by Kate Hewitt
Not My Daughter
An absolutely heartbreaking page-turner
Kate Hewitt
Books by Kate Hewitt
A Mother’s Goodbye
The Secrets We Keep
Not My Daughter
This Fragile Life
When He Fell
Rainy Day Sisters
Now and Then Friends
A Mother like Mine
* * *
Writing as Katharine Swartz:
The Vicar's Wife
The Lost Garden
The Second Bride
The Other Side of The Bridge
Contents
Prologue
Part I
1. Milly
2. Anna
3. Milly
4. Anna
5. Milly
6. Anna
7. Milly
8. Anna
9. Milly
10. Anna
11. Milly
12. Anna
13. Milly
14. Anna
15. Milly
16. Anna
17. Milly
18. Anna
19. Milly
20. Anna
21. Milly
Part II
22. Anna
23. Milly
24. Anna
25. Milly
26. Anna
27. Milly
28. Anna
29. Milly
30. Anna
31. Milly
32. Anna
33. Milly
34. Anna
35. Milly
36. Anna
Epilogue
The Secrets We Keep
Hear More from Kate
Books by Kate Hewitt
A Letter from Kate
A Mother’s Goodbye
Acknowledgements
Discussion Questions
Dedicated to my wonderful mom Margot Berry. Thank you for always supporting my writing endeavours from The Christmas Rose till now. I love you! Love, Katie
Prologue
The room is softly lit by the luminous stars on the ceiling, a present for your fifth birthday, and a sliver of moonlight from the window that slants in silver bars across your bedroom floor.
You lie so still, your lashes fanning your cheeks, your golden hair spread across your pillow. You’re so beautiful, and just looking at you makes my heart ache and ache.
Your breath is so soft I can barely hear it, but at least I can see the steady rise and fall of your chest, every breath a promise. You’re still here. I’ve still got you. For now.
I’ve been reconciling myself to your diagnosis for months now, trying out the words, testing the reality like a toe dipped in ice water, but in moments like this it is still a shock, realisation slamming into my chest, leaving me breathless and reeling. How did we get here? How can this be?
And, worst of all, the question I’ve seen clouding your eyes too often: why is this happening to me?
I rise from the side of your bed, too restless to sit still. I pick up your toy rabbit with the silk-lined ears that has fallen on the floor and tuck it safely under your arm. You smile in your sleep and snuggle closer.
In the quiet stillness of a long, lonely night, I let myself look back over the years – all the choices, all the mistakes, all the longings and losses, everything leading to this.
It is a form of torture, this futile second-guessing, agonising in every detail because of the questions I must ask myself. What if I’d been different? What if I’d done things differently? What if I’d been smarter, stronger, more selfless, right from the start? What if?
You wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here at all. And in this moment, poised on tragedy, overwhelmed by love, I don’t know the answer to that terrible, desperate question – if I could go back and do things differently, would I?
Part One
One
Milly
It’s bad news. I can tell from the doctor’s face, and I clench my fists in my lap as I wait for it.
‘I’m sorry.’ Dr Finlay, or Meghan as she asked us to call her a while back when we started this laborious journey towards having a baby, makes a little moue of sympathy, causing my stomach to clench along with my fists. That bad?
Silently, Matt reaches over to hold my hand, threading his fingers through mine. My palm is icy and damp, my heart starting to thump. I was hoping for good news today, news about how there was nothing to keep me from being pregnant, from us being a family, after months of consultations and charts and tests and waiting. So much waiting.
‘After looking at the results of Milly’s pelvic scan,’ Meghan begins, her gaze moving between the two of us, ‘I think I can make a certain diagnosis.’ She turns to focus on me, her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I’m sorry, Milly, but based on what I’ve seen in the scan as well as the hormone levels we’ve been monitoring over the last few months, I can now confirm you have Premature Ovarian Insufficiency.’
‘Pre… what?’ I stare at her blankly. We’ve talked about monitoring my ovulation, and trying to relax, and maybe, just maybe, starting a prescription for Clomifene. Dr Finlay – Meghan – has assured me that at thirty-four I’m still on the youngish side to conceive, and I have every chance – her words – that it will happen. And now she’s telling me something else, something worse? The dread that was swirling around in my stomach coalesces into a cold, hard ball.
‘Essentially it’s premature menopause, although we don’t like to call it that because menopause is its own natural process, and this, of course, is something else.’
I swallow, clinging to Matt’s hand, my only anchor in all this uncertainty and ignorance. ‘So what does this mean? I go on Clomifene?’ I ask, hearing the hopeful note in my voice and inwardly cringing at it.
‘No, I’m afraid that’s not a possibility now, with the level of deterioration already present.’
Which sounds awful as well as final, and that is even worse. ‘So what happens now?’ I ask, although I’m not sure I want to know.
Meghan hesitates, and in that tiny pause I hear all I don’t want to know. She’s breaking the bad news to me. I can see it on her face, in the way she places her hands flat on the table, as if she has to brace herself, when I’m the one who is going to need to absorb the hit.
I slip my hand from Matt’s and clench my fists in my lap once more. I’ve been so determined, doing everything right, whether its prenatal vitamins or avoiding caffeine, making time to relax or meditate, or whatever else the latest expert says will help, but in this moment I know none of it’s going to matter. It’s not going to count the way I thought it would.
‘In terms of your own pregnancy,’ Meghan says in that careful voice a medical specialist uses when the news isn’t good, ‘I would suggest using an egg from a donor.’ She turns to Matt. ‘If you feel that is the way you want to go forward. Obviously, you’ll need to take some time to consider, but there are other options as well…’ She continues on about egg donation, and IVF, and then surrogacy and even adoption, all the alternatives no one wants to consider, but at some point in her recitation my mind blurs and blanks. All I’m hearing is that I will never be pregnant. I will never have my own biological child, borne of my body, sharing my blood.
Twenty minutes later, Matt and I are both standing outside the clinic, an icy, unforgiving winter’s wind off the Bristol Channel buffeting us.
‘Do you want to go home?’ Matt asks after a moment, as we simply stand there. ‘Or we could go out for a coffee…?’
‘I don’t want to go out for a coffee.’ The wor
ds burst out of me in a snarl, surprising us both. I’m not angry at Matt, though; I’m just angry. ‘I’m sorry.’ I take a deep breath, willing back the tidal wave of emotion. ‘Sorry,’ I say again.
‘It’s okay,’ he says gently, even though it isn’t, and then he takes me by the arm as if I’m an invalid or an old lady. I’m not – it’s just my eggs that are old.
We drive in silence back to the three-bedroom semi-detached house in Redland, one of Bristol’s family-friendly neighbourhoods, that we’d bought two years ago, when we’d started thinking about families and babies and all those optimistic next steps.
We’d sold our one-bedroom flat in Temple Meads and bought the kind of house you had kids in, on a leafy street, with a garden, in walking distance of the local primary, in the catchment area of a good secondary. There’s a village hall where they do toddler groups and Girl Guiding, and a playpark right around the corner. It was all the way I’d imagined my life as a little girl, and now none of it matters.
‘Do you want to talk about it, Mills?’ Matt asks after a few minutes.
I stare out the window as I shake my head, my mind numb and frozen, refusing to move past the dead-end diagnosis we’ve just been given.
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Do you want to ring Anna?’
Anna, my best friend since year seven, the only person in the whole world besides Matt who has always had my back, who has never let me down. I know she will hug me, cry with me, and pour me more wine, but all that understanding might break me right now. I feel fragile, everything in me brittle, ready to shatter, but I know I’ll need her. I nod, sniffing. ‘Yes. I’ll ring her soon.’
Back at home I get out of the car first and walk quickly inside, flinging my keys on the hall table as I breathe in the scent of lavender cleaner – organic, of course – and lemon furniture polish. Home. Except everything feels changed now; everything feels like a horrible mockery… the garden perfect for playing, with space for a swing and a sandpit, the shallow stairs safe for children, the third bedroom we intended to be a nursery. I haven’t been so foolish as to paint the walls or buy a cot, not when I haven’t even been able to get pregnant yet. But I’ve dreamed. Oh, how I’ve dreamed. And that’s all it’s ever been – dreams.
Matt comes in behind me and heads for our open-plan kitchen and dining area, with plenty of light and room for a high chair, a playpen, a rattan basket for soft toys. I’d pictured it all in my mind so perfectly.
The French windows that overlook our tiny terrace were another plus, and we talked about sitting out there on sunny Saturday mornings with our coffee, our child on a swing in the horse chestnut tree at the bottom of the garden. Now the house I’ve loved so much has become a cruel reminder, taunting me with all the what-ifs that have suddenly turned into nevers.
I draw a quick breath, and it hitches like a sob. Matt turns from the kettle he’s been filling at the sink.
‘Milly…’
‘No. I can’t. Not yet. I’m sorry.’ I’m not ready to talk. I’m not ready to dismantle my dreams in a pragmatic conversation as we discuss a forward plan the way I normally like to do, complete with bullet points. Someday, but not yet.
I go upstairs, to the room we planned on being a nursery. There is nothing baby-friendly about it now; it just has some plastic storage bins, a few empty suitcases, and Matt’s saxophone stand gathering dust.
I stare at the empty room for a moment and then slowly slide down onto the floor, my back against the wall, my knees drawn up to my chest. Outside, bare branches tap against the window as the wintry gusts of wind rattle the pane. I rest my chin on my knees, drawing another breath. This one doesn’t hitch.
I’m not going to cry. I know if I cry I’ll have given up, and I’m not ready to do that yet. Not after everything. Not even if I will have to eventually.
I’ve been so good. I want to shout the words, but at whom? Who will listen? Who will care? I know life isn’t fair, not for me, not for anyone. I’ve seen too much suffering in the news, too much casual cruelty in the world around me, to think otherwise, but I realise now that some small part of me believed if I played by the rules, if I did everything right, if I was kind and loving and respectful and all the rest, I’d get the deep desire of my heart. I believed there was some overarching justice I could appeal to, that I could count on, some cosmic jury that would decide in my favour. But today tells me there isn’t. There can’t be.
I’m in menopause, no matter that Meghan didn’t want to use that word. I’m thirty-four and my eggs are withered up, dried out. Useless. So useless, in fact, that there is less than one per cent chance of me conceiving naturally. I remember Meghan telling me that.
The door creaks open and then Matt is there, crouching next to me with a cup of tea. As I take it, tears sting my eyes.
‘I wasn’t ready for that news,’ I say, my hands cradled around the warmth. I blink hard, because I’m still not ready.
‘I know.’
‘I won’t be able to get pregnant.’ I say the words as if I’m trying on an outfit to see if it fits. It doesn’t. It’s tight and scratchy and I want to rip it off right now.
‘Dr Finlay didn’t say that exactly.’ Matt has never called her Meghan. ‘She discussed other options…’
‘But it won’t be my baby.’ I wasn’t able to take in all the details that Meghan outlined, but I understood at least that much.
Matt rests his hand on my knee, warm and solid. ‘It would be,’ he says gently. ‘You of all people should know that.’
Yes, I should, because I’m adopted myself. I don’t know who my birth parents are. I chose not to find out. And my adoptive parents, my real parents, are wonderful. They always have been, strong and supportive and loving. So, yes, I of all people should not have a problem with the idea of adoption.
Except I do.
But I don’t expect Matt to understand that, and I’m not sure I could articulate it even to myself. Not now. Not yet.
‘We don’t have to rush into anything,’ Matt says, and somehow that hurts too. We don’t have to rush, because it’s already too late for me.
I rest my head against the wall and close my eyes. I feel exhausted, my body aching, my eyes gritty.
‘Do you want me to call the school?’ Matt asks. I only took the morning off for the appointment; I’m due back after lunch to take my Year One class, a prospect that now fills me with dread. I’m not ready to face twenty-eight five- and six-year-olds with their constant chatter and piping questions, but I can’t afford to take off the whole day. And while curling up under my duvet is very tempting, I know it would just make me marinate in self-pity. I don’t need that.
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll go in.’
‘What about Anna?’
‘I’ll ring her soon.’ She knew about the appointment today, of course; my phone has already pinged with a text from her asking how it went. Over the last year and a half, I’ve kept her informed of every torturous step on this journey, all the hope, all the disappointment, and she’s cheered and sympathised in turns. I know she will be there for me now, but her unwavering sympathy might send me over the edge, into the abyss of grief I sense is waiting for me.
I finish my tea and make to get up; Matt holds out his hand. As I take it, I realise with a painful jolt that this affects him too. He won’t be able to have a child, his wife’s child. Infertility isn’t just my problem, even if it’s my fault.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and he looks at me in surprise, his hand still holding mine.
‘For what?’
‘For not… for not being able to…’ I can’t finish the words; suddenly I’m crying, all sobs and snot, my shoulders shaking as Matt pulls me towards him and I collapse into him gratefully. I wasn’t able to keep it together for that long, after all, and I need this hug, his arms around me, holding me together.
‘This isn’t your problem, Milly. It’s ours. We’re in this together. And we’ll find a way through, whatever happens, togeth
er. It’s all going to be okay, I promise.’
I press my face against his shoulder, willing myself to stop crying, determined to take comfort from his words. Because I believe him. Stupid me, I believe every word he says.
Two
Anna
When Milly finally sends me a text, hours after her appointment, I know it must be bad news. I can tell, just by the three bleak words, with no added detail: Meet up later?
Of course, I type. What time?
Five? comes the quick reply. I usually finish work later, but I can leave a bit early.
Sure, I text. Do you want to talk about it now?
Several minutes pass before Milly replies. No. Later.
It must be really bad, then. Oh, Milly. All she’s ever wanted is a baby, a family. She talked about it even when were in year seven – how she wanted three children, because two didn’t seem like quite enough. Because she’s never had siblings. Because she’s wanted to see what someone related to her looks like. Would they have her wild hair, her slightly crooked front tooth? Every time she talked about it, her eyes would light up and her expression would turn wistful. I can’t wait.