Dark Lullaby by Polly Ho-Yen (ready to read books .txt) 📕

dreaming, I thought that my belly was ripe and domed, bursting with life. I believed I could feel a movement inside me, a dialogue that was only between mother and child, and my hand would fly to my stomach. There was nothing there, of course, and I’d rub the skin there, for reassurance, perhaps. Or was it for comfort?

Then I would remember what happened to Jakob and my fingers would grasp the empty air as though the baby that was never there had been taken from us.

NOW

I rub Mimi’s back gently before I close the car door and climb into the front seat. It’s a huge car. I feel high up sitting in the driver’s seat.

Evie leans over me and swipes at the goSphere sitting on the dashboard.

‘This is the nearest hospital,’ she tells me. The directions emerge from the screen, arrows blinking and pointing across the front window. ‘And I’ve programmed in another address. Go there afterwards – if you can. They might be able to explain to you the stuff that I can’t. I’m sorry that—’

‘It’s too late for that now,’ I cut her off. I manage to keep my voice from collapsing as I tell her, ‘You’d better say goodbye to Mimi – it’ll be the last time that you see her.’

Evie bites her lip and glances down, but then turns back to us.

‘Take care,’ she says meaningfully. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I know it doesn’t make it better—’

Anger floods through me, white-hot and blazing. ‘Don’t you get it? It’s too late.’

‘Did you ever stop to think,’ Evie says, ‘that I acted like I did for your sake, to try to protect you from—’ But I slam the door shut on her words.

I start up the engine and it roars into action. I stare at the road ahead but I can’t help catching the figures of Evie and Jakob in the mirror. Jakob is jumping up and down and waving with both hands, Evie stands stiffly, her arms crossed.

It’s too late. I feel the certainty of those words sink under my skin.

I glance back towards Mimi, her eyes still latched close. She looks so small with Evie’s coat around her.

This is the beginning of the end: this time in the car will be the last that I have with her.

THEN

We started speaking about having a baby in the car coming home from a weekend away and we ended up talking all through the night.

We propped up pillows around us, sitting upright in the nest of our bed, and went over and over the decision that we made, what led us to it.

We remembered what happened to Jakob.

We remembered how impossible it seemed that Evie and Seb were given IPS after IPS and yet it happened.

I told Thomas again about Marie, Leo and Tia.

Finally Thomas told me about Sean. He said he hadn’t spoken about him for so long he almost felt guilty and the longer it went on, the harder it became. His memories of his brother were patchy; what stayed with him more sharply was the period after Sean was extracted. He said it felt like what it was: a hole, a gap, a permanent sensation of missing someone.

‘I’ve imagined us having baby, too,’ Thomas admitted at three o’clock in the morning. The night had gone on so long, we’d been awake for so many hours, the darkness was a companion to us too. It filled the windows and so all we could see through it was our reflections.

As quickly as he said it, he added: ‘But it’s an absolute biological imperative. If I hadn’t thought about it, it would be strange. That’s what OSIP is counting on. That and all the financial pressure to do it.’ We knew if we stayed together and didn’t start induction, eventually we’d be forced out of our nice flat, and I’d be back in that damp, dingy part of the quarter where I had lived when I first met Thomas.

‘Some families keep their children, though,’ I said. ‘There was that person you and Seb worked with. And remember Jacqui, the woman from Jakob’s naming ceremony… her sister. She still has her son.’ And then: ‘It could be us.’

‘If you get through induction,’ Thomas reminded me. ‘You would have to make the decision that you can put yourself through it. I don’t… I can’t imagine…’

‘What?’

‘Losing you. I can’t imagine losing you.’

‘You won’t,’ I said straightaway, although even to my ears my tone sounded falsely reassuring. We didn’t know the exact numbers of women who didn’t survive induction but it happened to enough people that the risk was very real.

‘It worked for Evie,’ I said instead.

‘In the end. That’s another thing they’re counting on. That blind, unshakeable hope that it’ll be different, OK, for you.’

‘It could be, though,’ I insisted. ‘Couldn’t it?’

‘Kit,’ Thomas said in a way that reminded me of a feather falling to the ground. Though it seemed to hurt him to say it, he asked, ‘Do you really want this?’

‘I… I do. But I want you to want it too. It can’t be just me.’

Thomas didn’t answer.

A silence.

There was the smallest stain on the floor that I kept my gaze upon. I’d noticed it as we had been speaking. Though I knew it was impossible, in the dim glow of the bedside lamp, sometimes it seemed to have moved, changed positions, grown larger, each time I looked back at it.

I moved my foot over it so I was covering it entirely and you could not see the wavy edges where it began.

Thomas started to speak; I had to concentrate on pulling my focus back to him.

‘There’s no rush anyway, is there?’ he was saying. ‘Why don’t we just mull it over? See how things are in a month? I feel like I’m playing catch up if I’m honest. I just never expected us to have children. I wouldn’t let myself contemplate that we might. And now, just truly imagining it… well,