Swimming Upstream

21

I made my decision to leave England on the night of Uncle Silbert’s funeral, as Tim slept, as I lay in his arms and looked out of the open curtains at the moon, full and bright and beckoning, like another planet waiting to be explored. I hadn’t yet formulated a plan, but I realised now that this was what I wanted - to go to France, first of all, and then maybe to travel for a while. As strong as my desire to stay with my friends, to feel safe and secure, was the need to begin the process of self-definition, away from everything and everyone who wanted me to be something that I wasn’t at all sure that I was anymore. But there was something I had to do first.

The following day I waited until the lunchtime show was over and then knocked on Sandy’s door.

“Lizzie, come in,” said Sandy. He immediately put down his pen and papers and jumped up, as if he had been expecting me. He ushered me into a sofa next to his desk, and sat down in an armchair opposite me. He folded his hands in his lap and waited for me to speak.

“I need to leave,” I said. “I am so sorry. But I have to go away.”

Sandy’s face fell. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this. “Really?”

“Yes. I’m sorry,” I said again.

“Is there anything I can do? Anything to persuade you to change your mind? You are a great asset to us Lizzie. You are very talented. In fact, I had had in mind that you might be interested in taking on the role of News Editor.”

“News Editor? Really?” I was astonished, overwhelmed. I contemplated this for a moment, then shook my head, sadly. “I’m sorry,” I said, for the third time. “And I am really very grateful. But I can’t accept. I’ve made up my mind. I have to go.”

“I’m the one who is sorry,” said Sandy. “Sorry to lose you.”

“Thank you. That means a lot.”

Sandy smiled, and shifted a little uncomfortably in his chair. “You know, you could take some leave. And then think about it. Take a holiday, take a sabbatical. If that would help.”

I considered this for a moment, then nodded. “It would.”

“All right,” said Sandy, looking relieved. “Good. That’s settled then. When do you want to go?”

“Well my contract says three months…”

“We won’t hold you to that. Not if you need to go sooner.”

“Is eight weeks enough notice?”

“That will be just fine.”

I hesitated. “Actually, there was something else. Something else that I think would help, that is. You mentioned, once before... I was wondering if you could, in fact, put me in touch with someone. You know. To talk to.”

Sandy nodded and stood up. “Of course.” He went over to his desk, thumbed through a book and wrote a name and number on a piece of paper.

“There,” said Sandy. “It’s a man. Is that alright?”

I thought about this for a moment. “Yes.”

“I’ll call and let him know you’ll be in touch.”

“Okay.” I stood up and started to walk out of the door, then turned back, walked over to his desk and kissed him on the cheek. Sandy looked a little taken aback.

“Thank you for everything,” I said. “And, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologise,” said Sandy. “Not for anything.”

He stood up and took my hands and held them for a moment.

“Thank you,” I said, again.

In mid-July Lynne phoned to tell me that her contract was ending early. I put most of my belongings in storage and moved into the house with Zara, Shelley and Tim. I had researched and found a list of guest houses in Paris and was ready to find a flight and book my ticket. But something strange was going on. Gradually I noticed that I couldn’t eat or drink certain things, things that I had always liked before. I couldn’t face my dinner in the evening, or the smells of Shelley’s cooking in the kitchen, wafting into the hallway and up the stairs. I found that I was getting home from work each afternoon and going straight up to bed, exhausted, where I’d sleep for ten or eleven hours. And then one morning, a few weeks after I had moved into the house, and just as Zara had finally stopped throwing her guts up, I started throwing up myself.

I knew immediately whose baby it was. I also knew immediately what I was going to do; I was going to keep it. Lord knows it wasn’t what I had planned. I was supposed to be travelling, leaving England with no ties, no anchor, with nothing to stop me making and amending my plans from one moment to the next. Having children wasn’t even on my radar. But as Zara said, life changes direction and you just have to go with it. I knew that there was no other option for me.

Zara was over the moon when I told her.

“Now you can’t go travelling,” she said, excitedly. “You’ll have to stay. We can bring them up together. They could be sisters! Or brothers! Or brother and sister!”

I smiled, and said, “We’ll see.”

After the initial shock had worn off, Tim too was pleased. “I know this wasn’t what you planned. And I know I wasn’t part of your plan. But I want to be there for you and the baby. We can do this together,” he said. “I’ll be there for you every step of the way.”

“I don’t know, Tim,” I told him. “I just can’t think beyond the next five minutes. We’ll have to talk about this another time.”

The sickness floored me. I was unable to think about anything for several weeks, except for how to stave it off. By then, fortunately, I had left the radio station, and I had the luxury of being able to crawl back to bed in the daytime and stay there for most of the day. I still had the money from Jude’s parents, sitting in my investment account but I didn’t want to start dipping into that just yet. I put an advertisement in the paper to sell my car.

Zara went out for bananas and Weetabix - they were all I could stomach, along with the mashed potatoes Tim made me each evening, or at different times of the day, depending on his shift. Zara sat on my bed and held my hand and chatted happily, and made plans for us both and our babies, while she flicked half-heartedly through the daytime TV channels on an old portable black and white TV that Clare had left behind.

Once a week, I dragged myself out of bed to see my counsellor. I had had been seeing him since the start of the summer and it was helping beyond belief. When the session was over I was both physically and mentally exhausted. I would walk back to the house, climb back into bed and intermittently cry and throw up but I was happy in a strange, sad and ironic way. I knew that the counselling was necessary, not just for me but for the baby too. I had come to believe firmly in the principle that what you don’t hand back, you hand on. I soon realised that I wanted this child more than anything, and that I didn’t want its legacy to be one of anything but love.

In contrast to me, Zara was full of energy. I had noticed how bubbly she was, how happy and how many plans she had for us and the babies. It had vaguely crossed my mind that it could be mania setting in but I had dismissed that as cynical. For the first time in her life, she had everything she wanted. She was feeling well for the first time in weeks, now that the hormones had settled down. Why wouldn’t she be happy?

But one morning, when she hadn’t come in to see me as she usually did and I had got sick of the sight of my bedroom walls, I dragged myself downstairs to find her sitting in the living room drinking tea alone. I poured myself a cup, sweetened it and sat down opposite her. I noticed she had dark shadows under her eyes.

“You okay?” I asked her.

Zara nodded, and said nothing.

I looked around the room. The dust sheets had been cleared away, a carpet had been laid and the room was now habitable. Zara’s canvases were now tacked to the walls.

I looked at the Rose and said, “I know how you feel.”

“What?” said Zara. “What do you mean?”

“Not you, the Rose. Wilting. Sick.”

“Oh.”

Someone outside the window caught my attention, a man with a bald head, wearing a beige Macintosh. Zara had spotted him too. I heard Shelley running down the stairs and opening the front door.

“Who was that?” said Zara, jumping up and pulling back the curtain.

The front door slammed shut and there was a male voice in the hallway. Shelley poked her head round the door. “Lizzie, there’s a man here to see you. He says he’s come about your car.”

Zara frowned. “Who?” she said. “Who is it?”

“Oh okay,” I said. “Tell him to come in.”

The man in the Macintosh walked in and I waved him into a chair. “Sorry,” I said. “I’m not feeling the best. You saw it outside, right? I’ll get you the keys.”

I stood up and went to find my handbag.

The next thing I heard was Zara’s voice, screaming, “Get out!”

I rushed back into the hallway and collided with the man who was backing out of the living room with his palms up in front of him. I noticed that the back of his head was red and wrinkled and then I saw that so was his face. He looked astonished.

“What’s going on?” I asked him.

The man shook his head and pointed at Zara. “Her,” he said, in a thick cockney accent, his chin wobbling. “She’s barking.”

I poked my head round the living room door to see Zara, crouched in her armchair as if she were about to pounce. She was scowling, and her eyes were dark.

“What is it?” I said to Zara. “What’s wrong? What did he do?”

“He shouldn’t be here,” said Zara, defiantly, glaring at the doorway.

“What do you mean? What did he do?” I asked. “Did he hurt you?”

“What are you talking about?” said the man from behind me. “I never went anywhere near her. She just started shouting at me. She’s off her head.”

“Get out!” screamed Zara again. “Get him out of here!”

Shelley came thundering down the stairs. “What’s going on?” she said.

“I don’t know.” I turned to the man in the Macintosh. “I’m sorry, I think you had better leave.”

“You have got to be joking!” said the man indignantly. “I ain’t done nothing. I’ve just come all the way from Enfield. I’m a busy man. You ‘ain’t even gonna let me look at it?”

“Here,” I said, spotting my car keys lying on the telephone table in the hallway. I picked them up and thrust them at him. “Help yourself. Front nearside brake light’s out, handbrake needs attention, rear bumper slightly scratched. Other than that it’s in good nick.”

“No!” yelled Zara. “Don’t. You can’t!”

“Can’t what?” said Shelley, and ran to Zara and put her arm round her. Zara shrugged her away.

“Don’t let him near your car. He’ll bomb it!”

“No, Zara, listen,” I said, grabbing her hands, and bending down in front of her. “He’s a dealer. I told you, I’m selling my car. He answered my ad. I knew he was coming. And quite frankly he can do what he likes to it once he’s given me two grand.”

“Don’t take his money,” said Zara. “Please. I’m begging you. It’s blood money.”

I heard my car engine revving outside and then quietening as it went off up the street.

“Listen,” said Zara. “He’s taken it.”

“He’s gone for a test drive,” I said.

“He’s evil,” said Zara. “Don’t you see? Didn’t you see his eyes?”

“Oh God,” I said, and looked at Shelley, who gave a vague nod of the head.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Zara swung round and glared at Shelley.

“What?”

“I saw you.”

Nausea started to creep over me again. My mouth filled with water. I sat down next to Zara and rested my elbow on the arm of the chair, my chin on my thumb and my face cradled in my forefingers. Zara turned and looked at me for a moment as if I was a ghost, then jumped up and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” I lifted my head.

“Zara!” called Shelley, at the same time.

Zara turned in the doorway. “You’re supposed to be my friends,” she said. “I saw that, Lizzie. Sticking your fingers up at me, trying to hide it. Don’t think I don’t know that’s what you were doing.” She turned and bolted out of the door.

I looked down at my fingers, confused, and then moved to get up.

Shelley put her hand on my arm. “I’ll go,” she said. “You’re in no fit state.”

She jumped up and sprinted after Zara. I lay back in the chair, fighting back the bile that was rising in my throat.

A few minutes later, I heard shouting in the street outside. I lifted the curtain and looked out. Zara was on the pavement, grappling at Shelley, who was trying to catch hold of her and calm her down. I watched as my car came round the corner. At the same moment Shelley and Zara tipped into the road. My car screeched to a halt in front of them.

I leaped up and ran outside. The man in the Macintosh was getting out of the driver’s side.

“What the bloody hell…?” he said.

“Sorry,” said Shelley, bending over Zara, who had fallen over, and was sitting in the road.

“Is she okay?” I asked Shelley.

“She’s fine,” said Shelley. “No harm done.”

“No harm done!” said the Macintosh man. “What about me? She nearly killed me.”

“Don’t exaggerate,” I said, and added, weakly, “and anyway, at least you know the brakes work.”

“She’s pregnant,” explained Shelley. The man looked at Zara, who was being helped up by Shelley, then turned and looked at me.

“Which one?” he said.

“Both of them,” said Shelley.

“That explains a lot,” he said, and walked round the car to where I was standing. I was leaning against the driver’s side window. Saliva was filling my mouth. I couldn’t move, or speak.

“Okay. I’ll take it. Two grand, right?”

I nodded. The man took out his wallet.

“No!” screamed Zara, shrugging Shelley’s hand from her arm.

“Oh God. Excuse me,” I said, suddenly, and, steadying myself with one hand on the roof of my car, I leaned over the kerb and was violently sick. The man jumped backwards as vomit splashed his shoes. Zara saw her opportunity and made a run for it.

“For crying out loud,” said the Macintosh man, emphasising all his vowels far more than was really necessary.

Shelley called the police. We didn’t know what else to do.

“She’s a danger to herself,” insisted Shelley. “And to her baby. She nearly got us both run over.”

“Okay,” I agreed, reluctantly, as I stuffed a bundle of fifty pound notes into a drawer in the kitchen. I hated the thought of Zara being arrested, being grabbed and held against her will. “If there’s nothing else we can do.”

An hour later the phone rang. Zara had got as far as Faringdon tube station when the police arrived. They had arrested her under the Mental Health Act and she was once again a patient on Strauss Ward at St Barts.

Zara wasn’t allowed visitors until the following day. When I arrived at the ward with a big bunch of flowers, I noticed that the same staff nurse was at the reception desk. She smiled at me in recognition but clearly couldn’t place me. I was just another worried face to her. Whereas to me, it looked as though she lived here. I wondered what it felt like, working here every day, sleeping here at nights, permanently breathing in this hospital smell, this stench of disinfectant and broken lives.

Zara was in bed, curled up in a ball and staring at the wall.

“I got you these,” I said, waving the flowers around. “And I brought your pencils, and your pad. I thought you could draw them. Look at the lilies. They’re really something.”

Zara continued staring at the wall. A tear trickled out of the corner of her eye.

“Zara? Come on sweetie, talk to me.”

Slowly, she pulled herself up and looked at me. Her hair was matted and sticking up like a halo round her head. Her eyes looked red and wild. She picked at a fingernail and chewed it.

“You tricked me,” she said. “You sent the police to get me. I thought I was helping them. I thought they’d come to catch that man. The one who took your car.”

“I’m sorry, Zara. We didn’t know what else to do. And he didn’t take my car,” I said gently. “He came to buy it. He took it for a test drive.”

Zara looked up at me, and started to cry. She sat up and held her arms out to me. “Help me, Lizzie. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t take this any more.”

“Oh, sweetheart, come here.” I put the flowers down on a table and wrapped my arms around her. I sat down on the bed beside her. Zara clung to me and sobbed into my shoulder.

“I can’t do this any more. I’ve had enough. It’s the baby, that’s what it is.”

“Zara, they’ve examined you. The baby is fine.”

Zara looked up, her face pale and blotchy and tear-streaked. “No! You don’t understand. It’s not fine at all. It’s the baby that’s done this to me. I don’t want it. They’ve got to get it out of me. It feels like I’ve got an alien inside me!”

“Oh, come on honey, that’s just the illness talking…”

“No!” Zara started to thump her stomach with her small pale fist. “You’ve got to help me, it’s got to go, it’s got to go, it’s got to go!”

I grabbed her hand and held it firmly. “Stop, Zara. Stop it. Otherwise I’m going to have to call the nurse.”

“So call her. Tell her they’ve got to get me a termination. I don’t want it, I don’t want it anymore.” Zara started to scream.

I held her tight. “Shh, Zara, please. You’re upsetting yourself.”

“Then tell them, tell them!”

I got up and stuck my head out of the room, and looked down the hallway. Zara was scaring me and I couldn’t see anyone around to help. Zara’s voice got louder and louder behind me. I wondered if I should go and find a nurse or whether Zara would calm down again in a minute or two. I didn’t want her to start telling the nurses to give her a termination; I knew that couldn’t be what she really wanted. I wondered if I should maybe go and try and find Shelley, who was at work on the cancer ward. She would know what to do.

Finally, a nurse came walking down the corridor towards us. She spoke gently but firmly to Zara and then a consultant came in too. Zara was alternately screaming and then sobbing and biting her hand. But within minutes she had been sedated and was soon drifting off to sleep.

I watched her for a moment and stroked her hair. Then I bent and whispered into her ear, “It’s all going to be okay, honey, I promise. We’re going to get you better.”

I followed the consultant out of her room. He was a small-framed man, in his early sixties, I guessed. His head was virtually bald, all bar a few patches of white hair, and he had kind eyes behind big thick glasses. I couldn’t help but notice with irony that he had hair growing out of his ears.

“We can’t locate her parents,” he said. “I wonder if you can help? Do you have another contact number for them?”

“No,” I told him. “Only the one she has given you. To be honest, they don’t have much contact with her. I’ve never even met or spoken to them. Please talk to me. I’m her closest friend. I need to know what you’re going to do to help her. You must be able to see that she’s desperate.”

“Come with me.” The consultant took my arm and moved me into a side room off the main corridor. The room had beige plastic sofas with beige plastic cushions to match. A pot of plastic flowers sat on a side table along with a pile of magazines. “We need to stabilise her mood,” he said. “The anti-depressants aren’t enough on their own. What she really needs is a mood stabiliser and an anti-psychotic too.”

“Okay,” I nodded. “That’s great. So that was the problem then? She was on the wrong drugs?”

The doctor looked uncomfortable. He blinked hard with each eye alternately and his glasses moved up and down on his nose. “I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that. We stabilised her mood initially, the last time she left the ward. We prescribed Lithium, and it seemed to be working well. But then when she discovered that she was expecting, we had to stop the medication. Lithium can’t be taken during pregnancy. All the research shows that it can be harmful to the developing foetus. There is no alternative drug that’s effective and safe in pregnancy. So we are in a bit of a predicament. I’m afraid that there is no other way to put this. Zara has a rather difficult choice to make. It’s either her mental health, or the baby.”

“What?” I whispered. “You’re kidding, right?” Even as I heard my voice, I knew that I sounded stupid, that this was no joke.

“She’s a little over eighteen weeks pregnant,” the Consultant continued. “So a termination carries some risks, but it’s not unusual to carry out the procedure at this stage. And in her situation….well, I simply don’t believe that her mental state is going to improve by itself.”

I backed into the sofa and sat down heavily onto one of the plastic cushions.

“This can’t be right,” I said. “There must be another way.”

The consultant shook his head. “I’m sorry.”

“This baby, it’s everything she has always wanted,” I protested. “She’s in a bad way right now but you should have seen her a week ago. A few days ago, even. She was on Cloud Nine.” I stopped and realised how that sounded. Cloud Nine was a dangerous cloud for Zara to be on. “She was so happy,” I corrected myself, as if trying to alter Zara’s mood with my words. “About the baby, I mean. Look, she’s lost one before, and she can’t lose this one too. Please. There must be something you can do.”

“I’m sorry.” The Consultant scratched his head and took off his glasses. His eyes were big and a little bloodshot. He blinked hard several times. “You know she’s saying she doesn’t want it?”

“But that’s just the illness…” I protested. I stopped. “Isn’t it?”

“It’s hard to say.” The Consultant blinked again and I saw that in fact he had a tic. For some reason it made me want to put my arms around him.

Then I realised, suddenly and with alarm, how futile this situation was. I didn’t know which bit of her was in fact the real Zara: the high, happy Zara or the low, tearful depressed Zara. I cast my mind back to try and remember a time when she had been just somewhere in between, so that I had something to go on. I remembered her sitting in the King’s Arms the previous summer, the day we met up again. I remembered her telling me how much she had regretted aborting Doug’s baby. I knew that this could not possibly be what she would choose, if choice was really something that was open to her. But was she well then? Or was that the illness talking too? She had terminated her first baby, after all. I remembered Doug saying that she had been ill and I realised now what he had meant. He hadn’t meant physically. Zara had been unwell long before I had known her.

But even if a baby was what she really wanted, how could she be a mother, how could she raise a child, like this? They had to stabilise her, there was no other way. And to do that, they would have to kill her baby. Once she was stable again, I had no doubt that she would be in pieces over what she had lost. But right now, what other options were there? She could never be a mother to her child, not like this. And she couldn’t stay like this for the next five months, biting herself and crying.

“I get what you’re saying,” I said. “And I know she’ll agree. Right now she just wants to feel okay again.”

The Consultant nodded. “I know this is difficult,” he said. “We’ll talk to her in the morning.”

Then he was gone.

The operation was carried out two days later. Zara gave her consent immediately and without hesitation. And, as I’d predicted, once she was stable and realised what she had lost, she was heartbroken and her grief was hard to bear. I sat on the ward on and off for days, and held her hand while she cried, and I wondered briefly if she would soon begin to hate me for now having what she had lost.

I left for Paris in the autumn. I had just had my twenty week scan, and was told that the baby was a girl. I was over the moon. “I’m so happy! It’s a girl!” I told Tim, on the phone, as if I would have felt any differently if it had been a boy. “Hurrah! It’s a baby!” said Tim. I had called Sandy and told him that I wouldn’t be coming back to work. I packed and finally booked my ticket.

I knew that Shelley thought I was crazy.

“Do you really want to give birth in a foreign country where you know no-one and have no support?” she asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want to do. It may be hard to understand. But I want this new start. And besides, I’ll make friends.”

Both Zara and Tim knew that there were deeper reasons why I needed to go, and both of them accepted my decision. Zara was stable and Tim and Shelley had promised to look out for her.

“Don’t worry about me,” said Zara. She had recovered surprisingly well and appeared to be accepting with grace that this was her fate and the fate of her unborn child. “I’m going to make it, you know,” she told me.

I held her tight. “I know,” I said. “I could have told you that.”

Tim had borrowed a car from a friend at work and he took me to the airport.

“So,” he said, after I’d checked in, and we were stood at the gates to the departure lounge. “You’ll keep in touch? Let me know when the baby’s born?”

“Of course.”

“You know I will be there for you. Be a proper dad to her. If you change your mind. You know?”

“I know,” I said.

“Call me. Any time. Night or day.” He looked at me, blinking back tears.

I looked back at him and nodded. “Thanks.”

“So,” he said. “How does it feel?”

I smiled. “It’s like the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you jump out of an aeroplane.”

“Never done that,” said Tim.

“Me neither,” I said, and shuddered. “But I can imagine.”

“And …. Don’t do that by the way,” said Tim. I smiled. “You don’t have to go,” he added, one last time. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t say, “You could come with me.” Because we both knew that this was a journey I had to make alone. For a moment we stood by the gate, looking at each other and smiling. Then I kissed him, and took hold of my trolley and said, “Goodbye Tim.”

“Just you?” said the flight attendant, taking my passport and boarding pass.

“Just me,” I smiled, and walked through the gate. Just me and my baby.