‘Like?’
‘Like severe facial disfigurement and with its brain not properly developed. Most babies pass away before they’re born and that’s probably what’s happened today. So while it doesn’t feel like it, this is the best possible outcome. Your body knew something was wrong and rejected it. The worst-case scenario is that you would’ve gone the full nine months and been forced to have a baby that died as soon as it was born.’
‘How ... how do you know this?’ she asks.
‘When you were a little girl, your dad had these horrendous stomach pains and he ended up in hospital for a time. Eventually and after all sorts of blood tests, the specialists told us he was the carrier of a chromosome deficiency that was causing it and that he may well have passed it on to you. And then they told us what happened to babies born with it.’
‘But why was I born okay?’
‘It’s complicated,’ I reply. ‘It has to do with how many of the faulty chromosomes you’re carrying, and when you were tested as a girl, we learned you are carrying a high number.’
‘So I’ll never be able to have a normal baby?’
I pause, then answer her quietly. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’
I feel the rustle of her duvet as she draws her knees closer to her chest. ‘I want to go to sleep now,’ she says.
‘Shall I stay?’
‘No, thank you.’ I kiss her on the forehead and reluctantly leave her be.
I make my way back downstairs until I am in the kitchen. I need to take my mind off this hellish day, even if it’s just for a few moments. There are dirty dishes lying in the sink from yesterday.I’ll wash them, I think. But before I do that, I take a box of tablets from my handbag. ‘Clozterpan’ reads the label, and inside there are three empty spaces in a strip. I slip it into my pocket and make my way to the basement door. I pull the light switch and a bulb illuminates the storage area.
As I head towards the suitcases hidden away under the stairs, I am grateful for my job as a doctor’s receptionist. It allowed me to slip into Dr Fellowes’ office when he was on call and tear off a blank script to write my own prescription. After using the surgery stamp on it, I forged his signature that I am so familiar with and later had it dispensed by a chemist in town. Last night, I crushed the tablets with the back of a spoon and added them to the gravy I poured over Nina’s Sunday roast. She didn’t notice any difference in taste.
As I watched her eat, I questioned whether forcing my daughter’s body to miscarry without her knowledge was the right thing to do. My mind goes back to 1981 when I was two years into my midwifery training and fell unexpectedly pregnant with Nina. My plan to return to complete the course never materialised. But I know for sure from my studies that Nina has been pregnant for much longer than she thinks. I swallow a good measure of bile rising from the pit of my stomach.
You did the right thing, I repeat. In taking this away from her, I have given Nina so much more.
CHAPTER 12
NINA
Madonna’s greatest hits albumCelebrationplays through my headphones on the bus home from work. When I was six years old I’d take the lace doilies hanging over the back of the sofa and put them on my head, tie shoelaces around my wrists and pretend to be the Queen of Pop. Apparently, Dad didn’t like hearing his little girl miming about being ‘Like a Virgin’ so Mum and I would tease him by singing ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ in response. The memory tugs at my heart and I feel myself taken over by a longing to return for even a moment to those innocent times.
Still, after almost a quarter of a century without him in my life, there’s so much I miss about Dad. A lot has faded as the years march on and it saddens me that I draw a blank when I try to recall his voice. Mum disposed of all the photographs of him and I, apart from the one I have kept tucked away inside my purse.
I remember when it was taken. He drove us into town so that he could get a new passport picture in a photobooth. I waited outside while the flash went off behind the curtain. In the fourth and final photo, I squealed when his hands suddenly grabbed me and pulled me inside. That’s the one I have kept all these years: the two of us laughing our heads off. Mum doesn’t know this private moment between us was captured on film. And I treasure it because without it, I might not remember his face either.
My phone vibrates and an email icon appears on the screen. My inbox says it’s a Google News alert and my body stiffens. I set it up for when stories appear about one person only. I’m scared to open it. I remove my earphones and start tapping my feet against the metal floor of the bus. Then as I clutch the phone to my chest, I suddenly feel clammy and queasy and I crave fresh air.
I push my way through the commuters holding on to rails and exit through the rear doors three stops earlier than my scheduled one. I need time to read why he has made the headlines and to digest it before I return home for dinner with Maggie. Standing by the side of the road with my eyes half-closed, I read the email.
‘Troubled singer dead,’ says the headline. Underneath, it reads: ‘Convicted killer Jon Hunter dies after an 18-month battle with leukaemia.’
I am vaguely aware of traffic and pedestrians passing me, but I am simultaneously frozen in the present and welded to the past. I couldn’t move even if I wanted to.
Jon’s photograph is familiar. It’s the one the newspapers used at the time of his trial but which I only saw for the first time years later. It’s unflattering and doesn’t do his good looks justice. He’s scowling in it and to someone who didn’t know him like I knew him, he’d appear empty and soulless. I don’t remember much, but I know he was more than that.
Without warning, a series of images appear in my head, like pictures hanging from string in a photographer’s studio, slowly developing. I struggle to put them in order.I’m somewhere at home, I think, sitting down while Maggie is standing behind me. She moves closer and she’s talking, only her voice is quiet and I can’t make out what she’s saying. As quickly as they arrive, the images fade.
Without realising it, my fingers have moved towards my lips and the tip of one is tracing the tattoo hidden inside my mouth.
CHAPTER 13
NINA
TWENTY-FOUR YEARS EARLIER
