‘Oh yeah, that is probably something we—’
The fucking thought of it. I cut him off at the pass. ‘We won’t be doing that. No funerals. I just… no.’ I feel him freeze in protest beside me, but even so, we both know thatI will get my way this time. He is hurting, but I’m willing to argue that what I’m going through is of a different stripe entirely.
‘Johnny, I just can’t.’
‘If you would like to see your baby, we can make arrangements for that,’ the nurse offers gently.
‘Well, I would,’ Johnny says pointedly.
‘I don’t think I want to,’ my mouth says, even though every other fibre in my body is virtually screaming at my mouth as though it’s just scored an own goal in the World Cup final. I can just about hear the tiniest voice from somewhere inside me, though it is screaming at the top of its lungs, ‘What are you doing?’ I want to tell them about the guilt: how it swaps places with numbness every two minutes. That I somehow feel as though I deserve to be sad. Without looking at me, Johnny follows the nurse out of the room. She turns back to put a hand on his shoulder and I couldn’t be more envious of them.
While he’s gone, I think of Johnny holding our child, talking to it, telling it all the plans he had for the three of us. The child that was inches from my fingertips only a few days ago.
He returns a half-hour later, pink-eyed and mad.
‘I took a photo,’ he tells me. ‘I know you don’t want to see it now but you might, one day.’ I can’t tell whether I’m meant to be furious or relieved.
The next day, Johnny and I walk down the road, his proprietary hand on my shoulder feeling like a bag of wet seaweed. His breathing comes in small shudders.
‘It was the size of an avocado,’ I tell him, although he knows this for certain, having seen the baby. I take one last look at the update on the pregnancy tracker app beforedeleting it forever: ‘Your baby is the size of an avocado!’ it told me in a very excited and swirly font. It would have become a mango next, then a sweet potato.
‘Thinking of a good friend going through a tough time right now and sending her so much love and good vibes #tragedy #loss #friendsforever #wellness’, Brigitte has written up on her Facebook wall. Huh,nowshe’s interested.
Carrie texts me later that day. ‘Off to Argentina for a few weeks, just a quick break, but would be great to catch up when I get home xx.’ I notice that I only ever hear from her now when she is going somewhere impressive.
Has she not seen Brigitte’s post yet? Have they not spoken about this? ‘I’ve lost the baby,’ I text back, my fingers close to sparking. ‘So there’s no need to keep reminding me that you’ve got it better than me any more.’ She tries to ring four times: I cancel each call on the first ring.
‘I know you don’t want to but I’m just saying you can talk to me,’ Carrie texts. ‘Use me. Whenever you are ready.’
I’m already thinking of how I will tell Carrie about this. From the kindness of the nurse that felt like an exquisite pain to the look in Johnny’s eyes when he came back into the room and it was just the two of us. And then, the meeting in the hospital that happened after that, the one that changed everything for us and between us. I cannot even begin to imagine my mouth forming the words in front of Carrie, or anyone else.
Francesca has yet to return my text about losing the baby. There I am, all un-figured-out again, I guess.
Just as I thought would happen, Mum makes it all a little bit harder than it needs to be.
‘Are you going back to work at all in the next while? Some people say it’s a good thing. A distraction.’
‘I’m not really in the headspace for anything like that.’
She clucks her disapproval. ‘Just mind yourself in there with that lot, taking liberties like this.’
Well, I tell myself, she was never going to be one to leap on the next Ryanair flight over, comfort foods and blanket in hand.
‘No, Mum, I will not be going back to work yet, if that’s OK with you,’ I tell her. ‘I’m taking as much time off as I can humanly get away with.’ But this taking of the time off is not the Mum Way, or at least the way of my mum.
‘You won’t lose that job now, will you?’ she says. ‘Jobs in financial services aren’t that easy to come by for people like you.’
It does not surprise me in the slightest that, even in a moment such as this one, she will somehow get the dig in. Is she even aware of it? Is the casual yet quietly devastating insult just something she does, like breathing or blinking?
‘People like me. Meaning?’
She exhales. ‘Get some rest, by all means, but there’s the rest of your life to get back to. You’ll only be able to take time out for something like this for so long.’ On this, I stay silent because I guess she knows.
5
I have that leaden feeling: a darkness sitting, dank and heavy, in your chest. Like the ten seconds of overwhelm before you burst into tears, except those ten seconds have been going on all fucking day long.
These days, I’m sleeping all day and watching cable TV all night, keeping even-keeled thanks to the soporific sounds ofDeal or No Deal,My Kitchen RulesandCash in the Attic.America’s Next Top Model, watching beautiful young women with all the potential in the world being cut down to size with the cruel medicine of reality, is another horrible, guilty salve. Thin, beautiful girls, the most popular beings in their high school and on course for the gilded life that this promises, being told to go home as though it’s the worst thing to ever happen to them. They cry, and I cry along with them.
