Helena pounded the pavement, her feet synched to her breathing as she ran. They were experiencing something of an Indian summer, and the streets were busy with people enjoying a last blast of heat before the winter chill won out. Office workers spilled out of cafés on their lunchbreak. She weaved her way through people on the pavement. It was a long time since she had run, and her fitness wasn’t what it used to be. She had stopped running for a while; after hearing somewhere that it wasn’t good for women trying to conceive, she had abandoned it a few months back. She had read so many theories and tried so many alternative therapies along her infertility journey, desperately going along with them, hoping that that one change would be the thing that made the difference, but it never had. She felt her lungs burn as she breathed in, but she enjoyed the release it gave her body, the headspace it gave her mind to process everything. Not to mention an hour out of the house, where James was still laid up.
Things were still tense between them since he had told her about his plans to use the court system to get access to Milly. He wanted a shared-access arrangement; he said the details would need to be ironed out between both parties, but he was hoping to have Milly feature permanently in their lives. He was angry that Helena wasn’t on board with his plans, and she couldn’t blame him. It was her fault that they were on this road – she had pulled back a curtain and given him a glimpse of a life he could have, and now she wanted to close it again and forget all about it. How could she expect him to do that?
But no matter how much he argued with her or to tried to convince her that it was too late to back out now, that it was she who had opened this can of worms, Helena still couldn’t support it. Sometimes in life the fairest thing wasn’t always the right thing. How could they uproot Milly from the only father she had ever known, especially so soon after the loss of her mother? And what about Callum and Jack too and their wider family, how would Aidan explain to them why James was laying claim to Milly? He would have to taint the good memories that they had left of their mother with the less savoury news that she had been unfaithful. Then there was the risk of being struck off the medical register and the shame Helena would feel when her colleagues found out about it all. She just wanted things to go back to the way they were before, but James was obsessed with the idea of having Milly in their lives.
She stopped to let a beeping bin lorry reverse into a side street, taking a moment to catch her breath. Then she continued on, passing a woman coming against her on the footpath.
‘Dr O’Herlihy?’ the woman called after her.
Helena stopped and turned around; it took her a second, but then she recognised who it was. ‘Julie?’ she said. She immediately cringed, thinking back to that day in the surgery when this woman had cried in front of her, and Helena had fallen apart alongside her. Helena hadn’t realised it at the time, but that had been the start of it all – the beginning of the end. It felt like a lifetime ago now, her world had changed beyond recognition since then. ‘How are you?’ She breathed deeply, trying to catch her breath.
‘I’m good,’ Julie grinned. ‘I was in the surgery last week actually.’
‘Oh yeah?’ she panted.
‘I asked to see you, but they said you were off, so I saw the locum instead.’ The woman was grinning manically at her and Helena knew there was more she wanted to say. ‘I know I shouldn’t be telling people yet, but seeing as though it’s you…’ She leaned in conspiratorially. ‘I’m pregnant again,’ she announced, her whole face beaming with pride. ‘I was in having it confirmed.’
The traffic seemed to get louder and the white sunlight blinded Helena’s eyes. She suddenly felt very hot – the combination of the heat from the run and the searing sun made her feel as though she might pass out. She couldn’t catch her breath; her lungs had seized.
‘Are you okay?’ Julie asked, her face full of concern.
‘Sorry, I pushed a bit hard.’ Helena reached out and gripped onto a nearby lamp post to steady herself and fanned herself with her hands. ‘Congratulations.’ She tried to smile. She meant it, oh she really did, she was so happy for this woman who had experienced her fair share of pain too, but her heart also felt like someone was holding it at either side and twisting until it was completely wrung out.
‘I know it’s early days,’ Julie continued excitedly. ‘I’m only six weeks, so I’ve a long road ahead of me… After the miscarriage I didn’t think it would happen so soon. We’re both over the moon,’ she gushed. She put her hand on her tummy, where inside her miracle was growing – her chance of happiness was unfurling like the tiny buds in the spring.
Helena nodded. ‘That’s wonderful news, I hope it will all go really well for you.’
‘Me too,’ Julie sighed. ‘I’m a nervous wreck, every twinge has me running to the bathroom. I don’t think I’ll relax until I’m holding my baby in my arms.’
‘That’s understandable… Look… I’d better go,’ Helena said, still trying to catch a breath.
‘Oh sorry, I know what you runners are like about your times, so I’ll let you get back to it,’ Julie laughed.
Helena wished her well and tried to continue on, but her rhythm was all wrong. She couldn’t get her legs to work properly; they felt leaden. Her head was in a spin. She didn’t want to be that bitter person that was jealous of other people’s happiness, but it seemed that everyone else got their happy ever after except her. She had spent so long wondering when it would be their turn. Helena had always believed that if you wanted something badly enough and worked hard to achieve it, it would pay off. Sometimes it might take a while, but you would see the results eventually. It was a mentality that had served her well throughout her life – it had got her through medical school, running a marathon – everything. And she had been sure that because their journey to have a baby had been so arduous it would all come right in the end – they deserved it, but then it still hadn’t happened, and it would never happen now. Her friends had rallied around saying things like ‘keep your chin up’ and telling her to stay positive. ‘It will happen,’ they had promised as if they had a crystal ball, and she had stupidly believed them. They filled her head with stories of friends and relatives who had all but given up hope of conceiving a baby when suddenly they had fallen pregnant. Miracles happened every day when you least expected them, you just had to be open to them, they said. And she had tried, she had tried so bloody hard, but she now knew that people lied, they fed you stories full of hope because they didn’t know what else to say.
Carrying a baby was the most fundamental part of being a woman; it was the reason women were on this earth, to keep the human race populated. So why wasn’t her body capable of doing its job? Why couldn’t she do what millions of women did every day and had done for thousands of years? Why could women who took heroin, who drank bottles of vodka daily, women in desperate abusive situations, or living in countries ravaged by famine or war, conceive and carry a healthy baby while, despite giving her body every opportunity and having a pretty good lifestyle by most people’s standards, Helena still couldn’t?
It had happened once, her miracle. After several early miscarriages, she had got to the magical twelve-week mark, where the chances of miscarriage are drastically reduced, and she had been so sure that it was meant to be that time. Finally, finally, it was their turn. At last. She had waved to the blurry shape of her baby on the monitor during her scan, feeling her heart swell with love for her much-longed-for baby, with tears of gratitude pooling at the corners of her eyes. Until the cramps had arrived and then the bleeding had followed, and she knew her dream was being snatched away from her once again. She had found out in the blood tests they had carried out afterwards that he was a little boy. She had called him George. She had never told anyone that; not even James knew that she had named him.
The pain lanced through her as it always did whenever she remembered him. She knew James thought he could fix the hole in her heart with Milly, but it wasn’t a case of simply replacing one child with another. No matter how much she yearned for a baby, she knew the pain of losing a child, how could she inflict that on another person? She couldn’t do that to Aidan.
Somehow Helena managed to make her way home, she didn’t remember getting there – her head was too full. She let herself into the house and heard sounds of the TV coming from the living room.
‘Helena?’ he called out to her.
She couldn’t bear to see him, so instead she continued through the house and out into the garden. She sat down in the chair under the branches of the oak tree as they swayed gently in the breeze and closed her eyes. George would be a boisterous toddler now, taking wobbly first steps, trying to lift pudgy legs to climb steps. Eating everything he could find, soil and stones, exploring the world with his mouth. She could imagine leading him through the garden, lifting a rock to show him the creepy-crawlies beneath or watching an earthworm shrink away from them. He would trip going up the garden steps and she would pick him up, sit him onto her hip and soothe him. She would carry him inside and kiss away his tears and put a plaster on his grazed knee. She would sing to him until he stopped crying and tell him he was the bravest boy and that she loved him so, so much.