4

The shriek of the electric saw from two houses down fell silent just as Caro got to the point of what she’d been skirting around for the last five minutes. As a consequence the street fell eerily silent, her voice grew correspondingly louder, and opposite, a head shorter, Kay’s face had correspondingly drained. She was always pale; now she was white. ‘Anyway,’ Caro finished. ‘Now you know.’ That last sentence had felt so loud it seemed to bounce off the pebble-dash of Kay’s garage, and nothing would convince her that the old woman across the road didn’t also now know.

Kay pursed her lips. ‘Let me get this straight,’ she said. ‘You haven’t told Helen?’ She was hugging an orange and white traffic cone, the hard edge cutting into her navy fleece. Her short hair had been even more fiercely cropped than usual, lying as flat as a skullcap. Caro had an urge to reach out and fluff it up, inject some softness.

‘No.’

‘And you don’t intend to?’

She shook her head. (Now, she thought, would be a good time for that power tool to start up again.)

‘And you’re only telling me because you’re going to need me to cover for you?’

‘That’s not how I’d put it.’

‘No, I guess not.’ Dumping the traffic cone on the brick post of her boundary wall, Kay sighed. ‘Is that why you’ve been so insistent I come?’ she said. ‘Because seriously, Caro, you know how big a deal this is for me. And if I’m just needed—’

‘No!’ Caro shook her head. ‘That’s not it at all. I understand this is a big step. For you and Alex.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really. And actually it was Helen who insisted we make you come. And I agreed. Out of all of us it’s you that needs the break most!’

‘Mmm.’ Kay narrowed her eyes.

Caro looked down at the car keys in her hand. ‘This situation has only arisen because of you coming later.’

‘Right.’ Brushing dirt from her fleece, Kay turned back to her house. ‘You’d better come inside.’

‘Okay.’ But Caro didn’t move. She glanced back at her silver BMW, nestled now in the parking space cleared by the removal of the traffic cone. Why Kay insisted upon staying here, so close to her parents and in the very house she’d grown up, Caro had never understood. She shuddered. It wasn’t for her. It reminded her too much of where she’d grown up herself. The house, the family, she hadn’t been able to leave fast enough.

‘The car will be fine,’ Kay called. She was standing by her back door. ‘Mrs Newall will keep an eye on it.’

‘I wasn’t worried about the car,’ Caro lied. She looked across to the house opposite. A white-haired, frail woman (the one who now knew) had bent over a plastic pot, attacking the soil with a trowel, three bags of compost piled up by her front door.

Kay followed her eye. ‘She’s a one-woman neighbourhood watch society.’

‘Right.’

‘And weathervane. We know it’s going to be warm if she’s out with that trowel or on her stepladder washing windows.’

Head bowed, Caro nodded. Every Tom, Dick and Harry knowing your business? Watching all the comings and goings? It wasn’t for her. She took a step towards the driveway and then suddenly leapt sideways. ‘Shit! What is that?’

‘It’s dog shit, Caro,’ Kay sighed.

Well, of course it was. She knew that. What she wanted to say was What is it doing there? Right outside your drive, Kay! And why don’t you get rid of that stupid traffic cone and just move house? Car keys jiggling, arms folded across her thin blouse, she sidestepped the dog shit and walked up the drive.

‘Now we’ll know when it’s autumn as well.’

‘What?’ Just in front of the back doorstep, Caro stopped short. She was eye to eye with Kay, who had the benefit of the step. She switched a glance back across the road to the neighbour. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Kay laughed, ‘Mrs Newall has just bought herself an electric leaf blower.’ And she turned and disappeared inside the house.

Caro paused. She looked back across the road, and as she did, two things happened at once. Mrs Newall waved at her, and the power tool roared back into life. How did Kay stand it? Caro didn’t know the name of a single neighbour in her apartment block. She couldn’t say she’d ever even heard them come and go. And that was exactly how she liked it.

In the kitchen Kay was filling the kettle, moving cups around.

Caro dropped her keys on the bench and leaned against it. She hadn’t intended to blurt everything out on the pavement, but the knot of anxiety she’d had since Helen rang yesterday with final travel plans had unravelled like a demented snake the moment she’d got out of her car and Kay had said, What’s wrong?

Why should there be anything wrong? she’d tried, which Kay hadn’t even dignified with a response. No, it hadn’t been what she’d intended. Not out on the pavement, with Kay holding that ridiculous traffic cone, and all the neighbours downing their power tools as if they’d been tipped off. Kay, who’d always had that extra antenna. Who could snuffle out secrets like a pig with truffles. She crossed her arms and looked at the floor, trying and failing to find a way of restarting a conversation that was proving harder than she’d ever imagined.

‘Go through,’ Kay said, as if she’d heard Caro’s thoughts. ‘I think I need to be sitting down to hear this.’ She hadn’t even turned around.

‘Right.’ Caro smoothed her skirt. ‘Right.’ Yes, Kay had an extra antenna. And eyes in the back of her head. And a unique ability to make her feel like a schoolgirl. A schoolgirl who had got too big for her boots.

Kay’s living room was small. But then again, Kay’s house was small. One blue sofa and two bulbous armchairs all squashed around a huge TV screen, which would, of course, be for Alex. Because in all the years she’d known Kay, Caro had never seen her sit and while away hours watching TV. At university she’d spent whole days reading, tucked into a corner of the library, or flat on her back in her dorm room. Nowadays, Caro knew, her reading spot was a kitchen chair as she waited for various vegetables to boil.

She sat down in the armchair closest to the window, took out her work phone and put it on the arm. On the top shelf of the bookcase opposite, stood a small plastic penguin, the blue of his fur matching the blue of the sofa. Next to him, plastic ivy draped down from the top shelf. Plastic ivy? Caro snorted. Her own mother kept plastic plants. She could never keep the real things alive. But then, why would her mother have been any better with plants than she was with children? Both required a degree of nurture she was clearly incapable of.

She shook her head as if to rid herself of the thought. Aside from the soft urgent sound of the kettle boiling away in the kitchen, the room was quiet and peaceful. A photo of a blonde-haired child stood centre stage of the mantle, his smile so wide it was hard to find anything else within the image. Impossible, actually. It was just a photo of a smile. Alex. Caro’s godson. Uncomfortable, she crossed her legs and switched her attention to the window. She hadn’t, she knew, been much of a godmother to Alex. In fact, she hadn’t been one at all. She was godmother to Helen’s son as well, but there was no discomfort there. Jack didn’t have the same needs as Alex, either as child or adult.

She leaned back in the chair, let her hands rest in her lap and sighed. The walls in the room were a pale yellow, with a feature wall in orange. Hideous! And no doubt Kay’s last attempt at turning what was always going to be a sow’s ear into a silk purse. The house had been bequeathed to Kay by her parents, who had retired to a bungalow around the corner. And yes, Caro knew it had provided Kay with a much-needed and affordable sanctuary at the difficult time of her divorce. But then to never move on? To end up back in the street you were raised in? Again Caro shook her head. She and Kay had both been the first in their families to get a university education, and for her that had meant only one thing – upward mobility. But for Kay, who had been the brightest of them all (and this was undeniable), that obviously wasn’t the case. She was, or was going to be, content to end exactly where she’d started. It was almost beyond comprehension. She closed her eyes, stretched her hands along the chair, felt the rough pile under her fingers and thought of her own spacious apartment with its generous proportions and clean, blank walls. Then she thought of her mother’s cramped terrace. The clutter, the old-fashioned furniture, the sense of defeat that seemed to emanate from the foundations upward. Shuddering, she opened her eyes again. Sometimes she wished she could scoop Kay up and replant her somewhere else. Like she had so successfully done for herself.

‘Just wanted to check. Socket on… Oh, sorry! I thought you were Kay.’

Caro turned to the voice. A man stood in the doorway. He had the clearest blue eyes she’d ever seen. They were all the more startling because everything else about him was slightly decrepit. His hair was sparse and unruly, his fleece had frayed cuffs and a grease stain, his cheeks were ruddy, his teeth yellowed, his ears creased. But his eyes? They were unclouded pools, miraculously preserved among ongoing ruination.

‘Sorry,’ he said again.

Caro stared at his eyes. ‘Kay’s in the kitchen,’ she managed.

‘Great.’

‘I’m Caro.’

‘Right. I’m Shook.’

‘Shook?’

He nodded.

‘And that’s a name?’ she laughed.

‘It is now.’

She sensed his discomfort immediately. It had been meant to be a joke.

He turned to go, and as he did he came up against Kay, bearing a tea tray.

‘Whoops!’ Kay’s voice bobbed through. ‘Want a cup, Shaky?’ she said, and then she was past him, manoeuvring her wide girth through the cramped furniture, as sleek and efficient as a salmon swimming upstream.

Caro sat up and recrossed her legs so her skirt would ride up just a touch. Which it did. And it was as if someone was in her head, pulling strings, making her do it.

‘Three?’ Kay said. She dropped three spoonfuls of sugar into a cup.

‘I do hope that’s not mine.’ Caro laughed, tipping her head back. (Why was she behaving like this?)

‘Nope.’ Shook leaned forward and took the cup. ‘It’s mine. Thanks, Kay.’ He nodded. ‘Just wanted to double-check. Socket on the right-hand side, yes?’

‘Yes.’ Kay straightened up. ‘I’ll show you. Won’t be a sec, Caro. Stay right there.’

‘No problem,’ she said, and they were gone, leaving Caro alone in the room with only the dull reverberation of her failed jokes for company. She reached for her own unsweetened cup. She felt like an idiot, a giddy idiotic teenager. And who was he anyway? Kay’s electrician, who happened to have nice eyes… For heaven’s sake! She sipped her tea and looked out of the window, ready to notice anything that would divert her attention. The neighbour, Mrs Newall, was tottering up the drive now, a tray of marigolds in her hand. And yes, her BMW was still there. From upstairs she heard first Kay’s voice and then a burst of laughter from the electrician guy. And, inexplicably, what she felt was envy. At the very least she wanted to know what Kay had said to make him laugh.

Footsteps bumped down the stairs. Kay was back in the room.

‘Sorry. That was Shaky. He lives down the road.’

Caro nodded.

‘Poor old Khans!’ Kay fell into an armchair. ‘Twenty years they’ve been building their Shangri-La. Lions on the gateposts and everything, and now they’re the filling in a buy-to-let sandwich. They’ve got half of Eastern Europe either side! Still…’ She paused for breath. ‘That’s how I found Shaky. He’s Polish.’

‘He said his name was Shook.’

Kay looked at her. ‘Oh, it is! I keep forgetting. It was Shaky, now it’s Shook. He gave up drinking three months ago. He’s helping me out with a job in the back room, and he won’t take any money either.’ She leaned forward for her own cup. ‘I can’t exactly buy him a bottle now, can I?’

Caro shook her head. She was thinking of the way she’d said Is that a name? and he’d replied It is now.

‘Which is great, though.’ Kay scratched at her neck. ‘Because no other bugger will help.’

‘What about Alex?’

‘He’s too busy building his motorcycle.’

‘Still?’

‘Still. And hopefully by the time he’s finished building it, he’ll have lost interest in it.’ Cup in hands, Kay leaned back. ‘So. You’re going to have a baby?’

‘Going to try and have a baby,’ Caro corrected. She pushed back, feeling the hardness of a felted button in her spine. Kay’s living room smelled of air freshener and sunshine. Across the carpet she could see lines left by the vacuum cleaner, and all she could think of was how very strange it was to hear those words spoken out loud. Going to try and have a baby. How resilient it seemed to make them. Because they hadn’t disappeared. In the silence of Kay’s living room they remained, strung out and loud. So thank God, really, that Kay had shut the door. The thought of that man upstairs hearing…well, anyone really…but no, especially him.

Kay didn’t speak.

From outside she heard the electric saw again. It was out. What for so long had felt like a guilty secret was out. Her phone lit up. She glanced down at it.

‘Work?’

Caro shook her head. ‘Sorry. I just have to…’ And she swiped the message open, talking as she tapped out a response. ‘He’s what we call a high net guy. But he doesn’t understand investing. His father made a fortune in property and now he’s splashing it around in stocks. Danny Abbott.’ Caro’s voice trailed off. She looked at Kay, who was staring across the room, lips pursed. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

Kay nodded. ‘I don’t know how to say this, Caro—’

‘I’ll be using a donated egg,’ she blurted. ‘And donated sperm…obviously.’

‘Right.’

‘Is that what you didn’t know how to say?’

‘Sort of.’

‘It’s…’ Caro trailed off, looking down at her phone as she turned it through a half-circle. ‘It’s a complicated process. I have to… Well, I’ve been taking hormones. Oestrogen. In fact, before coming here I was at a scan.’

‘A scan?’ Astonished, Kay looked at Caro’s stomach.

‘It’s a check. To make sure I’m ready for…for the donation.’

‘Oh.’

And for a long moment they looked at each other, and then Kay said, ‘But why Cyprus? Why not stay home and—’

‘It’s more complicated here,’ Caro said bluntly. ‘For most places, I’m too old.’ I’m too old. I’m too old… These words, too, reverberated.

Kay didn’t speak; she sat very still, nursing her mug, her eyes fixed on the other side of the room.

‘It’s all very thorough. There’s a lot of screening.’ Caro shrugged. She was talking just to fill the silence, feigning a casualness she wasn’t feeling and which wasn’t appropriate. ‘Plus you get to match eye colour and hair. That stuff. Ethnicity, religious background, education. Everything really.’

Slowly Kay turned to her.

‘Even body mass index and height.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Donors can’t be too short or too tall.’

‘What’s too short?’ Kay asked. She wasn’t laughing.

Caro blinked. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Or too tall?’

‘I—’ She shook her head. Tears pricked at her eyes. She stretched her arms out and balanced her cup on her knees. She felt a little bit sick. What had she expected? That Kay would leap up and hug her, declare it the best news ever? That was what she had done with both Kay and Helen. Every time a new pregnancy had been announced she’d been there with smiles and congratulations. But this wasn’t, and never could be, the same. It was precisely why she’d hadn’t told anyone.

‘So how—’ Kay started.

‘Online.’

‘You just sort of looked through…and decided?’

She nodded.

‘Okay.’ Kay leaned back, cup in her lap as she stared out of the window. ‘Okay.’

Caro bit down on her lip. It had been hard enough convincing herself that what she was doing wasn’t abominable or a heinous crime of humanity. But here, among Kay’s plastic ivy and enormous TV, was her reality check. The public testing of her morality.

The silence between them intensified. She felt it in her cheeks – a strange mix of embarrassment, shame and defensiveness colouring her like litmus paper. ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she began. ‘And—’

‘Caro.’

The marker-pen emphasis Kay gave to her name stopped her short. She looked down at her cup, tears brimming. Was Kay going to talk her out of it? A moment ago she had been Caro the professional, knocking out a text to a millionaire; now she was Caro the child, lost and helpless in the face of what Kay might say. Because it was so very possible. Because she’d swayed so very much herself, it was entirely possible that one puff of righteous morality from Kay and it could all be over. This beautiful, impossible dream she’d nurtured for months, as protective of it as if it were the baby itself. She was that vulnerable. Her and her imagined family.

Kay leaned to her. ‘I love you,’ she said.

Caro didn’t speak.

‘Caro. Look at me.’

Slowly she raised her head.

‘You’re my best friend, Caro.’ Kay had hold of her hand now, squeezing it. ‘You and Helen. You’ve always been there for me, and I’d like to think I’ve been there for you.’

‘You have.’

‘Yes, I have. Even when you’ve been the most selfish, difficult cow on the planet.’

A tiny smile.

‘But honestly? In all the years we have known each other, you have never known what I’m thinking.’

‘Kay—’

‘I don’t even know what I’m thinking,’ Kay said, and leaned back, cup at her lips.

She might as well have stuffed a dummy in her mouth.

Hand shaking, Caro put her cup down. Why hadn’t she just continued her own course? Months of planning, and she hadn’t ever seriously wavered from the initial decision she’d made not to tell them. Which had been easy, because the conversation had moved on. The ‘baby’ question had, insofar as it involved her, died. In recent years her childlessness had solidified, becoming set in such a way that all wondering and tentative enquiries from Helen and Kay had ceased. As if the general conclusion they’d come to was that all emotional and physiological longing to be a mother had dried up along with her ovaries. Well, it hadn’t. It had simply gone into a self-imposed hibernation, and, understanding the limits of even the closest of friendships, Caro had kept this to herself. It was her own unsolvable problem, her own private sadness that no one, she’d accepted, could or would be able to heal.

Until that day in New York, at the Sustainable Futures Conference, when she’d met Alison Machowski. Fifty-six years old, CFO with one of the fastest-growing clean energy companies in the Northwest, and mother to a two-year-old son. Tucked away in the corner of the dining room of one of the most exclusive hotels in Columbus Circle, Alison had spilled her story like a river undammed. And Caro had listened, scarcely believing what she was hearing, as her eyes had flitted from the half-naked women dancing on the stage behind them to the windows beyond, where Central Park – in which she’d run that morning – was a gaping black hole in the heart of the city.

She’d flown home nurturing the very tiniest flame of possibility, which the cold light of her frenetic schedule had swiftly extinguished. Until Alison had emailed with a picture of her son, and the flame had flared again, stronger and all the more resilient. Finally, and perhaps inevitably, she’d made an initial enquiry, eased the door a crack. All of which had landed her here, so easily and so quickly, in Kay’s living room, with a womb lining thick enough, a donor in hormonal synch, a baby a very real possibility. But she wasn’t there yet. And the same reservations that had kept her from revealing this plan six months ago reared up again now. She folded her hands together. What she was thinking, and in fact had never stopped thinking, was that she shouldn’t have asked Helen and Kay to join her. It was too complicated. It was always going to be too complicated. For the life of her she couldn’t understand why she had.

Kay looked at her. ‘I can see the problem,’ she said. ‘If you haven’t told Helen.’

‘I just think…’ Caro whispered; she was speaking to her knees. ‘I just feel it will be easier if she doesn’t know until afterwards. I don’t… I don’t want her to judge me.’

‘Do you think she will?’

‘I don’t know.’ Caro looked up. ‘Everything’s been so easy for her. That’s all.’

‘Has it?’

‘Oh, come on, Kay!’ Caro shifted her weight. There was a nub of irritation in her voice. Kay going all therapist on her? Helen had been born lucky. They both knew that; they’d both, at different times, said that. ‘Lawrence,’ she said, ‘has always earned a fortune. All Helen ever wanted was her kids, her house and her garden. Which she got. Very easily.’

A shadow passed across Kay’s face. ‘Losing her first baby wasn’t easy,’ she said quietly. ‘Not easy at all.’

‘No. Of course not. I was there. I remember.’ Caro closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know how to say what I’m trying to say, Kay.’

‘Start by opening your mouth.’

‘Okay.’ And despite herself, Caro smiled. ‘You and Helen,’ she said. ‘You’re the closest thing I have to family. But it’s not the same for you.’

‘Caro—’

‘It’s not, Kay. You have Alex and your parents. Helen has her family. You’ve been busy. You’re still busy with your own lives. And that’s life. And because Helen doesn’t really understand what it’s been like for me, I’d just prefer not to tell her about this until…well, until it’s done.’

‘Would you have told me?’ Kay asked.

‘Maybe.’ She looked at Kay, her eyes heavy with memory. ‘I told you about…you know…that time with the tablets…’

Kay nodded. ‘But you never did tell Helen?’

‘I was never sure she’d understand, Kay.’ She fell back in the chair. ‘Helen’s had such a straightforward path, that’s all. She got what she wanted and she was happy. And I don’t deny it: I envied that.’

‘Oh, Caro.’ Kay smiled.

‘What?’

‘What we want in life changes, don’t you think?’ And before Caro could answer, Kay added, ‘There’s nothing to be envious of. What suited Helen before isn’t suiting her now. That’s obvious. Just as it isn’t for you.’

And there was nothing Caro could say. She picked up her cup and then put it down again. Kay was right. What had suited her before did not suit her now. Because wasn’t it true that for years she’d marched under the banner of chosen childlessness? Proclaiming its advantages as frequently as anyone (but particularly Kay and Helen) would listen. And it had suited her; it had been what she’d thought she’d wanted. Oh, the foolishness of youth. Because, of course, it was only as the option of choice began to fall away that she’d understood she hadn’t chosen anything. She’d just deferred. And in these last few years, as the cliff edge had approached, everything she’d spent half a lifetime perfecting in order to protect herself had crumbled. All that false bravado, as unexamined as the far side of the moon. Her Brigadoon future – vanished! Her cheeks warmed. She leaned back, hands clasped together as she twisted the diamond ring she’d bought herself for her fortieth. ‘I’m not prepared to tell Helen,’ she said, hearing the hard edge to her voice. ‘Not until it’s done. It’s going to be difficult as it is, and… I don’t want any questions…or judgements.’

‘Okay,’ Kay said quietly, and within the hush of the room Caro heard her words echo, and they sounded true. She didn’t want any questions. She didn’t want any judgements. She did not want to be talked out of it. So this really was it.

A calmness descended, silent as snow.

Kay smiled. She put her head to one side. ‘Do you want us there at all?’ she said.

And, hearing the deliberate kindness in Kay’s voice and looking up at the familiar face – the jowls, the lines, the oh-so-clever eyes – she understood why, against every screeching voice in her head, she had asked both of them to come. She smiled back. ‘It’s funny. Ever since I mentioned it I’ve been telling myself I should have just kept quiet, but…’ Her voice broke off. The back of her hand was at her mouth as she blinked away tears.

‘Okay?’

She nodded, breathed in. ‘Before Helen’s lunch, Kay, I was prepared to do this on my own. After all, I’ve done everything else pretty much on my own…’ Again her voice broke. ‘And then Helen…the stuff about Lawrence… I mean, we used to tell each other everything, didn’t we? That’s how it worked. That’s why it worked. I think over the years I’ve been more honest with you two than anyone else in the world.’

Kay pinched her lips together. ‘Ditto,’ she whispered. ‘Ditto.’

‘And we’ve gotten through.’

‘Somehow.’

Her fingertips were at her chin, palms together, like hands in prayer. ‘Can you,’ she started, paused and shook her head. ‘Can you imagine choosing the colour of your child’s eyes on your own from a computer screen?’

‘No,’ Kay whispered. ‘I can’t imagine that, Caro.’

‘So.’ Tears streamed down her face. ‘I do want you there. Both of you.’

Kay reached across and took her hand. ‘Then we’ll be there.’

Caro squeezed back. She felt as though the world had fallen off her shoulders, and she knew that on the day of Helen’s lunch, somewhere, behind the chatter and clutter, deeply planted memories had made themselves heard, and this was why she’d asked them to come. Kay knew. Soon enough, Helen would. The sky hadn’t fallen in, and what she had just said was true. She couldn’t think of a better way to go through what she was going to go through than to have her two closest friends there. For the first time in years, she didn’t feel alone.