Great excitement at the harvesting of healthy follicles.
Huge hopes at the clinic implantation of tiny cells made up of her and Ted: him holding her hand tightly and music playing in the background, the nurse holding her other hand. Everyone wishing the best.
And then the disappointment.
The crushing, life-numbing pain.
The abyss had been there too, Sam realised: but merely on the edges, a faint glimmer that never managed to reach her properly.
Just now it had come to claim her, when she had this miracle baby she’d been given to cherish. Why now? Why?
‘I love you, little India, with all my heart,’ she said scores of times every day.
Yet still the darkness waited and while she tried to keep it out until she was alone, it was creeping into her everyday life, making her eyes dull, her gaze full of pain.
Ted was concerned, she knew that.
He kissed her every morning but she couldn’t respond.
‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right, Sam, love?’ he’d said so often, his face creased with worry. ‘You look so tired and worn out. Should you go to the doctor? Will I take more time off?’
‘No, I’m fine,’ she’d say.
Once, this man had been her world and now, she couldn’t talk to him. The effort of explaining was simply too much.
Besides, he wouldn’t understand. Who would?
He’d think she was going mad.
She couldn’t even tell Joanne. Joanne had never felt like this. Sam was sure of that – she’d have told her if she had.
Sam had been in Joanne’s house when Joanne’s last baby, Posy, had been tiny and she’d watched, fascinated, as Joanne had wandered around the kitchen, Posy held against her expertly and she’d done things: she’d taken phone calls, kissed Patrick, had entire conversations, all the while knowing that she was safely taking care of the baby.
‘Make us a cup of tea, Patrick,’ she’d call happily.
‘Sugar?’
‘Oh gosh, yes,’ Joanne would say. ‘I need the energy. And a bun, if you haven’t snaffled them all.’
Patrick would laugh and say there was one left.
‘For me!’ Joanne would say triumphantly.
When the tea was made, Patrick would take the baby easily, and Joanne would sigh, grab her tea, rub her aching back at the same time, and sink into a chair, while Patrick, still holding Posy, would give her a plate with a bun on it.
It was like a seamless ballet of comfortableness, of people who knew what they were doing.
When Sam walked into her own kitchen, she was so full of fear something would happen: that she’d trip over one of the dogs, that they’d jump up and hurt India even though they were both knee-high to a midget and couldn’t hurt anyone. But she was frightened she’d fall and bang India’s tiny delicate little head on a chair, on the kitchen table, on the floor. Babies were so fragile.
Looking at the tiny delicate skin covering her daughter’s beautiful little skull, Sam could see a filament of veins and she could feel the fontanel. Under other circumstances she might have loved that word. It was otherworldly, but now it merely meant a tiny fragment of her precious child’s skull where the bones were not fused and where injury could occur.
She was sitting on the floor in the nursery with India one day, holding her and trying not to cry, when the doorbell rang.
Let it ring, Sam thought. She could not move while India slept. But then she heard a key turn in the lock and knew it must be either her father or Joanne, both of whom had keys.
Joanne appeared at the nursery door quickly.
She slipped onto the floor beside her sister.
