What's Yours Is Mine (25 page)

The doctors gather in a rugby huddle near the door. I hate it when they do this: they refuse to actually
tell
you anything, and then talk about you in maddeningly not-quite earshot so you're left to piece odd words and phrases together. From what I can gather, I'm either a seventy-five-year-old nun with syphilis and four months to live, or twenty-four weeks into a high-risk pregnancy with a zillion stubborn toxins doing a victory lap around my body.

Either way, to my intense frustration, I'm once more sentenced to bed rest, tethered into place by leads from a dazzling array of monitors and machines. Which means that when Grace bowls up to my bedside late that night, I have nowhere to run.

“Tom ratted me out,” I say accusingly. “He promised he wouldn't tell you I was here.”

Grace looks surprised; then livid. “Tom
didn't
tell me. Michael called my mobile, we were over at Blake and Claudia's. How the fuck did
Tom
know?”

Poor bastard. He's going to be in a world of hurt. Grace only swears when she's really pissed off. “Never mind that now,” I deflect. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you
think
I'm doing here?”

“You needn't have bothered. It's the same thing it was before. I'll be fine in a few days.”

“This isn't just about
you—
”

“Yeah. You've made that perfectly clear,” I say bitterly.

Grace pulls up a chair and sits down, her fancy leather bag on her knee. It probably cost as much as a small car, I think resentfully.

“Susannah, you've got to start taking this seriously,” she sighs. “You're sick, and you're pregnant. You need to look after yourself. You can't just run around doing whatever you want.”

“I was eating a bloody sandwich!” I yell. “I was hardly bungee jumping from the Empire State Building!”

Grace ignores my outburst. “When was the last time you had a bottle of beer?”

I shrug defiantly. Maybe I had two or three yesterday after Michael had gone to bed. Yeah, OK, the doctors said I shouldn't drink alcohol, but if you listened to doctors, you'd need a medical certificate to bloody breathe. No soft cheeses. No raw fish. No peanut butter, no caffeine, no pig's bladders, blah, blah, blah. For God's sake, I gave up bloody cigarettes, didn't I? Women have been getting pregnant and having babies for centuries without freaking do-gooders breathing down their necks, and no one died. Well, OK, they did, but not because of the fucking Brie.

“Susannah,” she says quietly, “if you carry on like this, you're never going to make it to full term. You won't even make it another week. Do you know what it'll mean if she's born now?”

“She'll be in an incubator for a bit. She's twenty-four weeks, lots of babies survive at that age.”

“No, Zee, they don't. A few, a tiny few, babies survive
at twenty-four weeks,” Grace says. “Most of them die. Their lungs simply aren't developed enough for them to breathe, even with help. They can't suck, swallow, and breathe at the same time, so they have to be fed intravenously. They can't cry, because of the tubes in their throats. Those who do manage to make it through the first twenty-four hours have to spend months in intensive care.”

“So?”

She sucks in a breath, and I can see her trying hard to hold on to her patience. “They have one crisis after another—infections, heart failure, respiratory distress, you name it; and you have to live out every crisis with them, too. Can you imagine how hard that is? For both of you?”

“I can do it,” I say crossly. “I'm not a complete idiot. I have been a mother before, you know.”

Grace absorbs the blow without flinching. “Then you know that if by some miracle she survives and you get to take her home, it's not necessarily happy ever after. She might be blind, or deaf; even if she seems fine, she may have learning difficulties or behavioral problems. Forget what you read in your magazines.
Listen to me
. If you have this baby now, she'll probably die.”

I'm shocked more than I let on. Grace doesn't exaggerate. It's not her style. If she says I could lose my baby, no matter what else is going on between us, I believe her.

“Susannah, I won't lie to you. I want this baby,” she says. “I want to be her mother. I know I could make a good one, if you'd just give me the chance. But more than
that, I want her to live.” She looks me in the eye. “Prove to me you're the right person to look after her, Susannah, and I'll support you, no matter what you choose to do. I'll cancel the lawyers, I'll give you everything you need. All you have to do is prove you want her to live, too.”

AFTER SIX DAYS
in the hospital, they dose me up with antibiotics (which give me diarrhea and a violent case of thrush) and release me. I might not like it, but Grace has got to me. I don't want to have a brain-damaged baby. For the next three weeks, I lead the life of a moustachioed nun. No fags, no booze, no sex, and lots of sleep. Believe me: lots and lots of sleep. When you cut out all the things that make life worth living, sleeping is pretty much the only thing that's left.

Meanwhile, the Asshole Formerly Known as Blake doesn't send me so much as a get-well card.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's admitting when I've made a mistake (practice makes perfect, Grace would say). Blake hasn't returned my calls or texts in weeks, never mind actually turning up to see how I am. Screw him. The sex was great—fucking fantastic, actually—but I still haven't forgiven him for the Layla business. I deserve better. Thanks to the thrush, I've gone right off sex anyway.

True to her word, Grace calls off the dogs. I don't get any more letters from her fancy lawyer, and she doesn't come banging on the door at all hours of the day and night.

Actually, I don't hear from her at all, which is a bit
weird, to be honest. I've got so used to her keeping tabs on me, it's a bit freaky to be left entirely to my own devices. It must be killing her not to come checking up on me.

Somehow, I hold up my end of the deal. I'm so clean-living, even the Mormons would have me. I'm taking my vitamins and drinking lots of water and generally behaving myself: right up to the point when I run into Blake and Claudia and their cute coffee-skinned children in Starbucks.

I stand in the center of the café, gripping my Skinny Latte so tightly I don't even notice when the foam cup splits and spills hot coffee all over my hand. Blake and his wife are crushed into one outsized velvet armchair, with the children playing on a small sofa nearby, and he's got his arm around her, and is leaning down to whisper something in her ear. She turns and laughs up at him, and I see the expression in her eyes, and I know she
knows
about his other woman, even if she doesn't know about me, and I see that she still loves him and will always love him and is never going to let him go. They don't even notice me, and it's all so gut-wrenchingly, fluffy-kitten adorable I want to throw up; and in fact as soon as I dump the coffee and reach the safety of the toilet, I do.

Afterwards, I go straight back home to Michael's and shut myself in my bedroom. I drink four beers, one after the other, and then I open a bottle of vodka and drink half of that, too.

It's not even about Blake. He's just the latest in a long, long line of assholes and losers. Every man I've ever been
with has treated me like shit, and I've let them get away with it. I want to tell myself I thought Blake was different, but I didn't, not really. We were never going to run off and play happy families with the baby. He was always going to stay with his wife, and I was always going to end up pregnant and alone.

I pass out on the bed, and wake up sometime around midday with a raging hangover. I finish the vodka, and go in search of more beer. The next day, I do the same thing again. And the day after that, I'm back in the hospital—only this time, they can't patch me up and fix me and send me home.

I have no idea if this will work, but I'm desperate, so I'll try anything.

Grace is fast asleep in bed, curled on her side in the fetal position. For the briefest of moments, I stand and watch her, remembering how I used to do exactly the same thing when she was a child. Her cheeks are no longer plump with baby fat, the hair spilling onto the pillow is threaded here and there with gray, and she doesn't suck her thumb, but to me, her mother, she looks just the same.

I shake myself. I don't have time for maudlin sentiment now. Lives depend on me. I lean over my elder daughter's sleeping form, and urgently call her name.

She stirs, but doesn't wake. I try again, louder this time, and Tom rolls over towards his wife, one strong tanned arm draping her hip as he moves.

I'm running out of time. I'm going to have to do this the hard way. With the greatest reluctance, I climb onto the bed and plant myself firmly on Grace's chest. I have no weight, no substance, of course, but I have to fight my
instinct to leap off her before I crush her when she starts to struggle. Grimly, I keep my seat as Grace pants and claws at her chest in her sleep. She won't suffocate. This isn't really happening. I'm just gate-crashing her dreams.

Grace suddenly sits bolt upright, wide-eyed and panicky, and I get up off the bed, my job done. “Tom! Tom! Wake up!
Tom, wake up!
”

“What?” Tom mumbles.

“I need to get to the hospital,” Grace says, throwing back the duvet and struggling out of bed. “Susannah's sick.”

Tom is immediately alert. “I didn't hear the phone.”

“No one rang. I just know.”

He pauses, one arm in the sleeve of his dressing gown. “You just know?”

“Don't bloody stand there, Tom. She needs me. We have to go.
Now.
”

Tom knows better than to argue. He is not the ideal son-in-law, or the perfect husband, but he is a man who understands his wife. Certainly better than I ever have.
I've been unfair to you, Grace
, I think regretfully.
So much of this calamity is my fault
.

Briskly, I rouse myself. No time for self-recrimination now. There will be plenty of time for that later. When I know if my daughter and granddaughter are going to survive.

WHEN I GET
back to the hospital, Susannah is no longer in the ER. For a moment, I panic, but then I find her upstairs,
where she has been admitted to the labor ward. She looks even worse than when I left. Her face is so swollen I barely recognize her, and her eyes are yellow. Her breathing is shallow and fast; a greasy film of sweat coats her skin.

“Susannah? We need to deliver your baby
now
,” the doctor is saying urgently. “We can't wait any longer.”

Susannah pulls the oxygen mask off her face. “No!” she gasps. “I told you! She's … too little! I'm only twenty … eight weeks. She can't be born yet. She'll die!”

“Susannah, twenty-eight weeks is
fine
. I know you're worried, but the scans show your daughter is a good weight for her age. She'll have to be in the NICU for a few weeks, but we'll do everything we can for her.”

“No. Just … give me some antibiotics like you … did last time. I'll be … fine … in a few days.”

The doctor struggles to hide her frustration. “This isn't
like
last time. This isn't just a kidney infection, Susannah. You have early onset pre-eclampsia. You and your baby are both very sick. If we don't deliver her now, you could both die.”

“I was fine … yesterday. I shouldn't have … had those beers, I know that.” She attempts a smile, her swollen face twisting hideously like a Halloween mask. “I won't do … it again. Just give me the … antibiotics or whatever I need and let's … get on with this.”

Once again, I marvel at how wrong I have been. Just a few short weeks ago, I was quite certain Grace was the one at fault for allowing this insane surrogacy idea to take root. She wasn't ever meant to be a mother, I'd known that
since she was a small child. She couldn't boil an egg without forgetting to put the water in the saucepan. Susannah was the loving one, the sympathetic, caring girl who was supposed to have a rosy-cheeked family and rambling old home and a Labrador curled up on the sofa. It was just a mistake, what had happened with Davey and Donny. Life had turned out to be too tough for her. She had never got the breaks that Grace did. If she'd had the same chances as her sister, her life would've ended up just as golden.

But I was wrong. I admit it now. I've made too many excuses for far too long. I've babied and mollycoddled Susannah since she was a child. She didn't need me swooping in like an avenging angel every time she decided she didn't want to cope. She needed to learn to stand on her own two feet, and I never let her.

I missed Grace's ninth birthday. I keep coming back to that. I missed Grace's ninth birthday, and until she ran away,
I didn't even know I'd missed it
.

For years, I've allowed my need to protect Susannah to blot out everything, including Grace. I've accepted the front she's presented to the world, and never taken the time to look further. But in the past few weeks, I've seen a side of Grace she would never willingly have shown me. I see she wants this baby, but not for the reasons I always thought. Not because she can't bear to fail, or because she wants to tick all the boxes. She
loves
this child. She loves her with every fiber of her being; enough to give her back to Susannah, if that is the right thing.

That was the moment that crystallized everything.
Susannah wants this child because she's looking for a second chance. A new start. She's not thinking of the baby at all. Grace is the one doing that. Grace is prepared to give up the child she loves and wants more than anything else in the world, and so I have no choice but to look at her differently. Suddenly my eyes have been opened.