Any Way You Want Me (34 page)

‘Mmmm,’ I had said noncommittally. Inside I was thinking, you don’t know them like I do, though, darling.

I wasn’t sure which of the three things on my to-do list was going to be the hardest. Telling Alex about the baby would be awful. I could hardly bear to think about the dismay that would undoubtedly spread across his face when the information registered. Yet cooling things with Mark was definitely the scariest option. He was so unpredictable, I was half expecting him to hit me. Or hurt me. Or print posters of my face and the word SLUT and stick them up all over town. He wouldn’t let go without a fight, I knew that much. The eight messages on my voicemail were testament to that.

Over the weekend, I planned everything out thoroughly. I would go round to Mark’s office as usual on Monday and tell him then. This time I wouldn’t cave in so pathetically, the way I’d done after my birthday weekend. I wouldn’t bang on and on about the reasons why, I’d just say it and then get the hell out of there before the storm broke.

I figured I’d soften up Alex over the following weekend. He’d loved it in Brighton, hadn’t he? Perhaps I would suggest another trip to the coast – either down to Brighton again, or somewhere prettier like Rye or Hayling Island – and then, once there, I’d guide him gently to some estate agent windows and say, ‘Gosh, look what we could get for our money down here, darling!’

And, if he really baulked at the thought of being even further south than we already were, I’d play my trump card and suggest a move north instead. Yorkshire. I knew exactly how much he would love to move back there. Hell, if it meant escaping London, I’d do it, even if it did mean our children would grow up talking like him.

Then, once he was really softened up and excited about moving, a week or so later, I’d drop in the pregnancy news. And, with a bit of luck, he’d be pleased.

I was starting to feel happier about being pregnant. I’d even sneaked a couple of looks at my Miriam Stoppard book to see exactly what was happening inside me. It was just as magical and awe-inspiring reading about the process for a third time. I looked at the amazing photos of six-week-old foetuses, and their bumps and nodules that would eventually turn into a face, arms and legs, with a throb of excitement.

My secret third baby that only Jemima and I knew about. Well, and Paige Kozinski, too, I supposed, but she didn’t count. Was this one going to be a girl or a boy? I wondered. Blonde again or dark-haired this time? Would they be mercurial and entertaining, like Molly, or placid and calm, like Nathan? I had worked out that the baby would be due on 27 November. A Sagittarian. I circled the date in my diary but wrote nothing next to it. It wasn’t like I was about to forget that in a hurry, anyway.

On Monday, I woke up feeling determined. It was D-Day. Dumping Day. Out with the old and in with the new. Nothing would stop me this time.

But then something terrible happened.

Anna was round for lunch, and I was just bending to get a pizza out of the oven when there was an agonizing cramp in my side.

‘Oh my God,’ I groaned, clutching my belly. The pain was so violent, I dropped the baking tray, which crashed against the floor, pizza landing the wrong side up. I was bent double, gasping, vaguely aware of Anna’s open mouth saying something to me, yet I couldn’t hear her.

‘The baby,’ I managed to say. I could feel something wet in my knickers. Blood, rolling out of me, along with all those precious, precious cells. ‘I’m losing the baby.’

‘I’ll phone an ambulance,’ I heard Anna say, and I started to cry.

Don’t go, I wanted to shout to my baby. Don’t leave me yet, little prawn. I want you. I always wanted you, really. Please hang on. Please stay with me. Please, please, please . . .

I was on the floor with the pain, crying and shouting. Molly and Ella had run into the kitchen at the sound of the crash and were hovering nervously a few feet away, staring at me with frightened expressions.

‘Mummy, what you doing?’ Molly asked, her face pale.

I couldn’t even pretend to be all right this time. Anna was kneeling next to me, stroking my hair. ‘They’re on their way,’ she said, over and over again. ‘I’ll look after the kids. What’s Alex’s number?’

I had never believed much in the idea of divine retribution, but I did now. I knew that this was utterly my fault. If I’d only been keener about the pregnancy from the word go, the baby wouldn’t have felt unwanted. If only I’d been happier! It must have known I hadn’t planned for it to come along. I must have driven it out of me somehow with all my bad thoughts and stress.

My kitchen was suddenly a blur of activity. Two male paramedics, kind and concerned, asking me questions as I lay on the floor. Molly’s wail of incomprehension as one of them lifted me up and took me to the ambulance. ‘I want my mummy! Mummy, come back!’

Her cries rang around my ears the entire way to the A&E department.

I was wheeled in for an ultrasound scan, which confirmed the worst. As the most horrible kind of foil to the scans I’d had of Molly and Nathan where I’d seen their wriggling fishlike bodies on the screen, and counted off their limbs and organs with joyous relief, this time the screen was black and empty. Too late. My baby had gone before I’d even seen it.

I felt just as empty as I looked. I lay on the hard trolley, my stomach cold and wet from the jelly they’d squirted on it, and wept as if I’d never stop. Then the door burst open and Alex was there, kissing my face and hair, hugging me, holding my hand. And then he looked at the screen, too, and cried with me.

‘Did you know?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I told him. This one was too important to lie about. ‘Yes, I knew. I was scared to tell you,’ I whispered, breaking down into sobs again. ‘I didn’t think you’d want it.’ I swallowed hard. ‘
I
didn’t want it at first. But now that it’s gone, I want it back. Oh, I so want it back, Alex.’

‘I know you do,’ he said, stroking my face. ‘I know, sweetheart. I know.’

‘I feel so sad,’ I cried. ‘I’m so, so sad, Alex. I can’t bear to think about what’s just happened.’

He hugged me tightly, his broad arms around me so that he ended up covered with the ultrasound jelly. I was half expecting him to make a joke about it, but for once, he didn’t. ‘I’m sad, too,’ he said, with a catch in his voice. ‘I’m really sad, too, sweetheart. But we’ll get through this, Sadie.’ He was squeezing me so tight, his fingers were digging into my back. ‘You and me. Good times ahead, I promise you.’

‘Do you mean it? Do you really promise?’ I was like a kid, desperate for reassurance, clinging to his words as if they could save me.

‘I promise.’ He kissed the top of my head. ‘I promise.’

Eighteen

Alex stayed with me and held my hand while I had the D&C. Every last bit of baby had been taken from me now. Each cell and fibre and feature. Gone. Flushed away. Irretrievable.

Everybody around me seemed desperate to say the right thing, yet there were no words in any dictionary that could make me feel any less devastated.

‘You have to remember, this wasn’t your fault,’ a well-meaning nurse told me kindly. ‘It’s very common to miscarry so early on in pregnancy.’

That only made me cry harder. How could she say it wasn’t my fault? She knew nothing! Of course it was my fault! And now she’d made me think about all those other women who were going through this, day in, day out, as a frequent occurrence. It was unbearable.

‘Maybe your body just wasn’t ready to be pregnant again so soon,’ Alex said, squeezing my hand tentatively.

I turned my face away from him and wailed into the pillow. My own body had failed me. I had been a traitor to my unborn child, let him or her slip from me so carelessly. How could I have done that? I hated myself for it.

‘You know, there could have been something wrong with the baby,’ Mum said when we were back home later that night. ‘It might be for the best. One of those things.’

I didn’t reply, just snivelled into a tissue, but inside I was raging. For the best? One of those things? How could this possibly have been for the
best
? I’d just lost a baby! How the hell did that equate to ‘one of those things’?

It seemed as though I had been away a long time, when we finally made it back to Tennyson Road. Everything had changed.
I
had changed. I had left the house, clinging to faint shreds of hope that my baby would survive. I had returned empty. Cleaned out.

The hospital staff had wanted me to stay in overnight, as I was still bleeding and in pain, but I refused point-blank. I had just lost one child; I didn’t want to throw the lives of my other two into upheaval by not being there when they woke up in the morning. So, dosed up on painkillers and numb with grief and shock, here I was. I had industrial-strength sanitary towels between my thighs, so thick I could barely walk, and a swirling sensation in my head from the drugs. And there was a dead space inside me where my baby had once budded and floated.

The kids were in bed, and I crept in to see them, trying not to cry too loudly and wetly over them. My beautiful, darling children, stretched out in slumber, breathing deeply, cheeks warm under my touch. How lucky I was to have them in my life. I was so, so grateful. I would never take them for granted again.

The house was spotless, all traces of dropped pizza removed from the kitchen floor, carpets Hoovered, everything washed up and put away. Someone had even cleaned Nathan’s high chair, which had had disgusting dried-on Weetabix splashes on it for so long I had started to think they were part of the design. Mum had obviously been thrown into a cleaning frenzy in a must-do-something-to-help response to the news. She rocked me on the sofa while Alex went to make everyone coffee, and it was like being five again, and having her comfort me for a skinned knee or a hair-pulling scrap with Lizzie.

‘It’ll be OK,’ she crooned, stroking my hair. ‘Don’t cry, pet. It’ll all be OK.’

The phone rang and Mum stiffened in annoyance. ‘It’s been doing that all night,’ she said. ‘Whoever it is won’t talk to me though. I answer it, say hello, and the line goes dead. Bloomin’ kids.’

RING RING. A chill crept down my back. No, not kids. It wasn’t kids. I knew who it was, all right. Who else would it be? The very person I’d been planning to see this evening until the unthinkable had happened.

RING RING
.

I went over and wrenched the phone line out of the wall socket and the noise stopped abruptly, mid-trill. ‘I don’t want to talk to anyone tonight, anyway,’ I muttered.

I sat down again next to Mum, feeling light-headed and woozy. Sod it. Bring on complete annihilation. Tonight, I needed it. ‘Alex,’ I called through to the kitchen, ‘could you make mine a large brandy instead?’

The next morning, I awoke with an eyeball-drying, brain-shrivelling, gut-churning hangover, and the nagging feeling that something unusual had happened. Then I remembered, and promptly burst into tears all over again. My baby. My little prawn.

Alex brought me breakfast in bed with the rest of the hospital painkillers, and Nathan to cuddle, but Molly hung back at the bedroom door, with the same anxious expression she’d worn the day before.

I dried my tears quickly, choked back the sobs and held out my arms for her. She shook her head mutely, her eyes fixed upon mine.

‘Come on, Molls, come and give Mum a kiss,’ Alex said, rolling Nathan up and down the bed to make him chortle.

Molly was still looking at me warily. ‘You lie on kitchen floor, Mummy. You cry,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Mans take you away.’

‘I know, darling. I was poorly,’ I told her. ‘The men took me to hospital to make me better. I’m really sorry if you felt frightened.’

Then she was over at my side in a rush, scrambling up on the bed, one knee in the toast in her haste. And she was clinging to me and kissing me and pressing herself right into me, bony arms squeezing around my neck.

Alex looked at me above her head. ‘We’ve got these two,’ he said, and his eyes were soft.

I was glad he hadn’t said ‘at least’. I was sick to the back teeth of hearing ‘at least’, and how I should count my blessings. Counting blessings and ‘at least’ didn’t change a damn thing.

‘I know,’ I said. I rubbed Molly’s back, feeling every knobble of her spine through her thin cow-print pyjamas. ‘We have.’

Alex had already called in to the office to say he would be off work all week, for which I was grateful and relieved. I felt as if my stuffing had leaked out of me along with the baby, plus every ounce of energy and sparkle, too. There was nothing left of me now, just bones and skin and a face. Yeah, so I was breathing in and out. My pulse was ticking along, same as ever. For all that, though, I felt utterly lifeless. I could scarcely drag myself out of bed to the toilet, let alone carry on as normal with the kids and our usual day.

Alex brought the TV up to our bedroom and switched on Lorraine Kelly for me. ‘I’m going to the shops,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you some magazines and oranges and chocolate biscuits and . . . stuff. Anything else you fancy?’

I shook my head and lay back on the pillows, watching with the very feeblest of interest as Lorraine interviewed a new family that were going to be appearing on
Emmerdale
. Everything was suddenly so . . . unimportant. So trivial. I listened to the front door slam and Molly’s high, cheerful voice as it floated up to the window outside, and then their footsteps faded away down the road.

My teeth were chattering. I was cold. Then, once the quilt was up to my neck, I felt hot. I smelled of hospital; I could feel it coming out of my pores, along with all the brandy fumes. I knew, without checking the mirror, that I’d look as if I’d been in a punch-up – red, swollen eyes, puffed-up cheeks. My baby had died. My baby had died. My baby had
died
.

Someone was knocking at the front door but I ignored them. Go away. Forget it. Not interested, whoever you are. Probably someone trying to sell me badly made oven gloves or pegs or some other household product that I always bought out of soft-heartedness and never used. Or it might be God-botherers trying to convert me. One glimpse of my slumped shoulders and they’d know I was easy prey. Alex would come home from the shops to find me signed up to choir practice and canvassing, with enough spare copies of
The True Light
to paper our bedroom.