Nadia pulled over but didn’t get out of the car. Instead, she stared at the entrance to the church on the corner of the street, wringing her hands. There were three cars parked in the spaces perpendicular to the side wall of the limestone building. The large wooden doors at the front were open, and there was a sandwich board on the pavement with a piece of white A4 paper taped to it. She couldn’t make out the black writing from her car, but knew that she was in the right place. Last week, Nadia had sent the organiser, Tracey, a brief email explaining how she felt. Tracey had responded the same day saying that while Nadia’s situation was ‘unusual’ for this group, she was very welcome to come along. Nadia had been so overcome to find someone who finally validated her feelings that she’d sent another, long message describing how she felt. Tracey had then insisted she come, saying she was sure that it would be helpful.
Nadia turned off the engine, then listened to the tick as it cooled down. She’d come here straight after dropping the children at school and it had taken her longer than she’d thought to drive to the northern suburbs through the morning traffic. There were five minutes until the meeting started at ten am: perfect timing. She didn’t want to be there early enough to have to make small talk, nor to walk in late and have everyone look at her.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror and drew her finger along the edge of her lip to wipe away a tiny smear of lipstick, then tucked her hair behind her ears. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed her handbag from the passenger seat and got out of the car.
She hesitated for a moment at the entrance. In the middle of the wooden floor of the church hall was a circle of eight grey plastic chairs. Two were already occupied; the women, probably in their late fifties, sat with their backs to the door, murmuring to each other. In the opposite corner was a beige trundle table with a hot water urn, a jar of instant coffee, a cardboard box of tea bags and a plastic carton of milk. Next to the table stood an elderly woman with cropped grey hair and red-framed glasses, holding a blue clipboard close to her stout chest. Nadia walked towards her, looking at the floor rather than meeting the glances of the seated women. As she got closer to the table, she saw a stack of paper cups, and a saucer with a discarded, soggy tea bag.
The woman smiled. ‘Nadia?’
‘Yes, hi. Tracey?’
‘Yes!’ Tracey said warmly. ‘Lovely to meet you. Now, I’ve made you a name tag.’ She peeled a rectangular sticker off the sheet on her clipboard and handed it to Nadia, who took it by the corner and slapped it onto the left side of her chest.
‘Thanks. And thanks for letting me come along today. I know it’s not —’
Tracey waved her free hand in the air. ‘You’re very welcome. You and I are not that different.’
Nadia nodded. Another woman arrived and greeted Tracey. Grateful for the distraction, Nadia smiled briefly and made herself a cup of tea, then slowly walked towards the chairs and sat down, leaving an empty chair between herself and the three other women. When Tracey closed the heavy wooden doors, a hush fell over the room. There were only the five of them. Nadia had hoped that there’d be more so she might go unnoticed, but there was nothing she could do now. She had made the decision to come here; she needed to see it through.
Louise was six months old now. Nadia had read, in all the pamphlets from the surrogacy counseller, that it was normal to grieve for six months, but that after that, she should really be getting on with her life. But Nadia couldn’t. Instead of things getting easier as she’d approached that six-month mark, things had been getting more and more difficult. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t concentrate, she couldn’t enjoy anything, not even her own children because all she could think about, day and night, was Louise.
For the past month, Nadia had spent her evenings looking online for other surrogates to talk to. There were plenty of sensational stories, of course, magazine exclusives and tabloid headlines shouting about extreme cases when it had all gone wrong, but those seemed mainly about money. She was looking for the ordinary surrogates, the women like her. She wasn’t sure if she was the exception or if people were lying to themselves, but those she did find in chat forums enthused about how wonderful the experience had been for them, and how they’d do it again. Maybe there were other women like her out there, women whose overwhelming feelings were of loss and regret, but like her, they were silent, lurking online late at night while their husbands and children slept, trying to find someone who shared their shameful, secret feelings. Feelings that didn’t fit with the image of what surrogacy was supposed to be like.
Perhaps it was her own fault; perhaps she had let herself get too attached to Louise. Or maybe it was easier for women who did it for strangers, knowing they’d never see the child again, or for women who were paid – it was an act of trade, of a thing, not a person. She didn’t believe it, though. Why didn’t those women talk honestly? Where was the shame in saying that you loved the child that you’d carried, that handing her over was like wrenching out a chamber of your own heart? All she could find online was doublespeak, a language that turned her, Nadia, into a carrier, an incubator, a walking womb, sites where people described themselves as socially infertile, commissioning parents, intended parents, consumers and recipients, where they had gaybies and twiblings and compared notes on the cheapest country to buy an egg or embryo or hire a surrogate, the places with the most lax emigration laws. But what had happened to her in all this? Where was the recognition of her not as a carrier but as a mother, a person? And what about the Louises – the twiblings and gaybies? Who was looking out for them? While she was searching for someone who would admit to feeling the way she did, Nadia had found this group with its own doublespeak title: a ‘relinquishing mothers’ group’.
Tracey welcomed them, then looked at Nadia and smiled. ‘And this week we have a new member, Nadia.’
Nadia’s cheeks burned as everyone looked at her. She glanced at each of them in turn, and muttered, ‘Hi.’
‘Nadia, would you like to tell us a little bit about yourself?’
Nadia inhaled nervously, shifting in her seat. This was why she was here; she needed to be honest, at last. Her voice shook as she began to speak. ‘Yes, hello, everyone. This is my first time here – well, anywhere really, apart from seeing a counsellor who wasn’t much help. Anyway, my situation is a little different to everyone else’s, so I hope it’s OK that I’m here.’ She cleared her throat, tears starting already. ‘God, I promised I wouldn’t cry. I’m here because I had a child, a baby girl, Louise. I had her for my sister – she couldn’t have children so I offered to be a surrogate for her. It was my biological baby, and my sister’s husband’s sperm. And anyway, I did it. But now …’ She paused. ‘Well, now, I’m … I miss her. Louise. I’m sad. I can’t stop thinking about her, and how part of me is missing, and what she’ll think of me for giving her up.’ She stopped, trying to compose herself, and bent down to pick up her tea.
‘Thanks, Nadia. When you emailed me last week, we discussed how our situation,’ Tracey swept her arm around to take in the other women, who were nodding and smiling sympathetically, ‘is not that different. We are all mothers who have given up our children to other parents. Some of us had them taken by authorities, some of us thought we were acting voluntarily by handing over our babies after being told we couldn’t give them a good enough life, but regardless, we all relinquished our children, and we are all grieving. You are very welcome here.’
Nadia nodded a little, smiled, and wiped her eyes with her fingers. She caught Tracey’s eye and saw, for the first time, someone who understood what she’d been through, what she was still going through. Tracey was a generation older than her, and yet Nadia could see that her grief was still acute and she hadn’t forgotten the child that she’d given up.