My good mood passes as quickly as it came. I pitch to the editor who was enthused about me writing for him last night, and he doesn’t reply. I am hung-over and my insides feel rotten, and I get the fear that drunk me told sober Shona too much.
In the afternoon it’s worse when I check the mail and find fertility clinic leaflets jammed in there so it’s full to bursting. What the fuck?
I log on to social media absent-mindedly and my stomach lurches. My accounts are filled with cruel messages from unknown, faceless accounts that are trolling me, like the one from last night.
Ugly bitch, says one.
Why would you post selfies when you look like that? says another. I switch tabs. Different network, same nastiness.
I feel disproportionately sick. Given these messages are from faceless people with no context, how can I care? But maybe that makes it worse. Why would they target me? What have I done?
The baby cries again next door and I am gasping for breath, suddenly. I feel like I am being attacked on all sides or losing my mind and I am not sure which one is the worse option.
In the evening my anxiety is worse again, speeding up and threatening a panic attack, and Anais texts me.
You’re doing that thing where you go off radar. Phone me x.
But I can’t reply. I need to be happier before I reply.
In her world, things are the same and this is one of the things I struggle with the most. For me, there is no stopping this, stepping off and rejoining the old party. There is guilt in wine, envy in other people and the knowledge that I have opted out. That I want something else.
But the something else is out of reach for me, too. The crew I’ve decided to join have no place for me. My mum friends from childhood do an annual trip to one of those family-friendly holiday parks together. I am never invited.
‘Oh you wouldn’t want to come,’ goes the refrain. ‘It’s all kids.’
They are right, of course, but not for the reason they think.
They are so removed from my reality that they picture Old Me, sipping cocktails, dancing behind VIP ropes and eating ceviche on rooftop terraces. They see me throw my carefree head back and slick on more lipstick. That me wouldn’t have wanted to go on the camping trip, they’re right. But that me’s a very distant memory.
And now, if I tried to go back to hanging out on that roof terrace, I would stick out there too, clearly over that phase of life and stuttering with my newfound lack of confidence.
I am in thirty-something limbo and I don’t belong anywhere. Except here, on this sofa. I get a biscuit.
Then my phone rings and it’s Tom.
He shouts hello and sounds drunk, and I know I shouldn’t be annoyed with him but I am. Because I tried to call him earlier, to tell him about the messages. Because I have cried in shame for the bulk of today and though he couldn’t have known that, I’m still angry.
‘I’ve got good news!’ he yells, clearly walking down a street as there are people shouting in the background. ‘We need to go to Sweden next month for this documentary. And the best bit is that they’ve said you can come out for a bit too, free flight.’
But if I’m honest, I’m mostly furious because unlike me, he can still be in the old world. He’s not gone to the pub nervous and shaking or spent half the night talking about fertility issues. He’s just been drinking with work colleagues, nothing new, nothing unusual.
A few years ago I’d have loved the idea of the Sweden trip. I’d have boasted about it on social media, booked restaurants, bought expensive boots, made plans. Now, I am so irritated I can’t speak.
The messages pop into my head again, too. Why would someone target me, unless they have something against me? Unless I have done something wrong. Or unless I have something they want.
‘So?’
Could that thing be Tom? That’s how these things normally work, isn’t it? Love rivals and vengeance?
‘Mmm?’
‘What is it?’
He sounds, suddenly, trepidatious. I am now a person who can make him trepidatious.
And he’s right to feel it, because now I have to bristle; tell him what the problem is. In I come to ruin everyone’s mood and make it all about fertility again. I am so tired of this role that I barely have the energy to speak.
‘We said we’d go to the doctors,’ I say, deadpan. ‘I don’t want to go on holiday. I want to go to the doctors.’
He’s quiet.
‘But it’s only a month. We can fit the doctors in before we go or …’
‘Plus that means we probably won’t get to try at the right time. I can’t stay for the whole trip, can I? It’s going to be hard to make sure I’m with you on exactly the right days.’
We are silent for thirty seconds and I consider, or try to consider, what it would be like to forget babies. To enjoy the rest of life. It would be so easy, to step off this trajectory. But I know it in my fibres – I can’t.
‘It didn’t even cross your mind,’ I say quietly, sadly. ‘And it’s all I can think about.’
Because there is so much pressure, being the one doing the planning, calculating, moderating, bleeding. I am exhausted. We haven’t even started any of the truly hard stuff and I am spent.
‘Well, you know what, maybe you need to think about some other stuff,’ says Tom.
I put my head back on the cushion and close my eyes.
Tom does something with his voice that is akin to putting a ‘hold fire’ hand up, were we in the same room. ‘Just for a month. Think about some other stuff and then when we come back we’ll go full steam ahead with the hospital.’
I hear someone shout his name and my eyes spring open.
‘You’re not with people having this conversation, are you?’
‘No, no, someone just came out of the pub and shouted me, but they can’t hear anything, I promise. I’m going to have to go but we’ll talk about it later, okay? I’m sorry. I love you. But Sweden!’
I sit, mulling over the conversation we have just had and wishing that logic and patience still existed for me. Wishing one month was what one month used to be, instead of a ticking, looming period of time in which we cannot have a baby, which may mean I never have a baby – a waste, a throwaway month, a month that pushes us down the list. The small becomes huge, the inconsequential becomes life-altering.
In another universe, Tom is right, but my brain won’t receive the message. My brain just hears delay, delay and works out how many months until I turn thirty-four. And it stews on the fact that Tom, when asked about going to Scandinavia, hadn’t thought for one second about the doctors when it would have stamped itself as a headline across my thoughts. I thought he was my teammate on this. Some of it though, the internal figuring out, there’s no denying that I am doing alone.
But Sweden! I think of the leaflets I picked up earlier that seemed to fill our postbox. Fertility clinics and IVF success rates. Had the universe – or the marketing part of it – uncovered my secret and was now targeting me at home? Or was I reading too much into a coincidence? They do happen.
Then, I think about the messages. What am I considering when I link them to Tom? Cheating and lying and angry other women? How can I possibly be serious? My Tom. My loyal, honest Tom.
It’s only then that I realise I didn’t even tell Tom about the messages, when they are why I’ve been desperate to speak to him all day. This is how much fertility issues dominate: when you’re talking about them, a part of your day that is so huge can become nothing, less than nothing, in seconds.
Later, I ignore Tom’s texts and curl up in a ball on the sofa, wishing that I could feel better as Harriet sings some sort of classical reimagining of a Take That song.
‘Fuck off, Harriet,’ I mutter. ‘Just fuck off.’