After the End(81)

It takes an age for Blair to sign her name, and fill out her address in neat block capitals. There is much discussion about whether blue pen is OK, or whether it should have been black, and Does this look like an “M” or an “N” to you, but finally it’s done. Mom and Blair disappear back upstairs—It was great to meet you, Blair. And you—safe travels!—and I go back out onto the porch with Pip. She’s kept her cab running—there was never any danger of her wanting to stay longer. We hug again, and now this one really might be the last one ever. I want to hold her forever, but we both pull away because from now on that isn’t how this works. There’s no house anymore, no child.

There’s no us.





thirty-six





Pip


   2015


I sit on the loo and stare at the Perspex window on the test in my hand, on which my future is written in unarguable capitals.


PREGNANT.



I lean against the wall of the cubicle and let out a breath. There’s no point in doing another test. My work shirt strains across my chest, and my body aches with a tiredness that’s more than work fatigue and jet lag. I knew a week ago, but I didn’t want to believe it. I told myself I was imagining things, that my body was translating anxiety into phantom symptoms.

Pregnant.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit . . .” I moan under my breath, my heart racing. What am I going to do? I can’t have a baby—I can’t risk loving a child so completely again, I can’t risk losing them again. But what’s the alternative? How can I end another life, after everything we’ve been through?

We fell the first month, with Dylan. Max pretended to be disappointed—I thought I’d at least be able to enjoy the practice runs—but his excitement was bolstered by that innate sense of pride men feel when they manage to achieve the very function they’re biologically engineered to do. It’s curious how important it is to them; how they imagine they have control over their sperm, and that, when one of their little wrigglers successfully impregnates an egg, it is entirely down to their own prowess as a man.

I did that test alone, too, already certain I was pregnant. Sore breasts, nausea, a dull ache in my abdomen. Even the fabled metallic taste, like a two-penny piece was lodged beneath my tongue. I wrapped up the test in a linen napkin and set the table for dinner à deux. Cheesy, I know. Worth it, though, for the look on his face.

Pregnant.

There’s so much I need to do. I need to tell Max, of course. He’ll be thrilled. He’ll see it as a fresh start, a new chapter. I need to ring my mum, who grieves so much for my lost motherhood. Nothing could ever make up for losing Dylan, but a new grandchild . . . my parents will seize upon this as a sign that everything is going to be OK. I need to tell work. Airline policy says cabin crew should be grounded as soon as they know they are pregnant, to reduce the risk of anything going wrong.

I stare at the pregnancy test. I think of the linen napkin, the table laid for two, Max’s naked joy as he realised what he’d unwrapped.

And then I open the sanitary bin beside me and drop the test inside.

I leave the cubicle, wash my hands, and join the rest of the crew to take the transfer bus to the car park.

“You all right? You look a bit peaky,” Jada says, as we stride through Terminal One with our wheeled cases in our wake. I am both desperate to get home—to take off both my uniform and my smile—and terrified of being there.

“I think those prawns last night were a bit off.”

“I did tell you.”

We ate at a lobster shack last night in Vegas, and both Jada and Ethan steered clear of the prawns, which Jada had convinced herself looked “funny.” They were perfectly fine—delicious, in fact—but if my current pallor can be attributed to a bad seafood meal, that suits me.

On the bus, I stare out of the window, unsettled by a sudden bout of nausea made worse by bumpy suspension, and run to my car on the pretext of wanting to get ahead of the traffic. “Text you later!” I call to Jada.

I sit in rush-hour queues regardless, my eighty-minute commute stretching to two hours. I’m glad of the delay, of the thinking time, but soon the silence becomes too much, and I flick on the radio. I have a sudden memory of my nightly drives back from PICU, and of my near-obsession with Bringing Up B. I feel irrationally guilty that I stopped listening, that I abandoned B and her family, and have no idea how they are, what they’ve been doing for the last three years. As I crawl forward I find the latest episode and connect the car Bluetooth.

For the first ten minutes, I am all at sea. Where is Bridget’s dad? When did they get a dog? Who are these people? They are strange yet familiar, like the new cast members of a soap opera once watched avidly. I listen to the soft voice of Bridget’s mum, and gradually I piece together the events I have missed. Eileen and B’s dad have separated. I have missed the trauma, the shock, the reasons why. I have come in on act three, in a new status quo now too normal to be noteworthy, and I wonder how much blood was shed to get there. I wonder what my own normal will be, three years from now.

“B chose a cake with Dixie on it,” comes the voice through my speakers. “Which is why, at eleven o’clock at night, I’m trying to cut sponge in the shape of a dachshund, and wondering why I didn’t present her with easier options.”