Lara was so tired. She’d kept the details to herself because she wanted a normal friendship, someone who didn’t know every little detail from her gynaecological past, someone who would see this pregnancy as something positive and possible: the way Lara wanted to see it. The way she wanted Matt to see it. But she hadn’t expected to get so close to Shelley. It was time to tell the truth. ‘When I told you about the miscarriages that time in the café, I didn’t exactly finish the story. There was something more I was holding back.’
‘Oh?’ Shelley sat up straight, expectant. Hopefully she wouldn’t be upset that Lara hadn’t been ready to tell her everything.
Lara picked up a cushion and laid it on her lap, stroking the soft fabric, staring at it to avoid looking directly at Shelley. ‘It was true that it took three miscarriages before anything was done. After the third one, the doctor referred me to a specialist unit for recurrent miscarriage. Matt and I both had blood tests for chromosomal abnormalities, and I had hormonal tests to check for polycystic ovaries. They checked my uterus shape, the strength of my cervix. Nothing explained why I couldn’t hold onto my babies.’
Lara felt her chin wobble. It didn’t matter how many times she talked about this; it did not get easier. Shelley reached out to her but Lara waved her away, put a hand to her mouth to steady her lips and then continued. ‘Matt kept saying he thought it was stress, and the doctors agreed it might be a factor. My job was pretty full on and – like I said – it was difficult to keep leaving work to go for the appointments at the clinic. So, I gave up my job.’
When she glanced up at Shelley, she saw her face had paled. But she nodded supportively. ‘I see.’
‘It made sense. I could get to all the appointments, and if we got pregnant again, I’d be able to rest.’ Lara wrapped her arms around herself. She felt cold. ‘But being at home on my own all day brought its own problems.’
Days and days at home where the clock seemed to go backwards. When the whole day was a trial to be got through, fighting her mind not to wander into painful territory.
‘Waiting for test results and appointments was excruciating. Almost physically painful at times. I know everyone says, “No news is good news,” but it doesn’t feel like that when you are waiting to know your fate. I’ve never been an anxious person. One of the reasons I was so good at my job was because I was able to be rational and dispassionate. But those few months, I couldn’t stop my mind from spiralling towards the worst possible scenario. We would never have a baby. I had some incurable disease. Matt was going to leave me. It just went on and on and on. Round and round my brain like a catastrophe carousel.’
She smiled weakly, and this time Shelley reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘Oh, Lara.’
Lara held up her other hand. ‘It gets worse. I had two more miscarriages. The last one was late. Really late. I was twenty-nine weeks pregnant. Twenty nine weeks and one day.’
27
Lara
Shelley’s hand covered her mouth; her eyes widened in shock. She didn’t speak.
It was easier for Lara to speak if she didn’t look at her. ‘I was out at the supermarket when the contractions started. Well, it was just a backache to begin with and a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I can’t really explain it, but I knew. I knew it was happening again.
‘I left the basket where it was and called a cab, then called Matt to tell him to meet me at the hospital. He stayed on the phone to me while he ran to the station for a train. “We’re twenty-nine weeks,” he kept saying. “We’re twenty-nine weeks. Babies survive at twenty-nine weeks.” He repeated it over and over, being positive. He tried so hard.’ Her voice cracked and she had to stop speaking.
Shelley held Lara’s hands, her own face streaked with tears. ‘Oh, Lara. I am so sorry. So, so sorry.’
Lara regained control of her voice. She needed to get this all out. To tell it all. No more secrets. ‘By the time I got to the hospital, I was having contractions. They came on suddenly, sharply. Somewhere between the cab and the entrance to A&E, my waters broke.’
Her memory of those minutes was hazy. People came from everywhere, she was sitting in a wheelchair, she was on a bed with her feet in stirrups, there were people, strange people, talking to her about trying to slow things down or stop things? She really couldn’t remember. She just remembered being in a sea of people and yet being so terribly, terribly alone. ‘Matt got to the hospital as quickly as he possibly could but he couldn’t get there in time. He didn’t see our son born.’
Their son. A boy. ‘He was so tiny, Shelley. So tiny and yet so perfect. They wrapped him up and I held him. Just me and him. A mother and her son. I wanted him so much. I don’t even know how long it was until Matt got there. He came in and put his arms around us both. And we cried. Because he was gone already.’
It may as well have been yesterday; the pain was still so raw. Lara’s shoulders jumped as the sobs wracked her body. She had tried so hard to be strong, to be positive, to stop thinking about the past and focus on the future. But she was tired, so tired. And scared. No, terrified. Absolutely terrified that it might happen again.
Shelley didn’t speak, just waited for Lara to be ready to talk again. ‘After we buried Aaron, our little boy, everything got so dark and I couldn’t see my way out. I’d wanted a baby from the beginning, but it became almost an obsession to get pregnant. At the same time, I was terrified of getting pregnant because I couldn’t see myself surviving another miscarriage. I actually felt like my heart was breaking.’ One tear ran down Lara’s cheek and dripped onto her stomach before she could catch it with her palm.
Shelley was crying openly too. Lara took a very deep breath and stared at the wall over Shelley’s shoulder; maintaining eye contact was too hard. ‘There was one particular afternoon. It was all too much. I was sore from an exploratory investigation, I was tired from being up in the night. I’d turned on the TV to drown out the mess that was in my head and there was that show One Born Every Minute on the TV. A teenager giving birth. She was seventeen. She hadn’t even wanted to get pregnant. It had been an accident. An accident! And there I was… there I was…’
A sob from Lara’s chest sounded loud in that small room. Shelley got up on her knees and put her arms around her new friend, held her close as they both cried. Lara’s stomach between them the only difference.
Lara sniffed when they parted. ‘Well, I flipped out. Smashed up the TV. Threw stuff around the living room. Then just sat in the middle of the mess and howled. When Matt got home, he was beside himself. He didn’t know what to do.’
‘He must have been so scared for you.’
‘He was.’ Lara nodded. ‘I was so angry and I couldn’t stay home and just wait to find out what was going on. It was killing me. Everything took so long. We talked about it that night. Matt wanted to stop trying for a baby, wanted to stop putting ourselves through it all. But I couldn’t even think about giving up. I had this huge hole in my life, and if I couldn’t fill it, it was going to swallow me whole. I wanted to pay privately to speed things up, and Matt said he’d do anything that would make me happy. That’s the other reason we had to sell our house and downsize – we used every penny of our savings, plus a loan, to pay the medical bills.’
Shelley spoke quietly and gently. ‘And you found out what was causing the miscarriages?’
Lara nodded. ‘I have something called antiphospholipid syndrome – or, in layman’s terms, sticky blood syndrome. Basically, my blood makes clots which prevent the placenta from working properly. I have to take blood thinners to prevent the clots, which would deprive the baby of oxygen and nutrients. Plus a load of other medication.’
Shelley nodded slowly as if trying to get her head around the information she was being given. She pressed her right palm to her heart as she continued to hold onto Lara’s hand with her left. ‘I can’t even begin to understand how hard this has been for you. Every day must be so frightening, living on hope that these blood thinners are
doing their job. You are so brave.’
Lara looked down at her stomach and paused for a while, ran her free hand slowly across her bump. When she looked up, there were fresh tears in her eyes and her voice was thin. ‘I’m not brave, Shelley. I’m terrified. I am twenty-nine weeks plus one day pregnant today. The exact same stage I was at when I lost Aaron. I know that Matt wants me to take it easy, but sitting next door on my own, staring at those walls. I just can’t do it. It’s driving me crazy. I need to stay busy.’
‘I wish you’d told me. I would have supported you more. Looked after you.’
‘You’ve helped me more than you can ever know. Sorting out this room with you, tidying, organising, talking through your memories, it’s all given me something to focus on that’s outside of me. Helping you has saved me.’ Until she spoke those words, even Lara hadn’t realised how true this was. It was amazing how close the two of them had got in this short space of time. She’d distanced herself from the friends she’d known longest and yet here was this woman next door who she barely knew and who had somehow – unknowingly – kept her afloat.
She wasn’t prepared for Shelley’s reaction though. Shelley put both hands to her face and breathed in deeply a few times. Then a sob escaped from between her fingers.
Lara reached out for her wrist. ‘Shelley? What is it? What did I say wrong?’
Without answering, Shelley took her hands away from her face. She took another deep breath and reached under the bed, feeling around for a few moments and then pulling out the object that she had been so intent on hiding from Lara.
It was a wooden box, white with yellow and green flowers. Shelley ran a finger over the embossed lettering – Memories – pressed her lips tightly together and opened it.
There wasn’t a great deal inside. A pregnancy test. A photograph of a smiling Shelley. And a tiny delicate baby blanket. Shelley pulled it out of the box and held it up to Lara. ‘I wasn’t honest with you either.’
28
Shelley
Before
Shelley had taken the pregnancy test with Dee. Mainly because she really didn’t think she was pregnant but also because – if she was – she would need time to plan how to break it to Greg. When they had first decided to get married, he had told her that he didn’t want kids. At the time, she hadn’t really been too troubled about it, not even knowing if she would ever want children anyway.
When had it started? This gradual need that had built in her to have a child of her own? Maybe it was when Greg’s friends had asked him to be a godfather to their son. Baby Seb was a tiny, screwed-up creature who had held a tiny fist around Shelley’s finger and made tears leak from her eyes. Watching Greg hold him and smile down at him had shifted something deep within. She wanted a child.
Then Dee had got pregnant and the desire had turned up a notch. She’d tried a few times to broach the subject with Greg but it always got changed somehow. He’d make jokes about the people they knew who had children. How they were all skint and tired and never had time to themselves. How could she complain when he had always said that he didn’t want to have children? He hadn’t changed; she had.
They were at an age when all their friends seemed to be having children, and the desire had grown as she watched them with their babies and toddlers until it became a deep need within her. A physical need. It became difficult to see Dee and her husband getting excited about becoming parents without experiencing a tearing desire for her own child.
But she’d had to accept that Greg had not changed his mind. He did not want a child of his own. He did not want her child. They would never have a baby.
And then she had missed a period.
* * *
Her biggest fear when she had told him about the pregnancy was that he would suggest they didn’t go through with it. But she needn’t have worried. He had been shocked, of course, but his first question had been to ask her how she felt about it. When she had admitted – albeit tentatively – that she was happy, he had hugged her. ‘Okay, then,’ he’d said. ‘Let’s do this.’
Today was their twelve-week scan. Maybe Greg would be more enthusiastic once he saw the baby on the monitor? Her stomach flip-flopped at the thought of it. With no change to her stomach shape and a complete lack of morning sickness, she sometimes felt like she had made the pregnancy up. Seeing a baby on the screen was going to be surreal.
They’d got to the appointment really early and had sat in the waiting room with several other women. Some looked like Shelley – you’d barely know they were pregnant; others were much further along and were leaning back in the waiting-room chairs under the weight of their huge stomachs. Shelley couldn’t wait to look like that. She had already stuck a pillow up her top several times to see what she might look like by month six or seven. It was silly, she knew.
She squeezed Greg’s hand; he hated hospitals and had looked white all day. ‘Okay?’
He smiled at her, lifted his arm and laid it across the back of her shoulders. ‘Yes, fine. You?’
She couldn’t hold back the smile that spread across her face. ‘Yeah, all good.’
It would have been better if Greg wanted this child as much as she did, of course it would. But she’d been on lots of parenting forums online, and many of the women had said that their partners hadn’t seemed enthusiastic until the baby arrived. It was different for men, she supposed. The baby wasn’t a part of their body. When he or she arrived and there was a tiny little baby who looked just like Greg, how would he be able to stop himself from loving it? Her stomach fluttered at the thought of him holding their baby. Dee had reassured her several times – amidst squeals of excitement about them being new mums together – that it was all going to work out fine.
The gel they spread on her stomach was really cold. Lying on the bed with her trousers open and a blue paper towel tucked into the top of her knickers, she felt exposed and vulnerable. For the first time, she felt nervous. Would everything be okay with the baby? She reached for Greg’s hand and squeezed it again. He was watching the sonographer.
‘Okay then, let’s have a look.’ The sonographer turned the screen away from them and placed the scanner onto Shelley’s stomach. ‘Is this your first pregnancy?’
‘Yes. First one.’ From the look on Greg’s face, it might be the only one. An observer would think she was being scanned for something horrible, not a new life.
‘Okay. I’m just going to check over the baby and take some measurements. Bear with me for a few minutes.’
While the sonographer worked, the only noise was the click of her mouse. It was so quiet that Shelley could almost hear the pounding of her heart. What if there was no baby? She’d taken four pregnancy tests at home and they’d all been positive, but this was the moment she would get confirmation. The silence became unbearable. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘I just want to ask someone else to come in for a moment. Bear with me.’ The sonographer flashed a brief smile and left.
Now Shelley’s heart was in her ears. What was going on? She looked at Greg. If possible, he was even whiter than he’d been in the waiting room. ‘Do you think this is normal?’
He put his other hand over the one he was holding and stroked it. ‘It might just be a problem with the machine. Or maybe she’s training, or—’
He was interrupted by the door opening. The original sonographer was accompanied by a younger woman in a different uniform. Was she a doctor?
‘Good morning, Mrs Thomas. I’m Dr Lane. I just want to have a look at your scan if that’s okay?’
Shelley nodded dumbly. Her mouth wouldn’t open. Why was there a doctor here?
Dr Lane sat down on the stool beside her bed and squeezed more of the gel onto her stomach – Sorry, this might be cold – then stared intently at the screen, which was still turned away from Shelley’s view. The sonographer stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. The scanner was pressed firmly onto her stomach and moved across. The doctor clicked off the monitor and tu
rned to face her. ‘I’m very sorry but I have some bad news. Would you like to sit up?’
The rest of what she said was a blur. No growth… About ten weeks… Will need to perform a procedure… Wind rushed in Shelley’s ears and she grew hotter and hotter. The baby was dead. Very common in the first trimester… doesn’t indicate that you won’t have other successful pregnancies… Take your time… How had this happened? What had she done? Just one of those things… It really is very common… She felt sick. Was there a bowl? I need to go now, but please take your time…
The doctor left and the sonographer followed. ‘I’ll give you a few minutes alone.’
Greg slid his arms around her and held her tight. ‘I’m sorry, love. I’m so sorry.’
He rubbed her back and kissed the top of her head, but she didn’t move. He was probably expecting her to cry but nothing came. Her heart felt as if it was freezing, calcifying within her. She wanted to close her eyes and not wake up.
How could everything have changed so quickly? She pulled herself away from Greg’s chest and looked at him. For a fleeting second, before he arranged his face into sympathy, he looked completely relieved.
Numb, she picked up her coat from the chair and followed him back to reception, where they made an appointment for her to come back the next day. A procedure that would clear away any trace that she had ever been pregnant. Wiping it away as if it had never existed.
It was 3 a.m. when she finally cried. Curled up in a ball on the bed in the spare room. Deep, thundering sobs that overtook her body.
* * *
Two weeks later, Greg told her he had booked himself in for a vasectomy. There would be no second baby.
The Forgotten Wife Page 15