The Turnaround
Needless to say I didn’t go in to the office the next day, Friday. Instead, I was back at the hospital for a scan and booked in to have a D&C procedure first thing on Monday morning. It was a simple operation. It wasn’t going to last for more than fifteen minutes and I’d be home in the afternoon. I hoped by Monday afternoon to have come down to earth so I could start dealing with things a bit better.
Anthony had stayed at home with me on the day of the scan, not going into work either. We were both in a daze and just didn’t know what to say to each other. I said very little apart from to grunt when Anthony asked if I wanted tea or coffee or something to eat. I didn’t eat but managed a peppermint tea.
‘We’re supposed to be at your mother’s this evening,’ said Anthony. ‘Should I cancel?’
It was already six in the evening and we were due there at seven-thirty.
‘I was the one who asked everyone to get together,’ I mumbled. ‘I should be there.’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll say you’re not well.’
‘Not well? That’s an understatement.’
‘I know that but I didn’t think you’d want me to tell them over the phone.’
‘You were the one who told me we shouldn’t say anything to anyone until we were sure.’ I looked out of the living room window at the house opposite. There was a window box on the ground floor and just one light on downstairs. It was dark outside, only the street lamps for light.
Anthony came up behind me and held my upper arms. I could feel his breath in my hair.
‘It was a good thing we did wait,’ he said. ‘Now we have a choice. We could just keep it to ourselves.’
‘It was as if you knew it’d all go wrong,’ I said, not turning around.
‘How could I have known?’
‘Well if you didn’t then maybe you jinxed it.’
Anthony pulled away. I looked over my shoulder at him and saw him about to storm off but, instead, he swung back to face me.
‘How could you say such a thing, Magenta? Missed miscarriages are very common; they said so. We were just unlucky. How could you say that …?’
Anthony didn’t finish the sentence. Instead he rushed to grab me because I’d sunk to my knees onto the floor, tears pouring from my eyes.
‘Magenta.’ He held me tight. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said once I’d stopped choking. ‘I didn’t mean what I said. I know you didn’t jinx it. I just can’t … I just can’t believe this has happened. I can’t.’
Anthony helped me to the sofa. We sat close together and he held me the whole time I cried. After I’d stopped I rested my head on his shoulder, whimpering like a lost pup.
‘I’ll call your Mother,’ Anthony said after a while.
‘No.’ I sat up. ‘I have to face people. I can do this.’
‘Are you going to tell them?’ he asked.
I looked at Anthony, pulling my hair from my face.
‘I don’t want to spoil what I hoped was going to be a great night,’ I said. ‘It’s the run-up to Christmas and …. I think … Let’s just deal with this ourselves. I don’t even know how I could talk about it to Mother or my sisters without breaking down, anyway. We won’t stay long. I’ll bring the dress over and we’ll talk about the wedding and then we’ll leave.’
Anthony placed a hand on my thigh. ‘Are you sure? Is that the plan? We say nothing?’
I nodded. It was seven-fifteen. We had been in the living room for hours and hadn’t put on a light when dusk came. I went up the dark staircase to the bathroom. When I clicked the light on I had to squint against it. I washed my face with cold water and tried to get rid of my bloodshot eyes.
We drove over to my parents’ in silence. Once the doors to their St John’s Wood mansion opened, I put on my best smile.
The smile lasted all evening and disappeared the moment we left the house and it didn’t return for days to come.
It was December, bitterly cold, or so it seemed to me. I managed to acquire a lot of aches and pains in my body over the weekend, probably tension, and I didn’t want to get out of bed. When Monday morning came around Anthony and I got to the hospital by seven a.m. and from the waiting room I called Riley to say I was unwell and that I wasn’t coming in for the foreseeable. She offered to come over and make me chicken soup.
‘But, Riley, do you know how to make chicken soup? I’m pretty sure you have to boil up a chicken and make stock up out of the bones.’
‘Eugh!’ she declared. ‘Well maybe I can pick up a tin at Waitrose.’
‘It’s okay,’ I told her. ‘If I need soup I can ask Anthony to pop out for me.’
‘Just keep warm,’ said Riley. ‘I’ll hold the fort.’
Riley sent constant texts during the operation, asking about this and that. What to say to the buyers of the men’s retailer in Amsterdam? Who should she speak to about the stack of zips and buckles that appeared at the office instead of at the factory? I looked at them all in the taxi home after the procedure. She wasn’t going to cope well without me but I couldn’t imagine for one second going back to work.
‘Don’t keep checking the phone,’ Anthony said as we arrived back home at about four in the afternoon.
‘I can’t help it,’ I said. ‘But you’re right. Anyway, I’m off to bed.’
I walked straight upstairs and got under the duvet in my clothes. Hours went by and I spent the next few days answering and making calls from beneath my duvet or from the bath. I may as well have gone in to work but it was just hard facing people. Anthony didn’t go back to the gallery but constantly berated me for trying to work when I was obviously falling apart.
In many respects it was a blessing I’d kept the pregnancy a secret because it meant not having to broadcast the bad news, causing me to break down in tears every time I told someone. That was the only plus to the whole affair. The family gathering at my parents’ house the Friday before had literally been to tell them about the wedding venue and a chance for my sisters to check out how far I’d got with Mother’s wedding dress – no extra surprise announcements.
Mother had suspected something was wrong despite my best act at being a happy-go-lucky wedding planner and wedding dress designer.
‘You are looking a bit tired,’ she’d said that evening. I was doing a fitting in Mother’s room, believing that the ten minutes of holding a cold icepack on my eyes had done enough to reduce the puffy eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have insisted on you making the dress. I don’t want you to be run-down.’
‘It’s fine,’ I’d said. ‘I’m keeping busy but I’m on top of things. I’m taking a few days off and I’m going to work from home.’
‘You just don’t look yourself, though, darling,’ she’d said.
‘I promise,’ I told her, ‘I’ll be just fine.’
But I wasn’t fine. I stayed off work for the whole week and by the weekend I was a basket case. Anthony and I were barely speaking. It happened almost organically. A silent form of anger on my part that I felt for Anthony but couldn’t explain what it was, where it was coming from or why I should have it. He just annoyed me, somehow. I was in bits and he hadn’t cried or said he was upset, not once. He was tetchy because I couldn’t go five minutes without running off to the bedroom or the bathroom, any room he wasn’t in, for a good sob. He said it was breaking his heart to see me like that.
On the phone to everyone else, be it Riley, a client, or the family I remained the ever-bubbly and bright Magenta, life always in some kind of tangle but who was equally capable of detangling it in some way or other. So everyone thought I was fine.
I was far from fine. I had never faced any of these so-called ‘tangles’ without back-up of some kind. For any life-changing problems I’d always gone to my Nana Clementine but she was no longer with us. I wasn’t sure what kind of advice she would have given me about how to deal with a miscarriage.
I had Mother, of course, and though I didn’t always go to her with my problems, I found this very hard to talk to her about, especially since I didn’t come right out with it when it happened and days of keeping my grief to myself somehow made it harder to share it with her. I’d told her I was okay, just busy, but I insisted I could cope. She and Father were still on a high about getting remarried and I knew, from classified information, that she and Father had been at it like rabbits ever since they announced they were getting back together after their five-year divorce. All I wanted to share with them was the excitement of the wedding. It was my happy space and I didn’t want to cloud that.
For most of my day-to-day trials and tribulations, relationships, and work matters there was always Anya. But she wasn’t due back for a while, especially since she’d said that she and Henry would be taking a long break after her film shoot. Besides, this wasn’t something I wanted to Skype or FaceTime about.
So that only left Anthony and with us being so snappish with each other I might as well have said I was on my own with my grief. And it felt like grief. Different from when we lost Nana but grief all the same.
Without realizing it I was slouching around the house in black: black trackie bottoms and a loose black sweater, worn constantly since the Friday after the procedure. I’d mooched around the house, day and night, in and out of bed in the same clothes for four days. I’d rough-housed my big hair, into a shaggy pineapple with something elastic I found next to the bin in the kitchen. I suspected it was the elasticated string used to truss the raw chicken I got out for dinner a few days ago but couldn’t be bothered to cook. My hair was probably alive with salmonella poison but it didn’t bother me in the slightest.
I’d splashed my face and brushed my teeth, which was the sum total of my personal hygiene routine for days. If I was going to go back to work, and my telephone buzzing with messages from Riley told me that I must, I’d have to be detoxified in antibacterial substances and have a hair specialist thoroughly wash the chicken germs out.
As I lay under the duvet, wondering if anyone had invented a carwash that humans could be put through, I heard the bedroom door creak open.
‘Magenta? Darling? Are you asleep?’ asked Anthony.
‘Too many questions – I can’t cope.’ I pulled the duvet off my face. I’d probably need to bring it into my human carwash with me. Anthony sat at the side of the bed.
‘You know the gallery called and asked when I’d be coming in. I told them tomorrow. Is that all right?’
‘You didn’t have to be off, too. You should have gone in.’
‘I thought you wanted me around,’ he said, tentatively reaching a hand towards me. I didn’t want to be touched.
‘Oh,’ I said looking up at a crack I’d never seen in the ceiling before. ‘I see.’
‘Will it be okay? I mean, when do you think you’ll go back to work?’
‘Soon.’
‘Well, I don’t think you should leave it too long.’
‘And you became a grief counsellor, when exactly?’ I shot a look at him.
‘Can we …? Please, let’s not fight again, Magenta. I’m tired.’
‘And so am I. I can’t get over the fact that we lost a baby.’
‘It’s not like we planned to have a baby.’ He threw up his hands. Actually threw them up.
I sat up straight. ‘So, I should care less that I had a miscarriage because I wasn’t planning to get pregnant?’ I said.
‘No, that’s not what I’m saying.’ Anthony closed his eyes, shook his head.
‘It’s exactly what you said,’ I told him.
He got off the bed and shoved his fists into his jeans. ‘I’m only saying that at some point you’re going to have to get some normality back into your life. It isn’t right to mope around like this.’
My face began to contort; my bottom lip was quivering.
‘It’s not moping, Anthony, it’s sadness. Sadness and pain.’ I threw myself back onto the bed, buried my face in the pillow, and sobbed.
After a soft sigh, Anthony sat again, stroking my back and rubbing my shoulders.
‘If you don’t want me to go back to the gallery, I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ll stay and look after you.’
‘I don’t need you to look after me,’ I said into the pillow.
‘I can’t leave you like this. I’m worried about you, Magenta.’ He leaned his body onto mine, his lips finding my ear. ‘I love you. I can’t handle seeing you like this.’
‘Then go. Go now. Just bloody well go.’
There was a sharp edge to my voice. How could I have been so cold? What made me think that the best way to deal with our situation was to drive him away? Ironic really when the one person, out of the list of anyone I could have gone to to listen to my agony about the baby, was – and should have been – Anthony. But I was driving him away. For some deep-rooted reason that I couldn’t even fathom in my own head I wanted to make sure he was hurting.
That said, I was heartbroken when I felt Anthony’s weight shift. He pulled away from me. I suddenly felt a shiver of cold when the pressure of his body left mine and the bed adjusted so it was only supporting me. I didn’t even hear the bedroom door open – or the front door, come to that. Anthony left the house and left me to my tears.
I must have cried myself to sleep and not for the first time.
I woke, groggy and out of sorts. I looked around the room with a feeling of not belonging but of being transported there from some other unknown place. Then it hit me again. That lonely, empty feeling that seemed to be reserved only for me, and I was shrouded in sadness.
I somehow peeled my tired body off the bed and slumped down the short flight of steps into the small corridor of our house, wondering which room to go into. My mobile phone rang from upstairs. It was still under the duvet, where I wished I’d been, but I didn’t go back up for it. It was most likely Riley. One of the senior staff members would have to help her out. My intention was to ignore the phone for the rest of the day. What I couldn’t ignore, though, was that I shouldn’t have sent Anthony away like that.
The front door creaked open when it was dark and Anthony appeared in the kitchen doorway where I’d sat sipping tea, having lost all track of time.
‘You’re up.’ Anthony was still bundled up in a thick, dark jacket, a scarf wrapped twice around his neck. He began to strip down to his sweater and paint-splashed jeans. I looked up and smiled. Anthony’s face felt cold and made me jump when he kissed my cheek.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s bitter out there.’
‘You’ve been out all day.’
‘I know.’
I reached for his hand as he passed me on the way to put the kettle on.
‘I’m up,’ I said. ‘And I’m sorry. I’m out of control and it isn’t fair.’
He kneeled beside my chair. ‘Magenta, I …’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m glad you’re up.’
He made himself tea, and another for me as well as some toast, which we ate while watching a late film on television. It wasn’t long before we both gave in to fatigue and went to bed.
In the morning Anthony got ready to go to the gallery. There was no reconciliation as such, just an understanding between us that since I was out of bed and looking through my wardrobe I must be a little better than the day before.
‘I’m glad we’re talking again,’ he said. But I would hardly call it that.
I should have cooked a special breakfast, served in bed and followed with lots of apologies to compensate for my awful behaviour. But Anthony had toast and was in and out of the shower in seconds – and seconds later he was gone. With a gentle kiss on my cheek he was out of the door on his way to the Slater Gallery.
My morning was a bit more of a challenge. I’d listened to Riley’s messages on my voicemail that morning and felt even more tired than I had when I got out of bed. But I couldn’t go on moping around the house. I should at least get some air. Something. Two weeks ago I had been all systems go, full on with the business and up for anything.
Normally I would have been up and out in the early hours of the morning, running regularly as part of a lifestyle change I’d adopted a year ago. Maybe it was what my body needed; a run might clear my foggy brain. My early morning sessions before work always left me recharged and rejuvenated so it was time to give my heart and lungs an aerobic kick up the butt.
I swapped my old black sweater for one of Anthony’s black hoodies. It looked bitter outside and with a long sleeved T-shirt underneath I could protect myself from the December morning. I put on some running socks, noting how dirty my feet had become since plodding around the house barefoot for days and not having had a bath. My trainers felt weird on my feet but I pushed on, grabbing a pair of gloves on the way out of the door.
There wasn’t much green space to run around but if I stayed around the back streets I should have a fairly quiet run. It was less of a run, actually, more of an unhealthy hobble. My body seemed to have lost all power in such a short space of time and I was pretty exhausted by the time I got to the top of the mews, about fifty metres. Regardless, I continued my slow stagger around the corner and turned down a long street lined with terraced Victorian houses, each with railings outside and steps up to the front doors. I stopped several times, sitting on front steps and hanging on to railings.
Most of my problem was not having eaten for days or having had anything much to drink. That morning I’d had a cup of coffee, which would only have dehydrated me further.
Not too far from home I decided to turn back. Each plod of my foot on the pavement made a booming sound in my head. Turning towards the direction of home I was being approached by a trio of children on scooters. They scooted like crazy towards me in brightly coloured puffer jackets and woolly hats. I didn’t expect children out on a weekday but realized that schools must have broken up for the Christmas holidays.
A woman, possibly their mother, was half running, half walking to catch up with them. She was carrying an overstuffed bag for life in one hand, looking harassed and probably wishing the Christmas holiday was over already.
‘Slow down!’ I heard her say but the trio of puffer jackets seemed to speed up. I’d have to do some nifty footwork to avoid them but hoped they’d have the manners to form a single file to let me by. How wrong was I? The little darlings carried on at full speed, not having noticed me or, if they had, probably expected me to jump up onto a front step to clear the track.
Thankfully, one pulled ahead of the others, forming a space between them. At the rate I was trundling along I could quite easily skip through it. I did a hop and skip towards the gap but must have misjudged the width. I tripped over a scooter or a child’s foot and fell to the pavement with a bump before rolling onto my bottom.
Just beside me the mother stopped with her bag for life, bellowing at the top of her voice. ‘Didn’t I tell you to slow down?’ She was red-faced. She dropped her bag, offering her hand so she could help me up. The children scooted back to us and dropped their scooters near my feet. I couldn’t move.
‘It’s all right, I’m okay,’ I said, a little dazed. But I just sat there on the pavement, looking at the dust on my gloves and at the faces of the concerned people in a circle around me. The mother extended her hand further. I took it and tried to ease myself up. The children rushed to assist, pulling at my hoodie and scooping me up under the arms.
‘Mummy, her hair stinks,’ said the little girl.
‘Don’t say, “stinks”,’ said her mother, ‘Say, “smells”.’
‘She smells,’ said the little girl.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ asked the mother as I got to my feet.
‘Absolutely.’ I straightened up my hoodie and smiled. ‘I am. I’m really all right.’
In that moment I made the decision to go back to work.
I limped off home. The little girl had made a poignant remark. I’d never let my appearance get so bad and I’d never worn the same clothes for more than half a day, let alone five in a trot. I stepped in off the street, looking at my wild hair, dry skin, and oversized clothes. Anthony had been sharing a bed with a bag lady for days, without complaint. It was time to tackle the issue of hygiene head on.
I stayed under the shower for an indeterminate time. I started on my hair, single-handedly, no professional intervention. I tried to tame my curls with half a bottle of conditioner and a wide-toothed comb, coming close to wanting to shave my head a few times. My eyes were stinging and pink by the time I emerged and I nearly slipped a disc clambering out of the shower because the floor was awash with giant bubbles from the deluge of product I had to administer.
I ate toast while holding the diffuser to my head and drank a cold cup of coffee left over from the brew Anthony made earlier on. I stepped into the wardrobe to find an appropriate outfit and chose a simple, black Victoria Beckham crew neck and matching knit skirt and long boots.
‘No more tears,’ I said to the mirror in the small corridor as I pulled a red woollen hat over my still-damp hair. I pointed a gloved finger at the woman reflected back at me in her Dolce & Gabbana coat saying, ‘It’s time to work.’