Chapter Twenty-eight

SEVERAL DAYS PASS, and I’m back spinning the hospital’s revolving door. Outside, an autumn wind tosses empty crisp packets into the air for the hell of it. Despite my daily visits, despite the purchase of underwear and various cotton nightshirts, and making trips to Waitrose to source interesting species of fruit, my gifts and I are always greeted with indifference. The one morning I didn’t go, when I had a stomach upset, Mother accused me of negligence.

The Medical Assessment Unit staff are welcoming. They speak highly of the compliant patient in their midst, one content to be prodded and wired up and written about on an almost hourly basis. They don’t suspect, as Matt does, that Mother enjoys finding herself the centre of attention.

Although critical of the portion sizes, and the repetitive menus, and of how mealtimes interrupt her TV viewing, Mother devours the cooking and often drops unsubtle hints for seconds. I overhear the nurses tease her that it’s rare for patients to gain weight on the unit. Usually they are too weak to eat. She normally exists on Cup-a Soup, I want to tell them. She can’t believe her good fortune. The day following the teasing, Mother is found to be off her food, eliciting further concern from the staff. There is talk of sourcing special meals from the Consultants’ dining room.

The good humour I always hear coming from Mother’s room dies the moment I arrive. It is irrelevant whether Mother is laughing at some daytime chat show or bantering with staff. The change on seeing me is instant, and mortifying. And I often ask myself why I keep picking at the scab of such humiliations. But every time I step from the Tube and drag myself to the hospital, I see in my mind the moment my mother wept. She’d seemed softer then, almost maternal. Someone with whom I could talk openly, and who would understand.

*

In the car park one morning, I bump into Nicole. She has come for a scan. I hug her for a long time. We haven’t seen each other since last week, when Nicole made her understandable excuses and withdrew permanently from the cast of Company. Her absence from the political intrigue of rehearsals has left her nostalgic for them. And I miss her, and our chats over coffee. So I am thrilled when she asks me to join her at the scan.

As a column of sun pours in through the window, she and I are already holding hands when the fluttering seahorse shape of Nicole’s foetus shimmies on to the screen. From her prone position, Nicole lets out a deep sigh of longing, as if she wishes she could give birth immediately. She reaches out and strokes the black-and-white image on the screen as if it lives inside the monitor. I saw Polaroids of Serena’s children at a similar age, but nothing prepares me for the beauty of the quivering image and the amplified watery gurgles. It’s a moment to rival television footage of men landing on the Moon.

The foetus weighs as much as half a banana. It has fingerprints, and elbows, and a face. The nurse indicates these places by gently tapping the screen; clearly, routine has not dimmed for her the magic of her job. We laugh with relief at the information, and its implications for health and normality. And the seahorse bobs in time to our voices.

It’s as I loiter in the corridor while Nicole supplies a urine sample that I think I see Jenny. Certainly someone very like her, with Jenny’s predilection for jolly knitwear. This person is walking briskly in my direction, but is partially hidden by two members of staff. A childish fear of rebuke stops me raising my voice in a public place, but I quickly regret my timidity. I am probably mistaken, and Jenny has always seemed indifferent to children, but I can’t let the discrepancy go.

‘Oh, hello.’

As we wait for a lift, a man’s voice slices through my thoughts. A tall, familiar-looking gentleman with a crest of sunny hair. Of course – William’s paediatrician. I introduce him to Nicole, all the while struck by the way he has the size of grip to hold two variety packs of sandwiches in one hand.

But before I have time to ask him about William’s progress, Dr Goodchild has got out on the floor below, and I am filled with an obscure form of guilt; that, in not keeping William in my thoughts, he is destined to perish.

And I am struck by how my own existence has lately narrowed. Redundancy, and Mother’s presence, have whittled away at my confidence. I haven’t learned my lines. I haven’t visited Serena and the girls. I haven’t telephoned Louisa, or Prue. My shock of peroxide is bleeding brown at the crown. Friends have begun to leave cautious messages, surprised by my lack of contact. Last night we even had to ring for a pizza, for God’s sake. Matt had to pop next door to borrow a flyer for the number, since I usually shove them straight in the recycling crate. I then spent most of the evening handing my pieces of cheese-coloured Plasticine to Matt, who seemed oblivious to – no, excited by! – this rare exposure to nutritionally inferior rations.

As Nicole and I pass the hospital coffee shop, I spot a female form draped in garish colours. Unable to persuade Nicole to join me for a quick pastry, we kiss goodbye, and I retrace my steps to where signs indicate ‘Fresh Hot Food’ and ‘All Day Breakfasts’, as if the two are not synonymous.

As I carry my tray over to where Jenny sits, I see that her face is drained of colour, even allowing for the café’s hostile lighting. Maybe I should leave her alone. But it’s too late. Something (my hesitation, perhaps?) has broken Jenny’s spell and, as she heaves herself back from her thoughts and refocuses on the real world, she sees me. I watch as she struggles to rearrange her features into something more welcoming.

‘Hello, stranger,’ I say, brightly.

Jenny stays sitting with her elbows propped on the table, clutching a cup between both hands as if she can’t bear to let it go. I sense she might want to be left alone, but having been caught approaching the table I can hardly sit elsewhere.

‘Heavens, my calves are stiff after all our rehearsing!’ I say, compounding the lie with an unnecessary lunge for my leg.

Jenny grimaces, and slurps at her drink. Sitting in the uncomfortable silence, I get the impression that someone has died.

‘Do you want to know a secret?’ says Jenny suddenly, setting her drink down with such precision that its base overlaps an existing stain. I note the edge to her voice, the exaggerated placidity. It draws attention to, rather than conceals, the sense of someone doing her utmost to remain in control. ‘Bea’s resigned from the show.’

I lower my cup with such force that it chips its saucer. ‘You’re joking.’ I brush aside my pique at being kept in the dark, since in all other respects this revelation cheers me up. ‘I bet Dylan’s livid.’

‘Dylan doesn’t know yet.’

My eyes widen. There are, I know immediately, two dimensions to this scoop. Negotiating the fallout from Dylan’s delayed discovery of betrayal will be hazardous, but manageable. Jenny’s possession of prior knowledge is, however, surreal and unsettling. The universal order of things has been subverted. And it is then that I suspect that Jenny saw me on the maternity ward, or rather realised that she had been spotted, and that what is happening now is an attempt by her to regain some power. I stick with the subject I’ve been given.

‘Dyl doesn’t know? How can he not know?’

‘Bea rang me last night. She thinks the cast is hopeless and she can’t see us improving. With her reputation, she can’t afford to be associated with an embarrassing flop.’

‘With her reputation?’

‘She’s very well connected, Amber. She lives in Primrose Hill.’

‘Well, whose fault is it that we’re hopeless? It’s her job to bring out the best in all of us.’

Jenny starts playing with the grimy funnel of a glass sugar dispenser. ‘You don’t like Bea, do you?’ I frown. ‘Well, you don’t, do you?’ Jenny’s eyes remain fixed on the white granules.

‘What does she expect? We’re amateurs. She knew that when she signed up.’

‘But you don’t like her?’

‘Look, I can’t see the point in—’

‘Just answer the question, Amber. Jesus! Why will nobody answer my questions today?’ cries Jenny, banging the dispenser down on the melamine. The off-duty paramedics poised to occupy the next table make a swift decision to shepherd their trays further away.

I hesitate to speak, since irritability is known to be contagious. On Jenny’s cardigan I notice a pulled thread, right there on the chest, as though my friend has begun to unravel from the inside out. As I struggle to work out what this is all about, I remember my mother crying in the hospital, apparently frightened. Perhaps Jenny is frightened, too.

‘Can I do anything to help?’

Jenny turns her head away.

‘Another drink?’

‘Don’t leave me here,’ whispers Jenny, still looking out across the room.

‘Don’t worry,’ I laugh. ‘I can stay all day, if you like.’

Jenny looks back at me, and smiles weakly. Then she stares down into her lap. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ She sounds exhausted.

‘You don’t have to say anything.’ It’s one of Matt’s lines, and I’ve always wanted to use it, but it sounds far too wise coming from me.

Jenny looks up. ‘Oh, but I do. That’s the problem. I’ve been told it will help if I talk. I’ve been bottling things up, apparently. But I just can’t say—’ She looks back into her lap.

‘Maybe your words feel inadequate?’ I say, remembering how hard I’ve often found it to make people understand my strength of feeling towards my mother.

Jenny thinks carefully before replying. ‘No, not inadequate.’ She pauses once more. ‘More like horrifically accurate. Deadly, even.’

‘That bad?’

Jenny nods.

I shrug. ‘So, try me.’ I can feel my body tensing up, as I wonder what I might hear.

Jenny shakes her head. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘I wouldn’t? Or no one would?’

Jenny purses her lips. ‘I’m not sure.’ I’m about to speak when Jenny holds up a hand and continues. ‘But don’t get me wrong. I’m desperate to talk. I can’t bear carrying this all by myself. It’s just— you have to promise not to be cross with me—’

‘Why would I be cross?’ A hot wave floods my body. An awful vision of Matt in bed with Jenny springs to mind. Or Matt and Clive—

‘Because I’m such a failure,’ Jenny replies, beginning to sob. The sound is wretched and agonised, desperate even, as though vital organs have ruptured; bleeding inside.

And I remember the time, one hot afternoon on a Tuscan stone patio, when I let my friend down, when I sat blistered by her candour and vulnerability, and was found wanting. When I made a promise to myself that I would focus on ‘you’ instead of ‘I’.

I am the failure, I think.

I reach out for her hands, but she has moved them to cover her wet face. So I drag my chair to the other side of the table, the better to hug Jenny’s body as it jerks and shudders in grief. The melancholy smell of mothballs, reminiscent of dreams shelved, escapes from the wool.

‘This is ridiculous,’ says Jenny presently, blowing her nose.

‘Don’t be daft. It’s good to cry. I do it all the time. Matt’s always worried because our house is built on reclaimed marshland.’

Jenny spits a short laugh. ‘Do you? Cry, I mean?’

‘God, yes! Nothing like a good howl. In fact, I can safely say I’m better at it now than I was as a child. Years more practice!’

‘Lucky you. I was never allowed to cry. At one of my birthday parties I wept under the dining-room table, and my mum crouched down and hissed that no one had come to see me throw a tantrum. And I wanted to say, That’s the point, Mum. No one has come to see me at all. You see, the other girls in class had accepted the invites simply to eat our food, and call me names, and prod their fingers into my stomach to test how fat I was, saying I was having a baby. I was always told that if I kept my wishes secret when I blew out my candles, then they would come true, but even then I knew that had to be a lie. Nothing I ever wished for came true. I hated my mum for lying to me, and I hated myself for being so miserable. And I’ve never stopped hating myself. Especially now—’ she gulps for air, as fresh tears spill over her cheeks, ‘because I thought it’s bound to take time, there’s no rush— Clive and I got married really young— glad, frankly, to escape my own family— and it would give us plenty of time. Until then we could build our careers— and even when I lost one at seven weeks, I thought there’s plenty of time. Then his sister had kids, and then his two brothers’ wives. And at family gatherings I knew everyone was looking at me and thinking— and at Clive, which he hated. It was an insult to his masculinity, he said, but I thought we still had plenty of time—’ She gulps again, ‘And then I lost my fifth – always the same, by week seven or eight— so we had tests— and it’s me. I always knew it would be me, and Clive had begun to say so, too— and so we started IVF— needles like knives in my thighs, bruises the size of muffins. I was always so sore— and the cost! And fucking Serena getting pregnant at the drop of a hat, and Louisa. And now fucking Nicole— God!’ cries Jenny, shuddering. ‘Whose stupid idea was it to put the Infertility Clinic on the same floor as Maternity?’

Another monologue from Jenny once again leaves me reeling. All this time, all these years I’ve known her, and Jenny has wanted to be a mother. ‘I had no idea—’

‘Don’t worry. We’ve never told a soul. For Clive, it’s a matter of pride, in case people think he’s the defective one. It’s why he wears that ghastly moustache, you know. Thinks it makes him look more virile. Better that people believe us to be selfishly childless than that he’s sterile. For me, it’s the sense that it serves me right, that I’m being punished for daring to hope for something good, when I’m fat and unworthy—’

‘You’re not—’

‘I am, Amber. I am. I’ve always been trying to turn myself into something I’m not. And in this case it’s a mum … By the way, I didn’t mean to swear just now.’

‘But surely there are other options? Adoption. Surrogacy—’

‘Believe me, Amber, we’ve thought of everything. Clive won’t hear of adoption. And surrogacy? Well, that’s what today’s little bombshell was about,’ she finishes, dryly.

‘What happened?’

‘Well, it’s a long story, but we’ve tried twice, and my eggs didn’t take. We were introduced to a lovely woman in Lyme Regis, and I had fantasies that the sea air would work wonders. And the doctors were puzzled, since this woman has two healthy children of her own, so they took tests, and they’ve finally realised my eggs are damaged. If we’d known that at the beginning, we might not have wasted so much time on IVF; we’d have just implanted someone else’s eggs—’

‘So, what’s stopping you doing that now?’

‘There’s no money left,’ says Jenny coldly, scrunching up her redundant muffin wrapper and depositing it in her drink, small gestures suggesting imminent departure. ‘There are so many hidden charges. In the beginning we promised ourselves that we’d do whatever it took. But it takes a lot out of you, you know? And I’m not just talking about the money. So, it wasn’t meant to be. That’s what I keep telling myself: it wasn’t to be. As if all my hopes could be packaged up in that one phrase and pushed out to sea like a ship in a bottle. But then I get to thinking that somewhere out there is my last hope, a woman who will find my ship in a bottle and— Forgive me,’ Jenny rises slowly and loops a scarf around her neck which clashes with her knitwear, ‘but I just haven’t worked out yet how I’m going to let go of my dream.’

I rise, too, and our eyes meet for an instant.

‘It’s funny,’ says Jenny, stooping to pick up her handbag, ‘you’re the last person I thought I’d tell all of this to. Your life’s so perfect, so contained. I didn’t think you’d be able to understand how much energy I’ve expended over the years wishing my periods away.’

I drop my gaze, slightly ashamed of the relief I feel when my periods come.

Jenny’s laugh startles me. ‘But this is some world, isn’t it? You’re terrified in case you get pregnant, and I’ve always been terrified not to. I guess we’re all the same deep down, aren’t we? Afraid.’

*

We go our separate ways at the Tube. I watch as she heads off into the bowels of the Northern Line. We wave, and she is gone. I change my mind and decide to walk home.

The light is mellow, but clear. Aeroplanes appear purple in the evening sky. My shoes make crisp sounds on the pavement. I feel very connected to this pavement, as though each step is the right one to have made. I feel as though I’ve had certain gaps in myself filled by Jenny’s womanly curves and quiet stoicism. Something inside me has shifted; something almost muscular that I couldn’t see before, but which has probably been there all the time.