by Karen Cole
Dr Georgiou nods and smiles. Her eyes are distant and there’s something detached about her that Abby is grateful for.
‘And has your doctor explained what surgical abortion involves?’
‘Yes,’ she lies. In fact, she hasn’t mentioned this to Dr Rowe. There’s doctor–patient confidentiality of course, but she knows that it sometimes gets broken, and there is no way she can let this get back to Ellie. Just the thought of what Ellie’s reaction would be if she found out makes Abby’s headache worse. She just wants to get it over with.
Dr Georgiou goes on to talk about the process. Abby tries to focus but her head is starting to throb, and something’s clawing at her stomach.
‘The whole procedure takes between ten to fifteen minutes. There may be some pain afterwards . . .’
‘Excuse me,’ Abby blurts. She rushes to the toilet and gets there just in time, as she coughs up a yellowish bile.
‘Sorry about that,’ she says when she returns.
Dr Georgiou flicks her hand dismissively. ‘No need to apologize. These things happen. Are you okay?’
Abby nods.
‘So, do you have any questions?’
Abby shakes her head.
‘And you want to go ahead with the termination?’
‘Yes.’
‘I can book you in for about an hour’s time.’
‘Great.’
Outside in the waiting room, Abby’s headache gets worse. It feels like a hammer is pounding inside her skull, about to crack it open. She pours herself a drink from the water cooler and swallows a couple of painkillers from her bag. The mother of the young girl gives her a sympathetic smile and she smiles back. But the headache just seems to get worse. The lights in the waiting room are too bright. It’s stifling. Abby feels an overwhelming urge to be outside in the fresh air, so she heads out through the sliding doors. She’ll just be a few minutes.
It’s recently been raining, and she gulps in the still damp air, trying to remember the breathing exercises Ellie taught her when she started having panic attacks after Mum’s death.
A few minutes. Some manageable pain and it will all be over. So why can’t she bring herself to go back? Instead, Abby finds herself walking, her feet carrying her away from the clinic up over the bridge, until she reaches the old Roman amphitheatre. It was originally made of wood and so there’s nothing left of it now, just a grass-covered hollow. Kids sledge down it in winter and people walk here in summer. She sits on the edge of the green bowl, moisture from the damp grass seeping into her dress. Maybe it’s the painkillers finally kicking in, but her headache is beginning to subside.
She looks at her phone. Forty minutes left. She watches a man as he walks his chocolate Labrador on the far side of the amphitheatre. Hector would like it here, she thinks. Why does she never bring him here? She feels strangely detached.
Twenty minutes left. Plenty of time to get back. She’ll just wait a few more minutes . . . It’s so peaceful.
Ten minutes left. There’s still time to get back to the clinic if she walks fast. But somehow, she doesn’t move.
About half an hour later, she stands up, stretches, and walks slowly towards home.
‘You win,’ she whispers to the thing inside her. And maybe it’s her imagination, but she feels an answering flutter, like there’s a trapped bird inside of her.
*
At home, Abby runs upstairs, shuts herself in her room and flings herself on the bed. She lies there trying to get her head around what has just happened. What has she done? She’s an idiot. There was a way out of this. Simple. Clean. Final. Of course, she could always make another appointment for tomorrow, but somehow, she knows she won’t. For better or worse, she’s allowing this thing inside her to live.
Abby pictures it stretching like a maggot inside her, and she remembers a documentary she saw recently about the jewel wasp – a deadly but beautiful creature. She thinks about the way it injects a cockroach with venom, not enough to kill, but enough to immobilize. Then it drags the paralysed cockroach to its burrow and lays its egg inside its body. The larva hatches and feeds on the internal organs, while the roach is still alive. Abby shudders, and rolls over, clutching her pillow. The parallel is inescapable. She’s the cockroach in this scenario. She’s been immobilized, and now this thing is taking over her life.
She must have dropped off to sleep because the next thing she knows, she can hear loud laughter from downstairs – it’s the distinctive sound of Carla’s braying laugh.
They’re in the living room. Rob, Ellie and Carla. Carla is sitting on the sofa, her long legs coiled gracefully under her, while her twin toddlers charge around the room causing havoc and her baby sleeps in its car seat in the corner. Rob and Carla are laughing raucously at some joke Rob has made, and Ellie is drinking steadily from a glass of wine.
‘Hi, Carla,’ Abby says. ‘I didn’t know you were here.’ She doesn’t particularly like Carla. She flirts too much with Rob, and Abby knows that seeing Carla with all her kids makes Ellie feel worse about her own childless state, but for once Abby is glad of the distraction.
Carla flaps an elegant hand at Abby. ‘Hi,’ she says. ‘Yes, well I just dropped by. I thought I’d find out what was going on with you all and what’s happening in the world of work. I really miss the surgery. We used to have a laugh, didn’t we?’ she says to Ellie. ‘I feel so out of it now I’m stuck at home all the time with . . . this pair.’ She gestures to the twins, who are systematically taking books off the bookshelf and flinging them on to the floor.
‘I don’t know – they look like a nice pair to me,’ says Rob, looking pointedly at Carla’s low-cut top. ‘Oh, you mean the twins!’ He laughs loudly at his own joke and sits back, clutching his chubby stomach. Carla laughs too, and flicks her long, blonde hair.
Abby winces. Rob is an insensitive twat at times. Why does he feel the need to flirt with every female he meets? She glances anxiously at Ellie, who, poker-faced, is pouring herself another glass of wine. She pours a glass for Abby, too, and hands it to her. ‘You’re not missing much,’ she says evenly to Carla. ‘I’ve had a really shitty week.’
‘How come?’ asks Abby, taking a sip of wine. She really could use a drink. She guesses she’s not meant to be drinking anymore, but surely one glass of wine won’t do any harm.
‘Where do I start?’ asks Ellie. ‘We’ve had to fire Helen, for a start.’
‘Who?’ asks Abby.
‘You know. Helen Harris, the nurse I told you about.’
Abby nods. She remembers Helen; a thin, bird-like woman who did a pap test on her last year. She took over as the main practice nurse when Carla left to churn out a seemingly endless series of babies.
‘She didn’t take it well. Said she knew things that could bring the whole practice down. Get us all fired if she wanted.’
‘She should have been fired a long time ago,’ says Carla. ‘She was always incompetent and unreliable. The number of times I covered for her, or Simon covered for her. You’re well shot of her.’
Ellie tucks a stray hair behind her ear and frowns. ‘I know, but I still feel bad. I mean, she’s a friend, kind of, and she’s got those two kids. I don’t think her ex pays any maintenance.’
‘What she really needs is help. You’re doing her a favour. Now she can get the help she needs.’
‘I’m not sure she sees it that way.’ Ellie takes a deep breath. ‘On top of that, I found out this morning that Mary died last night.’
Mary was one of Ellie’s favourite patients. She came to her in the advanced stages of breast cancer and Ellie has made it her mission to try to get her the best treatment available. Abby knows Mary wasn’t just another patient to Ellie, but a personal crusade.
‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ says Carla. ‘She was such a lovely woman, too. Why is it always the nicest people?’
Th
ere’s a long silence. Abby is thinking about their mother. She knows Ellie is, too. The silence is broken when one of the twins picks up Ellie’s wine glass from the coffee table and flings it across the room. It shatters into tiny pieces and red wine soaks into the carpet. Abby holds her breath, gripped again by the sudden memory of shattering glass.
‘Oh goodness, I’m so sorry!’ says Carla, not sounding very sorry as Ellie picks up the pieces. ‘Well,’ she laughs, ‘I’d better get going before they destroy your house.’
‘What happened to you, Abby?’ asks Rob when Carla has gone. ‘Jenny said you’d left early, a doctor’s appointment or something?’
Abby flushes slightly. ‘Oh, I had a headache, that’s all . . . I’m fine now. I just needed a sleep.’
‘There’s some macaroni on the hob if you want some,’ says Ellie. ‘It might be a bit cold, though.’
Abby dishes herself some pasta, sits down at the kitchen table and picks half-heartedly at her food. Ellie follows her in.
‘Why do you put up with Rob and Carla flirting like that?’ Abby asks.
Ellie shrugs. ‘Oh, you know Rob, he flirts with everyone. And anyway, I feel a bit sorry for Carla. It’s been tough for her since the divorce. But forget them, are you alright? You’re not eating your food.’
‘I’m fine, just not that hungry.’
Hector pads into the kitchen and sits down next to Ellie, eyeing Abby’s plate hopefully.
‘That’s not for you, boy. It’s for Abby,’ says Ellie, scratching him behind the ears and kissing the top of his head. Abby looks at them both and thinks, not for the first time, how much Ellie loves Hector. When Rob first brought Hector home from the rescue centre, Abby thought he was an idiot. It was just a few weeks after Ellie lost the baby, and Ellie was refusing to get out of bed. The last thing she needed was a puppy, Abby thought – as if a puppy could possibly make up for all she’d lost.
‘Take it away,’ Ellie had muttered when Rob dumped the whimpering, wriggling creature at the end of her bed. ‘I don’t want it.’
But Rob, to give him his due, hadn’t backed down, and somehow, slowly but surely, Hector had wormed his way into Ellie’s affections. It had turned out that it was exactly what she needed – something to care for and love. And gradually the old Ellie had come back. She wasn’t exactly the same, of course – something was still gone, some inner spark had disappeared, maybe forever – but on the surface, everything went back to normal.
‘He can have it if he wants,’ says Abby, and she stands up and scrapes her dinner into Hector’s bowl.
‘You’ve seemed a bit down lately. Are you sure you’re okay?’ Ellie watches her anxiously. ‘You know I’m always here for you if you need me, don’t you?’
Abby nods and tries to smile. ‘I know, thank you.’
It’s true. Ellie has always been there for her. When they were kids, and Abby was being picked on at school, Ellie was the one who marched into her school and demanded to see the head. When Mum died, she was the one who kept Abby on the straight and narrow. And when Ben dumped her, even though it was only a year and a half after she’d lost her baby, Ellie had been there with tissues, wine and funny stories. Abby toys with the idea of telling Ellie everything. She’s going to guess sooner or later anyway. It’ll be obvious once she starts to show. She opens her mouth.
‘Ellie . . .’ she starts.
‘Yes?’
But at that moment Rob comes in and begins to stack the dishwasher.
‘You got some post, Abigail,’ he says. ‘It’s on the sideboard in the hall.’
*
Next to the pot where they keep keys and other random paraphernalia, there’s a large brown envelope with a typed label. Abby’s skin prickles as she reads her name. No address. Hand-delivered.
Again. Is it from the person who sent the babygrow?
She rips it open. A piece of paper falls out and flutters to the floor. Abby picks it up and sucks in her breath sharply. It takes her a moment to make sense of what she’s looking at. When she does, she retches in disgust. It’s a collage of pictures glued onto the page at strange jarring angles. There’s a picture of a twenty-week-old aborted foetus. Next to it a black bin liner full of aborted foetuses that look like broken dolls. One of the foetuses looks like it’s been covered in tar. ‘Burned by saline abortion,’ reads the caption.
‘What’ve you got there?’
Rob looks over Abby’s shoulder.
‘Nothing,’ she says, and she shoves the page hastily back into the envelope.
Six
‘I don’t understand it. He’s always here on a Saturday night,’ Danny says, bringing their drinks. A pint of lager for him and a Diet Coke for Abby. He plonks them down on the table and pulls up a wooden stool, sipping the froth from the top of his beer.
They’re in the Three Compasses, sitting by the large open fireplace. Danny has brought her here to meet Alex Taylor. But so far, there’s no sign of him. Behind the bar a young blonde woman is serving drinks, and a middle-aged, bald man is polishing glasses, but there’s no Alex, and Abby’s beginning to wonder if they’re wasting their time. She’s still angry with Danny about the other day. They’ve barely exchanged a word all week and she doesn’t want to sit and talk to him if she doesn’t have to.
‘I guess he’s not working tonight. We might as well go home,’ she says coldly.
‘He’ll be here. Let’s wait a bit,’ Danny answers. And maybe he has heard and understood the tone of her voice because he leans forwards and says, ‘Listen, I’m really sorry about the other day. I had no business . . . If it’s any excuse, I was extremely tired and hungover. Can you forgive me?’ He smiles his most disarming smile, and Abby thaws slightly. It’s always difficult to stay angry with Danny for long.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she says, her lips twitching into a smile.
‘How did it go, anyway? Are you feeling okay? Was it awful?’
Abby sips her Coke. She’s nearly finished it already. She looks longingly at Danny’s beer. She would give anything for a drink right now, but she’s determined to be responsible. She may feel ambivalent, at best, about this creature inside her, but she doesn’t want to harm it.
‘Actually, I decided not to go through with it.’
‘Really? Why not?’ Danny asks carefully. Abby guesses he’s trying not to put his foot in it again.
She thinks about the feeling she had in the waiting room and the way she walked to the amphitheatre in the rain. The strange reluctance she felt about returning to the clinic. She isn’t sure she can explain. She isn’t sure she understands it herself.
‘I don’t know.’ She chews the edge of her thumbnail. ‘Pretty stupid, right? Now I’m going to have a baby. I’ve got no money, no support, and no idea who the father is.’
‘No – not stupid, not stupid at all.’ He reaches out and pats her arm. ‘I know this must be scary for you Abby, but you’re not on your own, you know. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.’
‘Right, so if I phone you up at two o’clock in the morning and ask you to come and feed and change the baby, you’ll be right over, I suppose?’
He grins. ‘Well, maybe not. I was thinking of supporting you more in the moral sense, not in any practical or useful way.’
Abby laughs. It’s good to be back on good terms with Danny. He can always make her smile, and she badly needs someone to talk to right now. She remembers the collage of photos in her handbag. She put it in there as she was going out. She’s been itching to show him since she got it, but they haven’t been speaking.
‘Someone sent me this a couple of days ago.’ She fishes in her bag, brings out the envelope, and hands it across the table to him.
Danny looks at the pictures and flinches in disgust. Then he slots the collage back in the envelope. ‘God, they’re horrible, Abby, how distressing for you.’
>
‘It’s disturbing, don’t you think?’ says Abby. ‘First the babygrow, now this?’
‘You think there’s a connection?’
‘Don’t you?’
He looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes his head. ‘No . . . Doesn’t it seem more likely these pictures were sent by an anti-abortion group? And I still think the babygrow must have been sent by the kids at school having a laugh.’
‘But how would they even know? No one knows I was considering an abortion.’
Except you. Abby doesn’t say it, but the accusation hangs in the air. But she doesn’t seriously believe Danny could have sent those pictures. Whatever his views on abortion, Danny would never do something like this. He’s her friend. She has to believe that.
‘Don’t look now, but that’s him.’ Danny suddenly nudges her and nods towards the bar to where a good-looking, dark-haired man has appeared, pouring drinks and chatting to an old bloke sitting on a bar stool.
Abby doesn’t recognize him at all. How can she have forgotten him so completely? She scrutinizes his face, searching for something about him – anything – that seems familiar. He’s good-looking in a disreputable kind of way with a narrow face, dark eyes, and tattoos on both forearms, but she could swear she’s never seen him before in her life.
‘That’s him? Are you sure?’
‘Positive. I’ve known him since I was eleven.’ Danny drains his beer. ‘You should go and buy us another round . . . see if he remembers you.’
‘What am I supposed to say?’ Abby asks, feeling suddenly nervous. ‘“ Hello, sorry to bother you but I think we might have had sex and now I’m carrying your child”?’
Danny chuckles. ‘Of course not. Just order some drinks and strike up a conversation.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t know. Use your imagination.’
As it turns out, Abby doesn’t have to think of anything to say because Alex recognizes her immediately.