The Child(78)

I don’t know what to say without betraying myself.

“Emma, was there anyone you think might have had something to do with burying the baby?” she asks. Her voice is all soft and hypnotic. Willing me to speak.

The word “baby” is ricocheting round my head. Baby, baby, baby.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “It upsets me too much.”

“What does?” she says.

“The baby,” I say.

“Alice?” she says.

“No. My baby,” I say.

I start rocking gently on the wall. Soothing myself like my mother used to do to me.

“Your baby?” Kate asks. “What do you mean?”

I think I wanted her to ask. I wanted to tell. I wanted to let it out. She could be my razor blade.

“I got pregnant when I was fourteen,” I say.

“God, you were still a child,” she says and she takes my hand as if in absolution. I thought when I finally confessed, there would be shouting and recriminations, but the world doesn’t stop turning. We are still sitting on the wall and the smokers carry on waving to drivers.

“Shall we go somewhere to talk?” she says. “You must be getting cold. The Royal Oak is just round the corner.”

I shake my head. I can’t bear the thought of other people.

“Or we could sit in my car?” Kate suggests as if she understands. Maybe she does. I don’t know why, but I trust her to understand.

In the car, she starts with gentle questions, asking if anyone else had known. Had Jude or Barbara Walker known?

I shake my head.

And she says: “How did you keep it a secret? You must have been so scared.”

There’s no judgment in her tone, just empathy. She isn’t telling me to stop talking about it like Harry. She doesn’t think I’m mad.

I want to tell her about the lies and hiding my pregnancy in big jumpers and I know she will listen.





SIXTY-FOUR


    Emma


SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2012

At first, I couldn’t believe it,” I say. “I told myself you couldn’t get pregnant from one time. Told myself periods came and went at my age—all the agony aunts in the magazines said so. Told myself I’d counted the weeks wrong. Told myself I was putting on weight because I was eating too many sweets. Told myself the fluttering in my stomach was anxiety over exams.

“But my body was telling another story.”

Kate puts her head on one side. “Oh, Emma,” she breathes.

“When the sickness started, I thought I had food poisoning. My mum had had it and I’d looked after her. But mine didn’t get better and I was retching most mornings, turning on the taps in the bathroom so no one could hear me and spraying the room with deodorant so they couldn’t smell my disgrace.”

I turn to Kate. I need her to know that I wasn’t a stupid girl. I was a bit of an innocent about boys and sex, but I wasn’t stupid.

“I know it’s hard for anyone else to believe—especially now, when sex is everywhere—but even though I knew what was happening, I thought I could will it away. I didn’t consider an abortion or drinking gin in a hot bath. That would’ve meant admitting it was real.

“I believed I could stop it by the power of thought. I would ‘get better,’ as if it was just an illness. I hadn’t even worked out when the baby was due to be born. It wasn’t going to happen.”

Kate shifts in her seat beside me and rummages in her bag for a tissue and hands it to me. I hadn’t realized I was crying.

“But Emma,” she says, “how did no one notice what was going on? It must have been so obvious.”

“Well, they didn’t. I didn’t let them. I led a double life: Emma the schoolgirl and Emma the girl who’d got herself in trouble.

“But it couldn’t last. The truth was battering down the door, demanding to be acknowledged, like a madwoman in the attic. I suppose it was a kind of madness.”

“You must have been out of your mind with worry. And at that age. How did you cope?” Kate says.

“I don’t know, now. But it’s when the dread started, that overwhelming feeling that the world is about to end.”

“But what about when your pregnancy started to show?” Kate says.

“That was the worst part,” I say. “I couldn’t bear to look at myself in the mirror. My stomach wouldn’t stop growing. I wrapped it tightly in scarves and I wore big jumpers and I stayed in my room, away from friends and family, saying I needed my own space. I was terrified they would see and know.

“Sideways, I was sure you could tell, so I became obsessed with always standing head-on with my mum, Jude, and I stopped hugging her. I could see she was hurt when I pushed her away, but I couldn’t risk it.”

I can’t stop talking now. Now that I’ve started. And I tell Kate how I took my meals upstairs to eat. “Jude wasn’t happy but her boyfriend, Will, told her not to make a fuss. He was glad to get me out of the way. And as my stomach grew, I piled more food on my plate to throw away later so I’d have an excuse for my weight gain.”

I was so resourceful. My quick brain spotting the dangers.

I almost feel proud of my child self. I would have got an A grade for deception.