I remember Marcus behind the steering wheel, how he forced us against the side of the lane like a bully, his eyes fixed and unseeing.
My phone starts vibrating on the table, shifting around like an upturned beetle. It’s Jess. I hold it in my hand. I’m not sure if I’m in the mood to speak to her; she always knows when something’s up and I don’t feel like justifying myself. Just as I decide not to answer, a pain like being simultaneously bitten and kicked in the abdomen jolts through me, and I call out, ‘Oh, Jesus!’, as I fall to my knees. The shock sucks the air out of my lungs, my arms fold around my belly, as if all this pain needs is a good, reassuring hug. My right hand, still clutching the phone, mashes the screen. I must press the answer button because I can hear Jess’s voice in miniature, shrunken on the line, asking, ‘Ali? Ali? Are you there?’
I call out again as another clash of pain rips through me. It feels like I’m being eaten alive. I can hear Jess calling for me – ‘What’s happening Ali? Are you there?’ – and I let out a groan that becomes Jess’s name and I look down at the phone, and with a shaky finger press the speaker button. My kitchen is filled suddenly with all the life in Jess’s kitchen. There’s music in the background, something with Spanish guitars. Tim must be on the phone or have someone over because his laugh, deep, resonant and usually so reassuring, echoes through the receiver and into my ear.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Now it sounds mocking.
Ha! Ha! Ha!
‘Ali? Alice?’, and then Jess pauses and says, away from the receiver, ‘For god’s sake, Tim, will you shut up? Something’s wrong with Ali’, and I let out another moan as the pain starts to feast deeper inside.
Tim always listens to Jess; the laughing stops immediately and the Spanish guitars are snuffed out as well. Bob comes to see what’s the problem. His black seal-head hangs low. He sniffs me uncertainly. I’m frightening him; all this noise is frightening him.
‘Ali, is it happening again?’ I was at Jess’s house when I had the sixth one; she recognises the groans. All I can do is grunt confirmation and try and whisper, ‘It’s OK, Bob. It’s OK.’
Refusing to hang up, Jess calls David from Tim’s phone to tell him he needs to go home. He’ll be a little over an hour she tells me in a breathy voice she must think is controlled, reassuring. Jess wants to call an ambulance but I yell out, ‘No, no ambulance’, and she knows I mean it, she wants to drive over, but it’ll take her almost as long as David at this time and, besides, I know this battle and I need it to be a private one. Between gasps of air, I persuade her she’s more help on the phone.
The only clear thought I have is that David mustn’t find me squashed and wailing on the kitchen floor. It’d upset him too much. So slowly, like a maimed animal, I pull myself up on the cutlery drawer. Bob’s tail starts cautiously wagging. Still bent over double and now holding the phone towards my stomach so Jess’s voice is muffled, I stagger to an old woman stoop and shuffle to the spitting hob. The meat is ruined, cooked through from one side, the skin carbonised. Tiny sprays of fat leap from the pan and sting my face. I could weep at the waste, but there’s no time. I know I don’t have long to get to our bathroom before another spasm. I turn the hob off and using the wall for guidance I pull myself upstairs. It starts again just as I get into our bedroom, forcing me to bend over as my abdomen is ripped to shreds, but it doesn’t quite wind me and I make it to the bed, tossing the phone down on the duvet, Jess reminding me in an authoritative voice to stay calm. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at my feet as I puff air in and out. Labour breath comes instinctively even though I never made it that far … never had the lessons.
After a few minutes, I think I’m strong enough and stand again, my body shaking like a taut string, my skin slick with sweat, and, grabbing the phone, I stagger faster this time, more urgent, to the drugs cabinet in the bathroom. I kept some morphine back from last time, as if I knew in my marrow this would happen again. I swallow a couple of pills and then feel the first falling away deep inside me, a detachment in that deep middle-belly space, the horrifyingly familiar sensation of being turned inside out. I manage to sit on the toilet as the blood comes quickly and focus on the pain that in a few months would have been happy, welcome pain, but now is just an agonising reminder of a truth I’ve refused so many times and I hold my head and I let myself cry.
This is how David finds me, hunched on the toilet, my face puffy with sorrow. He doesn’t ask any questions, not now. He sees the morphine, which is now kindly distorting, softening everything for me.
He picks up my phone. Jess is still on the line; he tells her he’s home, that I will be OK. She reminds him, like I asked her to, to call Kate’s to tell them I won’t make my night shift before he hangs up. He cleans me, puts me in pyjamas, all the while he’s telling me it’s going to be OK, that he’s here now, that he loves me.
He carries me to bed and lies behind me, spooning me, and it’s only then I feel his body tense and release, tense and release, as he sobs, and I want to turn to hold him but the morphine is too strong, and I let go and fall deeply into a violent, chemical sleep.
When I wake, there’s just a twisted strudel of bed sheets next to me. I sit up.
‘Hi, Ali,’ David says gently. He’s pulled the armchair over towards the bed. His face is swollen from lack of sleep. I feel as if I drank two bottles of heavy red wine the night before, a headache like a gathering storm pounds just behind my eyes. The cramps have quietened to dull thumps in my lower abdomen. My tongue is sticky, so I reach for the water but David intercepts.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks as he hands me a freshly poured glass.
I find I can’t answer, and just gently raise my shoulders, shaking my head, I don’t know how I’m feeling; I haven’t been able to place myself just yet.
‘Why didn’t you tell me, Ali?’ His face messy with lines and confusion.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out all night – why you didn’t tell me. I …’ He hangs his head.
I feel my heart crack as he starts shaking his head. I move forward, across the bed, and put my hand in his curls, trying to soothe him as best I can, when the pain, like a memory from last night, ripples through me, and all I can say is, ‘I’m sorry, David, I’m so sorry.’
He moves to sit on the bed. I fold around his torso, and he wipes his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.
‘I’ve been thinking, I’ll have a vasectomy to stop this from happening. I can’t go through it again, watch you suffering, me totally incapable of doing anything to really help …’