The Story of You (19 page)

I put the notebook and pen in my bag. The waiting room was packed now: fifteen, twenty women, most with their partners (but, like me – Joe had agreed to wait in the hospital canteen – not all), sitting clutching notes, clutching hands, anxiously jiggling knees. The walls were filled with posters of doom – it was farcical – the dangers of catching whooping cough in pregnancy, of MRSA. There was one opposite me with the headline:
HAVE YOU FELT YOUR BABY MOVE TODAY
? If they were trying to scare the living daylights out of us, they were doing well.

Everyone looked so ‘professionally’ pregnant, too, so natural with it. I felt like a fraud, an impostor.

‘So is this your twelve-week scan?’ someone said.

I glanced briefly at her, the woman opposite, with a blonde bob and the creamy skin, but then I let my eyes drift to the poster about hand-washing above her head – I didn’t think she could be talking to me.

‘Sorry, I’m
so
nosy.’ Then, I realized, she
was
talking to me.

‘No, not at all …’ I said. (Even though I thought she was a bit nosy, to tell you the truth.) ‘Yes, it is …’ but I could feel myself go red, like I’d been caught out, like that feeling you have when you’re supposed to be introducing someone and suddenly find you’ve forgotten their name.

She looked at my midriff. ‘Ooh, you’re showing, for twelve weeks,’ she said.

My hand flew to my stomach. ‘Am I?’

‘You’ve quite a little bump there, already, haven’t you? Is it your first?’

‘
Lorna
,’ a man – her husband? – said. He had reddish, cropped hair and a friendly face. He rolled his eyes, affectionately.

‘But that’s
good
,’ she said, nodding towards my stomach. A few other people had begun to look too; I was starting to feel self-conscious. ‘It’s good if you’re big for your dates, means baby’s healthy.’

‘Or you’ve been eating for two since day one,’ I said, and they both laughed.

‘Sorry about my wife,’ said the husband. ‘She’s obsessed. She’s been talking to strangers like this ever since we found out.’

‘It’s true.’ She giggled. She had one of those faces that looks like it’s permanently on the cusp of a giggle. ‘I’ve got this game: I eye up pregnant ladies then guess how pregnant they are. I’m usually right.’

‘And she asks them,’ he said.

‘Um, yeah,
and
I ask them,’ she admitted, giggling again.

‘Maybe wise to keep that game to ladies in antenatal waiting rooms,’ I said. ‘Just in case they’re not pregnant, they’ve just eaten all the pies.’

And we all laughed. There was a brief silence.

‘So how many weeks
are
you?’ she said, eventually.

‘
Lorna!
’

‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘About twelve, I think, maybe …’ I didn’t really feel like giving this stranger the exact details of my pregnancy.

‘Maybe?’ he said. ‘About?
Gawd
, this one knows how many hours pregnant she is. Never off that Baby Central website thing.’

‘It’s Baby
Centre
, Ian, and you’d be complaining if I wasn’t interested.’

‘First, it’s the size of an avocado.’ He made the shape with his hands. I could tell he was the showman in this relationship, this one. That he married her because she was still wetting herself at his jokes, several years on. ‘Then it’s half a banana. Apparently, this week it can blink …’

‘Aw,’ said the woman, ‘how sweet is that?’

‘And if it’s a boy, the balls will have descended.’

‘Really?’ I said. I was interested now. I generally approve of anyone who says words like ‘balls’ and ‘descended’ in public places. ‘So I’m guessing this is your twenty
-
week scan then?’ I said. If she was going to be nosy, so was I.

‘Yes.’ She beamed, rubbing her bump.

‘And what are you hoping for – a boy?’ I asked. She looked like a boy sort of mum. The homely outdoorsy type you could imagine standing around the rugby pitch in a few years’ time.

‘No, a girl.’

‘Yes, a boy,’ said the husband, and she gave him a withering look, ‘with ginger hair.’

‘I do
not
want ginger hair,’ she said, slapping his leg. I could see the woman next to her –
bright
red hair – smirk and look at the ceiling.

Ian tugged at the hair he had left. ‘We need to keep this Viking living on!’

‘I’d love a little girl,’ she said, ‘with blonde hair and brown eyes. I’ve always loved that combination.’

‘Mrs Lawley?’ Just then, a nurse popped her head around the door. ‘You can come through now, if you’re ready.’

‘Good luck,’ I said, as they were ushered excitedly into a room.

I watched as he gently closed the door behind them. I thought,
I don’t care if it’s a boy or a girl. I just want everything to be okay
.

The scanning room was perfectly white and quiet, with a small square window from which you could see a courtyard of the hospital. The sonographer had a soft, kind voice, which set me off as soon as she started talking, and she was so covered in freckles that they joined up – like Mum. This was going to be interesting.

‘So, Mrs King …’ she said, looking at her clipboard.

‘Actually, it’s Miss,’ I said.

‘Oh. I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Honestly, these GPs. Sometimes I wonder if they actually listen; do you know what I mean?’

I did. The GP I’d seen had looked about twenty-one, still with the remnants of teenage acne and, frankly, looked terrified by what I’d told him.

She smiled as she amended my notes. ‘
Miss
King; there we are, let’s get it right from the start, shall we?’ I watched her as she wrote on my pink notes. I wondered what was on those notes.

‘Now, if you’d just like to pop yourself on the bed, and roll your jeans and knickers down to your hip bones.’

I got up on the bed, the paper lining dry and rustling beneath me, and began to undo the belt of my jeans, but my fingers were trembling so much it was difficult. She smiled, encouragingly. ‘Everything okay?’

‘Yes, sorry.’

Do not have a panic attack in here. Hold it together. Breathe.

‘They’re fiddly those things, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘You take your time, there’s no rush …’

She must know, I thought. She must. Or maybe she was being extra nice to me because I was here on my own. I thought of Joe sitting in the hospital canteen and really wished I wasn’t. I’d realized far too late that he was the only person in the world who knew how I was feeling.

‘Okay, lovely, so just lie back and relax,’ she said, when I’d finally got it together enough to undo my belt. I stared at the blinking monitor in front of me. I felt suddenly powerless before this thing, at its mercy. My hands were shaking so much, I thought she might think I was mad, or a raging alcoholic with DTs, and couldn’t decide which was worse.

She turned around away from me. I could hear the ‘slick, slick’ as the latex gloves went on.

‘Ah, you’re a leg wiggler,’ she said, turning back. ‘We get so many leg-wigglers, I can’t tell you, and the problem is, it makes baby wiggle too.’ I tried to smile at her, but my lips had gone so dry they stuck to my teeth. ‘No need to worry, we’re not at the dentist now.’

I managed a pathetic laugh. ‘Okay, now this might be a bit cold …’

I felt the jelly go on, then the scanner glide over my belly, like a detector searching for precious metal. ‘Right, baby,’ she said. ‘This is your moment.’

Suddenly, everything seemed to hang on that moment. Everything. The rest of my life like I was balancing on a tightrope and one way was happiness and one wasn’t and it really could go either way.

Above all, I suddenly wanted this baby more than I’d ever wanted anything in my whole life but, to my horror, there was nothing, just quiet. As she slid the scanner over my skin, soundlessly, I could hear a heartbeat, but it was my own. There were black and white shapes on the screen, but they were fuzzy; shifting and morphing, like a storm tracker, and I couldn’t make anything out. What were probably six or seven seconds went by but it felt like an age and, without warning, my chest heaved and I let out this almighty sob; so big and uncontrollable that a bubble of snot escaped from my nose. It was violent crying, like I hadn’t known since I was a child.

‘Oh, gosh.’ The nurse looked very alarmed and I felt guilty, like she’d just been witness to a trauma, inches from her, and that that trauma was me. ‘Oh, dear, sweetheart, you are nervous, aren’t you? … Should I …? Do you want me to …?’ I had my hand over my face, I was hiccupping, mortified.

Then, a soft knock at the door. ‘Can I come in?’ someone said.

And then there was Joe, poking his head around the door, holding a cup of coffee, his eyes full of concern, and I’ve never been so glad to see someone in my life.

‘
Yes
,’ I said. The relief must have been so obvious in my voice, because the nurse kind of laughed. ‘Yes, please,’ I said. ‘Can he? This is Joe, he’s the father.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘Oh, good. Well come in, Joe, take a pew.’ Joe drew up a chair, and took my hand. It was warm from the coffee. ‘She’s a little bit upset,’ said the nurse, unnecessarily. Joe didn’t say a thing; he just pulled some tissue from a dispenser on the wall and wiped my face.

‘Baby’s heartbeat’s just being a bit shy at the moment. But I am sure, any minute now …’

The nurse cleared her throat. I squeezed Joe’s hand. I swear, it was like ten minutes had gone past, then, like one of those visual tricks that you have to stare at for several seconds before something emerges, it was there: a head, the very clear outline of eye sockets, a nose, a little stomach, limbs. Tears were sliding down my temples into my ears. I was willing it with every cell in my body.

‘The heartbeat?’ I said. ‘I can’t hear …’

And then came this noise; the most glorious noise, like a horse galloping across a beach.

‘
There
we are!’ The relief in the sonographer’s voice was tangible – you could have held it in your hands. ‘
Lovely
strong heartbeat. And look! Baby’s waving at you …’

I looked at Joe. He was grinning, his eyes full of tears too.

‘Oh, bless,’ said the nurse. ‘It’s so nice when you get the emotional ones – it’s always so emotional when it’s your first.’

I looked at the ceiling. I felt like laughing, I don’t know why.

‘It’s not my first,’ I said.

‘Did you hear that heartbeat?’ I said to Joe, on the way down in the lift, like our baby’s heartbeat was special, more miraculous than anyone else’s baby’s heartbeat. ‘It was going like the clappers!’

We had to get off at Level 3, to change lifts to get down to the main entrance, and I could hear a woman screaming in the labour ward, and then the cry of a baby – we looked at one another, eyebrows raised. To think, in six months, this could actually happen! I did not dare.

Outside, the sun had come out. Joe looked at me. ‘I wish they gave you an audio of the heartbeat, as well as a visual scan – I’d play it in the bath,’ he said, as we walked down the steps of the hospital and out into the still warmth of the day. ‘On surround sound.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Don’t they do apps for that, anyway? Where you can listen to your baby’s heart? You’re going to become like one of those super-parents, who puts their scan pic on Facebook, has their baby’s footprint framed, plays the heartbeat soundtrack at dinner parties …’

‘Yeah, and …?’ said Joe, shrugging. ‘What’s wrong with that?’

I squeezed his hand. He probably would too. He was so fabulously unashamed.

We decided to go to Waterlow Park. I couldn’t remember feeling so happy in a long time. We turned up Dartmouth Park Hill and it was only as we were scaling it – or at least it felt like that for me – that we realized we were still holding hands, that we’d been holding them since we’d been in the lift. We looked at one another and laughed shyly, then dropped them, even though I could have quite happily held Joe’s hand all day. It felt lovely – soft and big and familiar in mine. I was thinking about that place where our fingers interlinked, about the warmth radiating from his body and flowing into mine. After the intimacy of what had just happened, I felt almost postcoital, bathed in loveliness and feel-good hormones. I felt close to Joe in a way I’d never felt about Andy, and yet I knew that holding hands was as far as I could go now with Joe; that trying to have a proper (i.e. physical and romantic) relationship with him now I was pregnant again would bring back memories of that terrible time in my life that I’d kept in a locked box until this happened. All those painful memories.

But it couldn’t have been a more beautiful day to catch the first glimpse of your baby. The air smelt of honeysuckle and promise. I closed my eyes and inhaled as I slowly made my way up the hill, Joe at my side, trying to be in this moment, to push away the other thing trying to seep its way into my consciousness – a memory: Joe and I, a wet autumn day; me in a red coat and bad roots – the green-tinged blonde growing out. I won’t be able to dye it for a while.

We are sitting on the swings in Kilterdale Park, there are damp leaves at our feet – and this strange fungus. I don’t know why I remember the fungus – it somehow adds to the awfulness of that time in my head – but it is yellow and looks like soggy little pancakes stacked on top of one another.

I have the positive-pregnancy test in my hand. Joe has his arm around me, rubbing my back; trying to be a man when he is still a boy. And it feels like the world as I know it, has ended. Like the earth has literally fallen through my feet. I am sixteen. My mother is dead and I am about to be a mother myself, to a baby I don’t want and don’t think I can love, and I am petrified.

Joe suddenly spoke, bringing me back to the present. ‘God, I feel so happy,’ he said.

It made me physically jolt. Joe wore not just his heart on his sleeve, but his soul. What must that be like? To have no secrets? No demons? To have nothing come to haunt you in the small hours?

He said, ‘I told you it would be fine, didn’t I?’

‘You did,’ I said, laying my head on his shoulder. ‘You did.’