Playing Her Cards Right

by Rosa Temple

  Once Cassandra had left the building and I was over the shock of how easily my former enemy had become a reformed character I was finally able to get back down to some work. In between times I thought about the antenatal appointment scheduled for the next day.

  How I had been able to keep the secret until my first appointment I had no idea but that would all change in twenty-four hours’ time. I couldn’t wait.

  Chapter 12

  The Appointment

  Anthony was more excited and nervous than I was. We took a taxi to the hospital and worked our way around the maze of departments before finding the antenatal unit. I was walking slowly. The appointment letter had said to drink a litre of water because there would be a scan and it worked best on a full bladder. I drank two for good measure. My bladder was at full capacity and any cough or sneeze was likely to bring on a TENA Lady moment.

  I squeezed Anthony’s hand as we waited, hoping they’d call my name quickly as I wasn’t sure how long I could last.

  ‘I can’t sit still,’ I whispered to Anthony.

  ‘Nervous?’ he whispered back.

  ‘No, I need to go … badly.’

  In an angry whisper he said, ‘I told you not to drink that extra litre.’

  ‘I just wanted to make sure they could see the scan.’

  ‘Of course they can see the scan. The equipment is made specially for that. You always go over the top.’

  ‘I just wanted to be on the safe side,’ I whispered like a wimp.

  He didn’t whisper back.

  ‘And I bet none of these women drank a full litre,’ I whispered to Anthony behind my hand. ‘They all look so calm.’

  Then someone called my name. A nurse, four foot high with boobs the size of a small planet.

  ‘Magenta Bright?’

  ‘Here,’ I said leaping up and remembering in time I had two litres of water to keep in place.

  ‘This way, please,’ she said.

  Anthony and I followed the nurse down a corridor off the main waiting room. A midwife talked medical history to us for ages and worked out the due date.

  ‘But the dating scan will confirm the due date,’ the midwife said.

  ‘When will the scan be?’ I asked. My leg was crossed over my thigh and my foot was jiggling so hard to help me keep bladder control it was tapping the table like Morse code.

  ‘Nothing to be nervous about,’ she said looking at my fidgeting leg. Anthony put his hand on it.

  Next was a series of form filling, blood pressure, and temperature checks and still no one had done a scan. I was on the verge of tears. I couldn’t hold out much longer. The midwife talked about healthy eating, pelvic floor exercises, and asked if I would be attending antenatal classes. She said I should consider my birth plan, too.

  ‘And here,’ she said, handing me a plastic carrier bag with a Pampers advertisement on the front. ‘This is your pregnancy greeting pack. It’s full of freebies, fliers, and coupons for most of the baby bits and bobs you’ll be spending your hard-earned on.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I took the bag, put it beside me, and crossed my leg. My foot start jiggling against the table again. Anthony placed a hand on my thigh again, too.

  ‘I wonder if I could go to the loo,’ I asked the nurse who had just taken blood from me.

  ‘If you’re desperate, yes, but try to hold back as much as you can.’

  ‘Thank you so much.’

  I bowed as I ran out of the room, Anthony shaking his head at me as I left.

  On my return, bladder returned to a reasonable size, it was time for the scan.

  ‘I warmed the gel up as best I could,’ said the sonographer, ‘but it might still be a bit on the cool side.’

  I climbed onto the bed in the dimmed light of the sonographer’s small room. I lay back and looked at the black screen to my right. The sonographer tucked scratchy blue paper into the top of my knickers before rubbing gel onto my tummy and began tapping on the keyboard below the screen. It seemed to come to life and I could see a series of blurred lines and dots. Anthony held my hand as the sonographer rolled the probe over my tummy. There was nothing to see for ages until a series of white clouds appeared against the black screen and I got ready to look at this tadpole-shaped baby doing terrific things in my uterus.

  The sonographer rolled the probe over my tummy for a while longer, a puzzled look on her face.

  ‘This your first?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, cautiously.

  ‘Are you sure about your dates?’

  ‘Completely. Why?’

  ‘Not sure, it’s just that … hold on.’

  She applied more gel. She continued to probe my tummy, pressing very hard and at weird angles so that my bladder complained. I pulled a face at Anthony but his eyes were now glued to the screen.

  ‘Is-is there a problem?’ he asked the sonographer in a soft voice.

  ‘Well, I’ve found an embryo but it doesn’t look as though it progressed more than about six weeks. And … I’m very sorry; there isn’t a heartbeat.’

  No one spoke. I drew in a deep breath and squeezed Anthony’s hand tighter. He covered my hand with both of his.

  ‘You’re sure?’ he asked. I couldn’t speak.

  ‘I’m afraid I am. I’m very sorry, Magenta. I could try an internal scan but it doesn’t really seem –’

  ‘Could we?’ I reached over to grab her hand. ‘Just try. Just to be sure.’

  ‘You’ll need to pop to the loo first,’ she said. Her face and her demeanour offered very little hope.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, eager to get up, wipe the stupid gel off my tummy. We’d get to the bottom of this. Maybe I’d drank too much water and it was obscuring everything rather than being helpful. Why didn’t I just follow the directions in the first place? I must learn to follow instructions to the letter in future, I promised to no one in particular.

  ‘Magenta,’ Anthony said reaching for me before I could leave the small, dark room. ‘You sure you want to … want to …?’

  ‘Look it’ll be fine,’ I said waving him off. I was at the door, opening it and letting in light from the corridor. Anthony looked pale. ‘Sit tight, okay? I’ll be right back.’

  Why is it there is always a queue for the loo when you’re at your most desperate? There was a line of pregnant women and only two cubicles. I tutted loudly and two women with huge bumps turned to look at me. I was desperate to get back to that damned sonographer and prove her wrong. I’d ask for a different scanning machine when I got back, maybe a second opinion if necessary.

  Back in the room, the dimness felt eerie. Had it been that dark a minute ago? I climbed back onto the bed. Neither the sonographer nor Anthony wanted to make eye contact with me.

  ‘If you could raise your knees and relax for me, Magenta.’

  My eyes were on the screen again, willing a heartbeat to materialize, a foetus of eleven weeks and not six to be on that bloody screen. But it didn’t happen. All that uncomfortable and mentally draining internal scan revealed was that the sonographer had been right all the time. No heartbeat.

  ‘But why?’ I asked.

  ‘I know it’s upsetting,’ the sonographer said. ‘But it happens in more cases than people realize. Sometimes a pregnancy just isn’t viable. We never always know the reason. But it happens. I’m sorry. If you get dressed I’ll call the doctor to talk to you.’

  For the next few moments I moved around in a dreamlike state. I sat in a small waiting room, not the main one as before, not bothering to wipe my tears away. Anthony did his best to dab at my cheeks with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. We weren’t prepared for tears so we had no tissues and no one came along to offer us one.

  The doctor hadn’t shown up and an absolute age had gone by. I could hear the nurses paging away like mad after the first half hour.

  ‘She shouldn’t have to wait this long,’ one was saying. Another agreed.

  �
�So,’ the doctor said when she finally sat me in a stark-looking office with a metal desk and an examining table behind a screen. ‘I see you’ve had a missed miscarriage?’

  I said nothing. She went on.

  ‘What could happen now is you’ll start to bleed, might even happen tomorrow; it goes like that sometimes. We’ll schedule a scan. You can decide then if you want wait for a complete miscarriage or if you’d prefer for us to manage it for you. Most women opt for this. It’s entirely up to you but it would involve an operation under general anaesthetic. Do you have any questions for me?’

  She looked distractedly up from her notes in my and Anthony’s general direction. I looked away and Anthony shook his head at the doctor.

  ‘If you could let the nurses know you’re coming back for a scan, then. We’ll, er, book you in and take care of things for you, Magenta.’ She smiled, I think. My eyes were glassy again and I looked towards the door.

  She continued to speak by which time I hoped Anthony was paying attention because everything the doctor said swam around the periphery of my understanding and floated out of the window that was open and causing a huge draft. I tightened my scarf.

  ‘Can we go?’ I asked Anthony. He looked at the doctor.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t have any questions? Either of you?’ the doctor asked.

  I shook my head and we left the hospital. I stood by a low wall, the huge car park and hospital behind us, while Anthony waved down cab after cab, none of them stopping.

  ‘They haven’t got a light on, Anthony,’ I moaned at him. ‘It’s a waste of time.’

  ‘One’ll come along; let’s just hang on.’

  ‘What will we do with that?’

  I pointed at the plastic bag in Anthony’s hand. He’d held on to the pregnancy package all this time.

  ‘I’ll bin it,’ he said.

  Anthony walked a few feet away to dump our swag, as we’d both been calling it up until the scan, into a bin. While he did that a taxi with its light on went zooming by. I began to cry again.

  Chapter 13

  The Turnaround

  Needless to say I didn’t go in to the office the next day, Friday. Instead, I was back at the hospital for a scan and booked in to have a D&C procedure first thing on Monday morning. It was a simple operation. It wasn’t going to last for more than fifteen minutes and I’d be home in the afternoon. I hoped by Monday afternoon to have come down to earth so I could start dealing with things a bit better.

  Anthony had stayed at home with me on the day of the scan, not going into work either. We were both in a daze and just didn’t know what to say to each other. I said very little apart from to grunt when Anthony asked if I wanted tea or coffee or something to eat. I didn’t eat but managed a peppermint tea.

  ‘We’re supposed to be at your mother’s this evening,’ said Anthony. ‘Should I cancel?’

  It was already six in the evening and we were due there at seven-thirty.

  ‘I was the one who asked everyone to get together,’ I mumbled. ‘I should be there.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I’ll say you’re not well.’

  ‘Not well? That’s an understatement.’

  ‘I know that but I didn’t think you’d want me to tell them over the phone.’

  ‘You were the one who told me we shouldn’t say anything to anyone until we were sure.’ I looked out of the living room window at the house opposite. There was a window box on the ground floor and just one light on downstairs. It was dark outside, only the street lamps for light.

  Anthony came up behind me and held my upper arms. I could feel his breath in my hair.

  ‘It was a good thing we did wait,’ he said. ‘Now we have a choice. We could just keep it to ourselves.’

  ‘It was as if you knew it’d all go wrong,’ I said, not turning around.

  ‘How could I have known?’

  ‘Well if you didn’t then maybe you jinxed it.’

  Anthony pulled away. I looked over my shoulder at him and saw him about to storm off but, instead, he swung back to face me.

  ‘How could you say such a thing, Magenta? Missed miscarriages are very common; they said so. We were just unlucky. How could you say that …?’

  Anthony didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he rushed to grab me because I’d sunk to my knees onto the floor, tears pouring from my eyes.

  ‘Magenta.’ He held me tight. ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said once I’d stopped choking. ‘I didn’t mean what I said. I know you didn’t jinx it. I just can’t … I just can’t believe this has happened. I can’t.’

  Anthony helped me to the sofa. We sat close together and he held me the whole time I cried. After I’d stopped I rested my head on his shoulder, whimpering like a lost pup.

  ‘I’ll call your Mother,’ Anthony said after a while.

  ‘No.’ I sat up. ‘I have to face people. I can do this.’

  ‘Are you going to tell them?’ he asked.

  I looked at Anthony, pulling my hair from my face.

  ‘I don’t want to spoil what I hoped was going to be a great night,’ I said. ‘It’s the run-up to Christmas and …. I think … Let’s just deal with this ourselves. I don’t even know how I could talk about it to Mother or my sisters without breaking down, anyway. We won’t stay long. I’ll bring the dress over and we’ll talk about the wedding and then we’ll leave.’

  Anthony placed a hand on my thigh. ‘Are you sure? Is that the plan? We say nothing?’

  I nodded. It was seven-fifteen. We had been in the living room for hours and hadn’t put on a light when dusk came. I went up the dark staircase to the bathroom. When I clicked the light on I had to squint against it. I washed my face with cold water and tried to get rid of my bloodshot eyes.

  We drove over to my parents’ in silence. Once the doors to their St John’s Wood mansion opened, I put on my best smile.

  The smile lasted all evening and disappeared the moment we left the house and it didn’t return for days to come.

  It was December, bitterly cold, or so it seemed to me. I managed to acquire a lot of aches and pains in my body over the weekend, probably tension, and I didn’t want to get out of bed. When Monday morning came around Anthony and I got to the hospital by seven a.m. and from the waiting room I called Riley to say I was unwell and that I wasn’t coming in for the foreseeable. She offered to come over and make me chicken soup.

  ‘But, Riley, do you know how to make chicken soup? I’m pretty sure you have to boil up a chicken and make stock up out of the bones.’

  ‘Eugh!’ she declared. ‘Well maybe I can pick up a tin at Waitrose.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘If I need soup I can ask Anthony to pop out for me.’

  ‘Just keep warm,’ said Riley. ‘I’ll hold the fort.’

  Riley sent constant texts during the operation, asking about this and that. What to say to the buyers of the men’s retailer in Amsterdam? Who should she speak to about the stack of zips and buckles that appeared at the office instead of at the factory? I looked at them all in the taxi home after the procedure. She wasn’t going to cope well without me but I couldn’t imagine for one second going back to work.

  ‘Don’t keep checking the phone,’ Anthony said as we arrived back home at about four in the afternoon.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. Anyway, I’m off to bed.’

  I walked straight upstairs and got under the duvet in my clothes. Hours went by and I spent the next few days answering and making calls from beneath my duvet or from the bath. I may as well have gone in to work but it was just hard facing people. Anthony didn’t go back to the gallery but constantly berated me for trying to work when I was obviously falling apart.

  In many respects it was a blessing I’d kept the pregnancy a secret because it meant not having to broadcast the bad news, causing me to break down in tears every time I told someone. That
was the only plus to the whole affair. The family gathering at my parents’ house the Friday before had literally been to tell them about the wedding venue and a chance for my sisters to check out how far I’d got with Mother’s wedding dress – no extra surprise announcements.

  Mother had suspected something was wrong despite my best act at being a happy-go-lucky wedding planner and wedding dress designer.

  ‘You are looking a bit tired,’ she’d said that evening. I was doing a fitting in Mother’s room, believing that the ten minutes of holding a cold icepack on my eyes had done enough to reduce the puffy eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have insisted on you making the dress. I don’t want you to be run-down.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I’d said. ‘I’m keeping busy but I’m on top of things. I’m taking a few days off and I’m going to work from home.’

  ‘You just don’t look yourself, though, darling,’ she’d said.

  ‘I promise,’ I told her, ‘I’ll be just fine.’

  But I wasn’t fine. I stayed off work for the whole week and by the weekend I was a basket case. Anthony and I were barely speaking. It happened almost organically. A silent form of anger on my part that I felt for Anthony but couldn’t explain what it was, where it was coming from or why I should have it. He just annoyed me, somehow. I was in bits and he hadn’t cried or said he was upset, not once. He was tetchy because I couldn’t go five minutes without running off to the bedroom or the bathroom, any room he wasn’t in, for a good sob. He said it was breaking his heart to see me like that.

  On the phone to everyone else, be it Riley, a client, or the family I remained the ever-bubbly and bright Magenta, life always in some kind of tangle but who was equally capable of detangling it in some way or other. So everyone thought I was fine.

  I was far from fine. I had never faced any of these so-called ‘tangles’ without back-up of some kind. For any life-changing problems I’d always gone to my Nana Clementine but she was no longer with us. I wasn’t sure what kind of advice she would have given me about how to deal with a miscarriage.

  I had Mother, of course, and though I didn’t always go to her with my problems, I found this very hard to talk to her about, especially since I didn’t come right out with it when it happened and days of keeping my grief to myself somehow made it harder to share it with her. I’d told her I was okay, just busy, but I insisted I could cope. She and Father were still on a high about getting remarried and I knew, from classified information, that she and Father had been at it like rabbits ever since they announced they were getting back together after their five-year divorce. All I wanted to share with them was the excitement of the wedding. It was my happy space and I didn’t want to cloud that.