She rested her head against the glass, hoping that her next companion on this never-ending journey would take the hint and leave her alone with her thoughts.
She didn’t want to know about anyone else’s problems. She only wanted to know how she was going to cope with her own…how she was going to find the will to draw her next breath when she’d just walked away from everything she’d ever loved.
Not that it had been an easy decision, far from it. In fact, she was ashamed to realise how selfish she’d been for so long, wasting years and an almost obscene amount of money trying to force her body to do something it would never be able to manage—give them the child they’d both wanted.
She tried to stop the image forming inside her head but it was already there, indelibly, for the rest of her life.
The tears began again as she remembered how grey and still her baby had been when he’d finally been born.
He’d been perfect. Absolutely perfect in every way, with ten tiny fingers and toes each with the most minute nail already there and growing. She would never know whether he’d inherited Con’s deep blue eyes or her own grey ones or whether he would have the mischievous dimples that punctuated her husband’s cheeks whenever he smiled.
Not that he’d been smiling much in the last four months and twenty-three days. It seemed as if they’d both forgotten how to do that when they’d seen that precious little image on the screen and realised that the heart had no longer been beating.
The memory was still so painful that she could barely draw breath, her own heart feeling as though some alien force was crushing it inside her chest. What right did it have to beat when her baby’s didn’t? Why was it that even the youngest teenage girl could manage to get pregnant, seemingly with even the most meaningless of sexual encounters, while she…she couldn’t carry a child for the man she’d loved from the first moment their eyes had met, the only man she’d ever loved.
No more crying, she told herself, suddenly remembering that she mustn’t do anything to draw too much attention to herself. Concentrate on something else—except there wasn’t much else to look at in the barren wasteland of a bus and coach depot other than the people in the queue waiting to get on.
She hastily dragged her eyes away from the young woman struggling to fold up her baby’s pushchair single-handed with the child cradled in the other arm. She wouldn’t allow herself so much as a glimpse of the perfect little face so she would have no idea if it was a girl or a boy, if it was about the same age that her…
No! Concentrate on the two girls chattering brightly together. Were they friends setting off for a day’s shopping in the next big town or was this just the most convenient way for them to get to and from work each day?
The two older women in front of them were talking equally animatedly. Were they friends taking the trip together or were each of them like her previous garrulous companion, lucky to have found someone equally inclined to chat?
And the cadaverous young man with the tattoo sprawling up one side of his grubby neck? It was all too easy after spending time as an A and E doctor to spot the fact that he was a drug addict, but whether he was using illegal Class A drugs or had gone onto a methadone programme was more difficult to tell at first glance. The ravages of what he’d been doing to his body weren’t.
Then, in front of him, there was the white-faced young woman obviously trying hard not to cry as the stern-faced man spoke to her through a mouth thinned by a mixture of anger and exasperation. It must be hard for him to keep his voice down so the rest of the queue couldn’t hear what he was saying. He looked like the sort of man used to having his orders obeyed without question.
Apparently unaware that the passengers already on the bus had a bird’s-eye view of those waiting to join them, the man took out his wallet and grabbed several high-denomination bills, folding them twice, neatly, before he tried to press them into the girl’s hand.
Initially, she refused to take them, shaking her head fiercely, and the revulsion on her face was a far clearer indication of what was happening than any words she was saying. But, of course, the older man had made up his mind and with a few terse words denied her objections and thrust the money into her hand before he abruptly turned on his heel and strode away.
And then it was time for them to board and Callie watched out of the corner of her eye to see where each of them ended up.
Thankfully, the young woman with the baby decided to sit somewhere near the front. Callie didn’t know if she could have borne it if she’d chosen to sit beside her for the next hour or two. She wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation of looking and longing and…
The two young women chattered their way towards the back of the coach, leaving a trail of perfume in their wake, unlike the cadaverous young man. She was uncomfortably aware of holding her breath as he stood for several seconds beside the empty seat next to her, but he, too, passed on down the coach.
It was the white-faced young woman who finally slid herself into place beside her and it was only then that Callie saw what hadn’t been visible while the youngster had been part of the queue. She was pregnant.
Callie drew in a sharp breath as the shock hit her, and closed her eyes while she battled against the jealous tears with the realisation that she seemed to be showing about the same as she had, just before…
‘It’s not catching, you know,’ the young woman snapped with an attempt at bravado that was completely destroyed by the wobble in her voice.
‘Unfortunately,’ Callie muttered, even as she felt guilt that her reaction had made the young woman feel uncomfortable.
‘You…what?’ Her garishly painted mouth fell open and eyes heavily outlined with kohl grew wide. ‘Did you say…unfortunately?’
‘Yes,’ Callie admitted uncomfortably, wishing she’d either kept her mouth shut or stuck to a simple apology for her apparent disapproval. Now she was going to have to make some sort of explanation even though she knew it was going to hurt more than ripping a scab off a wound that had barely started healing. ‘I lost my baby nearly five months ago. I was just over halfway through the pregnancy.’
‘Oh…! I’m sorry if it makes you…Look, would you rather I asked someone else to swap seats with me?’ she asked earnestly, revealing a far more considerate side than the initial belligerent attitude would have suggested.
There was a sudden rumble of sound as the driver started the engine and an explosive hiss of air as he released the brakes to start the next stage of the journey.
‘It’s too late now,’ Callie said, resigned to a companion who was managing, in her early teens, to do what she, a mature professional, couldn’t do with all the expertise of her health service colleagues behind her. ‘You can’t go changing seats while the coach is moving. If the driver had to brake suddenly you might injure the baby if you hit something.’
The youngster stared at her in surprise then she pressed trembling lips together and Callie was startled to see that her eyes were swimming with tears.
‘I’m sorry. Did I say something to upset you?’ Callie was suddenly concerned that she must have inadvertently hit a sensitive nerve.
‘No. It’s just…You said that as if you actually care what happens to it…to the baby,’ she said in a choked voice.
‘Of course I do. Anybody would,’ Callie said, knowing that this wasn’t the time to talk about her own desperate longing for a child.
‘Not everybody,’ she snapped bitterly, then suddenly seemed to remember that they were surrounded on all sides and lowered her voice so that her words would be masked by the sound of the other voices around them and the rumble of the coach itself. ‘My stepfather gave me money for an abortion even though he knows it’s too far along. He said if you pay enough money any doctor would do it.’
‘Most