My mouth is full of saliva, and however much I swallow, it keeps coming back. ‘No. We wouldn’t.’
It’s pretty much the first thing we’ve agreed on for twelve years. I sniff, rub my face with my upper arm, but when I lean back over the sink another drip off my nose lands in the water.
Ross’s voice rises. ‘Bertie, you’re crying.’
‘Am I?’
‘Me and my big mouth. It’s not even as if I can take it back.’
I don’t know why I’m crying. All I know is the tears began running down my face as soon as I got to the sink, and now I’ve started I can’t stop.
I sniff and rub my nose again. ‘It’s not your fault.’ I gulp and try to explain. ‘Seeing you sitting with the baby before, it brought back how much I wanted ours.’
His head tilts, and as he stares at me his Adam’s apple rises and falls. ‘So you didn’t mind? You weren’t devastated to be pregnant?’
I shake my head. ‘Why would you think that?’
He pulls up his shoulders. ‘The night we talked about it here you called it a mistake.’
‘The only mistake was me thinking you’d step up. The rest was the opposite.’ I stare out of the window by the sink, watch the white lines of sea foam moving towards the shore as I remember. ‘I might have been pushing too much onto one tiny child, but all I could think was how wonderful a new baby would be after everything the family had been through with Charlie losing Faye. I know it wasn’t planned, but when it happened it wasn’t a problem; it felt like a gift.’
‘Oh, Bertie.’
As I look along the kitchen Diesel’s face is poking around the door frame, his brown eyes anxious, and Ross is moving a bright blue chair and a pile of boxes out of the way, and coming towards me.
I’m biting my lip, holding my tummy, and as I remember, the images flashing through my head are so sharp it might have happened yesterday. Those frozen January mornings, my stomach empty and aching from the retching. Walking the two miles to uni and back because I didn’t dare to get on a bus. My pockets full of ginger nuts, bottles of ginger ale swilling around my bag to fight the nausea. Strangers staring at me by the basins in the ladies’ loos when I’d been pushing my head under the cold tap to bring myself round. No one at uni really noticed; everyone just assumed I was partying so hard I had an endless hangover. And there I was, not minding any of it, because the reason was the baby. And she was already so much mine.
‘It was the strangest feeling; for a nanosecond when I saw the lines on the pregnancy test my stomach left my body. Then in the space where my stomach had been there was just a whole rush of joy. Even that very first day I was ready to go to the end of the earth for her if she’d asked me to.’
As I stare out to watch the lines of breakers again, Ross slides in behind me, his hands light on my shoulders. And I’ve never really talked to anyone about this before, but now I am it’s like a bottle being uncorked.
‘We were only together for four and a half months, but she wassoprecious.’ He turns me away from the sink, and as I twist to face him I let my head drop forwards until my forehead rests on his T-shirt. ‘It sounds like nothing when you say it out loud, but those eighteen weeks were like a lifetime. We were in it together, she was already my friend. Then they mentioned there might be problems and I was desperate. When the doctor told me I was losing her, it felt like my heart had been ripped out of my chest. And then the contractions ramped up and I wanted to die too.’
‘Oh, Bertie.’ As Ross’s arms close around me, his jaw is pushing against my temple. ‘And by the time I walked into the hospital it was all over?’
I nod, because I can’t quite bring myself to talk about that part yet. ‘I hadn’t even been home to tell the family. But it was such a good thing I hadn’t, because it would only have upset them all over again.’
Ross lets out a long breath. ‘That’s you all over, Bertie, always thinking of other people. You shouldn’t have had to go through this on your own, I should have made sure of that.’ As his arms close tighter I glance up and see his cheeks are glistening. ‘And you say it was a girl?’
‘I knew all along she was.’ I bury my fingers in the muscles under the soft folds of his shirt. ‘I loved her so much.’
‘I know you did.’ His whisper is so low it’s hardly there, but it penetrates right to the centre of my body. ‘I loved her too.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. I didn’t know her, but she was a part of you. I hated that I’d made things so hard for you, but that didn’t stop me caring. Or hurting.’
His chest is heaving against mine, and as we cling together shuddering, both of us crying for what we both lost, I’m wrapped in his warmth. Breathing his scent in and out, my cheek crushed against his chest as his T-shirt soaks up my tears, it’s nothing to do with animal attraction anymore; it’s just about solid human comfort. Someone being there for me now, even though they weren’t before.
After a very long time our sobs subside and when it finally feels like I’ve no more tears left to cry I give a huge sniff. He reaches out and passes me a tissue from the box on the shelf and blows his nose too. It’s hard to know how long we’ve been standing there, but the tide has come a long way up the beach. And somehow I feel different. There’s a calmness I’ve never had before. A sense of things that were wrong now being right.
I pat my hand against his back. ‘Thanks for lending me your shoulder.’ Not that I’m going to go on about it, but it’s brought a closure we haven’t had before. ‘We needed this.’
Ross sighs. ‘We’ve both cried alone, but crying together is so much more healing, somehow. And talking helps too.’
It’s twelve years too late, but it’s still worth saying. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you away that day at the hospital.’ I pull in a breath to explain, but his finger lands on my lips.
‘Don’t. It’s too late for recriminations. She’d have been very much loved by both of us, that’s enough for me. We can both move forward knowing that.’
