[alli55]

Ten days last summer


Thursday 31st August 2017


I heard the post come through the letterbox, and I was down the stairs in a flash. I had to make sure I got to it before anyone else, just in case the envelope I was waiting for had arrived. I picked my way through a couple of brown window envelopes addressed to Dad and then my heart stopped. There, in my hand, was an anonymous-looking brown padded envelope with my name on the front. It was here; I had them.

I dropped the rest of the post back onto the floor and hurried back upstairs and into my room. I shut and locked the door behind me. There was no way I could risk anyone coming in. I opened the envelope and tipped it up to allow it to relinquish its contents. Out fell a packet of twelve pills individually sealed into a plastic tray by a thin foil sheet. With them came a folded sheet of paper, filled with small writing. The heading, in bolder, larger writing, was visible on the outermost fold.

‘Guidelines for using Misoprostol to induce abortion.’

I unfolded the paper and began reading. There was lots of medical stuff, obviously, that I didn’t really understand so I skimmed over that. The bit I was interested in was headed ‘Instructions for use’. I read it and re-read it, my hands shaking and a sick feeling rising up through my stomach and into my chest. The words were doing nothing to calm my fears. I dropped the paper by my side and put my head on the pillow. I was going to need to build up enough courage to do this!

I reached out to grab a tissue to dab my eyes with. It’s silly, I know, but reading these love stories always set me weeping when it comes to the bits where the girl has her heart broken. Call me soppy, but that’s just how it is!

Only when I reached for a tissue, there weren’t any in the box. Damn! I put the book down and resolved to go and get a box from the Aldi store just around the corner. There were a couple of other things I needed as well, so I could get them at the same time.

I had to do this; and I had to do it when I was alone in the house. I’d been psyching myself up for the last half-hour and I was as ready as ever I would be; but I knew I wasn’t yet alone. Nearly, but not quite.

Dad was at work; Jenny and the littlies had gone out for the day with a family they knew well; and Caitlin had gone to see about a job she’d seen advertised at Snozone. That just left Holly.

I grabbed my purse, made sure there was enough money in it, and headed down the stairs and out the front door, pulling it closed behind me with a bang.

I heard the door bang and took a quick look out of my window. Holly was walking down the path. I had the house to myself!

I unlocked my door and went across to the bathroom. I found the biggest bath towel I could, and took the whole pack of sanitary pads from in the cupboard. The instructions had warned that I may need a few. Armed with the necessities, I returned to my room.

I laid the towel over my bed and put the pads where I could reach them. I removed my trousers and knickers, thought about tucking my blouse into my bra but decided I couldn’t rely on it staying there, so took it off as well. Wearing only my bra, I sat on the towel and tried to make myself as comfortable as I could. I knew I would be there for some time.

I picked up the pack of pills, and popped four of them out. Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I put all four into my mouth, tucking two into each cheek. I re-read the instructions.

‘Hold the tablets in the mouth for 20-30 minutes to allow them to dissolve, and then swallow the remaining fragments.’

I set the timer on my phone to 30 minutes so that I would know when it was okay for me to swallow any bits of the pills that were left by then.

I read on: ‘During this process you may experience bleeding that is somewhat heavier than for a period. That is normal. You should have a supply of thick sanitary napkins on hand.’

I reached across and patted the pack of sanitary pads, to reassure myself that I did indeed have them with me, and continued reading.

‘Bleeding and uterine contractions (cramping) may begin as quickly as 30 minutes following this first step. If bleeding and contractions do not start within 3 hours, follow step 2 below.’

Since I had to keep the pills in my mouth for 30 minutes, I read on.

Basically, it said that I had to inspect the sanitary pad to check if the pregnancy had been terminated. I had to look for something that was about the size of a short grain of rice in amongst all the blood. If I couldn’t find it, or if the cramping hadn’t stopped after 3 hours, I had to take another four pills and go through it all again.

I hoped and prayed I would be able to find this thing!

It was only a twenty-minute round-trip to Aldi, so I was soon back and able to continue my book, safe in the knowledge that I could dab away my tears when I needed to.

Oh bum! The timer still had 16 minutes left on it and I’d just heard the front door. Someone had come in! It would either be Holly or Caitlin. I didn’t want either of them around, and couldn’t make up my mind which one of the two I would prefer it to be.

With the pills already dissolving in my mouth, there was no going back now. I was totally committed. Oh, God, this was all going wrong already!

A sudden urge to pee took over me. I put the book down and headed to the bathroom. After finishing up, I noticed the door of the cupboard was open, so I pushed it closed before flushing and returning to my book.

It was starting! There was blood running down the inside of my thigh. I grabbed a sanitary pad and put it in place.

Engrossed in the story, as it neared its climax, I only vaguely registered the strange sound I’d just heard: like someone moaning, as if they were in pain. I went back to my book.

The cramping had started now, and I was in real pain. I did my best, but I couldn’t stop myself groaning with each new contraction.

There it was again, only louder this time! I put the book down.

Each one was getting worse! I’d had period pains before, but this was way beyond those! It was agony! I had to release that pain, and screaming was the only way.

The agonised scream chilled me to the bone. I got up and followed the sound; it was coming from Freya’s room. I pushed the door open and was confronted by something out of a horror movie.

“Aaaarrrggghhhh!” I screamed as the latest contraction hit me, my face contorted in pain. The agony had distracted me from maintaining the pad’s position, and there was blood all over my nether regions and their surroundings.

“Oh my God, Freya, what the hell?!?” I yelled at her.

She looked up at me, with a tortured expression.

“Help me, Holly!” she begged.

“I’m calling an ambulance!” I told her.

“No, no! You can’t! Please! No!” she screamed.

“What’s going on?” I demanded.

She pointed at a partially-used packet of pills, with a sheet of paper next to it. The words in bold were all I needed to read. Oh God, she was trying to give herself an abortion!

“Nnnnggg aarrgh!” she screamed again, and grabbed my arm with a hand.

“I don’t know what to do!” I cried, tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t stand to see her in so much pain and not be able to do anything about it.

She was in tears now, whether through the pain or the emotion of it all I didn’t know. “Hold me!” she pleaded. “Just hold me, Holly, please!”

Not caring about anything else, I sat down next to her and held her tightly.

I really wished I hadn’t started this now! The cramping was almost unbearable, searing pain ripping through me with each contraction. And now, to make matters worse, Holly knew; and worse still, she was going through God-knows-what agonies of her own. I just wanted it all to stop. Except, of course, it wouldn’t!

“Nnnnnnnnggggggg!”

She nearly burst with that one! I had to do something! I couldn’t just sit there and listen to this! But she wouldn’t allow me to let go of her. Well, if I was going to sit there, I was determined to be of some use. I pushed a sanitary pad up against her to try to soak up some of the blood.

“Eeeeaaaaaarrrrrrr!” Please stop this! Make it go away!

Freya turned to look at me. “I can’t do this, Holly!” she said. “It hurts so much!”

“Holly! Freya!” we heard a voice yelling from the stairs.

Oh God! Now who?

Caitlin burst into the room and looked at us, aghast.

“Help me, Caitlin! It’s Freya! I don’t know what to do!” I told her, as best I could whilst crying my eyes out.

“Aaarrrrrgggghhhhh nnnnngggggg arrrrgggg!” That was the worst one yet!

I looked at Holly through a veil of tears. “I want to die!” I told her.

“Shut up!” she said. “Shut up! Shut up!”

“Please,” she begged, “just let me die! It hurts too much. I can’t do it!”

“Stop it!” I told her. “Stop saying that!”

“Holly!” Caitlin’s voice snapped at me.

I looked at her. “What?”

“Go and get her some painkillers! Go on!”

“Don’t leave me!” begged Freya.

“Painkillers! Now!” Caitlin ordered.

There was such force in her voice, I didn’t dare disobey. Halfway down the stairs I heard another heart-rending scream of pain from Freya.

As soon as Holly left me, Caitlin took her place. She got a fresh pad and put it in place, swapping it for the existing one. She carefully examined the blood-soaked pad, moving some of the thicker blood clots with her finger to check them. Satisfied with what she’d seen, she put the pad down, and concentrated on holding me.

“It’s okay, Freya!” she told me. “As soon as the painkillers kick in, you’ll be able to cope! Just hang in there!”

I got back as quickly as I could, bringing a glass of water and the maximum dose of painkillers allowed. Freya quickly swallowed them.

“I can’t see it yet,” Caitlin told us. “How long has she been cramping?”

“10 maybe 15 minutes, I’m not really sure;” I answered, “I wasn’t here when she started this.”

“Okay,” she replied, “well there’s definitely more to come yet. I had a lot more blood than this before I found it.”

“You’ve done this?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said, “twice.”

“Oh my God, Caitlin!” I exclaimed. “Why? How? Nnnnnrrrrrrgggghhh!”

Holly took Caitlin’s place and once more held me to her, stroking my hair.

“My Dad!” Caitlin said.

“What, he raped you?” I asked.

“After Mum got put in prison, he used to say it was my job to look after him now. At first it meant cooking and cleaning and stuff. But then, when I turned 16, he said I had to look after him in bed as well. That’s when he started making me have sex with him. He never used a condom, and I was too scared to go and ask about the pill in case anyone found out what was happening, so I ended up pregnant twice. I took the same way out as you have, Freya!”

Suddenly, my problems seemed so insignificant, so pathetic, so pifflingly tiny! Even Freya’s predicament paled compared to what poor Caitlin had gone through!

A violent cramping produced another agonised scream from my suffering twin, reminding me that her predicament was very much real and ongoing.

There were another half-a-dozen contractions, each of which seemed to be tearing me in two, before the painkillers started to work. After that, gradually, although the cramping continued, it became a little more bearable each time. It still hurt, and it was still worse than the worst period pains, but it wasn’t the tortured agony that had made me wish to die.

Caitlin regularly swapped over the pads, each time inspecting the old one for signs of a successful abortion.

All the time I sat and held Freya, and as the painkillers took effect, she became more lucid again, and between contractions we began to talk.

“Holly, I’m so, so sorry for what I did!” she began.

“That’s okay!” I reassured her.

“No, it’s not!” she corrected me. “I’ve seen what it’s done to you. How much it’s hurt you. It’s not alright! Don’t try to be kind to me; you have to be completely honest, otherwise there’s no point!”

“I was angry with you at first, for doing it. But, really, I was much more angry with myself for reacting the way I did!” she began.

“It’s not your fault!” I told her. “None of it is your fault! It’s all me! I’ve caused it all!”

“But I didn’t help! I shouldn’t have reacted like I did! I don’t know why I dis! And then I wanted to just push it out of my mind, and pretend it never happened, but I couldn’t. I can’t! I wish we could just go back to how things had always been between us.”

“We can never do that! Things will never be the same as they were. We have to accept that!”

I knew that was true, but our special twin bond was so important to me that I would have done anything to get it back.

“After a while, I started to feel maybe I was ready to talk about it with you,” I continued, “but then you kept avoiding me. You were always at Lottie’s.”

“I was avoiding you,” Freya admitted, “because I thought you didn’t want me around. When I had to move out of our room, well …”

She paused and looked into my eyes.

“Go on,” I told her, “you said we had to be completely honest!”

“…well, that broke my heart,” she said. “We’ve always shared a room, and having to sleep apart was almost unbearable!”

“It was for me, as well!” I confessed. “I wanted to ask you to move back in, but I was too scared or stubborn or something.”

She put her hand in mine.

“Freya,” I said, almost pleading, “move back in, please. I want us to be together again.”

She smiled. “Me, too!” she said.

I was so glad to hear her say those words: ‘I want us to be together again’. So did I, more than anything in the world, so did I!”

Caitlin interrupted us, to give us some good news.

“It’s out!” she said, holding the latest blood-soaked pad in her hand. “It’s on here!”

“Are you sure?” I asked her, hardly daring to believe what she’d just told me.

“Yes! Look!” She held the pad out for me to inspect. With her blood-stained finger she pointed to a tiny piece of red stuff. “That’s it! Absolutely ,definitely, 100%, that’s it!”

Thank God!

“The cramping should stop soon,” she told me, “and the bleeding will slow.”

“What happens now?” asked Holly.

“You’ll keep bleeding, like when you have a really heavy period,” Caitlin said to me. “That will go on for a week or so.”

A week? Hopefully, that should mean it will have stopped by the time I go to the club with Alice and Hannah and Lottie. I was really thankful for that!

“Then you might get some little spots of blood until you get your next period,” Caitlin continued.

“How long will that be?” I asked her.

“With me it was six weeks the first time, and four weeks the second time.”

It was so comforting to have Caitlin there, able to tell me these things, having been through them herself. I couldn’t imagine having got through it without her.

Now it was done, me and Freya sat and hugged each other, like long-lost friends who are meeting for the first time in years.

“I never want to be apart from you again!” I told her.

“Me neither!” she replied. “I know we can’t go back to what we had, but let’s go forward and make an even stronger bond!”

I really, really wanted that, more than anything. But there was something I had to overcome before I could even attempt to move forward.

“It’s just,” I searched for the words I wanted, “I can’t stop seeing you like that!. In my mind, I mean, I keep seeing naked-having-sex Freya. I don’t want to! But I don’t know how to make it go away!”

I knew it had affected her, but I didn’t realise it was that bad. I felt so guilty.

“Oh Holly,” I said, “I wish I could help, but I don’t know how!”

“I think I do!”

We both looked at Caitlin, surprised by what she’d just said.

“But I’m not sure you’re going to like it, Holly!” she warned.

I didn’t know what idea she might have, but I was desperate. So desperate that I was willing to try anything at all.

“What is it?” I asked, determined to do whatever it was she suggested.

“Freya,” she said, “take Holly with you when you go to the club with Alice and Hannah.”

That didn’t sound too bad, until I remembered the thing that made Alice and Hannah different from everyone else I knew: they were naturists. So, presumably, this club was a naturist club. Was Caitlin suggesting I go naked at this club? I checked if this was what she meant.

“What? You mean me go to a naked club? And get naked?”

“No, you don’t need to get naked, Holly,” Caitlin explained her idea, “but you have to go to the club. Don’t you see? The only way to get that image of Freya out of your head, is to see her naked, with other people, in a different situation. If you see her swimming and having fun and playing with her friends when she’s naked, that will replace the naked Freya in your mind with a different, positive, friendly naked Freya.”

“That’s brilliant, Caitlin!” Freya exclaimed. “You’re definitely coming, Holly! You need to see me naked properly!”

I could see the way Caitlin’s idea might work, and I was desperate, so I agreed to go.