The Nameless Dead Read Free Page B

spikes of Penny’s hair. She’d had to shave it several times for surgery and it had only now begun to grow out again. In solidarity with her,
Debbie had cut her own hair in a gamine style that accentuated how similar the two of them were. ‘Was it . . . natural?’
    ‘We don’t know yet. They thought there were signs of something. The face was badly deformed, so the child might never have had a chance.’
    The comment silenced her for a moment, and I suspected I knew what she was thinking. Finally she said, ‘Even if it was natural causes, imagine not being able to bury your child properly,
having to hide them on an island. A miscarriage was hard enough to go through, never mind going full term then having to do that.’
    Penny propped herself up on her elbows and twisted to look up at Debbie. Despite having had her earphones on, she must have overheard our conversation, for she asked, ‘Did you have a
miscarriage?’
    Debbie glanced at me before answering and, even then, spoke as softly as possible. Penny was 15 now but Shane was only approaching 10.
    ‘He’s doing his homework in the kitchen,’ I explained, keeping an eye on the hallway in case he should approach.
    ‘When we were first married, we had problems having a baby. It took five years before you arrived. In fact, we bought Frank thinking we couldn’t have a baby.’
    At the mention of his name, Frank, our Bassett hound, lifted his head slightly off the hearth rug, his heavy wattles of skin drooping beneath his throat. He yawned widely then, satisfied that he
was not being directly addressed, lowered his head again to his paws.
    ‘Once I did get pregnant, but we lost the baby early on. I was about five months gone.’
    Penny watched her mother as she spoke.
    ‘But, then we had you, so that made everything perfect.’
    ‘If you’d had the first baby, would you have had me then?’
    Debs shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
    Penny considered the implications of the response. ‘Do you think about the baby you lost?’
    Debbie looked at me, surprised by Penny’s interest.
    ‘Sometimes I wonder what he or she would have been like. You and Shane are so different, that that baby would have been a completely different person, too. But I’ve never regretted
that I had you and Shane.’
    ‘What happened to him?’ The voice came from the doorway. I looked across and realized that Shane had wandered across and was standing watching us.
    ‘What, love?’
    ‘What happened to him?’
    Debbie considered how best to express herself. ‘He wasn’t well. The doctor told us that he’d be very sick when he was born. God must have decided that he was too good for this
world.’
    ‘So where did he go?’
    ‘He went back to God before he was born.’
    ‘He just disappeared?’ Shane said.
    ‘Kind of,’ I said.
    ‘What was he called?’
    ‘We don’t know whether it was a boy or girl, honey,’ Debbie said. ‘It was too early to tell. He or she didn’t have a name.’
    The room was quiet. Shane looked from Debbie to me. ‘I need help with my maths,’ he said finally.
    ‘No problem. Then afterwards, what about a movie night?’ I suggested. Debs smiled, though I could tell the conversation was playing on her mind.
    We sat that evening and watched a film and ate popcorn, Debs, Shane, Penny and I, with our phantom child somewhere between us, alive again in our minds for the first time in many years. Debbie
had not told the children the whole truth. She had not explained to them that the doctors had told us that our child would suffer severe disability. She did not tell them of the terror that thought
had held for us, only married a few years. Nor did she tell them of our resolution to face the future with our child no matter what, and the subsequent heartache that we had felt at his loss. And I
had never told Debbie, or anyone else for that matter, that my heartache at his loss had been tempered with a degree of relief.
    And that I had felt nothing but