‘What do you think?’ Johnny asked.
‘I could hardly say no, could I?’ Ruth said quietly. ‘And it’s only for one night.’
‘Make sure it is,’ he said, snatching an ashtray off the drainer. ‘I’m going for a bath.’
One night quickly became two, and then three, until Rita was turning up with her whisky and her nightie whenever Frankie went off on one of his ‘late meetings’. Which pissed Johnny off no end, especially since he’d begun to suspect that there were no meetings – not business ones, anyway. He had no proof, but he’d heard enough of Frankie’s phone calls by now to know the difference between him talking business and talking sweet.
Ruth knew that he hated finding her mum there when he got home, but it seemed stupid for them to be lonely in separate houses while their men were at work for such long hours. And, if she was honest, she was enjoying having her mum back in her life. She’d been dying to escape from her for as long as she could remember, but the reality of living apart had been much harder than she’d expected.
Content now that life was pretty much back to normal, Ruth got a shock when she checked her diary one morning a few weeks later and realised that she’d missed a period. It was what she had been praying for, and she was ecstatic to think that those prayers had been answered. But she was also terrified, so she kept it to herself and made an appointment at the doctor’s for the following week.
Determined not to put any unnecessary strain on her body, she took it easy for the next few days, only doing the bare minimum of cleaning and washing, and even making excuses when Johnny climbed into bed on the Friday night expecting sex.
Ruth was so tightly wound up by the time she finally saw the doctor on Monday morning that she burst into tears when he confirmed that she was pregnant.
‘Is there a problem?’ he asked, looking at her with concern. ‘Because there are options that you might like to consider.’
‘No!’ she cried, smiling through her tears. ‘There’s no problem. It’s a gift from God.’
And that was genuinely how she saw it: that God had forgiven her for her wicked lies, and blessed her with the one thing that she needed to bring her and Johnny closer together. And she was determined to repay His kindness by being the best wife and mother that she could possibly be.
Desperate to tell somebody now that it was official, she rushed straight over to her mum’s house.
‘Are you sure this time?’ Rita asked when she told her.
‘Positive.’ Ruth beamed as she sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I can’t wait to tell Johnny. He’ll be made up.’
‘You reckon?’ Rita muttered under her breath as she reached into the cupboard for a glass.
‘You’ll have to cut down on that now you’re going to be a grandma,’ Ruth said disapprovingly when her mum opened the whisky and poured her first shot of the day.
‘Why, what difference will it make?’ Rita demanded. ‘You weren’t so bothered last time. Or is that because you weren’t really pregnant last time?’
Ruth blushed. It was the truth – and they both knew it. But she hadn’t admitted it yet, and she wasn’t about to now.
‘Don’t start all that again,’ she said sharply. ‘Anyway, I only popped in to tell you, so I’d better get going.’
‘You’ve only just got here,’ Rita protested. ‘You can stop for a cuppa, at least.’
‘I’ve got someone coming round to look at that drippy tap,’ Ruth lied, standing up. She was too excited to sit here arguing. She wanted to go shopping. Alone.
‘Wait while I get dressed, and I’ll come with you,’ Rita said, swigging at her drink.
‘I haven’t got time,’ Ruth insisted as she headed for the door. ‘See you later.’
She rushed out, caught a cab into town and wandered around Mothercare for a couple of hours, looking at prams and cots and Moses baskets. She just hoped it was a girl, because you could really go to town when you were dressing up little girls. Boys’ clothes were so boring, but there were so many pretty little dresses to choose from. And then there were all the special-occasion dresses that she would have to have specially made, for parties and weddings and the all-important first communion. She couldn’t wait.
11
‘Johnny! Johhnnnnny . . . !’
Johnny was watching EastEnders, but he jumped up when he heard Ruth screaming his name and raced up the stairs.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked, rushing to her when he saw her slumped on the bathroom floor. ‘What’s wrong?’
It was a month since she’d told him about the baby, and she’d been floating on air ever since. They both had. But a couple of days ago he’d noticed that she was looking a bit pale and didn’t seem to have the same spring in her step. Concerned, he’d told her to go back to the doctor and get checked out. Ruth had insisted that everything was fine so he hadn’t pressed her. But he wished that he had now, because something was obviously wrong.
One glance at the towel she was holding confirmed his suspicions. Almost throwing up at the sight of all the blood, he pushed himself back up to his feet and staggered out onto the landing.
‘Stay there. I’ll call an ambulance.’
Sobbing, Ruth held the towel to her breast and rocked to and fro. The pain in her stomach was excruciating, but it was nothing to the pain in her heart. Johnny couldn’t have looked properly or he’d have realised that she was holding their baby in her arms. It was so tiny that she had almost mistaken it for a clot when she’d felt it slipping out. But when she’d really looked, she’d seen the little black blobs where its unformed eyes lay beneath the protective cover of its skin, and the stubby little balls of flesh that would soon have formed into recognisable hands and feet.
She had frantically tried to revive it but it had been futile – because there wasn’t even a proper mouth to try and breathe life into.
The doctor who examined Ruth at the hospital had a kindly face.
‘These things happen, I’m afraid,’ he said as he peeled off his gloves when he’d examined her. He sighed as he dropped them into the bin. ‘But you’re young so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t go on to have a perfectly normal, healthy pregnancy in the future.’
‘There’s got to be a reason why it keeps happening,’ Johnny said worriedly. ‘If it was the first one, I might be able to understand it. But this is the second one, so there’s got to be something wrong.’
‘The second?’ The doctor frowned and looked down at his notes. ‘There’s no mention of another pregnancy here. When was this?’
‘About . . .’ Johnny started. Then he trailed off, unable to think straight. ‘When was it, Ruth?’ he asked, looking down at her.
She was sobbing too hard to answer, so he tried to calculate when it must have been. But he couldn’t even remember how long they had been married, never mind how long into it they’d been before she’d lost that baby.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, shrugging helplessly. ‘A few months at most.’
‘And she was seen here?’ The doctor looked through the notes again.
‘I think she only saw the doctor back at the local surgery,’ Johnny told him.
‘Yes, but she would have been referred to us from there,’ the doctor replied. ‘The procedure I’m about to send her for now should really have been done then as well, you see,’ he explained, trying to keep it simple because he could see how confused Johnny already was. ‘We have to be sure that there’s nothing left inside that could cause infections or complications.’
‘Right,’ Johnny murmured, running a hand through his hair and swallowing loudly. The hospital smell was really starting to get to him, and he felt sick.
‘How far along was she at that last termination?’ the doctor asked. He pursed his lips when Johnny shrugged and said, ‘Okay, well, what’s the name of your GP? I’ll give the surgery a ring and have them check their records.’
‘Do you have to?’ Ruth squawked, desperation helping her to find her
voice.
‘Well, yes, I rather think I do,’ the doctor told her. ‘I’m not saying for one moment that your GP was negligent during your last pregnancy. But if you weren’t properly cleaned out afterwards, that may in part be responsible for the loss of this one.’
‘You’re joking!’ Johnny gasped. ‘You’re telling me that he should have sent her to hospital?’ Gritting his teeth in anger when the doctor raised an eyebrow in reply, he looked down at Ruth. ‘I told you to let me get an ambulance, but you said the doctor had told you it was normal to bleed like that.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ruth whimpered, sinking back into the pillow as fresh tears streamed down her cheeks.
‘Now, now, no point blaming yourselves,’ the doctor said, patting her on the shoulder. ‘Let me go and see what I can find out, and we’ll take it from there.’
‘I need a drink,’ Ruth blurted out. ‘Johnny, can you go and get me some water, please?’
Glad of an excuse to leave the cubicle and take in some fresh air, Johnny did as he’d been asked.
When he’d gone, Ruth looked up tearfully at the doctor and whispered, ‘There was no baby before this one. I – I thought there was, but then I had a period and realised I wasn’t pregnant.’
‘But your husband—’
‘Doesn’t know anything about it,’ Ruth cut in. ‘He was so happy when he thought he was going to be a dad, I didn’t have the heart to tell him.’
The doctor’s frown deepened. ‘You thought it was kinder to let him believe that it had died rather than just tell him that it hadn’t even been there in the first place?’
‘I know it was wrong,’ Ruth croaked, keeping half an eye on the curtain in case Johnny came back. ‘But it was too late to put it right after I’d done it, so I had to keep it up. And he can’t find out now or he’ll never forgive me. Please don’t tell him.’
The doctor sighed deeply. In his opinion, fathers had as much right to know what was going on with their babies as the mothers did. But she was his patient, and he had to respect her right to confidentiality.
‘I’ll book you in for the D and C,’ he told her.
‘Will – will it stop me from having another one?’ Ruth asked as he started to leave.
‘Unlikely,’ he said as he went on his way.
Left alone, Ruth squeezed her eyes shut and let the tears flow. The doctor had looked at her as though she was scum, and he was right. This was her comeuppance for tricking Johnny into getting married. God hadn’t blessed her with this baby, He’d used it to punish her for her wicked lies; dangling it in front of her, and then snatching it away again, to let her know that He didn’t think her fit to be its mother.
Ruth stayed in hospital that night, but Johnny was worried about her when he brought her home the next morning. She wouldn’t talk to him or her mum, and she just cried when Frankie sat with her on the bed and held her in his arms.
‘It’ll take time, but she’ll get through it,’ the GP reassured them when he visited in the afternoon. ‘Just make sure she has plenty of fluids, and try to persuade her to eat a little something to keep the painkillers and sleeping tablets from aggravating her stomach. There’s enough here for a week, but I’ll pop back in a couple of days to check on her. And if you’re concerned about anything in the meantime, don’t hesitate to ring.’
‘Too late to act like you care now,’ Johnny snarled, glaring at the man as he snatched the prescription from his hand.
‘Sorry?’ The GP was confused.
‘He’s just tired,’ Frankie said, stepping between them and showing the doctor out. ‘Thanks for coming round, Doc. Much appreciated.’
Turning to Johnny when he’d closed the door behind the doctor, Frankie frowned. ‘Have you got no respect? You can’t go around talking to medical men like that. What’s up with you?’
Johnny opened his mouth to explain but clamped it shut again when he realised that he couldn’t, because he didn’t fully understand it himself. The doctor at the hospital had made out like the GP was to blame for Ruth losing this baby and had been all up for ringing the surgery to find out why they hadn’t sent her in to get properly checked out after she’d lost the first one. But then he’d done a complete U-turn and said it wasn’t necessary, after all. So Johnny still didn’t know whose fault it was.
‘Son, I know you’re upset,’ Frankie said. He fetched two cans of beer from the fridge and shoved one into Johnny’s hand. ‘But you can’t go round taking it out on everyone else. Ruth’s the one who needs looking after, not you, so you’re just going to have to get a grip and sort yourself out. I know it ain’t gonna be easy, so that’s why we’ve decided that Rita’s going to move in for a bit.’
‘No!’ Johnny blurted out. Quickly tempering his tone, he said, ‘Sorry, but I don’t want to impose on Rita. I can look after Ruth.’
Frankie looked at him and nodded slowly. ‘You know, when she first told me what you’d done I wanted to kill you with my bare hands,’ he said quietly. ‘And there were plenty of times leading up to the wedding when I came proper close to sending you off a cliff with my boot up your arse. But you’ve been good to my girl, and a father can’t ask for better than that.’
‘I try,’ Johnny murmured, feeling guilty about the thousands of times he’d wished that he’d never laid eyes on Ruth – and the numerous times he could happily have shoved her under a bus and walked away without looking back.
‘The tough times make you stronger,’ Frankie went on sagely. ‘And you’ll cope with this just like you coped with the last one. But don’t try to rush it. Just take it one step at a time. Oh, and don’t worry about work. We’ll manage without you till you’re ready to come back.’
Rita didn’t want to leave, mainly because she knew that Frankie would just dump her at the house and then take off again. But he was adamant that Johnny and Ruth needed some time alone, so she had no choice but to get into the car.
Johnny waved them off and then nipped upstairs to tell Ruth that he was taking her prescription to the chemist’s. She was fast asleep.
Lisa was on the step when he opened the front door a few seconds later, her hand raised, about to knock.
‘Jeezus, you scared me,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ she apologised, giving him a small sad smile. ‘I’ve just heard. How are you?’
‘I’m all right. But Ruth’s not too good. I’m just off to get her script while she’s asleep.’
‘Do you want me to come with you?’
‘Actually, I’d rather you stayed here in case she wakes up while I’m gone,’ Johnny said, relieved to have a helping hand. He’d told Frankie he could cope, but he wasn’t so sure that he was equipped to deal with Ruth if she woke up and started crying again. Rita would have driven him crazy within two minutes flat, but he and Lisa had been getting on fine, so it wouldn’t be too bad having her here. And at least she’d have a better understanding than him of what Ruth was going through, with them both being girls.
‘I’ll make myself a brew and listen out for her,’ Lisa said, stepping inside and slipping off her jacket. ‘You look like you could do with a break, so why don’t you pop round to Dave’s while you’re over that side?’ she suggested, smiling as she added, ‘Bring me a little smoke back and I might even cook your dinner.’
Johnny could have kissed her. Getting wasted was exactly what he needed right now, but there was no way Ruth would have suggested it.
Immediately feeling guilty for thinking about himself when his wife was lying upstairs with an empty womb and a ripped-up heart, Johnny said, ‘Won’t be long.’
‘Take as long as you like,’ said Lisa. ‘I’m here now, and I’ll stay as long as you need me.’
Dave held out his arms when he opened the door and pulled Johnny into a hug.
‘Aw, man, I’m so sorry. How are you feeling – or is that a stupid question?’
‘How did you know?’ Johnny asked, wondering who could have told him – or Lisa, come to that.
; ‘Pauline from upstairs works nights at the hospital,’ Dave said. ‘She saw you and Ruth coming in with the ambulance last night, and she came round on her way home to tell me. How’s Ruth doing?’
‘She’s a mess.’
‘I bet.’ Dave tutted and shook his head. ‘I can’t believe it, mate. It’s shocking. Totally shocking. Do they know why it happened?’
‘No, they reckon it’s just one of them things,’ Johnny said as he followed him into the living room and flopped down on the couch. He hadn’t lived here for months, but it still felt like home – even with Wazza’s shit instead of his cluttering the place up.
‘Ah, well, I suppose you’ve just got to pick yourselves up and move on,’ Dave said philosophically. ‘Bet you could do with a smoke, couldn’t you?’
‘Why else would I be here?’ Johnny grinned. ‘And hurry up, ’cos I’ve left Lisa babysitting.’
‘Oh, is she round at yours?’ Dave’s eyebrows lifted as he loaded up the bong. ‘I might walk round with you when you go back.’
‘Probably best if you don’t,’ Johnny told him. ‘Ruth’s asleep, but I’m betting she’ll start crying again as soon as she wakes up, and I don’t think she’ll appreciate anyone being there. I even had to send her mum home.’
‘That must have been hard!’ Dave chuckled. ‘I know how much you love having her around.’
‘Like a hole in the fuckin’ head,’ Johnny moaned. ‘Still, Frankie gave me a nice little speech about how much he appreciates me being there for Ruth, so with any luck he’ll tell her to give us a bit of space.’
‘Wouldn’t bank on it,’ Dave said dryly. Bong loaded, he passed it over. ‘There you go – get your gob around that.’
A lot lighter at heart by the time he left Dave’s flat and floated home a little while later, Johnny smiled when he walked in and found Lisa scrubbing the kitchen sink.
Lost Angel Page 15
