‘It does to me.’
This time is entirely different. It’s tender, gentle and achingly lovely. When he enters me and begins his slow circles, silent tears spill from my eyes. Horrified, he freezes and I say, ‘Please don’t stop, Josh. I want this.’
He’s rearing back and out. ‘No.’
With my hands, with my legs, I clamp him to me. ‘Please. Stay in me, stay with me.’
‘But it’s making you sad.’
‘It’s making me less sad.’
‘It doesn’t look that way.’
I manage a watery laugh.
‘Are you sure?’ he whispers.
I cry through it and he kisses my tears, and he says, ‘Amy. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful Amy.’
80
Wednesday, 30 November, day seventy-nine
On Wednesday night when I get home from London, Sofie is even more peaky and pinched-looking than she was two days ago.
‘I can’t eat until it’s all over,’ she repeats.
Panicking, I make a rash threat. ‘If you don’t eat I won’t let you go to England.’
‘If you won’t let me go, I’m never eating again.’
‘Sofie!’
‘You don’t understand, Amy – I’d rather die than have a baby.’
‘You’re not having a baby. I swear to you on everyone I love that you’re not.’
She shakes her head. ‘The flight could be cancelled, the clinic could burn down, the anti-choice people might kidnap me –’
‘Sofie, that’s mad talk! How about if I made you some soup?’
‘Soup is food.’
‘Milkshake?’
‘Food.’
‘What about rehydration salts?’
‘Oh-kay.’
Well, it was something.
Derry won’t be in Ulan Bator next week, but she’ll be in some other far-flung location so she won’t be able to pick Sofie up from the clinic.
‘Who do you trust?’ she asks.
‘Easy. Alastair. But he wouldn’t be right for this.’
And as Steevie and Jana still aren’t talking to me, and Petra never gets time away from the twins, my options are narrowing.
‘What about Maura?’ Derry suggests. ‘Siena? Jackson?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘No. No.’
‘Jackson’s mum?’
‘She can’t.’ She has a special-needs kid, who needs a lot of care.
‘Urzula?’
‘No fucking way!’ That makes both Derry and me laugh.
Doubtfully Derry says, ‘Joe?’
I sigh. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think he’ll lie through his teeth to get out of it. If he, by some unlikely chance, commits to it, he’ll let you down on the day. You’d be a wreck, waiting for him to pull some stunt.’
She’s absolutely right, on all counts.
‘Derry,’ I say. ‘There might be another route. Sofie, she literally isn’t eating. She says she won’t until this is fixed. So could she be said to be suicidal? Because the law says that if a woman is suicidal, she can have an abortion.’
Derry shuts me down fast. ‘They’d keep getting more and more opinions and by the time they’d decreed Sofie really was suicidal, the foetus would be starting university.’
‘Or Sofie would have jumped off a bridge.’
‘Or simply starved herself to death.’
‘Right.’ Well, it had been worth a try.
‘It’ll have to be Neeve,’ Derry says. ‘There’s no one else.’
‘She’s too young.’
‘She’s twenty-two. And there’s no other choice.’
She’s right.
‘And Kiara can stay with Joe,’ Derry says. ‘It’s the least that useless fucker can do.’
‘What’s going on?’ It’s Thursday morning and Alastair has phoned me from London.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Thamy says you’re out of the office on another mysterious skite this afternoon. And you’re taking Monday off.’
‘Thamy rang you? Rang you in London?’
‘And you can’t shout at her. I made her tell me. What the hell is going on, Amy? I mean, I know you’re riding Josh Rowan’s lights out. What can be more exciting than that?’
‘You – you fucking nosy-poke!’
‘I tell you everything!’
‘But this isn’t my secret to tell.’
‘Oh!’ He gets it now, that this isn’t some jokey thing.
‘But, lookit, I might have to tell you anyway. Sofie is pregnant.’
‘Oh, shite.’ Then, ‘Why might you have had to tell me anyway?’
I almost laugh. ‘She hasn’t fingered you as the baby daddy, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’
‘That’s one thing I need never fear. I respect you so much that I’d never do any of your family.’
‘Except maybe my hot sister.’
‘Except maybe her. Yes. And Lilian O’Connell, mother of five, how is sh–’
‘So my skite this afternoon,’ I talk over him, ‘is taking Sofie to a counsellor.’
‘I am genuinely sorry, Amy, for calling it so wrong and for what you and Sofie are going through.’
‘She’s having an abortion in London on Tuesday.’
‘Isn’t that the day of your big Tabitha Wilton thing?’
‘Yeah. So I might need you, Alastair.’
‘I’m there,’ he says. ‘Just tell me when you need me.’
81
Monday, 5 December, day eighty-four
‘Next stop is ours,’ I say.
Sofie, Neeve and I stand up immediately, reaching for our wheely cases, trying to keep our balance on the wobbly train. We didn’t need to get up for at least another three minutes but we’re doing everything ahead of time. We’re almost three hours too early for the appointment, but better to be early than late.
The clinic is in deepest Wimbledon and we kill time in a café that reminds me of the one the losing team in The Apprentice go to. It hurts my heart to see Sofie so young and lost. This wouldn’t be easy, whatever country it was happening in, but it’s worse that she had to get up at the crack of dawn to catch a flight and that she’s having to make her way around a foreign city.
There’s something I’ve back-and-forthed on: I don’t want to load Sofie up with shame, but she needs to be protected.
I swallow. ‘We should use a fake address. We don’t want this to come back on Sofie.’
‘This is bullshit,’ Neeve says.
‘Please, Neeve, not everyone in Ireland is like us. People judge.’
Her tone is placatory. ‘It’s okay, Mum, I get it. I’m just pissed off that it has to be this way.’
The clinic is in a big, ugly house on a busy road. The entrance is around the side. Sofie is visibly shaking and even Neeve looks fearful.
We say our hellos, and a quick glance around the room establishes that there are about eight other clusters of people, different ages and ethnicities. Maybe some of them are Irish, too. No one makes eye contact.
My ‘address’ is an amalgam of those of friends and family. Clues are everywhere and Derren Brown would crack the real one in thirty seconds flat. If only I’d had the foresight to use a fake surname when I made the booking. Medical records are supposed to be confidential, but if someone raided this clinic and published all the details to shame the women and …
God. My hands are sweaty.
‘Y’okay?’ Neeve asks.
‘Yep, sure, yes, certainly!’
‘Sofie?’ A woman in a dress I recognize from Cos has poked her head around a door. ‘Come through.’
‘Can Amy, I mean my mum, come too?’ Sofie asks.
‘No, hon, we’re going to have a chat. It needs to be private.’
Another counsellor. I’m glad. The more counsellors the better, as far as I’m concerned.
Sofie is gone for about an hour and no sooner is she back than a woman in scrubs takes her for her scan. This time I’m allowed to go with her.
‘You’re almost ten weeks, Sofie, just in time.’ She gives Sofie two pills to swallow with a cup of water. ‘If you vomit within an hour of taking these, you must come back.’
Seeing as Sofie hasn’t eaten in days, what are the chances of her vomiting? Very low, I can only hope.
‘You might start cramping tonight or tomorrow morning, but you might not. If you do, take ibuprofen, nothing else. Be back here tomorrow at two p.m. You’ll be here for about three hours and you must have someone to take you home.’