‘Christmas baby for you, February baby for me,’ she says with more enthusiasm than I’ve ever seen from anyone about anything. To be fair, I don’t think there’s a single day of the year that she wouldn’t have been thrilled to have as her due date, such is her joy just to be pregnant.
‘Yay!’ I say, thinking anxiously for a second about all the people I know who hate having a late-December birthday, and immediately start picturing a child’s tantrums at having shared birthday and Christmas presents and a lifetime of everyone being too busy to celebrate. I’m being petty, I know.
The rest of the evening vanishes in a flurry of excited chatter about midwives and maternity leave, comparing sickness and fatigue, how happy Karl is and how lovely Edward was in his email. Lacey squeals that I’ll probably get married now. ‘A pregnant bride and bridesmaid!’ she announces, and I have to rein her in a bit before I throw up again with how overwhelming all of this feels.
We move to safer ground and talk about all the things we’ll do. We’ll go to baby massage classes, we’ll have lunch in posh garden centre cafés with them, we’ll have matching prams, we’ll take pictures of both of them in matching outfits (we’re talking as though we are both having mini-me girls) and we’ll watch them grow up together, be best friends at school together and go on their first holiday together as reckless teenagers. We really let loose with our fantasies and it feels amazing. Now is not the time to imagine the sleepless nights and stinky nappy changes. There’ll be time for that later. This is the moment we get to share something beautiful together. I go wild for her, she goes wild for me, we’re both exhilarated.
Once she’s left, promising to drive carefully over any speed bumps (is that a thing to worry about, or is my baby brain going into overdrive already?), I welcome home a sleepy seven-year-old and we head to bed. I feel the happiest I have in a long time.
This feels right.
THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up jubilant. Lacey is pregnant, Edward is on board, Alice thinks I’m cool, the world is coming good. I almost leap out of bed before I remember it’s sicky-uppy time followed by the normal routine of telling Lyla to get her skirt/shirt/socks/shoes on eighty thousand times.
By the time we set off in the car, I’m exhausted. How on earth am I going to manage this daily rigmarole with two children? I suddenly feel quite low again. My emotions right now are like being on a fairground ride. Can I get off?
As we walk through the school gates, I try to tell Lyla I need a bit more cooperation in the mornings. But I can see it’s all going over her nonchalant little head. The new mum, Gloria, is walking in with her twins at the same time, one hanging from each hand.
‘Verity Mae Straunston, if you don’t walk properly right now I’m going to put you back in the car and tell Mr Ravelle you’re too naughty to go to school!’ I hear her threaten as Verity and her sister, Athena, giggle.
‘I think they’re all the same!’ I say to her in sisterly support. ‘Mine doesn’t listen to a word I say in the mornings.’
‘I may as well be wrangling circus animals sometimes!’ Gloria says, half to me and half to the twins.
‘How do you manage two?’ I ask, hoping she’ll tell me some magic secret and being pregnant with my second won’t feel so frightening.
‘I don’t. I just grab each one by the hand and go for it. As long as I have two hands and accept I’m not perfect all of the time, we get by!’ she says with a smile, a laugh and two children pulling at her arms.
Well, if badass single mum Gloria Straunston with challenging twin children can do it, bloody well so can I!
SIXTEEN
MAY
YOU COULD CUT THE tension at work with a knife. Natalie has pitched and refined and pitched again and now we are awaiting our fate. MADE IT is already booming with local jobs, London shoots and our recent emergence into the film sector, but to have this major London Fashion Week gig would be a real coup. Natalie still hasn’t spoken to me a great deal, and I don’t know what my job will look like after all this. She’s only communicated the essentials but Stuart and Alice fill me in each day on the latest developments.
Since insert-fatty-pic-here-gate, I’ve been finding more and more ways to be out of the office and out from under Natalie’s feet. The books are laden with local jobs so I’ve scooped some of them up to busy myself with, plus, in getting back to the coalface, I’ve realised that I still love the practical side of things.
The big Friday rolls around and while I’ve been out on shoots, the excitement in the office has reached fever pitch.
Every time the phone rings, Stuart answers it in an increasingly posh voice until Alice snaps, ‘Why are you answering like you work at Buckingham Palace?’ From then on, normal telephony resumes.
At 3.15 p.m., the phone rings, Stuart answers (in only a semi-royal accent) and, keeping his voice calm and serene with, ‘One moment please, I’ll connect you to her,’ he stands up from his desk flailing his arms wildly and mock-thrusting his laptop. It’s quite the scene.
We wait in silence, staring at Natalie’s closed door. I think about getting up and shamelessly standing right outside it but notice Skye has already beaten me to it and is ‘just checking the noticeboard’ very studiously. Right by the door. Good old brazen Skye, you’ve got to admire her.
Suddenly the door bursts open, Skye almost jumps out of her skintight crop top and Natalie exclaims, ‘It’s ours! We’ve won it!’
The office erupts into whoops and cheers, Alice jumps up to give Natalie a celebratory hug, Skye claps, Stuart again faux-thrusts his laptop and makes sex faces (I must ask him why he does this one day, it’s so weird) and I continue to stand by my office door, smiling and taking it all in.
My idea did it.
My idea won a major London Fashion Week contract.
I stand there, thinking about how much I can’t wait to tell Kath and Lyla, my biggest cheerleaders in life, when Natalie comes over to me with outstretched arms.
‘Well done, Robin, you did it again,’ she says warmly into my ear. For a few moments I don’t move. For all these days and weeks I’ve been feeling like a grounded teenager whose parents aren’t angry, just disappointed (aka the worst thing they could ever be). I think of all the slinking around, desperate not to bump into her but also desperate for things to go back to normal, of feeling unspeakably guilty for making such a huge mistake (or rather, for not noticing Skye’s mistake before Natalie did) and anxious to the point of nausea (that could be the human life within, admittedly), and here she is congratulating me. As the kids would say, ‘Da fuq?’
‘What? But you took me off the job. I missed, I mean I messed …’ I say, shocked at the sudden kindness, my brows furrowed in confusion and probably looking like a bit of a tool.
‘Don’t think I don’t know the score. I know you. I was so disgusted, and so disappointed you didn’t manage Skye better and didn’t check through the work you were supposed to be overseeing. I handled it badly, you were a fool (a noble one, I grant you) for taking the rap, but I know whose ideas are whose and I know you, Robin. I know what you are and aren’t capable of. I’m sorry I flew off the handle, I’m sorry I left you stewing about it. I was under a lot of pressure but I know that’s no excuse, especially not after all you’ve done for MADE IT,’ Natalie says, quietly and gently.
Once more, I can feel tears welling up. All I seem to do these days is cry at things – bloody hormones. I’m so relieved! Maybe now we can work together again like last year; maybe I can tell her about the baby. Suddenly asking about maternity leave doesn’t seem nearly as frightening, and for a split second I envisage myself at LFW, working with Mara’s models, my bump in full bloom, everyone looking gorgeous, me with my glow, Natalie nailing it, amazing!
‘Natalie, I—’
‘No need to say anything, this is a happy moment. I’m sorry I’ve been so off, it’s been a shock to the system being back and this pitch has meant such a lot. You should know, I have spoken to Skye now. I’ve put her o
n a six month trial period. She knows she needs to regain our trust, and then some. I should have communicated better with you, but I just couldn’t. Forgive me?’
‘Forgive you? As if you have to ask. I’m just happy you’re happy, happy we’ve won, happy everyone’s so happy!’ I gush loudly, instinctively reaching a hand to my not-even-there-yet bump and then pulling it away before she notices. I can’t wait to tell her, but I think today I’ll let it be just the pitch win that we’re celebrating. The baby news can have a whole day to itself, spread out the joy a bit.
‘All right, Robs, we get it, you’re happy! Now come and have a glass of sparkles with us all!’ Stuart shouts jubilantly from the front of the office.
The party has begun. Alice has turned the music up, Stuart’s pouring drinks (I didn’t even know we had champagne flutes), Skye is dancing with her eyes shut and a glass in her raised hand and Natalie is striding over with a big smile telling Alice to ‘Call the others in, we’re celebrating!’
Panicking slightly about how I’m going to avoid sipping champagne without anyone noticing, I excuse myself. ‘Back in a mo!’ I call, even though nobody’s listening, the music’s too loud and the celebration too big.
Locking the little cubicle door, I sit on the loo and breathe out slowly. What a relief to have won and to have such a happy ending, I think. Today couldn’t have worked out any better. This month has turned out to be incredible. They say it comes in threes, so I wonder what the next thing will be!
And then I notice.
I don’t know how I didn’t before. I was so wrapped up in the celebrations of the win. My knickers, the tissue and the toilet are stained with blood.
Bright red, thick blood.
SEVENTEEN
IT TAKES ME A good few seconds to register what I’m seeing. There is blood in my knickers. I’m pregnant.
You’re not supposed to bleed when you’re pregnant.
Isn’t this bad?
Optimistically, I think perhaps it’s ‘spotting’. I’ve heard of this. Spotting is fine. Except this doesn’t look like a few spots of blood. I cautiously take some tissue and wipe again, not wanting to but desperate to see at the same time. This isn’t spotting, no one could call it that. There is just so much. How did I not notice it at my desk? Surely I should have felt it? Is this real?
My head seems to be working faster than my heart for once because I’m not registering any feelings right now. I am bleeding, I can hear Stuart yelling, ‘Fucking yes, then!’ and Alice ‘woohooo’-ing in celebration. I need to go home, I need to find a sanitary towel, I need practical advice, I need to speak to a responsible adult. All of a sudden, that person doesn’t feel like me.
I roll up wads and wads of tissue to make a makeshift pad and as I do I notice my hands are shaking. Heart is catching up to head. Suddenly it’s not about me, my knickers, my stuck-in-the-work-loos location. It’s my baby. Is my baby still my baby, or has it gone? Has it already left me? Can it be saved? Can I do something in this exact moment to help it? I don’t know what that would be. I need help. Panic sets in.
Almost on autopilot, I pull up my ruined knickers with their tissue wads, fasten my jeans, flush, wash my shaking hands, walk to my office, grab my bag and leave, walking straight past the team whooping and cheering. I can vaguely hear them asking me where I’m going or shouting my name as I get in my car, but it’s as if I’m underwater and I can’t make out their exact words. Right now, I don’t care. I don’t even turn my head to acknowledge their shouts. I’m not me right now, I’m not ‘Robin Wilde, Natalie’s wingman’, not ‘Robin Wilde, nicest woman in the office’. No, I’m Robin Wilde and I need to save my baby. I turn on the engine and, without thinking, I drive to Auntie Kath’s.
I knock on her bright red door and stand motionless with the same blank expression I’ve had on my face for the past twenty minutes. I still feel nothing. It’s like I’ve put every fibre of my mind and body on hold to protect myself, but the second she opens the door and I see her face and smell her 1980s Giorgio Beverly Hills scent I lose it. In her dusky purple crocheted cardigan over the top of a lacy mustard shirt that clashes entirely with her chunky green glass beaded necklace, she is the most welcome sight I can imagine. All at once, it hits me and I can barely stand. The sky feels like it’s falling in, every ounce of feeling I’ve ever felt in my whole life seems to well up behind the bones of my face, and I let out a huge animalistic cry and fall sobbing into her arms, trying urgently to say, ‘The baby, the baby.’
I don’t know how long I stand there but by the time I pull away, Kath is crying too. I’ve been ushered over the threshold into the hallway and Kath is holding me tightly, stroking my hair and hushing me. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right my love,’ she says over and over until my heavy tears turn to dry sobs and I’m just heaving through the pain in my heart. Heart has fully caught up and heart knows.
IT IS THE WORST day of my life. After being driven to the doctor’s surgery where Kath insisted I see the midwife, despite not having an appointment, we have our fears confirmed. I’m having a miscarriage.
‘It’s very common this early on,’ the midwife says in what I assume she thinks is a comforting tone. I nod blankly, not knowing the words for how I’m supposed to respond. In the end, Kath takes the lead, thanking her for her time and asking her what we do now. After being told we just have to let the pregnancy pass and that I should rest, Kath accepts some ‘helpful’ leaflets and walks me back to her car. Through all the pain and haze I notice the midwife says, ‘let the pregnancy pass’ and not ‘the baby’. She’s deliberately not saying ‘baby’ to make it easier for me. I want to scream at her to recognise that my baby is gone and even if it is very common, I’m not just having a medical experience, my heart is breaking.
We drive home to my house, Kath arranges to collect Lyla from school and I crawl into bed, curl up and cry.
I cry for so many reasons. I cry for the immediate loss I feel, and for the loss I know I will feel when I have to tell people my news and pretend I’m ‘fine’, regurgitating the ‘it’s very common this early in pregnancy’ line. I cry for the physical pain I’m starting to feel and what that means for the life inside me. I cry for the life I won’t be giving to Lyla. She never even knew that for a short while she was a big sister; she never even touched on the joy that was to come to her. I cry for the guilt I feel, such intense, immense guilt for not loving this baby, my baby, from the very second I found out. All those lost days thinking the worst and not embracing each second. I cry just because I’m crying. This is an emptiness like no other. The Emptiness I felt last year in those lonely single-mum-dom days seems only a scratch on the surface compared to the depth of The Emptiness now.
TWO DAYS LATER AND little has changed. I can’t imagine happiness ever flowing into my life again. I can’t imagine sunny days or laughter. It will just be this pain always. I’m broken, mentally and what feels like physically, too. Nobody tells you what a miscarriage feels like. It’s brutal. The heavy bleeding that I keep having to change pads for is a constant reminder of what my body is losing. The cramps take my breath away. The physical pain is less than the pain in my heart, though. Far less.
Kath has stayed at our house, called work for me and told Lyla I have a very bad stomach upset. Lyla hasn’t questioned this but has come up every so often to sit next to me in bed, cuddling up to watch vlogs of people opening Kinder eggs on the iPad and to tell me she loves me. Her innocent gestures of love are the only things that lift me at all.
I can see Kath’s love all around me. The way she comes in in the morning to draw my curtains, open a window and place a warm cup of tea on the bedside table, or the way she carefully French-plaits Lyla’s hair and makes sure her socks are pulled right up so she looks smart for school. The way she busies herself downstairs but pops up every so often with a tray of food or the offer of a ‘little drive to perk you up’, which I decline both days. I can see all her love, but Lyla’s love can be almost tangibly fe
lt. She has no reason to love me so hard, she doesn’t know the hurt I’m living in, but she freely pours her affections on me with no basis or expectation for anything other than her mother’s love in return. I pour love back. I love her for everything she is and everything I have lost. My maternal heart aches with love for both my babies, and the only thing that will soothe this feeling is to hold Lyla close. I smell her hair, listen to her chatter and praise her enthusiastically for the ‘Get Well Soon’ card she’s made me by cutting out pictures she thinks I’ll like from magazines (handbags, food, a poodle) and drawing me and her smiling next to our ‘new things’.
Like I did last year with The Emptiness, I shield her. I dry my eyes before she comes home from school, sit up in bed, smile when she bounds in and tell her my tummy feels much better every time she asks. Lying almost feels good. I want to believe it and lose myself in that lie. I cling to it like a life raft in a sea of misery.
EIGHTEEN
ON THE THIRD DAY, Kath comes in with warm Nutella toast and a cup of tea, and instead of leaving, she sits down on the end of the bed.
‘Lovey, it’s time to get up. You can’t stay here forever,’ she says with a tilted head and kind eyes. Today, though it’s starting to be summery outside, she is wearing a green knitted jumper with bits of red tinselly wool stitched into it and a long navy pleated skirt. I love that Kath just wears what she wants, seasons be damned. I wish I could have her to-hell-with-it attitude more often.
‘I can’t,’ I say quietly, looking at my plate of toast.
‘You can. You think you can’t, but I know you can.’ She places a hand lovingly on my leg.
Wilde About the Girl Page 11