The Last Year of Being Single Read Online Free Page B

towards me. We both, perhaps arrogantly, thought that relationships if they were meant to be didn’t need to be worked at. The agony pages were for other couples who had problems. We didn’t. We were intelligent and sensitive and in tune with our emotions and other people’s.
    Well, we did have some problems. I had been through an abortion after going out for nine months, to which he had agreed and paid for. We had planned a long weekend in Suffolk at the Angel Hotel. I had forgotten to take the Pill. Well, I had taken it, but I’d been ill and it hadn’t worked. Obviously, because two months later I’d discovered I was pregnant. I didn’t know if I should tell him. Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, don’t you think? In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him. In hindsight I wouldn’t have told him a lot of things. But I didn’t have the benefit of that, so I told him.
    ‘Paul. I’m pregnant.’
    ‘Is it mine?’
    ‘Of course it’s yours.’
    I didn’t expect that question.
    He came over to me and hugged me. I think he wanted to be hugged more than hug. I think he was dazed.
    Then, ‘What do you want to do?’
    ‘I don’t think we should have the child. We love each other but we’ve only been going out for nine months. It’s too soon. We want to do so much. Achieve so much. I think if I had the child you would resent me and it and I would resent you and it. That’s not fair on either of us or the child. Will you tell your parents?’
    Paul—‘No, of course not. They’re Catholics. They don’t even know you’re living with me, or we’re having sex. This would break their hearts. They wouldn’t understand. They wouldn’t get it. Couldn’t comprehend it. So it’s not worth going there, Sarah. Will you tell your parents?’
    I was bemused by the fact he thought his parents were naïve enough not to realise we were sleeping with each other, but, hey, like so many things Paul increasingly said, let it pass for now.
    Sarah—‘No. Likewise. They’re not interested. They have their life to lead. They are busy and my mother doesn’t want to know what will or could hurt her. So I tell her nothing. My dad’s not well. He thinks of me as his little girl. I don’t want to spoil the illusion. My mum wouldn’t forgive me if I did.’
    Paul—‘So we tell no one?’
    Sarah—‘We tell no one.’
    One week later. Local clinic. Paul drove. Seven a.m. No traffic on the M25. Leafy lanes. Pre-warned there might be demonstrators outside. Anti-abortion. There weren’t. It would take a morning. I could work the next day. They were very kind. Efficient. At twenty-five I was the oldest in a ward of ten women. It was quick. Physically and emotionally numbing. Offered Rich Tea biscuits and sweet tea when I woke from the deepest sleep. Feeling relieved and relief. The other women in the ward were still sleeping. One was awake. She was crying. She’d had a local anaesthetic and she told me she’d seen the baby.
    ‘I saw the baby. It looked like a proper little baby. I didn’t think it would look like a baby, but you could tell. You could tell it was a baby when it came out. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect something like that. I expected a little cell and I don’t think I would have had a local if I’d known. I don’t think I would. I don’t think I could go through that again.That will haunt me, that will. That will haunt me. Wish I hadn’t seen it. Wish I hadn’t.’
    I hadn’t seen the baby. I hadn’t seen what had come out of me at twelve weeks. I had been asleep. And I closed my mind to it and just thought it was a joint decision and something that both of us, Paul and I, had decided together and agreed upon. And that it was a dreadful decision to make, but it was the most practical decision, and it would have been unfair on Paul who was just starting out on his career and me who was trying to start one. And there would be plenty of time to have children and we loved each other so it