Yesterday's Echoes

IT WAS THE crying that woke her up, bringing her bolt upright in her single, almost monastic little bed, her arms crossing protectively around her body as she tried to clear her brain.

There was the familiar oblong of light cast by the moon through her bedroom window, the familiar pale colours of her simply decorated bedroom with its white bed-linen, its plain, light-coloured walls and carpet, slightly stark against the darkness of the room’s oak beams.

She was not, after all, as she had been dreaming, there in that hospital ward, all around her the cries of the new-born babies, to remind her agonisingly of the child she had just lost…The child she had been so terrified she might have conceived, the child she had rejected with panic and shock, terrified of what its conception was going to mean of the way it would alter her life.

But now there was no child, and she was safe. She knew she ought to be glad…relieved. Only somehow she wasn’t, and the pain inside her wasn’t just caused by the physical shock of the haemorrhage which had preceded her miscarriage. And those piercing new-born cries scraped at her raw nerves like physical torture. No matter what she did, she couldn’t escape from him…or from what had happened.

She was shaking, Rosie recognised, her body icy-cold. Even though it was a softly mild night, and despite her shivers her body was drenched in sweat as she fought not to remember.

It was over fifteen years ago now, almost half her own lifetime. She had been sixteen, that was all—still a child in so many ways, and yet still woman enough to grieve tormentedly for the life that was lost, for the child she would never now hold, for the ache within her that came from the emptiness of what she had lost.

Sixteen…Sixteen, and a virgin. Innocent of any knowledge of male sexuality. And yet she should have known…should have recognised.

It had been all her own fault, as Jake Lucas had so contemptuously pointed out to her.

You didn’t go upstairs with someone, allow him to kiss and fondle you, without knowing where it was going to lead.

Her head had still been thick then with the cider she had had to drink. Only half a glass and she had not finished that, but she learned afterwards that it had been scrumpy, brought back from the south of England by one of the others, with heaven alone knew what added to it.

That still didn’t excuse her, though. She shouldn’t have drunk it, shouldn’t have even been at the party in the first place. If her parents had been at home instead of away at a conference, if her sister had not been staying in the north of England helping her mother-in-law to nurse the husband who was just beginning to recover from a stroke, she would never have been allowed to go.

But they hadn’t been there and, out of bravado and a fear of being laughed at by the others, she had given in to her friends’ cajoling and agreed to join them.

TIREDLY SHE got out of bed. There was no point in trying to get back to sleep again. Not now.

And no point in reliving the whole thing all over again, she reminded herself bitterly. What good had that ever done, other than to reinforce her feelings of guilt and shame, to conjure up in front of her the sharply vivid mental image of Jake Lucas’s cynical, condemnatory expression as he stared down at her half-naked body, the way she lay sprawled across his aunt and uncle’s bed?

Then, still in shock, her body still aching with pain, her mind still clouded with alcohol, she had not thought of pregnancy. That had come later in a sickening wave of panic and rejection, when she’d realised that she could have conceived.

She hadn’t told anyone; she had been too afraid, too aware by then of her own guilt and degradation.

A month went by and the panic became a certainty, but still she did nothing.

All around her life went on as normal, and she felt somehow that if she pretended it had simply not happened…if she said and did nothing, it would all magically go away. That the nausea she felt in the morning would stop, that her body’s rhythms would return to normal, that the mental pictures that filled her brain at night while she slept would disappear, and that she would once again be the girl she had been before.

No one said anything to her; no one seemed to be aware of what had happened.

Jake Lucas’s aunt and uncle had emigrated to Australia three weeks after the party, with their family.

Some days she almost managed to convince herself that it had never happened, and then something would remind her: she would see a woman pushing a pram on her way home from school…or see a small baby on television. Whenever she saw a heavily pregnant woman she found herself looking the other way, as the panic bubbled up inside her.

Her mother was concerned about her and feared that she had been studying too hard for her exams.

The guilt she felt when she heard this was the worst kind of punishment. Her parents loved and trusted her. How could she tell them the truth?

And then, while they were away visiting friends and Chrissie was still with her mother-in-law, it happened.

Rosie had gone in to Chester for the day. She had some books she wanted to buy which were not available in their small market town.

She had bought the books and had just been walking out of the shop when it happened—a pain so searing and sharp that she dropped the books, her hand instinctively going to her stomach as she collapsed.

When she came round it was all over and she was in hospital.

She had lost her baby, a harassed young doctor had told her briskly, and they wanted to keep her in overnight just to check that there were no complications.

After that everyone seemed to ignore her, and it was only later that she learned that there had been an emergency that evening, with a major road accident locally.

In the confusion of that, no one realised that Rosie’s family had not been advised of what had happened, and when Rosie was discharged from the hospital the next day with a clean bill of health she realised numbly that no one but her knew or needed to know what had happened.

At first she was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for that fact, but later, when the sound of crying babies brought her out of her sleep, when the guilt over what she had done was replaced by the far greater guilt and anguish of having lost her child, she ached for someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone with whom she could share her confused feelings.

Logically she knew that her miscarriage was probably the best thing that could have happened. She was sixteen years old, she had attended a party without her parents’ knowledge, had had too much to drink and as a result…She shuddered, still not able to contemplate what had actually happened, and yet, despite knowing all that, she had still grieved for her lost child.

And still did.

She went downstairs and filled the kettle so that she could make herself a drink of herbal tea. Perhaps that might help her to get back to sleep.

She knew now that she would never have another child. How could she risk another man looking at her the way Jake Lucas had looked at her, when she told him about her past? She was too proud to want a relationship in which it remained a secret—that was not her ideal of marriage, of commitment, of sharing.

Once she realised what was happening she had, of course, tried to stop him, but he had pinned her to the bed, leaving dark bruises on her arms as he forced his way into her body, making her cry out in shock, not just at his unwanted, forced physical possession of her, but also at the emotional humiliation and degradation she was being made to suffer.

It had all been over within seconds, but those seconds had been long enough to change her life irretrievably. Even now, remembering…thinking about what had happened, Rosie was filled with self-disgust and guilt.

She had withdrawn into herself afterwards, earning for herself a reputation as a swot, as someone who would rather stay at home with her family than go out with her friends.

Her sense of shame and guilt over what had happened was so strong that she could not bear anyone else to know what she had done.

Rather then endure a repeat of the humiliation and shame, the sense of anguished guilt she had already known, she decided that her life must have another focus, that for the sake of her own sanity and self-respect she must accept that that commitment—marriage, a relationship that included a lover and the children they might have together—was not for her.

And most of the time she managed to convince herself that she was content. Except when she saw a small baby or a pregnant woman, except when she woke in the night remembering the past, except when something or someone reminded her of what had happened.

Her tea had gone cold. She looked at it with distaste.

It was fortunate that she was not superstitious, she told herself bitterly, because there could be no worse omen to precede her meeting with Ian Davies than what had happened today.

Tiredly she went back to bed, promising herself that this time she was not going to allow Jake Lucas to disturb her much-needed rest. That this time she was not going to lie there in the darkness remembering the way he had looked at her, the way he had spoken to her, the contempt and dislike with which he had treated her.

THIS WOULD HAVE to happen to her today of all days, Rosie fumed anxiously, as she waited on the full garage forecourt for a petrol pump to become free.

After all the careful preparations she had made for this morning’s meeting with Ian Davies, how on earth had she come to overlook something as vital as making sure her petrol tank was full?

The pump in front of her became free and she pulled quickly into it, ignoring the attempts of the driver behind her to cut in ahead of her.

As she unlocked the petrol cap and pushed the nozzle of the hose into the tank, for some contrary reason, instead of gushing smoothly into the tank, the strong-smelling liquid flooded backwards, spilling out on to her shoes and tights…

It was only a few small splashes, but they left a dismaying strong smell, Rosie acknowledged as she queued to pay for her petrol.

She always left herself with a good extra margin of time when she was travelling to an appointment, but this morning everything seemed to be against her. She had lost at least fifteen minutes getting petrol, and once she was actually on the motorway there was an unexpected hold-up where a lorry had shed its load and the mess was being cleaned up. She eventually arrived in Chester with only five minutes in which to find a parking spot and to get to Ian Davies’s offices, and Chester was a notoriously difficult place to park.