Page 96 of The Spark

‘I’m pregnant.’ My mouth felt dry, stale from sleep. ‘I’ve been... pregnant.’

He shuffled close to me then, grabbed my hand like I was in danger of floating away on an invisible current. ‘You... can’t be, Neve. How can you be?’

‘I did a test. It was positive.’

‘Fuck.’

‘I didn’t know how to tell you.’ My breath snagged in my throat, became a hot coil of pain.

‘Neve,’ he began, but then grew quiet, like there was no language suitable for what he wanted to say.

He was right. There were no words.

We called for advice. They told us to wait, monitor the blood loss, go to A&E if the bleeding got heavy, or if we were concerned.

I am concerned, I wanted to scream at the operator. I am concerned that I am losing our baby, and there is apparently nothing anyone can do about it.

I took painkillers and went back to bed, but neither of us could sleep. I felt clammy and too warm, though whether that was just because Norwich had been experiencing a minor heatwave that week, I wasn’t sure. I turned my face to our primrose-yellow wall, and Jamie tucked himself behind me and stroked my hair. It was all he could do, we both knew that. My body was braced against the violence of the cramps, the dizzying pain of losing what I already loved.

I wanted Lara there, too. I wanted Jamie on one side of me, and Lara on the other. But I knew this crisis belonged to me and Jamie. I didn’t want to make him feel like he wasn’t everything I needed in that moment.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked, voice muddy with emotion. I was glad, for once, that I couldn’t see his face.

‘I didn’t know . . . if you’d want it.’

‘God, Neve.’

‘What would you have said? If I had told you.’

The slightest breath of hesitation, warm against my neck, though he didn’t break from stroking my hair. ‘I would have said... “Wow, we made a baby, and I’m... absolutely terrified. But I’m also happy. It’s the scariest kind of happiness I’ve ever felt.” That’s what I would have said.’

It was everything I’d hoped for. He would have wanted it too, and the cruelty of what was happening struck me all over again.

Though dulled by the painkillers, my back and stomach were still cramping. I tried not to think about what my body was doing, entirely without permission.

‘This isn’t fair,’ I gasped then, emotions rip-tiding through me.

He kept stroking my hair. It was helping, that gentle, repetitive motion, like a constant whisper, I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.

‘This felt right to me. Even though... it was a surprise, it felt right, Jamie.’ I couldn’t stop thinking about the surge of joy I had experienced when I turned that stick over.

‘I love you,’ he whispered then. ‘We’ll get through this, Neve. I promise. We’ll get through it together.’

An image of his mother that night at the restaurant drifted uninvited into my mind, and in that moment, I realised I hated her. For having tried to buy my complicity. For her lack of solidarity. For having, in her darker moments – I was sure about this – wished this loss on me.

It was ironic, I thought, that I’d been so envious of Jamie’s family for all the years I’d known him. Like pressing my nose up against a misty window at Christmas time, desperate to soak up some of the warmth and contentment and intimacy I’d imagined they all shared.

But I knew now that he’d been raised by a monster, and he didn’t even realise. Even my own mother – a woman the police had once threatened to section – would never have done to anyone what Debra did to me that night.

For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for Jamie. For the lie he’d been sold on the loving family unit he thought he was part of, which turned out to be so fragile it had malfunctioned at the merest hint of pressure.

The next morning, I bumped into Lara in the kitchen. I was clutching a hot-water bottle. My eyes were raw from crying.

Jamie had already left the house. He’d felt bad about it, but he had a seminar on climate classification he said he couldn’t afford to miss.

Lara didn’t even need to ask. She just looked at me, and I nodded, then burst into tears.

She took the day off from uni and made me chocolate pudding for breakfast and we put on Gavin & Stacey and curled up on the sofa together. Her at one end, me at the other, our legs entwined, the pads of our feet touching.

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