He Held Her Son the Night I Lost Ours novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Follow-Up

The doctor at the London clinic had a kind face and a very short appointment.

"Physically, you're healing as expected," she said, and closed the folder.

"Good."

"Are you sleeping?"

"Some."

"Is someone with you at home? Family? A partner?"

I looked at her.

"Yes," I said. "Someone's with me."

She nodded and wrote something down.

In the New York ER I had said no to that question.

I was surprised how easily the yes came out.

I walked out into the thin Saturday sun with a leaflet about grief and a paper bag of tablets.

Rafe was standing at the kerb across the street with a carrier bag in his hand.

I stopped on the step.

He lifted the bag a little.

"Don't," I said. "You aren't here by accident."

"I'm here for the soup." He crossed the road. "There's a place two doors down. They do an extraordinary leek and potato."

"I never told you where I was going."

"You said you needed Saturday morning for a medical thing." He looked at the leaflet in my hand, and then at my face. "You said it in the voice people use when they don't want to be asked."

"So you followed me."

"I looked up the nearest clinic that opens on a Saturday. I'm not asking anything." He held the bag out. "I brought soup."

I took it.

It was warm through the paper.

Something in my chest, which had held steady for six days, gave a very small crack.

"I lost a pregnancy on Monday night," I said.

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