Watch Over Me (2 page)

Katrina is three years younger than me. We both love babies, we both wanted to be mothers since we were little girls. We used to play house, look after our dolls, feed them, put them to bed, take them for strolls in their little pink prams. Not surprisingly, we both decided we wanted to work with children: she became a paediatric nurse, and I became a nursery nurse. Well, a child development officer, they say now.

She got married early, barely out of college, and within six months she was pregnant. She had a boy, a lovely boy, my dearest nephew Jack. By the time Katrina gave birth yet again – to twin girls – I’d been trying for over three years. As I watched her holding them both, one under each arm, with their pink babygros and little pink hats and scrunched up faces, I felt sick with sorrow.

After Isabella and Chloe – while I was going through the second IVF attempt – came Molly. She was the baby of the family, the apple of our eye. More congratulations, more celebrating, more get-togethers, with my mum and dad joking that one daughter was providing enough children for them both.

Except they weren’t really joking. They know about my struggle, it’s just that my family is not very … how can I put it … tactful. Some would say they are a bit cruel. Well, with me anyway. My sister in particular. She is quite merciless, constantly reminding me how fertile she is, how abundant her harvest of little faces and little hands and little toes is, how much they love her and cling to her and make her … worthy.

While I am worthless, barren, my arms sore with emptiness. Empty arms, empty heart.

‘If you had any kids, you’d know how I feel!’ she pointed out, crying, on Jack’s first day at school.

‘They just want their mum don’t they? An auntie is not the same!’ she’d laugh, as one of the twins bypassed me and ran to her with a scraped knee.

‘Sorry, it’s not like I don’t want you to, it’s just that she settles better with me,’ she’d say if I asked to put Molly to bed.

In the meantime, her husband was giving Tom the same treatment. Including cruel jokes about firing blanks, which wasn’t even true – they had already found out, after extensive tests, that the problem lay at my door. Tom would pretend to laugh, but would then become very, very quiet. He soon started finding excuses to miss family gatherings. I couldn’t blame him.

Tom is a doctor; he’s a few years older than me. It wasn’t a crazy passion or anything, we were good friends, we got on and we both wanted children. Tom was well over thirty and wasn’t close to his own family either, so we hoped to make a little family of our own and not be alone anymore.

We started trying for a baby just after our honeymoon. Ten years, a lot of tests and five IVF attempts later, it worked. I was pregnant.

But by then, our marriage was in tatters. Tom was seeing someone and had been for a long time. I was so worn out by the hormone injections and all that went with it, I didn’t have the strength to discuss it, let alone fight.

I had left my job two years earlier. The treatment was making me an emotional and physical wreck and I couldn’t keep taking time off. I worked with children all day, I had to smile and be cheerful and loving when my heart was perpetually bleeding.

Not to mention the pregnant mums I had to deal with. They’d come to collect their children, struggling to bend down and take the children’s sand shoes off, to which I’d say, ‘There, I’ll help you,’ and they’d laugh and say, ‘Thanks, sorry about that, I’m getting bigger by the day!’ patting their rounded stomachs. And me, nauseous with envy, exhausted by hormone treatment, worn out by sleepless, sweaty nights, having to smile back.

I quit. I wanted to keep all my energy for my only goal, the only thing that mattered.

Four times they tried to put our babies into me – they called them embryos, I called them babies. Four times it didn’t work.

It’s not like they tried to latch on but then I miscarried. Not even that. Nothing happened, not even a bit of swelling, or some sort of feeling … different. I felt nothing, as if it had never happened, as if it had all been a dream of mine, those four babies-in-waiting. A dream that would vanish in the light, like dreams do. As if they were never there.

I would cry and cry for hours, sharing a glass of juice – wine was off limits during treatment – with my best friend Harry. His friendship saved my sanity. We met in school when we were thirteen, went out for a few weeks when we were sixteen and then decided we were better off as friends. A year later, he came out as gay, shocking his dad to the core. He went to stay with his aunt for about a week, until his dad turned up at his door and tearfully asked him to come home. After that minor upheaval, Harry’s life rolled on smoothly. He met his partner Douglas when they were both at college and they’re still together now.

While I was going through hell on earth, Harry and Doug provided a safe harbour for me and many a night was spent watching the soaps and some soppy film, eating prawn crackers and Singapore noodles.

I used to cry in Harry’s arms and he’d say, ‘Come on, come on, you’ll be fine, you’ll be fine …’ and I was so grateful my heart would overflow with fondness for him. He’s like a brother to me.

When I told him that Tom had a girlfriend, he reverted back to his old self, before he came out, and asked if I wanted him to go and punch him. Then he came to his senses and suggested we’d post his profile, complete with mobile number and email, on a gay dating website.

‘No, thanks. I think I’ll just ignore it. Pretend it’s not happening.’

‘That never works.’

‘I know … but I can’t stop now. The treatment is booked in two months time, I can’t possibly cancel, it might be my last chance!’

It worked. The fifth time, it worked.

As I stared at the blue cross on the pregnancy test, one line vivid blue, the one across hesitant and timid and barely there, I slipped down along the tiled wall onto the bathroom floor, closed my eyes and tasted the greatest happiness I had ever known.

Four tests later, four blue crosses later, I was out of pee and dizzy with excitement.

Tom was overjoyed. For a while, he didn’t work late anymore, he didn’t have any weekend conventions and meetings and overtime to do. I was in a bubble of happiness but didn’t dare to prepare for the baby yet. It was too early, I didn’t want to jinx it. Mine was classed as a high-risk pregnancy, I had to have constant checkups, so I couldn’t relax.

One day, Tom came home with a beautiful cradle, made of wrought iron and painted white. It was gorgeous.

‘It was Eva’s,’ he said, carrying it carefully inside. Eva is his best friend’s, and our best man’s, little girl. ‘You know how they don’t want any more kids, so he gave it to me. They got it up in Scotland, some small place in the Highlands. I thought you’d love it.’ He was smiling. Those days, he looked like the old Tom. The man I married.

‘I do! It’s beautiful! And it comes from Scotland!’

I lived in Scotland for several years as a child, when my parents separated. My mum, my sister and I went to stay with my gran Flora in Glen Avich, in the northeast of the country.

‘The only thing is …’ I started, hesitantly.

He made a puzzled face.

‘Well, they say it’s bad luck to put the cot in the nursery too soon. Maybe we could put it in the loft.’

‘In the loft? It’d get spoiled. And anyway, all that stuff about cots in nurseries and black cats and ladders, it’s a lot of rubbish, you know that.’

‘Of course, of course, I know.’

But I wasn’t sure. My brain was saying, ‘Come on, Eilidh, don’t be silly,’ but my gut was saying, ‘Why chance it?’

‘Eilidh,’ laughed Tom, lifting the cradle to carry it upstairs, ‘since when are you superstitious?’

‘I don’t know, it’s just …’ I shrugged my shoulders. I had no words to explain.

‘Nonsense. Come on, come and see.’

He carried it up the stairs and through the landing, the cradle that was never going to be filled. He placed it carefully in what was to be the nursery, the room that had been waiting for years.

‘There. Doesn’t it look perfect?’

I nodded, and smiled.

I tried not to be afraid, but I was.

It wasn’t the cradle, of course. I’m not superstitious enough to think it really was that. It wasn’t the cradle, it wasn’t carrying the groceries home on a hot day either, it was nothing I’d done, the doctor said.

I shouldn’t blame myself, he said.

But I do, oh I do, I blame myself, for not having been strong enough to carry the baby full term, to give him a chance to live. I let my baby down and now he’s dead.

That lovely sunny day, three months ago, a lifetime ago, I stopped to chat with my neighbour for a few minutes, before saying goodbye and turning back to cross the road, towards my house. As I walked on, I heard my neighbour’s hurried footsteps behind me and felt her arm go around my waist, as if to sustain me.

‘Let me get these, Eilidh, darling, there’s a good girl,’ she said as she gently ook the shopping bags from me and led me into the house, her arm still around my waist. I slowly realised that there was something wrong and then I felt something trickling down my legs, and it wasn’t sweat, and I looked and it was blood.

Had I had a boy, I would have called him Harry. Had I had a girl, I would have called her Grace.

When I finished crying, three months later, I got up from the sofa, had a long, warm shower, got dressed for the first time in weeks and made myself a cup of tea. I sat at the kitchen table with my phone, a spiral pad and a pen.

Tom was on a weekend away. Some convention, he said, as if I didn’t know the truth, as if I were stupid.

I wrote two notes:

    Mum, Dad,

        I’m going away for a while. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.

        I’ll phone as soon as I’m settled.

        Eilidh

    Tom,

        Our marriage is over. I am sure you know why but your girlfriend is not the only reason. It’s been over for years. I’ll be in touch with my parents when I’m settled, they’ll be able to reassure you I’m ok. Don’t look for me.

Eilidh

Then I picked up my mobile and texted Harry:

    
I’m going away for a bit. Don’t worry about a thing, seriously, I’ll be fine. I’m leaving my phone behind, but I’ll get on the net as soon as I can and e-mail you at once. xxxx E

I left the notes and the phone on the kitchen table, and packed a few of my belongings carefully, deliberately.

I felt empty. Like a shell, a dried-up shell with nothing inside, nothing left to give.

I got into the car and started driving, not having the slightest idea where I was going. I just knew I had to go.

On the motorway, I started seeing signs that said ‘North’.

North.

Suddenly, I realised where I was headed. Where the deepest, most secret part of me wanted to be, so that I could heal. I kept driving, on and on through the afternoon and the early evening.

The light was lilac and the pinewoods black against the sky when I got to Glen Avich. The sight of the whitewashed cottage and its red door made a million happy memories flood back. Had I been able to feel anything, it would have been relief. But I was numb.

I knocked at Flora’s door. She wasn’t there anymore, she’d been dead a long time – but my great aunt Peggy still lived there. She opened the door and gasped to see me so pale, so lost, so thin.

It was twilight, the hour when shapes seem to lose their definition and blur a little, as if they were beginning to vanish into the darkness. I was one of those things that were vanishing. I felt like Peggy could have opened the door and found a little cloud of blue cold air where I should have stood.

Peggy smiled, hugged me and led me in, made me a cup of hot, sugary tea, and spoke to me in the best accent in the world, the way my gran used to speak. By then, the night had fallen and it was pitch-dark, as we were deep, deep into the heart of the Highlands.

Peggy took me to my bedroom, the one I had shared with Katrina when I was a girl. I barely had the energy to put my pyjamas on and slip into bed. She brought me a cup of tea and left it on the bedside table. I whispered a thank you but couldn’t move, every bit of me felt like lead. I closed my eyes.

Slowly, slowly, Scotland started to seep into me. She enveloped me and held me – her sounds and scents comforting me, as they did when I was a child.

I fell asleep, under clean sheets and a duvet that smelled musty, but in a good way, like grandmothers’ things do.

I slept for a whole twelve hours, after weeks and weeks of white nights. When I woke up the next morning, at first light, I felt like life was bearable.

Barely bearable, really, but bearable.

I felt like maybe, in the nick of time, I had managed to stop the vanishing process. Maybe I wasn’t going to disappear and cease to exist.

Maybe life was giving me a second chance.

I knew she was gone when I saw that the painting was missing from the living room wall. All her things – the canvases, the paints, the paintbrushes, the bottles of white spirits, her cloths and aprons – it was all still there. But the painting was gone.