Blood Sisters

by Julie Shaw

  And she’d agreed that it was, because she’d been thinking it all the time lately, and when he went on – in that drowsy after-sex way he often did – about when they were married and how many kids they’d have, and how much it mattered to him to have a family, she’d felt as if her heart might break in two.

  But Lucy didn’t know. She didn’t actually, conclusively know that she had something wrong with her that meant she couldn’t have kids. It was probable, yes, and the doctor, like the horoscope, had told her to be braced for it, but even when she’d gone for the ultrasound and hormone tests, she was already expecting it. She’d read enough, knew enough, felt enough to know. Coming here today was just the confirmation.

  A nurse came out and called her name and Vicky squeezed her shoulder before releasing her. Bright, blooming Vicky, with her small but present bump. Who, despite the fact that she hadn’t dared tell Paddy yet, even though she’d been to visit him twice now, still exuded this aura of calm and equanimity, as if happy to be left in fate’s hands now. That’s what baby hormones did: they took you over.

  Vicky offered to go in with her, but Lucy shook her head. ‘They might, you know, want to examine me,’ she lied, and Vicky nodded, obviously believing her.

  ‘Good luck, mate,’ she said. ‘You wait, it’ll be good news.’

  But, then again, what else would she say?

  The doctor – a woman in perhaps her thirties, with a long, swishy ponytail – indicated that Lucy should sit down. ‘So,’ she said, scanning a sheaf of papers in front of her, ‘how are you today, Lucy? Okay?’

  Lucy didn’t know how to answer, since the answer should be so obvious. How the fuck could she possibly be okay? But she understood that this was just the usual exchange of niceties, and her job was to nod and say ‘Fine, thank you’ politely, so that, pleasantries dispensed with, they could get on.

  And the doctor didn’t waste any time. As if by a pre-arranged signal, her whole demeanour changed, to one Lucy knew she’d remember for years to come. That stern-but-sympathetic face, just on the right side of stern, so that she didn’t dissolve into tears then and there.

  ‘You have polycystic ovaries,’ the doctor explained, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes not leaving Lucy’s as she spoke. ‘As your GP has probably explained to you might well be the case, we now know they’re the reason for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing – the irregular periods, the hair thinning, the skin problems and so on …’

  And on she went, talking slowly, but still too fast – there being just way too much information – for Lucy to take it all in. All but one thing, which sat there like a stone in her stomach. That no, PCOS (what they called it) couldn’t be treated. Just managed. They would now help her manage her symptoms, like she had been left in charge of a particularly badly behaved child and couldn’t possibly control it by herself. And that, no, she’d be highly unlikely to be able to conceive naturally.

  ‘Which is not to say that you won’t be able to conceive at all,’ the doctor told her. ‘There are all sorts of medical interventions that can increase your chances. Certain drugs, new procedures. You’ve heard of IVF, I assume? It’s a field that is developing all the time.’

  But Lucy didn’t want to be in a field full of medical interventions. She wanted to be normal. She wanted to have babies. She didn’t want to be one of the statistics you saw in the papers. One of those wretched women – those desperate ‘six rounds of failed IVF’ women. ‘But is it likely?’ she asked the doctor, feeling young and frustrated but, most of all, defective.

  ‘The odds,’ the doctor told her, ‘are improving all the time.’ And then she went back to explaining how they’d start ‘managing’ her condition. Like Paddy-fucking-tosser Allen managed Vicky’s weight. Or used to. How could life be so bloody unfair?

  ‘Oh, God, mate, I don’t know what to say,’ Vicky said, crying along with Lucy as they trudged back to the bus stop. ‘Isn’t there anything they can do? Isn’t there an operation or something they can do to sort them out?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘It’s not curable.’

  ‘But you said they said you might still be able to have a kid, right? You know, by drugs and that? So there’s still some hope, isn’t there?’

  ‘Some,’ Lucy conceded. They. What was this ‘they’? Like there was some committee standing in judgement?

  ‘So you’ve got to look on the bright side,’ Vicky went on. ‘Miracles happen, Luce, they do …’

  And then she started on about some woman her mam knew who spent years trying to have a baby and then, just as they were about to sign adoption papers, suddenly got pregnant. ‘Just like that,’ she was saying, ‘after, like, six or seven years.’

  Vicky was sniffing away tears as she spoke, tears that Lucy knew were genuine. Genuine love between mates, and understandable frustration. And, understandably, Vicky was only doing what anyone else would. Trying to find a positive. Conjure up a solution. But six or seven bloody years? That was really going to cheer her day up, wasn’t it?

  Try as she might, Lucy could not help the rage building inside her. What had Vic got to fucking cry about? She was having a baby. No effort involved. No particular desire to have one, either. Yet here was one, growing in her belly, even as they stood there.

  And by that bastard who didn’t deserve a fucking dog, let alone a child! Thinking of Paddy – that bastard Paddy – made her rage all the more. And even Vicky – the best mate, who she would stand by, like a rock, through the whole sorry palaver – didn’t have the wherewithal to wipe her own arse half the time, and yet she would soon be changing nappies. It was all so unfair.

  She had no right to rage at her friend. None at all. But she knew if she were to achieve the seemingly impossible, she would have to put some distance between them.

  ‘Look,’ she said, seeing the bus approaching in the distance. ‘You get back. I’m not going to go home, not for a bit. I’m going to walk to Jimmy’s. He should be just about home by the time I get there—’

  ‘Luce, I’m not leaving you. Come on, let’s go back to yours and have a cuppa. You can see him later.’

  ‘No, I need the walk …’

  ‘Then I’ll walk with you. I’m not leaving you, Luce, I’m not.’

  The bus was almost upon them now. Lucy felt a powerful urge to run. ‘Really, Vic …’

  ‘No, Luce.’ Her voice was sharp. ‘I’m not leaving you in this state.’

  And she was in a state, even if she didn’t quite acknowledge it. She could tell by the concerned expression on the face of the woman who’d now emerged from the bus shelter.

  But she had to get away, and, as soon as the idea formed in her head, it wasn’t so hard to say the words that were needed. Perhaps they had to come out in any case.

  ‘Vic, just fucking get on the bus, will you? Look, I’m sorry, but you’re the last person I want to be with right now.’

  Then she turned tail and stalked off as fast as she could, so she wouldn’t have to see the expression on Vicky’s face.

  By the time she caught up with Jimmy – it was a good hour’s walk to his house, even using all the shortcuts – she had managed to regain sufficient composure that there was no concern in his face, just surprise. And pleasure, which made her wretchedness even more profound.

  He’d obviously beaten her home by mere minutes because he was still in his work overalls. And must have been wondering why she was at his when she would normally have still been at work. She hadn’t told him about her appointment at the hospital, just as she hadn’t told him about the last one, on the basis that if it turned out there was little to worry about, there would be no point in dragging it all out. Besides, some things were not for a lad’s ears, not really; that, as her mam had once told her, boyfriends and husbands shouldn’t be privy to.

  But as soon as he smiled at her, went ‘Hiyah, babes, this is a nice surprise’, went to kiss her, it felt like the dam she’d so carefully erected had been exploded into pieces. She fell a
gainst him, the sob she’d been holding back all the way there escaping from her throat on a massive outbreath, like a tsunami of emotion.

  He crushed her to him, going, ‘What, babe? What the fuck’s up? What’s happened?’ But for an age she couldn’t speak, only press tight against him, inhaling the cocktail of strange chemical smells on his overalls – sharp plumbing-related smells that were as familiar and dear to her as the shape of his nose, or the precise way his hair felt, or his laugh.

  But finally, after he’d shuffled her into the front room, and sat down with her on the sofa, she managed to spew it all out.

  Jimmy listened in silence, his expression changing as she spoke, one minute sad, another angry, another full of compassion, and locked as she was into the explaining of all her misery, she was alert to any expression that might confirm her worst fear. To any hint, however tiny, that once he had taken everything in, Jimmy would realise that he was with the wrong girl. He wanted a family so badly; to create the one his mother had taken away from him. And however much hope the doctors tried to instil in her, one she knew it was odds-on she could not provide, she wasn’t stupid. A future without Jimmy seemed such a terrifying place. But she wasn’t stupid – not about happy-ever afters. He might think – be completely convinced, even – that they could just make the best of it, now, but she knew better. It would eat at them. It was eating at her now.

  ‘So look, babe,’ she finished. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all the way here. And, you know, if you wanted to finish with me, it’s okay. Honestly.’ She clasped his hands, trying to effect a lightness she’d could never feel. ‘I wouldn’t …’ she could hardly get the words out, she felt so scared. ‘I wouldn’t, I would never, ever hate you.’

  Jimmy stared at her for a moment. Then pulled his hands away from hers. Then almost seemed to explode up from the sofa.

  ‘Christ, Lucy – I can’t believe I just heard you say that!’

  She stood up too, shocked by the anger in his voice.

  ‘But I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Really, Jimmy. I just don’t want to ruin your life, that’s all. I can’t bear it …’

  ‘You can’t bear it! Christ, Lucy,’ he said again. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. Really. I fucking don’t. You really think I’d do that? That I’m the sort of shit who’d just fuck off and leave you over something like that?’

  ‘No, Jimmy – I just—’

  ‘Then why the hell would you even say something like that? I just can’t believe you’d think I’d do that. I …’

  He ploughed a hand through his blond curls, which were dulled by dust and dirt. And she realised why he’d stopped speaking. Because he couldn’t speak.

  He cleared his throat noisily and pulled her back into his arms. ‘What kind of man do you think I am? I fucking love you, Luce. How can you say that? I fucking love you, you fucking idiot!’

  ‘And I love you. I just …’

  He kissed the top of her head. Almost roughly. Almost angrily. Could a person be kissed in anger? But that’s how it felt. Like her mam had done that time when she’d lost her in the park, and when she’d finally found her, and was so cross and choked. Just like that.

  ‘Then just don’t,’ he said. ‘Fuck.’

  And Lucy felt safe again.

  Chapter 14

  Apprehension sat like a stone in Vicky’s stomach. A stone that jumped every time Gurdy lurched away from junctions, the minutes ticking past till she’d have to face Paddy. As his officially pregnant girlfriend.

  But why the hell hadn’t he written back? To torture her?

  ‘For God’s sake, Gurdy!’ Lucy huffed from the back seat. ‘I’m going to throw up in a minute. You are the worst bloody driver on the planet. I mean, seriously. Did you really pass your bloody driving test?’

  ‘It’s not me, it’s the car!’ Gurdy protested as they kangarooed forwards. ‘It’s got some problem in the ignition chamber. Misfiring an’ that. Or something.’ He turned to Vicky and grinned. ‘Probably “or something”. I need Paddy, innit? He could fix it. I miss him, I proper do. Almost as much as you do, no lie.’

  But did she miss him? Vicky wasn’t quite sure. Not at the moment. Not with it hanging over her that she was shortly going to have to face him. Because his face would say it all. She still wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing in writing to him to tell him. Lucy’s idea. Lucy’s plan. Lucy’s ‘best thing to do’. And Vicky supposed she was right. Better perhaps to break the news to him in a letter than risk him going off on one in front of everyone in that bloody visiting room.

  And better for her, perhaps. Better in that it sort of let her off the hook. But had it? It had been almost a full fortnight since she’d written now, because she’d done so only a couple of days since she’d last been to visit. And not a word in reply. Which she might have accepted (he was no writer, and the same rule about the cost of stamps still applied), but when she’d told him something so momentous? When she’d specifically asked him to write back and reassure her he was happy?

  Lucy laughed. ‘You don’t miss him like that, I hope,’ she teased Gurdy from the back seat.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Gurdy said. ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  That had been one positive thing, at least – the only positive thing lately. Well, depending on your viewpoint, and Vicky knew plenty who didn’t share hers and Lucy’s, but they’d found out Gurdy was gay – like they didn’t already know that? – so now she was officially pregnant, and he was officially gay.

  He’d told Jimmy, of all people. While pissed as a fart, down at the Old Crown. Pissed to the point of barely being about to speak, let alone function, when some girl had come onto him – he wasn’t half bad-looking now he’d grown into his face a bit – and, according to Jimmy who had hardly been able to recount the tale for laughing, that she’d said, ‘Want a bit of this, mate?’, and he’d replied, in his usual polite-to-the-ladies fashion, ‘Only if you have a penis in those pants, love!’

  ‘How priceless is that?’ Jimmy had said. And Vicky wondered if Paddy would be quite so accepting. ‘Honest, bless him, I was so glad there was no one around to hear him.’ (And that was another worry, Vicky thought, as the prison loomed greyly in the distance. It getting back to Paddy that she’d been out with Jimmy and Lucy at all.) ‘Because he was off then, burbling on, all the fucking way home, on and on, about how much he wished he fancied girls, like his brother Vik did, but all he wanted was a bit of cock, and how I mustn’t tell anyone.’

  Jimmy hadn’t been sure how he’d be able to keep a straight face when he next saw Gurdy, thinking it was a good thing that he’d been too pissed to be likely to remember. But Vicky and Lucy begged to differ. They had no intention of aiding and abetting any amnesia, and at the first opportunity – a couple of nights later, when they’d met up in the appropriately named Oddfellows – they reported what Jimmy had told them. And though at first Gurdy was mortified, they all soon agreed that they couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t thought he was gay.

  ‘So you knew even before I did? What’s that about?’ he’d admonished. Then he’d laughed and they’d hugged and it was all a bit lovely. And they’d talked about his parents and how they’d go absolutely bonkers. But they were too blind to even see it, thank God, they all agreed. And they were now on a mission to find him a boyfriend.

  All of which was a world away from where they were now, Vicky thought. Which was good old HMP Armley: a place for grown-ups, and a very dark and charmless place. There to leave her to her fate, while Lucy and Gurdy went back off into Leeds city centre, there to go shopping, for baby stuff, among other things. She wished she was going with them instead of through the prison doors.

  Gurdy, ever the gent, leapt from the driver’s seat and came around the bonnet. It was an old Mini, his pride and joy, in a rather unlovely shade of maroon. In an ideal world, he’d have liked to have taken temporary ownership of Paddy’s Capri, but that was never going to happen. It was safely under a tarpaulin in the Manningham Lane
lock-up, and though he had been tasked by Paddy with starting it up periodically to ‘keep it sweet’, Vicky knew he’d no more risk taking it for a joy ride than jumping off a cliff. The repercussions were just way too grim to contemplate.

  But now he had his Mini (funded no doubt by shady dealings with Rasta Mo) and he cherished it. ‘Mad-arrrrm,’ he said, reaching his arm in to help her out of the front passenger seat. Like she was some delicate flower, or eight months pregnant rather than just a couple, and again with his new sing-song voice.

  ‘Gerroff, you Noddy,’ she told him. ‘I’m not a bloody princess.’

  ‘Yes you are,’ Lucy said, as she pinged the vacated seat down so she could sit in the front now. ‘Or at least you’re supposed to be his princess, aren’t you?’ Her voice was understandably sarcastic. ‘So don’t you go taking any of his shit, okay?’ She kissed her. ‘Pie and pea shop. Hour and a half or so. Top market. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ Vicky said, as Gurdy nipped back round to jump in again. ‘Drive carefully,’ she called out as they pulled away.

  And as she watched the car splutter back down the road towards Leeds she felt this powerful urge to run after it. No tax, no insurance, and Gurdy drove like a retard. But it wasn’t quite that. It was just the sense of them both disappearing. And the knowledge that, Paddy aside (and it was a feeling she wanted to shake off but couldn’t), all the love and security in her life were in that bloody rust-bucket of a lawnmower-on-legs bloody Mini.

  Shaking her head to try and clear it of the sense of impending doom, Vicky made her way slowly up the gravel road to the iron gates that incarcerated the love of her life. This was only her fourth visit, and she was surprised by how quickly it had become routine. The queueing, the endless chatter of the other women and children, the handover of most of her possessions and the humiliating body search, but in her pregnant state it had begun to make her feel even more violated.