Paul—‘So we tell no one?’
Sarah—‘We tell no one.’
One week later. Local clinic. Paul drove. Seven a.m. No traffic on the M25. Leafy lanes. Pre-warned there might be demonstrators outside. Anti-abortion. There weren’t. It would take a morning. I could work the next day. They were very kind. Efficient. At twenty-five I was the oldest in a ward of ten women. It was quick. Physically and emotionally numbing. Offered Rich Tea biscuits and sweet tea when I woke from the deepest sleep. Feeling relieved and relief. The other women in the ward were still sleeping. One was awake. She was crying. She’d had a local anaesthetic and she told me she’d seen the baby.
‘I saw the baby. It looked like a proper little baby. I didn’t think it would look like a baby, but you could tell. You could tell it was a baby when it came out. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect something like that. I expected a little cell and I don’t think I would have had a local if I’d known. I don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go through that again.
That will haunt me, that will. That will haunt me. Wish I hadn’t seen it. Wish I hadn’t.’
I hadn’t seen the baby. I hadn’t seen what had come out of me at twelve weeks. I had been asleep. And I closed my mind to it and just thought it was a joint decision and something that both of us, Paul and I, had decided together and agreed upon. And that it was a dreadful decision to make, but it was the most practical decision, and it would have been unfair on Paul who was just starting out on his career and me who was trying to start one. And there would be plenty of time to have children and we loved each other so it wasn’t a case of that. And we loved each other. And we loved each other. I kept saying that over and over in my head because it made me feel better. Not good. Just better. Reassured.
And I cried, just a little bit.
We drove home in silence. Two hours of it. He cried and went to Confession. Alone, I stayed in the two-up and two-down in Chelmsford and made tea. My mother phoned on the mobile to ask how I was, but really to tell me what she had been doing with Dad that weekend. She asked me if I was OK. I said fine and that I was. She didn’t wait for me to finish and said she had so much to do and had to look after my dad and there was a dinner party they had to go to and she had to get ready and get my dad ready. And she did. I didn’t tell my mother. She was not the sort to listen or offer calming advice. She was the sort to scream and consider every bad thing that happened to me an affront to her ability as a mother, and every good thing something she could either credit to her own influence or, in some cases, feel jealous that she hadn’t done herself. In her youth. Even the good things that happened in my life I think potentially hurt her. I would often think, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her and she can’t hurt me by reacting to things the way she does. Pity. I would have liked a mum. I spent my life in search of surrogate mums.
Paul returned from Confession an hour later, having confessed nothing.
Paul—‘I couldn’t tell the priest anything. I felt ashamed.’
Sarah—‘Isn’t that what the confessional is for? To relieve the guilt? To relieve the sin?’
Paul—‘You’re not Catholic. You don’t understand. Don’t even try to understand what I’m going through. Don’t talk about it any more. Don’t mention it. Ever.’
Paul didn’t tell anyone. I told my friend Helen and my friend Steve. Helen, an old schoolfriend, had had an abortion herself and was wise beyond her years. Steve was matter-of-fact, straight and honest, and I wanted and needed a man’s perspective. Paul didn’t want to talk about his perspective. So we didn’t talk about it again. The abortion was never mentioned. The baby was never mentioned. The weekend in Suffolk was never mentioned. It was a black hole of time we lost. And into it went our innocence.
I locked it away. We weren’t as intimate. We got up at ten a.m. on Sunday mornings and always met friends and had lunch out. Paul stopped going to church.
As an Irish Catholic, he had felt an impact on him greater than he or I could have imagined. The relationship strained under the weight of guilt and reprehension.
Paul—‘You should have told me you weren’t on the Pill.’
Sarah—‘I was on the Pill. I was just unwell and it obviously didn’t work.’
Paul—‘The Pill always works. Now I’ve got to live with it as well.’
Sarah—‘Are you honestly telling me you wouldn’t have had sex with me that weekend if I’d told you there was a chance the Pill might not work? It was a lovely weekend and I didn’t want to spoil it.’
Paul—‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’
Sarah—‘It was a shared responsibility.’
Paul—‘You didn’t give me the option to share it.’
Sarah—‘I didn’t think there was danger.’
Paul—‘You knew there might be.’
Sarah—‘You’ve slept with girls who weren’t on the Pill before.’
Paul—‘That was different.’
Sarah—‘How different?’
Paul—‘I knew about the risk and I took it. I was given no option here.’
Sarah—‘That’s not fair, Paul. Give me a break.’
Paul—‘Why should I? You didn’t give me one.’
Tears. Both of us.
Within the next six months the sex died. I quietly mourned. In silent desperation I would get up and go to work and come back home and go for a workout and organise birthday parties and Christmas drinks and dinner parties and be the devoted girlfriend and feel very lonely. And I knew he felt lonely too but I couldn’t reach him any more and somehow he didn’t want to be told I loved him any more. I loved this man in a spiritual as well as emotional sense. Paul had only a single bed, and we would snuggle up, spoon-like, so close all night. Somehow we managed to sleep and it was fine. We would ring and text each other every day. E-mails were long awaited.
Paul—message received Thanks for a lovely evening. I love spending time with you. I wish we could have spent more time together but there will be other times I know. xx
Sarah—sent You are a wonderful human being. Think of me in lacy black knickers. Nothing else. That’s how I’ll be when you meet me at the door 6pm tonight. Maybe … xx
After dinners out or the cinema the last message would always read something like:
Paul—message received Night beautiful. You are very special to me. Thanx for putting the sun into my summer. And I wish you were here with me in my bed. Lots of love. xx
After work lunches or meetings he would always remember and send:
Paul—message received Hi gorgeous one. Hope lunch went well. Wish I’d been there. You are fabulous. Thinking of u. xxx
We’d go to weddings and listen to the vows. I never caught the bouquet, but friends would always ask in their subtle-as-a-brick sort of way ‘So, when are you two getting married?’ It was a naff cliché and we both ignored it, but as years progressed it started to bug. Breeding insecurity and resentment and cutting communication of how I felt, because I knew it might open the wounds of the abortion again. Which he never talked about. Even when others opened a conversation at one of the many dinner parties we went to and were talked at.
He had been my white knight in his Golf GTI. He had helped me to gain confidence about my body and sexuality. And then he had taken it away. He didn’t feel it was right any more and so we didn’t have sex any more. We hugged naked. We occasionally, in drunken stupors, made love or had sex, but he was always slightly irritable in the morning—as though I had made him to do it against his will. I had tempted him against his better self.
We started to organise dinner