by Rosie Nixon
I noticed Aisha was quiet today; she seemed as lost in thought as I was for much of the morning. Joni was asleep in her pram for a lot of the time. I searched Aisha’s face for clues, but then checked myself – just the fact she was here was a good thing. She was concentrating intently on the three bunnies she was painting; putting us all to shame with her artistic talents.
Susie, Will and I were distracted for a while by gossiping about Helen, who had politely declined the pottery invitation, choosing WhatsApp to tell us the news that she and Ian were currently ‘on a break’ and that she and Maddie had moved back to Windsor to live with her parents for a while. She didn’t explain anything more. It had come as a shock to us, as they had seemed so together, so perfect.
‘I can’t even imagine them arguing,’ Susie observed, to which we all agreed.
The mystery of their break-up brought it home to me that none of us really knew what was going on in each other’s relationships. What a shock they would get if they knew the truth about me. I glanced around the table, which was now awash with painted baby footprints, Wet Wipes, spilt paint, and smudgy plates. I shouldn’t even be here.
When we left the pottery shop, I decided to go for a walk. Aisha had left early and gone to meet Jason. I’d thought about trying to persuade her to go for a spontaneous lunch with me instead, but had chickened out. My insides were churning. Would that be the last time I saw her?
I needed some air and Albie always slept better and for longer when we were outside. I headed up towards the common, and before long he was asleep in the cosy pram, oblivious to it all. I stopped for a moment and lowered the canopy to look at him. A peacefulness had spread across his features, so innocent, so unaware of his importance in the world; the pure, beautiful baby at the heart of this mess. Our umbilical-like bond tugged at my heart; a love I’d once wondered if I would ever feel.
It must have triggered something because my mind began wandering. My thoughts turned back almost twenty years, to the first baby I was pregnant with.
I had been at university for almost a year when I discovered I was pregnant. I fled back home to get some space; work out what to do next. How could I expect my gorgeous boyfriend or university friends to have the language or life experience to understand that kind of thing? And then I became too ashamed, too afraid to tell anyone else in case they judged me and hated me as much as I hated myself for either getting pregnant in the first place or going ahead with the abortion. But in moments when I least expected it, I could still see it. I could see the clotted blood so clearly.
‘It’s time to move on, get back on track and forget the past. It’s for the best,’ Mum told me the night after I had the abortion, bizarrely in the same London hospital that I was born in. Her arm was hanging loosely around my shoulders; she seemed relieved.
‘There’s no point dwelling on things,’ echoed Dad. Then they shut the door on me in my childhood bedroom, my grief so raw and palpable, my eyes heavy with tears and red from all the crying. Who could do that to their own daughter?
The only person I confided in was Katie, who had been shocked, but vowed to support me whatever I decided to do, although she too had leant towards the feeling that perhaps a termination was the most ‘sensible’ choice.
I can’t pretend to know what losing a baby later in pregnancy, or at full term, must be like, but even so, at ten weeks, she was very real. I don’t know for sure that my baby was a girl, but I’m as sure as I can be. I felt it. She was strong; a cheeky one. She didn’t want to go so soon, before she even had a chance at life. I know, because she was inside of my body. But I took her future away. I felt there was no other option. If I didn’t terminate the pregnancy then I’d have to drop out of uni, and I hadn’t even completed my first year. I’d end up living back at home, I’d be a drain on my parents’ lives and finances for the foreseeable future. My dreams would be cut short. I didn’t believe I had any other option. I was so wracked with shame and guilt. My mother even made the appointment at the hospital for me. Little did I realize then that I’d end up dropping out of my university course anyway.
The day after that, my boyfriend came from uni to visit; he thought I’d been in hospital for suspected appendicitis. That was the story Katie and I made up. I was still in shock and I looked awful, and I wanted to tell him the truth so desperately, but I had been warned by my parents that it wasn’t a good idea. It was better to get on with my life rather than risk what his reaction might be.
‘It will be okay, Luce,’ was all he could say. ‘At least you didn’t have to have it taken out.’
If only he knew the irony in those words.
I searched his face for some comfort, for him to somehow ask the right question so that I would have no choice but to tell him everything, but found none. He didn’t know how to deal with me, and I didn’t know how to let him in. I was too scared. Things felt awkward between us for the first time ever. He stood by my bed in silence. My hand lay there on the duvet, aching to be held. He must have thought this was a gross overreaction for suspected appendicitis. But something between us had gone. We had been together for nine months – the same amount of time that it takes to grow a baby – and it had felt so intense. At first it was about his good looks, but our bond quickly deepened and I thought I had found my soul mate. Yet now we didn’t know how to connect right now. His expression was fearful when I asked him to give me some space to rest and I’d give him a call when I was back on my feet again.
‘Are you breaking up with me?’ he asked solemnly.
‘I guess I am,’ I said, my eyes full of tears. It was the last thing I wanted in my heart.
He left.
He tried to contact me a few times after that, but I ignored his texts and calls. I pushed him away because it seemed the best option for us both. After a few weeks the calls stopped. I suppose his young ego prevented him from chasing me too hard. We were only 19 after all – there would be plenty more Miss Rights out there for a guy like him.
How I wish I could turn back time.
I went back to uni a month after the abortion, but I couldn’t cope. I was unable to simply move on, it was too painful. And my ex couldn’t understand why I wasn’t able to be ‘just friends’. Instead of finding the strength to return his calls, I became more isolated and drifted further away from my social group. I even found it hard to be around Katie because she was the only person who knew my secret, and neither of us were equipped for the level of ‘adulting’ the associated emotions required. I couldn’t blame her for that; I was naïve too. She tried to be there for me, but I found it hard to understand my own mind until a long time later. As the days passed, it felt more and more impossible to ever explain to anyone why I was feeling so low.
So, after a few weeks, I dropped out and moved back home to London. It was easier to just disappear and move on without explanation. ‘Ghosting’, they call it now. I didn’t even say goodbye to my tutors or all of my friends. Only Katie knew the real reason and although she begged me to think again, I had already made up my mind. The pain of what had happened felt too much to bear. It had been relatively straightforward to cut ties back then, before social media had really taken hold and we became used to recording our daily life. And there was no one I would miss more than him. At the start of the next academic year, I enrolled on a marketing communications degree in London.
As the years passed, no Mr Right came along for me; no matter how hard I looked, no man lived up to my first true love. He invaded my dreams and infiltrated my thoughts almost every day. The pain of terminating a baby made with a person I loved so much didn’t dull as the years passed.
It’s a decision I always regretted; always wondered: ‘what if I’d told him I was pregnant? Would things have turned out differently?’ For years I toyed with finally sharing with him the secret I’d been cradling for so long, but he had blocked my phone number when we split up. I hadn’t found any way to contact him since.
Until that night.
&n
bsp; My relationship with my parents had never been the same since. As I grew older, I learnt how to keep secrets from them – it was much easier to deal with life on my own than to share my problems. I’ve always felt alone in my life choices and I struggled to make friends or hold down relationships for a long time, because I didn’t find it easy to open up to people.
Until Oscar.
Just before Oscar and I officially got back together when I was pregnant, I told him about the abortion so he understood the significance of me expecting a baby again. But there the story stopped; I didn’t dare tell him any more because we were in such a good place – I didn’t want to rock the boat, and I was fearful of Oscar’s reaction.
I was already nervous about whether Oscar was really on board with a baby arriving in our lives; I didn’t want to do anything to risk losing him for a second time. Oscar was understanding and said he hoped the baby would help give me closure on what had happened all those years ago. He didn’t put two and two together like I feared he might.
Although a secret this big tortured me day and night, no one suspected anything.
I often thought about my girl, the precious ‘daughter’ I lost. She would have soon been turning 20. A year older than I was when I got pregnant. I wondered if we would have been great friends. I pictured her with dark brown hair, like her dad, and milky-white skin, like mine. Her eyes were green. She was so beautiful, a real head-turner.
And then the tears would well up in my eyes once more as I tried to picture the sun on her face, illuminating her freckles, her hair messy, sunlight dancing in her eyes, her infectious smile, but I couldn’t. I could never get that far. Because there was a blinding, bright light that started to bleach out her features and then her entire face was gone and she disappeared as if she was a star going super nova. It hurt me physically when she went from my mind.
But sometimes when she disappeared, there was another face left in her wake. His face. He had the same green eyes as her. My first true love.
I wondered if Albie would look like him too.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Aisha
I had missed several calls from Jason during the pottery class. Then he had texted:
Are you at home this morning? We need to talk. I can meet you by the bandstand on Clapham Common in 45 minutes. Please meet me there. Jx
It was now just gone 1 p.m. when I approached the bandstand area of Clapham Common. The coffee I had picked up en route was still piping hot, so I put it in the cup holder on the side of the pram and concentrated on tightening my pelvic floor, thinking I’d do my abdominal exercises all the way to the bench by the side of the bandstand and hopefully by then the coffee would be cool enough to drink.
It wasn’t like Jason to have free time during the day, but the fact he did – and that he wanted to meet up with me and Joni – gave me a spring in my step. This was the new Jason I’d seen over the past few weeks. Perhaps he wanted to take us for lunch. He seemed really invested in putting more into our relationship.
As I neared the bandstand, I saw Jason’s familiar figure walking towards me. When he saw me, his pace seemed to slow. I lifted my hand and smiled. As he got closer, I realized that he didn’t seem to be smiling back. His expression was hard to make out but, if anything, he looked stressed. I hoped something bad hadn’t happened.
As he approached us I could see he was sweating. He looked hot and panicky and it wasn’t a particularly warm day.
‘Aisha,’ he exclaimed when he reached me, ‘I’m so glad you could come.’ He was shaking and there was an urgent tone to his voice.
‘Baby, what’s up, are you okay?’ I asked. My first thought was his parents or sister. ‘Has something happened?’
He took the pram from my hands, and steered it towards a bench – one of those in a circle around the bandstand area. We sat down.
‘There is something I have to tell you,’ he said slowly and gravely. He looked at me with a fear and sorrow in his eyes that I had never seen before. It scared me. What was going on?
‘I’ve made a terrible mistake,’ he began, his voice faltering. ‘There is no easy way of saying this.’
I let out a short burst of sound – an involuntary gasp.
He continued: ‘I bumped into an old girlfriend on the Tube last September. A few drinks led to a one-night stand. Aisha, I bitterly regret it. It was one night of madness; we only slept together once. I can barely remember the details because I was so drunk. I’m sorry. So desperately sorry.’
A burning heat moved upwards from my chest to my face and I felt my cheeks flush and my heart pound. ‘Jason, what? You’re joking, right? This isn’t very funny.’
If only it was an unfunny joke.
‘There’s more. She got pregnant. She’s had the baby now and we have taken a paternity test, but I don’t have the result yet. I’m really scared, Aisha. I’m petrified I could be the father of this baby.’
With tears in his eyes and shaking hands, he told me that he couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.
I listened in silence. The fact we were stood here in such a familiar spot suddenly felt utterly surreal given the enormity of what he had just said.
‘Do I know her?’ I asked, as calmly as I could.
‘I’m afraid so,’ he bowed his head. ‘It’s Lucy.’
‘Lucy from The Baby Group?’
His facial expression told me the answer.
I was floored. ‘Seriously? No, I don’t believe you. It can’t be. Lucy and I, we, we’re friends.’ The words hung in the air, sounding ridiculous and completely at odds with what he had just said. ‘It can’t be true.’
‘I’m sorry Aisha.’
It had taken less than two minutes for Jason to deliver the words that would change our lives forever. For a moment I sat there, glued to the bench, feeling numb. I couldn’t look at him, so I put my head in my hands and desperately tried to collect my thoughts, wrap my mind around this shocking revelation. I wanted this to be a dream.
When I did steal a look at him I felt nauseous. He already looked different, unfamiliar.
Jason’s eyes were fixed on a piece of hard gum on the floor. He stared and stared.
An anger simmered inside of me.
‘You seriously think you’re Albie’s father?’ I asked pointedly, barely believing the words coming out of my mouth.
‘I don’t know. I think there’s only a slim chance. But she’s a psycho Aisha, I don’t know what she’s trying to do – to me, to us. I’m petrified. She’s not right in the head. I couldn’t handle it any more – the guilt was killing me, killing our family. I realize this is a huge thing to tell you. I’m so sorry.’ He turned to look at me. ‘Are you okay?’
Was he having a laugh? Of course I wasn’t ‘okay’. When I failed to reply he tentatively put his hand on my shoulder. I recoiled. I didn’t know him any more and I certainly didn’t want him to touch me. It felt as though a crushing weight had descended on me.
My brain was still struggling to compute what I had been told. ‘But Lucy told me she and Oscar went through IVF,’ I said. ‘Was she feeding me all of these lies to cover up your torrid affair?’
‘It wasn’t an affair. It was one night of insanity, I promise you,’ Jason said. ‘And she did have IVF, the…’ He paused. ‘The thing with us happened the night before.’
‘I can’t believe you’d do this to me – to us,’ I said. ‘How long have you known her for?’
‘We dated at university, in the first year and only for a couple of terms.’
That made her comment about Bristol University when we were in the pub fall into place, plus her interest in the Bristol FC photo in our flat. The fact she had been there, in our home, stalking our photos, made me feel sick. I did vaguely recall him mentioning a Lucy when we had talked about past lovers over the years, but I’d never needed to give her any real thought.
‘But she got pregnant,’ he continued. ‘She went home and had an abortion. She thought I didn�
�t know, but one of her friends told me. I didn’t know what to do – we were only 19. We split up and that was it. Life completely moved on.’
‘Moved on until you found yourself in bed with her again?’
‘Bumping into her, after all that time, it caught me in a weak moment. I thought the past had been laid to rest – it had for me, but clearly not for her. When I told her I had known about the abortion, she took it badly.’
‘I’m failing to see how this ended up in making a baby.’
‘We went to a pub and got drunk, so drunk that my memory of the whole thing is a bit hazy; I think I might have passed out. After that, I cut off all communication. I blocked her. After her reaction to the abortion comment I thought she seemed vengeful, crazy.’
‘And then she turned up in our Baby Group.’ I spat the words out; this was like something out of a horror film.
‘I was so shocked when I first saw her there. And at the same stage of pregnancy as us. I put two-and-two together.’ His head was hanging so low it was almost in his lap. ‘I freaked out, panicked, big time.’ His words then became peppered with sobs. ‘Honestly Aisha, I’m furious with myself, for keeping all of this a secret from you; I know I should have come clean.’
My mind was ticking over, trying to piece together the dates. This would have been at exactly the same time I discovered I was pregnant.
He seemed to read my mind: ‘That day, when you came to work to tell me you were pregnant…’ His voice trailed off, like he didn’t have the guts to finish the sentence.
‘Tell me Jason,’ I pressed. ‘You owe me the truth now.’
‘That was the morning after it happened. I didn’t have the heart to be so callous as to wipe the joy from your beautiful face with this dirty news. Not that day, and then there was never the right day.’
So many things clicked into place. He had fed me so many lies. I felt like the world’s greatest mug for not noticing or confronting him about anything, even when Jason and I were so obviously drifting apart during my pregnancy. In the weeks after Joni was born he had been so much more attentive and kind. Now I knew why. His guilty conscience was catching up with him.