Does Adam’s sharp intake of breath mean this is going in?
I take a swig of water, gulp it down, and watch his face.
When I’m done, I pick up my story.
‘You know our stairs – they’re steep and I went fast,’ I say, quiet, the first time for these words, so alarming even to me.
But they are tumbling out now.
‘Marc sobbed and sobbed, wept that what if he had hurt the baby, but I had no time to comfort him. I didn’t want him near me. He was in no fit state either, drunk on the gin he had swigged before he threw that bottle. So I drove myself to hospital at 2 a.m. for a scan, ignoring the aches, the pains, the bruising, to check my baby was okay.’
I should have told them, of course, what had really happened. That’s a huge regret now. Then it would be on record.
I didn’t. I told them I had tripped. My pregnant body toppled over with its imbalance on the way for a glass of water.
Heavily pregnant, my body had expanded, swollen, magnified but sitting on that plastic chair, alone in the middle of the night, I felt like half a person. As I lied to doctors. As I murmured to my baby to please be okay, please be okay. As I thought that I had put this baby in this position, me, by staying with Marc.
‘Next time, get your husband to get your glass of water,’ said the sonographer, with a tut, an eyebrow raise. ‘Men, eh? Where is he now, too?’
I murmured something about work.
Men.
She had no idea.
As I drove home, I wept from exhaustion. I was due in work in a few hours, knew I would have to call in sick. And then what – could I leave him? What would he do? Where would I go?
All these thoughts were buzzing around when the car swerved and I looked up suddenly to see something that seemed wrong.
A fence. Right in front of me.
Shit.
‘Oh, Romilly,’ murmurs Adam.
I look up at him. Shocked by his presence for a second. Brought back to the now.
‘I fell asleep driving home from hospital,’ and the tears start to fall. ‘I had been up all night.’
They roll down my face.
‘Nine months pregnant, and I fell asleep at the wheel.’