by Dani Atkins
‘I guess not. Although it’s been twenty years or so since they actually came into the loo with me.’ I couldn’t believe how much better I felt knowing that Max now shared the secret that had been burning inside me for the last week. My grandmother had always said ‘a problem shared is a problem halved’ and I don’t think I had ever fully appreciated what she meant by that, until now.
While I disappeared into the bathroom with the rectangular box, Max used the time to do some quick research on his laptop. I returned with the small stick, and placed it carefully on his chest of drawers to await the results.
‘It says here that you can get false readings on some of these kits,’ he said. He shook his head at the screen. ‘Well, that’s no good. We need to know for sure, one way or the other.’ He snapped shut the lid of his laptop and went over to stare at the stick. ‘Nothing happening yet,’ he reported.
I was sitting on the edge of his bed, head down, my attention riveted on the weave of the denim in my jeans.
‘Maybe we should have put it in the light, or somewhere warm?’ he suggested.
‘I don’t think that makes any difference,’ I said, my voice resigned.
‘God. This waiting sucks, doesn’t it?’ Max declared, looking at his watch. ‘Thirty seconds gone. Is that all?’
‘You’re really into this, aren’t you?’ I said, looking up at him, bent low over the white indicator stick, and peering at the tiny plastic window.
He straightened and looked at me with just a tinge of sadness. ‘Given the way things are, this is probably going to be the only time in my life I’m ever in this situation. It’s the closest I’m likely to get to finding out what it’s like to discover you’re going to be a daddy.’
I couldn’t help myself. I burst into huge gulping sobs, and he rushed across the room to my side and scooped me into his arms. He let me cry into his shoulder, patting my back and smoothing down my hair at the back of my neck in gentling strokes.
‘Shh, shh. Please don’t cry. You don’t even know what the result is yet.’
I sniffed, but said nothing. Because I knew. I’d done no other test; I hadn’t seen a single doctor or nurse, but I knew that within me something was changing. There was life in me.
‘Oh. Time’s up!’ cried Max, easing me gently off his lap and racing across the room. Apart from the quiet ticking of an old-fashioned alarm clock, his bedroom was silent, as he bent over the dresser. Very slowly, my old and dearest friend straightened up and turned to me. Never before, in all the years I had known him, had I seen that expression on his face.
‘There are two blue lines,’ he said, his voice subdued.
Of course there were.
Ally
I didn’t turn around to look at the test, which I had placed on the back of the cistern behind me. Instead I read the various inscriptions carved into the wood of the toilet door, as though they were a riveting bestseller. By the time one-hundred-and-eighty seconds had passed, I could tell you who everyone who had visited the cubicle before me was madly in love with.
I got to my feet and reached for the test stick. My feelings were the exact opposite to what they’d been eight years earlier. Then, I had been praying for the test to be negative; this time I was desperate to see just one word in the small grey window. Pregnant.
I thought at first that I’d simply mis-timed the test; that it was the small flashing hour-glass still displayed in the corner of the screen. But when I lifted the stick and examined it more closely, I saw the hour-glass had been replaced by a tiny diagram of a book.
‘What?’ I cried aloud in the small tiled room. ‘You’ve got to be kidding me. A book?’ I peered closer. It was definitely a book. I snatched up the instruction sheet, which I clearly hadn’t studied nearly well enough, because I had no idea what this meant. It took only seconds to find my answer. ‘An error has occurred during testing.’ Error? What sort of error? How was it even remotely possible that I had done it wrong? It was hardly rocket science. I leaned back heavily against the cubicle door, the instruction sheet crumpled in my hand. ‘You should test again using a new test.’ I glared down at the failed device that had snatched away the lifeline I had wanted to throw to Joe.
‘I don’t have another test,’ I told it angrily, feeling hot tears of frustration burning in my eyes. ‘Nor the time or money to go and get one.’
I walked up the remaining flight of stairs to the ICU, feeling deflated. Charlotte had her back to me when I entered the Relatives’ Room, so I had no warning of the firestorm I was about to walk into, until she slowly turned around, my missing purse in her hand.
I was overwrought and tired, and I think that’s what made me slow to realise the implications of what was about to happen. My lips were parted, ready to ask her where she had found it, or to thank her, I’m not sure which. But she gave me no chance to speak first.
‘Were you ever going to tell him? Or me?’
‘I . . . what are you talking about?’ I asked stupidly, although I could already feel the thud of my heart pounding in my chest, as though it wanted to be somewhere far away from this room. I didn’t blame it, because so did the rest of me.
‘This, Ally. I’m talking about this,’ Charlotte declared dramatically, separating the two halves of my purse and turning it towards me, as though I might possibly need reminding that there was a photograph in there of my son, whose resemblance to his biological father was just this side of uncanny. ‘Your son Jake is David’s, isn’t he?’
I think for a single ridiculous millisecond I thought of denying it, but how could I? The proof was irrefutable. I nodded slowly, as the demons I had been running from for the last eight years finally caught up with me. In my head I could hear the voices of my parents, Max, even of Joe too, silently saying, ‘We told you this would happen.’
‘When . . . ? How . . . ? Why didn’t you . . . ?’ Charlotte seemed to have lost the ability to construct a fully-formed sentence, and I could hardly blame her. I watched the emotions running across her perfect face. Anger, pain and then something else, as one last dreadful thought occurred to her. ‘David. Does he know about this? Has he known all along?’
I shook my head vehemently. ‘No. Of course not. He knows nothing about it.’
There was relief in her eyes, but it didn’t stay there long, the anger pushed it away.
‘How could you do this? How could you keep this from him? He has a child. Your son is his flesh and blood, and yet you’ve kept it from him all these years. Do you have any idea what a difference this would have made?’
Now it was my turn to be angry. ‘How can you, of all people, ask me that? I know precisely how different everything would have been if I had told David of this.’ My chest was rising and falling with anger, and both of our voices were raised in a room where people usually spoke only in hushed whispers. ‘If David had known about this, you wouldn’t be his wife now . . . and I wouldn’t be Joe’s,’ I concluded sadly.
Charlotte looked as though she was going to deny my words. They were new and unfamiliar to her, but to me they were a long-chanted refrain. ‘We both know the kind of man David is. He would never have turned away from what he thought was the right thing to do. If I had told him that I was pregnant, he would have come back to me.’ I said it without false modesty or pride. It wasn’t a testimony to the love we had once shared that made me certain I was speaking the truth; it was a deeper knowledge of the man.
Charlotte looked at me for a very long time, and I could tell that she wanted more than anything to say I was wrong, that David would have let me go, that he would have been prepared to parent and support his son from a distance. But we both knew him better than that.
‘After what happened at the Snowflake Ball, I knew there was no going back,’ I said, feeling something like relief to finally have the seal broken on the secret I had hidden for so long. ‘There was no second chance for David and me; we were too broken. Our relationship was over, and even if neither of you realised it then
, your own was already beginning.’
There was acknowledgement in Charlotte’s eyes, and something else which made me wonder just how close they had been, even when David had still been mine. She seemed to physically shrug that memory aside, as she continued like an interrogator determined to learn the truth. ‘But you knew, on that night, you knew you were having his baby?’
I shook my head in denial. ‘No, not then. Not for many weeks later.’
Charlotte sank slowly onto one of the chairs, as though the weight of the revelations flying around the room had pressed her down in submission. ‘Does Joe know that Jake isn’t his?’
I think of everything that Charlotte had said, that was the one thing that shocked me the most. ‘Of course he does. I could never lie to him about that.’ I winced at the hypocrisy in my words, and knew I deserved Charlotte’s stinging retort.
‘Just to David, then,’ she said bitterly, as though the words were poison on her tongue. Her face changed then, and she looked so sad that part of me actually wanted to go to her. ‘Do you know how much he wants a child? Have you any idea at all how devastating it is not being able to give him one?’
There was nothing I could say, and even if I thought of something, I doubt I would have been able to get it past the lump of guilt that was lodged in my throat. I closed my eyes and heard the echoes of a long past conversation.
‘Ally, you have to tell him,’ Max had insisted.
‘No, I don’t.’
My head was lowered and Max had had to hunker down on the ground before me, forcing me to look at him. Ally, this is wrong. You know it is. David has a right to know. He’ll want to do the right thing.’
I lifted my head at that, my face awash with tears. ‘Don’t you think I know that? But it won’t be right, not for him or for me. Nor,’ I said, realising at last that there was another individual in this equation. Nor for the baby.’
Max shook his head, and I could tell he was torn between supporting me, and telling me I was making the most ridiculous and selfish decision of my life.
‘Don’t you see, this is precisely what his mother was certain I would try to do: that I’d try to trap him in some way. She had me pegged as a gold-digger from the first moment she saw me.’
‘What the fuck does it matter what his mother thinks? We know that’s not true. For Christ’s sake, David will know it’s not true. He knows you. He loves you.’
‘Loved,’ I said sadly, correcting the tense. ‘We loved each other, but now . . . now he has someone else, and whether you think I’m right or wrong, I’m going to do this by myself
‘You’re wrong,’ said Max firmly, and there was something in his voice that made me look deep into his eyes. I saw there were tears in them, and I loved him at that moment more than I ever had before. ‘You’re not alone.’ He gripped my hands tightly within his. And you never will be.’
Charlotte
‘Mrs Williams?’
I jumped at the summons. I hadn’t even heard the door open, much less notice the nurse standing in its frame, saying my name. The nurse eyed Ally and me with visible caution. It was hardly surprising, I’m sure our raised voices had carried out into the corridor. ‘Mr Beardsworth the cardiologist has just arrived. He’s with your husband now. If you’d like to come with me, I’m sure he’ll want to speak to you when he’s finished his examination.’
For one stupid and insane moment I wanted to say to her, ‘Actually, I’m in the middle of something here. Can I get back to you when I’m done?’ Obviously I said nothing of the sort, but I shot Ally a meaningful look, which I was pretty certain she could interpret. It said: We’re not done yet. This is far from over.
I was still shaking with reaction as the nurse led me down the corridor to a small, unoccupied office. I felt like an archaeologist who’d discovered something so dreadful, all I wanted to do was throw the soil back over it and pretend I had never found it at all.
David had a child. All these years when we had been hoping and trying for a baby . . . and he was already a father. He just never knew it. How could Ally have done something so unforgivable? And how was David going to react to the news? Was he even strong enough to be told? I guess I would know the answer to that one after the consultant had finished his examination.
Charlotte – Four Years Earlier
‘I think we should see another consultant.’
David paused for a moment before passing me the fresh glass of wine he had just poured out. ‘We’ve already seen three,’ he said carefully, taking a seat beside me on our white leather sofa, the one that would never see small sticky imprints of jam-covered fingers on its pristine surface. He reached for my hand and held it in his, as though the sting of his words could be lessened by our physical contact. ‘Maybe it’s time we finally accepted what each of them has told us.’
I shook my head, like the defiant child I would never be able to conceive myself. ‘There was something I saw the other day on the internet—’
‘Charlotte, no. Enough. You have to stop this.’ David’s cobalt-blue eyes were full of concern. ‘You’re not going to find some miracle answer on Google, something the doctors have overlooked. I think we both need to accept that things aren’t going to happen that way for us, and start exploring some of our other options.’
‘You mean adoption?’ I said the word as though it was something to be ashamed of, as though it represented failure. I couldn’t help it, but that was how I felt.
‘That’s one way we could go,’ David said, gently taking the wine glass from my hand and placing it on the coffee table (the one with the corners far too sharp for a toddler). He pulled me into his arms, laying my head on his chest, directly above his heart. I could feel the throb of its steady rhythm through the silky cotton of his shirt. ‘There are so many babies all over the world; babies who need a home; babies who need parents to love them.’
‘I know that. But if we go down that road, it’s going to mean we’ve finally given up on having one of our own, and I just don’t know if I’m ready to do that yet. I don’t know if I ever will be,’ I admitted shakily. David’s sigh ruffled and disturbed my hair, but he said nothing as I continued. ‘It’s just that I can see them so clearly, in my mind. I’ve seen them for so long.’
‘Who?’
‘The children we’re never going to have,’ I answered sadly.
He let me cry for only a minute or two, before tenderly lifting my chin from his chest, bringing our faces just inches apart.
‘We don’t need to make a baby to have a family. I know you think that having a biological replica is important, but really it isn’t. At least not to me. I don’t need to see a little person with your hair and mouth, my nose and eyes, your bony elbows and my hairy legs.’
I blinked back my tears. ‘That’s one singularly ugly baby you’ve just described,’ I said solemnly.
His eyes were warm and smiling at me. ‘Indeed it is, Mrs Williams. And frankly I don’t think we can afford to take that risk.’ He was trying to tease me out of the black hole I had crawled into, I knew that. But beneath his light-hearted words, he sounded serious. ‘It’s not the genetic blueprint that makes you a parent, that’s just an accident of biology.’
‘And you really don’t care that you could have had that “accident of biology” if you’d been with . . .’ My courage deserted me at the last moment ‘. . . someone else?’
‘I don’t want or need anyone else. Just you.’
I closed my eyes when he kissed me, but somehow never quite managed to shut out the image of the dark-haired, crystal-blue-eyed children we’d never have.
Ally
‘You have my permission to say I told you so,’ I told my comatose husband, who currently couldn’t say anything at all. The nurse in his room, with a discretion I was immensely grateful for, never even glanced around as I spoke to her solitary patient.
‘You warned me, you all did. But I just kept hoping that somehow it would never happen.’ I gave a small bitt
er laugh. ‘I should have realised how futile that was, shouldn’t I? There’s something like invisible barbed wire that keeps tying us all together. You think it’s gone, you think you’re free of it, but if you run too far the other way . . . well, it just cuts you down.’
I pulled my chair closer to the bed and ran my hand down Joe’s arm. Could he feel that? Somewhere in the darkness did my touch have the power to reach him? ‘She’ll tell him, of course she will.’ I closed my eyes on all the pain that lay ahead, for all of us. ‘I suppose I can’t blame her for that. They’re close, I can see that, and she won’t keep secrets from him.’ A smile softened my face and I looked down on him with love. ‘Just the same way that I couldn’t from you.’
Ally – Eight Years Earlier
‘So what did Joe say?’ asked Max. The phone line was surprisingly clear from America, leaving me with no possibility of saying ‘Sorry, you’re breaking up. I can’t hear you.’ ‘Ally, you have told him now, haven’t you?’
‘Not exactly. Not in so many words.’
Max’s voice was tinged with disbelief and amusement. ‘How many words does it take to tell him you’re going to be bringing a squalling infant into the house?’
I sighed. ‘I know. I should never have left it this long. I probably should have told him before I moved in.’
‘Oh, do you reckon?’ asked Max, his voice heavy with feigned sarcasm. ‘Sounds like something I should have suggested at the time. Oh, hang on a minute . . . I did! Seriously though, Al, what are you going to do if he asks you to move out?’
‘Go back to Mum and Dad’s, I suppose,’ I said, my voice sad and resigned.
‘I just don’t understand why you’ve put it off for so long.’
‘Because I didn’t want things to get weird between us. I didn’t want it to change. Everything’s been going so well lately. I can study in the day, give music lessons in the afternoons and practise as late as I like in the evening. Joe’s so easy-going about everything. And we get on so well, it’s like we’ve known each other for years.’ Ironically, I sounded a little sad as I said in conclusion, ‘I laugh a lot these days, too.’