Theo

by Amanda Prowse

  It had been a testing evening at the end of a testing day and Theo was relieved to finally get in the shower and let the cascade of hot water soothe away some of his fatigue. It irked him more than he was able to admit that his father had given so little attention to his proposition. He’d put so much thought into his pitch, had spent hours working out exactly how to present it, and all for nothing. What sort of father relished making his son feel so insignificant? What sort of father made his son feel like a failure however hard he tried?

  Thinking about his own father inevitably led Theo on to thinking about Sophie. Ever since he’d seen Kitty and Sophie on the bus, the image of the two of them had rarely been far from his thoughts. He heard Sophie’s girlish voice as he fell asleep, he pictured her big smile and innocent dark eyes, and he saw Kitty’s horrified expression, her speedy exit from the bus. The message had been loud and clear, and it hurt. It hurt him more than he was able to express, and even if he had felt able, with Spud in the States he had absolutely no one to express it to. He found it hard to concentrate and he was conscious of the fact he’d been more irritable with Anna of late, on a shorter fuse. He felt bad about the row earlier on – it wasn’t Anna’s fault, he knew that, but even so... He just couldn’t face discussing parenthood right now, not with Sophie in his thoughts so much, and the warehouse project, and his dad’s intransigence. The black shadow of depression seemed to be coming scarily close again.

  Reluctantly Theo stepped from the shower and put on his sweatpants and sweatshirt. He didn’t know if Anna had let Griff, their new Alsatian-cross rescue puppy, out for his night-time wee and he thought he might run him quickly round the block. The fresh air might help clear his head and perhaps then he’d have a better chance of getting some sleep.

  Theo descended the stairs and ran through what he wanted to say to Anna. He didn’t want to go to bed on a row and he loathed seeing her upset. The least he could do was apologise and explain how he felt about his dad’s behaviour.

  Griff was making a low growl, which was curious because as long as their beloved pup was within sight of one or both of them, all was usually right with his world. As if urged by a sixth sense, Theo quickened his pace, just in time to see Anna stumble backwards and tumble to the kitchen floor. What the hell...?

  ‘Anna!’ he yelled, racing to her side. She’d hit her head and seemed to be out cold. ‘Anna! Anna!’ he yelled again, his voice loud and panicky now.

  Griff growled and yelped. Theo kissed Anna’s forehead, her hair, put his ear next to her heart. He couldn’t tell whether he was hearing something or not, he was too scared, his own heart was racing like a train. He wasn’t helping. Inhaling deeply, he made himself calm down. He gently lifted Anna’s right arm and held his finger against her wrist, checking her pulse. He made himself pay attention. The pulse was there. He gulped and sobbed, then yanked the blue linen dishcloth from the Aga door and folded it into a cushion between her head and the cold floor.

  ‘It’s okay, Griff, it’s okay, boy!’ He tried to reassure the pup, who stood alarmed and whimpering now, next to his basket. Theo grabbed his phone from the tabletop and dialled 999. ‘Ambulance! I need an ambulance, please, quickly. It’s my wife, she’s collapsed...’

  As soon as he finished the call, he opened the front door wide, then raced back to sit on the floor with Anna. He took her limp hand inside his and cooed to her, kissing her fingers and wiping her hair from her pale face. ‘It’s okay, Anna. The ambulance is on its way. They’ll be here in a second, don’t you worry.’ He kept talking, as much to allay his own fears as to reassure her.

  With one hand still clamped to Anna’s, he reached for the pen and paper that was lying on the table, thinking it might be helpful to note down Anna’s pulse rate before the paramedics turned up. He never got round to doing that, because the top sheet of paper had already been used. Anna had written one of her letters to her imaginary children, Fifi and Fox, presumably while he’d been showering. His breath caught in his throat as he read it.

  Fifi and Fox,

  Here it is.

  I have never been so close to giving up on my dream of you. Never.

  I sit here at the kitchen table, writing with tears trickling down my face at these words. It’s a hard thing for me to write, and an even harder thing to imagine. But, like always, I have to try and carry on, find the good, because there is one thing I know with absolute certainty and it’s this – if I give in to the deep, cold sadness that lurks inside me, if I submit to the lonely longing for the people who have left me and the things I can’t have, then the darkness will take hold. It will fill me right up and it will drown me.

  I can’t let that happen. Because while I am here there is always hope. Know, my darlings, that life is worth living. Life is worth living! It’s up to us what shape that life takes. I had reason more than most to let my life crush me, but I didn’t let it. I fought against it. And I will keep fighting – fighting to find the happy in this good, lucky life I have made, this life I share with Theo.

  I will keep positive. I won’t give up. I won’t.

  Anna

  (I hardly dare write Mummy – it feels a lot like tempting fate.)

  Theo howled as he reached the last line. ‘Oh, my Anna, I am so sorry! I am. I can’t lose you! I can’t! You are all I’ve got. You are the only one who understands, who loves me. Please don’t leave me, Anna, please, I’m begging you...’ He bent low and kissed her again, feverishly and repeatedly. ‘Where the fuck is the ambulance?’ he yelled towards the door. Every minute felt like an eternity. ‘Don’t leave me, Anna, please! I’ll do anything to keep you alive, to keep you loving me! I’ll... I’ll have a child with you! We can do it! We can make Fifi and Fox, we can. I can’t bear for you to not have what you want. I don’t know how I’ll cope, but I will, somehow, and I will do it for you! I will do anything. Just please don’t leave me.’

  Finally Griff started barking and there came the sound of footsteps on the gravel path. Two paramedics, a man and a woman, both wearing green overalls, ran into the kitchen and gently eased his wife from his grip.

  ‘Is... Is she going to be okay?’ Theo swallowed, placing his hands on his hips and trying to keep it together.

  The female paramedic looked up at him. ‘Let’s get her to the hospital, then she’ll be in the best place.’

  *

  The next few hours were a nightmarish blur. Anna was whisked off into the inner reaches of the hospital and Theo was left in the visitors’ room with only his thoughts and a plate of custard creams for company. His mind couldn’t settle and he kept going over the last few weeks, trying to recall if Anna had shown any signs of being unwell. Had she mentioned anything, any pains or headaches? He wracked his brain. He’d been so wrapped up in planning the Bristol project, and there’d been Kitty and Sophie, and Spud leaving... He definitely hadn’t been giving her as much attention as she needed. And then there was the baby thing. He kept replaying the words of her letter. There was so much sadness there, so much grief. He paced around the visitors’ room, desperate to avoid the obvious conclusion but coming back to it again and again: had she collapsed because of their row, because she’d been so upset? He stopped in his tracks, stood up straight and made a decision. He’d made a pact as she lay on the kitchen floor and he would stick to it.

  The nurse came in and she was smiling! Relief flooded through him.

  ‘Your wife is comfortable now, Mr Montgomery. She’s asleep, so you probably won’t get much out of her for a few hours, but you’re welcome to come and sit with her if you’d like to.’

  Theo needed no second invitation. He sat beside Anna through the dawn and on into the morning, clasping her, sobbing intermittently, willing her to be all right. As soon as she woke, he told her what he’d decided.

  ‘So, I’ve been thinking, Anna, I want to give you what you want. I will need your help, but we should go for it, we should have our baby. Our baby! I decided, last night when you were lying there on the floo
r, I decided that I’d been selfish and unfair and cowardly and that I couldn’t bear not to have you with me and so I made a promise to myself that—’

  ‘Oh, Theo!’ She hoisted herself up in the bed and stared at him. ‘You mean it?’

  ‘I do.’ He smiled. ‘We can do it together, right?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, my darling, that’s right, we can do it together!’ She reached for him and snuggled into his arms.

  Not five minutes after he’d told Anna about his change of heart, her room started filling up with visitors, rather robbing them of the moment. Much to his surprise, in came Anna’s friend Melissa, then Sylvie, the mother of her ex, and then his own mother. He was touched at their concern, but he worried that the party-like atmosphere might all be too much for Anna. In truth, though, she had beamed at all the new arrivals and it seemed they were just the distraction she needed.

  He decided to leave them to it for a brief while. He took a minute to sit outside the room, relishing the moment of solitude and glad to be away from the hubbub. He leant against the wall and tried to stem the shake to his limbs. The medics had discovered an irregular heartbeat, which Anna had tried to dismiss with shrugs and glibly offered statistics. But he was less convinced, all too aware of her mum’s shockingly premature death and keen to find out what could be done to prevent her collapsing again in the future.

  He was relieved when the visitors finally left, traipsing past him and offering to help in any way they could.

  Melissa kissed him firmly. ‘Call me, let me know what she needs, anything at all, and I can be there in minutes.’

  Sylvie wagged a nicotine-stained finger at him. ‘You take care of her, lovely boy, and you take care of yourself!’

  ‘I will.’

  His mother hovered, waiting until the other two were out of earshot. ‘Keep us posted, darling.’

  ‘I will, Mum, and thank you for coming.’

  ‘Not at all. An interesting bunch.’ She looked towards Melissa and Sylvie.

  Theo chose not to react; a hospital corridor was neither the time nor place.

  Stella cleared her throat. ‘It wants keeping an eye on, that heart thing.’ She nodded towards the door of Anna’s room as she looped her pashmina around her neck.

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He watched his mum sashay along the corridor towards the exit. ‘And I shall keep an eye on my own heart too,’ he muttered, ‘because if anything happens to Anna it will break.’ He took a deep breath, assumed an air of confidence and opened the door to Anna’s room.

  He took up the seat next to her bed and held her hand.

  It was only a few minutes later that the consultant reappeared. He flipped the pages of his notes, then held the clipboard behind his back. ‘We have all your test results, Mrs Montgomery.’

  Theo sat forward in the chair, trying to remain calm. He was a lot more concerned than Anna seemed to be.

  ‘As we discussed earlier, your heart is nothing to worry about at this stage, but with your family history we will keep an eye on it.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Anna squeezed Theo’s hand and raised her eyebrows as if to say, ha, I told you, nothing to worry about.

  ‘There was something else, however.’ The consultant paused and Theo felt as if those five words had sucked all the air from the room. He felt lightheaded and nauseous, desperately afraid of what might come next. With good reason, as it turned out.

  ‘We ran some blood tests,’ the consultant continued, ‘and your hormones are drastically out of balance. It would seem that you are in the middle of an early menopause.’

  Anna slowly let go of Theo’s hand and sat up in the bed. ‘What does that mean?’ she whispered.

  ‘It means, Anna, that your fertility is coming to an end.’

  ‘No more periods,’ she whispered. ‘No baby. Oh, Theo! No... no... baby. Not now. Not ever. Not... with you. Not with anyone.’ She sobbed into her sleeve.

  The consultant left almost immediately and the two of them sat there with the ramifications of this ‘something else’ spinning around them. It was like they were caught in a tornado that was ripping apart everything they thought they knew. It did so at speed and with such force it left them breathless.

  ‘No, Theo! Please, no! It’s all I ever wanted!’ Anna cried noisily, messily, clinging onto him as if for dear life. ‘I wanted my babies. That is all I have ever wanted! Please, Theo. Oh God! Please, no!’

  Theo had no idea how to console her. What could he say? What could he do? Only hours ago it seemed like they’d finally agreed to do this thing together, and she’d been so elated, brimming with joy at the prospect. But now... God, what a mess. The worst day of his life by far.

  As he sat there with Anna wrapped in his arms, rocking her gently, he realised with surprise that he wasn’t only desperately sad for her, he was sad for both of them. The idea of becoming a father had started to take root, and now that the possibility had been so brutally taken away, he felt deflated, denied the challenge. There had to be another way, didn’t there?

  They continued sitting there until Anna had calmed sufficiently and felt ready to pack up and go home. Theo made his way to the bathroom, leaving her alone for a few minutes, and decided to call his mother as he’d promised.

  ‘Yes, Theodore?’ His mother did this, always made it seem as if now was the worst possible time to phone her. It took him back to Vaizey, to when he was a small boy standing in Twitcher’s study, praying that she’d pick up the phone.

  ‘The consultant has just left and, er, we’ve had some bad news, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, Theo, dear—’

  He sighed, swallowed, and blurted it out. ‘We’ve just found out that Anna is going through an early menopause. So that means—’

  ‘Yes, dear, I am aware of what it means.’ She tutted disapprovingly, as if reminding Theo that it was not the done thing to discuss bodily functions and especially not women’s health issues. A wave of embarrassment washed over him.

  He pictured the note sitting on the kitchen table:

  I have never been so close to giving up on my dream of you. Never.

  I sit here at the kitchen table, writing with tears trickling down my face at these words. It’s a hard thing for me to write, and an even harder thing to imagine...

  Oh, Anna! My Anna! Coughing away his emotion, he decided he was after all in no mood to talk to his mother. A bolt of frustration shot through him. What had he expected – support, kindness? He was about to phrase his goodbyes when his mother interjected.

  ‘I did want grandchildren eventually – what a shame. And I think Daddy is similarly minded. Not that we’ve discussed it, but I know he would like someone to carry on the Montgomery name and all that. Still, life is a long and winding road, as they say. Who knows what’s around the corner?’

  Theo’s anger boiled. What she was she implying? That he would leave Anna and find a second wife to provide them with a grandchild? His skin prickled with fury and he could barely find the words. ‘You are fucking kidding me!’ was what he came up with, and with that he ended the call.

  He paced the corridor, his stomach in knots of anger and grief, steeling himself to go back into the ward.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he whispered to Anna, who looked small and fragile sitting on the hospital bed. It was as if the news of her infertility had made her shrink.

  She shrugged and bit her lip. Her eyes were swollen from all the crying and she looked wretched. Theo’s heart contracted. It tore at him to see her like that.

  He took up the seat by her bedside and again reached for her hand. ‘I meant what I said earlier about making a pact when you were on the kitchen floor, when I thought...’ He gulped. ‘When I thought I might lose you.’

  She turned her head towards him.

  ‘I meant every word – that we should have a baby, that I will be a dad for you, with you.’

  Her tears fell quickly and her voice when it came was barely more than a whisper. ‘Bit late now,’ she managed.
>
  Theo’s stomach churned. She was blaming him and he deserved it. But he would make it right. He would try and put his past behind him and do right by Anna. ‘No, my darling! There will be a way. We’ll find a way. We could... We could adopt! We could become parents that way – we could do it, we could!’ He gripped her tight, hoping this might be something they could focus on. ‘You know more than most how every kid needs a home. We might not be able to... to have a child, but we can help one. Give one a happy home, just like you’ve always wanted. We can teach it like your mum taught you – how to be strong, how to survive!’

  ‘Or two.’ Anna managed a small smile. ‘Two kids.’

  His heart leapt with relief. ‘Yes, my Anna. Or two.’ He placed his head on the side of the bed and offered up a silent prayer.

  13

  ‘You have a lock of hair sticking up.’ Anna spat on her palm and ran it over Theo’s scalp. He found this both revolting and demeaning and he ruffled his hair as soon as she’d finished. She tutted at him, playfully. He pressed the front doorbell and stood in the porch, waiting, with her arm resting through his.

  ‘I can’t believe you don’t have a key to your family home. That’s so messed up.’ Her words hung in the air like the afterburn of a sparkler writing in the dark.

  ‘Anna, as you well know, there’s lots about my family that is messed up. Denying me entry unless I come with a semi-formal invite to dinner is just one of them.’ He gave her a false grin.

  ‘Okay, well, I’m keeping a mental note, and your messed-up family is definitely not something we should mention at our adoption interview, okay?’ She looked deadly serious.

  ‘Okay.’ He sighed, already wary of doing or saying the wrong thing at their introductory meeting, scheduled for the following week. ‘I can’t believe you’re making us do this.’