I didn’t believe him at first.
I made him repeat it. Then made him check the file, convinced he was reading the results from someone else’s notes. But it was true.
Doctor Doom even got me to lie on the bed and scanned my tummy. He pointed out a tiny speck on the screen and said it was our embryo. The contents of your sample pot and my egg, grown together in a lab, had been successfully implanted in my womb, and it was there on the screen. Alive and growing inside me.
You missed it.
You arrived in the reception of the clinic just as I was leaving, and when you started trying to explain, I told you not to bother. I’m sick of hearing you talk about your work as if it’s the only thing that matters. You make shit up for a living and your agent sells it. I think it’s about time you all got over yourselves. The producers, directors, actors, and authors you tell me stories about sound like a class of spoilt children, and I don’t understand why you indulge them, or their temper tantrums. You’ve been truly hornswoggled by at least one of them, even if you are too blind to see it.
I’m sorry. I hope you never find this letter and in the unlikely event that you do, I didn’t mean what I said. I’m just hurting too much right now; and that hurt needs somewhere to go. It breaks my heart sometimes, the way you give these people all of your time and save none of yourself for me. I’m your wife. My stories are real. Does that make them not worth listening to?
I wanted to get the Tube, but you insisted we take a cab. I refused to speak to you for the first half of the journey. I’m sorry for that now, too, but I’ve never been one to wash my dirty linen in public. I do wish I’d told you sooner, though. We could have been happier for longer than we were.
I didn’t tell you until we got home. I’d already laid the kitchen table with a linen cloth – an anniversary should always be celebrated – but my face gave the news away when I took a bottle of champagne from the new Smeg fridge. Renovating the house has helped keep me busy and take my mind off other things. The ground floor is finally finished, and I’m proud that I did most of the work myself: sanding floors, plastering walls, making roman blinds – it’s amazing what you can learn just by watching a few videos on YouTube.
You cried when I told you I was pregnant. I cried when I showed you the scan. Having dreamed of that moment for so long, that black-and-white image was the only thing that made any of it feel real. Because you weren’t there to hear it, I kept worrying that I might have imagined what the doctor said.
‘I hope it’s a girl,’ I whispered.
‘Why? I hope it’s a boy. Let’s rock paper scissors for it.’
I laughed. ‘You want to play rock paper scissors to determine the sex of our unborn child?’
‘Is there a more scientific way?’ you replied, with a serious face.
My scissors cut your paper, just like always.
‘You let me win!’ I said.
‘Yes, because I don’t really mind whether it’s a boy or a girl. I’ll love them either way, but I’ll always love you more.’
You opened the champagne – I only had a small glass – and we ordered a pizza.
‘I didn’t forget our anniversary, by the way,’ you said, gorging on your third slice of Pepperoni Passion an hour later.
‘Is that so?’ I asked, sipping lemonade from a champagne flute.
‘I struggled with the linen theme, and this morning I was worried I’d bought the wrong thing—’
‘So give it to me now. Then you’ll know.’
You reached inside the leather satchel I had given you the year before, and handed me a square parcel. It was soft. I’m normally so careful when I unwrap things, but I was aware the pizza was getting cold so tore at the paper. There was a linen cushion inside. It had my name stitched on it along with the following words beneath:
She believed she could, so she did.
I tried not to, but I cried again. Happy tears. It felt as if you’d already known I was pregnant. You believed in me, even when I wasn’t able to believe in myself.
I was about to thank you, when I looked up and noticed the strange expression on your face. You were staring down at my legs and when I followed your gaze I could see why. A thick trickle of bright red blood had made its way right down to my slippers. When I stood up in panic, there was more.
According to the first doctor we saw in A&E, I wasn’t pregnant long enough to call it a miscarriage. The gynaecologist who examined me next was a little more sympathetic, but not much. Looking back now, I wish I’d never told you at all – you wouldn’t be able to grieve for something you never knew you had. And I’m sorry and broken enough for both of us.