We can only hope that she hasn’t shattered, given the media storm that’s just broken, in which many less scrupulous sites than ours have printed extracts from leaked clinical documents confirming that her long-rumoured pregnancy last year was not only real, but ended tragically in a late miscarriage. And if you’re hoping for more intel on that here, we’re happy to disappoint you. That kind of thing’s not our jam.
And to anyone reading this who’s got themselves involved in the speculation over whether Felix Jade rather than Nick Turner was the real baby daddy, shame on you.
There’s a line, people.
Chapter Twelve
Claudia
9 November 2018
Day 7 of the shoot: the first day off
Nick’s gone absolutely ballistic.
Ana’s gone ballistic.
Felix has too.
But Nick …
I’ve never seen him this angry. Not even during our worst rows last year.
It’s just gone ten on Friday morning, a week to the day since we started shooting, and everyone is meant to be taking a breath before we dive back into another six-day run of filming tomorrow. I should be sleeping. I haven’t managed a decent night of it since the one I spent up in Iris’s room. Each time I’ve climbed into my and Nick’s bed, I’ve felt like I’m heading into battle against my own insomnia, and the more tired I’ve grown, the more intimidating that battle has turned, whilst my mind – my unruly, wild mind – has become increasingly uncontrollable, the less sleep I’ve got. And I really don’t want to dwell on how deeply unhinged I by now feel, so I’d be glad to have this excuse not to, if everything happening wasn’t such an utter, sickening nightmare.
It was yesterday lunchtime, first thing LA time, whilst Emma and I were on the control tower soundstage shootingIris and Clare’s first shift, waiting forMabel’s Furyto return from Italy, that the tabloids started going live with the clinic’s leaked files. In fairness, there’s been plenty of disgust directed at those tabloids since – with journalists from the BBC, to Sky News, to the Associated Press, issuing statements condemning the publication of such private details, right down to my son’s weight – but none of that can change the fact that the worst loss of my life has been laid bare for the world to see. Extracts of my records have been dissected all over social media (what the hell’s a misshapen uterus?), whilst scores of polls have sprung up on Twitter, with users across the globe voting on whether Nick or Felix was really the father, and who, out of the two of them, might have made the cuter kid.
Nick spent most of last night on the phone to his lawyers in LA, who are even now building a case against the clinic for gross negligence. His parents have kept trying to call him from Montana, but he’s refusing to pick up to them.
‘Not until I’ve got something useful to say,’ he’s told me, but I don’t think he’s waiting for that at all.
Ithinkhe’s terrified that if he talks to them and lets their concern in, for even a moment, he’ll break down. Because incensed as I don’t doubt he is about the clinic’s leak, I know he has also, without question, been crushed by the suggestion that anyone but him could have been our tiny little boy’s daddy. I’m crushed by that.
I’vegone ballistic about that.
It’s what I’ve been on the phone tomylawyers about: getting all those hideous polls, and their accompanying comments, taken down.
‘So, you’re fighting each other’s battles, keeping yourselves from thinking about your own,’ said Mum to me on the phone yesterday evening. Unlike Nick’s parents, she’s withindriving distance, so I had to pick up to her. She’d only have descended on me here otherwise, probably bringing Phil and my sisters with her. The three of them have all called too, Phil petrifying me by saying how much he wants to get commenting himself, remind everyone that Nick and I are both human beings with human hearts. (‘Under no circumstances do that,’ I told him. ‘You’ll only give them more ammunition. And we’re not human, not to them. You know that.’)
‘Does anyone know who’s behind this leak?’ Mum asked me.
‘Apparently not,’ I said. ‘They’re not even sure it was someone inside the clinic. It could have been a hack … ’
‘Well, that would certainly be convenient for the clinic. No blame on them that way. I hope your OB’s apologised.’
‘Of course she has.’ Fiona called me within minutes of the first headline hitting. I was oblivious, filming. Everyone on set was oblivious. Nick, who arrived looking grim, was the one who asked Ana to call a break and took me aside, behind the cameras and lights, breaking to me what was unfolding.
‘I’m so sorry, Claude,’ he said, and didn’t hug me, even though it felt, in that moment like it was all either of us were thinking about him doing. There were so many people there, though, most of them with their phones out, catching up on the news, glancing our way. Their attention made me think of Imogen’s note at the end ofThe Bomber Boys, about Iris and Robbie’s relationship.As with all great love affairs, theirs largely played out in private.How nice that must have been for them.
‘I’m sorry too,’ I told Nick, but I spoke numbly, still not really feeling … anything.
I didn’twantto feel.
I realise now that that’s why I insisted to Ana and Emma that we continue working.
‘Are you sure?’ said Ana, when, turning from Nick, I called out to her that we should carry on.
‘I’m sure,’ I said, making for the stage.
