by Jane Corry
We drive home in silence. Matthew would understand, I tell myself. He’d been the one who had comforted me when my parents had split. He’d come down with me to see Dad and even took him out to the pub to ‘cheer him up’. They’d got on really well.
I try to book a room at the hotel I normally use in Worthing, but it’s full – there’s a conference, apparently – as are two others I try.
I go to the bathroom. Get out my phone again. Don’t do this, I tell myself. But I can’t help it.
How are things with you?
I text.
It’s pretty manic here. My dad’s in some sort of trouble and I need to go down tonight to see him. I can’t stay with him because you can’t even get into the spare room with all the stuff he’s hoarded over the years! Now I’ve got to try and find a hotel in Worthing that isn’t booked up. Never stops, does it?
Then, in an attempt to sound like the kind of casual ‘just-wanted-to-share-this’ message to a friend, I add a rolling-eyes emoji.
The reply comes back almost immediately.
Poor you. Actually I stayed down there once. I can still remember the name of the hotel. Would you like me to check it out for you? I’ve got a few minutes to spare. Sandra is having a nap, bless her.
How thoughtful. I feel relieved (and a teeny bit jealous, for some ridiculous reason) that he mentioned Sandra. It makes our ‘chat’ seem open and honest. Which, of course, it is. Especially as we’re not actually talking. Texting is more casual. Nowadays, it seems a phone conversation is reserved for serious matters. And this isn’t. Is it?
It’s OK, thanks
I text back.
I don’t want to bother you.
There’s nothing for a minute. Then the reply pops up.
I’ve got it! Here are the details. It says online that they still have limited availability. Hope that helps.
He follows this with a link to the hotel’s website.
That’s so nice of you!
I type.
No probs.
There’s a hammering on the door. ‘Mum!’ It’s Melissa. ‘I need the loo and Gran’s in the other. How long are you going to be?’
‘Nearly finished,’ I say, hastily saving Matthew’s number to my contacts and putting the phone in my pocket. I’ll have to book later.
Then I come out. Telling myself that I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve simply been chatting to a friend who has helped me out.
8
Betty
There was so much blood that the doctor called an ambulance. They carried me out on a stretcher and all the neighbours came out onto the street to gawp. It felt unreal, as if this was happening to someone else.
‘I want to come as well,’ said Jock, trying to clamber in after me.
‘There’s no room, I’m afraid, sir.’
Jock’s face went red with fury. ‘I’ll do what I want. I’m her husband.’
‘Rules is rules, sir.’ The driver was actually barring his way. No one did that to Jock in his book. ‘I’ll let them know at the hospital that you’ll be coming.’
The doors shut. ‘Now don’t you worry,’ said the kind ambulance man sitting next to me, taking my pulse. ‘We’ll soon get you sorted out.’
When we got there, the huge sanitary pad they’d given me had soaked right through. ‘It looks to me, love,’ said one of the nurses, ‘that you might be having a threatened miscarriage.’
‘No,’ I gasped. ‘I can’t lose my baby. I just can’t.’
One of the girls on the factory line had miscarried. She was three months gone too. That was last year and she still hadn’t got pregnant again.
The nurse squeezed my hand comfortingly. ‘And you might not. “Threatened” doesn’t mean “definitely”. I’ve seen others who’ve lost more blood than you have and the pregnancy ended up as right as rain. We’ll soon find out when the doctor examines you.’
I began to feel a ray of hope.
‘Are you on any medication?’ she continued.
‘No.’
‘Did you and your husband have sex recently?’
I nodded, my mouth dry, as I watched her write something down. ‘Could that have done it?’ I asked, feeling sick.
She avoided my eyes. ‘There’s one school of thought that says it’s a good idea to avoid intercourse around the time when you would have had a period. It’s been twelve weeks, you say. That would bring it to the third missed monthly.’
‘So it might have brought it on,’ I said.
‘It’s possible. But not definite.’
‘What about if … if my husband was quite rough?’
The nurse gave me a strange look. ‘Is he violent?’
‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘It’s … it’s just his way when we … when we make love. I suppose it was just …’
I stopped, trying to think of the right word. It wasn’t passion. More like him wanting to assert his ownership over me. But I was too embarrassed to say so. So I let the sentence tail away.
Again, she wrote on my file.
Hot tears ran down my cheeks. ‘I just want everything to be all right.’
She took my hand. ‘Look, Betty – I can call you that, can I? Let’s just wait and see what the doctor says, shall we? Ah, here he is.’
I steeled myself. The ‘internal’, as they called it, really hurt.
The doctor’s face was serious when he finished. Just as he was about to speak, Jock came rushing in. ‘Is my bairn all right?’ he panted. He was flushed and sweating, as if he’d been running.
‘I’m so sorry.’ The doctor looked me in the eyes. ‘But it looks like you have lost the baby.’
The tears came instantly, thick and choking. Jock’s eyes were moist too. ‘It’s all right, love,’ he said, taking my hand. ‘We’ll have another.’
‘Miscarriages are very common,’ added the lady in the white coat. ‘They do say it can be nature’s way of … well, weeding out the babes who aren’t meant for this world.’
But I sensed, deep down, that my baby would have been all right if it hadn’t been for Jock. And I hated him for that.
When we got home, I pushed him away when he tried to put his arm around me. ‘This is all your fault,’ I yelled at him. ‘The nurse said that sex can bring it on and you were rough with me.’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he said. ‘That’s typical, isn’t it, blaming me.’
I never dared to criticize him usually but losing the baby had changed everything. I burst into tears.
‘Look,’ he said, holding me. This time he sounded kind and almost sorry. ‘You’re upset. It’s understandable. But we’ll have another. I promise.’
‘They said we have to wait three months,’ I sobbed. In those days, that was the advice they gave. But I gather it’s different now.
‘Then we’ll wait. Now don’t you worry. It will be OK. Meanwhile, we have to get you feeling stronger.’
Jock was as good as his word. It was almost like having another husband. He was thoughtfulness itself, bringing me cups of sweet tea and then telling me not to ‘overdo it’ when I went back to work.
When the first three months were up, he started to make love to me again, but differently. He wasn’t rough. In fact, he was tender. I began to see flashes of the man I thought I’d married. But I couldn’t relax. What if I didn’t get pregnant again, like that girl on the assembly line? Would Jock still be as gentle then?
The following month my period didn’t come. ‘See,’ said Jock, ‘I said we’d hit the jackpot, didn’t I?’
Yet when the doctor’s receptionist rang to say that yes, my pregnancy test was positive, I couldn’t allow myself to become excited about it. Supposing I lost this one as well?
‘No,’ I said to Jock when he tried to make love to me. ‘You might hurt the baby.’
‘That’s rubbish,’ he said.
‘How do you know? I just want to wait a bit.’
As the next month went past and the next and the next, I k
ept putting him off until he no longer asked for it. Perhaps, I thought, he realized it was best for our child. It was what some people thought in those days.
Meanwhile, I was getting bigger and bigger. I started making my own maternity clothes to save money. Already I was worried about how we’d manage when I gave up work. Jock had insisted that I should do that. ‘I’m not having anyone saying I can’t support my family on my own. We’ll just have to watch the pennies.’
And while I knew that this ‘I’m not letting my wife work’ view was old-fashioned, I wasn’t all that sorry. If I was honest with myself, I couldn’t wait to give up my boring factory job. Besides, who else would look after the baby? ‘Don’t expect me to be much help,’ Mum had said when I’d told her I was pregnant. ‘At my age, I need time to myself.’
This sounds hard, but it was only later that I realized how much my parents had been through as children in the war. My mother had lost her little brother to a direct hit during an air raid, although she hardly ever spoke about it.
Even so, I couldn’t help wondering how Jock and I would make ends meet. We’d been living on tinned spaghetti and toast since the last electricity bill. Then, when I got to five months pregnant, Jock was promoted at the factory again. Looked like Dad had been right when he’d said my husband was ‘going far’.
A month or so later, I signed up for the free course of antenatal classes being run by the midwife at the surgery. I went along, feeling very shy and scared. The baby was really kicking away now. It felt both weird and amazing!
‘I felt the same way with my first,’ whispered the pretty blonde girl who sat next to me on the floor, each of us on our mats with a large diagram of a lady’s insides in front of us on a screen. ‘But you’ll soon get used to it.’
‘Thank you,’ I whispered gratefully.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Betty.’
‘I’m Jane.’
She had a gentle voice. She sounded quite posh, but not in a stuck-up way.
‘I had a miscarriage before this one,’ I said, without really knowing why I was confessing this.
‘Poor you.’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘I had one too. I know what it feels like. But we’re all right now. It usually happens in the first three months.’ She patted her stomach tenderly. ‘And we’re well past that, aren’t we?’
The ‘we’ made me feel really warm and happy.
This woman who was so kind, became my first – and only – real close friend. Before long, she asked me round for coffee and I met her four-year-old daughter. Alice was a beautiful child with long blonde hair swept back with a velvet hairband. She chatted away incessantly. ‘You’re big like Mummy! Have you got a baby hiding in your tummy too?’
How I longed for a little girl like her! It was almost painful. Deep down, I’d always wanted a daughter. I would be so much kinder to her than my mother was to me.
‘Why don’t we do that spin-the-ring test?’ suggested Jane. ‘You take off your wedding ring, thread a piece of cotton through and get someone to hold it over your stomach. If it goes round in a circle, you’re having a girl. If it goes back and forth, it’s a boy.’
‘Does it work?’ I ask.
‘It did for me last time!’
We tried it on each other. Mine showed I was having a girl. Jane’s a boy.
‘Perfect!’ said my friend, giving me a hug.
A tingle of excitement shot through me. Not just because I was (if the test was to be believed) going to have a daughter, but also because I had a friend to do things with. Most of the girls from school I used to meet up with at the Wimpy bar had moved.
Jane only lived about fifteen minutes away (in a better part of town), so we often went for walks together or took Alice to the local playground. It seemed a miracle, I thought, as we took turns to push the swing for this happy, smiley little girl, that I was growing a baby who might be just like her. I simply couldn’t wait.
My natural shyness, especially after leaving school, meant I’d never clicked with anyone from the factory either. I didn’t mind too much then – most of the girls on the assembly line were all so rowdy and confident and different from me – but now I was pregnant it was nice to have someone like Jane around. Because she’d already had a child, she was able to reassure me about all the questions I had – such as whether one should really go for a ‘natural birth’ as the midwife suggested or whether it was ‘cheating’ to have all the drugs on offer.
‘I didn’t have time when Alice was born,’ Jane had already told me. ‘It all happened so fast. I just made do with gas and air, which seemed to work for me. Don’t worry. You’ll be all right when it happens.’
Then she patted my hand. ‘I’m so glad we’ve met,’ she said. ‘I got a bit unhappy after Alice and … well, I don’t have any of my old friends any more because they didn’t really understand.’
‘Why were you unhappy?’ I asked. ‘Weren’t you excited at having a baby?’
‘Yes. I was. But … oh it’s difficult to explain. Anyway it probably won’t happen again.’ Then she linked her arm through mine. ‘We’re going to have such fun bringing up our babies together, Betty. I just know it!’
Oh, Poppy. If only I’d walked away right then and never seen her again.
Central Criminal Court, London
‘You had “simply been chatting to a friend” who had helped you out,’ said the barrister.
Poppy Page goes a deep red, which clashes with her auburn hair. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I was at the end of my tether and Matthew’s suggestion of a hotel meant there was one less job for me to do.’
‘And did you arrange to meet him there at this hotel?’
‘No.’ She says this firmly and loudly.
The expressions on the jurors’ faces are mixed. Many appear to be sceptical. One or two look sympathetic. But all are expectant. Poppy Page’s fingers are fiddling with the chignon knot at her nape. Tendrils of hair are escaping onto her crisp white collar.
‘This wasn’t the first time you’d been at a hotel together, was it? As we’ve already heard, the witness Jennifer Lewis saw the two of you going up to the fourth floor of a hotel after a Christmas party held by the Association of Supporting Artistes and Agents?’
The barrister says the name in a slightly disparaging way, as if the association is not to be taken seriously. The law can be very good at looking down its nose at others.
‘Yes. But that was totally innocent. We’d both had to stay the night because of the weather. And we were in separate rooms.’
‘You booked separate rooms, certainly,’ says the barrister. ‘It doesn’t mean that you stayed in them.’
‘But we did.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘What relevance does any of this have?’ she blurts out.
‘I’m coming to that in a moment.’
Poppy Page is really hot and bothered now. Interestingly, the defence counsel is sullenly silent, as if she accepts that Poppy has to endure this line of questioning. Either that or she isn’t doing her job properly. (It happens. People assume the law is above reproach. But there are incompetent barristers as well as untrustworthy clients.)
The prosecution barrister, on the other hand, is positively glowing. She has the court in her hand and she knows it.
‘So can you tell me, Mrs Page,’ she continues in a voice that might seem almost chatty if it were not for the underlying insinuation, ‘is it true that the deceased was indeed waiting for you at this second hotel – this time in Worthing – after you had visited your father on the Sunday after the Christmas party?’
There is a taut silence.
‘Please answer the question, Mrs Page,’ repeats the barrister.
When Poppy Page finally speaks, she sounds as if she is being slowly strangled.
‘Yes. But I didn’t arrange it.’ Her face goes hard. Her eyes flash. She is spitting out the words as if they were poison. ‘And afterwards, all I wanted was to get that man ou
t of my life for ever.’
9
Poppy
I have checked the train times. If I rush now, I can work in the carriage, get to Worthing early evening and then make Dad a meal. I throw a few things into an overnight bag and scribble down the phone number of the hotel on the kitchen noticeboard in case of emergency.
‘You can reach me there,’ I tell Betty. ‘It’s a different one from usual.’
‘Hope it’s all right,’ she says. ‘I’ve just been reading about some of these places without proper fire regulations.’
‘I’m sure it’s fine. A friend recommended it to me.’
Immediately I wish I hadn’t said that.
‘Which one?’
Is she being suspicious or am I imagining it? If I tell her about Matthew she might jump to the wrong conclusions. ‘Sally,’ I say. Instantly I regret this. But it’s too late now. ‘I’ve got to dash.’
I give both girls a long cuddle, breathing them in. ‘Why have you got to stay away for another night?’ says Daisy.
‘Because Grandad is going gaga, stupid,’ says Melissa.
‘It’s not quite like that,’ I say. Then I look around for Stuart, who had come straight in after our bistro lunch before disappearing again. ‘Have you seen Dad? I need to say goodbye to him too.’
‘I think he’s in his study,’ says Betty, her back to me as she gets something out of the Aga.
Stuart has a little room on the ground floor where he has a desk and shelves for his own private research work. My hand is on the door handle to open it when I hear his voice.
‘That sounds good.’ His tone is different from usual. Perkier. More upbeat. ‘Nine p.m.? Look forward to it.’ Then it drops slightly. ‘Yes. You too.’
I go in. He appears to jump at the interruption and slides the phone into his trouser pocket.
‘I’m off now,’ I say and then, with an air of nonchalance that I don’t feel, add: ‘Who was that?’
