And wasn’t that an understatement? Stunned and terrified was a more accurate description of the feelings that had stormed through her. She’d never felt physical pain like it. She’d thought she was dying. And then, when realisation had dawned, the awful, horrible confusion. How could she be pregnant? How could she not have known that she was? She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t uneducated. Yet in those bewildering, petrifying moments she’d felt both.
‘And subsequently?’ he said bluntly, yanking her out of the chaos and confusion of the delivery room and back to the present. ‘Josh is six months old.’
‘The whole thing came as a massive shock to me,’ she said, remembering with a chill how quickly and devastatingly her smooth, well-ordered life had been blown apart. ‘I was totally unprepared. I hadn’t been to any antenatal classes. I’d read no books and looked nothing up. I had no baby things and absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was thrown in at the deep end and expected to swim. It’s been a busy time and insanely tough.’
His dark gaze held hers, not allowing her to look away, not letting her off the ho
ok for one second. ‘Still, Georgie. Six months.’
‘I know.’
‘Well?’
This was it. Her moment of reckoning. ‘Could I possibly have a drink? I’m not prevaricating,’ she added in response to the sharp arch of his eyebrow. ‘Truly. I could just do with a bit of fortification.’
‘That bad?’
Worse. ‘Maybe.’
‘What would you like?’
‘Whatever you’re having.’
‘Scotch.’
‘That’ll do. Neat. No ice.’
With a brief nod, Finn got to his feet and strode over to the bar to fix her drink and refill his while Georgie tried to marshal her thoughts, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. How much should she tell him? What could she leave out? Was there anything she could do to make this easier? Unlikely.
‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the glass he held out and taking a long, slow sip of the whisky. ‘Delicious. Peaty.’
The look he gave her was forbidding, his patience clearly stretched. ‘Georgie.’
Right. OK. She lowered her glass and braced herself for the guilt and shame and anguish that still crucified her even though she knew that none of it had been her fault. ‘So, as I said,’ she said, her voice shaking a little despite her efforts to control it, ‘Josh’s arrival was unexpected. It was also extremely traumatic. Not from a medical point of view—in those terms it was very easy apparently—but from a mental one. I’d left home that morning expecting to be given some strong prescription painkillers. I’d envisaged being back in time to finish the report I’d been working on. Instead, ten hours after being admitted, I went home with a tiny newborn baby.’
She looked at him, willing him to at least try to understand, however big an ask that was. ‘The shock was cataclysmic. I can’t begin to describe the weight of responsibility. Or the terror. I was all on my own and I had no clue what to do. I didn’t know how to feed him or soothe him or anything. For forty-eight hours neither of us slept, which meant that nor did my flatmates, who were quick to point out I was now in contravention of the tenancy agreement and threatened to call the landlord.’
She glanced down at the glass she was turning in her hands, the amber liquid swirling continuously. ‘I phoned my parents but they didn’t answer, which I more or less expected, since we hadn’t spoken for a while, so I rang Carla, the friend of mine you met earlier. She came over and scooped us up and took us back to her house. And that was great for a couple of days. I scoured the internet and read books and did a crash course in babies. And I got a bit better at changing Josh’s nappies and feeding him and generally looking after him. But as the shock wore off, reality kicked in.’ She looked up at Finn, who was sitting impossibly still, his eyes dark and his expression unreadable, although she guessed he wasn’t missing a thing. ‘Did I ever mention my five-year plan?’ she asked with a slight tilt of her head.
‘You mentioned having one.’
‘Well, that went out the window. And so did all the structure and routine I’d created for myself and have always depended on. My life fell completely apart, and for the first time in years I had no idea where I was heading.’ She shook her head, the memories swirling. ‘It was all so overwhelming. I went into a sort of spin and it happened really quickly and really intensely. I wasn’t sleeping much anyway, but suddenly I wasn’t sleeping at all. My appetite all but disappeared. And then I started doing things that were really out of character. Like talking really fast one minute then not uttering a word for hours. I developed panic attacks and became convinced that Carla’s neighbour was following me. I even called the police one night,’ she said, biting her lip and remembering how scary it had been to realise on some level that what she was doing wasn’t normal, wasn’t right, but not knowing why she was doing it and not being able to do anything about it. ‘Anyway, eventually I was admitted to the psychiatric ward of my local hospital, where I was diagnosed with post-partum psychosis.’
‘Which is what?’
‘Like postnatal depression but worse.’ Far, far worse. ‘I stayed there for a week and then a bed came up in a mother-and-baby unit a hundred miles away. Josh and I left there ten days ago,’ she said, glossing over five intervening months, since Finn did not need to know how bad it had got before the medication had kicked in and the therapy had started to take effect. In any case she doubted she could even begin to explain how terrifying the delusions and the hallucinations and the disorientation had been, or how distressing she’d found it knowing that she wasn’t well. The feelings she’d had for Josh, or, rather, the lack of them, were far too upsetting to put into words, and Finn would never understand her gut-churning dread that the long, dark tunnel she’d been in had no end. He’d never fully understand any of it. No one could.
‘And that’s why it’s taken so long for me to contact you,’ she said, determinedly not letting those agonising memories descend but instead focusing on the man who was now looking at her a little as though he’d been slapped round the head with a wet fish. ‘I wasn’t in a position to do so. As soon as I was, I did. And that’s it. Now you know everything.’
* * *
Everything? Everything?
He knew nothing.
Watching dazedly as Georgie finished her drink, set the glass down on the coffee table and sat back against the cushions, Finn could barely recall his own name. He was reeling too hard, too stunned and shattered to be able to make head or tail of anything. Whatever explanation he could possibly have envisaged, none would have come anywhere near the one she’d just given him.
That she was telling the truth was without doubt. He might have had suspicions initially—who wouldn’t?—but not for long. No one would make up such a story, and no one could fake the emotion that had emanated from her, despite her attempts to contain it. When she’d been talking about what she’d been through, her voice had cracked and her eyes had become twin pools of pain. Her hands had trembled and her anguish had been palpable, and her obvious distress had cut right through him.