---

The problem with health freaks is that they never have the hard stuff to hand when it’s needed. There was only decaf coffee in Naomi’s cupboards, but it would have to do. Over the rumble of the boiling kettle, Jenny heard the bathroom door bang open and got there just in time to hold Naomi’s hair back from the toilet bowl as she threw up. A relationship-defining moment in most of her friendships: surprising it should happen with Naomi.

‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ Naomi sobbed between heaves. ‘You must think I’m…’

‘Shhh. Don’t speak. You’ll be all right in a minute.’ Although tomorrow morning was going to be rough for both of them.

Naomi couldn’t face coffee. Instead, she curled up on the sofa, holding a large glass of water with both hands. ‘What did you say to John’s mum?’

‘I just told her you’d eaten some dodgy prawns.’ It was very unlikely that Naomi’s mother-in-law had believed Jenny’s story, but at least she’d left without any fuss.

Naomi sipped her water. They were quiet for a few moments and then she asked, ‘Do you hate me? Now you know that I thought about… about ending the pregnancy.’

‘Hate you? Of course not. It’s none of my business.’ Jenny wasn’t naive: she knew other people who had faced this tough decision. But this was Naomi. ‘Breast is best’ Naomi. She even used washable baby wipes. She’d been so enthusiastic about everything at antenatal. Who could have guessed she hadn’t been ecstatic to find herself pregnant?

‘I want you to understand why. I want to tell you.’

And Jenny wanted to know. ‘You don’t need to explain yourself to me.’

Naomi sat up straight; she wasn’t going to be put off. ‘My head was all over the place. I’d had such a great time travelling and I just wanted to keep going. I only came home to work and get some money together.’

‘What about John – were you not together?’

‘We only met a few weeks before I came home. I liked him, and we’d been texting. He even hinted he might like to come with me if I went away again, but it was early days. Can you imagine how I felt? I was so frightened. It felt like the world was closing in on me. I didn’t know if I ever wanted a baby, let alone right then. Do you know how it feels to be trapped like that?’

Did Jenny know? No, it was not something she had ever had to face. But that was much more through luck than judgement. What if she’d got pregnant when she’d been with Mark? It didn’t bear thinking about.

‘I understand, Naomi. Honestly, I do.’

Naomi took another large gulp of water. ‘I thought I would just have to take a pill – like a strong morning-after pill – and that would be it. But I was too far gone. I’d been sick for a while and my period was late, but everything had gone out of kilter while I was travelling. It took a while before I realised.’

‘So, you would have had to…’

Naomi grimaced. ‘They called it a medical procedure. They talked me through the whole thing, what it would entail. Suddenly it all seemed real. What I was actually doing.’ Tears started to drip from the end of her nose.

Naomi seemed almost relieved to be unburdening herself. Perhaps she hadn’t told many people about this. Had she told anyone? Clearly, John hadn’t known until tonight.

‘My sister had a miscarriage just before I went away. It was awful. And when I was sitting in the waiting room, reading the pamphlets they gave me, I just kept thinking about my sister. How much she had cried and cried after her miscarriage. And now, when I think about Ruth…’ Naomi covered her mouth with her hand.

Jenny had been thinking about Ruth, too. She put her hand on Naomi’s arm. ‘Were you on your own at the clinic?’

Naomi nodded.

‘Did John even know that you were pregnant at that point?’

Naomi shook her head and her lip started to wobble again.

‘So you had no idea how he was going to react?’

‘How anyone was going to react. I hadn’t told anyone.’

‘Oh, Naomi. That must have been so hard.’

Naomi just nodded slowly. Jenny put her arms around her as she sobbed.

After a while, Naomi sat up and wiped her face. ‘When they called my name, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even walk through the door. I got up, went home and told my parents.’

‘And then John?’

Naomi nodded. ‘And he was incredible. He made it sound like we could do it. We could have the baby and make a go of things together. So we did.’ She paused. ‘You know at the class, when Sally said we should sing or read to the babies? That they might recognise our voices when they were born?’

Jenny wasn’t sure why they were talking about this. ‘Yes, I remember.’

Naomi’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She would have heard. Daisy would have heard what I was doing. What I was… planning on doing.’

‘Oh, Naomi.’

Naomi started to cry again. ‘I’m not sure how I will ever make it up to her. Every time I look at Daisy I think… I think that…’ She put her head back on Jenny’s shoulder. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you, Jenny? Please don’t tell anyone.’

‘Of course I won’t.’ The only person Jenny was due to see in the next few days was Ruth, and she certainly wouldn’t be regaling her with Naomi’s story.

Naomi the super-mother. It made a lot of sense now.

---

Ruth was due at ten. Jenny would rather have met her at a café, which wouldn’t involve tidying up, but Ruth had wanted to talk to her where no one else would be able to overhear them.

That morning, Henry had been an absolute angel, not waking up until almost seven o’clock. A full eight hours’ sleep! Now he lay on a mat, kicking his feet at the slightly sinister-looking animals dangling from his play gym. The dirty plates from last night’s dinner and the pile of laundry that needed to be sorted could wait. Time to open the laptop and work on the blog.

The disastrous night out with Lucy had confirmed it. Jenny didn’t want her ‘Girl About Town’ job back any time soon – if ever. She had hated watching Lucy schmooze her way around that club, but she didn’t want to be the one doing it in her place. It had been horrible. And exhausting.

However, Eva’s non-committal attitude about whether the blog would transfer to the magazine was speaking volumes. ‘Mildly funny’ were the words she had used; words that were fairly damning in Eva’s high-octane world. Jenny knew that there was something missing. It had been easy before, as someone always did something crazy or stupid: disappearing with the waiter at a new restaurant, or losing their shoes at a nightclub. It was more difficult to find something humorous when all you were doing was drinking tea and singing nursery rhymes.

She began to write in her notepad.

Gail was still not revealing anything about Joe. There had to be a good story there; some reason why they still hadn’t met him, or even seen a photo. Dan’s suggestion that ‘he probably just isn’t interested in us’ didn’t cut it. Even if Gail didn’t want to introduce him to the whole group, surely one of them should have seen him by now?

Next, she wrote ‘Naomi and John’ with a big question mark. A Google search for ‘Babies and your relationship’ uncovered some startling stats. One study showed that a baby increased the risk of divorce by around 37 per cent – even higher if you had a baby within a year of meeting each other. A newly single mother might make for more exciting blog storylines, but Jenny was really hoping that Naomi and John would make it.

Lastly, she wrote Antonia’s name down and drew two arrows to the words ‘Man in café?’ There had been nothing much to suggest there was anything less than innocent about her rendezvous, but Jenny had a hunch that there was more to it than two friends meeting for a drink.

This just left Ruth. Jenny sighed and sat back in her chair. Ruth hadn’t featured in The Undercover Mother so far; it hadn’t felt right. But there were other women who this had happened to, other women who it was going to happen to. Could she somehow put Ruth’s story in there in a way that was sensitive and helpful?

It wasn’t worth thinking about until she had spoken to Ruth about it, though. It was one thing writing about Naomi’s obsession with organic cotton without telling her; this was completely different. The question was, if she told Ruth about the blog, would she have to tell the others? Jenny looked at her watch. Ruth was due to visit in about half an hour: time to start scooping debris into cupboards and under the sofa.

---

Ruth was right on time and carrying a large cake tin when Jenny opened the door. She waved the tin as she came in. ‘I’m still baking.’

‘Well, the cake we ate at your house was delicious.’ Jenny took the tin from her. ‘I’ll make us a cup of tea to go with it. Go through to the lounge.’ Jenny went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and find a pretty plate for the cake. When she carried it through to the lounge, she found Ruth sitting on the floor, holding Henry’s hand, tears running down her face.

Ruth turned a wet face towards Jenny as she came in. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. I thought I would be okay.’

‘Don’t apologise. It was silly – we should have gone out on our own.’

‘No, no.’ Ruth shook her head. ‘I’ve got to get used to it. It’s just, you know, he’s the same age and everything.’

Jenny put the cake plate down on the coffee table. ‘Do you want to talk about it, or do you want me to make inane chatter about reality TV and the price of washing powder?’

Ruth gave a weak smile and then turned back to look at Henry, who still had a grip of steel on her finger. ‘I told you we were trying again, didn’t I?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes. You told me and Naomi when we came to yours.’

‘Well, neither of us could bear to go back into that monthly cycle of ovulation charts and disappointment, and the fertility people still won’t touch us. So, we’re just letting nature take her course and waiting to see what happens.’ Ruth didn’t seem very enthusiastic about this plan.

‘But is that what you want?’

Ruth took a deep breath. She turned her head slowly and looked at Jenny, then looked back at Henry, who was kicking his feet at a dangling giraffe. ‘I’m on the pill.’

Jenny was confused. ‘But I thought you said…’ As Ruth looked up at her, she grasped what she was trying to tell her. ‘Oh. David doesn’t know.’

Ruth shook her head. Guilt flashed across her face. Clearly, this was not something she had told anyone else. Her voice was just above a whisper. ‘I’m scared.’

Jenny took her hand. ‘Oh, Ruth, of course you are. But surely that kind of thing doesn’t happen twice? Everything should be fine next time. That’s what the doctors told you, didn’t they?’

Ruth nodded, but her eyes were full as she looked at Jenny. ‘It was so awful.’

Jenny struggled not to start crying herself. The thought of losing Henry was unbearable. Physically painful. ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like. I am so sorry that you had to go through that.’

Ruth was gazing at Henry again. ‘She was so beautiful, Jen. She looked just like David. She had a perfect little mouth and her eyes were closed so gently, like she was sleeping. She felt warm from being inside me and I just kept hoping. I couldn’t understand why they couldn’t do anything to revive her when she looked so perfect… We dressed her in a little white sleepsuit and just kept looking at her… I didn’t want to leave. It didn’t feel right, leaving her alone like that.’ Her voice wavered and she paused. With her free hand, she brushed the tears away from her face.

Jenny squeezed the hand she was holding. What could she say? Nothing would help.

Ruth hadn’t taken her eyes from Henry the whole time she was talking. ‘My mum offered to go to the house and clear away the baby things before I went home, but I asked her not to. I wasn’t ready to give them up yet… That beautiful pram, which took us weeks to choose… The crocheted blanket my sister made for her… The tiny vests and sleepsuits that I’d washed and folded so neatly in her drawers… For the first few days, I just sat in the nursery, touching everything, saying goodbye to it. It was like it wasn’t meant to be, like I’d been playing a game about having a baby, and now I had to stop playing and go back to work.’ She paused again and took a deep breath before looking at Jenny. ‘And that’s how I feel now. That it just wasn’t meant to be.’

Jenny’s heart hurt for her. ‘Have you told David how you feel?’

Ruth shook her head. ‘I don’t think I can. That man was destined to be a dad. How can I take it away from him?’

Jenny knew she was right. But it was also obvious how much he loved his wife.

‘How can I say to him that I don’t want to try for another baby? It would break his heart.’

Jenny thought of the story Ruth had told her at the antenatal class, about the number of pregnancy tests she had taken in her excitement about having a baby. ‘Are you sure that you don’t want to try again?’

‘No, I’m not sure. If a doctor could guarantee me a healthy baby, I’d walk over hot coals and cut glass to get to it. But no one can guarantee me that, can they? No one can promise that I won’t have to feel again that my own body somehow killed my baby, for no reason that anyone can give me. That I won’t have to go through labour again and still go home with nothing except a huge aching emptiness that never goes away. Have to watch my husband be terribly, terribly brave, and then listen to him sob in the next room when he thinks I’m asleep.’ She paused again, then whispered, ‘If it happened to us again, Jenny, I don’t think we could survive it.’

Jenny couldn’t bear to see the pain in Ruth’s eyes. There had to be a way to help. ‘You can’t carry all this on your own. I know that David would understand. What about counselling? Have you had support from someone who has helped other people in your situation?’

‘Yes, the hospital was very good. We both had bereavement counselling and it helped a bit, being able to talk about how we felt. But even they admitted that these feelings might never go away completely. I don’t even want them to go away; I don’t want to forget her.’

Jenny was adrift in uncharted territory. Go with your gut. ‘Having another baby wouldn’t mean you’d forget her. You wouldn’t be replacing her.’

Ruth looked up with a face so haunted that it made Jenny’s heart contract involuntarily. ‘I have spent years wanting to be pregnant, and now it is the most terrifying thing I can imagine.’

---

When Ruth had gone home, Jenny picked Henry up from his play mat and held him close. His warm, wriggly body felt solid and real in her arms. Putting her nose into the crease of his neck, she breathed in deeply. Right then, she couldn’t care less about Lucy and her ‘Girl About Town’ column. How could a night out on the town meeting random strangers possibly compare with this?

However, it didn’t look like The Undercover Mother was going to make it into print, either. Jenny had hoped that writing about Ruth’s experiences might have taken the blog in a different direction and piqued Eva’s interest. But after the conversation they’d just had, it would have been completely inappropriate to talk to Ruth about the blog. It all seemed so unimportant.

So where did that leave her? She didn’t want to fight for her ‘Girl About Town’ job, and Eva didn’t want her to write about being a mum. Maybe the time had come to see if someone else would?

Henry had dozed off on her shoulder. Holding him with one arm, she slipped carefully onto a seat at the dining table and opened her laptop.

Google search.

Mark McLinley.