Page 3 of The Midwife By the Sea
‘Sweetheart.’ Her dad’s voice had been gentle as he’d come to stand beside her in the sunny kitchen of her childhood home in Tenby. ‘Your mum and I have been talking.’
‘You want me to move out, don’t you?’ She’d widened her eyes in mock-horror, confident in the knowledge that her parents would never push any of their daughters out of the nest. Hope had been almost twenty-five by then and was back living at home temporarily, after accepting a one-year contract to cover another midwife’s maternity leave at Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest, about fifteen miles from Tenby. She’d studied for her midwifery degree in Bristol and stayed on in the city afterwards, working at Southmead Hospital, where she’d had the chance to experience high-risk pregnancies and deliveries. The job in Haverfordwest was at a midwifery-led unit, which gave her the opportunity to experience a different kind of environment, while she considered the next stage of her career.
She’d thought about renting somewhere local, after giving up her flat in Bristol when she left Southmead to take the new job, but her parents had wanted her to move back in with them, and the truth was it had been what she wanted too. She loved coming home to the five-storey sky-blue house that formed part of a colourful terrace overlooking the beach. But it wasn’t the house or the view that drew her back – it was the people. She’d wondered if it would be hard to adjust to living back at home full time, after three years at university, and a further three working in Bristol, but there’d been no tension, just a wonderful sense of being where she was meant to be. So if her father had told her that he and her mum wanted her to leave, she’d have been rocked to her core. Of course it hadn’t been that, but it had been something just as unexpected.
‘We think you should get in contact with your birth parents.’ This time when Hope’s eyes had widened in surprise at her father’s words, there’d been no playacting involved. The idea that they might want that made her whole body tense up.
‘Why? You’re my parents, I don’t need anyone else.’
‘It’s not about you needing them, Hope.’ Her mother had taken a step closer, putting her hand over Hope’s. ‘It’s about you being able to access all the information you might want, either now, or one day in the future. We were so worried before you got the haemochromatosis diagnosis, and when you told me the doctor asked you all those questions about your family history, it hit me that I couldn’t give you the answers.’
‘Lots of people don’t know their genetic history, even the ones who think they do.’ Hope’s response had sounded defensive even to her own ears, but she didn’t want to be pushed into finding her biological parents. She was happy, in a family where she felt incredibly loved. Why would anyone want to risk rejection, when they already had all of that? Her parents had been open with her that they knew certain information about her birth mother, whose name was Laura, because of the fact they’d fostered Hope before she was adopted. It meant she’d always known that tracing Laura – should she want to – would be relatively easy. Her adoption had been finalised just before a change in the law in 2002, which had made the process of tracing birth parents easier, and which had also generally led to there being some form of ongoing communication between birth parents and children. Instead, David and Alison had followed Laura’s request and maintained ‘letterbox contact’, sending an update and a few photographs to Hope’s birth mother each year, via a designated member of staff at the local authority. When Hope was old enough, they broached the idea of her taking control of the contact with Laura and she’d told them she didn’t want any direct contact with the woman who’d given birth to her. She had no idea if Laura would have wanted more than those yearly letters anyway, and her parents had never pushed her. Until her diagnosis. She’d decided, even then, that she had to make them see it wasn’t nearly as important as they suddenly thought it was.
‘Did you know as many as one in ten people aren’t the child of the man they’ve been told is their biological father?’ she asked them earnestly. ‘All those people are getting through life thinking they’re having conversations with doctors about their genetic history, when they don’t even really know what it is.’
‘Okay.’ Her father’s tone had never been anything but reasonable, even though her argument was completely irrational. Her parents knew that these kinds of conversations had always been hard for her, but this time they weren’t backing off. ‘We’re your parents and we couldn’t love you any more than we do, but we can’t give you that sort of genetic information. Unlike the people who’ve been lied to about who their biological fathers are, you don’t have to have those conversations with your doctor in ignorance of the truth. We know where Laura is and you can ask her those questions and get at least 50 per cent of the picture. She might even know how to trace your biological father.’
‘I don’t want to know the kind of man who gets a sixteen-year-old girl pregnant and leaves her to face it all on her own.’ And there it was; the single biggest reason why the idea of talking to Laura about the circumstances of her conception and birth had always been such a huge no-no for Hope.
She’d shut the conversation down for another six months after that. It was only when she’d met an expectant mother called Asha at an antenatal group she was running, that Hope had taken a step back to think about whether her parents might be right. Asha had sickle cell disease, and her husband Liam had known he was a carrier, because his own mother had the same condition.
‘It wasn’t ideal for me to fall in love with someone who was a carrier.’ Asha had rolled her eyes, but it hadn’t dimmed her beautiful smile, and she was one of those people who always seemed to be upbeat no matter what challenges they faced. ‘But at least we knew, because of his mum, that he was definitely going to carry the gene. It meant we could consult a haematologist and an obstetrician before we even started trying for a baby. If his mum hadn’t had sickle cell, he might still have been a carrier, but we’d never have known it, and we might just have gone ahead and tried for a baby without having any of the really important conversations we needed to have first.’
Hope hadn’t known that much about sickle cell disease before meeting Asha, even having worked in the unit in Bristol that supported women with high-risk pregnancies. Asha had seemed keen to share what she knew, explaining to Hope and the rest of the antenatal group that because she had sickle cell disease and her partner was a carrier, any biological child they had would definitely either have the disease or be a carrier too. She’d spoken in depth about her condition, over the six weeks that the group had met, detailing how the abnormal haemoglobin resulted in chronic anaemia, severe pain, infections and even organ damage. Asha had been open about the conversations she’d had with Liam, discussing the possibility of using donor sperm or eggs, and the screening she’d undergone when they’d ultimately decided to go ahead and try to conceive naturally. What had been apparent in everything Asha said was that her primary concern was for the wellbeing of her child.
It had felt like a blessing to Hope to be able to learn so much from someone like Asha, especially as the complexities of her pregnancy meant that although she was attending antenatal classes locally, she’d be giving birth in the high-risk pregnancy unit in Carmarthen. It had made Hope think about her own situation too. Although her ethnicity meant she wasn’t at risk of sickle cell disease, it brought home the possibility of there being genetic factors which could one day affect her own pregnancies. She might think it didn’t matter what secrets her genetic background could be keeping when it came to her own health, but the thought of that affecting one of her children in the future had been sobering, and she’d suddenly understood why it had bothered her parents so much.
That was when she’d finally agreed to reach out to Laura, who’d gone on to get married more than fifteen years after giving birth to Hope in the toilets of her sixth form common room. Laura now had three sons – Jacob, Samuel and Ezrah, who were just eight, six and four. She’d seemed pleased when Hope had got in touch and their meet-up had gone really well. Hope had been introduced to her younger brothers, but she and Laura had agreed beforehand that they wouldn’t be told she was their sister. It had felt like far too much too soon for everybody, and their father had taken them out after half an hour, giving the two women the chance to talk things through without the risk of the boys overhearing anything that might confuse them.
Hope had liked Laura, but it had been impossible to think of her as a mother figure, let alone the woman who had given birth to Hope, which had been a huge relief. She didn’t need or want another mother, and she could tell it wasn’t a role Laura expected to fulfil in her life either. What had surprised Hope, when they finally met, was that the thing she’d wanted more than anything wasn’t information about genetic conditions, but about the circumstances of her conception. It was something she couldn’t walk away from without asking.
‘The man who made you pregnant…’ The first few words had come out of Hope’s mouth easily enough, but then suddenly she hadn’t been sure she could finish the sentence after all. What if what had gone on between her biological parents hadn’t been consensual? Could she face hearing that? Laura had been so young and had faced so much all on her own. As it was, Laura had seemed to understand without Hope having to ask the question she wasn’t sure she was ready to have answered.
‘I met Joe when I was on holiday in Cornwall with my parents. I was bored rigid following them around as they oohed and aahed at the pretty seaside villages which didn’t hold much appeal to me as a teenager. Joe and his sister were on holiday too, staying with a family friend who lived there, and he was surfing down on the beach when I first saw him. It was love at first sight.’ Laura had given a sheepish grin, but Hope hadn’t been able to mirror it, because she still didn’t have enough details to know whether or not what Laura was about to reveal would turn out to be a horror story. ‘At least I thought it was love, because he’d just turned seventeen, a year older than me, and he was by far the best-looking boy I’d ever seen in real life.’
‘Seventeen.’ Hope had breathed out the word, a wave of relief flooding over her as Laura nodded.
‘Yes, we were both just kids really, but our feelings had felt much bigger than that in the intensity of a holiday romance and, you know, one thing led to another. It was the first time either of us had been with anyone in that way, and when I had to leave a few days later, it broke my heart. I couldn’t stop crying for weeks and I was convinced that nothing was ever going to feel worse than the pain of going back to Norfolk without Joe did, but then…’
‘You realised you were pregnant.’ It had been Hope’s turn to finish the sentence and Laura nodded.
‘It sounds awful now and I really hope you won’t take this the wrong way, but suddenly that felt like the worst possible news and all my heartbroken feelings for Joe evaporated overnight. I just didn’t want to believe it was true, so I refused to acknowledge it and pretended – even to myself – that it wasn’t happening. I carried on that way right up until the moment you arrived. I’m so sorry.’
Tears had filled Laura’s eyes then, but Hope had shaken her head. ‘Don’t be sorry. Any sixteen-year-old would be terrified in those circumstances and it all turned out brilliantly for me, I promise.’
‘I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that.’ Laura managed a watery smile. Maybe Hope should have backed off at that point – there’d already been a lot of revelations for one day – but she’d needed to know more.
‘Did you ever tell Joe about me?’
‘No.’ Laura shook her head. ‘I thought about it and my parents wanted to know who the father was, but I felt as if I’d already messed things up for myself and I didn’t want to do that to Joe too. I was also worried he might decide he was ready to step up and be your dad. He was such a nice guy that it wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d been willing to do that, despite being so young. But I knew I wasn’t ready and how could I risk letting him do that, when I knew I couldn’t? It probably sounds horribly selfish, and although I wanted you to have a clean slate and the best life possible, the truth is I wanted to have a clean slate too. I can’t believe I felt that way, not since having the boys, but it was so different with them. I knew I was meant to be their mum from the moment I discovered I was pregnant with each of them. With you, that feeling was never there and you never really felt like mine, even when I held you for the first time. I thought maybe it was shock, but I think now that it was probably the way it was supposed to be for us. Does what I did make me the worst person ever?’
A fresh crop of tears had filled Laura’s eyes at that point, her anguish obvious, but Hope had needed her to know how grateful she was for the choices Laura had made.
‘Not at all, what you did was the right decision. Not just for you, but for me too. I couldn’t have asked for a better childhood or to be more loved.’ She’d returned the squeeze of Laura’s hand.
‘Thank you. I hope it was right for Joe too.’ Laura breathed out slowly. ‘I was sure back then that it was, but when I gave birth to Jacob and saw just how thrilled my husband was to be a father, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact I’d robbed Joe of that opportunity. I felt so consumed by guilt that it was sucking the joy out of having Jacob, so I decided to try and track Joe down. He’d always said he was going to become a psychiatrist, even back then, and he was determined to get the grades he needed to get into medical school. It didn’t take all that much digging to find him and I discovered he was working in Australia as a psychiatrist, just like he’d planned. He looked happy and successful, and I saw from his Instagram feed that he was in a long-term relationship. So I decided that revealing what had happened all those years ago would probably just hurt him, especially given that I didn’t know if you’d welcome contact, and I decided it was better to let sleeping dogs lie.’
Hope had nodded then and found herself wondering if Laura was right, that she knew enough now. She had access to half her genetic history and the name of her father, along with a few other details about him. Most importantly of all, she knew that Laura’s pregnancy had arisen as the result of a sweet holiday romance between two teenagers, not a sordid or unwanted liaison as she’d feared it might be. It was enough. She’d told herself that for over six months, but it wasn’t as easy as she’d hoped it would be to forget about Joe. Like Laura, she’d found herself researching him online and had discovered that not only had he returned to the UK, he’d got married and was head of the mental health unit at St Piran’s Hospital.
