The Last Piece by Imogen Clark

Author:Imogen Clark [Clark, Imogen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2020-07-27T16:00:00+00:00

9

They didn’t tell me exactly when it would happen, although I’m sure they must have had a date in their sights from the very beginning. Of course, I could tick the days off the calendar myself, but I chose not to for reasons of self-preservation. I simply took each day as it came, learning and becoming more confident with each one that passed.

In the long weeks before my baby was born I had imagined that when the day finally came to give her away, I would be prepared. After all, I reasoned to myself, I would have had six long weeks to say my goodbyes, and I really was desperate to get home and to slip back into the life that I had left behind. But as my six weeks anniversary approached, I could feel a desperate kind of panic settling over me. It felt like a balloon in my lungs, each day blown a little larger so that my breath shrank until all I had left were little snatches of oxygen to survive on. I would grasp any opportunity I could find just to stare at her as I tried to fix each of her features in my mind, like a photograph developing in a darkroom. I examined the way her tiny fingernails were set, how her hair grew from her forehead around the swirling cowlick that she would no doubt curse when she was older, the darkness of her eyes, no longer deep blue but a rich brown like roasted coffee beans, which matched the colour of her hair perfectly. Each of these details I clutched to my heart as if someone could steal them from me. I wanted to be able to describe her minutely to Ralph so that it would be as if he had seen our daughter for himself. I would be given a single photograph, I knew, but that could only show one side of her, one expression, one moment captured of her ever-changing face. The rest I would have to preserve for myself.

It was a Wednesday, the very last day of July, and the day dawned warm and bright when really it should have been dark and brooding to match the occasion. I knew as soon as Stella told me that I was required in Matron’s office that my time had come. Fear grabbed me, fixing me to the spot, and I saw in her face that I was right.

She gave me a weak smile. ‘It’s all right, Cecily,’ she said gently. ‘They won’t take her whilst you’re gone. You’ll have the chance to say goodbye.’

Taking her at her word, I made my way with heart pounding and legs trembling to Matron’s office for what would be the final time, running my fingers through my hair as I walked. My young body had already shed the extra pounds that the pregnancy had created, and I remember feeling that it was vital that I looked my best so that Matron understood, if she had

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