Chanelle Hayes - Baring My Heart (8 page)

T
he nightmare began when I got really sick all of a sudden. I kept throwing up for days and felt too terrible to even get out of bed. Spencer, who was working as a legal secretary, ducked out in his lunch hour every day to come and check on me, making sure I was eating when I could manage to. In fact, the only things I could stomach were, bizarrely, hot dogs and Cadbury’s
Mini-Rolls,
so he was forever bringing me fresh supplies.

It seemed like I had a bad case of gastric flu but, when I was still being sick after a couple of weeks, I dragged myself to my GP, a nice lady who I got on well with.

She seemed baffled. ‘Well, it can’t be a bug, as they clear up after a few days,’ she said. ‘I think we need to do some blood tests.’

‘OK,’ I said forlornly. ‘I just want to get well. I’m missing a lot of college work and I feel like death all the time.’

After she took a sample of blood, she added, ‘I’m going to do a quick pregnancy test for you as well, so we can rule that out.’

I actually laughed out loud. ‘What? You don’t need to do that,
I’m on the pill – there’s absolutely no way I could be pregnant.’

‘Well, we need to make sure. You never know.’

You’ve probably guessed what happened next. She went over to the other side of the room and dipped the little stick into my urine, looked at it and then did a double-take. She got another stick and dipped it in again and then repeated it a third time.

‘What? What is it? I asked. ‘Don’t tell me – it can’t be…’

She turned around to face me and very simply said, ‘Chanelle, you are pregnant.’

I swear I almost passed out. ‘But that’s impossible,’ I protested. ‘There’s just no way. What about my pill? I don’t believe it.’

‘Look, the evidence is right here,’ she said softly. ‘I’m not making this up. You are expecting a baby and have been for about six weeks now.’

It only occurred to me then that I hadn’t had a period the previous month. But as they’ve always been a bit erratic because I have polycystic ovaries, I didn’t pay it any attention at all.

Although, at the time, I thought I was fairly scrupulous about taking my pill, I did occasionally forget to take it for a day. But I just assumed that one skipped day here or there wouldn’t make any difference. I’m not proud of that now.

‘I can’t tell my boyfriend,’ I said to her. ‘He’ll freak out. Will you call him for me?’

Fortunately, I’d been going to my doctor since I was a little girl and we’d always got on well, so she called Spencer at work for me.

‘Chanelle has asked me to pass on a message to you. She feels unable to talk to you herself at the moment but it’s pretty serious.’ There was a pause. ‘No, she’s fine. But we’ve just done some tests here and she is pregnant.’ Another long pause. ‘Spencer? Are you all right? What do you want me to tell her?’

Eventually, she hung up and said, ‘He wants you to go and meet him after work.’

I drifted out of the surgery in a kind of trance, feeling utterly numb. It wasn’t that I was appalled by the news, I just felt unable to process what it meant for us both and our future.

I got to his office dead on 5.30pm and immediately things seemed different between us. He didn’t kiss me and there was a coolness there. We went for a coffee and it was unbelievably awkward. We barely spoke and Spencer kept looking at me blankly, his normally sparkling eyes full of anxiety.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ was all he could offer.

I was dying to hear the words, ‘Don’t worry, honey, we’ll get through this together,’ but, from the very beginning, it felt like it was my problem alone.

I could have handled it better if he’d said, ‘Look, I’m just not ready to be a dad. What do you think our options are?’

That would have made sense but the fact that he wouldn’t say anything or discuss his feelings at all made it doubly hard for me.

With my head all over the place, I realised the only person I’d be able to talk to about this predicament was my sister Maria, who had given birth to her son Luke when she was 18, the same age as me. That same evening, Spencer and I got the train up to her place. During the journey, we sat in total silence. It was as if a screen had suddenly come down and he was a completely different person. He sat staring out of the window and wouldn’t touch me, or even look at me.

Within seconds of arriving on Maria’s doorstep, I blurted tearfully, ‘I’m pregnant! What are we going to do?’

‘Oh God,’ she said before ushering us both inside. ‘How? I thought you were… OK, just calm down. Don’t get upset.’

Maria was great in a crisis and, as Spencer sat silently in the corner, she said, ‘You obviously have some tough choices to make. What are you thinking?’

Glancing across at Spencer, whose eyes were fixed on his feet,
I wiped my eyes and sighed. ‘We, well… I haven’t got a clue. I’ve got no idea. At the moment, I just can’t get my head around the fact there’s a little baby inside me.’

‘It is a lot to take in,’ she said and nodded. ‘I remember, when I first found out I was pregnant, it took me days to accept it. Weeks even.’

She paused, then said, ‘I’m not sure if I should tell you this because I don’t want to push you either way but I would never, ever change anything about my decision to have Luke, you know.’

‘Yeah,’ I said slowly. ‘I understand where you’re coming from. I know how much you adore him.’

‘I know I was very young but he helped make me who I am today. My life changed for the better when I had Luke, really it did.’ She hesitated. ‘But at the same time, if I could go back and have him a little later in life, I probably would. Being a young mum is bloody tough. I’m not going to lie.’ Her eyes darted towards Spencer, who was still hunched in the chair. ‘Particularly if you were ever to end up a single mum.’

There was so much to think about. Later on, after Spencer and I had got the train back to Wakefield, I started walking briskly towards the bus station for home, figuring he would follow me. Instead, he announced curtly, ‘I’m not coming with you. I’m going home.’

That was virtually the first thing he’d said all evening and it got my back up.

‘Fine! Be like that,’ I snapped, walking away. And that was how we left things.

At home, I went straight to bed, not saying anything to my parents. How the hell could I?

I called Spencer the next morning but he didn’t pick up his mobile all day. He wouldn’t take my calls at work either. I kept texting too, saying, ‘Please call me. Why are you avoiding me?’

Assuming he just needed some space, I called again the next day but still couldn’t get hold of him. This was absolutely unbelievable. I felt so alone and was still feeling sick too, so I climbed back into bed and stayed there. After a couple of days, Mum came into my bedroom and said, ‘Are you going to get up today, love? Why don’t you have a nice bath and I’ll make you some breakfast? That’ll make you feel better.’

‘No, I’m ill. Leave me alone,’ I said flatly.

On the fourth day, she came in again and said, ‘What’s wrong with you? I thought the doctor didn’t find anything the matter, so pull yourself together. You’ll feel better if you get up.’

I ignored her and turned over in my bed to face the wall so she couldn’t see my eyes brimming with tears.

Clearly, she just thought I’d had a huge bust-up with Spencer because he wasn’t coming over any more, so I can see why she wasn’t more sympathetic.

College had been phoning home too, asking where I was, and nothing got my dad angrier than the thought of me bunking off again. He barged in and shouted, ‘Get up! Stop being so lazy. There’s nothing wrong with you!’

Again, I said nothing and curled myself up into a little ball, pulling the duvet right over me. I was drained and had nothing to fight him with. There was a pain gnawing away at my insides that wouldn’t go away.

With Mum now very concerned that I’d spent nearly a week in bed and was barely eating, she asked Becca – who was now back from South Africa – to come round and try talking to me. When she arrived, she sprinted upstairs and sat on my bed.

‘Right then, you. What’s up?’ she asked.

I sat up and burst into tears. ‘Becca, I’m pregnant. I don’t know what to do!’

She went very pale and hugged me tightly.

‘Shit. How far gone?’

‘About six or seven weeks,’ I wept.

‘Do you want to keep it?’

‘I do and I don’t. I’ve been thinking about it for days and I can’t make any sense of it. Spencer’s fucked off and left me too. He won’t even discuss it.’

‘You poor, poor thing,’ she said, pushing my matted hair off my face. ‘Can’t you tell your mum? I’m sure she’d be understanding.’

‘No!’ I said with a sniff. ‘Promise me you won’t say anything. They’ll kill me. I can’t say anything yet. Not until I know what I want to do.’

Becca then clicked into practical mode. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘You’re coming home with me.’

Once I was at her place, I had a long bath and we spent the whole night talking it over.

‘Have you considered an abortion?’ Becca said tentatively.

Because I’d had nobody to talk to, the word sounded revolting when I was suddenly confronted with it.

‘Sort of but I don’t think I could bear to, you know…’ My words fell away.

The truth of the matter was that I kept thinking about my real mum, who wasn’t much older than me when she had her children. She must have faced the same heart-wrenching decision and, though it can’t have been practical for her to keep us either, she did. Whatever her situation, she still valued our lives enough to go through with it. I was lucky to be alive, so the thought of getting rid of the baby inside me was unthinkable on many levels.

On the flipside, I didn’t feel anywhere near ready to keep it either. ‘I’m still at college, I can barely look after myself, let alone a little baby,’ I reasoned to Becca. ‘How would I afford it? Where would I live?’ I said, uncertain if my parents would be able – or
willing – to support me.

Becca was such a brilliant listener and helped me face up to all the crunch issues. But there was still no word from Spencer and, after a couple of days, I went home again and straight back to bed. A couple of days later, Dad stormed into my room, dragging the duvet off me.

‘Get your backside out of bed right now!’ he fumed. ‘You’re not sick, there’s nothing wrong at all. You’re just wasting your life! Get out of bed right now!’

He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me up but I started screaming.

‘Get off me, Dad! Just leave me alone! You don’t understand!’

With me lashing out and kicking him, he let go.

‘OK, fine,’ he said, throwing his hands in the air wildly. ‘But if you refuse to go into college, you can study here instead. I’m not having you doing nothing while you’re in this house and that’s final.’

College had been sending me work to get on with and it was piling up. But right now, it seemed totally irrelevant to me.

‘Just get off my back, Dad,’ I shouted. ‘There are more important things in the world than my homework. Stop trying to control me!’

This really incensed him again and this time he did yank me out of bed and, with a tight grip on my arms, pulled me out of the room. I was flailing and slapping his hands, using every bit of me to try to get free of him.

Dad raged, ‘You’ll never amount to anything at this rate. You’re a mess, you’re so bloody selfish!’

‘Get off me! I am sick!’ I yelled back. ‘Look at the colour of me and how much weight I’ve lost!’

That much was true. I hadn’t eaten properly for a couple of weeks, so I was getting very thin. As we wrestled each other outside
my bedroom door, I suddenly slipped and almost lost my footing. I clung to the banister to stop myself falling down the stairs. We both froze and Dad looked aghast. How had it come to this? I got up, grabbed my mobile phone and ran into the bathroom.

I was absolutely livid. If I had fallen down those stairs, I could have lost my baby. How dare he put me at risk like that? Of course, he had no idea that I was pregnant and was only trying to help me but I was not thinking rationally.

I still can’t believe I did this but, using my mobile, I dialled 999 and told the police, ‘Please come quickly. My dad just tried to throw me down the stairs!’

What a hateful thing for me to do.

Dad was hammering on the door for me to come out but I shouted back, ‘I’ve called the police, so you might as well back off now.’

All went quiet and I sat on the edge of the bath, realising that my decision was made: I wanted to keep the baby. Fearing for the baby’s safety had crystallised something in my brain. It was my duty to protect it.

Within 10 minutes, the police turned up and my poor dad was cautioned. I’m so ashamed that I did that to him and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for the humiliation I caused him. There’s no way he’d ever intentionally have hurt me, not in a million years. Whatever run-ins I’ve had with Dad in the past, he is a wonderful, caring man at heart. As a part-time social worker, he works with children for a living and pours his own money into a youth club, so I was completely out of line to risk wrecking his reputation like that.

As I sat feeling scared and vulnerable in my room, one of the police officers came in to talk to me and it must have been clear to them that this had been blown out of all proportion.

‘What’s really going on here?’ she said. ‘There’s no sign of
injury or violence. Is this just a row that got out of hand?’

Reluctantly, I said, ‘Kind of. I’m sorry.’

Her face clouded and she shook her head at me. ‘That’s really not on. And your father is…’

Butting in, I whispered, ‘Look, I can explain. It’s just that, oh God… Well, the thing is, they don’t know this but I’m pregnant.’

‘I see,’ she said, her expression softening a little.

‘I called you out of panic because I was worried something might happen to the baby. But you can’t tell my mum and dad. Please, they don’t know about this and I don’t want them to yet.’

I thought I had legal rights and that she would respect my wishes but she went downstairs and filled them in on everything.