The First Time Mums’ Club

Chapter 7

‘Morning, sleepy head.’

Ellie opened her eyes as a stream of sunlight shot into the room as a result of Zoe opening the living-room curtains. She groaned and pulled the cover up over her face.

‘Here, I made you a coffee. It’s decaf, mind.’

‘Why?’ Ellie’s voice was muffled by the cover.

‘Because you need to reduce the amount of caffeine you are drinking. It’s not good for the baby.’

Ellie pulled the cover off and sat up a little, making room on the end of the sofa for Zoe to sit down. ‘No, I mean, why did you bring me a coffee?’

‘Listen,’ Zoe perched on the edge of the sofa not far from Ellie’s feet and passed the cup. ‘I am sorry about yesterday. I didn’t mean to upset you with all that talk about Dad. I just wanted to make you see that he’s not a monster and it would be good for you to have him around, you know, especially now.’

The reality of why she was here at her sister’s came crashing back down and she was forced to think about everything again. She sipped at her coffee for something to do, it tasted bitter.

‘You know that I will always be here for you and that I will do everything I can to make things okay, but just don’t forget about Dad. I know he misses having you around and I miss having my family. It’s bad enough Mum not being here, but having to see you and Dad separately all the time drives me crazy. We should be sticking together, not pushing each other away. It makes it really hard on me – I hate having to choose all the time.’

‘I’m not asking you to choose.’

‘You kind of are, Ellie. You two not being able to be in the same room together without creating tension means I have to split myself. It’s not fair on me. Plus I know Dad would want to be involved with you having a baby – he’d love to have a grandchild!’

Ellie shook her head. ‘Let’s not get too carried away.’

Zoe huffed. ‘Honesty, it’s like talking to a brick wall sometimes.’

Ellie shrugged, reverting to acting like a child. Sometimes when she and Zoe were together she found herself behaving as she would’ve done at eleven years old, having her annoying fourteen-year-old sister around.

‘How comes you slept on the sofa and not in the spare room?’ Zoe peered at her over her coffee cup.

Ellie avoided eye contact. ‘I was watching a film and I must’ve fallen asleep.’

‘Fair enough. So, I’ve been thinking. We need to sort a plan out so that we know what we are doing and how we are going to do it. First things first, you need to tell Chris.’

Ellie groaned and dropped her head back so that it rested on the back of the sofa. ‘Not this again.’

‘Come on, you owe it to him to tell him. What have you got to lose?’

‘Err, let me think. My best friend, my job, my freedom… my sanity!’ She listed them on her free hand, one finger at a time.

‘Oh you’re such a drama queen. You will not lose your sanity and the rest we can sort out. You can’t just hide away at my place and pretend nothing is happening. You need to go and see a doctor, get the ball rolling with a midwife, put things in place ready for when the baby comes…’

Ellie felt her chest tighten listening to all this talk about the baby. ‘Look, I haven’t even decided what I am going to do yet. There’s no point in involving Chris in this until I know what I am doing.’

‘What you are doing? Ellie, you’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’ Zoe eyed her suspiciously and Ellie had to turn away again.

‘I don’t know what I am going to do. I need time to think. It’s all happening too fast and I’ve got work appointments next week to sort out and I need to do a new order for this film I am doing next month and –’

‘Ellie, I am afraid that’s life. When shit gets thrown at you, you have to suck it up and deal with it. Not brush it under the carpet and hope that it will go away. And this definitely won’t go away; this will become more and more prominent in your life, so you need to work out what you are doing. I will help you. You don’t have to go through this alone, but you do have to tell Chris.’

She knew she had to tell Chris, but she was so scared of losing him. ‘Zoe, what happened between me and Chris – it was a mistake. A huge mistake that should never have happened.’ And it shouldn’t have happened all the other times too. What was she thinking? Nobody can have a sexual relationship without the possibility of it getting complicated. She wished she had learnt this lesson before she got pregnant.

‘But it did!’

‘Don’t I bloody know it!’

There was a long pause, where both girls didn’t know what to say next. Ellie thumbed the mug and stared down into the shiny brown liquid. She knew her sister would be like this. Maybe, subconsciously, that’s why she came up here. She needed her sister to take control of the situation and tell her what she needed to do. This is exactly what she did when their mum died. She pulled Ellie back onto the straight and narrow and yet here she was again, nearly ten years later, and asking her sister to do the same. Would she ever learn? The thought of her being such a burden weighed down in her stomach and she felt guilty. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, taking another sip of coffee.

‘What are you sorry for?’ Zoe had now leant back and had her feet up on the coffee table, her long legs bare, with just a small pair of bed shorts on.

‘For always being such a mess. For always relying on you to pick up the pieces when I make a mistake… for being a crap sister.’

‘Don’t be silly, you aren’t a crap sister.’

‘I bloody feel like one. It’s never the other way around, is it? It’s never you coming to me and needing help to sort your life out. You’re so confident and clever and… just… Zoe. You never make mistakes; you never do anything wrong.’ Zoe looked away from Ellie and seemed a little uncomfortable. She was playing with her cup and looked awkward. ‘What’s wrong?’ Ellie asked, eyeing her sister suspiciously.

‘Nothing.’ She didn’t look at her.

‘Well, it doesn’t look like nothing.’ Ellie nudged her with her foot from under the cover.

‘Ellie, everyone makes mistakes. Even me.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You’re Little Miss Perfect, you don’t make mistakes. Everything seems to fall into your lap and you make things happen.’

Zoe turned her head to look at Ellie, her expression more serious than she had been for ages. ‘Everything doesn’t just fall into my lap. I work bloody hard for everything that I have.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying, some people are really lucky in life and others, well, others seem to get all the bad luck. Like me.’

‘I get bad luck too. I have my moments of weakness and I do things wrong. It’s not what happens to you in life; it’s how you deal with things. That’s the difference.’

Ellie eyed her suspiciously. Zoe looked uncomfortable, sad. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘What do you mean?’ The colour had drained out a little from her face.

‘You’re not telling me something. Why do you keep saying how you aren’t perfect, how you get things wrong?’ She paused, but didn’t drop her gaze. Zoe, however, wouldn’t look at her. ‘Zoe? What aren’t you telling me?’ she pressed.

Zoe exhaled and shuffled in her seat, turning round to face Ellie front-on. ‘Listen, I don’t want you to get rid of the baby. I think you will regret it for the rest of your life.’ She looked away. ‘I did.’

Ellie felt her stomach flip. The air suddenly became tight and she felt her throat close slightly with anxiety. ‘What do you mean, ‘you did’?’

‘Ellie, things happen in life that you can’t control and sometimes you have to make a decision based on what you can control.’

‘I don’t understand.’ She kind of understood, but she didn’t want to.

‘I have been pregnant before.’ The silence in the air that followed this revelation was both uncomfortable and strange. Zoe looked back up at her. ‘I didn’t have a choice. It was a volatile relationship and I had got myself into a situation I couldn’t get out of. And then I found myself pregnant.’

‘Shit,’ Ellie whispered as she reached across the sofa and held Zoe’s hand.

‘I couldn’t bring a baby into that environment. I had spent months gearing up to leaving him because he was,’ she swallowed, ‘he was physical with me.’

‘Zoe…’ Ellie breathed out. She felt distraught for her sister, but underneath a bubble of anger was beginning to brew.

‘It’s fine. I’m not with him now.’ She tried to laugh, but it came out strained.

‘So you got an abortion?’

‘I’m not proud of my decision and I regret it every single day. But I just couldn’t bring a baby into that. I was worried sick that he would hurt the baby and then I would be the worst mum in the world because I couldn’t stop it happening.’

‘Oh Zoe, why didn’t you tell me?’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want anyone else to know. I was ashamed of being so weak to let things get to that stage.’

‘It’s not weak, Zoe. For Christ sake, it’s him who should be feeling shitty, not you!’ She felt the anger building. ‘Who was he?’

‘It doesn’t matter –’

‘It does bloody matter; he deserves to be in prison for what he did.’ Her voice was shaky, but controlled. For now.

‘Ellie, it doesn’t matter. It was years ago and I’m okay. He can’t hurt me any more; I’m a different person to who I was back then. I’m stronger.’

‘When was it?’ She shuffled in her seat, still making sure she held Zoe’s hand, not letting go of her. She never wanted to let go of her. She should have been here for her when it happened and she didn’t think she could ever forgive herself for not.

‘Not long after Mum died.’

Ellie gasped, feeling the tears spring to her eyes.

‘I wasn’t coping very well and he came along and was so charming. I think he could sense that I was weak. He said all the right things I needed to hear and I let my guard down. It took me about six months to realise that I was in too deep and had become reliant on him. He knew it too. So he started to get heavy-handed if I didn’t do what he wanted and it just went downhill.’

‘Oh God, Zoe. Why didn’t you tell me, or Dad? He would’ve gone mad.’

‘That’s exactly why I didn’t tell him. But then I found out I was pregnant and that night we had an argument and he pushed me and I fell down the stairs.’

‘Oh my God, when you broke your arm!’ It was a statement rather than a question. Ellie remembered when Zoe came to visit and she had her arm in a cast. ‘You said you fell down the stairs.’

‘And I did. I just… had a little help.’ She looked down into her lap, clearly ashamed. ‘Ellie, I couldn’t bring a baby into that.’

‘I know. You did the right thing.’ She rubbed her thumb over Zoe’s hand.

‘Didn’t feel like the right thing.’

‘I can’t believe you went through all that on your own.’

‘I didn’t want anyone to see how stupid I had been.’ She coughed and composed herself, ‘Listen, all I’m saying is that you need to think long and hard before doing anything stupid. Because what you decide now will affect you for the rest of your life. Whatever you decide, just make sure it’s the right decision for you.’

‘Is that what you think we would’ve thought? That you had been stupid? Zoe, you are a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.’

‘I got myself into that situation, didn’t I? That was stupid.’

‘No, that was grief. It does fucked-up things to your mind. I should know – it royally fucked up mine.’ She felt a glimmer of relief that she now knew she wasn’t the only one to have let it get to her, though. When she thought Zoe was handling life perfectly well, underneath she was crumbling too. And as horrible as that was, it was comforting to know.

‘I can’t blame grief for my poor mistakes.’

‘Yes you bloody can. Zoe, you are not a machine – you cannot programme yourself to just erase things. You are human.’

‘Yes, but you have to take responsibility for your actions in life and that relationship was one bad decision after another – it was as if I was possessed. I could see myself spiralling further into despair, but I felt powerless to do anything about it. Until it was too late.’ She looked into her lap, ashamed.

‘Honey, you are allowed to make mistakes. It’s okay. Feel free to take the baton from me for a bit – I’m in my overdraft from the Bank of Mistakes!’ The girls both laughed and it helped to lighten the air. Ellie smiled. It was the first time in her whole life that she had seen that her big sister was not the perfect human being she had made her out to be. Whilst that was clearly a hard concept for her sister to deal with, it did make Ellie feel closer to her. As though a barrier had lifted out of the way – they weren’t so different after all.

All too quickly, though, their conversation drifted back to Ellie and the latest mistake she had made. After hearing her sister’s story, she knew that she couldn’t get rid of this baby. Deep down she never wanted to anyway.

‘I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get rid of the baby – I don’t know that that was even what I was thinking – but I am terrified. I can’t be a mum. I can barely look after myself!’ She huffed and put her head in her hands. ‘How would you deal with this situation?’ Even though she knew her sister was no longer perfect, she was more perfect than Ellie would ever be.

‘You know what I would do first?’ Ellie’s phone began to ring just as Zoe opened her mouth to speak. Both girls looked at the phone flashing on the coffee table with the one name Ellie didn’t want to see. Zoe pointed at it. ‘That. That is what I would do first.’ She stood up and squeezed Ellie’s knee. ‘Come on, you need to talk to him. He deserves to know.’ Zoe stood to leave, but Ellie sprung up and pulled her in for a hug. She squeezed her so tight.

‘I am so sorry you had to go through all that without me, Zoe. I promise I will always be here for you. No matter what.’

Zoe squeezed her back and then pulled away, looking Ellie in the eyes. ‘I know you will. Now do the right thing.’ She squeezed Ellie’s shoulder and left the living room, closing the door so she could give Ellie the privacy she needed to get this phone call out of the way.

Ellie picked up her mobile and took a shaky intake of breath before pressing the answer key. ‘Hi Chris.’

‘About bloody time! Where the hell have you been?’

‘Sorry, things are just a bit manic at the moment. I’m at my sister’s. Needed a break.’ Her heart was racing so fast. She took another sip of coffee to calm her nerves.

‘At your sister’s? In Shropshire? When did that happen?’

‘Friday.’

Chris paused. ‘So why do you need a break. Surely work isn’t going that badly?’

‘No, work was fine. Is fine,’ she corrected quickly. ‘I just, have some stuff going on and I needed some time to, you know, sort my head.’

‘Have you stopped being weird with me now?’ He laughed and Ellie felt a surge of affection for him. She missed him.

‘I wasn’t being weird.’ This conversation was probably one of the most awkward conversations they had ever had. She was avoiding the big elephant in the room and she needed to tell him. Thing is, the words just weren’t coming out. She physically couldn’t say the one thing she so desperately needed to say. Before she knew it, she blurted out, ‘Can we meet?’

‘Meet up? In Shropshire? I can’t come all that way today, Els, I have an early start tomorrow and a million meetings planned.’

‘Right…’ Disappointment dripped from that one word and Chris obviously picked up on it.

‘Is everything okay? You are being weird.’

‘Yes, its fine. I’m fine.’

‘Look, how about this? We meet halfway? Go for some lunch somewhere in Milton Keynes?’

Ellie thought about this for a second and then replied, ‘Actually, that’s not a bad idea. What time?’

‘Well, I need to jump in the shower and that, so let’s say one? I’ll google a place and text you where to meet me.’

‘Okay. No problem. See you in a few hours.’

‘Oh, Ellie?’

She stopped pacing. ‘Yes?’

‘Try and cheer up. It’s not the end of the world.’

No, she thought. But it may as well be.

*****

‘Do you know what I fancy?’ Imogen put down her menu and looked at Alice thoughtfully.

‘Me?’ Came the reply with a cheeky grin. Her hair was down today, as opposed to being scraped back, which was how she usually wore it for work, and she looked so beautiful. With a cute little t-shirt under a jacket and tight jeans, Alice looked casual but really pretty.

Imogen laughed. ‘Yes, of course. But I did mean foodwise.’

‘I know, I’m just messing. What do you fancy? It’s not going to be some weird concoction is it? I’m sure that doesn’t start this early.’

‘No,’ Imogen shook her head. ‘Nothing weird… yet. I really fancy a prawn sandwich.’

Alice turned her nose up in disgust. ‘Urgh, I can’t stand prawns. Especially not in bread. I mean, what is that about? The weird consistency of the slimy prawns on the dry bread… nope, can’t do it.’ She shook her head.

‘Slimy? No wonder you don’t like it if you are using slimy prawns!’ Imogen grimaced, shivering slightly at the thought.

‘You know what I mean. They’re all slippery and… and…’ she searched for the right word, using her hand as if that would help her brain, and settled for ‘fleshy.’

‘You’re making my prawn sandwich sound like a horror movie,’ Imogen giggled and picked up the menu again. ‘Maybe I’ll go for something else. It doesn’t sound as appealing now.’

‘Sorry, I won’t ruin your next choice.’ She smiled lovingly.

‘Hi ladies, are you ready to order?’

‘I am, are you ready, Ims?’ Alice flashed the woman a smile before settling back on Imogen.

She nodded at Alice but indicated that she should go first, to give herself some more time to look.

‘I’ll just have a BLT with a cup of tea, please.’ She handed back the menu.

‘No problem, and for you?’ The woman looked at Imogen with a beautiful, big smile, the lines around her eyes creasing as she did. She had a simple t-shirt with khaki jeggings on and an apron tied around her waist that had splatters of something brown on. She had her hair tied back into a tiny bun with a few strands loose around her face and she just looked the epitome of friendly.