The tears rained down her face and onto her pale blue nightie.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ asked Henry. ‘It was my loss too.’
But he knew the answer. He’d always been quite firm in his resolute. Children were a burden they did not need; a blemish on their perfect life, an inconvenience and a hindrance to their neat home. Hadn’t Imogen always agreed with him?
‘No, you never ever said it did you? Not in so many words. You never really actually said you didn’t want children. Not exactly. I heard it that way but … Oh, Imogen.’
She should have told him about the miscarriage. Had he really been that selfish? Had it been so difficult for her to share with him?
‘Our baby,’ he said and thought again of his funeral and how his children should have been there. They’d have given wonderful eulogies, he felt sure.
‘Our children,’ he said sadly. ‘We should have talked about it more.’
He clenched his fists.
‘Damn it, Imogen, why can’t you hear me? Rita can see me so why can’t you?’
Imogen stood up, stumbled slightly and reached out to the sink for support, her hands wet with blood. It dribbled down her legs onto her feet.
‘Oh my God,’ cried Henry. ‘So much blood, shouldn’t we call an ambulance.’
Imogen grabbed a handful of toilet roll and wiped the blood from her legs and then pulled off more to clean the floor. Henry followed her back into the bedroom where she quietly removed sanitary towels from the little cabinet and carefully placed them inside her black panties before swallowing two pain killers with the water she always kept by her side of the bed. Henry slept soundly. He didn’t even stir when she slipped in beside him, pulling her knees up to her chest. The only sounds were the ticking of their clock and Henry’s occasional snores. It would be a few more years before Henry bought their new alarm clock. Look at me, thought Henry angrily, lying there without a care in the world while my wife is suffering.
‘Why don’t you wake up you buffoon?’ he shouted, but to no avail. Henry felt suddenly lost. He didn’t belong here. The room turned dark and he was back in the bedroom he knew. The shag pile carpet grubby and worn. Imogen was lying on the bed holding the baby clothes and Henry lay down beside her.
‘You should have told me,’ he said. ‘Surely I wasn’t that difficult to talk to.’
The phone at the side of the bed rang and Imogen stared at it. It rang several more times before she picked up the receiver.
‘Hello,’ she said softly and then, ‘I’m alright mother.’
She ran her hand through her hair wearily.
‘I just have to cope with these feelings. I just …’
She began to cry.
‘I love you too.’
‘I’m sorry about the baby Imogen,’ he said, getting up. ‘When this business is sorted, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I just have to sort this out.’
Although exactly how he was going to sort it out, Henry had no clear idea.
Journal entry
Imogen
So much blood. They say only women bleed. I will be forever in that moment, my hands scarlet and sticky. There is an exquisite pain of loss that educates you in a way nothing else can. I feel my heart has been pulled from my body and yet still it continues to beat. I had him for such a short time before he was cruelly torn from my body and flushed down the toilet bowl. Sordidly sad. Our baby washed down into the sewer like waste. Henry would be pleased. At least now I won’t have to tell him that our perfect life, perfect home and perfect marriage is going to be marred by the presence of another human.
That’s what comes of deception. That’s what comes of being dishonest.
I want to scoop it all up, all the blood and jelly and push it back inside me. Don’t go yet.
But he’s gone. He won’t play on a swing in the garden or cling to my apron strings as I prepare dinner. He won’t go to university or bring home a much yearned for daughter-in-law.
I hate Henry sometimes with as much passion as I love him. I should call him.
‘Help me Henry.’
