After the Party (29 page)

He pulled the car up on a yellow line on Brixton Hill opposite the clinic—forty pounds was a small price to pay for stopping a cataclysm—and unclipped Blake from his car seat. He was about to leap, herolike, up the front steps and into the building when it occurred to him suddenly that he would be carrying a small and very appealing baby into a room full of woman about to get rid of theirs. He stopped, halfway up the steps. He considered Blake, fat in his arms. He considered the front door. He peered through the window. He saw a woman behind a desk smiling beatifically at another woman carrying a set of notes. He saw a row of chairs and he saw Jem, upright, prim, reading—not flicking mindlessly, he noted—but
reading
a copy of
Grazia
magazine. My God, he thought to himself, she's studying seasonal trends, in an abortion clinic. He felt a rush of strangeness to his head then, of unreason. Surely this wasn't his Jem? His Jem would not abort a baby. And even if
his Jem had good reason to abort a baby, she would do so with a gray face and wrung hands and an air of desperation. His Jem would not be sitting there so coldly composed.

As he watched, the kind-faced receptionist put down her phone and trained her kindly smile upon Jem, uttered some words which gave Jem cause to discard her fashion magazine and loop her bag across her shoulder and head to a door to the left where a less kind-faced nurse was waiting to meet her. Peering from left to right Ralph could see that there was nobody else in the waiting room, that Jem appeared to be the only woman in south London at this particular moment with a taste for killing an unborn child. He rang the intercom and told the receptionist that his name was Ralph McLeary that he was here to collect Jemima Catterick. He held up the baby Blake as if to prove his credentials and then as the lock clicked, he pushed open the front door and stormed (yes, he felt that stormed was the correct term) through the waiting room and down the corridor where he could see Jem and the nurse slipping through a door. He ignored the overexcited shouts of the receptionist: “Sir! Sir! You have to sign the register. Sir!” and pushed open the door and then he was there, face-to-face with Jem, and all he could say, in a voice quiet with fear, was:
“Don't.”

Jem looked at him blankly, as if trying to place his face. The doctor got to his feet as though he fancied himself as something of a hard man.

“What?” said Jem quietly.

“Don't,” he repeated. “Don't do this. Don't kill our baby. We'll never get over it. We'll never recover.”

Jem gazed at him in awe. “But . . . that's exactly why I'm doing it, because I honestly believe that if we have this baby we'll never recover . . .”

“No!” cried Ralph. “I mean, yes, I know what you mean, and it will be tough, of course it will, but not as tough as the repercussions of doing what you're about to do. I—”

“Erm,” came a third voice, the doctor, still on his feet, looking from one of them to the other, his hands outstretched in a conciliatory fashion, “I'm sorry to interrupt but there's something you both need to know.”

They turned to look at him. Ralph bristled slightly.

“You're not pregnant,” the doctor said flatly.

“What?” said Jem.

“You're not pregnant,” the man repeated.

“But . . . I took five tests. I mean, I even took a test yesterday, just to be sure, I . . .”

“Yes, well, you might well have been pregnant yesterday but today, I can guarantee you that you are not. I promise you.”

A small silence filled the room while Jem and Ralph digested this announcement.

“So you mean,” he began, “that we've lost the baby?”

The man nodded and sat down, very slowly. “Yes,” he said, “or so it seems. And now you have two options. You can either go home and wait for the baby to miscarry naturally, or we could go ahead with the D and C today, as planned.”

Ralph felt his brow gather tightly with confusion. Was this man offering to abort Jem's nonexistent baby? It didn't make sense.

The doctor looked at Ralph and sighed. “The advantage to having the D and C now is, of course, that there will be no waiting. You will not have to leave here knowing that you are carrying the fetus. You won't risk miscarrying somewhere where it is not convenient. You are also sparing yourself the possibility of a missed miscarriage. The advantages to not having the procedure
are more personal, really—you may feel you'd rather leave it to nature to choose its moment, you may feel more comfortable with coming to terms with the loss, believing that it is true?”

Ralph and Jem looked at the doctor, looked at each other, looked again at the doctor.

“You can go outside and discuss it, if you'd like,” suggested the doctor.

“No.” Jem looked at Ralph, slightly desperately, and shook her head. “I'd like the procedure, now, today, please,” she said, in a small, soft voice, tinged with tears.

The doctor nodded, with the suggestion that he approved of her decision.

Ralph glanced at her. Her eyes were watery but her neat little chin was set with certainty. She wanted to finish what she'd come here to do, it was clear. She wanted herself empty. He made a shape with his face that was meant to convey understanding but probably more resembled weary capitulation. And then he took his baby boy to the waiting room where he sat in a state of warped shell shock for twenty-five minutes, mentally saying good-bye to a baby that had never stood a chance.

•  •  •

That night Blake slept through from 8:30 p.m. until 7:15 a.m. Jem blinked at her radio and then peered across the room into the crib. She racked her memory for the bit where she had pulled her sleep-heavy body from the warmth of her bed and put a warm baby to her breast and sat upon her bed with her eyes closed, half awake, half asleep, waiting to be released back to her dreams. But it wasn't there. Her heart began to beat wildly at the possibility, always there, that her baby had died in his sleep. She saw his arm twitch, heard a small puff of air leave his nose, felt her heart slow down. He lived. She smiled.

She turned then and looked at Ralph. He was starting to stir. She leaned down and whispered into his ear: “Ralph. Blake slept through!”

Ralph opened his eyes and turned to face her. “What?”

“Blake. He slept through. No wake-ups! We've cracked it!”

Ralph grunted and turned again onto his back. Of course, thought Jem, he is not the one who has had to get out of bed two, three, four times a night for the past six months, this is not such a huge marker of progress for him as it is for me. She smiled again but then stopped as she felt the damp between her legs, the bulky towel, the stark reminder of yesterday's events. She would bleed for another week or so, she would continue to feel sick, her breasts would remain sore and swollen. Her baby was gone but her body was playing catch-up.

She cupped her hand over her empty belly and felt a jolt of sadness pass through her. It was gone. Her baby was gone. But rather than feeling relief and liberation, Jem felt deflated. Once again her body her taken control of her destiny, once again her body had failed her. And she wished now for her baby back, just for one more day, just to be able to say good-bye, properly, before it was too late. The baby that had withered and perished inside her felt much more real to her than the one she'd been ready to terminate. She felt love and compassion for that poor blighted lost soul where she'd felt none for the big robust baby she'd imagined to be gestating inside her unwilling body.

She stopped the thought processes there. No, she thought, today is a new day, a new start. Today is the day on which I will begin to plan my wedding, to tell people my happy news, to book babysitting nights so that my man and I can spend nights out together drinking beer and rekindling our lost magic. Today is not the day to wonder what if.

She tiptoed quietly from the room and then did something she had not done for seven months because she always had her arms full of baby: she tiptoed into her daughter's room and snuck into her bed, nestling herself against Scarlett's warm, bony body and burying her nose in her wild, musty hair. She could trick a moment's affection out of Scarlett like this, before her consciousness was fully aroused. Scarlett wrapped a small leg round Jem's knees and the two of them lay like that for a few moments, still and warm, until suddenly Ralph appeared in the doorway, a beaming Blake in his arms.

“Look who finally woke up,” he said.

“I want him!” said Scarlett, suddenly sitting bolt upright. “I want Blakey!”

Ralph put Blake on the bed, between Jem and Scarlett, who immediately threw her arms round his neck and rubbed her forehead against his. Jem watched them. Now that Blake was sitting up and eating real food Scarlett was taking more and more of an interest in him. Scarlett's face lit up at the sight of him in a way that it had never lit up at the sight of either of her parents (well, maybe Ralph, on occasion, but certainly not Jem) and he was now considered something of a treat, especially in his pram at the end of her day at nursery and even more so first thing in the morning. Ralph perched himself on the edge of the bed and smiled at Jem.

“You okay?” he said.

Jem smiled at him. “Good,” she said, “I'm good.” The sun was shining, her daughter was kissing her son's nose, her baby had slept through the night. Yesterday was yesterday and todays didn't get much better than this.

“Are you sure?” he asked again.

Jem nodded. She knew what he was asking her. He was asking
her how she felt almost exactly twenty-four hours after the end of her pregnancy.

“Honestly,” she said, “I really am. Fine.”

She smiled at her children again, children she'd spent months and years gestating, feeding, nourishing and teaching. These were her children. This was all she wanted. She didn't ask Ralph if he was okay. She didn't want to hear his answer.

R
alph had a history of snooping. He found the limitations of questions and answers, the insufficiency of ordinary conversation utterly frustrating. One day, he was certain, some brilliant person would invent a computer that could transcribe a person's innermost thoughts into text on a screen. But until that day the only way to get any really useful insight into another person's inner workings was to snoop through their stuff. Eavesdropping was another way. It was not something that Ralph felt proud of, it was just part of his makeup. He'd fallen in love with Jem after snooping through her things before he'd even had a conversation with her. He'd read her diaries, five years worth of them, from cover to cover while she was out at work. He'd found out all about her ex-boyfriends and her PMS and what she really thought about her flatmates. He'd fingered her clothes and examined her shoes, become familiar with the golden retriever called Maisy, whom she kept a photo of by her bed. If it wasn't for his snooping habit, Ralph and Jem might never have gotten together. And in fact, in his defense, he had not been actively snooping at all when he found the text message from a strange man on Jem's phone that morning. He had merely been curious as to why someone would be sending Jem a text message at seven o'clock in the morning.

The fact that he was alone in the kitchen at the time and that
Jem was upstairs having a shower was also a contributing factor to his picking up the phone and pressing the mail icon.

He had been expecting something dull, a message from Lulu saying “Don't forget to bring pizzas tomorrow,” or a message from the nursery saying “Due to inclement weather the planned trip to London Zoo has been canceled and children will NOT require a packed lunch today.”

He had not been expecting to read the words: “Dear Jem, I am still waiting for you to forgive me. Did you get the flowers? I miss you. Please let me know that we are still cool. Love, Joel x.”

He dropped the phone onto the kitchen counter and reeled slightly on the spot, as though an invisible man had just shoved him roughly in the chest.

After a moment he picked up the phone again and reread the message, trying to extract something from it that might offer a reasonable explanation for its presence on his partner's phone. But no, it was all there: flowers, apologies, kisses, the word “love.” There was no reasonable explanation for it, none whatsoever.

He quickly restored the message to “unread” status and switched off the phone.

He looked at his bowl of bran flakes and felt queasy. He heard footsteps overhead, Jem's, padding from the bathroom to the bedroom. He forced himself to swallow and listened to some buzzing in his ears for a moment. It was the sound of his thoughts arranging themselves.

What to do?

He had no idea.

He was not a fan of confrontation, especially not at seven in the morning.

He tried to step away from the situation by concentrating on making up a bowl of baby porridge for Blake, who was sitting
in his Bumbo on the kitchen table looking at Ralph expectantly. He poured boiling water onto the translucent flakes and stirred in a spoonful of puréed raspberry. It looked like something that had been extruded from a lanced boil. He swallowed again and fished a plastic spoon out of the cutlery drawer, waving it in front of Blake's nose.

“Have
you
got any idea?” he whispered to Blake. “Any idea? Who is Joel? Have you met him? God, I bet you have. I mean, Mummy never goes anywhere without you. Except . . .” He stopped mid-thought. That day, that day when she'd taken Blake over to Lulu's, when she'd been wearing those heels. Said she was going for a business meeting in town. He'd never really asked her about it, been too preoccupied first with wanting to get her into bed and then with feeling aggrieved that she wouldn't let him. Could that have been the first meeting? But then, what since? She hadn't been out in the evenings, there'd been no more business meetings, she was either here or she was out with the kids. How could she possibly have been conducting an affair with a man called Joel? She didn't (as she herself would probably have said) have the time.