One
‘Does this hurt?’ The doctor presses down sharply on her belly, so sharply that Abby Brooke gasps in shock.
‘Not really,’ she says through gritted teeth. She looks out of the window at treetops clawing the cold, grey sky. A gust of wind shakes the branches, and the new leaves shiver. She wishes she hadn’t come. There’s something very wrong with her, that’s for sure, but whatever it is, she doesn’t really want to know.
Cancer, she thinks. But she had that biopsy done just before Christmas and it came back clear, so it can’t be cancer. Abby pulls down her top and sits up, swinging her legs round so they are dangling off the edge of the couch.
‘Maybe it’s stress?’ she suggests. ‘This is only my first year teaching and it’s been . . . Well, some of the kids are quite challenging.’
That’s an understatement. Just halfway through the school year, Abby feels exhausted and disillusioned. She’s spent the past few months trying to develop the natural authority that the other teachers seem to have, and failing miserably. It doesn’t help that she teaches Art, a subject many of the children don’t take seriously, or that she’s only twenty-four and looks even younger, so small and fresh-faced that she’s often mistaken for a student herself.
Rob thinks she would command more respect if she changed the way she dressed. But he doesn’t understand that the vintage clothes she wears, and the over-the-top jewellery are part of her armour against the world. With them, she’s funky, artistic Abby Brooke. Without them, she’s just a shy young girl with mousy brown hair and grey eyes.
‘And don’t get me started on the paperwork.’ She rolls her eyes and smiles.
‘Hmm.’ Dr Rowe doesn’t seem interested in her teaching woes.
‘Are there any other symptoms?’ he asks, glancing up at Abby. ‘Apart from the nausea?’
‘Only that I feel tired all the time.’ Lately when she gets home from work it’s all she can do to wolf down her food and drag herself up to bed for a marathon twelve-hour sleep.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t finished yet. Could you lie back down please and lift your top up?’ He smiles apologetically at Abby.
Dr Rowe begins kneading and prodding again. He’s about thirty-five, with blond hair and an eager, friendly manner like a golden retriever. Right now, he seems puzzled, like a retriever that’s lost its bone. He frowns and takes out something like a stethoscope, placing it against her stomach.
‘You can sit up now, Abigail.’ He pulls off his gloves and propels his chair over to the desk, where he taps something into the computer.
On his desk, next to the computer, is a framed photo of him on a mountainside with his arms round a sporty-looking blonde woman and two children, a pale wisp of a girl about six years old and a boy who looks about ten. Abby recognizes the boy. He’s a few years older now than he is in the photograph but she’s fairly sure it’s Aaron, a quiet, studious boy from one of her classes. She wonders if Dr Rowe knows that she teaches his son. If he does he hasn’t mentioned it, and she’s glad. The last thing she wants to do now is to get into a conversation about school. She looks away quickly and her eyes rest on a bronze bust of a man with a curly beard and a bald head.
‘Hippocrates.’ Dr Rowe notices her looking at it. ‘The father of Western medicine.’
Abby nods. Her sister is a doctor, so she knows all about Hippocrates. She thinks about Ellie’s graduation, her mum, still very much alive, sitting next to her in the audience, how she squeezed Abby’s hand as Ellie walked up to the podium, how she was so proud to have a doctor in their working-class family. By the time Abby graduated ten years later her mum was unable to attend, already in the grip of the cancer that killed her. To her dismay, Abby feels tears welling up in her eyes. She blinks them away and looks at Dr Rowe to see if he’s noticed.
He’s giving her an oddly intense stare. He clears his throat. ‘Are you sexually active, Abigail?’ he asks.
‘No, not lately,’ she says, taken aback by the sudden switch in topic.
‘And your periods? Are they regular?’
‘Not really.’ Come to think of it, they have been erratic lately, if not non-existent, but she’s put that down to stress.
‘When was your last period?’
She strains to remember. She’s been so busy lately she’s barely noticed.
‘Maybe at the start of December sometime.’
‘Well, Abigail,’ he says. ‘It looks like you’re pregnant. About two months I would say.’
*
Abby stares at him, astonished. ‘That’s impossible.’ She laughs nervously. ‘Unless it’s the virgin birth.’
‘Oh?’ Dr Rowe raises an eyebrow.
She flushes. ‘I mean . . . I haven’t had sex for over a year, so I can’t be, can I?’ Since breaking up with Ben she hasn’t really wanted to get involved with anyone else. She’s been on a couple of dates, had a couple of awkward snogs and fumbles, but that’s about it.
The doctor shrugs. ‘You can take a test if you want to make certain.’
She opens her mouth to argue, but then closes it again. What’s the point? Dr Rowe clearly thinks she’s some flighty young girl who can’t keep track of her own sex life.
‘We’ll need a urine sample,’ he says, scribbling her name on a plastic beaker and handing it to her. ‘Give it in at reception when you’ve finished.’
In the hallway Abby pauses, fighting off a wave of nausea. She stares down at the pattern of hexagonal tiles on the floor. The sickness comes on suddenly and she doesn’t always have time to reach the toilet. Yesterday she threw up in a plant pot at work, which is why Danny insisted on driving her to the doctor’s today.
Well, there’s no way she’s pregnant. Dr Rowe is clearly mistaken. She knows Ellie thinks he’s great, and she should know, but Abby’s beginning to doubt he’s as good as she thinks. She hesitates outside Ellie’s door, looking at the brass plaque with the words ‘Dr Elizabeth Campbell MRCGP’ etched in it. She’s tempted to tell Ellie about Dr Rowe’s mistake. She usually shares most things with her older sister. She raises a fist to knock on the door, then lets it drop by her side. She can’t talk to Ellie about this. Anything to do with babies or pregnancy is taboo with Ellie. Anyway, she shouldn’t disturb her now. The door’s closed, so she’s probably in there with a patient.
Abby tosses the empty beaker into a bin and pushes open the door to the waiting room.
*
Danny looks uncomfortable, a thin, dark presence, squashed between an old man with a hacking cough and a mother with a snotty baby. He puts down the magazine he’s reading as Abby comes in.
‘You look pensive, sweetie. How was it?’ he asks, giving her a searching look.
‘I’ll tell you once we’re out of here,’ she says, tugging his arm.
It’s a relief to get outside. A brisk wind whips through her thin coat clearing her head. Clouds scud by over the rooftops. She’s glad Danny came with her. He has a way of making her see the funny side of a situation and already the incident is transforming into an amusing anecdote in her head.
‘You’ll never guess what the doctor said,’ she says as they turn and walk towards town.
Nothing bad I hope?’
‘Not exactly bad . . . no.’
Danny groans in frustration. ‘Just tell me.’
Abby pauses for extra drama. ‘He thinks I’m pregnant.’
She waits for Danny to laugh, give that infectious chuckle of his, and put this ridiculous idea in its place.
He doesn’t laugh. Instead he stops and claps his hand to his mouth. ‘I had no idea you were even seeing anyone!’
Abby frowns. ‘That’s just the point. I’m not. I’m not pregnant. I can’t be.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ Abby snaps. She walks on quickly, feeling annoyed. He’s supposed to be making her laugh about this.
Danny runs to catch up. ‘Okay, I get it, you live like a nun. It’s just a strange mistake for a doctor to make, that’s all. Did you take a test?’
‘No.’ She uses her slow, talking-to-idiots voice. ‘There would be no point. I’m not pregnant. I haven’t had sex for over a year.’
They stop at the corner by the Red Cross shop near where Danny’s car is parked.
‘Do you want a lift home?’ he asks.
‘No thanks, I’d like to walk.’
‘You sure you’re okay?’ he asks, his hand resting lightly on her arm.
‘I’m fine’ she says tetchily. ‘I’m feeling much better now. It was probably nothing.’
‘Well, I’ll see you tomorrow,’ he leans forward and kisses her on the cheek. ‘You take care.’
‘You too.’ Abby softens. ‘And thanks for coming with me. I appreciate it.’
‘What are friends for?’ he says. Then he turns and saunters away towards the car. She watches him for a minute, taking in his thin shoulders, his light springy step, and she feels a lurch of unease.
‘Danny?’ she calls out.
He turns, his hand on the car door. ‘Yes?’
‘Don’t tell anyone about this, okay?’
‘Course not,’ he says, grinning impishly. ‘Would I?’
She makes her way through the pedestrianized town centre past the smug little tea shops, the antique shops and the gallery with its four-figure price tags, feeling the usual claustrophobia. This sleepy Gloucestershire town is just too small and too twee. You can’t so much as sneeze without everyone knowing. Can she trust Danny not to tell anyone? Danny’s a good friend, but he isn’t exactly the most discreet person in the world.
Anyway, it doesn’t matter. She’s not pregnant. She can’t be.
Nevertheless, she finds herself, a few minutes later, in the chemist’s, staring at a display of pregnancy tests. She puts a couple in her basket and shoves deodorant and a bottle of conditioner on top in case she meets someone she knows. Then she heads for the checkout.
The cashier is overly friendly and chatty. She’s seen Abby around. Doesn’t she work at the school? Her son is in Year Seven. What does Abby think of the new head teacher? Abby answers her questions as politely as possible, all the time willing her to hurry up. Every extra minute makes it more likely a student or parent or someone she knows will walk in.
‘The conditioner is two for the price of one,’ the cashier says. ‘Do you want to get another one?’
‘No thanks,’ says Abby impatiently, and the woman frowns as if not getting two when it’s for the price of one is a sure sign of insanity.
*
A black cloud rolls over and Abby makes it home just as the rain starts pelting down. Rob’s new Vauxhall is parked in the driveway, gleaming silver in the lashing rain. Abby sighs as she makes her way up the pathway. She’d hoped to have the house to herself. Rob usually has a management meeting on Thursday after school, but it must have been cancelled today.
She slips her key in the lock, wishing, not for the first time, that she could afford a place of her own. But it’s impossible on her salary. She reminds herself how lucky she is that Rob and Ellie have let her live with them rent free. She should be grateful, and she is. It’s just she wishes she didn’t feel so suffocated all the time. Living and working with her brother-in- law is not exactly ideal.
Rob is in the kitchen, chopping chicken and humming along with the radio. He’s wearing the apron Ellie had bought him last Christmas with the picture of a gladiator’s body on it, a bit of a cruel joke on Rob’s paunchy body but he doesn’t seem to care. Hector, Ellie’s dog, is watching him intently, waiting for some meat to drop. He wags his tail politely at Abby.
‘Where the hell did you get to?’ Rob switches off the radio and waves the knife at Abby. ‘I would’ve given you a lift, but I couldn’t find you.’
‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t think to tell you. I walked with Danny.’ Abby clutches the bag with the test kits inside behind her back.
‘Danny, eh? . . . “Oh, Danny boy”,’ Rob starts singing, ‘“the pipes, the pipes are calling” . . .’ He puts the knife down, brushes a greasy hand through his thick brown beard and stretches out his arm like an opera singer. He sings that every time Danny’s name is mentioned. The joke’s wearing a bit thin.
‘You’ve been seeing a lot of that young man lately. I haven’t given my seal of approval yet.’ He grins, his brown eyes glinting with amusement.
Abby rolls her eyes. ‘You do know he’s gay, don’t you?’
Rob stares at her. ‘Really? Danny? No way! I thought you two were . . . Well, you know . . . friends with benefits.’
‘Yeah, well, a lot of people think that but it’s not true.’ In fact, Abby has encouraged the idea. Her friendship with Danny is a useful buffer against the attention of other men. Since Ben she’s been in no rush to get into another relationship.
‘Gay? Really?’ Rob shakes his head again. ‘It’s always the good-looking ones, isn’t it?’
The microwave pings and when Rob turns to open it Abby takes the opportunity to escape. ‘See you later,’ she calls, and she runs upstairs, locking herself in the bathroom.
The test is simple, though it feels undignified squatting over the toilet and peeing on a small, plastic stick. Abby doesn’t have to wait long for the results. Just two minutes. While she’s waiting, she slumps against the bath, staring at the tangle of spiders’ webs and dead flies under the sink. Ellie refuses to let Rob or Abby kill spiders.
‘They have as much right as we do to be here,’ she said a couple of months ago, during an argument with Rob.
‘Well, not really,’ Rob said. ‘They don’t pay the mortgage, do they?’
Abby had been unable to shake the feeling that they were really arguing about her.
She sighs and picks up the stick. A small but definite blue line has appeared in the control window.
And a plus sign in the result window.
A positive result.
It must be a mistake. She reads the instructions through again, trying not to panic. But she’s done everything right.
‘Shit. Shit. Shit,’ she says, fumbling with a second test packet, and she repeats the test, warm wee splashing on her hand. After another two minutes, the results are back.
She’s pregnant.
Two
It makes no sense. Abby looks down at her belly. There’s a red pattern etched on her pale skin from trousers that are too tight and a tiny puncture mark from the belly-button ring she no longer wears, but otherwise nothing. It’s as flat as ever. There’s no sign of anything stirring under the surface.
The test claims to be 99 per cent accurate. A one-in-a-hundred chance the first test was wrong. But for both tests to be wrong . . . What are the odds?
She reads the section about medical conditions and medicines that could affect the result, but there’s nothing that could conceivably apply to her. There’s no escaping it. She must be pregnant. She sits down on the toilet seat with her head in her hands, reeling with shock. This can’t be happening, she thinks. Please God, let this not be happening. How will she even begin to cope? She can barely take care of herself. The thought of having a small baby completely dependent on her is terrifying. And what will she do about her job? She can all too easily imagine the head’s reaction when she tells her she needs to take time off to have a baby so soon after starting at Elmgrove.
Downstairs, the front door slams. It’s Ellie arriving home, talking to Hector, murmuring something indistinct to Rob in the kitchen. Seconds later she hears her come thudding up the stairs.
Shit. Abby stuffs the tests back in the bag, ties it tightly and shoves it in the bin, covering it with scrunched-up toilet paper.
She waits for the sound of Ellie’s bedroom door closing, then creeps across the landing to her room.
Lying on her unmade bed, Abby stares up at the blue ceiling with its fluffy white clouds. She painted them up there herself two years ago, when Ellie and Rob were still planning to use the room as a nursery. She remembers standing on the ladder painting up high, while a heavily pregnant Ellie painted the skirting boards. Abby blinks back tears at a sudden vision of her sister, rosy and happy, a smudge of magnolia paint on her cheek, struggling to reach down over her swollen belly.
‘Our little miracle,’ Ellie had called it.
They’d been trying for years to have a baby. They’d almost given up on the idea of conceiving naturally and were considering IVF when boom, just like that, she fell pregnant.
‘She’s going to be a black belt in karate, this one,’ Ellie said during a break in painting.
They were sitting together on the bare floorboards, drinking milky tea. Abby put her hand on Ellie’s belly and felt the taut skin judder as her niece tested her new limbs.
But Ellie’s baby didn’t become a black belt in karate. She never became anything. She kicked and wriggled so much in Ellie’s womb that the umbilical cord wrapped itself around her neck and strangled her.
Abby sits up and wraps her arms around her knees, remembering those terrible months after Ellie lost the baby. Abby was still living in London at the time, but she came as often as she could to visit. And on her visits, she was deeply shaken by the change in her sister. For days on end Ellie just sat in bed staring into space, refusing to speak or eat. Ellie had always been so full of life and energy – always helping people, always with some cause to fight for. But when her baby died it was as if all that furious energy had been sucked inward somehow, like a star imploding. And it was awful to witness.
It’s a cruel irony, Abby thinks, that Ellie who wants a baby so badly, who would make such a great mother, can’t have one, and that she, Abby, who can’t even so much as keep a plant alive, is pregnant. It makes no sense.
Unless . . . She sits up and switches on her laptop, types in ‘What is the longest pregnancy on record?’
According to the internet, someone called Beulah Hunter gave birth in 1945, after a 375-day pregnancy. But even if the story is true, it still wouldn’t make sense. She last had sex over a year ago and, according to Dr Rowe, she is only two months pregnant. Abby trawls the internet some more, getting distracted by some grim stories about stone babies, a rare condition where the foetus dies and calcifies inside the mother. She reads, horrified and fascinated, about how, sometimes, the baby can stay in the womb for years. There’s a picture of a wrinkled Moroccan woman with a distended stomach and the stone baby she carried inside her for forty-six years.
Abby’s stomach curdles, and she rushes to the bathroom, throwing up in the toilet bowl.
‘Are you okay, Abs?’
Ellie’s there, standing just outside the open door. She looks tired and anxious, her work suit creased, dark rings around her eyes and blonde hair scraped up in a messy bun.
Abby wipes her lips and flushes the toilet. Ellie is nine years older and has always been like a second mother to her. She normally tells Ellie everything. But this is different. She can’t tell her this. It will only stir up all that pain and grief that Abby knows still lurks dangerously near the surface.
‘I’m fine,’ she says, standing up and offering a weary smile. ‘Just a stomach bug.’
‘You should go see Simon. Or if you want, I could examine you.’
‘I saw him today, actually.’ Abby washes her hands in the sink, watching the water get sucked down the plughole.
‘You did?’ Ellie frowns. ‘What did he say?’
‘Like I said, it’s a stomach bug.’
‘Why don’t you take some time off work? They’d understand. I’m sure Rob could explain.’
‘Rob could explain what?’ Rob appears at the top of the stairs. Now they are both looking at her, blocking her exit. Ellie with her anxious, blue eyes, and Rob with the superior, comical expression he reserves for his students and, with irritating frequency, Abby too.
‘Jesus. Can’t a girl get a little privacy?’ Abby explodes in frustration. She pushes past then towards the stairs. ‘Does everyone want to come and watch me throw up? Maybe I should sell tickets?’
‘Abby was sick again,’ says Ellie. ‘She’s overdoing it. Don’t you think she should take some time off, Rob?’
Abby sighs angrily. ‘I’m fine. I don’t need time off, I just need some fresh air. I’m going to take Hector for a walk.’
*
The rain has stopped but the air is still damp, and the trees and shrubs are dripping. Abby strides along, Hector trotting along beside her, towards the old Abbey grounds.
Hector strains at the lead as they reach the park gates. Abby lets him off and he bounds away up the path round the lake. She follows, walking rapidly, as if she can shake off Rob and Ellie, as if she can shake off the questions and doubts crowding in her head. How can she be pregnant? If not Ben, then who? And when? How the hell has she got herself into this mess?
Abby follows the path over the bridge to the other side of the lake and sits on a damp bench looking at the dark, wind-ruffled water. The park is empty, the sun sinking behind the church and the trees. The shadows are growing, swallowing up the park and creeping over the newly mown grass. A swan glides by silently, its eyes cold and black. Abby shivers, batting away a sudden sense of unease. Something is very wrong.
She’s walking back past the bandstand when it hits her. And suddenly it seems so obvious. Why hasn’t she thought of it before? According to Dr Rowe, she’s about two months pregnant. Two months ago was the beginning of January. Abby reaches the park gates and calls Hector, putting him back on the lead. Of course, that’s it. It must be.
New Year’s Eve.
Three
‘Danny, you know your New Year’s party? You remember how drunk I was?’
It’s Friday afternoon, almost the end of the school week, and everyone else has buggered off to afternoon classes. Abby and Danny are the only people left in the staff room at Elmgrove Comprehensive, sitting in sagging armchairs and sipping cold coffee. They are done with classes for the day but Danny likes to stay late and get all his marking done on a Friday so that he can enjoy his weekend without having to think about work, and Abby is in no rush to get home. Gina, the head teacher, has left a box of chocolates on the table, and Abby is munching her way through them distractedly.
Danny’s dark eyes crinkle in amusement. ‘You certainly were the life and soul of the party, flirting for England, if I remember rightly.’
Abby cringes inwardly. ‘Was I flirting with anyone, in particular?’
Danny r. . .
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