by Kate Hewitt
‘Careful, sweetheart.’ I take an instinctive step forward as Alice gets off the swing. She stumbles, tripping over her own feet, something that seems to happen a worrying amount. The paediatrician assured me that developmental delays are common with preemies, and I shouldn’t be too worried that she isn’t hitting the targets with her motor skills, that she seems to be so clumsy.
She’s on track, all things considered. Be grateful.
And I am.
Now, before I can catch her, she’s fallen forward and skinned both her knees. ‘Alice!’ I hurry over, but she’s already clambering up, brushing the bits of gravel off her legs.
‘I’m all right, Mummy.’ She grins at me, proud of herself for being brave. ‘I’m all right.’
‘So you are.’ I pull her towards me and kiss the top of her head, just because I can. Because I never want to take her for granted. Then we turn and start walking back towards home.
Alice slips her hand in mine as we walk along, the sun shining on this gentle April day, the cherry trees above us giant puffballs of blossom. I listen to her tuneless humming as I mentally review what is in our fridge that I can make for dinner.
In the four years since Alice’s birth, I have not gone back to work. I never even thought about it, because why would I leave Alice with a childminder or in a nursery while I went to be with other children? I don’t want to miss a moment. I can’t, at least not yet, and there’s no real financial need for me to, so Matt and I are both happy with the decision.
I unlock the front door and Alice skips in ahead of me, running to the wicker basket of toys in the kitchen and getting out a few of her favourites. I switch on the kettle and open the fridge, humming softly as I scan its contents for the makings of a meal.
Alice is soon absorbed in some little plastic figurines on the floor – fairies or princess or a combination of both.
I get out a packet of mince and an onion and start frying and chopping. As always when my hands are busy but my mind isn’t, my thoughts drift – first from Alice’s preschool play next week, to the taster day at the local primary in a month’s time, to the second vision test her preschool informed us she needs to have since she didn’t do brilliantly on the first one, and then to what I want to talk to Matt about tonight, my heart tumbling in my chest at the thought. And then, as I so often do, I think of Anna.
I have not seen her since she walked out of my house. I don’t know if she still lives in her flat in Totterdown, or what she does for work. I searched for her on Facebook once, but she didn’t have a profile. I didn’t think she’d had when we were friends, either.
I go over and over that last day, the charged words, the accusations hurled, the finality of it all. Did it have to be that way? Did it really have to be that way? During those last moments, it felt as if we were hurtling towards a terrifying precipice, and no one knew how to stop or even slow down.
I still hadn’t been well, not truly well. Anna’s words had preyed on all the insecurities that had been my demons since I’d given birth. Even worse, she opened up a chasm between Matt and me; after she’d left, the click of the door seeming to reverberate through the room, I’d turned to him.
‘Did you really say that?’
‘Milly…’
I knew then that he had. ‘You told Anna that you didn’t think I should be a mother?’ My voice was a hoarse whisper as I clutched Alice too tightly to me and she began to squirm.
‘I didn’t say it like that. For the love of… Milly. I was at a low point, and so were you. I was thinking out loud – not even thinking, just… I don’t know, moaning. Grieving. I wondered if we should have gone down the whole donation and IVF route, that maybe we’d been trying too hard… I was tired and afraid and it was late, Milly. That’s all it was, I swear.’ He looked at me pleadingly, his eyes full of fear.
I shook my head, unable to forgive him so easily. Unable to forgive myself, because perhaps Matt had been right. Perhaps Anna was. Perhaps I should have been the one walking out the door, and she should have kept Alice in her arms. I glanced down at my daughter and saw her face grow red as she began to cry, as she always seemed to do with me. I had no idea what to do, how to comfort her. I stared at her helplessly and after a few awful seconds Matt took her from me. Then I went up to bed and slept.
Thankfully we survived those first weeks and months, although it wasn’t easy. I had a lot of healing to do, and a lot of forgiving of myself. At one point, encouraged by my therapist, I looked up my birth records and discovered that my birth mother had suffered from serious postpartum depression. It both saddened and relieved me, to know that. To understand why she’d given me up, and also why I’d felt the way I did. Genes mattered, but in a different way than I’d feared.
Matt and I also started therapy together, to work through our feelings surrounding Anna, my diagnosis, all of it. And, day by day, step by step, we made it. But our friendship with Anna didn’t.
At one point, the therapist suggested we contact her for some sort of closure.
‘I don’t need closure,’ Matt said shortly. ‘It’s already closed.’
‘Still, considering what a long-standing friendship it was…’
‘No.’
The therapist didn’t bring it up again. And the few times I did, Matt was adamant. We’d trusted Anna. We’d trusted her with our child, the most important thing in our lives, and she had betrayed us utterly. For him, affable, easy-going Matt, there was no going back. It was a surprising insight into his character that I had never seen before, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.
But, I admit, it was easier for me to go along with him. I was afraid to see Anna again, to deal with all that hurt and guilt and mess. I already had enough to be dealing with. And so the months, and then the years, slipped by, and soon enough it all felt too late… and that felt okay.
When Alice was six months old, Jack went back to France. I think that was, in its own way, a relief. He’d tried to stay involved at first, playing with Alice, having a beer with Matt, but it had all been tinged with awkwardness and tension, which may or may not have been wrapped up in Anna’s absence or Alice’s parentage or perhaps was just a result of the relationship he and Matt had had over the years – not estranged, but not close either, just like the rest of his family. Matt’s parents didn’t visit us until Alice was three months old, and that seemed normal to them.
With Jack and Anna essentially out of our lives, something in me breathed easier, and I think it did in Matt, as well. What that says about us, I don’t know and don’t like to think about. We hadn’t told anyone else, except for my parents, about the donation, and I thought now we never would. That, in its own way, felt like some sort of betrayal, although of whom exactly I couldn’t say, but in any case I just pushed it aside. We needed to focus on the future now. On Alice. And we’d tell her the truth of her parentage when she was old enough to understand it. When that would be, I didn’t need to think about yet.
Still, I think of Anna often, and I think of her now as I chop an onion and my eyes stream. Did she get another job in Human Resources? Is she with someone? Does she think of Alice?
‘Mummy, can you fix this?’ Alice holds up one of the little figurines whose arm has snapped off.
‘I’ll try, honey.’
I root around in our junk drawer for some craft glue while Alice waits patiently, her sea-green eyes so trusting. She looks like a miniature Anna, from her wavy blonde hair to those beautiful eyes, and of course the dimples. I remember how I joked about Anna’s gorgeous genes to Matt, and inwardly I cringe. I could do without the constant reminder, but of course I’d never change anything about Alice at all.
‘You’ll have to leave it for a bit,’ I say after I’ve managed to glue the tiny arm back on. It looks wonky, but hopefully it will stick. ‘The glue needs to dry.’
‘All right, Mummy.’ Alice gives me an easy smile before turning back to her toys. I don’t know if I am imagining that she has Anna’s plac
id, passive nature as well as her looks – is that kind of thing determined by DNA, or developed through nurture? I suppose I’ll never know, and I really should stop thinking about it. In the end, it doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered, if everything hadn’t gone so disastrously wrong, and that’s my fault for being ill in the first place. If I hadn’t been… if I’d been able to take care of Alice right away…
Of course, it’s impossible to say, but I think things would have turned out so differently.
Matt comes home an hour later, dropping his briefcase by the door and then crouching down as Alice runs to him, tripping over the hall runner and half-flying, half-stumbling into his arms.
‘Whoa there, gorgeous.’ He scoops her up in an easy armful as he glances at me. ‘Good day?’
‘Yes, a very good day. We went to the park.’ A beef and pasta casserole is in the oven, and I reach into the fridge to get a beer for Matt. I’ve become the classic little housewife, but I don’t care about stereotypes, I just want to be happy.
‘And how was preschool?’ Matt asks Alice as he tugs on one of her plaits.
‘Good.’ She snuggles against him. ‘But Mummy said I need to get my eyes tested again.’
Matt frowns over the top of her head. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ I shrug as I put the beer on the counter and then go to check on the broccoli. ‘They had vision tests at school, and I got a notice today saying she needs a second test.’
‘Why?’
Like me, Matt is protective of Alice, perhaps a little too much. But it’s an understandable response, considering everything we’ve been through, and it surely can’t hurt.
‘She doesn’t have 20/20 vision, I suppose,’ I say lightly, conscious that Alice is listening to every word we say, and not wanting her to feel somehow deficient. ‘It’s not a big deal.’ I choose not to let it be.
But Matt returns to it after Alice is in bed, when we’re tucked up on the sofa with the latest offering from Netflix on the screen paused in front of us.
‘So do you think she’ll need glasses?’
‘Maybe. We always knew being premature would affect her in different ways.’
‘You think this is about being premature?’
‘I don’t know.’ I glance at Matt, trying to lighten the mood. ‘But surely there are worse things than needing glasses?’
‘Yes, of course there are. You know how I am.’ He smiles, and presses the remote, the moment nearly forgotten.
If only I’d known how prescient my words were. If only I’d known how this was all going to end.
But I didn’t know, and so I dismiss Alice’s eye test and instead talk about what I think is really important.
‘Matt… I think it’s time we thought about another baby.’
Matt’s eyes widen, his lips parting silently as he presses pause once more on the remote. ‘Milly…’
‘I know it’s scary,’ I say, my heart starting to thud, because in all this time we have not talked about having another child even once. ‘And there’s a likelihood that I’ll experience depression again.’
‘Milly…’ Already he is shaking his head.
‘Matt, we’d be prepared this time. And I’m not getting any younger.’ In fact, my POI has advanced to a point where if I don’t have IVF in the next year or so, the window will most likely have closed forever. I’m on HRT, and so far it’s all been manageable, but still.
Matt leans his head against the sofa and closes his eyes. I wait, determined to be patient. I want this too much to jeopardise it by pressing hard now. I’ve learned that much over the years.
‘I don’t know, Milly,’ he says finally. ‘I really don’t know. What happened before…’
‘But it will be managed this time,’ I can’t keep from interjecting. ‘If it happens at all. It might not, you know. With the medication and therapy and knowledge I have now, it might not.’ I’ve done my research; I have a fifty per cent chance of experiencing postpartum depression again.
‘Even so.’
‘Alice is so wonderful.’ I hear the emotion clogging my voice. ‘So, so amazing. Don’t you want her to have a brother or sister?’
‘Yes, of course I would like that.’ Matt sounds irritated, which makes me fall silent. ‘Do you honestly think I don’t? Sometimes I think you believe you’re the only one who ever wanted a family.’
‘What?’ I blink, startled by the turn in the conversation. ‘Of course I don’t think that, Matt…’
‘Well, all of this has been hard for me too. The POI, the IVF, the PPD, a dozen different acronyms that basically suck. I don’t think I can go through it again, Milly. I just want to enjoy having Alice.’
I sit back, winded by his diatribe, and more than a little hurt. He’s acting as if it’s all been my fault, and isn’t that what I have been trying not to tell myself for so long? What I so desperately need to believe?
‘I’m sorry,’ Matt says after a moment. ‘I didn’t…’ He rubs his hand over his face. ‘I shouldn’t have said it like that. I’m sorry. I’m just scared, Milly. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face all that again.’
‘Together we can be strong enough. I’ve looked into it, and because I’m a known risk, I can have a care plan in place from the beginning. I can consult a perinatal psychologist, I can start taking medication that’s safe for the baby even while I’m pregnant.’
‘What about the high risk? You’d have to have a C-section again, and while you were pregnant, you were on bed rest for weeks, Milly. What about Alice during all that?’
‘A C-section is one thing, and I might not have to be on bed rest. Look, there were a lot of factors last time that won’t be a consideration this time around – my job, my mum’s diagnosis…’ I gaze at him despairingly. ‘Will you just think about it, please?’
It takes an age for Matt to slowly nod. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I’ll think about it.’
After a tense moment of silence, we settle back to watch whatever’s on the TV. I feel as if I know what the battle ahead is, as if I’m prepared for it, because I have a plan, when actually I had no idea at all.
Twenty-Four
Anna
I am lying in bed one Saturday morning in September, the sunlight through the window spreading over me like golden syrup, when my phone pings with a text.
At first, I think it’s Will. We’ve been dating for a few months, since June, and it’s becoming more serious, slowly and sweetly. It started after that first cup of tea while it rained; in the weeks after, we found ourselves running into each other more often, giving jokey, self-conscious smiles and sharing a bit of banter. It wasn’t until later that we confessed we’d both been spending more time on the allotment for just that reason.
Chats standing in soil, cups of tea in his shed when the rain came down and then when it didn’t, and finally one late afternoon in June, when it was just melting into a golden evening, he asked me out for a drink.
Since then we’ve seen each other several times a week, drinks and dinners and movie nights in, and I made it official in my own mind by telling my colleagues and friends at work that I had a boyfriend. In July, Will asked me to accompany him to a friend’s wedding; in August we spent a day at the seaside, like little children, eating ice creams and even going on donkey rides.
So I am smiling, thinking of him, wondering if he wants to do something together today, as I reach for my phone and then stiffen in shock when I see who it’s from. Milly.
The text is shockingly brief: Just checking this is your number. I stare at it for a long moment, hardly able to believe that such a pithy sentiment is how she’d choose to connect with me after four years of silence, as well as the complete fallout that precipitated it. Just checking?
I put my phone down and get out of bed, my contented, languid mood replaced by something edgy and restless. I pull on my workout clothes and trainers and hit the pavement for a run, something that usually helps me gain some perspective.
&nbs
p; But the only perspective I gain is an even greater fury and resentment that she’s texted me this way, after so long. After so much. And then I question whether I have the right to feel that way, if in fact I’m being unreasonable, considering my part in it all.
The trouble is, I reflect as I pound down the pavement, I have no one to talk this through with. The only person who knows about Milly, and more importantly, Alice, is my therapist Ellen, whom I stopped seeing two years ago. I could ring her, but it feels like overkill. It’s just a text.
Exactly.
Back at my flat I shower and dress and then stare at my phone again. She hasn’t sent another text, and I haven’t replied to the first one. I have no idea what I’d write: Yes, that’s right! Still here! How on earth am I supposed to respond? She sent a text as if she’s confirming my address for their annual Christmas card.
I tell myself to ignore it, to forget about it, but of course that’s impossible. It’s just a text, but it’s sent my fragile, carefully ordered world into a tailspin. One text and I start to remember. Wonder. Regret, and worse, want.
What if she wants to get in touch for a good reason? What if she wants me to be in Alice’s life again? Instinctively I know that’s not the reason. It can’t be, and I can’t let myself hope. It hurts too much when it falls apart.
That evening, Will comes by to watch the latest drama series on the telly, and after just a few minutes he can tell I’m out of sorts.
‘Anna.’ He puts one warm, heavy hand on my knee. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s nothing, really.’ I try to shrug. ‘Just a text I received this morning from an old… friend.’ The word doesn’t sit right on my tongue.
‘An old friend? And that was a bad thing?’
‘It was… surprising. We fell out a while ago.’ I pause, deliberating how much to tell. ‘Quite spectacularly, actually.’
Will smiles, his forehead crinkling. ‘I’m having trouble imagining that.’