The Mummyfesto (21 page)

The answer of course was that some pain couldn’t be avoided. Some pain was necessary. I wished I was one of those women who had a particularly high pain threshold. The sort who went through labour without drugs because they thought nice thoughts about a wooded valley with a stream running through it. I’d screamed the bloody maternity unit down, if I remembered rightly. And yet here I was, desperate to go through it all again.

‘How are you feeling?’ asked Paul as we got into the car. It was a stupid question, but the expression on his face prevented me from saying so.

‘Ask me again in a couple of hours,’ I said with as big a smile as I could muster. He nodded. I thought he was going to say something, but if he had been he stopped himself. We talked about stuff and nonsense on the way to the hospital. Anything apart from what was about to happen and what the outcome might be. What I really wanted was an answer. A reason why. On that level I didn’t mind having the dye injected. If you could see something
on the screen, a barrier of some kind, then at least you had an idea of what you were up against.

We took our seats in the waiting room. I was starting to feel like a regular now. Almost expected to see my name on the back of the chair. I thumbed through a magazine. I couldn’t even have told you which one it was. My hands were turning the pages, but my eyes were not really seeing.

‘Mrs Crabtree?’ The nurse was smiling at me. It was time to go. Time to get my answer.

It was weird, watching on screen as they squirted the blue dye into me. Like watching a dry river bed filling up inside you. I waited for it to come up against a dam. It didn’t though. It kept on flowing. Right out into the sea. I looked up at the consultant, unsure whether I’d seen what I thought I’d seen.

He nodded. ‘Your Fallopian tubes are clear,’ he said.

‘What do you mean clear?’ I asked.

‘Look, here,’ he said, pointing to the screen. ‘You can see where the dye has run through into your cervix. There are no blockages. Nothing to prevent your eggs from reaching your womb.’

I looked at Paul. He didn’t seem to know whether it was good news or not. I turned back to the consultant.

‘So what happens now? Is there another test?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve excluded all the possible medical problems. I’m afraid in these situations the diagnosis, as such, is that of unexplained infertility.’

I stared at him. How could that be a diagnosis? Anything
that had the word ‘unexplained’ in it couldn’t be final in any way. Scientists didn’t produce research papers saying they hadn’t discovered anything but couldn’t be bothered to go on looking.

‘But you can’t just stop there,’ I said. ‘There must be something else you can do.’

‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Crabtree. We really have exhausted every avenue.’

‘So what are we supposed to do now?’ I asked.

‘Some couples find it actually takes the pressure off. Occasionally they even get pregnant straightaway afterwards. The mysteries of the female reproductive system never cease to amaze us.’

‘Can’t we be referred for IVF?’

‘Jackie.’ The tone in Paul’s voice took me by surprise.

‘I have to ask, don’t I?’

‘Look,’ said the consultant. ‘Why don’t you take some time to think about things? Now’s not the best time to be making decisions.’

‘I’m not making decisions,’ I said. ‘I’m simply asking for information. Might IVF work for us?’

‘For someone of your age,’ he said, ‘we’re only talking about a 2 per cent success rate per cycle and you would have to pay for that yourselves, I’m afraid.’

‘Well a 2 per cent chance is still 2 per cent better than nothing.’

‘As I said, take some time to think things over,’ repeated the consultant. ‘There’s a leaflet here with all the information you need.’ He handed it to Paul, as if he somehow
thought it wasn’t safe to give to me, that I wasn’t in the right mental state to handle it.

‘Thank you,’ said Paul, standing up. The consultant stood too and shook his hand. They both turned to look at me. I got up reluctantly and headed for the door, my head bowed so he couldn’t see the tears welling up in my eyes.

‘I know you’re upset,’ said Paul, as we got in the car, ‘but there were no need to be rude to him.’

‘Well, what do you expect? The guy’s just told me he’s given up on us.’

‘He didn’t say that.’

‘Maybe we should think about going private. I bet they’d be able to offer another test. There has to be a reason.’

Paul rested his forehead on the steering wheel. ‘There doesn’t, love,’ he said. ‘Sometimes life’s like that. Things just aren’t meant to be.’

I turned to look at him, a frown creasing my forehead. ‘What do you mean, not meant to be?’ I was aware that my voice had risen an octave.

Paul sighed and turned to me. ‘Maybe we should start trying to get our heads around the idea that it just might not happen.’

‘You’ve given up too, haven’t you?’

‘It’s not a case of giving up. I just don’t like to see you putting yourself through this. It were bad enough what happened today, let alone having them pumping you full of drugs for IVF.’

‘Well, if that’s the only way, that’s what I’ve got to do.’

Paul reached out for my hand. ‘You haven’t got to do anything. We can simply decide to leave it there and let nature take its course.’

‘Sometimes,’ I said, pulling my hand away, ‘I’m not sure you want another baby.’

‘You know I do, but not at any cost. And I certainly don’t want it if it means you being stressed up to your eyeballs like this and we become so obsessed with it that we stop enjoying what we’ve got.’

‘Who said I were obsessed with it?’

Paul sighed and turned to look out of the driver’s window. ‘Look at what it’s doing to us,’ he said. ‘I could understand it if we didn’t have Alice, but at end of day, we’ve got a daughter. Some people never have that. Sometimes I think we’ve forgotten how lucky we are.’

I looked down at my shaking hands and waited until the lump in my throat cleared. ‘I’m doing this for Alice,’ I said.

‘Are you?’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Maybe you’re more bothered about it than she is.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Because I think it might be true,’ he said, turning back to face me. I fiddled with my wedding ring, unable to speak and determined not to cry in the middle of a car park. Paul reached out again for my hand.

‘Alice loves you because you’re a brilliant mum. The last thing she needs is you putting yourself through hell to
try to give her something that just isn’t as important as you being happy and well.’

I squeezed his hand. He was saying this for all the right reasons, I knew that. But it still didn’t make it any easier to hear.

‘I mean it’s not as if you haven’t got enough on your plate,’ he went on, ‘what with your mum and now this election business.’

‘You don’t think I should stand, do you?’

‘I didn’t say that. I just think you’ve taken on too much. It’s like you’re trying to be superwoman or summat.’

‘I’m just trying to make things better,’ I said. ‘For everyone.’

‘It don’t feel better at moment,’ he said. ‘Not from where I’m sitting.’

‘Well I can’t back out now,’ I said. ‘The others are relying on me.’

Paul stared straight ahead out of the windscreen. He didn’t say anything, but I knew exactly what he was thinking. I could pretty much have written the thought bubble above his head.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘I know this is going to be tough on you and please don’t think I take you for granted because I don’t, but this is something I really want to do. All those motions we put forward to NUT conference, all those petitions we sign about this, that and the other, at end of day, we’re pissing in the wind, aren’t we?’

Paul shrugged. ‘But this,’ I went on, waving my arms around as if I were talking about the hospital car park,
which I wasn’t, ‘this Lollipop Party thing is something which really could make a difference. I feel like we could change the world and I haven’t felt like that since I were a student. I like it and I don’t want to stop now.’

‘I don’t want you to stop either,’ said Paul, ‘but I do want you to think about consequences.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I’m saying I want you to realise how difficult this is going to be for you and our family. Summat has to go. You’ve got too much on and I’m not going to stand by and watch you run yourself into ground. If you’re determined to go ahead with Lollipop Party thing then we should wait until after election before we make any decision on IVF. It makes sense not to rush into it. It’ll give us time to think about it properly.’

‘I’m not going to change my mind, you know.’

‘Fine. Let’s just give ourselves a bit of a breather.’

‘I still want to go on trying.’

Paul sighed. I knew what he was thinking. That there was no point. That I was in denial. Maybe I was, but the alternative was far too scary to contemplate.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘Well I’m hardly going to complain about that, am I?’ He turned to smile at me. I managed one back. ‘Now, can we go home, please,’ he said, ‘before I have to put another couple of quid in parking machine.’

‘In the mummyfesto,’ I said, ‘all hospital car parks are going to be free.’

Paul smiled and shook his head. ‘I should bloody hope so,’ he said.

There was something about sitting outside the Head’s office that always made you regress to your schooldays. Although it had to be said that in my case it wasn’t that it brought back memories of getting into trouble – the only time I could remember being sent to the Headmaster was for good work and behaviour in primary school. He gave me a set of two crayons as a reward – a gold and a green one. At the time I’d been delighted and had passed them around for my friends to admire. I couldn’t help but think how unimpressed kids would be with them today.

I wished I wasn’t on my own. I knew all too well how good Mr Freeman was at belittling people and brushing off their grievances, both from my own experience and from Jackie. David hadn’t been able to get the time off work. He had seemed genuinely upset when I’d told him
about the latest bullying incidents. But that hadn’t seemed to translate into a determination to get something done about it. Maybe I should have taken it as a compliment: that he trusted me to be able to sort it out myself. But for some reason it didn’t feel like a compliment. It felt like a dereliction of his duties.

The school secretary came out of her office on the other side of the corridor, bringing the whiff of hairspray with her.

‘Mr Freeman is ready for you now,’ she said. I nodded. They annoyed me, men who were too high up the scale to be able to open their own office door.

I knocked and entered as commanded. Freeman stood up and offered his hand.

‘Sorry to keep you, Mrs Sugden,’ he said. Tempted as I was to correct him on the Mrs, I decided to let it go. There were bigger battles to be won and I didn’t want to get off to a bad start.

‘That’s OK,’ I said, shaking his hand firmly.

‘Now, thank you for your letter and for bringing this matter to my attention. As you know, we at Hebden High take any allegations of bullying very seriously, but it does appear from your letter that none of these incidents took place in school.’

‘The texts and messages were all sent by pupils at this school.’

‘Well that may or may not be the case, but I’m sure you understand that we can’t be held responsible for things that happen outside the school premises.’

‘Some of these texts were probably sent from school premises.’

‘May I remind you that we have a ban on mobile phones being used on site.’

‘With the greatest of respect, that doesn’t mean to say that they’re not used.’

‘Are you suggesting that we are not in control of our pupils?’

There was a note of challenge in his voice and in the expression on his face. I sat up straight, determined not to be intimidated.

‘I’m simply saying that sometimes things happen that shouldn’t. In our case, our daughter is being bullied by pupils at this school. As her parents, we’re really not bothered what side of the school gates the messages are sent from. The effect on Charlotte is the same.’

‘Well the obvious solution is to take away her mobile phone and stop her using Facebook and the like.’

‘She’s no longer on Facebook and she’s switched off her mobile. The problem is that many of the pupils at this school are on Facebook and have seen what has been posted about her. And a minority of them are continuing to make offensive and abusive comments about her on the site.’

‘Perhaps you should take that up with Facebook.’

‘These are your school’s pupils, Mr Freeman.’

‘And this is your daughter we’re talking about. Perhaps there are things you as parents could do to offer her greater protection.’

‘And what do you suggest?’

‘You could encourage her to integrate more with her peers in order to help her to become more accepted.’

‘Yes, you’re right. We should encourage her to have underage sex, wear make-up and concentrate on getting a boyfriend instead of studying hard for her GCSEs.’