’s a couple of cats or fox cubs and he tries to open the door, but