Keep Her Close
Page 30
‘Looks absolutely fine. I just need to take some measurements.’
Jo kept her eyes on the screen as the sonographer moved a cursor over the screen, snapping free-frames, and making notes by hand. ‘Your baby is in the normal range we’d expect for that gestation.’
The tears came from nowhere, fast and heavy. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ The sonographer handed her a tissue. ‘Everyone cries the first time.’
Jo didn’t correct her. Madeleine must have been buried in the records somewhere. In fact, the last time she’d been in a room like this would have been almost exactly a year ago, holding Ben’s hand as a different sonographer told them the bad news – that despite all the positive tests they’d done at home, their child had stopped growing at around nine weeks and showed no signs of life.
‘Is it really okay? No problems at all?’
‘Absolutely. Because of your age, we’ll want to bring you in for regular scans.’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you like to hear the heartbeat?’
‘Can I?’
‘It’s not normally something we do at this stage, but given everything this little one’s been through, it only seems right. Just lie back and relax.’
Jo lay her head down and looked at the ceiling. In a few seconds a soft, rapid, rhythmic squishing sound came through the speakers.
‘It’s fast!’
‘Quite normal,’ said the sonographer.
Jo wiped her belly clean with another cloth, pulled down her top and put her coat back on. The sonographer gave her a piece of folded card with the sonograph image inside.
‘Thank you,’ said Jo. ‘For everything.’
She left the consulting room feeling like a different person entirely from the one who had gone in. She went to the toilet to empty her full bladder. At the reception, she handed over the form, making another appointment for the twelve-week scan.
‘Congratulations, Ms Masters,’ said the receptionist. She looked at the screen. ‘We only have one contact number here. Is there another – just in case? The baby’s father, perhaps?’
Jo smiled. ‘I’ll give you my brother, if that’s all right.’
Back in the car park, she looked at the black and white image.
She’d read up as soon as she first suspected she might be pregnant on paternity testing in utero, worried that the only methods were invasive and risky. But there were other ways. Bright Futures would do it, though she would need samples of the potential father’s DNA.
Or only Lucas’s, she surmised. Because if his didn’t match, there was only one other possibility.
She made the decision then and there not to find out. She touched her stomach with her fingertips.
‘The two of us have survived enough already, don’t you think?’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.J. Ford lives with his wife and family on the edge of the Peak District in the north of England. He has worked as an editor and writer of children’s fiction for many years. His debut novel, Hold My Hand, was published in 2018. Keep Her Close is his second crime book. You can follow Michael @MJFordBooks.
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