December EIGHT YEARS BEFORE

December

E IGHT YEARS BEFORE

9.00 A . M .

‘Madeleine Woods?’ the doctor called from the open door of the consulting room. Madeleine identified her by the stethoscope hanging like a shiny success symbol around her neck. She bet the woman wore it everywhere – the supermarket, swimming pool ...

‘Yes, hi.’

She grabbed her bag and walked in, glad to be progressing from the crowded waiting room, where she was sure she could almost see the germs and bugs swirling in the stuffy, overly warm air. Happy, finally, to be away from the motley snivel-nosed crew who occupied the chairs placed uncomfortably close to each other around the walls of the square room.

‘Sorry for the wait. I’m Doctor Khan. What can I do for you today?’ Dr Khan indicated for her to sit while asking the question and taking her own seat at the desk, in what was clearly a well-rehearsed routine. The only clue to the hectic pace of proceedings was her rather hurried tone.

‘I’m not feeling great. I have stomach pain and I feel sick and just a bit ... bleurgh!’ She shrugged.

‘Okay.’ The doctor gave a condescending smile, clearly underwhelmed by her description. ‘And apart from today, I can see you’re usually fit and healthy.’ The doctor scanned the questionnaire she had filled out on arrival.

‘Yep. I’m never ill, never taken a day sick from work.’

‘Could you describe your stomach pain? Is it sharp, or gripping, or an ache?’

‘Erm ...’ Now it wasn’t quite so acute it was hard to put into words. ‘All of the above, I guess ...’

‘Right, I think it best you pop up on the couch and let me have a look at your tum, is that okay?’

‘Sure.’

‘Just ease your jeans down over your hips and pull up your top.’

The doctor tapped into her keyboard and, with precision timing, turned as Madeleine assumed the position and lay on the narrow couch lined with paper, her jeans pulled down and her top up. Her neon-pink knickers made quite the statement. The doctor however didn’t seem to notice and laid her hand on the base of her stomach, pushing slightly.

‘Does that hurt?’

‘Not really. A bit, maybe.’

‘When was the date of your last menstrual cycle?’ The doctor studied her face.

‘Not sure.’ She tried to picture when she’d last bought tampons. ‘I’m on the pill and so it’s never heavy, and I don’t always have a proper period, but ...’ She tried and failed to recall when she had last bled.

‘Is there any chance you could be pregnant?’ the doctor asked softly.

Madeleine sprayed her laughter into the atmosphere and felt instantly embarrassed.

‘Erm, no, absolutely none. I’m not in a relationship and haven’t, you know, seen anyone for a while. Not for five or six months, maybe a bit longer.’

She tried to do the math, already logging the detail in her mind for retelling to her flatmates later – this would make them howl! Her having to admit that she was experiencing a sexual drought while in her prime – oh, the shame of it! The simple truth was that she was too focused on working her jobs and too exhausted of late to put herself out there. Falling into bed alone was, in recent times, her preferred option. Jimmy was the last person she had slept with. Sweet, good-looking Jimmy, who had drawn her a picture of a cottage with a sodding duck pond on it!

‘I think it might be worth doing a pregnancy test, just to make sure. Won’t take a minute, you just pee into—’

‘Yes, I know what to do, but there’s really no point.’

‘As I say, just to make sure.’ Dr Khan’s voice was clipped.

It would be hard, she figured, to find a woman of her age who had not partaken in this ritual. There had been a moment a couple of years back when she and Quentin the dentist had spent a drunken weekend at his brother’s wedding, only for her to remember that she’d forgotten to take her pill. The sweet, sweet relief at the sight of the ‘not pregnant’ message was a gift. Thinking about it now, it might have played as much a part in her decision to bin him as the feeling that he was a right Tom Pepper.

‘Right, hop off the couch, the bathroom is next door. If you could pee into this cup.’ The doctor tapped the small plastic tub no bigger than a shallow shot glass and left it on the table.

‘I will, but I mean, I’m not pregnant. There’s no way I can be, so—’

‘Let’s just exclude it then as a possibility, and we can have a think about what comes next.’ The woman avoided making eye contact and Madeleine wondered why she had bothered coming here in the first place. It was a complete waste of time. What she had hoped for was a quick diagnosis, a prescription to ease her tum, and – hey presto – back to work!

She opened the door of the exam room to the expectant eyes of everyone in the waiting room, feeling her face turn puce as she made her way into the small bathroom with her pee cup in her hand. The collective sigh of disappointment that she was not freeing up the doctor for her next appointment was almost audible.

‘This is a joke!’ She closed her eyes and tutted as she did her best to manoeuvre the impossibly tiny cup under her stream of pee. She half-filled it and soaked the cuff of her sweater in the process. ‘Perfect!’ She ground her teeth.

Doing her best to ignore the eyes that now followed her from the bathroom back to the consulting room, she held her cup of pee aloft and marched in.

‘Pop it on the table, please.’ The doctor indicated and donned plastic gloves before removing a strip of some sort from its protective foil wrapping and popping it into Madeleine’s hastily collected, still-warm pee.

‘I don’t think it’s food poisoning. I mean, it could be – our kitchen’s a bit grim. But yesterday I only had a tuna sandwich and a banana at work, then toast and Marmite when I got in, and three oranges which I thought might be going off. But when I woke up, I also felt as if I’d hit a wall – like really tired, too tired to stand up and get cracking, which is not like me at all, and—’

‘Madeleine,’ the doctor interrupted her nervous babble and sat in her chair, leaning forward. Joining her hands on the desk in front of her, she took her time, as if knowing that what she had to say would need to percolate. ‘Your pregnancy test has come back positive.’

‘Positive?’

There was a split second where she couldn’t remember if positive was a good thing or not. Did that mean she was pregnant or not? Not that she could be, it just wasn’t possible. It was as if her mind skipped a beat and, as the room spun, she knew that if she weren’t sitting down, she might well have fallen over.

Positive?

Positive!

‘That’s ... no, erm.’ She felt a little winded. ‘That’s not possible.’ It was embarrassing how this so-called professional could have got it so wrong. She gave the doctor a wide-eyed smile, showing she was friendly and wasn’t about to kick off when the obvious error was revealed.

‘I know that sometimes this news is surprising, a shock, and it will take you a while to wrap your head around the situation before you can figure out what comes next.’

‘Mwhae ...’ She tried to respond, but what left her mouth was more of a garbled groan than tangible words.

‘Do you have support, Madeleine?’

She pictured her mum and dad going about their day. Her mum, so pleased to have heard from her earlier. And Trina, her best friend, who she hadn’t seen for a few weeks. In that moment she missed her more than anything, this wrapped in the guilt she felt over sleeping with Jimmy, swiftly followed by a wave of regret.

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s good, it makes processing this news easier when you have a support network.’

‘I need to go to work. Umm ...’ Her thoughts were jumbled and she was finding it hard to take a full breath. ‘Are you sure ?’

‘Yes.’ Dr Khan’s tone was unwavering, her gaze steady. ‘I think, given the length of time since you had sexual relations and the uncertainty about your last cycle dates, it would be a good idea for you to have a scan.’

‘Right.’ She suppressed the desire to laugh, waiting for someone to jump out of the cupboard and tell her she’d been pranked real good!

‘I can organise that right now. What would be your local hospital?’

Instantly, she pictured her childhood bedroom and felt a longing to be right there, under the duvet, with her dad whistling in the bathroom as he shaved his face before bed, and her mum’s laughter floating along the hallway from the lounge while she watched her quiz shows and the re-runs of Friends that she so loved.

‘Newham would be my local hospital.’

‘Righto, let me get a message to them and I’ll give you a slip of paper to take along and then you just turn up at the pregnancy clinic and they’ll direct you where to go for an ultrasound.’

Pregnancy clinic! It was so bizarre. Again she wanted to giggle.

‘Right now?’

‘Yes, if you just make your way there.’ The doctor’s tight-lipped smile suggested it was a matter of urgency. ‘They’ll be able to tell you how far along you are, how things are progressing, that kind of thing.’ The doctor coughed.

What kind of thing? she wondered, as she walked from the surgery with the slip of paper in her pocket and headed for the Tube. She texted her manager, a picky woman called ‘Suzy with a Y!’ When Madeleine had done this very impersonation to Luciano, he’d replied, ‘Yuzy? That’s odd!’

She laughed now at the memory as she walked along the street, head down, doing her best to avoid the morning crowds all trying to get somewhere, and all, it seemed, heading in the opposite direction to her. Her laughter unexpectedly turned to tears as she trembled with fear.

It felt surreal. Her world was unravelling and yet it felt like a dream. Her legs felt oddly detached from her body. Staring at her feet, she did her best to concentrate on her steps, knowing this was key to staying upright, not thinking too hard or letting her worries run ahead.

‘I don’t know what’s happening.’ She whispered under her breath. It felt as if the world turned quickly while she had slowed. It was odd and unnerving. She did her best to keep her pulse steady and not pay attention to the bombs that exploded left, right and centre in her thoughts, blowing up her plans, shattering her dreams, and knocking her life so far off course she felt entirely winded by it.