What became of us

speck of salt via kidney bean and plum, to curled up body the size of a melon.

    * * *

    She wished that she was not going up to Oxford. The reunion, which she had been dreading, would be worse now. She could already feel the chill of barely concealed hostility from her contemporaries as she walked into Hall.
    But she had to go because she had promised Saskia and Lily that she would take them punting beforehand.
    Anyway, they probably didn’t perform abortions on weekends, but now that she had made the decision, she wanted to have it done as quickly as possible.
    She could not have a baby.
    It wasn’t really a baby yet, she told herself. Nobody announced a pregnancy until twelve weeks because it could so easily miscarry. It wasn’t really a baby. At this stage, it wasn’t even the size of a grain of rice.

Chapter 7

    ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy...!’
    The voice in Ursula’s dream became a voice in the house calling her, and she was out of bed and standing up before she had worked out which of her sons it was. George. Blearily, she put on her dressing gown and switched on the landing light so that she could see into his room without dazzling him.
    ‘What is it, love?’
    ‘I seed pictures in my eyes.’
    He was sitting up in bed in his pyjamas, rubbing his eyes. She sat down and drew his head to her chest, patting him soothingly on the back.
    ‘There, there, Mummy’s here. What did you see?’
    ‘I seed clowns.’
    George was afraid of clowns. She didn’t know why, but whenever he saw one on television, or in the local shopping centre making balloon animals for the children during the school holidays, he would cling to her like a limpet.
    ‘There aren’t any clowns, darling. It was just a dream.’
    ‘Clowns won’t hurt you,’ he said, repeating what she always told him.
    ‘I wouldn’t let anything hurt you.’
    ‘Mummy, clowns are not really clowns, are they?’ It was an interesting existential question, she thought, because clowns were, after all, only people dressed up as clowns.
    ‘You’re right,’ she agreed, ‘clowns are not really clowns.’
    ‘Mummy, you’re not going to leave me?’ he asked, only half awake.
    ‘Go to sleep now,’ she whispered.
    His breathing quietened against her chest. She laid him back down and tucked the blankets around him.

    ‘Which one?’ Barry asked when she returned to bed.
    ‘George.’
    ‘George?’
    Their youngest son usually slept soundly. Luke was the one who sleepwalked and until recently had regularly wet the bed.
    ‘He’s not keen on me going to Oxford tomorrow,’ she explained. ‘I think it’s some sort of subconscious blackmail.’
    ‘I’ll get up if he wakes again.’
    ‘Thanks,’ she said, appreciating the gesture, but knowing that she was always the first to wake. A moment of fear blossomed and died inside her as she pictured Barry sleeping through a crisis while she was away, but fire was the only thing she could think of that might not alert one of the boys, and she had renewed the batteries in the smoke alarms recently. Gradually, her heartbeat returned to normal, but she felt wide awake now.
    ‘Can’t you sleep, little bear?’ Barry’s voice said next to her.
    Little bear had been his affectionate nickname for her from the moment they were introduced and he discovered her name was Ursula. That was long before the existence of the children’s book which they had read so many times to the boys. He used the endearment rarely enough for it still to make her feel warm all over. She nestled into his side.
    ‘How did you know I was awake?’ she asked him.
    ‘I can tell.’
    ‘Do I snore?’
    ‘Not usually, but there’s a different quality to the breathing.’
    She was surprised he noticed such things.
    ‘It’s not the first time you’ve been away since George was born, is it?’ he asked.
    ‘On my own, I think it is,’ she said.
    ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Barry acknowledged, after giving the question due consideration. ‘We all went to the funeral, didn’t we?’
    She had been thinking the same thing. It unnerved her that their minds were so used to each other that their thoughts often followed the same route.
    ‘I don’t know why,’ she said. ‘It was ridiculous to drag the boys all the way there.’
    ‘Solidarity,’ Barry said, a warm hand seeking and finding hers under the duvet.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, finding it comforting to lie talking in the dark.
    He rolled onto his side and put his other hand on