Not My Daughter

Prologue

The room is softly lit by the luminous stars on the ceiling, a present for your fifth birthday, and a sliver of moonlight from the window that slants in silver bars across your bedroom floor.

You lie so still, your lashes fanning your cheeks, your golden hair spread across your pillow. You’re so beautiful, and just looking at you makes my heart ache and ache.

Your breath is so soft I can barely hear it, but at least I can see the steady rise and fall of your chest, every breath a promise. You’re still here. I’ve still got you. For now.

I’ve been reconciling myself to your diagnosis for months now, trying out the words, testing the reality like a toe dipped in ice water, but in moments like this it is still a shock, realisation slamming into my chest, leaving me breathless and reeling. How did we get here? How can this be?

And, worst of all, the question I’ve seen clouding your eyes too often: why is this happening to me?

I rise from the side of your bed, too restless to sit still. I pick up your toy rabbit with the silk-lined ears that has fallen on the floor and tuck it safely under your arm. You smile in your sleep and snuggle closer.

In the quiet stillness of a long, lonely night, I let myself look back over the years – all the choices, all the mistakes, all the longings and losses, everything leading to this.

It is a form of torture, this futile second-guessing, agonising in every detail because of the questions I must ask myself. What if I’d been different? What if I’d done things differently? What if I’d been smarter, stronger, more selfless, right from the start? What if?

You wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be here at all. And in this moment, poised on tragedy, overwhelmed by love, I don’t know the answer to that terrible, desperate question – if I could go back and do things differently, would I?

Part One

One

Milly

It’s bad news. I can tell from the doctor’s face, and I clench my fists in my lap as I wait for it.

‘I’m sorry.’ Dr Finlay, or Meghan as she asked us to call her a while back when we started this laborious journey towards having a baby, makes a little moue of sympathy, causing my stomach to clench along with my fists. That bad?

Silently, Matt reaches over to hold my hand, threading his fingers through mine. My palm is icy and damp, my heart starting to thump. I was hoping for good news today, news about how there was nothing to keep me from being pregnant, from us being a family, after months of consultations and charts and tests and waiting. So much waiting.

‘After looking at the results of Milly’s pelvic scan,’ Meghan begins, her gaze moving between the two of us, ‘I think I can make a certain diagnosis.’ She turns to focus on me, her mouth turned down at the corners. ‘I’m sorry, Milly, but based on what I’ve seen in the scan as well as the hormone levels we’ve been monitoring over the last few months, I can now confirm you have Premature Ovarian Insufficiency.’

‘Pre… what?’ I stare at her blankly. We’ve talked about monitoring my ovulation, and trying to relax, and maybe, just maybe, starting a prescription for Clomifene. Dr Finlay – Meghan – has assured me that at thirty-four I’m still on the youngish side to conceive, and I have every chance – her words – that it will happen. And now she’s telling me something else, something worse? The dread that was swirling around in my stomach coalesces into a cold, hard ball.

‘Essentially it’s premature menopause, although we don’t like to call it that because menopause is its own natural process, and this, of course, is something else.’

I swallow, clinging to Matt’s hand, my only anchor in all this uncertainty and ignorance. ‘So what does this mean? I go on Clomifene?’ I ask, hearing the hopeful note in my voice and inwardly cringing at it.

‘No, I’m afraid that’s not a possibility now, with the level of deterioration already present.’

Which sounds awful as well as final, and that is even worse. ‘So what happens now?’ I ask, although I’m not sure I want to know.

Meghan hesitates, and in that tiny pause I hear all I don’t want to know. She’s breaking the bad news to me. I can see it on her face, in the way she places her hands flat on the table, as if she has to brace herself, when I’m the one who is going to need to absorb the hit.