So many times over the last few weeks I’d gone to the park and stood looking at the bandstand, wondering whether to step inside. Would Emma be there? Would she ever be there again? Maybe she was there right now, waiting for me, hoping I’d come. Hoping she’d have the chance to explain why she did what she did. If she was, all I needed to do was to take a step, and I’d be with her.
But in the end, I hadn’t been able to do it. Because I didn’t see how I would ever be able to forgive her for what she’d done.
Even though I didn’t know exactly what she’d discovered about me, the thought of what itcouldbe haunted me throughout my days. I knew that whatever I imagined could very well be worse than the reality, in which case finding out the truth would help. But there was always the possibility that it was exactly what I feared, and once I knew, there would be no going back.
Every night I lay in bed trying to sleep, and the demons would flood my mind with images I didn’t want to see.
Some were memories: of Dawn’s last days, of the promises I’d made to her to go out there and live my life. Others wereflashes of what might be to come, of me ill, or dying; endless possibilities cycling through my brain on a loop until I’d have to get out of bed and find something to distract me. The lack of sleep was driving me mad.
‘You need to go get some help, talk to someone,’ Andy told me, over and over.
I knew he was right. But the sort of help he was suggesting felt impossible. There was no way I could tell anyone about my fears – that I was afraid I was going to die some time in the next twenty years, that I was living on borrowed time – without telling them about Emma. And if I tried to explainthatto anyone, I risked being sectioned.
So instead, I’d agreed to speak to my GP and ask for something to calm my mind and help me sleep.
It had worked too. Because now I had a prescription for three months of antidepressants, and enough sleeping tablets to sink a small ship.
I just had to hope to God it worked, because I couldn’t go on like this.
I needed to get better and get on with living the rest of my life – however much of it I had left.
19
EMMA
‘Oh myGod,’ Rachel whispered, when I told her what I’d done. ‘Do you really think this could change things?’
‘I don’t know. But I had to at least try.’
She nodded. ‘Okay. But now you’ve done this you have to put it out of your mind and get on with your life. Do you promise me?’
‘I promise.’
And I was doing it. I was going to work, enjoying nights out with friends, going to the theatre, booking a holiday. I even joined a local am-dram society and was loving being on stage for the first time in years. I started to feel revived, like I really could do this.
And then, two weeks later, everything changed.
It took me a while to notice that I wasn’t feeling very well. A low-level, underlying nausea that felt like I’d been reading in a car for too long. It hung around all day, only clearing by bedtime and starting all over again the next day.
And then I realised that I hadn’t had a period for a while.
When I bought the test, I was fairly certain the result had to be negative. Because there was no way I could be pregnant afterhaving sex with someone who didn’t even live at the same time as me. As impossible situations went, that would be up there with the best of them.
So I wasn’t particularly nervous as I peed on the stick, or as I waited for the blue line to appear, confident there would only be one line, and my sickness would be caused by something else entirely.
There were two lines.
Not once. Not even twice. But three times.
And then I knew it had to be true.
I was pregnant with Nick’s baby.
For the next few days I felt like a ghost, living outside my own life. I had this enormous secret, and I couldn’t tell anyone about it. Not even Rachel, because I was too scared of what she’d say. The only person I wanted to tell was Nick, and that was impossible.
But there was something else on my mind too.
There was endless information to be found online about pregnancy. Whatever you needed to know, it seemed you could find someone to help you, and there didn’t appear to be a single topic that was off-limits, that hadn’t been written about hundreds, thousands, millions of times. If I wanted to know how big my embryo was likely to be at two months old, I could easily find out (the size of a grape, if you really wanted to know). If I needed to find a hypnobirth expert, or a mother and baby class, or a newborn photographer, or advice on swollen ankles during pregnancy, there it was.
