Unfollow Me

by Charlotte Duckworth

  I love you, I suddenly think. I love you for not thinking I’m a weirdo for my YouTube habit, for not being put off that I have a child. I love you for seeing me, despite all of that.

  “Thanks for lunch,” I say. “I really appreciate it.”

  “Pleasure,” he says. “Good luck with your Christmas shopping. Make sure you get me something nice.”

  YVONNE

  I’ve taken a test every morning and evening since I found out, and I now have a clutch of them, which I’m keeping in a shoebox. I don’t know if it’s the kind of thing the baby will want to see when they’re older, but you never know. It’d be nice to be able to show them how vigilant I was, right from the beginning. Checking they were all right every day. More than that though, keeping them means I can look back at them when I’m feeling insecure. Seeing the pink lines grow stronger each morning fills me with a strange combination of elation and fear. Because I know at any time, it could all be snatched away again, and this time the stakes are so much higher.

  I’ve got no symptoms yet, other than slightly swollen breasts. Nothing else. No cramping—a sign that my uterus is stretching. No nausea. No metallic taste in the mouth. A little bit of bloating, but that’s it. I’m not eating more than normal. I’m very determined this time to stay in shape. Last time, I got carried away, thought I could eat all the carbs I wanted, and I was a stone heavier when I gave birth. Considering Nathan was only 1.2kg, very little of that was from him.

  The most noticeable difference in my life since finding out is Simon. He’s like my little shadow now, following me around the house, checking that I’m well at every opportunity.

  “Can I get you anything?” he says, popping his head around the living room door. He’s been in the kitchen, cooking my favorite—chicken stir-fry with quinoa.

  I smile up at him from my spot on the sofa.

  “No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine.”

  “Five more minutes.” He grins back at me. “Bet you’re starving.”

  I’m not, particularly, but I nod and grin back at him anyway.

  After we’ve finished eating, we sit in the kitchen and Pushka joins us on the table, sniffing around for scraps.

  “All right, Push,” Simon says, scratching her on the head as he stands and clears the plates away. He hated her when we first got together. He wasn’t a fan of cats. But she was a deal-breaker—she came with me; we were a team. I couldn’t explain how important she was to me. She had been my only comfort for years. A replacement for Nathan, but of course, she never quite lived up to him.

  Simon doesn’t know about Nathan. He doesn’t know I’ve been to the police, either. I swallow, reaching for my glass of water, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “There’s some stuff I need to tell you, Si,” I say, as he boils the kettle to make me my nightly cup of peppermint tea. “Could you sit down a minute?”

  His eyebrows rise but he joins me back at the table. Pushka stares at him as he sits down, licking her back and curling up into a croissant. I wouldn’t normally let her sit on the table like this, but I can’t bring myself to push her off.

  “Everything OK?” he says, a note of panic in his voice. “You haven’t started bleeding?”

  I shake my head.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Do you remember what I told you when we were on honeymoon?” I begin. “About the man who attacked me when I was in my first job?”

  He swallows, nodding.

  “Well, he was arrested a few weeks ago. On historic sexual abuse charges.” I pause, allowing the information to sink in. Simon’s eyes darken.

  “Did you…”

  “No,” I reply. “Not then. The police wouldn’t tell me much, but the accusations date from before I met him. A long time before.” I give a bitter laugh. “I suppose he’s been doing things like that his whole life.”

  “So you’ve spoken to the police?” he says, frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I take a deep breath.

  “I don’t know…” I say. “I just wanted to see what they would say if I shared my story. I suppose I thought it might come to nothing, but they took me seriously. They took a statement, in fact. They’re building a case. It might take months but … I said I’d be happy to testify against him, if it came to that. It’s a long time ago now, so there’s every possibility it’ll come to nothing, but at least I’ve finally said my piece. After all this time … It feels like a huge burden has been lifted.”

  “Oh Von,” he says. “I wish I had known…”

  “All the pregnancy stuff has been a good distraction. I’m sorry I didn’t share it with you, but part of me hates talking about it, raking up the past like that…” I tail off, thinking about Henry, how inextricably linked he is to what happened with Bertie, how I hate even mentioning his name in Simon’s presence. “I want to be rid of all the memories of that time. It wasn’t a happy period in my life.”

  “I know,” Simon says, stroking my hair away from my cheek. “But it’s over now. You’re so brave, Von. The bravest woman I know. It’s why I’ve always loved you so much. Your strength.”

  I smile. I don’t feel strong. Most of the time I feel on the edge of sanity; my determination to become a mother at any cost the perfect way of avoiding dealing with things. Just give me a baby, I’ve always thought. Give me a baby to love and then I won’t need to worry about myself anymore—I’ll have something far more important to worry about. It was a bit simplistic, but surely there was some logic to my reasoning?

  “There’s something else I need to tell you. I’ve booked a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow,” I say, speaking slowly, choosing my words with care. “Just to get myself registered on the system.”

  Want me to come with you?” he says, immediately.

  “No, no, it’s fine,” I say. “I don’t think much interesting happens. But there will be other appointments in the future…”

  “Just let me know when they are and I’ll make sure I don’t have any sessions booked,” he says, reaching over and squeezing my hand. I think of Henry, the way he stared at me in the canteen.

  Pregnant? You cannot be serious!

  “The thing is, I was pregnant once before,” I say. I can’t bring myself to look Simon in the eye. I should have told him before.

  “I know,” he says, and my head lifts in surprise. I stare at him.

  “How…”

  “I read the forms, the ones we had to fill in for the consultant when we did IVF last time,” he replies. “You left them out on the kitchen table. Sorry. I wondered when you were going to tell me, but then I thought it probably wasn’t a big deal. It said you had a termination. I guess I thought you didn’t want to talk about it, so I never mentioned it.”

  “Oh,” I say, overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. Amazement that he’d bothered to read the forms, embarrassment that I had underestimated him. Relief that he wasn’t angry with me.

  Dread that I was going to have to tell him everything now. That I was going to have to explain it all.

  “They’re not … a big deal, are they?” Simon asks, taking my hand. The kettle starts bubbling away in the corner of the room, steam rising steadily. “I mean, lots of women have them. It said you were twenty-three, I guessed you just weren’t ready to become a mum.”

  “Yes, they’re common, I suppose,” I say, nodding. “But the thing is … it was, it was a bit different in my case.”

  Simon’s eyes are wide, waiting for me to continue.

  “It was a late termination,” I say. I take a deep breath. “At twenty-two weeks. I had a late termination.”

  “Right,” Simon says, nodding. Twenty-two weeks won’t mean anything to him. He won’t understand that at twenty-two weeks a baby is fully formed, that they look just like a full-term baby, only smaller. He doesn’t know that if a baby is born at twenty-two weeks, they have a ten per cent chance of surviving, that they’re just a few weeks sho
rt of the age at which they’re considered truly viable. Worth saving.

  He won’t understand that when I held my baby, even though he was only twenty-two weeks old, he looked absolutely perfect.

  I can’t speak. Instead, I am back there. Sitting outside the hospital in the fierce winter sunshine after they had injected my poor baby’s heart to make it stop beating, waiting for them to tell me there was a bed free so I could deliver him. They had told me to go home, to wait until they phoned me, but I couldn’t bear the idea of trudging back to my bedroom, of pretending everything was all right when my flatmates asked why I wasn’t at work. How long could you carry a dead baby around inside you? It seemed inhuman, what they were asking of me. But I wasn’t a priority; the priorities were the women who were going to give birth to babies that would scream and kick and, most importantly of all, breathe.

  I stood in the bright sunlight, putting my hand on my stomach, knowing that he was already gone. They said I should have someone with me, but no one wanted to know. So I sat there alone, and I rang his phone number, again and again, and he didn’t pick up. Not the first time, not the seventieth time. He never picked up.

  “It was years ago,” I say, the words tumbling out. “It was for medical reasons … I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t want to do it—my God, I didn’t want to do it—but the doctors told me I had to, because there was no hope. It wouldn’t have worked; I could have carried him to term but he would have died. There was no hope. It was the only option.”

  “What was wrong with him?” Simon asks.

  “He had something called Potter’s syndrome.” I try to slow my breathing, to say each word carefully and clearly, so that I never have to say them again. I remember the way I felt when they told me; the flash of illogical paranoia that made me think perhaps he’d planned it all, somehow. “It’s a complicated … condition.” The consultant sucked her cheeks in as she broke the news, before telling me I was young, that there was no reason to think I wouldn’t be able to have another, healthy baby. A proper one. One that was meant to be.

  They only found out at my twenty-week scan. The baby didn’t have enough amniotic fluid … they need it to swallow and then expel as urine, and then swallow again. It helps the baby’s kidneys develop, as well as the lungs. Without it, they don’t develop normally. The baby is fine when it’s still in the womb, receiving everything it needs from the mother, but once it’s born, it will die. They said there was nothing they could do. No way to save him.” I pause before forcing out the three words that circled endlessly in my mind in the months after the termination. “They all die. Some babies live for a few days after birth but they told me they all die eventually.”

  My voice has been relatively calm up until now but suddenly grief overcomes me and I start choking on my own sobs, fighting to catch my breath. Seventeen years of pain, boxed up and fenced in, released in a moment. I scrape my chair back, lurching forward in my seat, digging my hands into my knees as I try to contain myself. The tips of my fingers start to tingle and my chest feels as though it might explode. I throw my head forward between my legs, knowing I’m going to faint if I don’t get more oxygen to my brain.

  “I’m sorry,” I sob, as my tears soak the terracotta floor underneath me. My ears are ringing, and in the background I’m vaguely aware of the sound of the kettle as it reaches a furious boil. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  HENRY

  A week after I sent Yvonne that message, we were sitting in a bar, around the corner from the office. Not one of our old haunts—that would have been far too risky. Somewhere that served fifty different types of gin. I thought she would like that. She used to like gin. But clearly times had changed, and so had she. Apparently, she wasn’t drinking.

  As soon as she turned up, I regretted it. It was unnerving, the whole evening. The only way to get through it was alcohol. My old friend. For the first twenty minutes I questioned what I had been thinking. She was enjoyable to look at, as ever, but the conversation was awkward, too polite. None of the carefree cattiness that used to flow between us. She didn’t want to talk about what had happened at all. She was confident: too confident. Like an actress playing a role.

  She would have made a bloody good actress.

  “I’m sorry about the wedding,” I said, after my second pint.

  She sat back in her chair, regarding me with an expression that reminded me, somewhat disturbingly, of my father.

  “What are you sorry about?” she said.

  “I swore at you, or something, didn’t I?” I ran my fingers through my hair. I felt flustered, as though I was suddenly losing my composure. That was how she always made me feel. She stripped away my confidence, left me feeling on edge the whole time. There was something catlike about her. Something evil.

  “I can’t remember,” she said. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why did you come?” I said, reaching forward and leaning my elbows on the table. I felt the familiar stirrings of desire as she looked at me coolly over the top of her glass. Her almond eyes were ringed in thick brown eyeliner and they were suddenly the only things I could see.

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging slightly. “Old time’s sake.”

  “Well. You look beautiful,” I said, the words tumbling out carelessly. I met her eyes again, my hand making its way under the table towards her knee. Her fucking knee! But it was all I could find, and I rested it there, looking up at her.

  She didn’t say anything. That was the thing about her. So cool, calm and collected all the time. What went on in her head? I knew she had wanted me once, but now, it was impossible to tell. She looked down at my hand, and simply and quietly picked it up and laid it back on my own leg, as though brushing off a fly.

  “I better go,” she said.

  “I still want you,” I said, my voice thick now. I knew how I sounded: like an old, drunken lech, but I didn’t care. “I never didn’t want you … but you were so needy; we were so young.”

  “Henry…” she said, standing up. So controlled, so fucking controlled. “Don’t.”

  She pulled on her jacket and made her way to the entrance of the bar. It was June, and still light outside, even though it was 9pm. I followed her, draining the last of my pint as I left and flinging it back down on the table, where it skidded to an awkward stop.

  Out on the street, she looked back briefly to see whether I was behind her, but then started marching ahead, as though I was a stalker she needed to shake off.

  “Hey,” I shouted across the Mayfair crowds. People stared at me.

  I broke out into a half-hearted jog, pushing my way through the people until I caught up with her. I grabbed her arm, yanking her to a stop, and twisted her round to face me.

  “What?” she said, pulling her arm away.

  “Why are you running away?” I asked. I leant in a little too close to her, and I felt her body soften in response, even though her jaw was clenched. She still wanted me. “I thought we were having a nice evening.”

  She breathed out, raising her eyes to the sky.

  “We were,” she said, speaking so slowly she was practically spitting each word out. “But now I’m going home.”

  “Yvonne,” I said, releasing my grasp on her arm. Some of her thick brown hair had blown in front of one of her eyes, caught on her long eyelashes, and I swept it away with my fingers. She looked past me, but her eyes were glistening.

  “I was an arse to you,” I said, my arms going round her back now, pulling her towards me. “We were young, weren’t we? Young idiots. God, it must be more than ten years ago now…”

  “Sixteen years ago,” she spat. “It was nearly sixteen years ago.”

  “OK, sixteen. I was a tosser, I admit. I still am. But you know … you certainly got your own back.”

  I pulled up my sleeve, grateful for the personal trainer sessions Violet insisted on. I would always be soft around the edges, but there was at least some shape there now.

  Yvo
nne looked down at my arm, the silvery scar still just about visible. She sniffed, turned her head away, looking into the crowds.

  “Hey hey,” I said, gently easing her face back and tilting it towards mine. “I deserved it. I know I deserved it.”

  “For fuck’s sake, it was an accident! And it was nothing in comparison with what I went through,” she hissed, and I could see then that she wasn’t even sorry. “You broke me.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go back to your wife,” she said, those dark brown eyes like pits again, strong and unblinking.

  I looked down at the pavement. Of course that’s what I should do. Of course it was.

  “I don’t want to,” I said, and I couldn’t be sure if it was the alcohol, the lust, or my guilt talking. The problem was, she was too good for me. Violet. But Yvonne. Yvonne was on my level. Fucked up, narcissistic, entirely self-absorbed. We were perfect for each other.

  I suppose I should have been prepared for it, but it still took me by surprise. The noise first, that distinctive clap, then the sting spreading as my hand rushed to my cheek.

  I stared at her, in shock, but she was already striding away again. And this time she didn’t look back.

  LILY

  Despite being weighed down with shopping bags, there’s a new-found lightness in my step as I push my way through my front door. I have twenty minutes before Sylvia turns up with Archie and I’m determined that the flat be presentable. I don’t want her thinking I can’t cope. I hide all Archie’s presents at the back of my wardrobe and then push the hoover around the patches of carpet that aren’t obscured by furniture or boxes of toys. There isn’t much of it, so it doesn’t take long.

  Then I rummage about under the sink until I find an ancient can of Pledge and a duster, and I spray everything—the television, the coffee table, the base of our Christmas tree. Next, I deal with the teetering pile of ancient catalogues shoved under the coffee table, also covered in dust. I sort them into piles and take the recycling pile outside and dump it in the green bin, along with last week’s wine bottles. Finally, when I’m back in the flat, I slice the cake I bought especially for Sylvia (Battenberg, her favorite) and make a pot of tea. She’s very particular about her tea, likes it strong.