Suzie Havilland sat on a train to Waterloo and tried to stop a sob as she took a deep breath. She was remembering what happened on her way to the train station: such an idyllic moment. A mother with her beautiful toddler girl, the bright pink cheeks, a giggle as she kicked the carpet of copper leaves in the weak September sun. She was just adorable. Her blonde curls bounced out of her turquoise woolly hat and shone in the sunshine as she squealed in delight.
The mother bent over her, poked some curls back into her hat and then took her phone out of her pocket. She started swiping.
Suzie had sat at the red traffic lights and stared at them. She took a short, sharp breath and felt the familiar tightness in her throat. Why wasn’t that mother looking at her child?
I would never stop looking at her.
A car horn had honked behind her and she had jumped. She looked in her rear-view mirror. A bloke in a silver Audi was mouthing ‘stupid woman’. And then the tears. She pulled away from the lights as the salty liquid travelled down her cheeks and made its way across the fine wrinkles, her laughter lines – oh how funny – to the edges of her mouth.
She drew in to the kerb and yanked on the handbrake, turned the engine off. She placed both hands in her lap and took a deep breath. The silver Audi whizzed past her at speed and blasted its horn, making her shudder. She sat staring for a while at her cherry red manicured hands in her lap then, calmly, opened the door and got out.
She shivered as a watery sun shone on her. She had her eyes on something else and wasn’t bothered about the freezing air around her. As she walked toward the swings, she could hear a gleeful cry from the little girl pushing herself with her feet backwards and forwards, the sun streaking across the rubber flooring of the playground. The hat had been thrown off; the little girl’s golden hair was flying out behind her as she swung up and down. Laughing, squealing in delight.
Suzie walked over to a bench and sat down. The mother was nowhere to be seen. Suzie glanced around, worried for the little girl. She was just about to leap up and look for her when the mother appeared.
The mother took hold of the swing and started pushing the toddler, who giggled. ‘Higher, Mummy, higher!’ Little dimples formed in the toddler’s cheeks as well as the flush of pink from the chilly day. Suzie was mesmerised by her: she watched as she lifted up both her legs on each swing in perfect parallel unison, chubby legs encased in red polka dot woolly tights.
Suzie clutched the side of the bench and stared at her hands. Her knuckles were white.
Here was a child so very like the one she imagined she might have one day. She needed a coffee; she needed to get to work, she needed to get out of there. The mother looked over at her and smiled. A look flashed across her face, probably wondering why Suzie was there without any children. She felt utterly out of place in her work outfit, her urban high heels in a sunshine-soaked park.
The dreams had started again: remembering back to when she had, fantastically, once been pregnant. How she’d used to imagine the tiny hands and face inside her womb, even when it was only the size of a pea; she’d felt such hope – desperate for her minute miracle to survive, and then the crash. Always a crash. The blood – or, somehow worse, the face of the sonographer as Suzie lay on the bed with cold jelly on her tummy. I’m so sorry, I can’t seem to find a heartbeat… or, perhaps her favourite: well technically you’re pregnant she had been told down the phone by some twenty-something receptionist, as Suzie had felt blood trickle out of her.
She got up from the bench and walked unsteadily back to the car and sat there for what seemed like ages, wiping the mascara from underneath her eyes. So much for all that counselling.
Dear Dr Jones, you asked me to tell you how I felt. To write it down, in an email. To compose the symphony of – what did you call it? – ‘anger’ in my mind into black and white words. Well here is my response. I FEEL LIKE SHIT. I feel broken, I feel exhausted, I feel battered and bereft. It’s a grief that has no name. If you actually lose someone, people sympathise, but when you ‘lose’ something you never actually had…
What in the name of God was she doing? She leant back in her seat, listened to the rumbling of the train and tried to block all the painful memories. This had to stop. She hoped her plan would finally give her the peace she deserved.