Kitabı oku: «Blood Ties: Part 3 of 3: Family is not always a place of safety»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Acknowledgements

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About the Publisher

Chapter 19

Having had no real mother in her formative years with whom she could discuss such things, Kathleen knew almost nothing about pregnancy. She knew a little, though; enough to feel a welling of certainty that her Aunt Sally was spot on in her diagnosis.

Now she thought about it rationally it all made perfect sense. However much time she’d spent poring over the calendar, and that comforting ‘only three days a month’ thing stuck in her mind, other facts now struck her as well. Such as the fact that you could get pregnant without even ‘doing’ it. Hadn’t she been told that back in school, too? When that lady had come in and shown that film to them? Such as the fact that her last period had been not quite as expected. Hardly anything even – and another thought hit her. Hadn’t her friend Sandra said you could have a period even when you were pregnant?

God, what an idiot she’d been! ‘Yes, Terry,’ she’d say, every time he’d asked her if it was safe. ‘Yes, it’s fine,’ she’d say blithely, ‘I’ve worked it out.’ Such an idiot! An idiot wrapped up in a big bow of ignorance – of thinking everything was fine because of some half-baked optimism; that things like that didn’t happen if you were ‘careful’. She almost laughed as she set off to walk the long way to the pub. Being ‘careful’ doing something where she’d never felt so carefree, or passionate, or abandoned. Well, now she was paying the price, and she still didn’t know how to feel. Only enough to know that perhaps clambering over walls wasn’t the best thing to be doing.

For the first time she could remember, she was actually hoping not to see her dad. She even crossed her fingers as she let herself into the pub – as quietly as possible – and continued to do so mentally as she set about the cleaning, moving around the various rooms like a burglar. God forbid she’d see him; something would show on her face, she didn’t doubt that. And the last thing she wanted was for him to get any sort of inkling; not before she’d been to the doctor’s and confirmed it – if that were even possible? How would the doctor be able to tell? And definitely not before breaking the news to Terry.

Heart in mouth. That was the expression for what she was feeling, she thought distractedly, as she hurried round the taproom and the bar area and cleaned. For all that Sally’s diagnosis had made her head spin, and it had, grim reality was beginning to creep in – in the form of questions she couldn’t answer. An unmarried mother at her age. What would people think? And what if Terry hated the idea? Was cross with her, even? Or worse – the idea came to her in a cold draught of anxiety – what if he didn’t accept the truth of it? That she’d simply been stupid and naïve and dozy. What if he thought she was trying to trap him into marriage? For the first time, Irene’s situation with Darren and Monica’s father hit her hard. What if Terry was furious? What if he threw her out?

The little bubble of unreality suddenly popped.

Kathleen returned home after finishing at the pub, thankfully having seen no one. Not even Monica, who she’d heard leave while on her hands and knees behind the bar. And once home, she’d stayed home, for a long, thoughtful hour, drinking tea and dithering about going to the doctor’s on Park Avenue where she’d be bound to see someone she knew. The morning surgery finished at eleven, and she knew she’d probably have a wait; they did a first-come-first-served thing and if you weren’t there when the surgery doors opened, you could have a dozen or more patients in the queue in front of you, especially at this time of year, with everyone suffering from coughs and colds.

Which was what decided her. She might feel shameful and silly turning up with her questions about possible pregnancy, but she could legitimately go because she’d been ill with an infection, too. She poured the last of her tea down the sink and berated herself for being so daft anyway; no one would know anything – consultations with doctors were confidential. So, having given Tiddles the milk she’d promised earlier, she set off down Louis Avenue and across to Park Avenue. Impossible to deal with something when you didn’t even know what it was you were dealing with, after all.

Once in the surgery, Kathleen looked around and was struck once again by how it seemed as if there must be some evidence of her condition in her face. She was the youngest there by decades, bar a frazzled-looking mother with a toddler whose nose was streaming thick yellow mucus and who was fidgeting and grizzling at her constantly. Everyone else was elderly and gave the pair a wide berth.

And everyone – everyone – looked at her. Quite without any compunction or subtlety either, a couple of elderly ladies not even moving their legs out of the way as she passed them. She carefully stepped over them, conscious of all the eyes following her progress, all of them wondering, no doubt, why a young girl like her was here, taking up the precious time they might be allocated. She had always hated going to the doctor’s anyway, having a healthy fear of illness and death, and had not been inside the place since she was thirteen or fourteen when Irene had taken her because of a rash. It had turned out to be German measles and she remembered it well. Being stuck in the stuffy bedroom for days, banished in case of contagion, crying like a baby, wanting her mum.

The surgery looked exactly the same now; a tiny, too-hot room, with ragged posters on the wall that flapped in greeting as the outer door was opened, and a hole in the wall at the end that opened into a back office, at which the greeting was invariably more hostile. Between the two, the room was given over to high-backed bench seating – one row of it taking up the length of the remaining walls, and two benches, back to back, down the middle.

She gave her name and took the last remaining seat available, thankfully in the corner, and buried her nose in one of the magazines that was piled just beside it, reading an article about a man who made mosaics out of old plates, and hoping no one would try to engage her in conversation.

A good twenty minutes passed, and, in that time, the room emptied, and before long, with more leaving than were now shuffling in, there were just four patients left in the room. None looked ill, any more than she realised she must look pregnant, and she was just biding her time wondering what might be wrong with them when the receptionist in the office beyond called her name.

Kathleen took her notes from her – though woe betide you if you ever dared to look at them – and made her way into the corridor to Dr Jackson’s door. The name was familiar, though she couldn’t remember having ever seen him herself, and when she entered the room she was dismayed to find a grizzled man, swivelling in a swivel chair, with hairs sprouting from his nose. She flushed from head to foot. He looked about a hundred. Where on earth would she begin?

‘Take a seat, young lady,’ said the doctor, taking the envelope of notes she proffered, but, before so much as glancing at them, he sat back and considered her over a pair of tortoiseshell glasses that sat at the end of his nose. Then he sat forward suddenly, startling her, and said, ‘So, what seems to be the trouble?’

Now she was here there seemed little point in beating around the bush, so she told him she’d been feeling sick and thought that she might be pregnant, which unleashed a torrent of questions that came one after another, each more embarrassing than the last. When was her last period? Had she frequency? A desire to go for a wee more often than usual? Had she any breast tenderness? Giddiness? Any aversion to smells or food? And, almost as an afterthought, and which made her blush to her hair roots, a question about something that he seemed to have only just thought about: ‘I take it you are having regular sexual relations?’