spilt something on it? I kept it pristine, a treasure, a precious memory. And then one day I went to dress up in it in front of my bedroom mirror and had grown
too big for it. I wept then, thinking about Dad dying alone, missing him.
It’s funny, I have no memory of him ever being drunk around me. Sometimes I even wonder if he was really as bad as Mum likes to say. After all, musicians are allowed a little licence.
Partying goes with the territory.
One of the things that drew me to Art was that his father wasn’t around when he was a child either. He understands what it’s like to be without a parent when you’re young and
to idolize them while somehow, somewhere, thinking you must be to blame for their absence.
I reach under the salwar kameez and take out what I know is there: a small, white babygro. It’s the only item of Beth’s baby clothing that I kept. I let Hen have everything else
– it seemed only fair, she had so little money for Nathan back then.
I take the babygro and hold it to my face. After Beth, I carried it with me everywhere for a year, I even slept with it. I packed it away the day we scattered Beth’s ashes. It’s
years since I’ve seen it and, as I feel its softness against my cheek, I realize that it no longer has any power over me. It’s just a piece of cloth. Never worn, never used. That I
invested it with the significance I did seems amazing to me now.
Could Art have lied to me about Beth?
The question ricochets around my head.
Ridiculous. Impossible. Even if he were capable of such dishonesty, what possible reason could he have for colluding in a plot to take our child – our first and only, much-wanted baby
– away from us?
I put the babygro and the salwar kameez away, run a bath and soak in it.
I strain my memory, trying to bring back the moment Art told me Beth was dead.
We lost her.
Suddenly the words sound ambiguous. Lost her to whom?
I close my eyes, remembering how Art had cried in my arms and how I’d wept in his. How each day brought a new reminder that, although we had no baby, no one had informed my body, so that
my belly sagged and ached under the long purple gash of the fresh C-section scar, while unneeded milk leaked from my nipples. Art walked every morning along the river, hands in his pockets,
shoulders hunched. I saw him from my window and everything in his body spoke of his despair. He went to pieces at the funeral, too. I watched him from behind the numb wall of my own grief as his
legs gave way under him and Morgan helped him stumble red-eyed out of the crematorium.
It’s impossible to believe that anything Lucy O’Donnell said is true. And yet my gut tells me she wasn’t lying. I sink lower into the bath, letting the water lap over my
stomach, over the place where Beth once danced inside me.
I fall asleep at last in the warm water. In my dream I’m back in the house where I grew up. I’m hiding under the bed, a child, holding my dad’s guitar like a security blanket,
and then a voice calls me out and it’s the young doctor from the first clinic where Art and I were tested following nine months of trying to get pregnant again after Beth. I’m not
anxious about it – not really. After all, I got pregnant easily enough the first time. The doctor turns to me. She smiles. ‘We can find nothing wrong,’ she says. ‘You are
both still young. It just takes time.’ She shakes my arm. ‘Listen to me. It is just a matter of time. The baby should come. Just give it time.’ She shakes my arm. ‘Geniver.
Give it time. Time. Gen . . .’
‘Gen.’
I wake, disoriented. Art is gently shaking my arm. It is dusk outside and I am lying on the bed covered in just a towel . . . Cold.
‘Are you all right?’ Art’s eyes are tender in the twilight. He sits on the bed beside me.
I tug at the towel, drawing it up over my shoulders. I don’t even remember getting out of the bath and onto the bed. I stare into Art’s face and realize how
too big for it. I wept then, thinking about Dad dying alone, missing him.
It’s funny, I have no memory of him ever being drunk around me. Sometimes I even wonder if he was really as bad as Mum likes to say. After all, musicians are allowed a little licence.
Partying goes with the territory.
One of the things that drew me to Art was that his father wasn’t around when he was a child either. He understands what it’s like to be without a parent when you’re young and
to idolize them while somehow, somewhere, thinking you must be to blame for their absence.
I reach under the salwar kameez and take out what I know is there: a small, white babygro. It’s the only item of Beth’s baby clothing that I kept. I let Hen have everything else
– it seemed only fair, she had so little money for Nathan back then.
I take the babygro and hold it to my face. After Beth, I carried it with me everywhere for a year, I even slept with it. I packed it away the day we scattered Beth’s ashes. It’s
years since I’ve seen it and, as I feel its softness against my cheek, I realize that it no longer has any power over me. It’s just a piece of cloth. Never worn, never used. That I
invested it with the significance I did seems amazing to me now.
Could Art have lied to me about Beth?
The question ricochets around my head.
Ridiculous. Impossible. Even if he were capable of such dishonesty, what possible reason could he have for colluding in a plot to take our child – our first and only, much-wanted baby
– away from us?
I put the babygro and the salwar kameez away, run a bath and soak in it.
I strain my memory, trying to bring back the moment Art told me Beth was dead.
We lost her.
Suddenly the words sound ambiguous. Lost her to whom?
I close my eyes, remembering how Art had cried in my arms and how I’d wept in his. How each day brought a new reminder that, although we had no baby, no one had informed my body, so that
my belly sagged and ached under the long purple gash of the fresh C-section scar, while unneeded milk leaked from my nipples. Art walked every morning along the river, hands in his pockets,
shoulders hunched. I saw him from my window and everything in his body spoke of his despair. He went to pieces at the funeral, too. I watched him from behind the numb wall of my own grief as his
legs gave way under him and Morgan helped him stumble red-eyed out of the crematorium.
It’s impossible to believe that anything Lucy O’Donnell said is true. And yet my gut tells me she wasn’t lying. I sink lower into the bath, letting the water lap over my
stomach, over the place where Beth once danced inside me.
I fall asleep at last in the warm water. In my dream I’m back in the house where I grew up. I’m hiding under the bed, a child, holding my dad’s guitar like a security blanket,
and then a voice calls me out and it’s the young doctor from the first clinic where Art and I were tested following nine months of trying to get pregnant again after Beth. I’m not
anxious about it – not really. After all, I got pregnant easily enough the first time. The doctor turns to me. She smiles. ‘We can find nothing wrong,’ she says. ‘You are
both still young. It just takes time.’ She shakes my arm. ‘Listen to me. It is just a matter of time. The baby should come. Just give it time.’ She shakes my arm. ‘Geniver.
Give it time. Time. Gen . . .’
‘Gen.’
I wake, disoriented. Art is gently shaking my arm. It is dusk outside and I am lying on the bed covered in just a towel . . . Cold.
‘Are you all right?’ Art’s eyes are tender in the twilight. He sits on the bed beside me.
I tug at the towel, drawing it up over my shoulders. I don’t even remember getting out of the bath and onto the bed. I stare into Art’s face and realize how
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