Today, I’m taking part in the first anniversary blog blitz for
The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye. I asked Sarah Marie to share the most heart-rending
scene from her novel and she chose the scene where Abbie finds out she’s
pregnant.
Scroll down for the giveaway!!
The
Second Cup
by
Sarah
Marie Graye
Abbie had known there was something awry with her body the
way only a pregnant person can. And it wasn’t just the swollen ankles, swollen
abdomen and swollen breasts.
The tiredness and the backache that she’d put down to too
many long days and too many late nights had reached the heights where they
could no longer be ignored as symptoms of something bigger.
The pregnancy test was a mere formality: a wand to wave
magician-like at Ebbs in a “look what we’ve made” kind of way. Except that she
didn’t want to wave anything at Ebbs, except maybe a hand to shoo him away.
She had a little person growing inside of her and it was
half Ebbs and she didn’t know if she wanted it. And until she knew, she wasn’t
going to be able to tell him.
The secrets and the waiting and the decisions. They all
became nothing when the pain came. It didn’t just rip her in two: she’d felt
hung, drawn and quartered, her mind flitting back to history lessons at school,
to the horrors of the centuries gone by where people who betrayed the crown
were subject to a slow and humiliating torturous death.
Abbie felt like she was suffering a similar agonising fate,
but all she could think of was the little person inside of her, that they were
probably dying in her place.
Ebbs rushed her to A&E, knowing something was terribly
wrong, but having no idea of the cause. At that point Ebbs simply cared about
Abbie – and she realised she could have told him. But it’s too late for
confessions, so she must speak in whispers with the hospital staff.
A positive pregnancy test confirms what she tells them in
hushed tones. An ultrasound scan confirms the worst. Nothing in her uterus.
An explosion in her right fallopian tube. The worst type of
ectopic pregnancy. A medical emergency. Abbie rushed into theatre, crying for
herself, for her dead baby, for anything to make the pain go away. She cried
out – the sounds began to form the name “Paul” – and she quietens herself with
her fist in case Ebbs is near.
Later, after a straightforward laparoscopy, she was moved
to the recovery ward, her ruptured fallopian tube removed. Her baby removed.
The part of her and Ebbs that she didn’t know if she wanted
she now so desperately craved. She knew it was the hormones pulsating round her
body, but that knowledge didn’t stop her womb from aching for the life that
never was.
Later still, she was at home with Ebbs, the two of them
coming to terms with the pregnancy neither of them supposedly knew about. He
thinks it is easier that way: that they never got to know the idea of having a
baby before it was taken away.
She agreed, nodding, trying to hide the waves of grief for
the baby she’d known about for three weeks. And along with that grief, she
needed to come to terms with a diagnosis of pelvic inflammatory disease causing
damage to her fallopian tubes. The reason her baby didn’t make it to her womb.
The potential damage it may have caused to her other
fallopian tube. The problems she may face conceiving safely in the future.
She comforts herself with “at least” – the motto she has
come to live her life by – that at least they didn’t have a Band-Aid baby. So
Abbie knew she needed to be grateful alongside her grieving. To not be trapped
by a baby like her mother was.
And then later still, none of it matters. Shortness of
breath, followed by feeling faint, followed by yet more pain. Another hurried
journey to A&E. Another visit to theatre. A nasty infection. Another tube
removed.
Just isolated ovaries swimming around inside her, with no
connection to her womb. No way to make babies – Band-Aid or not.
And then later still, Abbie and Ebbs are no longer
together. The doctor checked Abbie’s scars and told her she had healed well.
She looked down at her abdomen and agreed. Physically she had healed very well.
The little cream lines near her belly button sat in the
natural folds of her skin and could easily be mistaken for chicken pox scars.
Yes. Physically she had healed very well.
And then later still, came an extra glass of wine to ease
the pain, to keep her company, an attempt to fill the hole. And then later still
came Dominic. But the hole was too big for him to fill too.
The
Second Cup
Would your life unravel if someone you knew committed
suicide? Theirs did.
Faye knows her
heart still belongs to her first love, Jack. She also knows he might have moved
on, but when she decides to track him down, nothing prepares her for the news
that he's taken his own life.
Faye is left wondering how to move forward - and whether or
not Jack's best friend Ethan will let her down again. And the news of Jack's
death ripples through the lives of her friends too.
Abbie finds
herself questioning her marriage, and wondering if she was right to leave her
first love behind. Poor Olivia is
juggling her job and her boyfriend and trying to deal with a death of her own.
And Jack's death has hit Beth the
hardest, even though she never knew him.
Is Beth about to take her own life too?
Giveaway – Win 3 x
Signed copies of The Second Cup by Sarah Marie Graye
(Open Internationally)
*Terms and Conditions –Worldwide entries welcome. Please enter using
the Rafflecopter box below. The winner will be selected at random via
Rafflecopter from all valid entries and will be notified by Twitter and/or
email. If no response is received within 7 days then I reserve the right to
select an alternative winner. Open to all entrants aged 18 or over. Any
personal data given as part of the competition entry is used for this purpose
only and will not be shared with third parties, with the exception of the
winners’ information. This will passed to the giveaway organiser and used only
for fulfilment of the prize, after which time I will delete the data. I
am not responsible for despatch or delivery of the prize.
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It’s a diagnosis that has stayed with Sarah Marie over three
decades, and something she believes has coloured every life decision, including
the one to write a novel.
Sarah Marie wrote The Second Cup as part of an MA
Creative Writing practice as research degree at London South Bank University –
where she was the vice-chancellor’s scholarship holder.
Sarah Marie was diagnosed with ADHD in November 2017 and
published an extended edition of The Second Cup in February 2018 that
included character interviews so she could diagnose one of her characters with the
same condition.
