The next day Lucy got dressed for work in a navy shift with a black belt and some strappy gold sandals. It felt good to be back in her routine. She didn’t even mind the early, piercing wake-up call from her alarm clock. She had missed Lettie, Simon, Jack and the rest of her colleagues and was looking forward to catching up on all their news. She was especially looking forward to seeing Jack. She had missed his company. She wondered how he was getting on, whether he was back in the family home or not.
She was relieved that no one approached her to talk about the break-up. There were no insensitive comments and the prying eyes and pitying looks that she had been dreading barely made an appearance. Jack came over to find out how she was and to talk to her about the latest updates on their social enterprise project: a campaign to promote a telecoms brand that was aiming to connect thousands of people in rural Africa. It sounded like they had made great progress with it in her absence.
At midday Lettie and Simon announced that they were taking her out for lunch to the local Leon. They filled her in on all the office news, including the big scandal that arose when the head of Human Resources, Sandra Wysowski, had been caught in the stationery cupboard kissing bald Alan, her underling. Lucy cackled with laughter, trying hard not to regurgitate her lunch at the thought! It felt good to be back.
Lettie and Simon were both dating. Simon was still seeing the man that he had been dating since March, a Spanish guy called Andre who worked in IT. It seemed to be going well and Simon was optimistic, for once, about the future. He was even talking about moving to Spain, which Lucy thought was a bit drastic. Young love, she reminded herself, was very fanciful. Lettie was dating a string of men that she had met on match.com and spent most of lunch regaling them with stories of the dates that she had been on so far, ranging from the bizarre to the outright extraordinary.
‘You guys are not going to believe this one!’ Lettie said with glee. ‘Last week I went on a date with a guy called Mark. He seemed perfectly normal when we were messaging but seriously… he was anything but!’
‘Go on!’ urged Lucy, taking a slurp of her Diet Coke and leaning closer in anticipation.
‘Okay, so we met at this bar in Soho. I spotted him immediately and went over to meet him, he bought me a drink and it all seemed to be going quite well.’
‘And?’ asked Simon, intrigued.
‘Well we sat down at a table in the corner and he took a deep breath and said, “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t really look like your profile.” I didn’t really know what to think seeing as it’s a close-up of my face and it looks just like me, so I asked him to clarify exactly what he meant. He replied that he had hoped that I would be larger than I was, explaining that he wasn’t really in to “slim women”, apparently he only fancies women that are in the unhealthy/obese category of the BMI scale!’
‘No!’ exclaimed Simon.
‘Maybe he’s one of those feeders that you see on TV!’ shrieked Lucy. ‘What did you do?’
‘Well I couldn’t leave with a full drink so I apologized for being too slim, secretly congratulating myself on the compliment, and decided to pry into this bizarre fat fetishist a little further. He told me that he was extremely attracted to the sight of rolls of fat. I began to feel a little queasy and started downing my wine in bigger gulps. He proceeded to explain a particular fantasy of his where he would lift up a fat roll…’
‘Nooooo!’ shrieked Simon and Lucy, wincing at the thought.
‘…insert a slab of cheese, wait until it had melted slightly and then eat it!’
‘Aaaah!’ screamed Lucy. ‘No way!’
‘Eurgh, I’m going to be sick again at the thought!’ Lettie shuddered.
Apparently Lettie had almost vomited on the spot and knocked over a table in her haste to get out of the bar. Lucy was encouraged to find herself really laughing, a deep, belly-rippling laugh that she hadn’t emitted in a long while.
That afternoon she ploughed through the rest of her emails and made sure that she popped into see her boss, Jill, to thank her for her understanding, for letting her take the time she needed. She bumped into Jack again on the way back to her desk. He seemed to have resumed his old flirtatious manner, giving her a cheeky wink as he passed her, no doubt encouraged that Lucy was now single once more, but she was determined not to encourage him. Ignoring his complicated home life, she was so focussed on her plans for motherhood that she didn’t want or need any distraction.
As the weeks rolled by, Lucy settled into the routine of work, running home once or twice a week, catching up with friends, seeing her granny and spending her free evenings researching.
One Saturday in late July, she met with her GP. As she sat in the chair and the doctor asked her what she could do to help, Lucy almost wimped out. She felt embarrassed to say that she was interested in finding out about donor insemination. She was worried that the doctor would judge her somehow, that she would think her naïve or foolish, that she should wait until she met a man like everyone else before having a child. She steeled herself and tentatively broached the subject, her desire to find out exactly what her options were overriding her embarrassment. Her doctor was surprisingly sympathetic. She asked her whether she had thought carefully about proceeding down this path, then recommended various websites that she could go to to get advice and support.
Feeling slightly more positive about the choices that lay ahead and armed with some literature that the doctor had given her, she set off to meet Tor in the park. The sky was a warm, cobalt blue. A light scattering of cloud streaked above the horizon as if a piece of white chalk had been dragged across it. Even the pavement beneath her feet seemed to radiate with the dry heat of the day. Lucy fumbled in her bag for her sunglasses, squinting against the bright light of the sun.
As she walked through Holland Park she inhaled the floral fragrance that permeated the air, noticing with joy that the towering delphiniums and scarlet oriental poppies that blossomed at this time of year were out in full force. She telephoned Tor, who was en route, to find out what she wanted to eat and then went inside the cafe to order, carrying her tray full of sandwiches and crisps out to their usual table in the sunshine.
About five minutes later she saw Tor approaching, pushing her enormous pram, looking slightly dishevelled but grinning happily and waving as she spotted Lucy. Putting the brakes on the pram, she gave Lucy a hug, plonking herself down on the chair and saying, ‘Phew, I made it!’ with a sigh of relief.
Lucy peered into the pram and admired the sleeping baby.
‘I’m telling you, Luce, it’s a bloody nightmare trying to get anywhere with one of them!’ she moaned, pointing at the pram.
‘I can imagine!’ said Lucy. ‘I’m going to push him around the park later, see if I can steer it. It looks like an awkward contraption to manoeuvre!’
‘It is! It’s supposed to be top of the range, but surely they can come up with something better than that. I mean, in the first few weeks, I’m not exaggerating when I say that it took me about five minutes to work out how to stop at the pedestrian crossing and press the button to cross without letting the pram slide into the road!’ she laughed, rolling her eyes at her own hopelessness.
‘I honestly don’t know how you do it!’ laughed Lucy.
‘It’s trial and error, that’s all,’ confided Tor. ‘I haven’t really got a clue! Anyway, much more importantly, tell me how it all went with the doctor this morning.’
‘I was pretty terrified, to be honest,’ said Lucy. ‘It all feels a lot more real when you find yourself eye to eye with a medical professional.’
‘Has it put you off?’ asked Tor. ‘I remember my first consultation when we started IVF… it sounded frankly horrific: the needles, the injections… et cetera. But in a way I was grateful that I knew what lay ahead; forewarned is forearmed, as they say.’
Lucy had been there for Tor the whole way through, it was too late to spare her the gory details. ‘It turns out that IVF is only used if you have had trouble conceiving naturally. Because I haven’t tried to get pregnant yet, there is no reason why I shouldn’t be able to without any help.’
‘Thank goodness for that. So what did they suggest?’ asked Tor.
‘Something called IUI.’
‘Oh yes, I remember that. What does it stand for again?’
Lucy glanced down at her leaflets, riffling through them to find the one she was looking for. She showed it to Tor. ‘Intra-Uterine Insemination.’
‘I’ve heard of that,’ said Tor. ‘We were offered it but I think our chances were better with IVF so we went straight for that.’
‘Well apparently it is a pretty straightforward procedure. They wait until you are at your most fertile and then inject you with sperm with some kind of turkey baster!’
‘A glorified one-night stand!’ laughed Tor.
Lucy raised her eyebrows as she took a bite of her sandwich, contemplating the prospect. ‘It would certainly be a lot cheaper!’ she agreed.
‘And you can choose what they look like.’
‘Apparently I can do that anyway at the sperm bank,’ said Lucy.
‘I’ve always wondered about sperm banks,’ said Tor. ‘Do you think they are literally warehouses full of frozen sperm in test tubes?’
‘I have no idea!’ said Lucy. ‘What a disgusting image!’
‘Do you have to go along and pick your sperm in person?’ asked Tor.
‘No, I think it’s more digital these days. I can look at the website apparently.’
‘Can you get it done on the NHS?’ asked Tor.
‘Sadly not. I need to find a private clinic that specializes in donor insemination. I’m planning on doing lots of research this week and then I’ll make an appointment for a consultation. There’s so much to get my head around!’ said Lucy.
‘Don’t rush into anything,’ warned Tor. ‘Having IVF was the best thing I’ve ever done, but also the hardest.’
They both looked at Otto, still sleeping peacefully beside them in his pram. Lucy knew in her heart of hearts that however tough the road might be, she was determined to take it.
‘I don’t want to be too negative, but have you thought about the cost of it all too?’ asked Tor. ‘It’s a bloody expensive process, well, IVF was anyway, hopefully IUI is cheaper?’
‘It’s definitely cheaper than IVF but it’s still going to cost me a lot, especially cos it’s so unlikely to work on the first attempt. I managed to save a few thousand pounds from Alex’s contributions towards the mortgage repayments while he was living with me, so that will help.’
‘At least there was one perk to that arsehole moving in,’ said Tor.
‘And I’ve also made some general savings over the last few years, so hopefully that will be enough to cover the costs of the treatments.’
Having finished their lunch, they decided to set off for their customary walk around the park. Lucy pushed the pram while Tor entertained her with stories of her experiences of motherhood so far. There was so much to learn, from the painful boobs from breastfeeding to the constant smattering of sick on all of your clothes, the sleep deprivation, the lack of sex life, the over-reliance on microwave meals and takeaway because you’re too knackered to cook. But most importantly, there was the total and utter all-consuming love that you felt for your baby that just obliterated all of the downsides completely. It was so obvious in the besotted way Tor looked at Otto, and Lucy just knew more than ever that she was ready to experience it too. Why should she have to wait for a man to have a baby? There was no time to lose, as far as she was concerned. As soon as she got home she pulled out her laptop and continued with her research.
Lucy wanted to find the right place to have her treatment, somewhere approachable and experienced in treating women in similar situations to her. She found a fertility centre called The London Women’s Clinic which had been open for over ten years and which she was reassured to find out was one of the pioneering clinics to start treating single women. The website told her they had helped over two thousand women just like her have babies, a fact which made her feel fractionally less alone, thinking of all those who had been in exactly the same boat as her, making this terrifying decision before her. She joined the Facebook group and spent hours poring over the posts and articles, fascinated to hear from all these women who had chosen to have a baby by themselves. The more Lucy read, the more empowered she felt, and the more excited she became about the prospect of motherhood. She made an appointment for the twenty-third of August where she would be able to talk to a doctor and have a proper consultation.