Mother's Story (30 page)

‘I don't want to go for a walk!' she wailed.

‘Okay, okay. We don't have to, I just want to help you.' He raised his palms.

She gave a reluctant nod.

‘I'm here to make things better, remember? You just tell me what you need.'

‘I don't need anything.' She sniffed.

‘Come on, Jess. Help me out. What's wrong?'

‘I'm pregnant,' she whispered.

‘What?'

‘I'm. Preg-nant,' she enunciated.

‘Oh, honey! Oh, Jess! Are you sure?'

‘Yes, I'm sure.' She pointed to the pregnancy test on the counter top.

Matthew pulled her up and into his arms. ‘Then why have you been crying? This is fantastic news, a baby brother or sister for Lilly. It'll complete our little family. It'll be wonderful! We will make it wonderful.'

She leant against his solid chest as he stroked her hair. ‘Supposing… supposing I can't cope again. I don't want to feel like that again, Matt. I don't. I can't go backwards. I'm so scared. I still have off-days and I need to focus and now this…' She hiccupped.

‘Hey, listen to me. It will be far easier this time because we know what to expect. We can talk to Dr Boyd and make sure we plan and put things in place that make it better for you. We know what to look out for this time, right? And Lilly's birth was a horrible shock, an emergency, but this won't be like that. It will be much, much better. Everything will be different, okay?' He tilted her chin with his finger and kissed her.

‘Okay,' she whispered. ‘Don't leave me, Matt.'

‘I'm never going to leave you, that's a daft thing to say.' He kissed her head.

‘I love you.'

‘I love you too.' He held her fast and closed his eyes, offering a silent prayer that his words of reassurance would prove to be true.

And things were fine, for a while.

Jessica's initial misgivings about increasing her dose of anti-depressants during her pregnancy had disappeared after a consultation with her GP. She had to agree, it was far, far better for her, Lilly and their unborn child that she remain on an even keel. Lilly knew she was getting a baby brother or sister and was given a big-girl's bed in the larger spare room, which became her bedroom. The cot got a good scrub, ready for the new arrival.

And then, without warning, Jessica had woken one morning and simply didn't want to get out of bed. It was as if some unseen force had come along in the night and switched off her happy.

Lilly called out, rousing her from her sleep. ‘Matt? Matthew?' she called, but he had already left for work. It was as though she had caught a bug: she felt hungover, fuzzy-headed and sad, just like she had before. Within minutes of waking, the tears that she had kept at bay had begun leaking from her puffy eyes.

She had hoped it was a one-off, a blip. But the cloud of despair had now hovered over her for weeks, as dark and forbidding as it was before. Try as she might, she couldn't find a chink big enough through which to come up for air. She waited with bated breath for Lilly to call out again. A hammering headache beat out its rhythm inside her skull and opening her eyes caused her physical pain. When Lilly finally did yell out, Jessica felt the all too familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. ‘Oh no, please no,' she whispered as she crept across the landing.

Lilly was now steady on her feet and happy to trot up and down the stairs when holding her mummy's hand. They trod the stairs in silence. Lilly's bare feet slipped a little on the wide treads. Her crumpled nightie hung off her and her nappy needed changing.

When they reached the kitchen, Jessica gave Lilly her breakfast in silence: a little bowl of baby porridge with three slices of banana that she squished between her chubby fingers and ate like a lollipop. Lilly then started to cry. It sounded to Jessica like breaking glass; it grated on her senses and put her on edge. Without giving it too much consideration, she reached into the cupboard and pulled out the bottle of strawberry-flavoured liquid paracetamol. She no longer needed to read the instructions and used the plastic syringe to squeeze the required dose into Lilly's mouth. The little girl swallowed it between sobs; some of it dribbled down her chin in a sticky slick that Jessica pushed back in with the tip of her finger. She then refilled the syringe and Lilly duly swallowed the second dose. After the third, Jessica stopped.

Lilly reached out a sticky hand and placed it on Jessica's stomach. ‘Baba!' She was most disappointed not to get a reply.

Jessica nodded, answering flatly, ‘Yes, another baba.' Inside, her heart twisted. How would she cope with another baby? She was sure that Matt had noticed she was using the strawberry medicine to keep Lilly quiet. She had taken to buying it secretly and stashing it under their bed, unable to explain the amount she got through. It had become a habit.

Almost every evening now, Matthew would run his finger around Lilly's gums, looking for new teeth, convinced this was the reason for her fretfulness and night-time waking. Jessica lived in fear of Matt discovering that she was once again not coping. She laughed falsely as she prepared supper and tried not to notice the growing mountain of laundry, the way the kitchen floor was so sticky underfoot it gripped her heel with every step, or the growing piles of paper and detritus that littered the work surfaces and crowded the table.

At eighteen weeks, Jessica's rounded baby bump was starting to show. Coral called daily, trying to offer support by way of chirpy conversation, careful never to mention the word depression or ask how her daughter was feeling, a little fearful of the response. Jessica tried to sound grateful for the calls and upbeat messages of support, but in reality it was simply another intrusion, another pressure for her to deal with.

Lifting her little girl as best she could, Jessica carried her back up the stairs and laid her in their double bed, with pillows around the outside so she wouldn't fall out. This became the pattern for the next week. She and Lilly would spend most of the day sleeping or lying in the darkened bedroom, getting up just before Matthew came home. Lilly, weepy and disorientated, would then cry incessantly.

Walking to the window, Jessica glanced down in time to see Mrs Pleasant looking up at the bedroom window. ‘Fuck off!' she mouthed, before drawing the curtains tightly and shutting the bedroom door, making the room as quiet and dark as she possibly could.

Jessica then climbed into bed beside her daughter and placed her head on the pillow. She screwed her eyes shut and she made a wish, just like she used to when she was little. ‘Please, please don't let me have this baby. I don't want it. I can't do it and I wish… I wish it would disappear.' This she whispered into the ether as Lilly began to snore. It wasn't long before both of them had fallen asleep.

25th May, 2015

An unforgettable day. During quiet time, while the others were playing a board game and some were watching television, I opted to sit and look out of the window. I stared at the small patch of grass in the middle of the courtyard. I have a trick, keeping my eyes low so I only see the grass and not the high barbed-wire fence or the carefully positioned cameras and security lights that surround us. I make out I am in the park. I jumped as someone suddenly screeched in the hallway, a horrible sound, shrill and animal-like. I felt a wave of pity for them and a flicker of fear, followed by a burst of happiness, because I never used to notice the grunts, shouts and screams. I was part of the noise, part of the fabric, but I figured that if I now notice them, feel separate from them then maybe I don't belong here any more and that thought makes me happier than I can say.

The nurse disturbed my thoughts: I had a visitor. Paz came on his own, Polly was working, but that's not important. What is important is what he brought with him, a letter. A letter! He pushed the envelope across the table, slowly and carefully as though it was fragile. It had been opened, read and checked. Two whole sentences had been blocked out with a black marker pen. This didn't really bother me. I was too busy digesting what was legible. I ignored Paz pretty much. I read it four times over and over and have read it again and again all afternoon. I have run my fingers over the paper that he has touched and have inhaled it, trying to detect his scent. I know it by heart. It says this,

Jess, even writing your name makes my heart jump. But I want you to know that I feel calmer. (And then there is the thick black strip that I can't see beneath and I have tried, even holding it up to the light and squinting with it close to my eye, then it says) I have been through a range of emotions, phases if you like, hatred, rage, guilt, regret and am now as I mentioned, a little calmer. I still don't fully understand how our situation spiralled into hell and how it happened so quickly. I blame myself for not seeing the signs, not intervening sooner. (And then there is another black strip. Then it continues) I am able now with the buffer of four years between now and then to think of some of the good aspects of our life and that helps. Life is a strange and difficult journey and I could never in a million years have imagined how mine would unfold, I am sure it is the same for you. The purpose of this letter is to tell you that I don't wish you any harm, not any more. I forgive you. By forgiving you it will make that journey easier and less painful for us all. Matthew.

My tears came readily and I am crying again now. He forgives me! It is more than I could ever have wished for. I am also crying at the sight of his name. Matthew – followed by a full stop. A single dot. I could never have imagined a time when he would put pen to paper and not draw big X's after his name, not when writing to me. I can picture the countless notes he has scribbled to me and each and every one ends with his name and a little line linking the top of the w to a large kiss. I wonder if he hesitated, if habit urged him to put an X or whether the Jess he wrote to is so far from the girl he married, the girl he loved that it didn't occur to him. Matt, my Matt. Your forgiveness is like a beacon of hope at the end of a very dark tunnel and I am so so grateful. We did spiral into hell; this letter is proof of how far we fell.

Matthew sat on the sofa with Jessica's head in his lap. It was the middle of the evening, just before bedtime and bar the odd groan from a radiator, the house was quiet. He stroked her hair away from her forehead.

‘This pregnancy feels very different from when you were carrying Lilly, doesn't it.'

She closed her eyes. ‘Does it?'

Matthew sighed and chose his words. ‘Yes, I think so. It's nice and calm, much better in some ways. First time round we were really over-excited, weren't we? This feels better, like we are more in control. Don't get me wrong, I loved it when you were having Lilly – not the drama and panic at the end, but the first bit was lovely, while we waited, not knowing what we were going to get.'

‘We don't know what we're getting now,' she murmured.

Matthew reached down and held her hand. ‘No, and that's the best bit, isn't it? Getting to meet our little one for the first time! I can't imagine Lilly being a big sister, can you?'

Jessica didn't answer.

‘And I think our names are good: Leo for a boy and Sophia for a girl. Are you sure you don't want to go with Bethan?'

Jessica shook her head.

‘D'you remember when you were in labour with Lilly and I couldn't park the car and then I brought Polly's yoga bag instead of your maternity bag! God, that moment when I pulled out a bag of bloody crystals! I knew you wanted to go mad at me. I felt like such an idiot! But it didn't matter in the end, did it?'

‘Nothing matters, nothing. Not really, not in the great scheme of things,' Jessica whispered into the still sitting room, her words sending a shiver of fear along her husband's spine.

Much later that night, Jessica fumbled for the door handle in the pitch dark, needing the loo but not wanting to rouse herself fully. With her PJs around her ankles, she slumped on the loo, her eyes still closed. This was a neat trick she had perfected, remaining half asleep so she could slip back between the covers as if nature had never called.

The pain in her stomach came quite without warning. Jessica bent double and tried to focus as the shock pulled a guttural yell from her throat that woke her husband.

‘Jess?'

She heard him get out of bed, heard the creak of the mattress and the snap of the lamp as she sat flopped over, trying to catch her breath. Matthew came into the bathroom and pulled on the light. He looked stricken. She stared down at her bunched-up pyjama bottoms and saw that they were drenched in a pool of bright red. She was bleeding, heavily.

‘Oh God! Stay there! Don't move.' Matthew ran back into the bedroom to grab his phone. Who he was planning to call she wasn't sure. She looked down, fixated by the vast scarlet stain that had now transferred to her thighs, hands and calves. It felt as if time was suspended.

This was what she had wished for and yet Jessica felt none of the relief she had expected, only pain, fear and self-loathing. But it was too late to rewind. Her wish was coming true. This was her fault.

In the hospital, Matthew answered all the preliminary questions while Jessica got cleaned up. Then she lay flat on a paper-sheeted couch with her hospital-issue gown pulled up to reveal her stomach. Matthew sat by her side, occasionally laying a tentative hand on her shoulder, nervously letting her know he was right there, while trying to remain unflustered. She heard him exhale loudly several times.

‘Okay, Jess, where are we?' The sonographer was chatty, composed and efficient as she came into the cramped room, shutting the door firmly behind her. Her friendly, business-like demeanour brought calmness to the situation. ‘You were due to have your twenty-week scan next week, is that right?'

Jessica nodded.