Martha made sure the bathroom door was firmly shut. Which was stupid. The door was either shut, or it wasn’t. Just as there were no degrees of being pregnant. You either were, or you weren’t. And that was something she knew all about. The not being pregnant part, that was. She was all too familiar with that state of affairs.
Opening the package which she had bought on the way home, she followed the instructions to the letter. Not that she needed to read the leaflet contained within the small box; she knew what she had to do.
Afterwards, and while counting the seconds away in her head, she flushed the loo, then washed and dried her hands. When she had reached a hundred and twenty, she added on an extra thirty seconds in the hope they would make all the difference.
They didn’t.
As before, the appearance of the minus sign told her that once again she and Tom had failed in their attempt to create a baby. This time she had really thought it might happen, that she was
pregnant. She had convinced herself that this month she felt different, that her body was already nurturing a tiny speck of miraculous life. But it was just a cruel false alarm. Or no more than a case of wishful thinking.
Cross with herself for putting too much store in being eight days late, for allowing her hopes to be raised, she stared at her face in the mirror above the basin. Too soon to panic, she told herself; she was only thirty-five, there was plenty of time yet for her to become a mother.
The important thing was to remain relaxed about it.
Anxiety, she reminded herself, would only make things worse. Besides, she wasn’t the worrying kind.
She was Martha Adams.
Cool-headed and practical Martha.
Efficient Martha.
Reliable Martha.
As Dad used to say of her, if you needed a steady pair of hands, then Martha was your girl.
Pep talk over, the disappointment in her face now replaced with a determined smile, she put the pregnancy kit back inside the chemist’s bag, screwed it up, and put it in the bin under the basin in the marble-topped vanity unit. She then scraped her shoulder-length dark hair back into an obedient ponytail. Mum had described her hair that way when she’d been a child…
Leave a Reply