Kathleen McGurl - The Stationmaster’s Daughter

Ken drove her home in the mid-afternoon and began work on preparing the dinner for that night.

‘While I do this, pet, you go out for a walk. It’ll do you good. Just head out that way along the cliff path as far as you like, then turn around and come back. As long as you’re back before it gets dark.’

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ she protested, but Ken would not listen.

‘Tomorrow it’s due to rain all day. Today’s a better day to go. Just ten minutes, if that’s all you’re up to, but believe me, it’ll help.’

It was easier to go along with his suggestion than not. Tilly put on her trainers and headed out along the cliff path that ran behind Ken’s bungalow away from town. It rose steadily, first fenced on both sides but once she was away from the town there was a fence only on the inland side, keeping walkers out of the fields. There were a few metres of grass between the path and the cliff edge. Tilly took a few steps nearer the edge and peered over. The stony beach was a long way down, with waves crashing onto it. She wondered if the fall would kill a person instantly, or just leave them broken and battered in hospital for months.

Feeling suddenly alone and scared of her own thoughts, she pulled out her phone and punched in Jo’s number.

‘Hi, Jo. Just letting you know … everything’s OK so far.’

‘Great! Where are you now?’

‘I’m on a walk. On the cliffs. Dad sent me out.’

‘Sounds good. It’ll help, if you’ll let it, Tils. Describe it to me?’

Tilly looked around and searched for the right words. ‘The sky’s blue, fading to pink, the sea’s shimmering in the sunshine, and there are rabbits ahead of me on the path.’

‘Sounds glorious. Take me on that walk when I come to visit.’

‘Sure.’ Tilly took a deep breath. Her friend’s voice, making plans for the future, had helped calm her. Jo’s visit was something she felt she could look forward to. ‘You were right, Jo – it’s going to be good for me, living here with Dad for a bit. I’m glad you phoned him and told him.’

‘You’re doing so well, mate,’ Jo said. ‘I can’t wait to see you again. I’ll be there in a fortnight. Sean’s happy to stay home with the kids.’ Tilly felt a surge of pain and bit her lip at the mention of Jo’s children. Her children would have been the same ages as Jo’s. They’d have grown up together, gone to school together, played together.

With her first pregnancy, she and Ian had been ecstatic when the blue line showed up on the pregnancy testing kit. They’d only been trying for a couple of months, and Tilly had schooled herself not to be disappointed if they had no luck for ages. But it seemed they were both fertile, and a baby was on the way already. There’d been no sickness, and only a tenderness in her breasts to show that something was different.

And then, at around ten weeks, she began to feel a dull pain, low on the left side of her abdomen. There was a little bit of bleeding too. Tilly came home early from work, tucked herself up on the sofa with a rug and a soothing cup of tea.

‘I think I might be losing the baby,’ she said to Ian, when he arrived home.

He dropped his bag and sat down heavily opposite her, looking down at the floor. The pain in his eyes when he finally raised his eyes to hers broke her heart. ‘How come, Tils? How has it happened?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Should we go to hospital?’

‘Don’t think there’s any point, right now.’ She reached out a hand to him. ‘It might not be a miscarriage. Sometimes people bleed in pregnancy and it turns out to be OK. But not always. Jo lost her first one. She sighed. ‘If it’s going to happen, it’ll happen. I don’t think there is anything they can do, in hospital. I’d rather stay here.’

‘Can’t you do anything ? Rest or something, try to keep it?’ His voice was hoarse with emotion. He really wanted this child, she realised. She hadn’t thought he felt so strongly about it.

‘I am resting,’ she replied. Why wasn’t he asking her how she felt; whether she was in any pain?

Later that night the pain increased severely. Tilly was doubled up in agony. This was more pain than Jo had described experiencing. This was far more pain. Tilly couldn’t function, couldn’t think straight. Ibuprofen made no difference. While Ian paced, muttering about how she must have done something wrong to cause this, she called the out-of-hours doctor’s number. Between spasms of pain she described her symptoms.

‘You need to go to hospital, right away,’ the doctor told her. ‘Call an ambulance if there’s no one who can drive you.’

Ian had drunk a couple of glasses of wine with his dinner, so she took the doctor’s advice and called an ambulance for herself. Thankfully it arrived very quickly. She was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy; her fallopian tube had ruptured, and she was in surgery within thirty minutes of being admitted.

‘Can you still get pregnant?’ Ian had asked, sitting at her bedside after the operation.

‘Yes. Though I’ll only be firing on one cylinder, as it were, so might not be fertile every month.’ It’s what she’d been told when they’d prepped her for surgery.

Ian had grimaced. ‘Well, as long as we can still have children, I suppose that’s all right. How soon until we can try again?’

Tilly put a protective hand on the surgery dressing and winced. ‘Give me a chance. They say a couple of months, at least.’

‘OK. Well, get well soon, and all that.’ Ian had patted her shoulder. It was as much sympathy as she was going to get from him, she’d realised. At the time she’d just excused it as his way of expressing his sadness at their loss.

Six months later, she was pregnant again. Ian had wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool. ‘Don’t go to your Zumba class. Don’t go running. Make sure you get a seat on the bus. This baby is precious to me.’

‘And to me!’ she’d protested. It was so precious. She wanted children at least as much as Ian did.

But that pregnancy never felt quite right. She couldn’t explain why, but it was as though her body didn’t want this embryo. At just seven weeks the bleeding started, accompanied by what felt like bad period pains. She knew she was losing the baby, but this time had no chance to tell Ian until it was all over. He was away on a training course with work, and this wasn’t something to tell him over the phone. When he returned, and she told him, his first reaction was one of anger.

‘Not again! Bloody hell, woman. Having a baby’s a natural thing. Why can’t you do it?’

She’d been calm throughout the miscarriage, dealing with it with a resigned efficiency. But Ian’s outburst was the last straw. She crumpled, throwing herself down onto the sofa, wrapping her arms around her face. ‘It’s not my fault, Ian! It just … happens. This time it wasn’t ectopic. Maybe next time will work.’ God, she hoped so. She was 37. They’d left having children until they’d established their careers and bought a big family home. Now Tilly was regretting those decisions. Perhaps in her twenties her body might have made a better job of growing a baby?

It was another year before Tilly became pregnant again. She’d insisted on waiting six months before trying, and then it just took a long time. Ian had been getting more and more frustrated each month, when she told him that no, they’d had no luck this time.

When it finally happened, they were both thrilled, and the news gave a much-needed boost to their relationship. This time the pregnancy felt right. There was breast-tenderness, sickness, a small but definite bump low down on her abdomen.

‘This time it’ll work. This time we’ll end up with a baby,’ she told him, and they made plans to decorate a bedroom in readiness, and started looking at catalogues of prams and cots and car seats.