A Million Dreams

by Dani Atkins

  ‘And when they discovered the mistake, what did they do? Did that woman have a termination?’ The thought felt like a scalpel gouging out my own flesh.

  ‘No one discovered the error,’ said the board member softly. It was his first contribution to the discussion. ‘This tragic mistake was only uncovered yesterday.’

  ‘So what is it that you’re saying?’ I asked. I was on my feet without any recollection of how I got there. ‘That her pregnancy continued?’

  They nodded. Every single one of them, but it was Dr Alistair who delivered the final blow. The coup de grâce. ‘Yes, Beth, it did. Eight years ago, she gave birth to a child. A child she has no reason to believe is not hers. Your child.’

  *

  I shouldn’t have driven home. The fact that I can’t remember a single moment of the journey proves that. That I did so without wrapping my car around a lamppost is a miracle of sorts. The end of the meeting at the clinic was a blur. I can remember hearing their repeated assurances that a ‘full and thorough investigation would begin immediately’ and having to restrain myself from screaming out that it was too late. They couldn’t undo what had already happened. There was no way to right this wrong.

  I could feel my control slipping away, and like an injured animal I was desperate to get out of there. My hip collided clumsily with the table, knocking over the water jug, and in the resulting confusion, as files were snatched from the slowly growing puddle, I made for the door.

  ‘I have to go,’ I can remember declaring. ‘I can’t be here. I can’t do this now.’

  The room seemed to have suddenly elongated, the way they do in dreams, moving the doorway agonisingly further away. By the time I reached it, the practice manager was beside me, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder. One look at my face made her quickly withdraw it.

  ‘Mrs Brandon, I realise this must be a terrible shock.’

  I looked at her dumbly as though she was speaking in a foreign language. Shock didn’t even come close to describing how I felt right then. There simply weren’t words to convey the emotions coursing through me: despair, grief, and anger, so much anger. I clawed for the door handle. I had to get out of that meeting room, out of the clinic, and far away from these people whose incompetence had destroyed my future.

  I was still shaking when I finally let myself into my home. It had taken four attempts before I’d managed to align the Yale key in the lock. I think that used up the last reserves of my control. I leant back against the closed door and sank slowly down to the floor. With my head on my knees, I sobbed in a way the walls of my home hadn’t heard for a very long time. I’d never been pregnant, I’d never held my child in my arms, I’d never looked down and seen my husband’s eyes in our baby’s face. And now I never would.

  The shadows had travelled across the floor to the far reaches of the room by the time I eventually dragged myself to my feet. I went straight to the kitchen and drank three full tumblers of water, one after the other, knowing I was probably still seriously dehydrated. My throat felt raw and I didn’t have to look in a mirror to know my eyes would be red and puffy. I took the coward’s way out and opted to text Natalie rather than phone, to let her know I wouldn’t be coming back that day.

  She replied with a message of ‘Feel better’ and a row of emojis, which bizarrely made me cry all over again. I was a mess, and knowing that did nothing to help. I was probably still in shock, still trying to process how on earth this could have happened. Now, and only now, I finally regretted not confiding in my family about the last embryo. If I had, I would at least be able to turn to them now. But my stupid need for secrecy had led me to share my plans with no one. Except, of course, Liam Thomas. I pulled off the clothes I’d worn for the appointment as though they were tainted, glad I had no way of contacting Liam, because the need to share this burden was so overwhelming I might not have been able to stop myself from trying to drag him into this horrible mess.

  That night, for the first time in ages, I pulled Tim’s dressing gown from the bathroom door and wrapped it around me before sliding into the bed we had once shared. The smell of him was long since gone from the fabric, yet still I buried my nose into the folds of material, desperate to catch one last hint of him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I crooned, in the quiet of my empty room. ‘I’m so sorry, baby.’ In my head he said it was all right. In my head he told me that it wasn’t my fault; that there was nothing either of us could have done to prevent this. In my head he told me to close my eyes and try to rest. ‘I miss you so much.’ I said the words to the empty room, knowing that somewhere, somehow, he would hear them.

  9

  Izzy

  Out of a habit I thought I’d forgotten, I automatically pulled my car over to the far side of the drive to allow Pete to park beside me. Noah skipped ahead to the front door while Pete and I locked eyes across the roof of his car. Mine were so full of questions I could hardly see straight, but he answered them all with a tiny shake of his head. Not yet.

  It was weird sliding my key into the lock and feeling Pete standing right behind me once again. We must have crossed this threshold together thousands of times before. Yet all I could remember were the times when after doing so, our lives had changed. Like when he’d carried me over the doorstep when we’d returned from our honeymoon, and had collided into the frame after misjudging the opening. And then eight years ago, with infinitely more care, as we’d carried our precious newborn into the house for the very first time. Or the day of my mother’s funeral, when I’d been blinded by tears and Pete’s arm around my waist had been my guiding strength and support, in every sense of the word. The way it had always been.

  Beginnings and endings. Those were the moments that filled my head now as we walked into our house. It was impossible to shake the feeling that whatever had happened today would be added to those occasions.

  Amazingly, given the size of the meal he’d just eaten, Noah raced straight to the biscuit tin as soon as we entered the kitchen. I was distracted, so caught up in the overwhelming feeling of déjà vu at seeing Pete in this room again, when usually he ventured no further than the doorstep, I forgot to voice even a token objection.

  Noah was reaching for Pete’s phone, scrolling through the collection of videos from the show. Under cover of the tinnily reproduced rendition of ‘Summer Nights’, I drew Pete to one side. There was a tremor in his forearm as I laid my hand on it.

  ‘What’s this all about? It’s got something to do with that phone call, hasn’t it?’

  Pete glanced towards Noah, whose head was beginning to droop as he watched his own performance. ‘Let’s wait until Noah has gone to bed.’

  From the look of our sleepy son, I would get my answer soon enough.

  ‘Is it something bad?’ I asked, my voice little more than a whisper.

  ‘No,’ he said, which should have calmed me, except I’d known immediately that he was lying. Had he forgotten that his voice always gave him away?

  Noah yawned hugely, revealing a mouth dusty with biscuit crumbs. ‘You look exhausted, my little rock star,’ Pete declared, crossing the kitchen and ruffling Noah’s thick dark hair lovingly. His strong fingers lingered among the ebony strands, looking down at them almost in wonder. Inexplicably, I shivered.

  ‘Why don’t you take him up, and I’ll make us both some coffee,’ suggested Pete.

  I opened my mouth to protest but he was already reaching for the cups, as if making himself at home like this in the house I’d asked him to leave nine months ago was perfectly normal.

  Noah was so tired he stumbled like a drunken party goer as I followed him up the stairs. ‘Have you had a good day?’ I asked, suddenly overwhelmed with a fierce feeling of love and protectiveness.

  ‘The best,’ confirmed Noah sleepily. ‘It’s great to have Dad here again.’

  For once he offered no complaint as I stood in the open bathroom doorway while he used the loo and gave his teeth a dozen half-hearted swipes with the toothbrush. I was so anxio
us to return to Pete waiting in the kitchen below, I didn’t even bother asking him to clean them again.

  ‘I was so proud of you today,’ I said, dropping a kiss on the smooth skin of his brow as I tucked him in. ‘We both were,’ I amended.

  Noah mumbled a response, but was already tumbling into sleep. He was snoring gently by the time I reached the bedroom door and let myself out of his room.

  Pete was standing beside an open kitchen cabinet, staring blankly at the packets of sugar, flour and other cake-making ingredients.

  ‘Where’s the bottle of brandy we used to keep in here?’

  I was so stunned I forgot to remind him that I didn’t have to run it by him if I wanted to rearrange the kitchen cupboards. I reached into the larder unit and extracted the bottle of amber-coloured alcohol. We only ever used it at Christmas to ignite the pudding, or when Pete had a cold and insisted that a hot toddy trumped a dose of Night Nurse to help him sleep. Except Pete wasn’t sneezing right now.

  The coffees were already made, and before I could stop him, Pete unscrewed the bottle and poured a generous slug into both cups. That was the moment when my concern turned into fear. Why did we need brandy?

  ‘Sit down, Izzy,’ Pete said, and there was a tremor to his voice that I truly don’t think I’d ever heard there before.

  Blindly, I reached for one of the pine kitchen chairs and sank down onto it. He pushed one of the coffees towards me. I caught a waft of the potent alcohol and my already nervous stomach rolled queasily.

  ‘Pete, what’s going on? What is this all about?’

  He shook his head and took a large mouthful of the high-proof coffee before replying.

  ‘That phone call I had this evening…’ The world stopped turning and balanced on a pivot as I waited. ‘It was from a doctor.’ He swallowed awkwardly, as though the words were reluctant to leave him.

  ‘A doctor? Why?’ My voice was a hushed whisper, as though we were in danger of being overheard. ‘Are you sick? Is that what this is about?’ A cold finger of dread ran lightly down my spine, and with his next words I thought my worst fears were confirmed.

  ‘I don’t know how to say this.’

  ‘Pete, you’re scaring the shit out of me. What is it?’

  He reached across the table and gripped my hands tightly within his, but not before I noticed that his were trembling. Fear was releasing adrenaline into my veins, and I still had no idea what this was all about.

  ‘They made a mistake, Izzy. A dreadful, awful mistake. And they’ve only just discovered it.’

  ‘Who made a mistake? You’re not making any sense.’

  He was in pain, I could see that, actual physical pain. And he was openly crying, and I could think of only two other occasions in all our years together when I’d seen him do that. I blinked away the memory of his face crumpling when nine months ago I’d asked him to move out. That had been bad, but what he was about to tell me now was clearly even worse.

  ‘The Westmore Clinic. They fucked up, big time. Noah isn’t our son.’

  *

  ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’

  I shook my head, which did little to help the pounding headache that had definitely settled in for the night. My throat felt raw and my eyes were dry and scratchy and probably impressively swollen. Pete was a blurry mirage in the dimly lit lounge, a hazy shape shrouded in shadows on the opposite settee. The only light in the room came from a single low-wattage table lamp, and frankly even that felt too bright.

  ‘I wouldn’t be able to sleep. And what if Noah woke up and needed me in the night?’

  ‘Then you’d be in the room next to his, the same as always,’ reasoned Pete. ‘I’m the anomaly here. I’m the one who he’d be confused to find.’

  I was surprised by the wave of panic that suddenly hit me. ‘You’re not thinking of leaving, are you?’ Where was the capable single parent who’d coped so very well over the last nine months? She seemed to have disintegrated on hearing the news Pete had delivered earlier that evening.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, not tonight,’ Pete confirmed. His words felt like a blanket, and I wrapped it around me, yet still the chill found its way in.

  *

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  That had been my initial reaction to Pete’s shattering revelation. It was a phrase I kept repeating, as though my brain refused to allow any other thought process to intrude until I’d got beyond that initial hurdle. Except now, hours later, I was still no further ahead. Everything about this situation was so incomprehensible I could feel myself being swallowed whole by the enormity of it.

  ‘Tell me again,’ I urged. ‘Tell me exactly what Dr Alistair said. Every single word.’ Obediently, Pete recounted the brief telephone conversation… for the fourth time, even though I already knew it so well I could have recited it myself without a single prompt.

  ‘He began by saying there was no easy way of putting it, so he was just going to have to give it to me straight. And then he confirmed he was calling about your IVF treatment.’

  I nodded impatiently, wanting him to fast-forward to the crux of the story again.

  ‘The crazy thing is,’ Pete said with a humourless laugh, ‘I thought they were ringing about the cheque we’d sent them. I thought it must have bounced. I had no idea…Never in a million years did I think… Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’

  ‘And then?’ I urged, as though one more telling of the tale would make the nightmare somehow more believable. But of course it didn’t.

  ‘Then he just came straight out and said it: “The embryo we implanted in Izzy wasn’t hers. It belonged to another couple”.’

  Bile rose in my mouth and I swallowed it down determinedly. ‘Did he say why they phoned you and not me?’ I suddenly thought to ask.

  ‘He said they’d been trying to reach you, but the number they had on file wasn’t working.’

  My eyes met Pete’s. ‘They still have my old number.’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘Thank God for that,’ he added. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have broken this news to you.’

  That reminder of his fierce protectiveness was almost enough to set me off again. ‘But he still didn’t explain how it had happened?’

  Pete shook his head. ‘Apparently there’s going to be a full investigation.’

  ‘But they checked. On the day they did the transfer, I remember them checking, don’t you?’ I asked Pete desperately. I saw the memory of that day in his eyes, almost as brightly as it was in mine. The small sterile room, the gowned doctors, and Pete’s hand holding mine tightly as the hatch between the treatment room and the lab opened up and the dish containing our embryo was passed from technician to physician. They’d verified my name, my date of birth, and double-checked it all against the wristband I was wearing. Everything had been absolutely correct.

  I could still remember that magical moment when we’d watched the monitor as the catheter delivered its precious cargo inside me. We’d both held our breath as we stared transfixed at the screen as our embryo settled into its home for the next nine months, totally unaware it held the weight of a million hopes and dreams upon its microscopic shoulders.

  I still had the ultrasound image one of the clinic staff had handed me. ‘For your baby album,’ he had said. And Pete and I had both laughed, almost giddy with excitement.

  *

  ‘What happens now?’ My voice was hollow and trembling, because every single answer to that question terrified me.

  ‘I don’t know, Izzy. I don’t think anyone does.’

  *

  I must have climbed the stairs half a dozen times that night, drawn up the treads by an overwhelming urge to check on Noah. It had been years since I’d been this anxious, yet the old obsession felt horribly familiar. Oh, hello. So you’re back again, are you?

  Noah had been sound asleep each time.

  I crept back down the stairs, hoping that the silence in the darkened lounge meant Pet
e too was asleep. I should have known better.

  ‘He’s fine, Izzy. You don’t need to keep checking on him.’ The old words fell so easily from his lips. We were back there again, but this time it wasn’t just a new mum’s paranoia we were dealing with. This time there was a real and tangible threat to our family life.

  ‘What do you think we should tell him?’ I asked, curling up on the vacant settee and drawing the soft fleecy throw back over me.

  ‘Nothing.’ Pete’s voice was quick and decisive. ‘There’s no need for him to know anything about this. Not yet. It will only scare him.’

  I could hardly argue with that, because it was terrifying the life out of me, and Pete too, despite his best efforts to hide it from me. Had we been right in deciding not to tell Noah anything about our IVF journey until he was much older? He’d recently started to question the story about the stork, so how the hell were we now supposed to explain that the fabled bird had made a terrible mistake?

  Dawn was still several hours away when a question punctured the quiet darkness like a rocket, taking with it all possibility of sleep. ‘The embryo – the one they should have implanted in me, what happened to it?’ Pete’s breath caught in his throat as the nightmare took on a new and horrible twist. ‘If what they’re saying is right – if the embryos did somehow get muddled up – was ours mistakenly implanted into this other woman?’

  There was a rustle of a blanket and a soft sigh of settee springs as Pete got to his feet and crossed the room. He eased himself down beside me, his strong arms forming a protective circle that I willingly fell into. I buried my face into the warmth of his chest, as the fabric of his T-shirt absorbed a new batch of tears.

  ‘What happened to the baby we were meant to have?’

  10

  Beth

  I slept badly, tossing and turning for most of the night. At just before five I gave up all hope of sleep and got out of bed. I reached for my phone and composed a message to Natalie, which I sent quickly, not bothering to check it for typos, knowing that if I gave myself a chance to think, I might reconsider.