Before She Was Mine (27 page)

The actual birth was supposedly like pooing out a watermelon, and somewhere during the trauma your bits tore in half and then you had to have them sewn back up with a massive curved needle and
they were never the same again. And that was only the beginning of your trials. I had an idea of what motherhood entailed because I’d heard women moaning about it on TV. There was a lot of
shouting and tantrums and cheek, and sick and changing bed linen in the small hours. I’d seen women shut themselves in the kitchen and weep, while above their heads doors slammed and music
boomed. Babies never slept, and were incontinent, and you couldn’t go anywhere and just leave them on their own, not even down the road to the corner shop because that was against the law and
your name would be splashed across the papers and people would scrawl stuff on your door. Newborns were ridiculously fragile, too, and had to be held a special way or their heads came off. There
were a million things for a mother to get wrong.

Impossible to imagine what I’d do with a real live baby. Where would it go? Our spare bedroom was only the size of a cupboard, and currently stacked full of a display on the Wonder of
Wetlands. Liv wouldn’t want her pots of moss re-housing. Liv wouldn’t want waking in the night, or hours of non-stop wailing or extra smells and clutter and mess. Geraint would say to
me, ‘How can you put your mother through this new stress?’ and I’d have to kill him.

Then there was Melody. Dear God, Melody. My insides shrank with horror when I imagined breaking the news to her and Michael. For me to produce a child right now would seem like the ultimate
insult. She might even think it was deliberate. I’d be out of that family for good.

But even as I fretted and raged, I couldn’t stop my brain twisting off along other, less horrible scenarios. An image flicked up of Oggy and me lying on a hillside somewhere with a
laughing child between us. Clouds would be scudding across the blue sky and Oggy would be tickling the child – a boy – with a blade of foxtail. He’d wave the grass head above the
boy’s fists, let him grab it. The sun would be warm and the breeze fresh. And I thought suddenly,
What if Oggy’s actually pleased with the idea of being a father?
If his
reaction’s positive and supportive, being pregnant might be bearable. More than bearable. Perhaps this was all meant to be.

Because I’d have a direction in life at last. I’d
have
to pull myself together. I would move out finally, get a proper place. Get a place with him. Oggy as a dad – was
it so bizarre? I knew he had a tender side because I’d seen it a fair bit lately. It was as though we’d found a recent level of understanding, an acknowledgement that, whatever had gone
before, we were ultimately meant to be together. I’d taken to wearing his ring on my finger even though it did leave a green mark.

We were grown-ups, for God’s sake. When Liv was my age, she’d been married two years; Grandma Abby had Melody at nineteen. So twenty-three was plenty old enough. Oggy and I would
have a baby and muddle though, because people did. I knew how to run a home, I could do the things that mothers did. Another of these false memories flashed up, this time an older boy dressed in
old-fashioned shorts and a red jumper; I must have got the picture from an Enid Blyton cover. We were down on the Moss fishing for stickleback with a seaside net. I saw us hunting for adders,
whistling blades of grass, climbing gates, lifting bark to catch woodlice. It could be the making of me, being a mum. It didn’t have to be a disaster. If that was what fate had handed me,
maybe it was up to me to do the best with it.

Oggy and me: our coming of age.

I let myself in with the key he’d given me.

As soon as I walked across the threshold I smelled weed, and my heart sank. Oggy was lying on the sofa with his eyes closed, despite the combined noise of the TV, Napster’s Hot Five, the
kitchen radio and the washing machine on spin.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted over the row.

‘Not a lot.’ He grinned as he watched me go round switching off appliances. The scent of skunk was faint but tangy. I opened a window and stood by it. ‘I wish you
wouldn’t smoke that stuff.’

He pulled a face but made no comment.

I lifted the ashtray from the arm of the sofa and took it through to the kitchen, where I emptied it into the bin under the sink. On my return I found he’d zapped the television back on
and we were now watching
Chucklevision
.

I said, ‘I need to talk.’

‘I need you,’ he said. ‘Come here.’ He wriggled his hips until there was a margin of cushion for me to perch on. As soon as I sat down he buried his face in my shirt.
‘Oh, Freya, Freya.’

‘Get out of there.’

He peered up at me, his eyes small and slitty. ‘Your hair’s very red today.’

‘Never mind that. Listen, are you in any state to have a serious discussion?’

Something in my tone must have penetrated because he frowned and half sat up. ‘I’m OK, just chilled. If you want to talk, you go for it. Uncle Oggy’s all ears. You tell Uncle
Oggy what’s bothering you. And if it’s that twat Michael . . .’

A bluebottle circling the room distracted him and he lost the end of the sentence. He followed the insect with his eyes, till it settled on the window sill.

I took his face in my hands. ‘Listen. Are you happy?’

‘Fucking ecstatic.’

‘With me. Us.’

‘Like I said.’

‘What about,’ I said carefully, ‘if there were three of us?’

A blank. Then an expression of slow puzzlement crossed his face, followed by an insane, beaming smile.

I couldn’t believe it. My heart soared with relief, I felt dizzy. He did want to be a dad. It was going to be OK.

Then he said, ‘You talking about a threesome?’ He began to giggle. ‘God, you’re full of surprises, you. Fucking hell, fucking hell, who—’

‘No,
not
a threesome. Not that. No. Jesus, this is hopeless.’

‘It’s not.’

‘Yes it is, Oggy. I’m going to leave you and come back tomorrow.’

‘Whatever’s the matter, woman?’

‘Nothing. It can keep.’

He snatched my wrist and held it tightly. ‘Something’s wrong, yeah? Tell me now. Come on. You look upset. I don’t want you to be upset. Oggy says you mustn’t be upset . .
.’

The fly was on the move again.

‘I’ll give it one shot. Then I’m done.’

I waited till he re-focused.

‘Go on.’

‘How would you feel if I told you I was pregnant?’

‘Dunno. Is it something you’re likely to say?’

He sniggered again. I stared at him till he sobered up.

‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘You’re not, are you?’

‘I might be. There’s a good chance. I’ve never been this late before, and there was that time when you wouldn’t—’

‘I thought you were dealing with it.’

‘I meant to.’

‘Have you done a test?’

‘No.’

He flung his head back, despairingly. I could see his mind was engaged now, but the wheels were moving slowly.

I said, ‘I wanted to see what your reaction was. In case I am.’

‘Should’ve done a test,’ he mumbled. ‘Anyway, listen, it’s . . . You don’t have to worry, yeah, because I’ll go with you . . .’

‘To the hospital?’

‘Wherever they do it. I’ll help with the fee, I don’t know how much it costs. I’ll put something towards it, anyway. There was that girl, Jo whatsit, used to knock about
with Robbie Birch, she went to Wrexham for hers. You could ask around . . .’

It dawned on me what he was getting at.

‘I wasn’t thinking of an abortion.’

Oggy made an indeterminate noise in his throat.

‘How far are you on?’

‘I’m two weeks late.’

‘Then it’s a bunch of cells, that’s all.’

‘It’s more than that, Oggy. It’s you and me.’

‘Aw, shit, don’t get so . . . You were prepared to use the morning-after pill. It was just cells then.’

‘That was before. It feels, it feels like a baby now.’

‘Fuck.’ He put his arm across his eyes to block me out. ‘I can’t get my head round this.’

‘Imagine what it would be like, though, having a kid. A little person hanging on your every word. Who thinks you’re brilliant, your number one fan, yeah?’ I tried a smile.
‘Because, I mean, what are you doing with your life as it stands? Nothing. You’re like me, drifting about. And that’s OK for a while, but you have to, you have to
settle
at
some point, you have to achieve something. Make a difference. Otherwise, why were you born? What’s the point of it all?’ No response. I waited, then I leaned over till my lips were next
to his ear. ‘Oggy, be honest with yourself:
are
you happy?’

I really thought this speech might have hit home. Surely the doubts that plagued my confidence and kept me awake at three in the morning sometimes were the same ones that bothered him? The sense
that I should have achieved more, was being left behind, had failed to make the grade. Would never make it. I didn’t want to be stuck in no-man’s-land any more, I wanted something to
move me on. He and I could move together.

‘I was happy,’ he said. ‘I am happy—’

‘But are you really? Truly?’

‘Yeah, Frey, I am. My life’s fine. I don’t need any add-ons. I
want
everything to stay the same. Same’s good.’ The next instant the fog seemed to clear and
he looked at me sharply. ‘I get it. This is about you, isn’t it? What’s bugging you. You’ve decided having a kid will be like, I dunno, a safe harbour where you can sit and
be a mum and no one’ll bother you, for years. Maybe the council’ll sort you out a house. Then you can veg at home and watch CBeebies all day, all that shit.’

‘No!’

‘Oh, I think so, Frey. Well I’m not ready for my world to shrink, even if you are.’

I pointed angrily at the television screen where a man was riding a runaway lawnmower through a campsite of yelling Scouts.

‘That’s the kettle calling the fucking pot, that is. What are you watching, then? Sodding
Newsnigh
t with Jeremy Paxman? What do
you
do with your days except coast
through your job, go down the pub, crash in front of the TV, get up and start over again?’

‘Yeah but there’s stuff I want to do in the future, sometime. Like, I’ve never been to America, you know? I want to have a go at snowboarding, go round a race
track—’

‘I thought you said you didn’t want change.’

‘That’s, it’s, I meant—’ Then: ‘Fuck it. This is stupid. Do a test. Come back when you know what the fuck’s going on.’

The lawnmower hit a tree and catapulted the driver head first into a convenient wheelie bin. The credits rolled as his legs waved.

‘You know, plenty of girls are late. Two weeks is nothing. We’re probably fine,’ said Oggy, more quietly.

No, I thought. Whatever a test shows up, one thing we aren’t is fine.

I didn’t go straight home. Instead I followed the backstreets into the centre of town, then walked slowly up the main road in the direction of the chemist’s. No
hurry. I wanted to hold onto this space-of-not-knowing, stretch it out, savour it. I didn’t want to be pregnant, I didn’t want not to be.

Once you’re tuned in, evidence of fertility’s everywhere. Right in front of me an elderly woman stopped to admire a baby in a pram, while the mother smiled down indulgently. Up
ahead, a man holding a girl-toddler by the hand threaded his way through the crowds towards me. Two junior-age boys cycled past, calling to each other and laughing. All around me society was busy
producing.

Nearly every shop window seemed to boast children’s books or toys or baby gadgets, adverts for school uniforms, christening gifts. I passed Thorntons where five months ago I’d
stopped by and bought two identical boxes of chocolates for Mother’s Day; took a minute to imagine someone giving me a handmade card, crayon scrawl inside. Once I’d made Liv a daffodil
card out of an egg carton, and another year our teacher had got us to cut out teapot shapes and sellotape a tea bag on the back. Liv had kept them all. Even Melody had one of my cartoons on
display, a picture of the two of us I’d doodled on a flyer during one of our nervous early meetings. It lived on her kitchen wall, next to the calendar and takeaway leaflets. ‘I like to
see it every day,’ she’d said. I hadn’t appreciated what that meant till now.

I reached the chemist and hung around outside, delaying the moment. I had no reason to suppose I was pregnant bar the late period, and periods can just be late. Twice before I’d taken a
chance, and got away with it. Why should I be caught this time? If I did the test and I wasn’t pregnant, I was going to go out tonight and get smashed. If I did the test and I was—

Join Our Parenting Club!
read the banner across the chemist’s door. The bell jingled as I pushed it open. Surely everyone would stop what they were doing and turn to watch the
harlot complete her walk of shame? I kept my eyes away from people’s faces, concentrated on scanning the shelves till I located the rack of pregnancy testing kits. On the same aisle, not two
stands away, there were packets of nappies and tins of milk powder and teethers and bibs, doll-size nail scissors, special baby-gentle bath lotion. My stomach lurched. I grabbed the nearest kit and
took it to the counter.

Found myself standing hip to hip with a woman who looked about nine months gone. I cast her a sly look, and she nodded back.

‘When’s it due?’ I heard myself say.

‘Another six weeks.’

Another six weeks?
Blood and sand. Her belly was already as enormous as it was possible to be without exploding. ‘Oh,’ I said, and let out a stupid high-pitched giggle.

She collected her prescription, gave me a quick anxious smile, and heaved herself away from the counter.

I kept the box hidden under my hand till she’d gone.

I’d turned off my phone while I was visiting Oggy. Coming out onto the high street again I switched it back on and found six missed calls and two text messages, all from
Nicky. I rang her at once.

‘Where are you?’ she said.

‘In town.’

‘So am I. Can we meet in Walkers?’

‘When?’