by Carmen Reid
Chapter Twelve
She could still name the date when it had all started to unravel. April the 3rd had started so absolutely typically with Dennis leaving early for his office in the City while she got the boys ready for the school run. Denny, then six, and Tom only four, in their tiny grey flannel shorts, blazers, caps and brown satchels for the precious private day school they attended.
She remembered being behind the wheel of the sleek black Range Rover spinning along the green and lovely country lanes with her two sons chattering in the back and she'd felt happy, really happy for the first time in ages.
She'd not long turned 26 and she was 11 weeks pregnant with the baby she'd wanted for two years now. It still seemed such a fresh miracle to be pregnant again. Last year she had forced Dennis to come with her to see a specialist, as she'd become convinced Tom's difficult birth had somehow left her infertile.
In fact it turned out that Dennis's sperm count was faltering. The doctor had told him to cut down the stress, cigarettes and booze. But Dennis had shrugged the advice off, saying business was at a critical stage, he couldn't slow up now, needed a drink to relax. In fact, he had started to work even longer hours in the London office, had taken on yet more new clients and had stressed and worried about them all, although the money seemed to be piling in.
But still somehow, almost three months ago now, the magic had just happened. Dennis was pleased for her of course, but she could hardly contain the happiness she felt about it. She couldn't wait to have a baby in the house again. Please, please, a girl. And this time it was going to be different: no bottle-feeding, no leaving the baby to cry in the night, none of the small miseries Dennis had inflicted on her and her boys 'for their own good'.
A new baby would at last punctuate the busy boredom of her days when the boys were at school. Dennis hadn't wanted her to go out to work, he'd made that clear when they married – her, in a soft lacy dress, vaguely embarrassed that she was already obviously pregnant with Denny.
So, Evelyn had stayed home, looked after the children and cooked and shopped and entertained and decorated their progression of larger and larger Surrey houses with taste. She'd held dinner parties, joined the ladies who lunched and done all the little chores (with the help of a cleaner of course) that made up running the household. Without ever knowing if it was what she wanted, she'd turned herself into a model, polished and perfectly organized, Home Counties wife. But since Tom had started school in September, a deep boredom with it all had crept up on her. She knew exactly what she was going to be doing this week, next week and for ever... so she longed and longed for the baby to give her a new sense of purpose. At some point on that drive, bowling along the narrow roads, she must have felt the merest hint of a trickle, down there, between her legs. But she hadn't paid it any attention.
She'd driven into the village to do the morning's shopping at the butcher, delicatessen and greengrocer's. She'd picked up the dry cleaning, popped her head round the door of the hairdresser's to book an appointment. All the usual errands.
Back home, it was almost lunchtime. She'd unloaded everything from the car, put it all in the fridge and cupboards and finally headed upstairs to the bathroom. It was there that she'd seen the sizeable splash of dark red blood.
She'd felt strangely calm about it. No, she wasn't bleeding any more, she'd told the doctor over the phone. Get some rest, he'd advised her, take it easy, lots of women bleed in early pregnancy, it's probably nothing. But he warned her to call back if the bleeding got heavier or if she began to feel pain.
She'd managed to eat lunch almost cheerfully and made the few calls she'd been planning. Then she'd persuaded herself to go and lie down and try to get some sleep before it was time to pick her sons up again at four.
An hour or so later, she'd woken up feeling groggy with dull, cramping pains in her stomach. She had pushed back the duvet and been horrified to find herself lying in a pool of blood. It had soaked through her trousers and onto the sheet and duvet cover. Shocked and panicky, she'd rung the doctor from the bedside phone and he'd ordered her straight to hospital.
But she'd had the necessary calls to make first. Her fingers had shaken as she'd dialled the boys' babysitter, Mrs Wilson, and asked her to collect them from school and look after them until she got home.
'Is everything OK, dear?' Mrs Wilson had asked.
'I don't know yet. I have to go in for a checkup. I'm not sure how long it will take, but I'll make sure Dennis is home early,' she'd said, not knowing how she would persuade Dennis to get out of his office ahead of schedule, even in an emergency. She'd punched in his number and listened to his secretary on the other end.
'Mr Leigh is out of the office meeting clients for a late lunch, Mrs Leigh.'
'Do you know where?' She was anticipating no response to his bleeper, as usual.
'Well... according to the schedule, it's with a Mr Maxwell at the Savoy.'
'Thanks.' She'd hung up and dialled his bleeper first, leaving as urgent-sounding a message as possible, then she called the restaurant: it had no booking under Leigh or Maxwell. The waiter, sensing her agitation, had offered to go and ask for Mr Dennis Leigh at each of the tables.
She'd waited out the long minutes this took, watching the folded white towel she was sitting on turn red as she'd wondered how she was going to get to the hospital without leaking blood everywhere.
'No madam.' The waiter was back on the line: 'There's no-one here by that name, I'm sorry.'
She'd hung up and immediately forgotten about Dennis, her mind filling up with worry about the bleeding and the hospital trip. She could feel great gouts of blood flowing out of her now. It was ominously dark and she was beginning to feel scared. In the bathroom, she'd stuffed a wedge of toilet paper into her pants, then pulled on dark blue jeans, socks and loafers, before calling a taxi.
Waiting for the car, she'd filled her handbag with things she thought she might need: a magazine to read, more toilet paper, purse, keys. It hadn't occurred to her she might be there overnight.
By the time the taxi was snaking along the busy road to the hospital, blood was seeping out of her jeans and starting to pool in the folds of her raincoat. The driver took her straight to the A&E entrance and wouldn't accept the note she shakily held out for him.
She'd walked across the tarmac, bent double with the pain of the stomach cramps, white-faced and in shock now. When the nurse at the reception saw what a mess Evelyn was in, she ushered her into a side room to sit on a trolley while the forms were filled out.
'A doctor will be here soon,' Evelyn was told, but an age of waiting had followed. Lying on the trolley, she'd watched the blood seep out of her clothes, felt it wet her socks, run between her toes.
Finally, she had been wheeled up to the ward, feet first through the endless, pale green corridors. In the small exam room, a doctor and nurse in those silly paper hats, green pyjamas and plastic aprons had attended to her with a level of quiet hurry which had made her feel even more frightened.
She'd heard herself asking over and over, 'What's happening? Am I going to lose the baby? I need to phone my husband.'
They'd given her only reassuring noises, not answers, as they did the blood pressure, temperature and other checks and helped her out of her sodden, blood-soaked clothes and tied a hospital nightie round her. The hot flow did not stop: she'd felt the sticky puddle growing underneath her, soaking into the back of the nightdress.
At the doctor's request she'd put her bloodstained legs up into the stirrups, but reluctantly; she had not wanted to be examined in these circumstances at all.
Then came the matter-of-fact words she had so hoped not to hear: 'Your cervix is dilated, I'm afraid you're miscarrying. I'll need to get a better look.'
Out came the speculum to crank her open. Lying there on the examination bench, totally exposed to the bright strip lights above, she'd felt the beads of sweat form on her upper lip and armpits.
The doctor began the examination.
The sac . .. the sac .. . She barely had time to register that he meant the baby in its little sac of fluid, before the terrible prodding began. It wasn't painful, but it was such a violation of the most tender and secret place. It had felt like sex and like rape, like abortion and like birth all at once.
As he fiddled and prodded, she had not been able to stop herself thinking about the birth she had imagined for this baby, in a warm pool with candles and lavender oil and love. But here she was in a small, hot cubicle having it pulled out of her with tongs, with rivers of blood, with two absolute strangers whose names she hadn't even picked up.
She'd begun to weep then, head flat back against the bed, arms gripping the sides, the tears running straight down into her ears as the nurse stroked her hair with a crackly plastic-gloved hand.
I'm sorry,' the doctor had said. 'I don't want to hurt you, maybe we should just take you down to theatre and do this under anaesthetic'
'No, no,' she'd insisted, clinging to some hope that if she just stayed conscious, maybe she could hang onto this baby after all.
He'd probed in with the tongs again.
'Stop, please stop,' she'd asked him as another contraction moved through her, squeezing a fresh stream of blood onto the bed.
He'd told her to try standing up, so somehow, with the nurse helping her, she'd got to her feet and had stood there, loose-kneed, clinging to the bed, feeling the blood run down her legs. Then she'd wished she could faint and be out of this, but her mind was stubbornly conscious.
She was ushered into the adjoining toilet where the doctor put a cardboard dish over the toilet seat and told her passing water might loosen the sac. Racked with sobs she tried to pee, while inwardly clenching every muscle she could to try and hold onto this baby. But the flow had started and she'd felt an involuntary, entirely unwanted contraction inside until – plop – like a smooth and painless birth, she knew her body had pushed the baby out.
She'd stood up and did not need to look to know that her baby was behind her in a cardboard dish, but horrified, she'd turned and looked anyway. All she could see was a surprisingly big bubble floating in a bright red pool of blood and urine. The nurse had caught her glance and had quickly thrown a paper towel over the bowl, then led her to the bed, where a drip was put in her arm and she was helped into the kind of papery pants and sanitary towels she remembered from the maternity ward. So many echoes of giving birth, she'd thought, just no baby waiting for her in a little plastic cot to make the ordeal worth while.
The nurse had sponged the worst of the drying bloodstains from her legs and tried to help her to her feet. But she had buckled on contact with the floor.
'You wait on the bed, I'll get a chair.'
So then Evelyn, in a backless nightie with her pants stuffed full of uncomfortable wadding, had been wheeled along with her drip to a hospital bed, feeling more wounded, hopeless and bereft than she had ever done before.
'I have to make some phone calls,' she'd managed to tell the nurse. 'Arrangements for my boys.'
The payphone had been wheeled to her bedside and she had rung home first. Denny had picked up.
She'd felt tearful just to hear him say hello, but he was breezy and unconcerned that she would be away for the night.
'Are you and Tom being good boys?' she'd asked.
'Yes. Can we come and visit you?'
'No silly, I'll be back tomorrow. I miss you lots and lots . . . Do you think you could get Mrs Wilson for me?'
After Mrs Wilson had assured her not to worry, she would stay on overnight if necessary – no, there hadn't been any word from Dennis – Evelyn had wanted to speak to Tom.
'Hello, Mummy, where are you?' He'd sounded anxious.
'Hello, muffin.'
He'd giggled a little at that.
'Mummy has to be away tonight, I'm very sorry but I'll be back home tomorrow.'
'Will you take us to school in the morning?' There was a wobble in his voice.
'I might not be back that early, but I will definitely, definitely pick you up from school and we'll drive to the cafe and have cakes. Would that be a good idea?'
'Yes,' came the whispered reply. 'Is Daddy coming home soon?'
'I'm going to phone him now and he'll be home as soon as he can. And I'll be back tomorrow ... I promise ... OK?'
'OK, Mummy. And Mummy, we planted seeds today in pots.'
'Oh, that's great. I love you loads and loads...'
'Bye.' He hung up abruptly, the way little kids do, but this evening Evelyn couldn't bear it and hid her face in the sheet to cry.
There was still no word from Dennis. She would have to try him again. So she'd messaged his bleeper: 'Dennis, I'm in the County General, ward 7. Mandy's at home with the children, but when are you coming home? Where the hell are you?' She'd paused, unsure how to end the message, 'I'll be fine,' she'd added. 'But I've lost the baby.'
The receiver back in its cradle, she'd begun to cry again, big heaving sobs which she'd wanted to hide from the other women in the beds beside her, but she couldn't. It was already 6p.m. She couldn't face the food being wheeled round the ward, so she lay in bed, eyes fixed to the wall, too shocked to sleep.
The words Tost the baby' had played over and over in her mind. 'Lost' hadn't seemed right... as if she'd mislaid it, dropped it... couldn't find it. In fact, she'd known exactly where it was, in its bubble in the grey cardboard dish, or maybe in a lab dish by now, or incinerated with the rubbish. Dreadful thoughts, but she hadn't been able to turn them off as she lay back against the bank of cushions and watched the ward, watched the clock hands move slowly and felt tears slide down her face, noiselessly now.
It had been almost 9p.m. when Dennis finally appeared.
She remembered how slightly strange he'd looked as he'd sat down on the bed beside her: kind of nervous, agitated and a little dishevelled, although he was still in his pinstripe suit with a vibrant pink shirt and navy polka dot tie.
He'd kissed her on the forehead and asked how she was and as she'd told him what had happened he'd put his arm awkwardly round her, constrained by the seams on his suit.
'I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't here,' he'd said.
'I couldn't get you. I tried everything,' she'd told him.
'I was at the Savoy, I don't know why the bleeper never goes off in there.'
Evelyn had realized he was lying.
'Were you there all afternoon?' she'd asked, wondering why she wanted to hear him lie some more.
'Yes,' he'd answered, without any further detail.
But she'd pushed him for more, having no idea what to do with her secret information that he was lying. What did it mean?
She'd asked who he'd met, what they'd eaten, where they'd been sitting – as many questions as she could think of.
'Is something wrong?' she'd asked, confused by all this untruth and agitation, as she watched him fiddle with his cufflinks distractedly.
'I can't tell you right now,' he'd said finally, 'It doesn't seem very fair.'