The Push

by Claire McGowan

  That was interesting. Diana glanced at Alison and back to Kelly. ‘You didn’t know she had an older daughter?’

  ‘Nope, don’t think she ever said. Which is weird cos she made sure we knew everything else about her, I mean everything. I practically knew what kind of pants she had on. Maybe she wanted to pretend she was younger or something, I dunno.’

  ‘And what happened – how much were you there for?’

  Kelly clenched her hands. ‘I . . . not for the fall. I went home before that. Jeremy drove me.’ Alison glanced at Diana – they had known already that Kelly wasn’t at the scene when the first officers arrived. They were still hazy on the details of why.

  ‘How come you left, Kelly?’ Alison tried, gently.

  ‘I . . . There was like a mix-up. Someone thought I . . . did something. But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.’

  Alison could see Diana wanted to press her, so gave her a look. Careful. They’d check with Jeremy of course, but everyone so far had agreed Kelly was gone when it happened, so she didn’t want to distress her more than necessary. They’d find out from someone else what the ‘mix-up’ was. Although why had no one else mentioned it?

  ‘So before you and Jeremy left, everyone from the group was there that day.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Diana leaned forward. ‘But that’s not true, is it, Kelly? Ryan wasn’t there.’

  The scowl fell back down over her face. ‘Ryan never really came to the group.’

  Also not true. Alison said, ‘We heard he came one time.’

  Kelly acknowledged it. ‘One time. Just for a bit, like.’

  ‘And there was a kind of . . . altercation, is that right?’

  She pursed her lips. ‘Dunno what that means.’

  Alison was fairly sure that she did. ‘A fight. I heard Ryan turned up one day and there was a fight. Can you tell us about that, Kelly?’

  On the way out a while later, interview finished, Alison nudged Diana and pointed to a stain on the cream wall of the flat. Any police officer – any woman for that matter – knew what blood looked like when it was inexpertly washed off and dried. And there was definitely blood on Kelly Anderson’s wall.

  The day of – Kelly

  1.21 p.m.

  Kelly stood outside Monica’s house for a long time before she rang the bell. In her head she was talking herself into and out of it. Why shouldn’t she go in? She’d been invited, even if they’d probably just forgotten she was on the email chain. She wanted to see everyone, even though she knew it would hurt like a knife, the babies that had survived, the happy mums. She wasn’t really a mum, was she? But she kind of was. She didn’t know how to describe herself now.

  It had all gone wrong anyway because of the stupid group. First there was the homework. She’d read the assignment for the class four times and she still didn’t get it. Draw your family tree to three generations on both sides, so that your baby will have an idea of its heritage. Why? The baby wouldn’t have a clue what that meant, not for years, and anyway she wasn’t totally sure about some of her heritage. Did she put on her grandma, who’d been married three times and also had a kid with the next-door neighbour, Kelly’s Uncle Dave, but no one officially knew that, even though Dave looked exactly like the neighbour? What about her dad, who’d left before she was born, or her stepdad Pete, who’d been her actual dad in all the ways that mattered, but was now divorced from her mum and had two new kids with a woman called Eileen? She hesitated with her pen over the paper. ‘Hon?’

  Ryan was sprawled on the sofa, with the TV on some reality show, his eyes fixed on his phone. ‘What?’ There was an edge to his voice. He was working a lot at the minute, pulling double shifts at Sainsbury’s, trying to save for the baby coming, because Kelly wouldn’t get much maternity leave from her job at the swimming pool. They already followed her around with little yellow signs in case she might slip in a wet patch. She knew they’d want her out before too long.

  ‘It’s this homework for class. Family trees. I need yours.’

  He made a noise of annoyance. ‘I don’t have time for this shit. What’s it for anyway?’

  She read him out the instructions.

  ‘Like the baby can even understand that?’

  ‘I know. But Nina said.’ At school Kelly had always done all her homework, trying to meet the directions exactly, so she wouldn’t get told off. Still she often got it wrong, sometimes because her mum hadn’t bought the right ingredients to cook with or plastic to back her books with or socks for gym. It was a lot of extras, school, even when it was supposed to be free. And somehow Kelly always got blamed for what her mum hadn’t done. She thought about ringing her to find out the rest of the family tree info, but she and her mum weren’t really talking right now. Her mum had hoped she’d make something of herself, maybe become manager of the swimming pool, which was definitely possible as the current one, James, could barely add up, but then Kelly had gone and got herself pregnant at twenty-two. Her mum had hinted strongly that she ‘didn’t have to have it, you know’, and Kelly knew that, she supported a woman’s choice, of course she did, she’d taken three friends of hers to have abortions already. But this was her baby. And she couldn’t explain why, but she wasn’t going to do that. She just wasn’t. Even if Ryan wasn’t exactly . . .

  ‘What are you hovering there for?’ he snapped. ‘I’m relaxing. I have to work again in an hour. This is just middle-class shit anyway, happy families where everyone has the same mum and dad and they stay married forever. I don’t want them knowing all my family business.’

  ‘OK.’ She’d just make it up. They would never know, surely, even though that Nina had eyes that somehow seemed to see right through her. ‘Sorry, hon.’

  Are you scared of Ryan? her mum had once asked her, watching her run around after him at a family party, trying to find the right kind of beer and sausages done the way he liked, a little bit pink in the middle. Of course not, she’d said, laughing. But was it true? As she scuttled away to finish the family tree in their tiny bedroom, could she say that she honestly wouldn’t feel her whole body relax the moment the door-slam told her he’d gone to work?

  Then there was the row when Ryan turned up that day. Fair enough, he was drunk, but did Nina really need to kick him out like that? Kelly’d had to go running after him, drag him away from the Asian guy, who was talking to him outside the church hall, all intense and scary. He’d pushed Ryan’s face into the wall and Nina had almost rung the police, though she didn’t in the end. They’d gone home and not mentioned it after, but she’d felt Ryan simmering away, his anger, his humiliation. So maybe it was the row, or maybe it was just one of those things. Who knew?

  No one could tell her why it happened. She was woken one night, a month off her due date, by the blood. She’d been dreaming something weird, that a pipe was leaking from the ceiling, or that a window was open above her and rain was dripping on her, making the bed wet. It took quite a few seconds to remember that they didn’t have a skylight. It was just before dawn, already bright enough to see shapes in the room. She could hear birds outside, and the drone of planes above London. Something had woken her. What? The bed was wet. Not from a window, there wasn’t one. She felt around, finding a wet patch underneath her. She lifted her hand into the pale dawn light. It was dark, sticky. It was blood.

  A moment of total clearness, of complete and absolute terror. ‘Ryan.’

  He’d come in late from his shift, and he wouldn’t want to be woken, not when he’d only been asleep for a few hours. She pulled her hand from his shoulder and went to the bathroom, bunching up her nightie between her legs trying not to leave a trail. Even so a drop of dark blood fell on to the hall carpet, and she thought about their deposit, how much it was. It’s OK, she told herself. People still bled when they were pregnant, that was why so many didn’t even seem to know they were up the duff. There was a whole TV programme about it, even. She’d be alright.

  Under the harsh bathroom light – n
o window in there either – she could see how bad it was. Her legs were splashed and crusted in it, her nightie wet and see-through, and it was all over her hands, embedded in her nails and even some in her hair, turning the blonde a strange brown colour. Her eyes were wild and terrified in the mirror. Is this happening? Am I losing it?

  Hospital. She had to get there. It wasn’t far away. Ryan would have to drive her. She wadded up a towel and made her way back in. She wanted to lean on the walls for support but then the blood would be there too, handprints everywhere like a murder scene. Funny how on TV and in films blood always meant someone had been murdered, when really women saw blood all the time, with their periods, and . . . what this maybe was. She didn’t want to say the word. She was too far along for a miscarriage. The baby could live now, if it came. A little glass cage and tubes and tiny woolly hats. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, get it over with now when the baby was still small, maybe avoid some of the worst pain.

  She switched on the light, and it felt weird to have it on in the morning. ‘Ryan.’

  He woke up slowly, face screwing into a snarl. ‘Jesus! Turn the fucking light off.’

  ‘Ryan, I’m . . .’ She didn’t know how to say it. ‘I’m bleeding.’

  He blinked and looked at the bed. ‘Jesus fucking Christ. What did you do?’

  Later, she would think about that question. Wonder: what did she do? Was it the ham she’d had for dinner, or the cheese on her pizza, or the weed smoke she walked past on the high street, or the half glass of wine she’d let herself drink after work, despite what Nina had said about that? Or did she walk too far or stand up for too long or something? Get too upset about Ryan at the group that day? Nina had something to say about that as well. Your baby is at risk.

  It could have been anything. At that moment though, she could only stare at the bed. It was the worst bit by far, a pool of dark black blood that had seeped through to the mattress. It wasn’t theirs, they’d have to buy a new one. Security deposit gone. It was on Ryan too, a bloody tidemark on the white T-shirt he slept in. He tore it off, disgusted.

  ‘You need to take me to hospital, please.’

  ‘You’ll get blood all over my car!’ Was this really happening? He was worried about his car seats when she was maybe . . . no I’m not it’ll be OK . . . when something was maybe really wrong?

  ‘I’ll sit on some towels. Please, Ryan. I’m scared.’

  And then the wave of pain struck, like a fist hammering her from the inside out, and Kelly gasped and fell back against the hallway wall, so that when she came back the next day there would be a mark of her body there in blood, staining the old-fashioned cream paint, and there was no way to get it out and no, they never would get their deposit back. But by then it wouldn’t really matter.

  Ryan finally got up, moving with bad grace. ‘Fucking disgusting,’ he muttered, at the print of blood on his torso. ‘I need a shower.’

  She could hardly speak. ‘There isn’t time!’ She’d always spoken softly to him, knowing he could easily be scared away, like a roosting bird. She didn’t care any more. ‘You stupid selfish bastard. I could be dying. The baby could be dying. Now shut up and fucking drive me to hospital.’

  He went pale, licked his lips. It was like he didn’t know her for a second. Then he nodded and pulled a hoody from the back of a chair, and took the car keys from the bedside table. His phone, his wallet. Kelly pointed. ‘My phone. My bag. Get the stuff I’ll need. Essentials. You can come back later.’

  He scooped it all up, and then they hurried out of the flat – trying not to leak blood on to the lobby carpet – and into the half dawn, and it was like getting up early to go on holiday, except it wasn’t like that at all, and as she sat with her head against the cool window, she knew nothing was going to be the same again.

  And it hadn’t. She didn’t want to think about after, the careful way the doctor told her, in a cold bright little room, that there was no hope at all, her baby was dead, and she could hold him for a little while but then they’d have to take him away. How Ryan had reacted, shouting and punching the wall and how, when she got home from the hospital, she’d called her mum and her mum’s boyfriend Larry came round and changed the locks and had a word with Ryan and she hadn’t seen him since. It hurt her head to think about it all, how it had gone so wrong. Was it the group, the homework, the way Ryan had been treated that day? Was it Nina and her advice? Because now she was alone, with no baby and no partner, and everyone else at this party, they would have both those things. It made you wonder. Was it anyone’s fault, what had happened to her?

  Eventually, she got too hot standing on the street. She walked up to Monica’s house with the smart glass door and rang the bell. No one answered for a while, and then she saw someone coming towards the door. It was Cathy. And she had a baby strapped to her chest.

  Jax – seven weeks earlier

  The bus clanked and wheezed its way to the church hall, and I thought longingly of my old Golf, languishing in the garage. Like hospital for sick cars, or rather very, very old ones that might soon be taking the Dignitas option to the scrapyard in the sky. I’d turned the key in the ignition that morning to pop to the shops for milk, and nothing had happened. The garage had to come and tow it, an expense we didn’t need. I fretted about money, doing sums in my head, thinking about the cost of buying a new car, or an old new one, while I was on maternity pay, or had possibly lost my job, depending on what happened (Sharon had still not been in touch). It said a lot that I didn’t even factor Aaron’s pay into my equations. He sat on the outside seat of the bus, his long legs stretched out, a hand on my thigh.

  I had grown used to Aaron’s silence. Unlike other men his age, unlike everyone else on the bus, he didn’t look at his phone or listen to music, he just sat quietly. Aaron must have been the only twenty-four-year-old with a non-smart phone, a cheap Nokia one. Partly this was frugality, but mostly it was wanting to disappear, wanting quiet in his mind. There had been little of that growing up.

  ‘Next stop, babe,’ he said, stirring. As we got off – he held his body to protect me, shield me, and I wondered did he even know he was doing it – two yummy mummies got on, buggies and matching yellow Boden raincoats. I saw one glance at Aaron, then at me, and a trill of giggles followed us off. I was sure I heard the word cradle, but I walked on, heavy feet landing in puddles, a flush spreading over my face. It would always be this way, I knew. People would look at us and think I must be rich, or maybe it was a visa marriage, that there was something pathetic about me, believing a young man like this really loved me. Aaron would probably only get more attractive, as happened to many men, their eyes crinkling and hair silvering. What would people think of us when I was sixty and he was just in his early forties? There goes that man with his mum, how nice? Urgh. I had to stop thinking like that. It was just sexism, and anyway I wasn’t even going to be an old mum; Monica and Anita were both older than me. Kelly was the one who stuck out now, only in her twenties. I wondered if her boyfriend would show up today.

  We reached the hall, already familiar with the layout, walking down the cream and puce corridor. I wondered who would have brought baked goods today, and sure enough it was Aisha this time, with some sticky sweets rolled in coconut, bright-coloured and pretty. God, I really didn’t want to have to start baking but it would clearly be my turn soon.

  Monica swallowed a bit, grimaced. ‘Oooh, a bit sweet for me.’ Cathy had one too, though Hazel frowned and said we should all be watching our sugars.

  ‘I agree,’ said Nina, sweeping in with a jangle of bracelets and rings. Her skin was tanned, her glossy dark hair braided, her body slim and supple. I hated her. I wished she liked me more. ‘Too much sugar isn’t good for the baby.’ Seeing Aisha’s face fall, I made sure to take one, though it left my fingers sticky and I kept wiping them surreptitiously on my jeans. Looking about, I noticed that Kelly’s supposed partner had not shown up again. I felt proud briefly, that Aaron, also a young dad
, had made the effort. He was good. I had to trust him, like he said. But it was hard, after years on my own.

  It had become clear as time went on that our little group had nothing in common except for our pregnancies. There’d been disagreements over diet, childcare arrangements, birth plans, and of course the snippiness about veganism. That day, our fourth session, was the day Jeremy, of all people, threw us into turmoil. We were having ‘free discussion’, where we aired our thoughts and worries about childbirth. I had so many worries that I felt I couldn’t voice them all or I’d be judged. When it was my turn, I just muttered something about ‘following my birth plan’. As if you could plan for being blown up.

  Nina smiled thinly. ‘Good luck with that, Jax. It rarely goes to plan.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder why people even have children.’ Jeremy did not say much, so his comment landed in the circle like a brick. ‘Nothing is more guaranteed to ruin your bank balance, your career, and your marriage. Your body too, for the woman.’

  Cathy looked the most upset to start with. She was wearing a knitted jumper with a penguin on the front. ‘But it’s what you do – humanity would die out otherwise!’

  He smiled abstractedly, untouched by the emotion his remark had stirred up. ‘That’s the thing though. The global population will reach ten billion in a few years – and think what a mess we’ve made with seven. Food and resources will be stripped. Animals will go extinct.’ He pointed to Cathy’s jumper. ‘Those penguins you love, for example – they won’t exist any more. Humanity may well die out if we don’t stop having children.’