Forget Me Not

‘And what if you weren’t going abroad?’ I asked. ‘How would you feel about it then? If you were staying here?’

Xan looked at me. ‘Exactly the same.’

‘Oh,’ I said quietly. ‘I see.’ I stared at the carpet again, scrutinising the little mark. I now saw that it was shaped like an aeroplane.

‘Don’t do this, Anna,’ I heard Xan say. ‘You’ll wreck both our lives – and the child’s …’ – he seemed unable to say the word ‘baby’. ‘It’s so unfair on it, not having a father from the start. Children have the right to be born into a stable family unit, with two parents to love them.’ I stared at him. ‘Please, Anna. Don’t. I do want children one day, but I want to be a father to them – not some absent stranger.’ His eyes were shining with tears. ‘It’s still early days and you have a choice. Please, Anna, don’t do this. Please …’ he repeated quietly.

I stared at Xan, too shattered to reply. Then he picked up his bag and walked out of the house, closing the front door with a definitive click.

THREE (#u8798a5ca-f69b-53de-ae5f-a8243b788d0e)

The private clinic I’d booked myself into a week later was called the Audrey Forbes Women’s Health Centre and was in a rain-stained sixties office block in Putney High Street, next to a bookshop. I glanced in the window at the colourful pyramid of children’s books: We’re Going on a Bear Hunt;The Gruffalo; The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I wasn’t in the least hungry myself, I realised, even though I’d been told to have nothing to eat or drink.

I gave my name to the receptionist on the ground floor, then pressed the button to summon the lift. To my disappointment it arrived straight away. The interior smelt of stale cigarette smoke and cheap scent, which added to my nausea, which had been increasing daily. I arrived at the fifth floor with a stomach-lurching jolt.

There was a faint smell of antiseptic mingled with the odour of plastic chairs as I entered the huge waiting room. There must have been about eighty seats or so – a good half of them occupied by women, some as young as children, others as old as grannies. Perhaps they were grannies, I thought. It was perfectly possible to be a granny and pregnant – even a great-granny, come to that, if you’d got started young enough.

To my left two women, one early twenties, the other late thirties, were chatting in a subdued way. As I queued at the desk I caught fragments of their conversation.

Oh, you’ll be fine … about two hours … don’t cry …left you in the lurch, has he …? Don’t upset yourself … Ihaven’t even told my husband … well, he’d kill me if heknew … no, not really painful … don’t cry.

‘Name, please?’ said the nurse.

‘Anna Temple,’ I whispered. I felt a wave of shame.

‘And how will you be paying today? We take Mastercard, Visa, Maestro, American Express, cheque with a valid guarantee card – or cash,’ she added pleasantly.

I handed her my credit card.

‘That’ll be five hundred and twenty-five pounds,’ she said as she slotted it into the machine. ‘Which includes a 1.5 per cent handling charge.’ This somehow made it seem like excellent value. I wondered if she was going to offer me a 3 for 2, like the pharmacist, or maybe a discount voucher, for future use. She handed me a clipboard. ‘Please fill out this form.’

I stepped to one side, filled it in and returned it to her. She handed me a plastic cup to fill, and told me I’d be called within the hour.

As I walked to the Ladies I ran through my mental list, for perhaps the thousandth time in the past seven days, of the Eight Good Reasons for not proceeding with my pregnancy. I listed them again now, in descending order of importance.

I am heartbroken about Xan. If I have his baby I willnever be able to get over him.

Having Xan’s baby when he doesn’t want me to feelswrong.

I do not wish to bring a baby into the world with nofather in its life.

It will make it so much harder for me to find someoneelse.

Having a baby now will wreck my new career.

I will have no income for a very long time.

I will be too engrossed in my own problems to help mydad, who needs me.

Being a single mother will be lonely and hard.

As I washed my hands, a girl came out of a cubicle. She looked about fourteen. Her mother – who looked no older than me – was leaning against the basin, arms akimbo, an expression of pained resignation on her face. As I followed them back to the counter with my cup I wished that I had someone with me – but who would it have been? Not Xan, obviously, even if he weren’t on a plane, crossing five time zones to reach the other side of the world. Not Cassie. She’d be no comfort at all. Would I have wanted my mother? No. Not least because she’d been there herself but had worked it all out. I had a sudden hankering for Granny Temple, who was always practical and kind – but she’d died in 2001.

As I took my seat again, near to a wall-mounted TV – This Morning was on: they were cooking something revolting-looking with red lentils – I remembered my consultation with my GP. It was already too late for the method where you take a pill; so it had to be the early surgical technique.

‘It takes five minutes,’ my doctor had said reassuringly. ‘And the recovery time is quite short – just a couple of hours. Now, are you sure about it?’ she asked, as she signed the letter which would state that my mental health would be impaired by my proceeding with the pregnancy.

‘Yes. I’m quite sure,’ I lied …

I am heartbroken about Xan, I repeated to myself now, like a mantra. If I have his baby I will never be able to get over him. Having his baby when he doesn’t want me to feels wrong. I do not wish to bring a baby into the world with no father …

What was my fourth reason? I couldn’t remember. What was it?

‘Anna Temple!’ I heard. I stood up. ‘You’ll be going down to the ward next,’ said the nurse, ‘but first go to the locker room, take everything off, put your belongings in a locker, put on a paper gown and wait.’ I did as I was told. Then, clutching the back of the gown, which felt uncomfortably breezy and exposed, I sat down with two other women in the waiting area. I felt suddenly self-conscious about my bare feet. The polish on my toes was chipped and there was a ridge of hard skin on my heels. But the thought of prettifying my feet in preparation for an abortion made me feel even more sick than I already did.

I picked up a leaflet about contraception so that I wouldn’t have to catch the eye of either of the other two women who were waiting with me.

‘Anna Temple?’ said another female voice now, after what seemed like a week but was probably twenty minutes.

I followed the doctor down the draughty corridor into a cubicle.

‘OK,’ she said as her eyes scanned my form. ‘We’ll just run through a few things before I perform the procedure.’

‘Could you tell me how it works,’ I said.

‘Well, it’s quite simple,’ she replied pleasantly. I noticed a speculum lying on a metal tray on the trolley next to her and some syringes in their wrappers. ‘You’ll be given a local anaesthetic, into the cervix, and once that has worked, the cervix is gently stretched open, and a thin plastic tube is then inserted into the uterus, and the conceptus …’

‘Conceptus?’

‘That’s right. Will be eliminated from the uterus.’

‘The conceptus will be eliminated from the uterus,’ I echoed.

My head was spinning. I closed my eyes. I was ten weeks pregnant. The ‘conceptus’ was over an inch long. It had a heart that had been beating for five weeks now – a heart that had suddenly sparked into life. It had limb buds, which were sprouting tiny fingers and toes, which themselves had even tinier nails. It had a recognisably human little face, with nostrils and eyelids; it even had the beginnings of teeth …

The doctor began to tear the wrapper off a syringe. ‘If you could just hop up on to the bed here …’

I stood up. ‘I need to go.’

She looked at me. ‘You need to go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, there’s a bathroom at the back, by the fire exit.’

‘No,’ I said weakly. ‘That’s not what I mean. I need to go as in “leave”. I can’t do this. I don’t know how I thought I could. It’s … not the right thing – at least, not for me. My boyfriend – ex-boyfriend now – doesn’t want me to go ahead. And when I told him I was pregnant he was very upset, and he said that a child has the right to be born into a stable family unit with two parents to love it, and that may very well be true. But now I’m here I realise that more important than that, a child has a right to be born.’

She looked at me. ‘So you’ve changed your mind?’