Page 36 of Forgive Me Not
It was a humid Friday morning. The fourteenth of July. Emma had been out of detox for two weeks. Perhaps she’d have her own flat soon. That had been the plan, with her and Joe’s baby due in January.
For such a long time there’d been no sense of a yesterday or a tomorrow. It was so long since she’d spent even one minute planning for the future. Since considering taking steps to get better, however, ideas had popped into her brain that focused on cots and prams. These ideas had become something else then; she’d created a story around first days at school and built up images of herself waving her daughter off to university.
Something had told her that her baby was a girl. Josephine, she’d be called. Joe might have liked that.
She swallowed and looked around the minimalist whitewashed room at Stanley House, with the flipchart easel in front of a half-moon of chairs. She’d started the Listening EAR programme last week, straight out of detox, despite what had happened. This was her sixth session. One of the facilitators, Dave, came in. In defiance of his receding hairline, he still managed to scrape back some sort of wispy grey ponytail. He wore his standard attire – T-shirt and voluminous explorer shorts.
He switched on a fan and she gave a weak smile as he passed around a clipboard for them all to sign in. Then he started with the usual catch-up – going around the room getting everyone to say how they’d managed since the last session two days ago.
Emma tried to focus, but instead, in her mind, the unexpected scenes of her last day of detox just played over and over. She had gone to the bathroom, marvelling at how clear-headed she felt. She’d washed her hands trying to pretend that she hadn’t just seen pink spots – that the cramps in her stomach were simply due to too many vegetables at lunch. She’d got herself a coffee. Tried not to double up. But the pain was too bad and those spots had returned, like traffic lights designed to halt pregnancies rather than cars. They had turned into a stream that couldn’t be stopped.
She had lost her.
She’d lost Josephine.
Potential decades of life wiped out in a few hours.
A kind doctor had checked her over. Said she wasn’t to blame. Early miscarriages weren’t uncommon. The foetus just wasn’t viable. Nature’s way, perhaps.
The voice on her shoulder tried to persuade Emma that her former habits would fill the void, and the old her would have taken oblivion over reality any day of the week. This was all new, facing feelings head on. Her case workers supported her with sympathy and cups of tea, but what was the point of recovery now?
Night after night she’d lain curled up in her bed at the hostel, listening to shouts from the room next door as sirens approached, unable to sleep after years of simply passing out. Heart thumping, she would think about her lost baby and how the future now seemed like a blank screen. The emptiness, the loneliness made her want to join in with her neighbours’ hollers. She’d go on to recall the hurt and trouble she’d brought to her family. Instead of releasing her to darkness, closing her eyes just made her see more. The huge upset she’d caused Mum, Andrea and Bligh. The smaller things she’d forgotten, like the villagers’ disgusted expressions… it was all coming back now.
The emotional up and down made her realise just how much she missed Mum. She did. And Andrea too. But most of all she missed her Josephine and the littlest pair of arms that might one day have hugged her tight as she hugged back too.
Everything seemed so hopeless.
‘Boring you, are we, Emma?’ said Dave.
With a jolt she came back to the present.A right bastard, Dave is, but his heart’s in the right place, one of the others had said to Emma on her first day. She’d been scared of him to start with.
‘So how about you?’ He raised a wiry eyebrow. ‘What’s been going on since Wednesday?’
She shrugged.
He held her gaze.
‘Okay… you want the truth? It’s like it’s the end of the world. Like I’m the worst person ever. Like everyone must think I deserve to have lost my child. At moments I don’t see the point in staying sober.’
‘That’s some pity party. You like wallowing, don’t you?’
Her face flushed. She shifted in her seat. An accusation like that somehow held unquestioned truth when it came from a fellow recovering addict.
‘But mostly I’m disappointed that you’ve already forgotten everything we did in the last session.’
Her brow knotted.
‘Negative thinking. Go on. Just analyse your last few sentences. How aboutit’s the end of the world? What are you doing there?’
Okay, so the universe as she knew it hadn’t come to a halt. She still got up and washed. Still set her alarm when she went to bed. ‘I’m catastrophising,’ she said, and bit her lip.
‘Andeveryone must think I deserve to have lost my child. I see you’ve still got that crystal ball. Wish I was that special, being able to mind-read.’
Her cheeks felt hotter. Dave was right. She shouldn’t assume what people thought. In fact, everyone in the group had been really kind.
‘AndI’m the worst person ever,’ she interjected.‘I’ve given myself a label, haven’t I?’
‘Bingo. Do that long enough and mentally, labels stick.I’m a bad personis a common one.’
