The Love of My Life(59)

‘It’ll be OK,’ they kept saying. ‘You’re amazing, Emily, you’ll get through this!’

They were lovely. They also had no idea what they were talking about. I was four months pregnant and alone.

As the shower passed over us and moved inland, I stood up and told them I was fine.

They went back off to their prawns and blennies, their crabs and their whelks, reiterating the meaningless things people always say: I was ‘amazing’ and ‘brilliant’ and ‘stronger than I knew’.

I singled out Jill, who was far away with her hand plunged into a freezing pool, and scrambled over the rocks.

‘I’m seriously thinking of doing it,’ I said, when I reached her. ‘Of saying yes.’

Jill abandoned the top shell she’d been examining.

‘I really would be there for you if you decided to keep the baby,’ she said. ‘Seriously.’

‘I know. And thank you. But I think I want them to have her. I want her to have a good life, Jill. I want more than anything for her to be happy. And I don’t think she would be with me.’

‘Really?’ Jill’s voice was sad. ‘You really don’t think she could be happy with you?’

‘I don’t. No.’

After a long pause, Jill took my wet, cold hand in her own wet, cold hand, and nodded.

We stood there, surrounded by kelp, watching cloud shadows stripe the shore. And for the first time in weeks, even though tears were falling soundlessly down my cheeks, I felt something that might be hope.





Chapter Thirty-Seven


After I said yes to the Rothschilds, I began the obligatory counselling and interviews. I filled in forms, I shared medical records. I made cheerful jokes with everyone and anyone, and when they dried up I’d head back outside, walking up and down the shore at St Andrews, fractured and craving anaesthesia.

Janice kept a respectful distance in the first few weeks, but eventually asked if I’d like her to call to check in from time to time. And I did want her to. She and Jeremy were the only people who actually wanted me to be pregnant. Who had some idea of what I was going through, and what lay ahead.

She had the local greengrocer deliver me fruit and vegetables every week, and sent me a book about pregnancy, along with a maternity coat, as if she had somehow been there the day my bump had burst through my zip. She always seemed to know the right moment to send chocolate, or a pair of pyjamas.

She lifted my mood. She listened.

She offered to take me maternity shopping in Edinburgh. It wasn’t a bad idea, but it intimidated me. This semi-famous woman, this stranger, who wanted to be the mother to my baby. What would we say, without the safety of a phone? Would there be excruciating small talk? Or would she want to discuss things I couldn’t quite fathom yet, like how and when to hand the baby over? Would the agency even approve of us meeting?

The problem was, I was exhausted by then, sick of doing it alone. I didn’t want to talk about marine ecosystems or who was shagging whom on my course, I just wanted to talk about foetal movements and pelvic girdle pain and which girls’ names I liked most.

So I said yes.

Janice took me to John Lewis in Edinburgh and bought me a maternity pillow. We went for lunch in a proper restaurant. She bought massage oil and iron supplements. She put me on the train to Leuchars at the end of the day and told me I was a bloody brave young woman and should be proud of myself.

‘Please come again?’ I begged, as I boarded the train.

She smiled and said of course, as if it were no bother to travel hundreds of miles. And she did, the very next week. And the week after.

I looked forward to her visits. She was becoming a friend.

I had made the right decision. I knew that, even in the middle of the night when I was faced with the reality of my body, with the miniature human beginning to kick and tumble. She would have a better life with the Rothschilds. Not only were they good, kind people, they were ready for her, and I was not.

Granny called often to try to make me change my mind, even though she knew it was pointless. She sounded defeated every time we ended a phone call, and my grandmother was not the sort of woman to sound defeated.

She gave up eventually. We agreed I’d go and stay with her for the summer when my second year finished, and I’d have the baby in London in early September. Then I’d stay at her house until I felt ready to rejoin my coursemates in St Andrews for our final year. She even had one of her toy boys paint the spare room for me.

Sometimes, I would wonder if Granny was actually right – that we could, somehow, do it together. Or I would think about what Jill was still saying, which was that we could muddle together to bring up a baby in our little student house. Vivi, our housemate, stayed up all night smoking pot and talking to her boyfriend in Korea – she’d be able to do the night feeds, no problem! But when I woke, and heard Jill entertaining some man in her bedroom, or spoke to Granny on the phone and heard her age in every word she spoke, I knew it was hopeless. Jill was twenty. Granny was eighty.

In the Easter holidays Janice invited me to stay at their place in Northumberland, so I could ‘relax’.

I had never forgotten how beautiful it was down there, with those enormous sandy beaches and endless rock pools and castles jutting out from the coast like dreams. I said yes.

I arrived in Alnmouth on a bright Wednesday morning in late April. Janice wasn’t due until later, so I let myself in with a key she’d hidden in the coaching arch. A coaching arch, I thought. A coaching arch! The house I had inherited from Dad in Plymouth was barely wide enough to accommodate a front door.