A Pretty Little Mistake

Chapter Three

It has been some time since I last set quill to parchment and wrote to you, and much has happened. I have decided, for one, to continue writing these letters, even if no one sees them but myself. I went to the post office and purchased some cheap binding - plain but all I could afford, and once I wrote A Pretty Little Mistake across it in flowing script, it looked pleasing if not beautiful. It took me some time to think of a title for my little collection, but what I have chosen seems fitting, don't you think? I briefly considered taking these with me to my grave, but I think instead that I shall give them to our son on his eighteenth birthday - it is fitting that what he learns of his parentage should be the unadulterated truth, and I flatter myself that I have written nothing less.

Where to begin? I think that to give a full account of what has transpired in the time since I last wrote I must begin in the kitchen of our boardinghouse, some two months ago. The sun had not been in the sky for more than an hour, but Annie and I were already in the kitchen preparing breakfast. I say preparing breakfast, but my culinary skills have still not advanced to the point where Annie trusts me do more than get things out of the pantry. It is getting harder to bend over, though, and I wonder what will happen when neither Annie or I can stoop to the lower cupboards - there are precious few meals that can be made with only mid-level ingredients.

When the doorbell rang, I was not there to answer it. I have taken to busying myself elsewhere when people come to call - a rare enough occurrence in a village like Puddlemere. It makes my cheeks burn when the eyes of visitors linger on my swollen belly, and my haircut no longer suits me. I lopped my formerly long hair off to above my shoulders some time ago, in a misguided attempt to keep it from my face as I wash laundry or scrub floors. The straight, wispy cut does not look well on me; it overemphasizes the largeness of my eyes, and throws into sharp relief the jutting angles of my face. After I had finished cutting it, I remember staring at myself in the cracked, spotted bathroom mirror and wondering what you would make of my decision - you always enjoyed looking at my hair. I then chastised myself for entertaining such thoughts, but I do not think I shall ever be able to stop.

My first impression of our visitor was not a favourable one. I suppose I am partly to blame for the disastrous fallout of our encounter, but in all fairness I was still reeling from the shock of seeing a Hogwarts graduate sitting in a dining room of a decrepit boardinghouse in Puddlemere Village. In retrospect I do not know why I was so surprised; I had heard that Oliver Wood played for Quiddich for Puddlemere United.

Oliver Wood, then. I suppose I ought to thank him for bringing me closer to the reality of my situation, but at the time I found it difficult to be grateful. I was still trying to salvage my composure when his eyes lit with recognition and he said, "Tabitha... Your name is Tabitha, right? I had thought that you were at Hog - er - school still! Married now, are you? You'll have to introduce me to the father sometime."

The room suddenly seemed colder. A heavy, oppressive silence fell, wrapped itself around my shoulders and pressed down upon me. I could not speak; I was in a dark room again, with marble floors and a vaulted ceiling. A red geranium by my feet, a bag of money on the floor, a pretty little mistake, 'Much like yourself. Dispose of it. Dispose of it, dispose of it, dispose of it...' I shook my head violently, trying to yank myself back to the present, 'You are in your manor and I am in a boardinghouse in Puddlemere, you care nothing for me or our son, why will you not let me be, it has been five months why can you not just leave me be?'

I cannot recall exactly what happened then. My thoughts were an odd mix of past and present and my energies were being spent mostly in trying to separate the two. While I do not remember leaving the kitchen, I do recollect Annie sitting beside me on my thin, hard mattress, wrapping a scratchy blanket around my shoulders and rubbing my back whilst I shook like mad with the tears I would not allow to flow.

I also remember jumping to my feet and hurriedly smoothing the wrinkles from my dress as Oliver Wood mounted the stairs to my attic. I drew a cloak of icy calm around myself as he entered the room and as he began to apologize - without stuttering or stammering, thank God - my chin rose and my eyes flashed. I will say this for him, though, he was not cowed by the same stance that has sent countless house-elves and even human servants scuttling for cover. He finished speaking in the same quiet, even voice in which he had started, and then turned and left the room with the same restrained dignity with which he had entered. I wondered, then, if I had misjudged my fellow boarder, but quashed the thought as soon as it occurred to me. I was very determined to hate Oliver Wood.

Some time passed in this manner. Oliver Wood could not come into my presence without being greeted with thinly-veiled insults and ill-concealed dislike. After a few weeks of this, even Annie - usually my staunch ally - began to shoot me disapproving looks. This did nothing whatsoever to affect my behavior. It was once remarked by someone (was it you? I cannot remember), that it is a fortunate thing for the world at large that I do not carry many grudges, as I have the tendency to cling to them for a longer period of time than is really necessary. I am afraid that I must agree whole-heartedly. It is one of my less attractive characteristics.

After a while, of course, Oliver Wood reached the point where he had had enough. It happened during an otherwise normal dinner conversation. Annie had been teasing Oliver Wood gently, asking him in her thick Swedish accent why it was that he had not yet brought home a wife for her to see- were all the pretty ones taken? Sensing an opportunity, I crossed my legs placidly and remarked in an airy tone to my dinner plate that perhaps Oliver Wood's chances for finding a partner would be higher if he were capable of thinking before he spoke.

I knew instantly that I had gone too far. Silence fell as everyone at the table turned to stare at me. Annie - gentle, quiet Annie's normally cheerful countenance grew cool and she said to me in a sharper tone than I have ever heard her take, "Tabitha, vännen, I have put up with this for long enough. If you have a grievance with this boy you will discuss it with him openly, like an adult and you will stop this petty quibbling. I am sick to the bone of it. Is there anything else you would like to add, Oliver?" She glanced at Oliver who had risen from his chair to stare evenly at me.

"I just want to say that I don't care for the high-and-mighty way you treat me. I said something stupid and I'm sorry, okay? What else am I supposed to say? Anyone here can tell you I tried to be polite to you when God knows you haven't made it easy for me! If you think there's something wrong with how I've been treating you, can you bloody well tell me instead of all this sniping and wrangling? I'm sick of it, woman! Just...just grow up will you?"

I fled. I have taken, of late, to sitting on the roof outside my attic window when I need to be alone with my thoughts; it is a sanctuary of sorts in a house that constantly overflows with people. Staring into the dank, foggy gloom that passes for night in Puddlemere, I closed my eyes and conjured from the depths of my memory the ghosts of my past. It is usually your voice that drifts through my mind in times like these, but on this occasion I surprised myself with the recollection of Blaise Zabini.

'Blaise, what do you do if you've had a fight with someone and they're incredibly wrong and you're right?'

'Apologize immediately.'

'What?'

'If I care at all for them, at any rate. Particularly if recent circumstances have proven me to be correct. Unless it's a life-or-death issue, what's the point in making a fuss over it? Of getting all righteous? All it does is make people less likely to listen to you.

'Yes, but what do you do if you find out you were wrong?'

'Same thing. Why change a tactic that works?'

'But I can't do that! It'll make me look like a fool!'

'So you're saying that it's not all right to apologize when you're wrong?'

It was enough. If I am to raise a child I think that I must first stop acting like one, and to this end, when Oliver Wood greeted me today with his customary 'good morning' I smiled briefly. It felt odd, like my face was being stretched far too wide, and in uncustomary directions. I so rarely smile any more. Our eyes met for an instant and then we parted ways; I to the water pump and he to the deserted field where I assume he trains. It was not much. It was enough. Enough perhaps for a beginning.

I thought of your wife today. This in and of itself surprised me; I have always avoided thinking on her as such thoughts are always accompanied by a vague sense of wrongdoing. I wonder, do you allow her to love you? I cannot imagine that you would, any more so than your other mistresses. Perhaps that explains my image of her; I have seen her only once or twice, and received both times a fleeting impression of great beauty withered by the passage of time, and of great sadness, hidden by an expression that suggests an unpleasant smell is nearby. I had thought, once, that she and I were exceedingly different but in truth it is only that I am better at hiding my pain.

Pain. I had thought that above all things I desired your love but I have come to realize that above all else I crave release. I want so badly to have left my pain behind but I am trapped; trapped in a past that I can neither outrun nor turn to face. I am tired, love, so very tired, and so very, very miserable because I have come to realize that these past few months have changed me. Were I offered the choice, I no longer believe I could go back to the time when our child did not grow inside me, when you held me and I lied to myself that I did not care if I was loved. I cannot live without you, my dear, but I do not think I could live with you, either, and where does this leave me?

Rachel McCallum has given me breathing excercises to do before bed. She disguises it with a brusque manner and a prickly exterior but I think that she truly does care for me. It is this that compels me to attempt the accursed things night after night, despite an ostensible lack of success. I try so hard; I breath in and the pain fills me, swells like a thousand pinpricks until I feel my breath catch in my throat, but when I try to let it out I can't and I have to push it back again to the furthest corners of my mind. When it recedes, it leaves an emptiness in its wake and I am numb and hollow inside. I do not know what it is that you have taken from me that leaves me so desolate and barren but if I am ever truly to live I think, love, that you shall have to return it first.

All my love,

Tabitha Baddock