Sing me to Sleep

by Helen Moorhouse

  His parents’ wealth helped Guillaume immeasurably of course. Regular payments into his account kept him in the lap of luxury at their house in South Kensington while they travelled for nine months of the year. And the fact that his mum had been a model had meant he’d inherited very, very fortunate genes indeed.

  Guillaume smiled coyly at a curvy blonde girl that he passed on the way to the gents’, standing to one side to allow her to pass between two tables. The air virtually sizzled between them as she slid by in the tiny space and Guillaume was only too aware that she was holding her breath as she blushed yet maintained eye contact with him as she passed. He allowed himself a little satisfied chuckle as he continued on his way to the toilet. He could have her back at his place in five if he really tried – but that was too easy.

  Three hours and four pints later, however, Guillaume found himself thinking that it would have been a much easier and more pleasurable way to spend an evening, as he found himself trying to count out change to pay a cab driver who had brought them to some mystery street somewhere in Fulham. That done, he turned and squinted down the lamp-lit street in search of Ed, who had wandered off.

  Finally locating him, Guillaume hit the cab roof with the palm of his hand, indicating that the driver could go, and charged off toward where Ed stood. Once beside him, he steadied himself with a hand on Ed’s shoulder before looking up to mirror what his friend was doing and stare intently at the house outside which they stood.

  “There it is, Gui,” slurred Ed, pointing at the house. “17 Pilton Gardens.” The gesture, and Guillaume’s added weight on his shoulder, unbalanced Ed and he staggered slightly to right himself. “That’s our home!” he finished triumphantly. “Ed ‘n’ Jen’s!”

  Guillaume simply raised an eyebrow, as if to say: ‘Is that it?’

  The house looked like any other Victorian terraced house in the area to him – in the whole of London, in fact. Red brick, front door painted a chipped green, paint peeling from around the bay window of the living room, all of which looked onto an overgrown front garden with a rusted front gate.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” slurred Ed with pride as he stared up at it.

  Guillaume cast him a sideways glance and sighed.

  Ed turned to face his friend and staggered again. Guillaume had been right. They should have come out here after that third pint, but what the hell. It still felt amazing to be here, showing the house off to his best mate. Ed breathed in deeply. The smell of a city evening was intense, he realised. He could hear distant sounds of traffic and the low hum of music coming from someone’s garden nearby. A warmth flooded through him. This was going to be his home. His future, he acknowledged. For himself and his beautiful, talented wife.

  Ed was high on triumph. He had never felt more of a provider, more of a man than he did at that precise moment, buoyed by the brotherhood he felt for his best friend at his side, and the copious amounts of lager that he had consumed. So buoyed that he glanced at his watch, which was a bit of a blur quite frankly, wondering if his solicitor might still be open so that he could get down there right now and sign the final papers.

  “Isn’t it a bit small, mate?” offered Guillaume.

  Behind them, a curtain twitched in a house across the road at the odd sight of a tall and skinny white man and his very tall and well-built black friend peering up at No 17, hands on hips, and swaying on their feet.

  Ed crunched his face to indicate that no, it wasn’t small at all. “Totally deceptive,” he managed. “Massive potential – we’re going to do the garden, build an extension, attic conversion – the bloody works, man, The. Bloody. Works! Small on the outside maybe but, you know . . .”

  “So, like a TARDIS,” responded Guillaume.

  “Exactly!” Ed snapped his fingers as though Guillaume had solved a particularly difficult puzzle. “Like a TARDIS, man. Small on the outside maybe but bloody massive on the inside when we’re finished with it. Innit great?”

  They stood in silence for a moment.

  “Whatcha think, Gui?” asked Ed, looking up into his friend’s face as Guillaume surveyed all before him.

  “You know what I think, man!” replied Guillaume, shaking his head and slinging his arm around his friend, almost knocking him over. “You know what I think. Ditch the chick, mate. Come with me to the other side of the world and have an adventure. Learn new things – learn about computers and do some crazy shit and live a little. But you won’t listen – you never have. Getting married, mate – that was a nuts thing to do. But if it’s what you want, then Uncle Guillaume can’t stop you!” He looked down on Ed in a fatherly way. “Do it, mate. Buy the damn thing if you want but don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

  Guillaume suddenly gripped Ed’s head roughly into the crook of his arm and playfully rubbed his crown with his knuckles. Then, as suddenly as he had grabbed him, he released him, shaking him off. It was time to move on to the next thing.

  “Right,” he said, clapping his hands together, the noise echoing down the leafy cul de sac. “Now, if you’re gonna live here, we’d better do us some research.” He looked right and left intently.

  “What you got in mind, mate?” said Ed, taking a last look at the house he would buy, wondering silently how soon it would be before he’d actually have the keys, and setting off down toward the junction with the main road, which Guillaume had already reached with massive strides.

  “The boozer, man,” said Guillaume. “The local. And some chips. I’m bloody starving, mate.”

  “Good thinking,” replied Ed and fell into step beside his friend.

  “And some ladies. If I have to come and visit you here I’ll need to check out the local talent. Life’s too short not to have the lovely company of girls, Ed. A lesson you’d have done well to learn before you went and got tied down.”

  Ed grinned. “Only one girl for me, Gui, but I’ll come with you for a look, eh? Make sure you don’t get into any trouble.”

  Guillaume grabbed him in another headlock as they strode together down the road, all the while scanning the area around him, like an animal on the prowl. “Ed, mate,” he said, “if I don’t get myself into trouble tonight then this has all been a complete waste of my valuable time!” And with that he released Ed and pushed him playfully out onto the road, bellowing with laughter and striding into the night, hunting, as always, for adventure.

  Chapter 10

  February 1995

  Jenny

  The steps of the Mayberry Maternity Clinic were icy first thing in the morning. Jenny knew this because she had slipped and almost fallen on her first visit there and it was at that precise moment that she realised how desperately she wanted her baby.

  She and Ed hadn’t been trying to get pregnant. They’d just stopped trying not to and she hadn’t thought for one second that no sooner had the ink dried on the deeds to the house, that she’d be feeling queasy all day long and that her body would ache in places where she didn’t know she’d had places.

  She’d found out for sure early on a Saturday morning when she’d finally given in and taken the test out of her handbag. Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, watching the line turn blue, was the most surreal moment of her existence.

  “Ed!” she’d shouted suddenly.

  She hadn’t planned for this. In a split second she regretted calling him – didn’t other people do this in a more romantic way? Didn’t they present their partner with a pair of bootees or something? Bootees? Were they actually a thing? For a brief moment, Jenny panicked. What the fuck have I done, she thought to herself. And now what am I supposed to do? She called Ed again, the unmistakable feeling of panic clearly audible in her voice. His sudden footsteps on the stairs were heavy and rushed.

  “Jenny! What’s the matter? Let me in!” The door to the bathroom jiggled as Ed tried the handle. “Are you hurt? What’s wrong? Jen! Jen!” His voice was filled with panic at the lack of response. After a moment, he heard the toilet flush, followed by the rattle of
the bolt as she slid it back. Her skin was grey as she peered out at him silently. Slowly, Ed’s eyes lowered to the plastic stick in her hand.

  Later, as she sat on the couch in the bare-floored living room while he made her tea, she stared at her own wedding picture. At the slim, carefree laughing girl in it, taken the year before last – was it that long already? And that short? Had they only had a year of marriage together before this? For a moment, Jenny didn’t recognise herself. A strange feeling crossed her mind that she was an utterly different person from the girl in the cream dress carrying the lilies. I want to be her again, she thought for a second. I want to be her, not me. Not this person. I don’t want this to happen.

  At once she felt guilty. She didn’t, of course, want anything to go wrong – and she had no one to blame but herself. But she just didn’t feel ready. At all. Would that change over time, she wondered. Would she actually grow to be happy about this?

  “Are you okay?” asked Ed awkwardly as he handed her a steaming cup.

  Jenny peered up him and nodded. No point in letting Ed know how she felt, she decided. It would pass. She was sure of it.

  “Wow, Jen,” he said, sinking down on the couch beside her. “I didn’t think it would happen so fast.” She said nothing, just sipped the tea silently. The two of them sat side by side, staring straight ahead.

  “Nor me,” she said quietly. Stay normal, she thought to herself. Don’t let him know you’re having second thoughts.

  “Jesus!” he said again, breathlessly. “There’s going to be a baby, Jen. A baby.”

  Jenny felt helpless tears well up behind her eyes. Stop, Ed, she urged him silently. Did he think she didn’t know that? Suddenly, she felt completely overwhelmed. By the situation – by Ed. She just wanted to be left alone, to forget about all this for now. To just turn on the TV and somehow block reality out. And yet she couldn’t. It was really happening. Right now, in her body. Another person being made. A tiny, tiny person. Her person. For whom she would be always responsible. She felt ill. Christ, she thought. I’m barely out of college – I can’t even get a decent job – how am I going to look after a baby? Jenny clenched her eyes shut as her head started to spin.

  “A bloody baby,” whispered Ed softly, in a daze of his own, strolling out of the living room and up the stairs.

  It wasn’t that they weren’t pleased – after all, they’d made the decision for Jenny to stop taking the pill – but in retrospect she’d been totally unrealistic. Carried away by owning their own house, by being married. “Playing grown-ups” she knew Eileen called it, behind her back. It galled Jenny to think that somehow she was right.

  And because she felt like this – the doubt, the terror – Jenny didn’t expect to feel the sense of complete and total panic that hit when she noticed that she was bleeding when she went to the loo in work, three weeks after taking the positive test.

  In the back seat of the black cab, Jenny shivered – partly involuntarily and partly because she was absolutely freezing. She noticed suddenly – as if waking from a daze – that she’d forgotten to put on her coat, such was her rush to get to the hospital.

  Luckily she’d remembered to bring her handbag, and she thrust some money at the driver outside the Mayberry. It took an age for him to give back her change. Come on, she urged, her stomach throbbing, occasional dull, stabbing pains assailing her. I could be losing my baby, she admitted to herself suddenly. She was at once flooded with panic. I know I’m losing my baby.

  Jenny fidgeted and was about to give up and simply disembark without her change, when the taxi driver turned slowly, leaned through the hatch to the back seat and slowly counted out her change into the palm that she extended toward him.

  “Five, fifty, seventy and five!” he beamed at her, filled with the joys of a sunny morning and the promise of spring despite the cold. “Mayberry Maternity Clinic,” he announced, looking out the window at the destination while Jenny scrabbled frantically for her belongings. “Best of luck, love – have a great day!”

  Fuck you, Jenny wanted to say. Do you think that every time you drop someone off here it’s all storks and bouquets? My baby could be dead for all I know.

  Distracted by her venomous thoughts toward the cabby, she skidded as she stepped down from the taxi step onto the kerb. With a gasp she righted herself, paused for a second and then began to walk.

  Without looking left or right she scurried across the pavement toward the façade of the cream-coloured, modern building that stood in its own piazza, surrounded by fountains. “We pay for the best,” Ed had said. “We have the money, so we pay for the bloody best and make sure this goes right.”

  Well, it isn’t going right, thought Jenny, crunching through a leftover patch of snow from the previous week’s heavy fall, again distracted by rage.

  It was then that she fell. So preoccupied with feeling angry was she that she failed to notice the ice across the shaded steps of the building. Before she was able to stop herself, she went down, her feet flailing underneath her and her hand grabbing frantically at the handrail but to no avail. Jenny fell square on her bottom, hitting the ground with a thump and jarring her coccyx, her teeth slamming together on impact. She was stunned silent for a moment, reeling from the shock. Suddenly, incapable of doing anything else, she started to cry.

  What was the point, she sobbed to herself, feeling sore and strange and shocked. What was the point in rushing toward that door when the baby had to be dead? It was her own fault. Her just desserts. She hadn’t wanted it enough at first and now she’d killed it.

  It was the taxi driver who appeared from behind and helped her up. Jenny felt limp as he picked her up, holding her under her armpits, all the time clucking soothingly: “Are you alright, love? Saw you from the cab – can you walk? Can you put your weight on that leg? Is anything broken?”

  Just my baby, she thought helplessly. My baby’s broken. And my heart. Snot bubbled from her nose as she started to cry loudly at the thought.

  The taxi driver was joined by an elderly woman with a tartan shopping cart. Next, Jenny became aware of someone in hospital scrubs running down the steps of the building and taking her arm as he called for help. Between them all, they helped her up the steps and into the shiny new building.

  As she entered through the revolving doors, another rush of bodies milled suddenly around her – a wheelchair was summoned from somewhere and thrust underneath her. Jenny protested that she was fine, and that she could walk and made all those helpless noises that she always made when she felt someone was putting themselves out for her. But inside she felt like she was only watching. Like she was outside her own life, looking in, but not really there.

  The examination room was warm, although she still shivered from a combination of cold and shock as she lay on the tissue-covered bed. The doctor stood with his back to her, fiddling with the screen on a monitor which was affixed to a complicated-looking scanning machine. When he turned to face her, his hands were gloved and the jelly that he spread on her stomach was cold. Jenny gasped.

  “Sorry now, this will be a little bit cold,” he said belatedly, applying his small scanning device to her skin, tugging down the waistband of her trousers before looking back at the screen.

  Jenny lay there with her eyes closed. I could just sleep here, she thought suddenly. The room was dark and cosy, and it was nice to lie down. She could just pretend that none of this was happening. That she wouldn’t have to get into a gown and into a bed and maybe have them do horrible things to her. What was it that they did in these circumstances? She took a deep breath to quell the panic growing again inside her. Just stay here, she thought. I just want to stay here. I don’t want to see what he’s going to show me.

  “Now, we’re not sure how far the pregnancy has progressed, Mrs Mycroft,” said the doctor, concentrating on the screen and pressing the scanner more firmly into her stomach, putting pressure on her bladder. “And quite often at this early stage – if you’re right about the date o
f your last period of course – it’s not possible to see a heartbeat . . .”

  Jenny forced herself to feel numb. Here it came. Here was the confirmation that it had happened.

  “. . . but by my reckoning, you’re about seven weeks gone and the baby is showing a very steady beat there. Have a look yourself.”

  Jenny couldn’t stop herself. Dizzy, yet entirely focused, she sat up suddenly, propping her elbows underneath to support her. The small screen showed a blob, and in the centre of it, a blinking dot. Steadily pulsing up and down rapidly. A blinking dot. A heartbeat.

  “My baby!” gasped Jenny. She didn’t know where that had come from. She had been trying her best not to think of it as a baby. She couldn’t allow herself to think that it was a person – that it could be another human being. But as she saw the pulsing, moving dot, she whimpered, and sniffed loudly, unable to contain herself.

  The doctor smiled. “I know, it can be very emotional the first time, but what I can tell you is that so far, so good. It’s very early days, however, Mrs Mycroft, and pregnancy at this point can often be in the lap of the gods.”

  Jenny knew that. She wasn’t a fool. Hadn’t she expected to lose it? Hadn’t she been sure that this couldn’t be happening to her? She gazed at the screen as, all too soon, the doctor turned it off and hung the scanner on a hook below it. He was businesslike as he handed Jenny some thick blue tissue to wipe her stomach.

  “But the bleeding . . .” began Jenny. “The cramps . . .”

  “All very common at this stage of pregnancy,” said the doctor, if not reassuringly, at least in a tone of voice that indicated this was a question he had answered many times before. “It’s just your uterus stretching to accommodate the growing foetus. If you experience bright red bleeding then come straight back to us. That might not be such good news if it were to happen.”