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‘If you really loved me, you’d get rid of it,’ he told me one night after days of unrelenting pressure to think of the ‘options’. ‘We can’t be tied down like this – we’re soul mates, Megan; we can’t be shackled. A baby means that you’d just be thinking about all the stuff that society tells you it needs. You’d have to work in jobs you hate – what would that do to you? There would be no more partying, you’d be a mum – that would be it, that would be your identity.’
I could see what he was saying, but I’d always wanted to be a great mum. If that meant making some compromises, I’d do it. I couldn’t abort a child just because I fancied a night out every now and then. The baby would grow up with a love of music too, it would learn to be free and happy, and it would have a mother who would know how to make sure it never felt lonely. I would do well at this, I told myself, I would make sure my little one was the happiest, most loved child in the world.
The comments Lucas made changed everything, though. From that point, I assumed I would be a single parent, even if he did hang around for a bit longer. Nothing would make me kill my baby, no one would emotionally blackmail me into giving up this child. Throughout the pregnancy I kept thinking of all the promises I had made to myself about what sort of mother I would be one day, and I realised that ‘one day’ had arrived.
‘This baby is happening,’ I told Lucas. ‘I don’t really care whether you want it or not – the important thing is that I do, and I’ll do all I can to make sure I’m the best mother I can possibly be.’
He shook his head. ‘Suit yourself,’ he muttered, and left the room.
The pregnancy became the ‘elephant in the room’ that neither of us really mentioned. It was ludicrous – as my skinny frame gained four stones of extra bulk, there was no missing my enormous belly, but still we never spoke about what was to come. We were both in denial. I sailed through the pregnancy physically. I was young and healthy, and had the ability to blank out what might happen after the little one arrived apart from the happy aspects of it all. I still spent most of my time listening to music and dancing. I’d sing to my bump, dance around the caravan and tell the baby what a lovely time we’d have together. That baby was surrounded by music all the time and I started to think I’d have a partner in crime, as it were. I’d teach it about all of the things that mattered to me. I could still take on the world – I’d just have a small person by my side to do it with.
I went into labour twelve days before my due date on a night when there was a huge red hunter’s moon low in the sky. It was a beautiful sight and seemed like a wonderful omen, as if Nature was on my side. Leaving my confused-looking dog Maxie – who was just a little puppy at the time – staring out of the open caravan door, we got into my car, where I braced myself against the pain with my feet on the dashboard. Lucas was looking as if he hadn’t quite realised a thing like this might happen, and I wondered just how much he had been able to block out. While I had been in denial to some extent too, it had really just related to never raising the issue of my pregnancy with my baby’s father. I was the one who got huge, I was the one who was woken by kicking and heartburn, so it wasn’t as if I could pretend I wasn’t actually having a baby. Seeing Lucas’s face now, as my contractions increased, I suspected he had actually told himself it wasn’t happening at all. It must have been a huge shock to him to realise that, after nine months of pregnancy, a baby would actually arrive!
My labour was short and intense. At just after 4.30am I was holding my tiny daughter. I gazed at her perfect little face, her wide-set, slate blue eyes taking their first peep at the world, and I was mesmerised.
‘Hello, Ruby,’ I whispered. ‘Are you ready for an adventure?’
This changed everything. This little person was the reason I was here. She was so little but so beautiful with lots of dark hair and pouty little lips that made her look like some sort of fairytale princess. I couldn’t believe I had managed this. Flighty Megan Henley – a mum.
There was more relief flooding through me than just that of holding my baby – Lucas was choked up too, shedding tears of joy as I passed our daughter to him, before giving her a cuddle against his bare chest. Finally he knew this was real. It had taken a while, but we’d turned a corner. A very dramatic one!
Ruby had been born the day after the academic year ended. When I returned after summer, my tutors were all fine about the gorgeous ten-week-old bundle I took along to classes with me. It seemed blissful to start with, but reality soon set in – trying to concentrate on lectures and take notes whilst breastfeeding, having had little to no sleep, proved too much, and I left the course at Christmas. Becoming a mum had been a huge shock to my system. Luckily, from the word go Ruby was an angelic child, always content and placid. Even so, the daily grind, monotony and isolation of looking after a small baby was difficult; day in, day out I would be stuck in the caravan with Ruby and Maxie, who were not great conversationalists. After the first few weeks, where he stayed every night, Lucas only turned up every couple of days, a pattern which caused obvious friction between us. Our relationship soon began to fall apart. I desperately wanted things to work out, but it seemed we had hugely different expectations of the situation and there was no future in it for either of us. It didn’t matter, I told myself, I could do it all, I could be everything and everyone for her.
Just after Ruby turned one, Lucas and I split up. I’d had to end it, for my sake as well as hers. He was constantly making nasty comments about my weight, even though I was far from obese. The only part he played in our lives was to turn up once or twice a week, expecting me to make dinner for him, and we never had sex together from the moment Ruby was born – his choice, not mine. I decided that things would never change and maybe if I ended it I would at least have a chance of happiness, which would never happen with him. I didn’t want Ruby to grow up absorbing those sorts of messages, so I decided that both of us could do better.
They say it never rains but it pours, and not long after that the caravan became infested with mice and I had to face up to the fact that, for Ruby’s sake more than anything, it was time to be ‘normal’. I found a flat for us to rent, but it still wasn’t ideal. We bounced between different places for a couple of years as the short-term lets became more and more unreliable, the landlords more and more unscrupulous, the lifestyle more and more depressing. Finally, a couple of miles outside Horsham, I found somewhere perfect, a cottage that screamed ‘perfect family’ to me. Mother, child, dog – we didn’t need anyone else. It was hard, but maybe in this place with its pretty setting and huge potential, life would get easier.
Ruby had just turned three when we moved into the cottage where I’d hoped for security but where my life was about to be turned upside down. I was finding life quite hard, constantly struggling to make ends meet, even though I was juggling about four part-time jobs. Sometimes, once the bills were paid, there was very little money left for food – I always made sure that Ruby and Maxie were fed, but I didn’t take such good care of myself.
I didn’t intend to stay poor, any more than I had intended to get pregnant at twenty-two. I had to figure out of a way of making some money. I’d always loved antiques, so wondered if I could turn a hobby into something that would actually bring in some money. I began selling beautiful furniture, paintings and china online, and within a few months I had established a thriving business. I spent all of my spare time sourcing stock at car boot sales, charity shops, auctions, house clearances – usually with Ruby and Maxie in tow. I made contacts in lots of different countries and thoroughly enjoyed the new challenge. My timing was right too, as the demand for vintage and retro things was just kicking in.
With my financial woes easing, the next thing I needed to have some luck with was my love life. After a couple of ill-fated relationships since breaking up with Lucas, I decided to try internet dating. I took a deep breath and made my profile, creating what I hoped was a positive spin of myself and my situation, uploading my best photo, as everyone does. I was immediately surprised at the lack of effort and originality the average man was prepared to put in to his messages, and how many of them thought I wanted nothing more than to see pictures of what was in their knickers almost immediately, but within a week one did catch my eye. It was from a man called Christopher, who was from London and worked in the music business (that bit caught my eye straight away!). He was in his thirties, divorced and the father of three children. After a couple of weeks of chatting online, we arranged to meet for a drink, on a Sunday afternoon in London.
It was a freakishly hot day for October, so I pulled a summer dress out of hibernation for the occasion. As we first walked towards each other at the spot on the Embankment where we’d arranged to meet, a huge gust of wind made a flurry of leaves rain down from the trees, falling around Christopher and making him look like he was in a scene from a film. He threw back his head and laughed.
‘I ordered that,’ he said, ‘and the sunshine!’
He had an infectious smile and we got on immediately. He was no Brad Pitt – actually, he must have taken about 800 pictures of himself before he got the one on his dating profile – but he had a twinkle in his eye and a lovely, soft voice. We sat on the edge of the harbour for a couple of hours, our legs dangling over the side, and felt the unseasonal sun beating down on our backs. We laughed and joked over a couple of glasses of wine, and the conversation flowed freely. I decided that he was a genuinely nice guy, and I didn’t resist when he leaned in to kiss me.
Our relationship was like a dream come true. It was a novel experience to have a boyfriend who wasn’t completely skint and who washed on a regular basis. Christopher often whisked me off for weekends, if my mum was available to look after Ruby, and we started to spend as much time as possible together, which meant that he was usually at my house if he was not working. I missed him terribly while he was away but I would frequently find the postman knocking on the door to deliver surprise presents from him. It was a fairytale romance and such a contrast to the struggles of the last few years.
Finally, in every way, things seemed to be coming right for me. Life was picture perfect and I was happy to be a good girl at last.
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