Five Unforgivable Things

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said, pushing through the gap between them as best she could, one hand protectively covering her bump. ‘I knew you wouldn’t understand. Any of you.’

Jenny followed her out into the street. Pregnant women not being the fastest of movers, she wasn’t too difficult to catch up with.

‘Laura. Wait!’

‘What for? I came because I thought it might be good to see you, and maybe to try to explain. I didn’t expect you to start ganging up on me.’

‘That’s not what we’re trying to do. Honestly. Come back inside, Laura. Please. We’ll go easy on you, I promise. And I do keep my promises, as you well know. If I didn’t, it would be Ollie standing here right now, pleading with you. Not me.’

Laura hesitated for a moment, but Jenny could tell she had given in. In fact, there seemed very little fight left in her at all.

‘All right. I’ll come in, but that doesn’t mean I’m coming back home, or telling Ollie. Not right now, anyway. Just because you make all these rash promises doesn’t mean that I have to, okay?’

Jenny slid her arm through Laura’s. ‘Of course you don’t. Whatever you want is fine by me. But I do want to hear all about junior here. Boy or girl? Due date? Possible names? Everything. Wow, Laura, I’m going to be an auntie, aren’t I?’ She laughed. ‘That sounds really funny, doesn’t it? Auntie, aren’t I! But I am. Going to be an auntie. Auntie Jen, the practical one, that’ll be me, opening it a savings account and buying it sensible shoes. And Auntie Beth can take it partying and do its hair, and Nat can … oh, I don’t know, take it for wheelie spins in her chair! It’s going to be just great.’

‘Slow down, Jen. This baby isn’t even born yet, and on my past record it still might not be.’

‘But you’re six months gone. You won’t miscarry this one. Not now. You’re home and dry!’

‘If only I could believe that, but there’s still a long way to go. Anything could happen. Anything could still go wrong. And not a day goes by, Jen, not an hour or a minute when I don’t worry that it will.’

Jenny didn’t know what to say. The sheer misery etched on Laura’s face brought tears stinging into her own eyes.

‘It will be all right, Laura.’

‘Will it? You can’t possibly know that. And it’s what I thought the first time, isn’t it? And the second. And this is the fourth, remember. Four! I hardly sleep, and when I do I just dream these horrible dreams. I can’t settle, or relax, or plan. Ever. It’s like I’m in a living nightmare, Jen, and it’s one I’m not going to wake up from until this baby is born safely, all in one piece, and lying in my arms. Do you think I could put Ollie through all this too? No! Never. It’s best he doesn’t know, doesn’t have to feel what I’m feeling, fret and stress and tie himself up in knots. Best he doesn’t have to go on blaming himself – or me.’

‘Blaming? For what?’

‘Oh, God, Jen, you really don’t understand, do you? Please, let’s go back in to Beth and find something else to talk about for once. Books, clothes, the sodding weather if we have to. But any more baby talk and I think I just might explode!’

Chapter 9

Kate, 1979

I packed my pants with a double layer of padding, swallowed three aspirins, and wore the dress back to front. Nobody would know. The neckline was a bit higher at the front than it would have been and the shaping, such as it was, was all wrong (thank God for small breasts), but the giant ribbons attached at the sides had been as easy to tie one way around as they had the other, and I was now eternally grateful I hadn’t gone for something with a train that would have made such improvising pretty much impossible. The small stain, still damp and not quite invisible, despite Linda’s frantic scrubbing, was now at the front of the dress, disguised, along with my bump, by the long trailing bouquet I was clutching so tightly that my knuckles had gone white.

Mum gripped my hand on the step. ‘Sure you’re okay to do this, love?’ she said, looking anxious. ‘Maybe you should have stayed lying down. It might make a difference.’

‘I doubt it. I don’t think babies fall out just because the mother is upright, do you? If I’m going to lose it, there’s not a lot I can do to stop it now. And I will see a doctor as soon as I can, I promise. But I think we all know it might already be too late.’

I took a pace forward to the door and tried not to think about what was happening inside my own body. If I’d thought too hard about it I would probably have crumpled, gone in there crying my eyes out, tripped over my own feet or something. Somehow it was easier to ignore it, pretend it wasn’t happening, tell myself that none of it was true. This baby had not been planned but over the last few weeks I had grown to love it, to want it. And now all I wanted was for it to hang on and live, to become a part of our brand-new family. Baby Blob, that was what Dan had taken to calling her, his hand stroking over my belly, his ear pushed against my skin as if he could hear her breathe. Her? Why did we just both assume it was a she? Little Baby Blob. No, don’t think about it. Concentrate on what’s happening right now. The wedding. Dan. Us …

Peering into the church, I could just see him standing at the front. Dan, with his back to me, hopping from foot to foot and straightening his tie, and Rich standing beside him, fiddling with something in his pocket. Probably the rings. And between them and me, a small rolling sea of heads and hats, a general murmuring of whispered conversation, and an unmistakable air of anticipation.

I was late. Only by ten minutes, which we’d needed to try to sort out the dress, but that was probably enough to get tongues wagging. Where is she? Is something wrong? Is she going to turn up? The flash of an image popped into my head, of that woman Linda knew, seeing it all ahead of her, turning away and running scared, all the way to the bus. But not me. For better or worse, that’s what this was all about. And things didn’t come much worse than this.

‘Do you want me to slip in there and have a word with Dan? In private? Tell him what’s happening?’ Mum asked, her forehead creased into a frown, as she pulled a mirror from her handbag and had a last check of her lipstick. She looked, like me, as if all she really wanted was to get on with it, get it over with, as quickly as possible.

‘No, Mum. It’s not as if there’s anything he can do. And you whispering in his ear in front of that lot in there could hardly be less private, could it? Let him enjoy his own wedding, eh? No point all of us worrying ourselves sick, is there? Ready, Lin?’

Linda nodded as she pulled my hem into line and did a final tweak of my hair. ‘Then, let’s get in there, shall we? There’ll be time enough to tell Dan afterwards. When it’s too late for him to change his mind!’

They both laughed in a muted, nervous kind of way, but a little piece of me wondered if it was true. If he was only marrying me because of the baby, and now there was no baby …

The bells stopped ringing then and, having spotted us waiting in the open doorway, the organist started up and everyone suddenly stood and turned and stared. It was too late to do anything but go through with it. I grabbed Mum’s arm and pulled my flowers hard against me. Then, taking a big collective breath, all three of us stepped over the threshold and into the church, and made our way, very slowly, up the aisle.

***

Was that it? The moment I sealed my fate. Our fate? Walking down the aisle without telling him? Without saying a word? I knew it was the baby – the accidental baby – that had brought us there, to that day, that church, that rushed decision we might never otherwise have made. And now there might not be a baby, I could have stopped it all, the whole charade. Not that he ever complained, but it must have crossed his mind from time to time, later on, mustn’t it? That I’d tricked him somehow, not given him the choice. I was wrong. I know that now. I could have – should have – just told him, stopped the wedding, set him free. Or at least given him the option. But I didn’t.

It wasn’t easy to think straight. Everything was happening too quickly. I was bleeding, I was in pain, I wasn’t in control. Yes, I know they just sound like excuses now, but it would have taken more courage than I could muster to stop it. All those people, all that expectation, and no convenient bus waiting to whisk me away, blood-stained dress flapping wildly in the wind.

I loved Dan. Reliable, responsible, oh-so-conventional Dan, wearing a new suit and a carnation, and already there, waiting for me at the front of the church. Not only for me, but for our little blob of a baby too, because we came as a package now, didn’t we? One hidden away inside the other, like Russian dolls.

I should have told him the package had come undone, that our plans were already unravelling like an unruly ball of string. I should have given him the choice, to tie the knot or let it go, but I didn’t say a word, until it was too late.

It was the first big lie in our relationship, the first truly unforgivable thing I had ever done. And no way to embark on a life, a marriage …

I think I may have been paying for it ever since.

***

According to Rich, who’d travelled down by train early that morning with three more of Dan’s friends, and with the sole intention, best-man duties aside, of having a bloody good time, the reception was a hoot. Knowing how much booze that lot were able to put down their gullets, and Rich in particular, I was surprised he was able to remember it at all.

‘These country folk sure know how to party, don’t they?’ he said, perched by the side of my hospital bed, with one elbow on the blankets, and working his way through the grapes he’d brought with him, spitting the pips into his hand. ‘Drinking cider and chomping through mounds of food – delicious, by the way – and dancing the night away like there was no tomorrow. How your dad manages to get up and milk cows after a night like that I’ll never know. I take my hat off to him. My head’s still pounding like a sledgehammer, and I left before any of them. And the price of a taxi at that time of night, you wouldn’t believe! It was only five miles to our hotel too. Should have walked.’

Dan chuckled. ‘Walked? Staggered, more like, knowing you lot. And down those little dark lanes? You’d have ended up in a ditch.’

‘Bit rough though, wasn’t it? You two missing your own reception.’

‘At least we made it to the wedding. That’s the most important thing.’ Dan squeezed my hand and I felt my new ring push its way gently into my flesh. His eyes were looking watery again and he quickly rubbed a sleeve over them. He’d been with me all night, dozing beside me in a chair, and had held my hand this morning, just as he was doing now, when the scan had shown us what we already knew. The baby was gone.

Rich looked uncomfortable, and I knew it wasn’t just because of his hangover or the hard plastic chair he was sitting on. He wasn’t good with emotional stuff, and the sight of his best mate on the verge of tears was not something he knew how to deal with. ‘Well, I just wanted to look in before I left,’ he said, bundling the last of the bunch of grapes, which by now wasn’t much more than a collection of stalks, back into their paper bag and dropping them on the bedside cabinet. He held out a hand to shake, but Dan walked around the bed and pulled him into an awkward bear hug.

‘Thanks for coming, mate. And, you know … for not losing the rings and everything.’

‘My pleasure. And I’m sorry about the baby.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

We watched in silence as Rich walked away down the ward, turning to wave before heading out towards the lifts.

Dan idly lifted up the paper bag, opened it and peered inside. ‘Grape?’ he said, plonking himself down on the bed and holding it out to me.

‘I don’t really fancy them now. Not having seen him spitting all those pips.’

‘Cup of tea, then?’

‘I’d love one. Although, now I’m not pregnant any more, I suppose we should push the boat out and have a proper drink. Of course, we may have to improvise a bit until we get out of here.’

‘Champagne, to celebrate?’

‘Well, maybe not celebrate exactly, in the circumstances. But at least to toast our future together, as we didn’t get to do it at the reception. Which reminds me, I never got to hear your speech, did I? Or the best man’s.’

‘Good job. They were rubbish anyway.’

And that was how our married life began. Just the two of us, where there should have been three, trying desperately hard not to cry, and sipping weak hospital tea with our eyes shut, pretending it was bursting with bubbles.

NUMBER TWO

Chapter 10

Natalie, 2017

‘Welcome home, you two.’ Natalie watched her sisters drop their coats and bags in the hall and went back to stirring a bowl of pasta sauce on the hob. She lifted the wooden spoon, licked it carefully – they were family so nobody would mind – then put it back into the pan. ‘So, what did you get up to on this spa break of yours?’

‘Oh, you know, just chilling out really,’ Beth said, bounding into the kitchen and sniffing the air appreciatively. ‘Lettuce leaves for lunch, a bit of swimming, some woman bashing away at our backs and rubbing our heads too hard. That kind of thing.’

‘Did you get to the beach?’

‘Not really the weather for it.’

‘And we didn’t get a lot of time,’ Jenny cut in, slipping into a chair and fiddling with the cutlery Natalie had already laid on the table. ‘So, sorry we didn’t bring you anything back.’

‘I didn’t expect you to.’

‘When’s Mum home?’

Natalie tilted the steaming pan and started spooning the sauce over plates piled high with too much spaghetti. ‘Sunday, I think. I’ve not heard from her. She didn’t take her phone. I found it on the hall table.’

‘Typical!’ Beth carried two of the plates to the table and went back for the third.

‘Got any Parmesan, Nat?’ Jenny was already twirling the pasta inexpertly around her fork and dropping most of it back onto the plate.

‘Anyone would think I’m the only one who lives here! You know where the fridge is.’

‘Don’t bother yourselves, either of you,’ Beth said, using her best put-upon voice. ‘I’m still standing. I’ll get it.’ She rummaged around in the fridge, tore open a bag of ready-grated cheese, poured it into a bowl and sat down with it still in her hand. ‘And thanks for cooking, Nat. It’s been a very long journey and I’m famished.’

‘Not that long,’ Jenny said. ‘But I think all that sea air must have made us hungry.’

Natalie wheeled her chair over to the table and slid it into her usual place. ‘I’ve missed this,’ she said when they were all settled and eating. ‘I know you were only gone two nights, but …’

‘Better get used to it, girl. You won’t have us two around all the time once you’re married, you know.’

‘I know. It’s like the end of an era, though, isn’t it?’

‘You didn’t say that when Ollie left home.’

‘That was different somehow. This is … well, I don’t know, I love Ollie, of course I do, but maybe it’s just because we’re the girls. It feels like the break-up of the Three Musketeers or something. You know, all for one and one for all.’

If only it was really like that, she thought. The three of them doing everything together. Because, although she knew they meant nothing by it and the last thing they would want would be to hurt her, they did make her feel a bit left out sometimes. Sharing a room for so long had brought the two of them closer, along with all the whispering and giggling together after lights out that had inevitably come with it. And hadn’t they just been away together and left her at home? Still, she shouldn’t blame them. Her wheelchair made it harder to do things together. Normal things, that didn’t need loads of planning and thinking about stairs and ramps and space. It even put her at a different level, a good couple of feet below everyone else, so even hugs were hard sometimes.

But she was being too harsh. She knew she was. Just look at how Beth had carried the plates and gone to the fridge for the cheese. They were always making allowances for the things Natalie couldn’t do as easily, or as quickly, as the others, anyway. Both of them, always being extra kind, extra helpful. And they were her sisters, for God’s sake. They knew her inside out, but for weeks now the elephant had been stomping about in the room. The wedding they seemed to find it so hard to talk about. The wedding that Natalie wanted, and the one – the very different one – they were trying to push upon her. If they still didn’t understand that all she needed was to feel normal and relaxed and comfortable, especially when it came to her own wedding, what hope was there that anyone else would?

‘Is Phil back at the weekend too?’ Beth said.

Natalie nodded, her mouth too full of food to talk.

‘More wedding stuff to sort out, I suppose. You really should get out more and have some fun, you know.’

‘Yes, you’re like an old married couple already,’ Jenny added. ‘Still, not long to go now, eh?’

Natalie swallowed the pasta and wiped her mouth. Ah, here we go, she thought. They’ve brought the conversation back round to their favourite topic. She wondered what had taken them so long. ‘Eleven weeks. As you well know!’

‘Chosen the dress yet?’ Jenny asked. ‘Only, you do seem to be cutting it a bit fine.’

‘Well … I did try something on, but I’ve decided I’m going for simple. I can’t be doing with all the flounces and trains and stuff. Probably straight from a shop rail, so I’ve still got plenty of time. For now, it’s getting invitations out and making sure you all get something to eat at the reception that’s taking priority.’

‘Oh, so we are invited, then?’ Beth said, sounding very much like she was only half-joking.

‘Of course you’re invited! You’ve already had the ‘save the date’ card. In fact, I can see it from here, stuck on the fridge door. Oh, I get it. This is about the bridesmaid thing again, isn’t it? Look, I want you there as guests. Very important guests, but I’ve already told you I don’t want bridesmaids.’

‘And we don’t believe you. Everyone has bridesmaids! And if you leave it much longer to change your mind, we won’t have time to get our dresses sorted out.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! I haven’t even got a dress myself, and you’re already worrying about yours. Whose wedding is it anyway?’

‘Yours, Nat. And that is why, as your loving and loyal sisters, we don’t want to see you make a mistake you will come to regret, like not having a big white dress and us right there behind you. As your bridesmaids. In pink.’

‘Pink? You’ve already chosen the colour?’

‘Well, it’s up to you, obviously, but we’ve talked about it, just in a what-if kind of a way, and we do think pink would look best. The bright-fuchsia kind of pink, obviously, not the wishy-washy baby kind. Or maybe some kind of purple. Blue or green don’t really work for bridesmaids, do they? Too cold. Although Mum’s planning on wearing blue, so she says. And I know it’ll be nearly Christmas, but red would just be way too much like we were trying to look like robins, or Mrs Santa Claus! And, besides, I’ve seen the most gorgeous shocking- pink satin shoes. Not too high. I know you won’t want us to look too tall …’

‘Beth!’ Natalie had to raise her voice to be heard. ‘Beth!’

‘What?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay what?’

‘Okay, I give in.’ Natalie couldn’t help but laugh. Beth was nothing if not persistent. ‘You can be my bridesmaids. Both of you. But we do it by my rules, okay? And no fuchsia pink. Absolutely, definitely no fuchsia pink.’

Chapter 11

Kate, 1983

Four years had been a long time to wait. Mum had offered, had said that Dan could move into my room at home, that the two of us could treat her house as our own home for as long as we needed, but living with Mum would have meant living with Trevor and I felt I’d done that for more than long enough already. No, living at Dan’s place hadn’t been too terrible in the end, and Rich wasn’t too bad as flatmates go (he tidied up, cooked well and smelled okay), so things could have been a lot worse.

In fact, those first four years of married life were fantastic. Like they say about schooldays, they were probably the best days of our lives. And nights. Being one half of a couple was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Living together, taking the good with the bad, sharing the chores and the worries and the joys, and learning to become the invincible team we had always suspected we were meant to be. And being squashed into that small room wasn’t so bad either, or into that not-big-enough bed, as we curled up under the covers at night, moulded sweatily together like two smoothly curved spoons that fitted inside each other as if they had been made to do nothing else. Whispering so Rich couldn’t hear us, and giggling when he banged on the wall, making it clear that he had.

But it was good to finally have saved enough for the deposit to buy a place of our own, where we could spread out, make noise, run around naked if we felt like it, and start buying the furniture and curtains and sets of matching plates we needed to make a proper home together.

Working at the bank had turned out to be a godsend when it came to getting an affordable mortgage, and now we’d painted the small lounge and smartened up the kitchen, it was time to turn our attention to the bedrooms. There were three, although the smallest was little more than a box room, with just about enough space for a single bed and a wardrobe.

‘This will make a great nursery,’ Dan said, standing in the middle of the empty room with a paintbrush in his hand. ‘Are you sure you want it this neutral magnolia colour? Not covered in Disney characters or Winnie the Pooh or something? It would save having to change it again later.’

‘Nursery?’ It was the first time either of us had mentioned the possibility of another baby and just hearing the word stopped me in my tracks.

‘Well, not right away, obviously, but one day soon …’

‘Really? But, Dan, we haven’t even talked about it.’

‘Then maybe it’s time we did. I’ll be hitting thirty soon, and you’re …’

‘Yeah, I know. There already, and beyond. Don’t rub it in. But a baby? I didn’t think you were that keen. I mean, last time was an accident, so it’s not as if it was something you’d ever said you wanted. Or me, for that matter. Much as we’d got used to the idea …’

‘Baby Blob. Remember?’ He grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.

‘Of course I remember.’

‘I do wonder about her sometimes, you know. What she would have looked like. A little bit of me and a little bit of you. Can you imagine it, Kate? She’d be four now, wouldn’t she? Probably starting school.’

‘She!’ I smiled at him, my hand automatically moving to draw little circles over my tummy. ‘Why did we always think of it as a girl? It could have been a boy, you know.’

‘Maybe the next one will be.’

‘Oh, Dan, really? Are we ready to try again, do you think? What if something goes wrong again? I don’t think I could face it … And shouldn’t we get the house the way we want it first?’

‘How long can that take? We’re halfway there already. Another couple of months, maybe, to decorate up here and buy a few more bits and pieces? And babies do take nine months to cook, don’t they? Plenty of time, even if you fell straight away. And there’s no reason to fear the worst, is there? The doctor said there was no reason we couldn’t have more, didn’t she? When the time was right.’

I sat down on the bare floor and rested my back against the wall. ‘You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you? Where was I when you were plotting away with a calendar in your hand?’