ALL THE WEBSITES carried news of the protest, and of the tragedy of Will Bhattacharyya. Holly went home to her family, Eva got straight back to work, and Piotr published an article about FullLife’s misguided privacy policy – and Freida’s prediction of the risk of fatality. Suddenly journalists from all over the country were digging deeper. It was like they’d been waiting for permission to speak and now they were speaking, on every topic, from every point of view:
Vigil Continues; Fears Over Pouch Safety; Bhattacharyya Family Thank Public For Support; Care Home Closure; Fatal Used Pouches; Biological Class Divide.
They had interviews with families who couldn’t afford the FullLife plans, and interviews with the other parents who had lost their babies over the past three years.
Piotr published photos from the care homes outside London; dozens of children, toddlers to teenagers, crammed into huge dormitories. One reporter had figures – though it wasn’t clear where she’d got them – of higher instances of Down’s syndrome, cystic fibrosis and haemochromatosis in the homes than in the general population. The care pouches were used of course, the oldest on the market. Were they getting the same screening and health care? Were they becoming faulty with overuse?
One by one the FullLife board members resigned as memos were leaked and more documents appeared proving the cover-up. The way they had panicked after the first pouch death, the scale of research funding hidden in the accounts, even minutes of the meeting where they decided to offer natural birth as an alternative, just in case. For three years they’d tried to keep the growing risk of pouch death away from the public, and the addition of the NaturalBirth plan to their portfolio showed just how calculating they had been – they were trying to retain customers by putting an alternative in place before announcing the truth about the pouches. Four legal cases were pending, though it was widely assumed they would settle out of court. Piotr suspected more cases would quickly follow.
So far as he had been able to find out, none of the current board members had known there were similar problems with the earliest pre-clinical mouse trials. The founder of the company, Sylvia Ash, was the only one who had known – and it seemed she’d even destroyed Freida’s research in her determination to make the pouch seem perfect. She was the one who should have been prosecuted. But she had been dead for twenty years. He and Eva focused on making sure everyone knew the truth, understood the risks; and that they understood the risks were the same as with natural birth, too. There was no safer alternative here. The pouch was not to blame.
The director herself was the last to resign, though given her lack of public comment and continued support of the protesters it had seemed inevitable. Her statement said she valued every second she had spent at FullLife, but that she was not the right woman to lead the company forwards. Details of the break-ins came out too, including the one from a few weeks ago. All that had been stolen from FullLife was a box of red fleece pouch covers. Piotr thought it was probably poor parents who’d just wanted their pouch to look festive for Christmas. But he also wondered what else the police might be keeping hidden.
Eva had given interview after interview – denying Piotr’s request for a never-ending exclusive – talking about everything from the risks of abuse to the long-term effects on human fertility. She questioned the accessories, the optional extras, the paid-for extras. But she made it clear that she thought that the pouch should remain available to the people who needed it. And to the people who chose it.
Together, Holly and Piotr had written the announcement about cancelling FullLife’s exclusive lease of the baby pouch patent. From now on, the design would be available for free to any and all registered hospitals. It wasn’t clear yet how any other hospitals would be able to afford to make it, but at least now they had a chance – and FullLife knew their monopoly was not going to last.
Then, on the day the director issued her resignation, Eva got a phone call. She told Piotr it was one of the strangest phone calls of her life. She was being invited to FullLife. They’d all expected that FullLife might want to talk to them; they were talking to everyone who had ever disagreed with them at the moment, trying to rebuild their image. But FullLife must have been more frightened than Piotr, or Holly, or Eva had realised. Or perhaps they genuinely wanted to make things better. Either way, they were inviting Eva in for more than advice.
Rosie wasn’t sure if she liked the idea. But she had to think about it – really think about it – after everything that had happened. It was just so different from how she’d imagined things would be. But then she didn’t think she’d want to go through it the same way again. She closed her eyes and tried to picture it, to feel it, the movement and the weight and the closeness. A baby inside her body. Sometimes you could feel their little hand, their curled fist, between your ribs. She’d read that yesterday. Was that beautiful or was it gross? She didn’t know. And there’d be no such thing as a break from it, if she didn’t like the feeling. But then, there was no such thing as a break from being a parent, was there? And perhaps she would love the feeling of being pregnant. Perhaps it would be beautiful.
She’d sent Kaz a text message the day after she’d told him to leave her alone, after he’d inexplicably chopped up their tree and she’d angrily ripped up her book of designs. I didn’t mean it, she’d written. I love you. Come home?
He’d arrived back from his dads’ house with red eyes and a potted plant, of all things.
‘It’s a hazel tree,’ he’d said, holding it out to her on the doorstep as though he doubted being invited in. ‘I thought that, maybe … Well, maybe once it’s a bit bigger we could plant it in the garden, for Will.’
She’d pulled him into her arms, mumbled yes through her tears. He’d come back, and that was what she’d needed. They’d been inseparable since.
She knew Kaz would be a wonderful father, however they decided to try next time. She had no doubt of the equality between them. But that was what the pouch had achieved, wasn’t it? Without that, she wouldn’t be considering what she was considering. Could she do it, though – did she really have the strength to do it? She’d have to go through labour. She didn’t know how much pain she could take.
She’d been reading a lot, these past few weeks. They both had. Watching videos together, too. Absorbing different points of view. She’d heard her mum and nana talk so often about the pouch, but she hadn’t heard anyone really talking about the alternative. And now she wanted to. There was a woman in the States, a midwife for natural birth, who said that the key to a happy delivery was laughter. That we shouldn’t fear it, we should laugh through it. Her smile was so warm it was hard not to wish to share her views – Ina May, with her long grey hair and her kind voice. Rosie had memorised what she said, she thought it was so good. ‘It’s very easy to scare women about childbirth,’ she said. ‘But it’s not very nice. It’s bad manners. So let’s not do it.’ Was that what FullLife had been doing, quietly, subconsciously, for three generations?
Rosie didn’t want to be afraid. She didn’t want any woman to feel afraid.
She looked up at Kaz. His face was soft, hopeful – like when they had first talked about having baby Will. She placed her hands on her belly and imagined the shape there, and suddenly Kaz was kneeling down by the side of the bed and doing the same. With their hands, they made the shape of Rosie’s pregnant belly. Kaz blew it an air kiss. He looked quite ridiculous, she thought, and then she smiled. But it didn’t feel right – not yet. She needed more time. She pulled Kaz up to sit next to her on the bed and she hadn’t really meant to do it, but she found that her hands now made the shape of the pouch around his belly. He was doing the same. He was holding his belly, where he had carried Will, his arms wrapped around himself, and he was rocking, silently, on the bed.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know.’ And then they were both crying, crying for their lost baby. They curled around each other on the bed and they cried.
When Holly thought about Will, it was mostly his laughter that she remembered. She had laughed with Will. They had laughed so often and so much. You had to, with three kids under the age of ten. She could still see him now, Aarav held under his arm as he scrambled to climb up on his back, the girls playing their version of crawl-football between his legs, and he would be cheering them on with Leigh grabbing onto his knees and Daphne – always Daphne – being the one to say, stop now, everyone, I think Daddy needs a sit-down. Hands on hips. She was in charge, even then, her confident eldest child. The baby who changed it all.
They’d laughed the next time Will had asked her to marry him too, so many years after his first proposal that had been met with absolutely not and a kiss and a lifetime spent as partners. They were both in their fifties then, Leigh already in Delhi and Aarav had just moved down to Brighton, and they were alone in their house for the first time, acknowledging that no one else was coming home any time soon.
‘What are we going to do now?’ she said. Although by that point she was two years into her five-year research grant and Will was writing a book, which he never did finish. He loved writing it, though. It was the kind of memoir no one would ever want to read but them. In reply to her question he got down on one knee and asked her: ‘Will you, Holly Bhattacharyya, be the next Mrs William Bold?’
And she’d said, ‘Yes, yes, I believe I will, but I have just one question. No, two questions. Who is William Bold, and where do I find him?’
‘It’s my name, woman,’ he said. ‘My name is William Bold.’
‘But they always call you Will Bhattacharyya,’ she said. ‘What a funny thing. How confused the world must be.’
‘Never mind the world,’ he said. ‘Will you marry me?’
‘I can’t see the point in marrying you,’ she said. ‘And now I think about it, I don’t really want to be a wife.’
‘That’s a good point,’ he replied. ‘Now I think about it, I don’t really want to be a husband.’
‘Let’s stay who we are then,’ she said.
‘Yes, let’s. But we should have a ceremony.’
‘There’s no one here to attend.’
‘There’s you, and there’s me,’ he said. ‘I’m happy with that.’
And so was she, Holly had said, and she’d thought it very often since, too. There was nothing more that she could have had. Nothing more that she wanted. She was so content that she’d never really questioned the decisions she’d made, until now. How could they have been wrong, when they had brought her so much happiness?
‘Are you OK, Mum?’ Daphne asked, sitting down beside her. It was unusual for neither of them to select the armchair closest to the fire, with its cushions and its solitary comfort – unusual but nice, to be sitting next to each other like this.
‘I was just thinking that my part in this story is all a little false.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean that perhaps I made no difference at all,’ Holly said. ‘Perhaps I am just an irrelevant old woman who was once in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘To me it looks like you made a huge difference, Mum.’
Holly smiled but she didn’t agree – there were plenty more women ready to do what she had done. They would all have done it in their own way, and their own stories would have played out, and sooner or later someone would have snapped after losing a child and someone would have found Freida’s files and the risks would have come out and the world would be exactly where it was. Though she wouldn’t have had Daphne, if she’d made different choices – she would have had a different family. So perhaps her choices were pretty good. She certainly wouldn’t change a single one of them now.
FullLife would be paying compensation, but Rosie and Kaz had already decided they wanted to donate all of that to charity. Maybe to the care homes, Rosie had said. She’d had a big talk with Eva. And FullLife were changing their advertising policy too; from now on every advert would carry details of the risks. It was something.
‘Freida’s lighthouse was brutal,’ Holly said.
‘However did she run a lighthouse all on her own?’
‘She didn’t. It was fully automated and managed from Edinburgh, apparently.’
Daphne smiled. ‘So she liked the idea of running a lighthouse rather than the reality?’
‘Maybe so,’ Holly said. ‘Mostly I think she wanted to be near the waves.’
They lapsed into silence for a moment, both of them enjoying it. Aarav was coming up at the weekend, with Drew and the kids, so the peace and quiet would be replaced by the noise of family soon enough.
‘Would you have done the same, in my place?’ Holly asked her daughter. ‘Would you have volunteered to be the first woman to use the pouch?’
‘I hope so,’ Daphne said. ‘I think you were brave.’
Holly shook her head. ‘No. It was fairly easy, my part in the whole thing. I wanted to make society better as quickly as possible, and other people had invented a way to kick-start the change. But is it any better?’
‘In some ways it is, yes. In a lot of ways, in fact. And you made things infinitely better for me.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, Mum. I thought you knew that. You gave me choices. Thanks to you I always knew I had options. That made all the difference in the world.’
‘Well, then I’m proud,’ Holly said.
‘Me too, Mum.’
Holly smiled and Daphne took her hand, and mother and daughter sat together for a while, watching the clouds blowing past the sun as it sank behind the tall glass buildings in the distance.
‘After all,’ Holly said, turning on the lamp in their living room and leaving the outside to its increasing darkness, ‘I’ve had a beautiful life. I have lived such a very fortunate life.’
Standing outside the FullLife birthing centre, Eva could tell that the front panel of glass had recently been replaced. There was a piece of cream-coloured tape still visible along one edge, the kind that window fitters use to seal the glass against the frame during installation. She hoped that no one else had noticed it – she didn’t want it to be removed. It gave the building a certain fragility. For once, you could see how easily it could shatter. How carefully it might need to be repaired.
Behind her, the Thames glittered in the morning light and she could hear the waves lapping against the boats moored along the water’s edge.
In front of her were the rotating doors that led into the FullLife reception hall. There was no turning back now.
Eva strode confidently across the lobby and took the lift up to the top floor. It had never been open to the public, or to the press. There were fish tanks all along the walls – indigo hamlets, her grandmother’s favourite. She wondered if the director had had any idea why they were here, or what they’d once meant to someone. In her bag she had Freida’s folder, several of her own, some of her mum’s old letters – including the one from her grandmother – and the photo of her mum and Piotr, with paper hats on their heads, taken years ago. Everything else she’d arranged to be sent over yesterday, though she still didn’t quite trust these people, and as she pushed open the door to the director’s office she felt a little queasy.
The room had been divided into an open-plan office, as they’d promised, with several desks, tables and sofas, just like she’d requested. She’d told them that she wasn’t doing this alone, and she had absolutely meant it. And there, beside the desk nearest the window, was her old chair. She sat down in it, leaned back, and felt it adjust in exactly the way that she needed.
She wished James Quentin were here. He’d have been a good partner, with his uncertainty and his conscience; he was such a natural scientist. She hadn’t known him for very long, but she missed him. Eva didn’t understand why the wrong people so often had to pay the price.
She’d spent yesterday afternoon with the director – or former director, as she was now – who had apparently decided that changes should be made.
‘You’ll need to talk about the care homes,’ she’d said, taking Eva’s arm as though she were an old friend. ‘I think they’re the biggest challenge we face, and no one knows what to do. We thought we could cope with the numbers, but we can’t. It’s increasing every year.’
Of course it was, Eva thought.
‘At first, it seemed such a good thing to offer the pouch as an alternative to abortion. A number of … well, interested parties, offered financial support.’
Eva raised her eyebrows, but made no comment.
‘But now … Basically, they’ve changed their mind. The money is gone and the homes need help, in the short term. In the longer term, we need a solution, and that means debate, legislation …’
‘You know it will open other debates,’ Eva said, with sharpness in her tone. ‘Sterilisation. Cryogenics …’
‘Yes.’ The former director was nodding.
‘Genetic modification.’
‘We have strong ethics laws in place—’
‘Genetic selection.’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ she’d said, smiling and leaning back in her chair. She was wearing casual clothes, a knitted jumper; she looked different to before. ‘I’m so glad it’s you taking over. Debate everything.’
And that was exactly what Eva intended to do. She was going to start with the care homes. And natural birth. The risks and the choice. The money. The inequality.
She opened her email and saw 1,439 messages already waiting for her. Glancing through the first few pages, she saw they were emails from staff and from scientists, from new parents and would-be parents, old people, schoolchildren; on the second page of her inbox there was an email from Holly. Probably just one of many – Holly was having a lot of ideas. They all had ideas. They had questions, they wanted to understand what had happened, and to ask her about what they could do next. She gently swivelled her chair away from the computer and stood up. On the wall were several large blank screens. The former director had used them for photos of her baby, but now Eva set up each one to display the notes she’d prepared yesterday. It was her statement of intent. Her list of what needed to be done. The NaturalBirth plans, the care homes, education, research into long-term effects, the many and varied risks – there was still so much they didn’t know. The government had to start contributing again. Some kind of universal health insurance. The new hospitals needed help, equipment and supplies. And the options had to be available to everyone, not just those who could afford them.
It was going to be hard. The extensive range of private health plans, the accessories, the covers, the add-ons, were how FullLife stayed afloat. She knew it. Not to mention the court cases pending. People had been lied to. People were angry. She had inherited a fractured company, to say the least.
She knew there was a black market internationally, that pouches were being misused and civil unrest was rising. She knew that natural birth was still preferred in some countries, and that while the UK had embraced the pouch others had voted to make it illegal. The world was divided. She knew the pouch was involved in some domestic abuse cases, even today, and FullLife had to take a stronger role in prevention and survivor support. Perhaps she’d push for new legislation. Taking Freida’s folder out of her bag, she placed it on the desk and let her fingers rest briefly on the pages.
Her phone was ringing, and when she picked it up the receptionist started talking before she’d even had the chance to say hello.
‘Oh good, you’re there, all set up? I’m holding a queue of fourteen people on the phone lines, and we’ve got a dozen or so already down in the lobby, asking to talk in person. Bethan, new director of research, is going to start some one-to-ones, if that’s OK with you – I figured you might not have time for that today – and the press have arrived. Will I send them up?’
‘Send them up,’ she said, still standing, and aware that this was the last moment of peace she was going to have for quite some time. She wanted to take a moment to look out at the sky. The clouds were low, a deep vibrant grey, strikingly beautiful.
Then they were at the door. Thirty, forty people, she wasn’t even sure how many, came crowding into the room, all speaking. It was the first time the press had ever been allowed in here. And among them, she saw Piotr. She felt the blush spreading to her cheeks, even though she’d been having breakfast with him just two hours ago.
‘I’m never going to change my mind,’ she’d said.
‘I know.’
‘I have given it a lot of thought,’ she’d said.
‘Eva, I know.’
They’d discussed it the night before, so when he said that he knew, it was true. She just wanted to be sure. People had a habit of expecting others to change and she didn’t want him imagining he could change her. Though she was fairly certain that he didn’t want to. But with or without him there was a lot of work to do and Eva, it turned out, was not someone who could walk away leaving it undone.
‘I’m not having a child,’ she’d said, speaking forcefully because of how important it was to be believed. ‘If you want a child—’
Piotr shook his head.
‘I know,’ he said.
And she had considered it. Of course she had, they both had – there were options. It might have been too late for her to have a child the way she wanted, but it wasn’t too late. She’d tried to imagine it, closed her eyes and tried to picture herself with a pouch, but it still felt wrong to her. Deeply so. She didn’t know what it was, or where it came from, this desire to have children, but she knew it was to do with creating, or recreating, family. And she had a family. Her mother had saved her once, and her grandmother had saved her too. The care home where she’d spent the first three years of her life was somewhere she’d be spending a lot more time from now on. Looking at the photo she’d placed on her desk, she knew she was ready.
Eva sat down on her chair, and took a deep breath. And then it began.
‘Are used pouches less safe?’
‘How many babies—’
‘—risks of natural birth—’
‘Where is the financing—’
‘—support new hosp—’
‘—lawsuits—’
‘But the dangers are—’
‘—appoint to the board?’
‘One thing at a time,’ she said, raising her voice to make herself heard above the commotion. ‘I will listen to everyone, one at a time.’
Piotr wasn’t shouting with the rest though. He was standing still in the middle of the huddle, and he smiled at her as she began to explain, to answer their questions as best she could, to tell them everything she knew. On the wall, her plan was written clearly for everyone to see, along with her naivety, or perhaps her optimism, or perhaps her life’s work. Glancing at it, she felt suddenly afraid. She didn’t know if she was doing the right thing. She didn’t know if she could make any difference. Except that something was different already, because she was here. And now she was surrounded by all these people; by this humanity, and its questions.