‘Mr Arnold?’ I rise effortlessly, as though in a dream, and take a step towards him. ‘Will my baby be okay?’
There is something about the shape of the back of the doctor’s head that makes me pause mid-step, and halts my progress across the room. There is a spot of black in the glorious technicolour haze of my happiness and, as I gaze at the width of his shoulders and the uneven balance of his stance, it spreads, like black ink on a wet watercolour. My fingers twitch at my sides as if they’ve developed pins and needles after hours of sitting on my hands. My thighs twitch too, then my shoulders, my calves and my feet. My body is waking whilst my mind still snoozes and I feel a sudden compulsion to run but why would I? My child is here. She needs me.
‘Mr Arnold?’ I say again. ‘Is it bad news? Is that why you won’t talk to me?’
Yes, I have sensed that what he is about to tell me is bad news and my body is preparing itself for the worst, it is trying to shake my mind out of its soporific slumber.
For a couple of seconds the consultant does nothing and I wonder if he has heard me then his shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath and he turns to face me. I don’t immediately recognize the grey eyes flecked with blue, the large nose and the wide, thin mouth because I’m thrown by the thatch of grey hair, the deep lines around the mouth and the heavy stubble that covers his top lip, jaw and throat.
‘Hello Suzy-Sue.’
The shudder that goes through me speeds from my head to my toes then explodes back again and I shake violently, as if the temperature has dropped by forty degrees.
I thought I was ready for this moment. I thought I was old, strong and resilient enough not to be affected by the sonorous timbre of his voice but it’s as though I’ve stepped into a time machine and I am twenty-three again, hiding in the wardrobe, quaking as he walks from room to room, calling out my name. I take a step backwards, instinctively pressing a hand to my stomach, to hide my secret, to cover what is no longer in my womb. James notices and the blank expression he was wearing morphs into something else. His lip turns up in a sneer, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flare and then the revulsion is gone, replaced in a heartbeat by a wide, natural smile. I blink several times.
‘Hello Sue,’ he takes a step forward. ‘How’s Charlotte?’
The mention of my daughter’s name is all I need to snap out of my shivering stupor and I spring to her side, my hand on her shoulder, my eyes on James as he moves to the foot of her bed and unclips her notes and flicks through them making small uh-hum noises as he scans the pages. On the last page he purses his lips and shakes his head.
‘I’m no doctor but, even to me, the prognosis doesn’t look good. Unless I’m very much mistaken your daughter is minutes away from death.’
‘Get out.’ I say it as calmly and steadily as I can and point at the door. ‘Get out or I’ll—’
‘Press this?’ James steps nimbly to the other side of the bed and thumps the taped emergency button with his fist. ‘Oh dear, it appears it’s broken. The NHS do try hard but honestly, their equipment just isn’t—’
‘I’ll scream then.’
‘You could do that,’ he places a hand on Charlotte’ pale neck and drums his fingers slowly and deliberately on her pale skin, ‘but she’ll be dead by the time you pause for breath.’
Lying on the bedside table beside him is Oliver’s pile of National Geographic magazines with my best hairdressing scissors on the top. If I threw myself across Charlotte I could reach them but James would still get to them first.
‘There you go,’ he says, misreading my silence. ‘There’s no need for histrionics. No silly screaming, no heroics. Not that you could move quickly enough for heroics.’ He removes his hand from my daughter’s throat and sculpts a beach ball in the air. ‘You always were on the chubby side but you’re veritably matronly these days.’
‘Childbirth, was it?’ He glances at my daughter and I suppress the urge to leap across the bed and tear out his eyes. ‘Did carrying your ugly spawn around for nine months turn you into a fat bitch or did you mainline cream cakes and butter?’
James laughs and I am glad he’s gone straight for a verbal assault. My fear was that he’d wrong-foot me by being charming and apologetic. Still I say nothing. I’m waiting for the sound of footsteps or chattering voices in the corridor so I can scream for help but the wing is unusually quiet, there’s not so much as a squeaky trolley or a slamming door.
‘She’s not as gargantuan as you but it’s only a matter of time.’ His eyes are still on Charlotte. ‘I still shudder when I remember those rolls of flab on your back, your stomach, your thighs … how you found someone else who could bear to make love to you, I don’t know.’
‘Is that what you call rape these days?’
‘Rape?’ His dead eyes flick towards me. ‘Rape implies taking something of virtue from someone innocent but you were never innocent were you, Suzy-Sue? You were a dirty slut who’d been putting it about for years.’
‘No, I wasn’t. I was a normal twenty-something who’d had a handful of boyfriends and a few one-night stands. I wasn’t a party girl or wild or unusual or dirty or used goods or any of the filthy things you called me.’
‘The truth hurts, Suzy-Sue.’
‘But it’s not true.’ The words spill out of me and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. For twenty years these thoughts have blistered and festered inside me, dying to be spoken. I tried to block them out but the more I ignored them the stronger they grew. No wonder they spilled into my dreams. ‘None of it was true. You tried to make me feel ashamed, James. You tried to make me regret the life I’d lived because you couldn’t accept that I’d had a life before you. But most twenty-somethings don’t come with a blank slate, James, no matter how much you might wish it, they are who they are because of their past.’