Shelley’s hand covered her mouth; her eyes widened in shock. She didn’t speak.
It was easier for Lara to speak if she didn’t look at her. ‘I was out at the supermarket when the contractions started. Well, it was just a backache to begin with and a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. I can’t really explain it, but I knew. I knew it was happening again.
‘I left the basket where it was and called a cab, then called Matt to tell him to meet me at the hospital. He stayed on the phone to me while he ran to the station for a train. “We’re twenty-nine weeks,” he kept saying. “We’re twenty-nine weeks. Babies survive at twenty-nine weeks.” He repeated it over and over, being positive. He tried so hard.’ Her voice cracked and she had to stop speaking.
Shelley held Lara’s hands, her own face streaked with tears. ‘Oh, Lara. I am so sorry. So, so sorry.’
Lara regained control of her voice. She needed to get this all out. To tell it all. No more secrets. ‘By the time I got to the hospital, I was having contractions. They came on suddenly, sharply. Somewhere between the cab and the entrance to A&E, my waters broke.’
Her memory of those minutes was hazy. People came from everywhere, she was sitting in a wheelchair, she was on a bed with her feet in stirrups, there were people, strange people, talking to her about trying to slow things down or stop things? She really couldn’t remember. She just remembered being in a sea of people and yet being so terribly, terribly alone. ‘Matt got to the hospital as quickly as he possibly could but he couldn’t get there in time. He didn’t see our son born.’
Their son. A boy. ‘He was so tiny, Shelley. So tiny and yet so perfect. They wrapped him up and I held him. Just me and him. A mother and her son. I wanted him so much. I don’t even know how long it was until Matt got there. He came in and put his arms around us both. And we cried. Because he was gone already.’
It may as well have been yesterday; the pain was still so raw. Lara’s shoulders jumped as the sobs wracked her body. She had tried so hard to be strong, to be positive, to stop thinking about the past and focus on the future. But she was tired, so tired. And scared. No, terrified. Absolutely terrified that it might happen again.
Shelley didn’t speak, just waited for Lara to be ready to talk again. ‘After we buried Aaron, our little boy, everything got so dark and I couldn’t see my way out. I’d wanted a baby from the beginning, but it became almost an obsession to get pregnant. At the same time, I was terrified of getting pregnant because I couldn’t see myself surviving another miscarriage. I actually felt like my heart was breaking.’ One tear ran down Lara’s cheek and dripped onto her stomach before she could catch it with her palm.
Shelley was crying openly too. Lara took a very deep breath and stared at the wall over Shelley’s shoulder; maintaining eye contact was too hard. ‘There was one particular afternoon. It was all too much. I was sore from an exploratory investigation, I was tired from being up in the night. I’d turned on the TV to drown out the mess that was in my head and there was that show One Born Every Minute on the TV. A teenager giving birth. She was seventeen. She hadn’t even wanted to get pregnant. It had been an accident. An accident! And there I was… there I was…’
A sob from Lara’s chest sounded loud in that small room. Shelley got up on her knees and put her arms around her new friend, held her close as they both cried. Lara’s stomach between them the only difference.
Lara sniffed when they parted. ‘Well, I flipped out. Smashed up the TV. Threw stuff around the living room. Then just sat in the middle of the mess and howled. When Matt got home, he was beside himself. He didn’t know what to do.’
‘He must have been so scared for you.’
‘He was.’ Lara nodded. ‘I was so angry and I couldn’t stay home and just wait to find out what was going on. It was killing me. Everything took so long. We talked about it that night. Matt wanted to stop trying for a baby, wanted to stop putting ourselves through it all. But I couldn’t even think about giving up. I had this huge hole in my life, and if I couldn’t fill it, it was going to swallow me whole. I wanted to pay privately to speed things up, and Matt said he’d do anything that would make me happy. That’s the other reason we had to sell our house and downsize – we used every penny of our savings, plus a loan, to pay the medical bills.’
Shelley spoke quietly and gently. ‘And you found out what was causing the miscarriages?’
Lara nodded. ‘I have something called antiphospholipid syndrome – or, in layman’s terms, sticky blood syndrome. Basically, my blood makes clots which prevent the placenta from working properly. I have to take blood thinners to prevent the clots, which would deprive the baby of oxygen and nutrients. Plus a load of other medication.’
Shelley nodded slowly as if trying to get her head around the information she was being given. She pressed her right palm to her heart as she continued to hold onto Lara’s hand with her left. ‘I can’t even begin to understand how hard this has been for you. Every day must be so frightening, living on hope that these blood thinners are doing their job. You are so brave.’
Lara looked down at her stomach and paused for a while, ran her free hand slowly across her bump. When she looked up, there were fresh tears in her eyes and her voice was thin. ‘I’m not brave, Shelley. I’m terrified. I am twenty-nine weeks plus one day pregnant today. The exact same stage I was at when I lost Aaron. I know that Matt wants me to take it easy, but sitting next door on my own, staring at those walls. I just can’t do it. It’s driving me crazy. I need to stay busy.’
‘I wish you’d told me. I would have supported you more. Looked after you.’
‘You’ve helped me more than you can ever know. Sorting out this room with you, tidying, organising, talking through your memories, it’s all given me something to focus on that’s outside of me. Helping you has saved me.’ Until she spoke those words, even Lara hadn’t realised how true this was. It was amazing how close the two of them had got in this short space of time. She’d distanced herself from the friends she’d known longest and yet here was this woman next door who she barely knew and who had somehow – unknowingly – kept her afloat.
She wasn’t prepared for Shelley’s reaction though. Shelley put both hands to her face and breathed in deeply a few times. Then a sob escaped from between her fingers.
Lara reached out for her wrist. ‘Shelley? What is it? What did I say wrong?’
Without answering, Shelley took her hands away from her face. She took another deep breath and reached under the bed, feeling around for a few moments and then pulling out the object that she had been so intent on hiding from Lara.
It was a wooden box, white with yellow and green flowers. Shelley ran a finger over the embossed lettering – Memories – pressed her lips tightly together and opened it.
There wasn’t a great deal inside. A pregnancy test. A photograph of a smiling Shelley. And a tiny delicate baby blanket. Shelley pulled it out of the box and held it up to Lara. ‘I wasn’t honest with you either.’