‘No,’ I said. ‘My period’s a week late. I need a pregnancy test.’
I was terrified as I sat on the closed toilet seat, the pot of my urine and the small white stick on the lip of the bath beside me. Two years ago I would have been over the moon if James had got me pregnant but now I was shaking with fear. I was still clinging desperately to the hope that the memory of my ‘infidelity’ with Steve would fade and James would get bored of having me around and let me go. But not if I was pregnant. If I was carrying his child he’d keep me prisoner for at least nine months.
‘Well?’ he burst into the bathroom. I hadn’t shut the door, there was no point.
I held the paddle up to him and said nothing.
‘Two blue lines?’ He frowned. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘That I’m pregnant.’
I stepped up my attempt to escape the next time he left the house. The first thing I did was rip out a number for an abortion clinic from the Yellow Pages and stash it in the one thing that hadn’t been destroyed when James trashed my sewing room – the secret drawer in my table. I tucked it away with my diary and my savings and then searched the house for a way out, going through every drawer, every tin, every cupboard and every wardrobe looking for something, anything to help me. It took five days before I discovered the mink coat stashed at the back of Margaret’s wardrobe. I could barely breathe as my fingers stroked something small, cold and metallic in one of the pockets. A key. A door key. She hadn’t been out of the house alone for years but maybe someone somewhere was smiling down on me and it would fit the front door. I didn’t have a chance to find out because the front door slammed open as I closed my hands around the key. Panicking, I shut myself in the wardrobe and hid, as best I could, behind the mink coat. James’s footsteps reverberated throughout the house as he climbed the stairs.
‘Suzy?’ he shouted. ‘Suzy, where are you? I can’t smell dinner cooking. Have you been watching TV all day, you lazy bitch?’
‘Suzy?’ The landing floorboards creaked as he crossed towards the sewing room, then again as he made his way back. ‘Suzy?’
The footsteps grew louder. He was in the same room as me. I held my breath, sure my thudding heart would give me away then, ‘Suzy?’ James’s cry was quieter, he’d gone back down the stairs.
I crept silently out of the wardrobe, pushing the key deep into my sock before I left, and hurried down the stairs.
James looked up in surprise as I burst into the living room. ‘Where the fuck have you been? I looked for you upstairs. You weren’t there.’
‘Attic.’ I gestured at the dust on my cheek (swiped from the top of one of the shoeboxes in Margaret’s wardrobe). ‘I remembered your mum saying she’d stored your baby clothes up there and went to have a look.’
‘You did what?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I pressed my hand to my non-existent bump. ‘I just wanted to make things nice for the baby. I thought we could turn my sewing, I mean, the spare room, into a nursery. I thought it was a nice thing to do.’
‘But …’ James’s face returned to its normal colour and his jaw softened, ever so slightly. ‘I didn’t see the step ladder. The hatch was shut.’
‘I closed it,’ I said, my hand still on my belly. ‘I didn’t want to risk tripping and falling through it. I didn’t want anything to happen to the little one.’
It made me feel sick, talking like that, like we were all going to play happy families and waltz off into our perfect primrose-coloured future but the ‘baby’ was the only Achilles heel James had.
He looked at me for a second, his eyes flicking from my face to my belly and back again. He knew I was lying but he so desperately wanted to believe.
‘Don’t do it again.’ He waved a hand for me to leave the room. ‘What’s in the attic doesn’t concern you. If the baby needs anything I’ll be the one that provides for it.’
‘Okay.’ I felt the key press into my ankle, hard and reassuring as I turned to go, ‘I’ll go and get tea on then, shall I? It’s turkey stir-fry tonight.’
I left the next day. I watched from the spare room window, the curtains open a millimetre, as James left for work, crossed the road and stood at the bus stop. Terror ripped through me as he glanced up at the house but then he looked away again, down the road. Thirty seconds later he stepped onto the number 13 bus and was gone.
I flew through the house, jamming clothes, toiletries, a nightie, a towel and food into a bag. I had no idea how long a private abortion would take or how long I’d have to be in the clinic. I didn’t know anyone who’d had an abortion so had no idea what it would cost, never mind entail but I didn’t want to think too much about the latter. I already hated myself for what I was planning on doing. As for the cost, I just had to hope that ￡600 would be enough to cover it and get me a cheap flight abroad because, if James ever found out what I’d done, I needed to be as far away as possible.
I was standing in the sewing room, the diary and advert in one hand, a pile of notes in the other when I heard it – the sound of a fist thumping on glass. I threw my secret spoils at my bag, tossed a paint-stained sheet over it, crept onto the landing and pressed myself up against the banister. The noise was coming from the front door. Had James come home early? I dropped to my stomach and inched my way across the landing. If I could just get to the top of the stairs I’d be able to see.
I shuffled forwards slowly, freezing each time there was another knock. I was almost there when the metallic clatter of the letter box made me jump. I peered down the stairs. A white card lay on the front mat. A ‘sorry you were out’ card from the gas man.
Thirty seconds later I was on my feet again, this time with my bag in one hand, the key in the other, and speeding down the stairs.
‘Please,’ I prayed as the tip of the key jiggled against the lock. ‘Please fit, please fit, please—’