Chapter Twenty

PAULINE was vacuuming when James opened the door, but her bright smile faded the second she saw Lorna, pale and shivering, beside him.

‘James, I’ve got the most terrible migraine,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have to go home.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘I’ve put the dishwasher on.’

‘That’s fine, Pauline,’ James said, relieved that she was going. This ten years overdue conversation didn’t need an audience.

‘It’s not fair.’ Lorna sat on the sofa and said it again. ‘Why couldn’t our baby have lived?’

‘Because it couldn’t,’ James said sitting beside her, holding her frozen hands. ‘Because it didn’t…’

‘I know it was ages ago, I know I should be over it, I am over it.’ She screwed her face up as she tried to explain. ‘I just…Seeing that little baby…’

‘We all feel it,’ James said. ‘And it isn’t fair, because we’d have loved ours so much.’ And the tears started then, but they were different tears from her usual ones. Her usual tears were silent and frequent, a little river that flowed easily, while this was like a dam bursting, an outpouring that had even James wondering if she would ever stop. He held her body as she cried, not just for the little baby this morning but for her baby, for their baby that they’d never even got to hold.

‘I don’t even know what it was. I didn’t ask, I didn’t.’ She was bent over double on the chair and he was holding her shoulders, had been for the last hour now.

‘A girl.’ James said, because ten years on they could finally talk about it. ‘It was a little girl that we lost.’

And it was nice to cry together, horrible and sad but nice. It was good to hold each other and weep for their little girl who should be dashing off to school right now, who would have been so very loved if only she had lived. It was good, James thought, to be able to say it, to let Lorna know that he really had cared, that it had made him bleed too, but on the inside.

And even if they thought she’d never stop crying, of course Lorna did, beating the dishwasher to the end of its cycle, in fact. She let James hold her and listened to the noise of his empty house the gurgle of the dishwasher draining. Lorna was just being for a moment instead of thinking, until James spoke.

‘I love you Lorna.’ She froze in his arms, wished he wouldn’t say it. ‘I always have and I always will.’

‘You said you didn’t.’

‘No.’ He would say it this time, would tell her what he’d tried to all those years ago. ‘I said in a row that I felt trapped, and I did feel trapped, because I was twenty-five and we’d barely started going out and your parents insisted we marry. I did feel trapped, because you lost the baby and then you hated me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ James countered. ‘You just lay on that couch and looked at me as if you hated me.’

‘No.’

‘Yes!’ James insisted, because she had. ‘And then we’d row and then you dragged it out of me that I didn’t love you on our wedding day. Hell, Lorna, I didn’t know you on our wedding day and,’ he admitted, because he was going to be honest now, ‘I didn’t know how to love you once we lost the baby. I’ll tell you when I realised I loved you. The minute you walked out that door, the second I lost you, I realised how much I loved you, only you didn’t want to hear it. You went back to your parents and let them brainwash you some more.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ James said, but this time she was adamant.

‘No,’ Lorna said again. ‘I did go back to Scotland and I stood up to him. I told him I wasn’t a whore because I’d had sex out of wedlock, I told him what a good man you were and that divorce wasn’t a sin—that it just didn’t work out.’

‘You said that?’

‘Yes.’ And he held her tight because he knew how hard that would have been. ‘And I believed it too. We didn’t speak for years after that. But, James…’ Oh, this was hard, this was so hard. ‘I loved you so much, I loved you from the first day of medical school and I set my cap at you that night.’

‘Lorna.’

‘No, listen. That night I dressed for you, I put on make-up and perfume and I set out to get you to notice me.’

‘Lorna!’ He halted her then, stopped the rotten legacy her father had given her in its tracks. ‘That’s called flirting. That’s what people do when they like each other. You’re not some witch who cast a spell on me that night. I was crazy about you too.’

‘I didn’t expect it to be so-o-o…’ She screwed her face up as she tried to explain. ‘I never thought it would be so much, that we’d want each other so much!’

And even if it was jumbled, he did understand. Because they hadn’t just flirted, they’d connected that night, connected at a level James had spent the last decade trying to recapture. They’d entered a world where they spoke in a new language, cracked the code, discovered new colours. His twenty-two-year-old virgin had unlocked the door and unleashed a tiger, and she blamed herself for it.

‘I set out to hook you that night and I did, and I got the prize—you married me for the baby, and suddenly there wasn’t one. You did marry me for the baby, James.’

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘But I also believe we’d have got there in the end anyway.’ He felt the shift in her then, could almost see the mist clearing as she stared back at their past and took away all the hurt and pain that had led them to this. ‘I’ve never been happier than you made me, Lorna.’ And now ten years on surely he could say it. ‘And I’m sorry we couldn’t talk about the baby, but we are now, and there will be others.’ It was the worst thing to say to a woman who had lost a child, but this was ten years on, he knew that. Surely it was okay now, but seeing her stricken face he could have kicked himself for saying it. ‘You’re thirty-three, Lorna.’

‘There’ll be no others.’ And out it came. If she’d been upset before it was nothing to this. ‘He said my sins would catch up with me and I didn’t believe him. I know that I did nothing wrong, I’m a doctor for God’s sake, but that year, that horrible year, when I went back to the doctors each time, I felt as if my sins were catching up with me. Adhesions from my appendix, endometriosis…I’m a mess inside, James. There won’t be any more babies.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do!’ Lorna sobbed. ‘Because I can’t live with the pain, and in four weeks’ time I’m having a hysterectomy.’

And it was out and she’d said it and he was still holding her.

He never wanted to stop holding her—here in his living room, his head felt as if it was imploding. There was a tumble of regret, of anger, about wasted, wasted years and wasted, wasted futures, about the damage that had been done, not just this morning to the baby they had fought to save but to the woman he was holding in his arms now. He knew she was spent now, knew he needed to think before he rushed in and said the wrong thing, so instead he stood her up and said the only thing he knew that she wanted to hear.

‘Bed.’

He gave her his nice man kiss, a little kiss on the forehead that told her he knew she was tired, drained, utterly exhausted. He took her upstairs, unbuttoned her coat, took off her clothes and his own. He pulled the duvet over and pulled her into his arms and held her, didn’t say a word as it all sank in. He held her the same way he had the night her father had screamed at them and told her she was a slut and a whore, the same way he had the night she’d come home after losing their baby.

Their little girl.

Lorna was thinking about her too.

‘Is she the L on your keying?’

‘She’s the one,’ James said.

‘Lily.’

There were no tears left, just relief at being able to finally mourn her and the shrivelling sorrow for the baby that had died today too. Then there was James, his hand low on her stomach as if somehow he loved it—adhesions and endometriosis and missing Fallopian tube and all.

As if somehow still he loved her.