As I sit on the toilet, I look down at my knickers. But I don’t see any mucus. I see a bright red smudge. In the centre of the smudge is a clot. Looks like a slice of liver. It’s the size of a sesame seed.
I grab a pregnancy test from the shelf behind me and follow the instructions on the back of the box. I rest it on the radiator and look at my watch.
I bought these knickers from Marks & Spencer. They’re white with green diamonds on them. They came in a multipack. I had no inkling, when I bought them, that they’d play such a pivotal role in my life. I take them off and look at the clot more closely. It has no distinguishable features. It smells of me. I smell of it.
It’s early, but I can’t hold out any longer. I look at the test.
A faint second line is appearing.
My jaw unclenches. I exhale. Thank God for that.
This is more implantation bleeding.
I wipe myself with the toilet roll. There’s more blood. I can feel it trickling out of me now, and I feel a twinge in my cervix as it comes out.
The test has had three minutes. The faint second line hasn’t grown any darker. It’s a ghost. I drop it in the bin.
I feel another spasm, and I pass more blood. I wipe it away and get off the toilet, but I don’t know what to do with my knickers. I don’t want to put them back on, but I don’t want to leave the clot alone. So I hold on to them. But I don’t touch the baby in case I damage it—it’d be like touching a butterfly wing.
My whole world is in the palm of my hands. My whole world is a glob of blood, a slice of liver, a butterfly wing. Nothing else matters.
I curl up on the floor, pressing my cheek against the cold vinyl. Sliver by sliver, I bleed and fall apart.
“Oh no, Solvig.”
Time has passed and James is looking down at me.
29
Tonight’s full moon means I don’t have to switch on any lights. I can even see the floorboards, and I know exactly where to step so that I don’t make any creaks.
I go into the spare room and walk over to the window. I wish I could open it and dive straight into the sea. I wonder what creatures are out there now, swimming in the moonlight. The sea serpent Morgawr, perhaps? Another Cornish legend.
Sometimes at this time of year we get the odd bluefire jellyfish washed up on the shore. James was so excited when we found one last summer. Normally they live in colder waters. They live for a year and will sting you even when they’re dead. I’ve never been stung by one, but I did tread on a sea urchin once. I was on holiday with my dad in Lanzarote. A local barman had to pull the spines out of the sole of my foot with tweezers, and then he shaved off the pedicellariae with a razor. I don’t know what the pedicellariae were, exactly. Dad and I couldn’t understand the barman very well. It was something to do with the sea urchin’s mouth, or possibly anus. Afterwards, I threw up, and vowed never to go near the sea again. A couple of days afterwards, though, my foot felt better, and I was back on the beach, building sandcastles.
The miscarriage happened ten days ago. I went to the doctor the morning after it happened. The appointment was delayed, so I had to sit in the waiting room with James for over an hour, watching two identical twin girls in the play area building a tower with green bricks, then demolishing it, then building it, then demolishing it. I almost screamed at the mother to stop them from repeating this endless cycle, but James put his hand on my arm and told me he’d take me for lunch afterwards. We’d go and eat some brie or salami or smoked salmon.
“I think I’ve had a miscarriage,” I told the doctor while James sat in the waiting room.
“It doesn’t say on your notes that you were pregnant,” she replied.
“I hadn’t got around to telling you. But I was. And I don’t think I am any more.” I got out my phone and showed her a photo of the clot.
The doctor barely looked at the photograph. “Let’s do a blood test to confirm either way, shall we?” She took an empty vial and stuck a needle in my arm. My blood came out almost black. Not like the bright red stuff I’d seen the day before.
“You can phone for the results tomorrow,” the doctor said. “In the meantime, I wouldn’t be too hopeful. This is your first pregnancy, yes?”
I burst into tears, and I was instantly angry with myself for crying in the presence of someone so heartless. “We’ve been trying since January,” I said. “I think there’s something wrong.”
The doctor handed me a tissue. “You’re thirty-seven,” she said, “which probably isn’t helping matters. It’s only going to get tougher with each passing month. But it’s still too early to think about treatment. We’ll see what the results of this test say, all right? If it’s bad news, you’ll need to keep trying for a full twelve months before we can refer you for tests.”
“What if I’d lied and told you we’d been trying since last October? Would you have referred me then?” I asked.
The doctor typed something on my notes but didn’t answer.
“Is it my fault? Is it because I’m a saturation diver? Is my body a hostile environment?”
The doctor stopped typing and looked at me over her glasses. “It’s just one of those things.”
I knew that the test results would come back negative.
