1992

If it hadn’t been for Emily, I think I’d have kept on walking that day. I had no idea where I was going. I felt terrible about leaving my baby, but I had no choice – I just had to go. I couldn’t bear the thought of being invaded by hordes of people – especially those people.

I’d pleaded and pleaded with John after they’d phoned to announce their arrival. “oh god please not. Can’t you call them back and ask them to come next week instead?”. He couldn’t see the problem – they were his family after all – his five brothers and sisters, their assorted partners, and his mother. She was the kind of person who is described as “larger than life”, but not in a good way. She terrified me. Since I’d known them, I’d worked out that in big families it’s not about the individual. You were supposed to just accept what the crowd decided and go along with it. Normally I coped by disappearing into a corner and smiling a lot, but that day I couldn’t bear it.

Four weeks is a long time to be in hospital, especially if you aren’t ill. The only time I’d left the grounds had been to vote in the general election. I’d already had one experience of going home without my baby, five years before, and nothing on earth was going to make me repeat the bleak awfulness of the daily visits – the long drives, always depending on someone else’s timetable, the awkward “what do I do now?” feeling, as I sat by the incubator, and later, the see-through plastic cot, staring at the tiny baby I didn’t really feel belonged to me.

That first time was beyond horrible. It struck me almost daily, with every encounter I had with the many professionals – midwives, doctors, nurses - once that little line in the test tube said “yes, you are pregnant”, how ironic it had been that I’d bothered coming back to England to have this baby because I’d felt it would be better to give birth somewhere people spoke the same language as me. I never felt more foreign in my life than I did during that dreadful year in Yorkshire. At least in Suffolk I didn’t feel the hate radiating off people as soon as I opened my mouth. It was much friendlier.

Even though I didn’t feel like such a leper in Suffolk, it was still depressing not to have managed to be like the women I saw shooting triumphantly back home the day after giving birth. Four weeks of pacing restlessly through endless corridors. Temporary escapes into the bleak cafeteria, or the sad little garden surrounded by windows; the benches placed haphazardly on the ugly concrete; small attempts to brighten things up a little with pots of tulips and daffodils. They didn’t really work, they just emphasised the grey and the glass.

The special care baby unit was a sealed world, full of bleeps and buzzers and busy nurses and women, some looking sad and worried, some just slightly lost. To enter, you had to pass through several doors, the temperature rising with each one, until you finally reached the tropical heat of the room where most of the babies were.

I wasn’t one of the sad mothers. My baby wasn’t sick. He’d just arrived two months early and we had to stay until he was judged big enough to cope with the world outside. At the end of the unit, there was one tiny room. It had no window – just a bed and a little cupboard, with space for a plastic cot on wheels. It was the only place they had for mothers to stay. If it was in use; tough. You had to go home and be content with visits

I saw a lot of different things in those four weeks. There was a seventeen year-old girl from the most deprived town in the area; she’d called her baby Jacques, because the man she thought was the father had said he was French. He had disappeared as soon as she’d told him she was pregnant, and she wasn’t sure how to pronounce it, so she settled on Jake. She was big and brash and friendly and had an optimism I admired, even though I wondered how long it would last once she’d taken her baby home. No one visited her as far as I can remember. She said she had lots of friends, but none of them were old enough to drive. She’d been in care, and she was going to be given a flat when she left.

Once, the doors opened and a tall couple came in. They looked like the kind of people who advertise vitamin pills – good looking, athletic, tanned. They’d brought their baby back after two days because it had been diagnosed with Down’s syndrome and they didn’t want it anymore. The woman’s mouth was set tight with misery. I remember looking at her and being puzzled as to why she had put lipstick on – wondering what had gone through her mind as she’d looked in the mirror. I suppose she’d been on automatic pilot. A small crowd of nurses and doctors quickly formed around them and they were ushered into a side room.

There were no really sick babies - the ones you hear about who are at the cutting edge of viability. Those cases got whisked off to Cambridge where they had more facilities. This place was mainly full of babies like mine, and their mothers, just waiting until they were big enough to leave. I felt so sorry for the ones who came every afternoon and sat by the side of the incubators, with blank expressions. When finally, my son was pronounced fit to go home, I was thrilled to be leaving. I couldn’t wait to get back to the real world.

If you’ve never had a baby, you might or might not know that afterwards, and quite often before too, you find yourself completely overreacting to even the smallest things – stuff you can normally shrug off quite easily. The euphemistic way of describing this is “the baby blues”, but really it’s pre and post-natal depression, and it can range from mild to severe. In many cases it’s not reported, or diagnosed, and you’re left to get on with it as best you can.

My optimism lasted until I got to the front door of the cottage. It sounds stupid now, but my personal tipping point – the thing that made it vanish instantly, was when I asked for my keys as we got out of the car, and was told they’d disappeared. So many different people had been in and out of my house while I’d been gone that they’d been lost.

I knew they were only keys – easily replaced with one short visit to the shoe repairman in the marketplace, but to me, it felt as if I’d suddenly become a non-person, like I didn’t really live there anymore, as if I didn’t count. John said, “what’s the big deal?” I was so angry I couldn’t explain properly how it felt. I think it had to do with being helpless; as if while I’d been away, my life had been taken over.

And then the phone rang and John told me his entire fucking family would be there in an hour. I felt an irrational panic. John couldn’t help. It wasn’t his fault. Beyond the initial pleading I couldn’t find the words to explain the dread that enveloped me. I can remember shaking with fear, and looking around, wondering if there were somewhere I could hide, knowing the answer already. Privacy was not something they understood. If I was within reach, in my bedroom with the door shut, I knew one of two things would happen; either they’d stay away from me and be offended, seeing it as yet another example of my stand-offishness, or the door would be pushed open and they’d crowd in, piling onto the bed, talking and arguing amongst themselves while I tried to look as if I didn’t mind. I knew I couldn’t win.

I’d have to go. There was no alternative. I’d leave my baby there. He was the one they wanted to see after all, not me. I wanted to take him too, but I knew that would cause even more uproar and I would have done anything to avoid that. I just wanted to disappear. I had no idea where. I don’t think I took anything with me – no money. I just left, and started walking. I remember how odd it felt to be on pavements again. I liked the numb feeling in my feet as I quickened my pace. My scar pulled after a while; it was still quite sore. I felt myself start to cry, slowly at first, then more and more. And then the first car beeped its horn. Oh fuck. How could I have forgotten?

It’s nice living in a village because everyone knows you. But it’s also shit living in a village when you want to disappear. On one long street, there’s no escape – you’re on display. There is no crowd to hide amongst. I was terrified someone might stop – they were bound to eventually. I really don’t think I looked very well. I was going slower now, admitting defeat. My scar was hurting more, and even if I pressed hard where it was, it didn’t seem to help. Each step made a shooting pain. I felt so tired. If I’d reached the fields by then I think I would have dived into them and headed for the woods nearby where I would have been able to crouch among the trees, but I was still on the street – it didn’t finish for another mile or so and I knew I couldn’t make it that far.

Then Emily opened her door. She said “I saw you from the window”. She didn’t ask how I was, she didn’t ask about my baby, or comment on my pale face, or my red eyes. She just stood there quietly for a minute. I could see her dog standing patiently behind her. I can’t remember exactly what I said. I don’t think it was much, but I remember the door opening wider, and stepping into the dark coolness, being ushered up the stairs, and left alone, in peace, in her quiet bedroom, where I lay down and cried until I fell asleep.