‘So what’s upsetting you, Jenny? This seems like a storm in a teacup to me.’
‘It’s not, I’m really worried about Jackson. Something happened in that room last night. When I looked in, he wasn’t there. It looked as if nobody had used the room, but then I noticed a piece of broken china on the floor. It had come from one of the cups on the tray. I walked into the room to pick it up, and then I saw it. There was blood on the carpet. A lot of blood. And no sign of Jackson anywhere.’
It seemed strange thinking about my relationship with Alex after such a long time. There was something that had happened during our five years together which had a profound impact on my relationship with Meg.
Alex and I had been living together for about three years, closer to four by that stage. There was no marriage on the cards, no talk of starting families. We had just picked up where we left off at the polytechnic. We were both working hard on our careers, and we had a good amount of disposable income, so time away from work was spent eating out, going to concerts, watching movies and travelling. It was a great time. We’d avoided the worst of the student finance shake-up so weren’t looking at mortgage-level debt, and life was sweet.
When you’re fully engaged in your career and loving every minute of it, you don’t have to think that much about your life. If you’re in love too and happy with your relationship, all is good with the world. That’s how I felt, and I’m sure that Alex felt that way too, which is why it gave us both a jolt when Alex got pregnant.
It was only when I thought back that I saw how much I’d kept from Meg. Nobody tells their new partners everything, it would be too painful to hear, and I edited my past too. When Meg and I started having fertility issues, I was pleased that I had kept things quiet about Alex. I think it might have made things worse with Meg.
Alex and I were young, too young to be thinking about families, particularly because of the transient nature of our careers. People in broadcasting move around a lot, they’re always chasing that next best job.
So when Alex came down to breakfast one Saturday and looked as if she had something serious to tell me, I braced myself for bad news. The look on her face made me question how things had been between us. Had I missed the signs? Was she about to end the relationship?
‘I’ve got something to tell you, Pete. Can we turn the radio off?’
The radio was usually on quietly in the background – it’s a curse of the job, you’re always keeping one ear on the latest news stories. I turned it off, studying Alex’s face for clues.
‘I’m pregnant, Pete. Remember when we came back drunk from the pub that bank holiday weekend when I forgot my cap? Well, it did matter. We should have used a condom to make extra sure.’
I hadn’t expected that. If you’d have asked me beforehand if I wanted a baby, I’d have told you no, I hadn’t even given it any thought. But now that Alex was announcing that she was pregnant, my reaction was delight. I was really excited. Why not? We were in love, things were good. Neither of us would have opted to start a family at that time, but given that it had happened by accident, it didn’t seem that much of a problem.
I stood up, walked over to Alex and kissed her.
‘Me and my sweet-talking,’ I smiled. ‘I wonder how many couples have been caught by the it-won’t-matter-just-this-once line?’
I think that Alex had been unsure how I’d react to the news. She seemed relieved that I was so delighted. Even I was surprised by that one, but it was fine, it was great, why not?
‘How far gone are you?’ I asked, ready to dig into the details.
‘Almost three months,’ Alex replied. ‘I missed a couple of periods, but I’ve always been a bit irregular anyway, I didn’t think anything of it. I’ve been really sick on my morning shifts so I decided to get a pregnancy test on the spur of the moment yesterday. I’m sorry I didn’t mention it sooner, but with me on earlies, you on lates, I wanted to pick my moment.’
‘It’s fine, it’s fine, I know how it is, it’s hard work when the shifts aren’t in sync. Will you give up work?’
‘It’s too early to say, Pete. I need to go to the doctor first. I’ve booked in for next week, we’ll get a better idea of due dates then. And it’s still early days, remember.’
Those words proved to be portentous. Alex got the pregnancy confirmed and was booked in for her first scan. We didn’t share the news with anybody, it seemed prudent to wait for that first visit to the hospital. We’d celebrate it then.
For a couple of weeks we lived in a secret bubble of happy expectation and excitement. We bought some baby books, read and re-read the information about stages of development, speculating about what our own baby looked like at that time. I even bought a packet of sleep-suits from the supermarket. I couldn’t resist it. I’d had virtually no direct experience of babies in my life. I wanted to get out a 0–3 months sleep-suit and see just how tiny they were.
For a short time, careers seemed unimportant. I honestly believe that Alex would have been quite happy to leave work, never looking back at the career that might have been. I wouldn’t have expected that reaction from her and I certainly would never have asked her to give up her career if she didn’t want to. We were parents-to-be, we were excited, it was our secret and we were as happy as we had ever been. Then the bubble burst.
To my eternal shame, I didn’t go to the hospital with Alex for that first scan. The appointment clashed with my shift and I made the wrong call. I didn’t want anybody to know about the pregnancy, so didn’t want to show my hand by admitting that I needed time off to go with her.
Alex was matter-of-fact about it.
‘It’ll be fine, they’ll just check everything is okay and I’ll bring back a picture. You can come with me to the other check-ups, everybody will know by then.’
What she was saying made sense, so I went along with it. It was only when I emerged from reading the news bulletin to see a voicemail waiting on my phone that things started to fall apart.
‘Pete, it’s Alex. Can you call me? I’ve got some bad news, I’m afraid. I need you at the hospital if you can get here.’
She was choked up, having terrible difficulty getting her words out. With the bulletin delivered, I was into the last hour of that day’s shift, so I made my excuses with the manager, saying I was feeling unwell. The hospital wasn’t far from the radio station, and I was there within twenty minutes. I’d never seen Alex looking so vulnerable. She was on her own in a small waiting area, quietly sobbing. I walked over to her and hugged her. We held onto each other for several minutes, no words were needed. Eventually, she was ready to speak.
‘The baby’s dead,’ she began. ‘The sonographer started doing the scan and he went quiet all of a sudden. I could see he was struggling with something so I asked what was wrong. He said that the baby wasn’t as big as it should have been, was I sure of how pregnant I was.’
I knew where the conversation was going. I’d done enough interviews about miscarriage to know that we were well and truly in that territory.
‘The baby’s dead, Pete. It just stopped growing. I’ve had a second test and they confirmed it. They need to get it out of me.’
It was over. We’d lost the baby. We’d never planned it that way, but when Alex had announced the news we’d both been ecstatic. Now our dreams for the future were being dashed. We’d gone from an amazing high to a devastating low. I felt completely deflated, God knows how Alex was feeling. Like a true journalist, I started asking questions.
‘Is it definitely dead? How soon do they have to remove the foetus? Are you okay?’
That was the saddest time of my life. Up until that moment I’d never understood how completely desolating something like that can be. When we did eventually share the experience with close friends, people would say things like ‘Well, it wasn’t really a baby, it was just a foetus’, and ‘At least you can try again’. But that baby was all our hopes and dreams, and they’d been cruelly taken away from us. We’d never held
the child in our arms so we didn’t even get a funeral.
Alex had the required D&C and presumably whatever was left of our baby ended up in the hospital waste. We were given some leaflets about counselling and left to our own devices. For a few days it felt as if a death had occurred, but when Alex returned to work things got back to normal. We’d never intended to start a family, so we never discussed trying again. We picked up where we’d left off and carried our new emotional baggage with us on our way. What else could we do? Our loss was intangible and so difficult to articulate.
It wasn’t long after that that Alex became unsettled and started looking for new jobs. The move to the press officer role followed soon afterwards, then the move to TV.
I’d never really thought about it before, maybe because I thought I’d dealt with it and put it in the past. There’s a reason why I hated counselling so much. And there’s a reason why I was ambivalent about starting a family with Meg.
Counselling took me back to that dark place with Alex. We’d attended one counselling session, decided it wasn’t for us, and ducked out before we got too embroiled with the group. To be honest, we were a bit self-conscious about sharing everything – as journalists we liked to ask the questions. It’s a good defence mechanism. As minor celebrities, we were recognised by some of the couples in the group. That put us off immediately, we decided to work through our problems together.
I’d never realised this previously, but looking back it’s as clear as day to me now. I was scared to have a baby with Meg. It wasn’t that I didn’t love her or that I didn’t want to have children. I was scared that I might have to go through that terrible loss all over again.
Chapter Nine
‘Have you spoken to the police yet?’ I asked Jenny.
‘Yes, but I haven’t told them what Jackson and I were planning. I keep thinking about it, but I don’t think that helps Jackson, does it? I mean, if something has happened to him, they don’t need to know that we were sleeping together, do they?’
I thought it over, but my mind was more preoccupied with my personal situation. I’d be joining Jenny in covering up my own bad behaviour very soon. Why did it have to happen in the room next to mine? There was no way I was getting out of that hotel without at least having some sort of conversation with the police. I’d have to do the same as Jenny, keep my mouth shut about Ellie and just tell them what I’d seen and heard – leaving out the adulterous sex.
‘I think that if you tell them your exact movements and whereabouts, but miss out the bit about sleeping with Jackson, it won’t mess up their investigation, but you won’t get into trouble either.’
I was thinking aloud, working out my own dilemma. That’s what I would do. The police didn’t need to know that Ellie and I had been sharing the room. Nobody had seen us. Derek would confirm my whereabouts when the fire alarm went off.
‘Do you have CCTV here, Jenny?’ I asked, thinking through the options and potential slip-ups that might occur.
‘Only in the car park. There’s no CCTV within the building itself. We have a camera over the entrance too, but that’s it.’
‘So if you tell them what your movements were, they’ll see that confirmed on the cameras. You need an excuse for checking the room next to mine when the alarms went off. Tell them it was ajar, that’s true, let them know you were just checking it out. Derek did exactly the same after you exited the building, that’ll back up what you say. Keep quiet about meeting Jackson for now … unless you killed him, of course!’
Jenny looked horrified.
‘Oh God, I’m sorry Jenny, I didn’t mean to frighten you. Look, he’s only missing at the moment, the chances are he finished his shift early. Keep an eye on your phone, he’s bound to get in touch. You might want to check through your sent texts, to cover your back. Leave anything friendly on there, remove anything that could get you into trouble over the illicit meetings on company property.’
‘It’s okay, we use the Erazerr app for messaging, it deletes everything after it’s been seen. We should be fine.’
I couldn’t believe that I was helping Jenny to cover up her trysts with Jackson at the OverNight Inn. I thought it over again. So long as Jenny accounted for what she’d seen and done, it wouldn’t divert the police from whatever they were doing. She wasn’t being investigated, she didn’t have to answer for her actions. It was the same for me. I’d tell them exactly what I’d seen and heard – very little – and it was none of their business about Ellie. I couldn’t afford for that to be public knowledge, that’s all I needed, it getting back to Meg via the rumour mill.
I needed to move on my own issues. Jenny seemed happy that I’d put her mind at ease. The blood that she’d seen on the carpet was troubling me, though. Could Jackson have done something stupid? Maybe cut himself on the broken cup, made a mess and done a runner? My journalistic sixth sense was kicking in. There were too many police officers around for this to be just about a missing teenager. Something was going on, and I couldn’t avoid getting involved because of where my room was located. I’d have to talk to Ellie, give her a heads up about it. We’d need to stick to our story – it wouldn’t mess up anything the police were doing, but it could screw things up elsewhere. At home, for instance.
‘Jenny, I need to ask you more about the woman who was here last night. Was she definitely asking for me? What did she look like?’
‘Yeah, I’m sorry, I’ve been distracted. I should have told you about that earlier. I shouldn’t have let her through really, but she seemed nice and genuine. You get some weirdos coming in here who claim to be visiting another guest, but you can tell they’re up to no good. I don’t let them in, Derek usually sees them off the premises if they kick off. But she was nice, even showed me her driving licence to prove it was her. She had the same surname, Megan Bailey. I remember it because I like the name Megan. Why does she shorten it?’
‘I’ve always called her Meg, I never really think of her as a Megan,’ I replied. ‘What time was this?’
‘It was around midnight, probably just after, actually,’ Jenny replied confidently. ‘I know that because the late-nighters had come in from the bar and it had all settled down for the night. I’d put the sign up on reception while I nipped out to the loo. We do a tour of the hotel at around that time, to make sure there’s no noise or windows open, anything like that. She came in as I was about to head to the second floor and do my sweep. Derek and Jackson had already gone.’
I thought through the timeline. Ellie and I had come back after closing time, some time after midnight, but reception had been empty when we returned. The sign was on the counter saying to wait five minutes and use the pager on the phone if necessary. Jenny would have been in the toilet then. Meg must have arrived after we got back from the pub. If she’d come before, she would have found my room empty.
If she’d come after we were back from the pub, that was getting serious. From what Jenny was saying, that sounded most likely. But nobody had knocked on the door. There had been some noise from out in the corridor, but I’d been preoccupied at the time. I thought back to Ellie. It had been good.
To my knowledge, Meg didn’t knock at the door. Had she been outside? Could she have heard what was going on? We were both making a bit of noise the night before. If someone was listening at the door, they’d have heard all sorts. My face reddened, I could feel it, Jenny noticed it too.
‘Are you alright?’ she asked.
‘Yes, yes, fine, I just came over really hot. It must be my age!’
I attempted to shrug it off, but I was feeling uncomfortable. What on earth had Meg done? Why hadn’t she knocked at the door?
‘Do you know what?’ Jenny picked up. ‘I’ve just realised something.’
Now it was her turn to blush.
‘I may have sent her to the room next door to you. She asked what room you were in, but I may have told her the wrong number. I was thinking about meeting Jackson, he’d just told me which room we were meeting i
n. You’re room 123, aren’t you? I think I told her to go to room 121, not yours. I’m not sure now, I’m sorry, there’s so much going on at the moment.’
I liked Jenny, but I was beginning to get a bit impatient with her.
‘Did you see her again, Jenny? This is important.’
I thought about the blood in the room, and I considered the police presence. I was growing concerned about Meg. Could she be somehow connected with the blood that Jenny had seen?
‘I didn’t see her leave the building,’ Jenny replied, sensing my urgency. ‘I assumed that she’d join you in your room and that would be it. I don’t remember everybody who comes here you know.’
She was getting jittery. She had her own subterfuge to hide. But we were tied together now, we had that room in common. If she’d sent my wife there, and her own boyfriend had been in the room, perhaps there was a connection? Had Jackson done something to Meg? I shivered at the thought of it. I dismissed it from my mind, it was crazy. There would be a sensible explanation, Meg was probably at home. The most likely option was that she’d tried to phone me when she realised that it was the wrong room and had no joy with my mobile number. If reception had been clear of staff when she came back through the building, maybe she’d headed home. No, it was a two-hour drive, she wouldn’t do that. If I were in her position, I’d check into the hotel, wait until morning, then seek me out.
‘Did she check in overnight, Jenny? Maybe Jackson or Derek booked her in?’
‘It’s possible,’ Jenny said, turning to key in some information on her computer.
‘I don’t see her checked in as Bailey. Would she use any other name?’
‘No, she’d use Bailey. Meg or Megan Bailey. I wonder where she’s got to, I’m getting a bit concerned.’
‘We don’t see everything that happens here, of course. She could easily have left with another group. It’s easy enough to get into the building if you walk in with a big group, but you couldn’t get into a room without a key card, so it’s fairly pointless.’
Don't Tell Meg Trilogy Box Set Page 11