Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (35 page)

I have to stop working, I’m mentally unfit to work. I become reclusive, hiding away at home, occasionally venturing out to get food. Every ounce of my energy goes into my husband. I love him, I want to keep him, I make his dinner, we sit on the sofa together holding hands and watching TV. We are very close. It’s us against the world.

I am accepted at St Mary’s Hospital miscarriage clinic – run by the world-famous Professor Lesley Regan – and put on a blood-thinning regime, injecting aspirin into my stomach every day; then I go back to the Lister to start trying again. Still nothing. No baby. Just purple, black and yellow bruises all over my stomach. I couldn’t look less like a mother. I have a sharps bin under the sink. Every day, every day I inject. I go to see
Trainspotting
at the Screen on the Hill, but have to leave halfway through. I think it’s glorifying needles; needles aren’t rock ’n’ roll to me, nothing glamorous about them – to me they signify heartbreak and failure. Back home that night, the tiny pale grey mosaic tiles in our bathroom pulse like millions of mini TV sets as I sit on the bog, head in hands, staring at the floor and worry, worry, worry if I’m doing the right thing. Is this is a safe or ethical way to conceive? IVF is in its infancy, not many people have done it. A little girl’s voice cuts into my thoughts, loud and clear,
I don’t care how I get here, Mummy. Just get on with it
. The voice is reassuring and confident. Or am I just barking mad? I shouldn’t watch surreal films whilst I’m in this state.

I hear of an IVF clinic in Belgium that has a better success rate than English clinics and because they have different fertility laws over there, they can put more than three embryos back into the womb. So Hubby and I start trekking over to Belgium. Altogether, I’ve had eleven attempts at IVF and thirteen operations under general anaesthetic, including two lost babies and the removal of my gall bladder as it was overstimulated by the IVF drugs. No wonder I’m bonkers. I lie on the bed and stare out at a Belgian industrial estate; hundreds of magpies gather on the grass outside.
Dear god, just send me a sign if this is the wrong thing to be doing
… Hundreds of magpies, thousands of pounds, heartbreaks, train trips, international phone calls, blood tests … and still I fail.

Failure has become my middle name. Do I sound sorry for myself? Fucking right. Why don’t I give up? Because I want a baby more than anything in the world. I didn’t want a baby for thirty-six years but now I’ve met a man I love and I want a baby. Simple as that. I’m gripped and driven by a desire way out of my control. Mum is being destroyed along with me. She tries to tell me that having a baby isn’t the be-all and end-all: ‘Why do you want one so badly?’ ‘I JUST WANT TO HOLD MY BABY.’ No logic, no sense, a compulsive biological urge. I see a baby in a pram outside the gym. How lovely it would be just to pick her up and hold her. I look down at the sweet little bundle,
I just want to hold … Oh god, I am that close to stealing a baby
. That vile, unbelievable crime, I understand it now, I get it, that’s what the crazy bad lady always says, ‘I just wanted to hold her.’ You pick her up for a quick cuddle, and baby feels so warm and soft, and that lovely newborn smell makes you close your eyes in ecstasy, and you can’t put her back down again. Ever.

As a project, to take my mind off everything, Hubby and I start looking for a house to buy. We want something modern, can’t stand those cornices and uneven floors and dust coming out of the walls made of lime and horsehair. We find a great house in a mews full of one-off architect-built houses in Camden Town. Lots of people are after it but we get it. It’s the first thing that’s gone right for years; I hope it means my luck has turned. I wasn’t expecting it. I will never just presume I’ll succeed again. I am not that person any more. I am a person that bad things happen to. We move in, it’s huge. ‘Please don’t leave me alone in this big house,’ I say to my husband. I love the house though, it’s the first time in my life I have walked up to a front door and been proud to put my key into it. This means a lot to me; it sounds shallow but my home is important to me, I’m ashamed to say it defines me in a way. I’ve lived in horrible homes all my life, now at last I am in a great one.

My career has gone down the toilet with my failed pregnancy tests. The BBC have offered me a short contract. I don’t want to do it but I’ve accepted it. I need to start contributing to our finances again; I’ve sold all my guitars, amps, Sex clothes and Sid’s bits and pieces at auction to pay for a couple of the IVF attempts (if one of those attempts had worked, I was going to call the baby Sid if a boy, Sidonie if a girl). We’ve decided to have one more try and then stop. When I’ve healed emotionally I’ll think about adoption.

Hubby and I plod off to the hospital in Chelsea for one more go and I start working at the BBC in White City again. On my last day of the BBC job, I meet a very kind woman who is a reiki healer. She does a ‘hands on’ healing session on me, as I’m stretched out on a desk in an empty office. She won’t take any money for it, she’s a true healer. I go home feeling good for the first time in years. I keep telling myself,
Whatever happens, I can take it
.

It’s Saturday, time to do our last-ever pregnancy test. Negative. Of course it’s negative. I’m resigned to it now. We’ve arranged to meet some friends at Kenwood House for a picnic and to listen to the open-air concert tonight. I’m not going to let my quest for a baby dominate our life any more, so we go anyway. Hubby and I lie on the grass and Handel’s
Water Music
floats over the lake. I can’t smile. I can’t talk. Hubby says, ‘Why don’t you get drunk? At least you can do that now.’ But I daren’t, in case baby is still there. I have a feeling baby might still be there.

I secretly do a pregnancy test every day. It’s always negative. I just want to be sure, seeing as this is the last try. I’m going to do a pregnancy test every single day until my period comes. If I’m still doing tests, I’ve still got something to live for. Still got hope. But it’s the hope that kills you. Every day I torture myself looking at the little window on the white tester stick, waiting and waiting. No blue line.

Except one day there
is
a blue line. Very faint but I think I saw it. Or imagined it. Hubby squints at the stick and says he thinks he can see a blue line too. Is it possible that you can get negative after negative reading and then a positive? The next day I do it again. The blue line is stronger. Not imagining it. We go to St Mary’s, where my consultant does another test and confirms I’m definitely pregnant. I’ve become quite friendly with this woman, but today we can’t look at each other. Her best friend, the TV presenter Jill Dando, has just been murdered. I’m so unstable that it all feels like part of my curse.

A baby is growing inside me. I know it. And I know Baby is healthy. I don’t trust myself, don’t trust my own health but I have no doubt that Baby is strong, mentally and physically. It’s just up to me now not to let her down, to be a safe and stable home until she’s ready to be born. (I found out the sex, I can’t bear any surprises, it’s gone on too long. I have to be ready.) Surely I can manage that? Of course I can’t. Dear old Blood starts showing up again, pouring out of me. I’m carted off to hospital and stay overnight. The woman in the bed next to me is handcuffed to the bedstead. She’s a prisoner, a warden sits on a chair next to her bed. The prisoner is so excited to be out and about that she gabbles away excitedly all night. The bleeding stops, Baby seems to be OK, I’m sent home. But I keep bleeding on and off throughout the pregnancy; every time it happens I go back into hospital but Baby hangs on in there. Doesn’t let go. Thank you, darling girl.

10 HEAVEN AND HELL

1999

It’s days before I’m due to give birth, and I am suddenly convinced that I shouldn’t have the ‘natural’ birth I’ve planned and was so looking forward to; I should have a Caesarean in controlled circumstances. I follow my instincts and book the operation for 12 April 1999. Baby is lifted out of my womb:
Bloody hell, I don’t know much about babies but she looks the size of a toddler!
For the first time in my life, I know what it is to cry with joy. If I die now, I will be happy. She is swaddled and handed to me, hollering her head off. As the nurse advances towards me with this wailing hole wrapped in a white cotton blanket, I panic.
I won’t be able to stop her crying. She’ll know I’m a fake. Everyone is going to see I am a useless mother
. I hold her and whisper, ‘It’s all right, Baby, Mummy is here, Mummy will look after you.’ And she stops crying. I don’t put her down again, unless I really have to, for three years.

The three days in hospital with my baby are three days in heaven. She’s a beautiful, soft, dimpled little dumpling. I gaze at her all the time. She clings to me like a baby koala bear. I’m standing on the steps of the hospital with her in a car seat, she’s dressed in her Baby Gap pink hat and jacket, we stop a passer-by and ask him to take a photo of me, Hubby and Baby. Now we’re in the car, Hubby is driving. I’m horrified. What the hell is he doing driving like this? He is going to kill my child. Everything is heightened and distorted. Being a new mother is more psychedelic than taking acid. The whole world is different. Dangers are exaggerated, smells are intensified, speed and distance are stretched. Back home with another fish-mouth scar across my stomach, I sit in the rocking chair feeding Baby, listening to Hubby moving about downstairs, and think to myself,
Please go. Just leave now and put a cheque through the letter-box every month
. What a filthy thought. I am filled with hate and fury and mistrust towards my husband, who has stood by me through years of IVF and never once threatened to give up on me, not even in a temper. I loved him with all my heart until the second we set foot on the pavement outside the hospital. I confess my feelings to the visiting midwife. She tells me to give it a year and then reassess the situation, she explains that it’s biological and not uncommon. She’s right: after a while, the familiar warm feelings I had for Hubby creep back into my cold heart.

I’m nervous. After so many years of trying for a baby, deep down I don’t think I deserve a child. Someone is going to take her away from me; my mum will lose her in Camden Town, a paedophile will snatch her, Hubby is going to trip up whilst he’s carrying her: every night I imagine going to her funeral.

Hubby is going out tonight for the first time since Baby was born, she’s six weeks old. I feed her and put her to bed. I think,
Shall I just lie here and go to sleep?
I’m exhausted but decide to get up and make beans on toast. Got to look after myself. I’m sitting on the sofa eating when I hear a thump. I ignore it. Another couple of thumps. I put my beans on toast down, wander into the hall and drift towards the sound, not in the least bit worried. The noise is coming from the garage. I open the garage door, look up at the skylight and see a figure spread-eagled across the glass.

Oh, just some kids messing about,
I think to myself,
probably climbing across the roofs of the houses for a laugh … NO, VIV. THIS IS IT.

A man is climbing into the house through the open first-floor window at ten o’clock at night he wants my baby he’s come for her I’m alone she’s upstairs I’m downstairs I’m a new mother I don’t know what I’m supposed to do I don’t know how to save someone else I’ve only ever looked after myself before does he have a lookout outside should I run upstairs and grab my baby or will that make us both vulnerable
…

I think all this in a split second and decide to confront him, hopefully luring him away from Baby. I decide to leave her up there alone. I might be wrong. I open the front door – if he has an accomplice, I’m in trouble – and look out into the silent black street. Fucking modern houses, not one of them has a window onto the mews, just brick and render as far as the eye can see. I remember being told that criminals hate noise, it draws attention to them and makes them nervous, so I let out the loudest, most blood-curdling scream I can muster. Two lives depend upon it – I give that scream everything I’ve got. The man drops off the roof and lands a foot away from me as I stand trembling at the open door. I try and slam the door shut but time has gone elastic, my hands have turned to rubber and the door is made of lead. It takes a lonely lifetime to push it shut. An army of men could have come through that door, it seems to take so long.

Once the door is shut I stand in the hallway and scream again. I don’t know if there’s another man already in the house, I want to give him the chance to get out. Then I run upstairs to Baby, who is crying. She’s never heard her mother make such a frightening noise before. I’ve rehearsed an emergency like this so many times in my head. I’ve always thought I’d lock myself and Baby outside on the balcony, so this is what I do but the moment has passed. All that worrying and plotting my escape I’ve done in the past was useless; when it happened, I had to improvise.

The police come, they think it was an attempted robbery. ‘Did I do the right thing?’ I ask.

‘You and the baby are safe,’ says the officer. ‘That means you did the right thing.’

11 BLOOD ON THE TRACKS

1999

I’m walking with Baby and Hubby on Primrose Hill when I get a terrible, cramping stomach ache, so I go into the nearest pub. I’m losing lots of blood, it’s a wonder I’ve got any left. Something’s wrong. Baby’s only three months old and I’m breastfeeding so I shouldn’t be bleeding at all. I have a feeling that something bad is happening. I’m in the bog for ages; Hubby snaps impatiently through the door at me as if he thinks I’m staying in there to be annoying.

I go straight to the doctor’s surgery and a trainee nurse does a smear test. I bleed like a stuck pig and the nurse runs out of the room to find a doctor. Fat fleshy steaks slide out of me, they pile up on the white paper sheet covering the examination couch, looks like a butcher’s shop window. I can’t stop it. Where is everyone? Anyone?