The Girl Before

Could I really cope with a disabled child? Because I’m under no illusions—that’s what a child with Down syndrome is. Yes, their prospects may be better than they once were, but these are children who still need more parenting, more help, more dedication, more love and support. I’ve seen mothers with disabled children in the street, endlessly patient, clearly exhausted, and thought to myself how amazing they are. Am I really one of them?

It’s only when I get back to One Folgate Street that I realize I really can’t put off talking to Edward any longer now. It’s one thing to pick my moment to tell him about being a father, quite another to conceal something like this. All the leaflets emphasize the importance of discussing the situation with your partner.

The first thing I do, though—inevitably—is a search on the Internet for “Down syndrome.” Within minutes, I feel sick.

…Trisomy 21, as Down syndrome is properly known, is associated with thyroid problems, sleep disorders, gastrointestinal complications, vision problems, heart defects, spinal and hip instability, low muscle tone, and learning difficulties…

…What safety precautions can you take to reduce wandering? Install good locks on all internal doors, put STOP signs on outside doors, and think about fencing your yard completely…

…Potty training a child with low muscle tone is certainly extra challenging! We’ve had three years of accidents, but I’m glad to say we’re getting there…

…We ate yogurt in front of a mirror so our daughter could see why she was spilling it—that worked a treat! Hand–eye coordination remains a challenge…

Then, even more guiltily, I Google “Down syndrome + abortion.”

Of those couples who receive an antenatal diagnosis of DS in the UK, 92 percent choose abortion. Under the Abortion Act, termination of a baby with Down syndrome is legal right up to the point of delivery.

…We realized it was better for my partner and I to suffer the guilt and grief of an abortion than to let our daughter suffer all her life…

Oh God. Oh God oh God.

Isabel would be sleeping through the night by now. Isabel would be sitting up, grasping things, putting them in her mouth. She’d be crawling, perhaps even walking. She’d be clever and athletic and high-achieving, just like her mother. Instead of which I have to decide whether or not to saddle myself with—

I stop. That’s not the right way to think about this. Dr. Gifford has made an appointment for me at the testing center first thing tomorrow. They’ll give me the results by phone within a couple of days, he promised. In the meantime I must try not to let it hang over me. After all, the odds are still vastly in favor of everything being fine. Thousands of expectant mothers have a scare like this, only to discover that’s all it ever was: a scare.

I phone Mia and cry over her for what seems like hours.

THEN: EMMA

I sit on the train, wondering what I’m going to say to him. Power stations and fields flicker by. Commuter towns and rural stops come and go.

Every speech I prepare in my head sounds wrong. And I know the more I rehearse it, the more fake it’ll get. Better to speak from the heart and hope he listens.

I don’t text him until I’m off the train and waiting for a taxi. Coming to see you. We have to talk.

The taxi driver refuses to believe my destination even exists—There’s nothing there, luv, the nearest house would be in Tregerry, five miles away—until we turn down a farm track to discover an encampment of prefab work cabins and chemical toilets surrounded by mud. All around us are open fields and woods, but across the valley trucks pass on a distant road and I can see how this might indeed be a whole new town one day.

Edward strides from a cabin, his face dark with concern. Emma, he says. What’s wrong? Why are you here?

I take a deep breath. There’s something I need to explain, I say. It’s really complicated. I had to tell you in person.

The cabins are full of surveyors and draftsmen, so we walk beside the woods. I tell him what I told Amanda—that I was drugged and forced into sex by one of Simon’s friends, that he sent me a video he’d made of it as a way of threatening me and the police assumed it was Deon Nelson, that I’ve had to accept a formal caution for wasting police time but really none of it was my fault. He listens carefully, his expression giving nothing away.

And then he tells me, very calmly, that it’s over between us.

No matter whether I’m telling him the truth now or not, I’ve lied to him in the past.

He reminds me we agreed this would only continue for as long as it was perfect.

He says a relationship like this is like a building, that you have to get the foundations right or the whole thing falls apart. He thought our relationship was built on honesty when actually it was built on deceit.

He says that all this—he gestures at the fields—only came about because I told him I was attacked by Deon Nelson in my own home. He says this town is now being built on a lie as well. He’d been trying to design a community in which people looked out for and respected and helped one another. But such a community can only function on trust and now it’s tainted for him.

He says goodbye, his voice empty of emotion.