Dawn was glad to see the reintroduction of the pistachios and wine evening into her life. As it was a welcome return to normality, she was going all out and cooking a balti. She’d missed having Jane over every Friday evening post afterschool club.
Jane had started coming over regularly not long after she’d begun her job at the school about five years before. There wasn’t much of a nightlife in Owerdale apart from a few bistro pubs and restaurants, so, as meeting up at the flat saved the cost of a babysitter, Dawn’s friend headed over there most weeks for a night in.
In the past they would have collected Archie, sourced some food, and then the evening always ended with nuts and wine and putting the world to rights.
Since being pregnant, the nuts and wine had gone out of the window, along with being able to manage staying up beyond nine in the evening. So they’d been opting for a takeaway then an early night. This was the first time they’d managed to get together without Dawn being up the duff. It was nice to feel ready to reacquaint herself with the parts of her life she’d missed. It was just strange not to be coming from school with Jane, who’d escorted Archie home today. She hadn’t realised she would miss being at work and the manic run-up to the summer holidays.
‘Here you go.’ Jane passed Dawn a bag of essentials for the evening: wine and nuts.
Once Archie had been fed and put to bed, they set about enjoying their evening.
‘Food smells delicious,’ Jane said.
‘I’m starving. I’ll go dish up.’ It was later than Dawn would usually eat, but they’d decided to have their relaunch once Archie was asleep, so she’d dished his dinner up from the slow cooker earlier and, ever since, her stomach had been grumbling at the welcoming smell.
Dawn cheated with microwavable rice and heated some naan bread to go with it, before serving it up with the finesse of lap trays. Well, it was the closest thing she had to date night.
‘So, how are things?’ Jane asked, once they were both set to tuck in.
Dawn shoved a forkful of lamb balti into her mouth before answering. She was too hungry to wait and it was a good way to avoid the question for a bit longer. It was too broad a question and one she was struggling to answer in just one simple sentence. The silence was awkward so she made stupid, pointing-to-her-face gestures so that Jane would know she was eating. Even though it was perfectly clear she was eating.
‘This is really lovely.’ Jane filled the void, making it even more apparent that Dawn hadn’t really answered.
‘It was a boy, like I thought.’ Even though Jane had looked after Archie on several occasions, they’d not actually taken the time to sit and talk about what had happened. Jane was the only person Dawn had told about thinking she knew the sex of the baby. She was the only person she’d trusted to tell.
‘Has it been hard?’
‘Hard would be a good description.’ Impossible seemed nearer to the mark. ‘It’s getting easier, although…’ Dawn wasn’t sure how much detail she wanted to go into. Certainly Jane didn’t need to know that she no longer needed the maternity pads she’d been waddling round in. Or that she was now back into normal-sized knickers.
‘Go on…?’ Jane encouraged, obviously sensing Dawn’s need to talk.
‘I’m struggling with being involved. I’m finding it hard to find the right level.’ There was no rule book for the process they were all going through.
‘What’s been going on then?’
Dawn dabbed some naan bread into the curry sauce and answered before filling her face this time. ‘They had their initial couple of weeks together as a family, but David has asked me to help out now his paternity leave has finished and he’s returned to work. I want to be there for them, but I also need to take a step back. It’s hard to explain.’
‘It was always going to be complicated. It’s a massive period of adjustment you’re all going through. I’ve said it since the beginning – you’re a much better person than me. I’m not sure I could have done that for my sister, however much I love her. It’s a huge thing you’ve done for them. And if they’re asking too much of you, you need to explain that to them.’
‘I think that’s why I’m struggling. I’ve already done the big ask by handing over the baby, the rest should be small stuff in comparison.’ Helping out shouldn’t have been too much bother, but the more they asked of her, the more she worried about if they were coping. If any of them were coping.
‘It obviously doesn’t feel small, otherwise it wouldn’t be bothering you.’
‘They’ve asked if I can look after the baby one morning a week so Rebekah can get some rest. She’s really struggling on very little sleep. I keep trying to think of it in rational terms. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d carried him, I wouldn’t hesitate in volunteering to look after my nephew one morning a week. In fact, I would be delighted.’
‘And you’re not happy about it because…’
It wasn’t so much a question as a sentence that needed completing. ‘Because I’m scared.’ It was as simple as that and yet so complicated. ‘It sounds silly, I know, but I don’t want to forge any kind of bond with him, but at the same time I’m his auntie so it’s natural that there would be one. I haven’t held him yet because I’m too scared that parts of me might explode into mortification that he’s not mine.’
Jane was mopping up the remainder of her curry with some naan bread. ‘Maybe that’s the next step then. If you hold him, at least you’ll know how you feel. Whether you can keep it all in check or whether you need to keep your distance.’
Dawn realised she’d neglected to pour them any wine, so quickly went about correcting that error as well as grabbing a bowl for their post-dinner pistachios. ‘I’m waiting for them to choose a name at the moment. I told them I wouldn’t help any more until they’d decided that.’
‘What? Wasn’t he born, like, weeks ago? Surely they’ve decided?’
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? To me, naming him is part of the bonding process they need to go through. In fact, it’s annoying me that they haven’t chosen. It’s beginning to seem discourteous.’ Dawn drank some of her wine, finally able to get some of the emotions that had been ratcheting up inside her off her chest.
‘They don’t have long to decide. Don’t they have to register the name within so many weeks? Whose name goes down as the birth mother?’
Dawn gave up on her curry. ‘Bloody hell. I hadn’t even thought about it. It must be Rebekah, right?’ Genetically he was Rebekah’s; her name must go on there somewhere. Otherwise, without some significant footnote to explain, future generations of the family would question this bizarre case of incest. ‘I’ll have to ask. Do you think that’s why they haven’t come up with a name yet? Because of the registration process?’
Jane shrugged her shoulders. ‘No idea. What do you think?’
Shelling a pistachio, Dawn gave it some thought. ‘I’m just perplexed by it. For so long they’ve tried for and wanted a baby. They never got to name their baby angels. It always made me think they’d be desperate to name this one in the same way they were desperate for a happy outcome. After all we’ve been through, it feels like a bit of an insult to everything I went through to not choose something. I thought telling them I wouldn’t help with the baby until they chose a name would speed up the process. Not that I want to blackmail them into it, but I think they should realise it’s important for all of us that they make a decision.’
Jane took a handful of nuts and shelled them one by one as they chatted. ‘At least it gives you a bit of breathing space to decide how you feel. To process whether you can really be involved to the extent they’re asking you to be.’
‘It was David who asked me about helping once a week by text the other day. I don’t even know if he’s asked Rebekah. He never texts. I’m not sure I like it.’
‘Sounds like you all need to sit down and have a chat about everything. Some things are too complex to try to guess what everyone is thinking.’
Jane was right, of course. This was beyond the scope of what they’d discussed, both when they’d taken the decision to go for surrogacy and when they’d decided how to handle things initially. It might have been naïve, but they’d not talked about the future. Like it was a dangerous subject, in case they never got that far. And now they were here it was like none of them quite knew how to function. ‘They should be here on Sunday if they don’t cancel again. Hopefully that’ll give us the chance to talk.’
Because Dawn needed to be honest. She should confess she was struggling with the void being a surrogate had created.