Every time you make a move

A Cold Wind Blows...

This chapter touches upon a delicate topic and contains some graphic content that some readers may find upsetting. There are resources available in the previous update for those who may need them.

Brompton Public Library, sometime in February, 1986

"I'm sorry, but you have lost the baby"

It had already been one month today, and the doctor's words still replayed in Monica's head. 

It didn't matter where she was or what she was doing, for the intrusive flashbacks from that long night and day would not leave.

In an attempt to take her mind off of it, Monica lifted her head from the pile of different university prospectuses in front of her and looked over to Johnny and Roshni. 

They were both sitting at the group study table nearby, silently and obediently doing their homework without a care in the world.

"Good," she thought, "They're distracted".

As long as her children could not see what she was looking at then that was fine. But that didn't matter, for none of the information that she was looking at was going in properly today anyway. 

With a sigh of defeat, Monica quietly stood up and gathered the pile of prospectuses in front of her neatly, and went to put them back in the careers guidance file cabinets. In the past week she developed a habit of attending local libraries, taking the twins with her after school, in order to look up information on further education courses related to media or the arts of any kind that she was able to find. After all, it was the only experience that she had developed since she left high school and moved to London on a whim. 

There were just too many types of courses available; long-term ones, short-term ones, finer art ones, academic ones, industry-heavy ones... but Monica wasn't going to give up easily. After all, her job was currently unstable and she was close to being made redundant. Margaret Thatcher's regime hadn't been too kind to her boss Theo's production company, or towards British arts and culture in general; her colleagues were dropping like flies in search of work elsewhere, and so Monica was going to need a back-up plan for the future. Besides, her friend Paula was the one her encouraged her to finally get a university degree when she visited last summer.

But deep down, Monica hoped that taking Paula's advice about developing herself would help her move on from the heartbreak and grief that the miscarriage caused her. Every day was getting to be a constant reminder of her baby that was never to be and how her body failed her.

When she got back to her table her daughter was standing by her empty seat, pen and paper in hand.

"What do you want, love?" Monica whispered as she sat down beside her.

Roshni handed her her numeracy exercise sheet, "Can you please help me solve problem number seven?" 

Monica read the exercise brief at the top of the page. All of the sums had a missing number that equaled a value, and the task was to calculate the missing number. In this case, the sum was 4 + 5 + ? = 20.

Monica asked, "Right, what does four plus five equals?"

"...Nine?" Roshni answered hesitantly.

She nodded, "...And to find the missing value here, what do you do next?"

The girl looked at the page, completely lost. 

She encouraged her daughter, voice hushed, "Well, what do you do with the twenty?"

"Take nine away from it!" Roshni said aloud.

"Very good!" Monica gestured her to be quiet, handing the sheet back to her, "What next?"