When Allison’s husband disappears just a few days after the birth of their triplets, she is forced to rebuild her life from scratch. Twelve years later, a chance encounter threatens the peace she has fought so hard to achieve, and the truth she thought she had left behind begins to take on a different form.
I was 23 when Adam vanished from our lives, and even now, at 35, I can still hear the silence he left behind. There was no final conversation. No apology. Just the sound of the hospital door closing behind him as I took turns holding our newborn triplets in my arms. I was stunned, stitched up and completely alone.
I couldn’t even hold all three at once. Amara lay on my chest, Andy was crying in a bassinet, and Ashton had just been placed in my arms by a nurse.
My body was broken, my mind clouded by painkillers and panic, but I still looked at Adam, waiting for the steady smile he’d shown throughout my pregnancy.
The smile that said: We can do this.
Instead, I saw only fear.
“I—I need some fresh air, Allison,” he mumbled, averting his gaze. “Just a minute.”
That minute turned into an hour, then two hours. And then two days.
My discharge papers were drawn up. All three babies were doing well, and I wanted to get them out of hospital as soon as possible. The babies were picked up by three different nurses with warm smiles and sympathetic looks.
And Adam?
Oh, he never came back.
Two days later, I left the hospital alone, my arms full of newborns, my chest hollowed out by a panic I didn’t know was possible. Adam had taken the car. He said he’d be back in a moment, and I believed him.
I waited. I breastfed, I rocked them, I cried quietly when no one was looking. But he didn’t come back. When the nurse asked again if anyone was coming to pick us up, I just nodded and reached for my mobile.
I didn’t even know what I was saying when the taxi company called. I think I mumbled something about needing a van. They told me it would take 25 minutes. I sat in the hospital lobby with three little babies in their car seats, which the nurses had helped me strap them into.
I tried to appear calm and in control, like someone who’d had a plan all along – and not like a woman with three babies on the verge of a breakdown.
But I didn’t.
The taxi driver was friendly. He didn’t ask any questions when he saw the state I was in. He simply helped me get the babies in and turned off the radio without a word. The journey was quiet, apart from Amara’s soft whimpering in the back seat and the way Andy kept bumping against the side of the pushchair, as if he wanted to get out already.
I kept looking out of the window, half expecting Adam to jog alongside the car, breathless and full of apologies.
He didn’t.
When we stopped outside our flat, the living room light I’d left on two nights ago was still burning. I opened the door and stood there for a long time, three sleeping babies in their carrycots beside me, wondering how I was supposed to walk into that flat and pretend it was still my home.
The first night was one long cry – mine and hers. The flat echoed with the newborns’ cries and I felt as though the walls were about to come crashing down. I tried to breastfeed, but my milk hadn’t fully come in yet.
Nothing felt natural. My body was sore and heavy, and the babies needed more than I could give them. I warmed bottles whilst holding two at once, one on each side, whilst the third cried in the baby bouncer, as if it knew it had got the short end of the stick.
I acted on instinct and adrenaline. Sleep became a luxury I couldn’t afford. I cried in the dark between feeds, and when the crying wouldn’t stop, my own tears joined theirs like background music I couldn’t turn off.
The days began to blur into one another, and I found myself no longer looking at the clock to rest, but to survive.
I stopped answering the phone. I had nothing left to say. I stopped opening the curtains, because even the daylight felt cruel.
One night, after the twins had finally fallen asleep on my chest and Ashton was whimpering in his bassinet, I reached for my phone. I couldn’t even remember pressing Greg’s name. I just needed someone to hear me breathe. Greg was Adam’s best friend.
My voice broke when he answered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Allison?” he said gently. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I can’t… I don’t know how to do this. I can’t even keep track of bottles. I haven’t slept for days. I haven’t eaten anything but dry muesli… Help me!”
“I’ll come over,” he simply said.
“Greg, you don’t have to,” I said. “I’m fine. I just had a moment…”
“Alli, I want to,” he said.
Thirty minutes later, I opened the door and saw him standing there with a huge bag of nappies in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. He looked a bit uncertain, as if I might tell him to go away.