Love is All by JOAN FALLON

Author:JOAN FALLON
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: JOAN FALLON
Published: 2021-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

The next morning, after Mark had left for work Michelle remained sitting at the breakfast table. She’d had a terrible night; after the usual lovemaking, which had seemed more perfunctory than usual, she’d lain awake for a long time thinking about her life. She remembered checking the clock at two o’clock and again at three; finally, when the pale light of dawn was starting to creep through the curtains, she had fallen into a dreamless sleep.

Michelle was an only child; her mother had given birth very late in life, after having already resigned herself to a childless marriage. Then to both parents’ delight Michelle had been born, not only sound and healthy, but also very beautiful. She had blonde curly hair and big blue eyes, and would sit in her pram, which her mother always parked just outside the door of their small terraced cottage, smiling and gurgling at all the passersby. They were enchanted with her. She grew up in a home with little money, but an over abundance of love.

When she was fifteen her father died. He was already seventy and years of hard work and heavy smoking had taken their toll on his not very robust body. A long, painful period of emphysema followed by pneumonia had delivered the coup-de-grace. Michelle was heartbroken. It was her best friend, Teresa, who helped her through that painful time.

She and Teresa had been inseparable until Teresa had met Mark when, inevitably, they had at first drifted apart. But the ties of their friendship proved too strong and when Teresa and Mark married, she had begun to see more of her again.

Michelle had been just twenty-one when she began having trouble with her periods. At first it was irregularities: lateness, heavy bleeding that lasted two weeks and soaked her clothes, debilitating pain that caused her to cancel engagements, then nothing at all for a couple of months. The doctors suggested she change her contraceptive pill, but her condition didn’t improve. They suggested the coil—a fairly new device then—they even advised no contraceptives at all, but her suffering continued. In the end, worn down by the machinations of her own body, she agreed to a D and C. They cut out the tumour they discovered, snuggled deep inside her womb and the D and C became a hysterectomy. It was not until many months later that the full significance of their action hit her: she would never be able to have children now.

Once again Teresa had been a caring friend. She refused to leave Michelle at home to mope and so began a pattern that would last many years. Michelle was included in almost everything that the Rushtons did. The children came to regard her as part of their family and called her Aunty Michelle; they became the children she couldn’t have. The Rushton family filled her life.

Inevitably she had boy friends; she had been a beautiful child and had grown into a particularly attractive young woman, or so she was told by the numerous young men who courted her.

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