When my phone does ring an hour later, the television has not distracted me in the slightest and I have ended up making a new list on my phone of possible names, ones I haven’t already used.
‘Hello? Greg?’
‘Hey, Mads. You ok?’ His voice is flat.
‘Yes. I’m good. Really good.’
‘Oh?’ His interest has been piqued.
‘I’m pregnant… again.’
There is a pause. ‘Ok…’
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes, I heard you.’ He doesn’t sound as thrilled as I thought he would. He sounds… tired.
‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s just… Well, we’ve been here before. I don’t want to you to get your hopes up again.’
Suddenly I’m angry. Why shouldn’t I get my hopes up? Why shouldn’t I be excited? How dare he?
‘Fuck you, Greg!’
‘Excuse me?’
‘How dare you!’ I know I’m screaming at him, but I can’t stop myself. ‘Why can you not just be happy for me? For us? After everything we’ve gone through, you know how much this means to me. Is a little bit of excitement too much to ask?’
‘I’m sorry, Mads, I just—’
‘You know what, I’m not going to let your negativity ruin this for me.’
I hang up and fling myself back onto the pillows.
Breathe, Maddie. Stress is bad for the baby.
I focus on my inhalations and exhalations, letting my pulse slow again, then start searching up new ideas for the nursery on Pinterest.
8
The shoebox sat on the kitchen counter like a bomb.
Maddie sat on the bar stool, her hands resting flat on the countertop.
This flimsy cardboard box held what felt like a lifetime of pain, crushed dreams and broken splinters of promise. It had the ability to completely eviscerate her and yet she kept it.
However, spending time with Ben yesterday had fortified her enough to face this. She looked over at the photo on the fridge, Ben’s smiling face, the sheer joy in her eyes.
She reached out slowly and lifted the lid of the box, setting it aside gingerly. The smell of lavender filled the air.
Inside, lying on a bed of scented, pale purple tissue paper, was what looked on the surface to be a pile of innocent pieces of paper. But each one could cut her like a scalpel.
The papers were tied together with a thin piece of silver ribbon, like love letters. And that’s what they were.
Love letters from a mother to her children.
The ribbon had started out as quite a long piece, but as Maddie had added to the pile, so the ribbon had shortened until there was now only enough to tie one small knot at the top.
She untied that knot now with quivering fingers and forced herself to look.
A photo of every scan done for every one of her failed pregnancies – and for each child, a hand-drawn card with a name, date of conception and date of death, each one decorated according to the scheme they had picked for the nursery. One had zoo animals; another flowers; a third rainbows – all painstakingly hand-drawn and decorated while she was grieving yet another disappointment. The cards had been a kind of art therapy for her, cathartic in a way and an important part of her attempt at closure. There had been no way of knowing for some whether they were boys or girls, so she had gone with her instinct and by her reckoning, she had had more boys. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were gone. And each one had taken a piece of her soul with them until she had felt like an empty husk, just a body carrying her around every day but drained of all feeling. Numb and hollow.
The only thing that seemed to raise her heartbeat now was the sound of a child laughing, the sight of a wide, innocent grin and the feeling of a tiny hand clasped in hers. That was why spending time with Jemima and Ben was so important. That was why she would do anything to spend time with them. It frightened her to think about the lengths she would go to to have even five more minutes in their company.
Perhaps that was what annoyed Gemma the most. On the surface, Maddie had assumed it was her relationship with Greg, but perhaps it was the threat of her being in Jemima’s life, a woman who wanted to be there, to spend time with her, unlike Gemma who seemed to resent her daughter’s reliance on her.
Maddie looked at each and every card, tracing the names with her fingers, remembering each and every one. At the very bottom of the pile, the drawing was an ink impression of a tiny hand and a tiny foot.
Archie.
The boy who breathed.
For a moment, she held Archie’s card in her hands, feeling its smoothness against her fingertips, stroking her thumb over the ink impressions, not breathing.
After Archie, she was so far down in herself that for a while she couldn’t see any light at all. Greg had learnt over the years how to reach down and drag her back up, but after Archie, even he couldn’t reach her, his fingers barely grazing the heavy air between them. Even so, he never stopped trying.
Maybe it was time to let him go. She didn’t need someone to reach for her anymore because she had survived.
Maybe it was her turn to reach out to someone new.
She put the card down and picked up her phone before sending a Snapchat to Jade.
Can we talk? M x
Then she got to her feet, poured herself a large glass of wine and waited.
THEN
Something is wrong.
‘Greg?’ I call out.
He doesn’t answer. He’s in his study again. Muted conversations and hushed tones behind a closed door. I drag myself from the bed, but it is difficult to move at any speed now with my huge, distended stomach. For such a tiny thing, the weight of the baby is astonishing, pushing down on the floor of my
