Stolen Child by Laura Elliot Page B

his next contract. I didn’t write and tell him I was pregnant. Time enough when I was sure. Two months later, I was in Dublin, attending a meeting with a department store buyer, when a cramping pain forced the breath from my lips.
    ‘It happens,’ said the doctor in the family planning clinic. ‘First babies, it’s tricky. No reason why it should ever happen again.’
    Miriam, busily crafting glass, did not notice my shadowed eyes when I returned to the studio, and David never knew.
    Six months later, when he came home again, I’d chilled white wine in the fridge and red wine was breathing on the hearth. I served beef roulades with blue cheese and walnuts, a blackberry crumble for dessert. He carried me to the bedroom. Afterwards, I brushed his hair from his eyes and whispered endearments. Sweat beaded his chest. I leaned mypalm against the beat of his heart and, for once, I wished I could experience that hot, racing sensation where nothing else exists outside the boundaries of our desire.
    We slept and awakened, made love again. Three times he came inside me and when he finally left my side, his eyes dark with spent passion, I lay still and sensed his strong determined sperm shouldering each other in the rush to create something wonderful between us.
    Three months passed before I wrote and told him I was pregnant. I assured him he’d no reason to worry. Nothing would be demanded from him, no commitment, no support, no strings. I imagined him reading my letter, surrounded by the scorching sands. He would be alarmed at first, then reassured, then wincing, thinking, no doubt, about his son, who now lived with his mother and stepfather in Canada.
    He rang and proposed. We would be married when he came home on leave. He spoke with certainty. This child would carry his name.
    I asked him if he loved me. We’d had so little time to know each other.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, and I believe he spoke sincerely. ‘I love you, Susanne. That’s all we need to begin our lives together.’
    A week later the pain began. Miriam drove me to the hospital.
    ‘First babies, it’s common enough,’ she said, and cried with me, held me gently, as if she was afraid I’d shatter at her touch. She faded quietly into the background when David returned from the oilfields to comfort me.
    ‘We will still be married,’ he said, ‘and we will have many children.’
    We married that summer in Maoltrán. I’d achieved what I desired yet I was haunted by ghosts; the ache was unbearable. Miriam moved into my house and I moved to Rockrose.‘Less clutter, more space,’ she insisted. ‘Two women together in the family home, not a good idea.’
    The Burren billowed into the distance, a grey patchwork quilt stitched in green. I imagined the earth seething beneath the limestone ridges and dolmen tombs; and on the surface, the gentle orchids and gentians, the woodruff, harebells, eyebrights and rockrose spurting from the cracks. This grimly beautiful landscape would absorb my grief. We would have more babies. They would grow up wild and free and happy.
    I was in the business of persuasion but fate mocked my hopes one by one. And then they began to whisper to me, my lost children: no more…no more…no more.
    They don’t whisper any more. Not since you came to me. The only sound that breaks the night silence are your fretful cries, as if you are trying to break through the walls with your voice.
    Today, sitting at my kitchen table that had once been hers, Miriam asked how I was feeling. Her expression was guarded, as if she was picking her way through thistles. She wanted to know if I’d seen Dr Williamson.
    I shook my head and told her everything was under control. I’d seen a doctor when I was in Dublin visiting my father. He prescribed antidepressants to get me through the next few months.
    She frowned, as if I’d suggested lacing my tea with arsenic. ‘They will only mask your symptoms,’ she said, a hint of ice in her tone. ‘We’re not