My mother told me to get rid of the baby, and now I will never have children of my own.
I was sixteen when I found out I was pregnant by a boy I loved dearly. His name was William, and we’d been together for a year. We were classmates, side by side every school day. The day I discovered I was expecting, an uncanny fog crept into everythingI felt swallowed by secrets and panic. William and I didn’t breathe a word to our parents. But shadows have a way of stretching, and soon enough, our secret was spilled. My parents erupted in anger, their voices echoing through the halls of our tidy, well-kept house in Oxford. Ours was a picture-perfect English family, the sort you’d see nodding politely and achieving top marks. I, the only daughter, never once brought them shamethat is, not until now.
We were too youngthey said so, over and over, icy cups of tea trembling in their hands. Mum and Dad had painted all their hopes for me in pastel colours: university, career, a sensible wedding. An unexpected baby was not on the palette. Choices were not choices, not for me. Our parents made their decision on our behalf while we drifted, voiceless, as though caught in a current. Mum escorted me, grim and silent, to the surgery in a city I barely recognised while half-awake. The doctor wore a tie with blue ducks on it. Afterwards, it was just another rainy afternoon, though the sky outside looked like watered milk. It wasn’t too late, they said. There were sighs of relief, biscuits passed about; I just went back to school, tucked away inside my own unspoken storm.
William and I carried on. The seasons wheeled by in dreamlike hazewe saw each other, sat exams, left school, entered university. A year later we were married, a small ceremony with roses and grey clouds drifting by overhead. Our parents, lighter now, left us be. Then the day came when my world shifted again: another child was coming. This time there were no secretseveryone was elated, especially us. The world felt clear and soft, like the air after an English rain.
But at six months, the dream twisted. One morning the world melted, colours running together, as blood stained the floor. The boy arrived quietly, impossibly tinyless than three pounds. He breathed for three hours beneath strange hospital lights, then slipped away as quietly as hed come.
Complications ensnared me like ivy on a crumbling wall. The doctors in their white coats, all sighs and muted tones, said they were sorry but had to remove my womb. My mother came to the hospital in her best wool coat, smelling faintly of lavender, and told me through tears that she was sorry for forcing me to end my first pregnancy all those years ago. But apologies didnt restore what had been lost. Regret cannot be unwoven, nor the years rewound.
Now, I drift through the days with William, uncertain if we belong to each other or merely walk side by side, ghosts in a world where children tumble across green fields while we stand apart, watching, untouchable. Family games echo from neighbours gardens while our own home remains silent, save for the ticking clock. I will never be a mother now. I wonder: can happiness grow in such emptiness, when something so important is forever missing?
