I didn’t know what Claudia would feel like eating, if anything at all, so I brought everything: bacon, eggs, yogurt, organic muesli, fresh bread, kiwis, juice, almond croissants, green tea and caffe mochas for all. I rang the doorbell and listened to Al’s heavy footfalls as he made his way downstairs. He opened the door a fraction with a fierce expression. I watched his brain recognize that standing on his doorstep was friend not foe; his face softened, his body relaxed and finally the door opened wider. Instinctively, he took the bags from me. Ben and Al are cut from the same cloth in that respect.
“I don’t know how to ever thank you,” said Al, wrapping the plastic bags around me in a bear hug. “Thank God you were here. Come in. She’s sleeping.”
I followed him down the hallway into the kitchen. On the staircase wall was the faint grimy outline of a missing photograph. I swore silently in my head. The photograph was still back at home, though that was not what I was swearing about. I stared at the step and watched again, as I had a thousand times during the night, a kiss that had come nearly twenty years too late. I put my fingers to my lips and the memory made me giddy with yearning.
Al poured the coffee into mugs, put them in the microwave to reheat and pulled out a croissant each. Neither he nor I had slept a great deal and what we craved was a hefty dose of sugar. I’d make something sensible and slow-burning in a while, but what we needed right then was a hit. I dunked the croissant into the caffe mocha and sucked. Al did the same.
“You think of everything, don’t you, Tessa? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you’d repainted the…” Nursery. Spare room. Constant reminder of their infertility.
“I couldn’t have done it without Ben. He chose the paint.”
“You are the best team of friends anyone could wish for.”
I kissed Ben on the steps. I used your personal tragedy to cross a boundary. What kind of friend does that really make me? If Claudia hadn’t cried out…Once again, my face registered my thoughts because Al looked concerned.
“I’m so sorry, it must have been horrible,” he said.
I dismissed his concern. “What are you going to do?”
“Get out of here,” said Al immediately. “It’s all organized. I just haven’t told Claudia yet.”
“Move house?”
“No. I mean get out of the country. I still have a job in Singapore. We’ve been put up in a sister hotel of the one we’re working on. It’s stunning. Claudia can rest, spend her days in the spa, swim, recover at whatever pace she can. The work isn’t taxing. We’ll be able to have lunch most days, travel around the area on the weekends, go island hopping. My bosses know the situation and are happy to be flexible, not for ever, but for a little while.”
“How long would you be away?”
“A couple of months. Don’t you think it’s a good idea?”
“I think it’s a great idea, I just don’t want you to go. But you should absolutely, definitely go.”
“I’m going to try and sell the house too. I booked an agent to come and see it tomorrow while Claud is at the doctor’s. I know this is a bit cheeky, but I thought maybe you might oversee the sale.”
“Of course I will,” I said. “Consider it done.”
He reached over and placed his hand on mine. “Thanks, Tessa, I knew I could rely on you.”
The feeling of satisfaction rose up inside me faster than the dampening reminder of why Al was asking me to sell his house for him. I couldn’t help it. I had always done a great deal for my friends, they were my family, so it was reaffirming for me that Al and Claudia felt they could rely on me. Although this was happening to them, we were, as I’d always suspected, in this together.
“You really have got it all organized,” I said, when Al retracted his hand.
He stirred his coffee. “I’ve learned to fear the worst.” He rubbed his eyes. It was an involuntary movement but it reminded me of the incredible strain Al had been under all these years. You can’t be the strong one indefinitely. Somewhere, something has to give.
“You are an exceptional man, Al. Claudia is lucky to have you.”
“You think? She’d probably get pregnant like that”—he clicked his fingers to demonstrate—“with somebody else. She’d certainly have been able to adopt.”
“Don’t think things like that. It’s you, only you, and it will always be you,” I said.
“But we all know that’s not true. People lose husbands and wives and find new people and are just as happy, sometimes happier. People are heartbroken and go on to find new people to love. There isn’t just one person. Claudia would find someone else.”
He was scaring me. “Al, is this about you, or her?”
“Her. She’s the one upstairs, drugged up with opiates so she doesn’t feel the pain that I’m causing her.”
“You didn’t do this to Claudia, in the same way that Claudia didn’t do this to you, or herself,” I said. “This is just some terrible shitty thing that has happened to you both. I know Claudia wants children, but not without you. That would be too high a price.”
“This is already too high a price, Tessa,” said Al. “I can’t watch her do this again.”
“I’m sure she doesn’t want to go through this again. What about going back to adopting again?”
“We can’t. My record.”
“Not here, abroad, where papers aren’t so strictly adhered to. China, Africa, Estonia, Russia. There are orphanages everywhere, Al. Countless children who need a home.”
“Maybe it is time to look into that,” said Al. Frankly I was surprised they hadn’t looked into it before.
“It could be exciting,” I said, trying to sound positive.
“Maybe. But Claudia has to accept that the IVF has failed and she will never be a mother to our child.”
“And you?”
“If Claudia is happy again, I can live without children. But her survival mechanism throughout all of this has been that ultimate failure was not an option. She had to believe that it would work. If not this time, then the next. She had to believe that or else she wouldn’t have been able to get up in the morning. How do you undo that steadfast faith? It’s like telling someone not to believe in God any more.”
“So you would consider it?”
“We went for adoption before we went for IVF because they told us our chances were so slim. We went for adoption first and they screwed us. I screwed myself. I screwed us.”
“Stop it. Let’s not go back to that. The drugs had fallen through the lining of your bag, it could have happened to any of us. We were all guilty.”
“But I knew it was missing. I could have looked harder. How is it possible that one second in time, almost twenty years ago, can still make my stomach clench into a knot and leave me unable to breathe?”
Let’s go home. “I don’t know,” I said, feeling the familiar sensation of my heart pounding in my chest and my airway contract. But it could.
I sat on the side of Claudia’s bed. The bed I had stripped and remade the day before. I glanced at the carpet. I could still see the faint trace of pink from the single drop of blood. I wondered if I always would. Out, out, damn spot. Maybe Al was right. This house had too many sad memories. Al and Claudia needed a change. Singapore was as good a place to start as any. Claudia moved her head on the pillow. Very slowly she opened one eye and looked at me. She smiled and closed it again. It opened again as she yawned and I watched her force her other eyelid, prising it open; she blinked a few times in a battle to keep her eyes from closing again. It was like watching her come round from the anesthetic all over again. It was like watching the twins wake up after the christening.
“Hey, you,” I said softly.
“Hey,” Claudia croaked.
“I brought you some fresh juice and some green tea.”
She smiled and started to prop herself up in bed. Within seconds she’d slumped back down on the pillow. “Where’s Al?”
“Downstairs. Do you want me to get him?”
“Is he all right?”
I stroked a strand of her hair away. “He’s worried about you. How are you feeling?”
“Numb. No, not numb. Empty.”
I took her hand.
“Did they tell you why?” she asked me.
I nodded. This was hard. “The placenta had come away from the uterus wall.”
“My baby starved to death.”
“No, Claudia. You can’t think like that.” I moved round the bed and lay next to her. “Once the oxygen supply was lost it would have been very quick. She would not have felt a thing.”
“I thought I felt her move while we were painting. How could I not have sensed that something was wrong? Shouldn’t I have felt something? What sort of mother would I make?”
“Stop it. This isn’t going to help you or change what has happened. You have suffered a medical problem, one that isn’t even that uncommon. The doctor said there is no reason to think that the IVF won’t take again and this time they will monitor you and keep you in bed. He will explain it all at your visit tomorrow.”
Claudia let out a long breath. We lay there in silence for a while as I stroked her hair and waited for some words of comfort to come to mind. None did. Al found us there some minutes later. Claudia’s tea had gone cold. She propelled herself off the pillow and fell into her husband’s chest. He wrapped her up like the precious parcel she was and rocked her gently side to side. I could hear Claudia was crying and I could see that Al was too.
It was time for me to go. There are some things that friends are for. There are others when only husbands will do.
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard Al. He ran down after me, held me for a moment in a tight embrace, then kissed me quickly on the lips.
“From both of us,” he said. “We love you.”
He hugged me again for a split second then returned to his wife. I stood on the step. It was unnecessary to thank me but I was grateful, except for one thing: any notion that what had passed between Ben and me on the same steps, in the same circumstances, the previous evening was purely platonic was ludicrous. What had just happened with Al was platonic. More than that, it was familial, brotherly, fatherly. What had happened between Ben and me was something else entirely and I had no idea what to do about it. I pulled the front door behind me quietly and walked to my car, heavy with sadness and guilt. Whatever terrible outcome kissing Ben at eighteen may have had, it could not be worse than this.
My phone vibrated in my pocket. It was Ben’s home number. I looked at it. If I ducked his call it would be tantamount to admitting something was really wrong. I had never ducked a call from Ben in my life. If I answered it, was I going to make it worse? Could I pretend nothing had happened? I stared at the phone…Who was I kidding? I’d been pretending for years.
“Hi,” I said gently.
“Hey, Tessa, I thought you might need scooping up.”
It wasn’t Ben. Of course it wasn’t Ben, he always called me from his mobile. Not home. “Sorry?”
“Ben told me what happened.”
No. No. No. “What?”
“You’re not all right, are you? Ben said you were there all night. Al is back, right?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still with them?”
“I’m just leaving.”
“Right, I’m not taking no for an answer. Meet me at that organic café in Battersea. I’m leaving now.”
“Oh Sasha, thanks but I’ll be—”
“No, Tessa. I’m taking you out for lunch, plying you with lentils and organic wine then I’m taking you home. It’s time someone looked after you. Twenty minutes. I’ll be there.”
“Really, Sasha, I’ll—”
“Tessa, you can’t carry everyone else’s shit all the time. You just can’t. You’ve got to leave a little bit of room for you. I’m already getting into the car.”
She ended the call, leaving me with no choice. Why does she have to be so fucking nice? The same reason she has always been so nice. She just is. This is why in normal circumstances consuming alfalfa beans and wine with Sasha, then lying on a sofa chatting and farting, would be a great way to spend a Saturday. But ordinarily I hadn’t just kissed her husband.
The café is tiny but we were early and Sasha had a table in the window overlooking a little triangle of shops. Sasha is a striking lady with Annie Lennox hair and figure. She wears narrow rectangular glasses which make her look trendy and intelligent all at the same time. In truth, she is more intelligent and less trendy than her glasses. Her somewhat sloppy dress sense is probably a good thing—if she were too finely turned out she’d be terrifying and when she’s in a suit, I can’t help but imagine a whip in her hand.
She has always come across as smooth to me; I don’t mean smooth as in smarmy, I mean as in the absence of sharp corners. She is opinionated, as most of us are, but you won’t find yourself impaled on her arguments; she doesn’t charge at you as some people do. What Sasha does is walk slowly and steadily into conversational battle, somehow managing to deflect all incoming targets until she is standing in your corner with her flag dug firmly into the ground. I think it comes from the deep-seated confidence she possesses in her core. I don’t know Sasha’s family that well, but I have met her parents and her two younger brothers and they all possess it. I think it is the powerful combination of encouraged individualism and a strong family unit. She possesses every quality Ben needs. For this reason I could only ever rejoice in my friend’s choice of wife.
Sasha gave me a big hug and passed me something green and zingy to drink. I drank it thirstily. Turned out something green and zingy was exactly what I needed. Sasha knew me well. I wanted to be the woman she knew. I didn’t want to be the nervy, distracted, guilty woman who sat before her.
“Tell me what happened,” said Sasha. I presumed, since she was offering to buy me lunch, she was talking about Claudia losing her baby and not me kissing her husband. I enveloped myself in the memory. It wasn’t hard to obliterate all other thoughts that way.
“It was awful,” I said. “We were painting the nursery, giggling about the dire state of my love life—I think Claudia was suggesting I become a lesbian or that I am a lesbian and somehow don’t know it yet; she simply put down her paintbrush and went off to the loo laughing at her own phenomenal sense of humor. No warning, nothing. I just went on painting, I didn’t even realize she hadn’t come back. She didn’t make a sound when it happened. She just sat on the loo and that was where I found her.”
While food came and went I told Sasha about the blood, the cramps, trying to clean everything up. I told her about the hospital and how I had cried into the arms of a nurse and hadn’t put her right when she thought I had lost a baby. I told her about the strange globules of blood that stuck to the bottom of the toilet bowl. I told her about the thick, industrial-sized sanitary pads and watching Claudia’s eyes roll into the back of her head as the anesthetist counted down from ten. I told her everything, in excruciating detail, until it came to tucking Claudia into bed. Then I skipped a bit.
“Ben left, I sort of slept on the sofa until Al came home at six and then I went home.”
“And how was she today?”
“Blaming herself and very drugged. Al doesn’t want her to go through it again.”
“I’m surprised they’ve gone through it as many times as they have.”
I’ve thought much the same myself. But every time they thought about giving up there would be a new technique, a new man with a new method, better statistics. Medically, IVF is an incredible growth area; a lot of the cutting-edge treatments come out of genuine clinics with good intentions, but not all of them. Claudia spent hours on the Internet; somebody else’s miracle story would grab her and off she’d go down another fertility worm hole.
“She isn’t even the gullible type,” said Sasha.
“But she wants it to be true so much. Talk about a soft target.”
“Why don’t they just adopt? I don’t understand.”
“They tried,” I said. “It didn’t work.”
“Years ago.”
“I think they’re considered too old to adopt now.”
“Maybe in this country, but not in China.”
“I’ve had this conversation with Al. He says they’ll look into it.”
Sasha pulled a disbelieving face. “Now, after nine years they are going to look into it?”
I held out my hands. Sasha was repeating my very thoughts. “I guess it is very hard to go through IVF several times—all that invasive treatment, the complete eradication of sex for sex’s sake—without believing 100 percent that it will work, and if you can convince yourself it will work, then you do it again and adoption seems second best. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“You and Ben don’t feel particularly strongly about kids, so it wouldn’t.”
Sasha pulled a strange, disapproving face, but she didn’t deny it. “Do you want children?”
“Of course I do.” If I were absolutely honest I would tell her that the single thing that terrified me the most was the thought that I wouldn’t have any children. I didn’t want it to, but it did, it terrified me. How could I tell Sasha that? How could I tell her that my desire for children had begun to affect how I behaved? How it was eschewing my judgments. How it made me look at her husband with a longing I didn’t know what to do with. I couldn’t tell her that. “I was crying in the hospital yesterday because of this fear I have started to feel.”
“Fear of?”
“Not having kids. Sasha, I cried because of the imaginary children I might never have while Claud was having a real baby cut out of her. I’m despicable.” I was despicable, but not necessarily for that reason.
“No, you’re not, Tessa, come on. I think being single at your age must be hard sometimes, but you know, having kids isn’t necessarily the answer.”
“That’s because you don’t feel like this. I envy you. It’s a horrible feeling and it makes me feel desperate. I never thought I was desperate, the very word makes me…” I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t know.”
“You’re wrong. I do feel desperate about having children, Tessa.”
I glanced up from the food I’d been fiddling with and stared at Sasha. “Huh?”
“I feel very strongly that people have children too often for the wrong reasons.”
I was confused. “How could wanting to have a baby be a wrong reason?”
“Because there is a huge difference between wanting to have a baby, and wanting to be a parent. I think the baby thing gets in the way. The perfect Pampers baby that we’re all supposed to have.”
“It’s maternal instinct.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s a desire to procreate.”
“Sasha, come on. I don’t want a mini-me, I want a baby, a child, a person, to love. An individual.”
“Then go to China and get one.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Because…” Sasha let the question hang in the air.
Because I do want a child of my own? Because I do want a mini-me? Because I do want a husband who adores me, a picket fence, a baby with his eyes and my legs? Because I want what everyone else has? “I can’t even manage the boyfriend bit.” It was a pathetic duck and Sasha knew it, but she didn’t pull me up. Instead she ordered decaf soya latte and carrot cake. I was feeling defensive and angry with her. I felt Claudia and Al needed our support, not an intense examination of their motives. I overlooked the fact that Sasha was saying almost exactly what I had said to Al myself. But I was still angry with her.
She was right, of course. There was a huge difference between wanting to have a baby and wanting to be a parent. One was selfish, the other selfless. If they happened to come together, wonderful. But they often didn’t, because if they did, there would be no such thing as a bad parent. And as Ben, Helen, even my own mother, could testify, there were plenty of bad parents out there. I was angry with Sasha because I wanted to be. I was angry with Sasha because in the middle of the night I imagined she was married to the father of my unborn children. I was angry with Sasha because I adored her and knew she was married to the right man and I would never have those children.
The waitress put the cake and coffees down.
“I’m sorry, Sash, I’m all over the place.”
“Don’t ever apologize to me. You have nothing to apologize for.”
For some reason the bite of carrot cake I put in my mouth didn’t taste nearly as good as it should have. I watched Sasha as she stirred brown sugar into her coffee, slowly and methodically.
“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said. “It is a subject I get too involved with, too personal. What Claudia puts herself through is her own business.”
“She just wants to be a mother.”
There was that same strange, disapproving look. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“If all women thought like Claudia, I wouldn’t have a mother.”
I frowned. “But you have a wonderful mother who would do anything for you and your brothers.”
“Yes, I do. But as you know perfectly well, she didn’t give birth to me.”
I sat back in my chair. Of course…Sasha’s biological mother ran off when she was still a baby. Her father remarried when Sasha was about six. She was the person Sasha called mum. I’d completely forgotten that she wasn’t Sasha’s “real” mother. Clearly, that was her point.
“Stop thinking about having a baby, Tessa, and start thinking about whether you really want to be a parent. Not the fantasy—bouncing baby, adoring husband, picket-fence stuff—the real nitty-gritty, life-altering, mind-blowing responsibility that is being a parent with all the risks it involves, and if the answer is yes, then you can. These days there is nothing stopping you. If you really want to.”
That morning I had woken with a head full of desperate, self-piteous, downright treacherous thoughts but I walked back into my flat lighter for having had lunch with the one person I could have sworn I didn’t want to see. Even my mercy mission to the shops to buy things for Claudia and Al was merely a dressed-up good intention. I couldn’t bear my own company since the only thing I could think about since my eyes had opened was Ben. It was easier to throw myself back into Al and Claudia’s drama because it meant I didn’t have to think about Ben any more. A scary fantasy had begun, with alarming detail and repetition, to play over and over in my head. Ben announcing his undying love. Sasha and Ben amicably agreeing to go their separate ways and Ben and I dancing off into the sunset to have several little Bens and Tessas. It was hideous. It was delicious. It was enticing. It was revolting. It was perfect. It was utterly stupid.
I kicked my shoes off and sat down on the sofa. First things first. Yes, we had crossed a boundary. But only for a split second. It was a need born of dire circumstances. And by that I meant the dire circumstances that were taking place in our oldest friends’ lives. Not the current state of my life.
We had both run the moment we heard Claudia’s voice. If we were true charlatans we could have ignored Claudia’s delirious mumblings and gone at it like hammer and tongs. After all, she was heavily sedated and would not have known about me coming in and rearranging her pillows, pulling up her sheet, fussing with the window. She was not aware of the procrastination taking place in the disguise of good nursing. Ben left. He did not wait to acknowledge, discuss or reignite what had happened. The spell had been broken. There was no cyclist careering towards a lamp-post. No damage had been done. Nothing was broken. Nothing had been done that couldn’t be undone. It had been a moment and the moment had passed. I lay very low for the rest of the weekend.
The best thing to do, the only thing to do, was to forget about it and concentrate on the future. My future. There were headhunters I needed to call. There were hours and hours of research to do about where else my legal training could take me, if not directly back into law. Irony of ironies, Sasha had inspired me. It was time to think about what I really wanted out of life and then go and get it. Did I want to be a parent? That was too big a question to start with. That was jumping the gun. What I needed to do was work out what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. How and why—not who and when. At nine o’clock sharp on Monday morning I was ready. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.
“Hello, this is Tessa King, I’d like to talk to your legal recruitment department…”
“Just putting you through.”
I waited. The reason why I’d been putting this off was because I couldn’t face explaining why I was currently out of work. But I had to move on. I had to put an end to the halt that man had caused to my life. By that I meant my ex-boss, but thinking about it…
“Tessa King, I’m Daniel Bosley, head of legal. I’ve been hoping you’d call.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, you’ve been on my radar some time, but I didn’t think we’d ever prise you out of your chambers.”
“Well…” I took another deep breath.
“Don’t need to say a thing. I know all about it. Don’t worry about that, draw a line, we can move right on…”
The conversation went on nicely from that point. I was to send in my CV, which was good, there were no sordid details on my CV. In fact, my CV put me in my best light. Consistent. Conscientious. Untroubled by the world of chicken pox and sports days. I could come to work early and I could leave late and the risk of maternity leave was rapidly diminishing. I’d employ me.
Emboldened, I carried on and called another. Why are these sorts of calls rarely as bad as you imagine them to be, yet you always imagine the worst? I worked away the rest of the day. I printed off forms and filled them in, I ticked boxes, I printed off my CV several times on smart, stiff paper then realized everybody did everything by email. Times had changed since I was in the market for a job.
When my phone rang I was so engrossed in work mode that I didn’t recognize the voice at first.
“Hello,” said a deep male voice.
“Hello,” I replied.
“Tessa, is that you?”
My lungs suddenly constricted. “Who’s this?” I asked.
“Caspar,” said Caspar.
I exhaled loudly. I slowly unclenched my fist from around the phone and exhaled again. My palms had gone all sweaty. When did Caspar’s voice get so deep?
“Tessa, are you there?”
Not as breezy as I thought. One step forward. Three steps backwards. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. “Sorry, sweetheart, what can I do for you?”
“Just ringing to say hi.”
Oh, really? “Bullshit, my darling boy. What is it?”
“Really, I just wanted to say thanks for bailing me out last weekend.”
“Caspar, I love you, you know that, but in sixteen years you’ve never called me unless you wanted something. It’s all right, I don’t mind, that’s what I’m here for.”
“I love the iPod.”
He was tenacious, I’d give him that. “Good. Got music on it yet?”
“Yeah. I went to this kicking place where you can download 800 tunes in…” I phased out about here. Caspar is a bit of a techno-geek. Always got great marks in maths and physics and IT. He was a genius with computers. Without the IT guy at work to come and sort out my laptop problems I was hopeless. I did that girly thing of rebooting at the first sign of trouble.
“…I can come and update yours if you want. Surely you’re getting bored of Abba by now.”
“Oi, I’d like to have you know that I’m listening to Eminem right now.”
“Ooh—a white rapper. Very cutting edge, Tessa. What will she do next?”
“Caspar, you are a gruesome child. Anyone told you that?”
“Constantly. Have you spoken to Mum and Dad recently?”
“Why, what’s happened?” This was the reason for the call, then.
“Well, Mum is really on my case again. I was wondering if you could have a word with her.”
“What have you done?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
I bet. I stepped away from my desk and walked to the window. A police boat putted slowly up river. “Well, what’s this about then?”
“There was a party, I took some beer, but—”
“Caspar!”
“What? Four fucking cans of beer. Cheap stuff too. Shitty own-brand.”
“Hey, language.”
“Yeah, right, I’ve heard you turn the air blue with swear words before now.” That was a problem. Was I a mate, a bad example, or a good excuse, I wondered. Whichever it was, I was beginning to think that perhaps I wasn’t the ideal person to rein Caspar in; he certainly didn’t sound like he was going to be taking instruction from me any time soon. “I thought about what you said, Tessa, and I think they’re being like this with me because of what you said. You’re right, you got it, it’s spot on, isn’t it? Right, so now I know, I’m not taking it, for no reason, see?”
And in human speak that would mean what exactly? “Huh?”
“Missing out, they missed out; they don’t know what’s going on, what’s normal, right? They’re like stuck in a time warp. Need a Tardis. Four beers, man. Zac nicks vodka all the time from his old man and no one notices.”
How many bottles of vodka did a kid have to nick before he got noticed, I wondered, but Zac wasn’t my problem. “Well, that’s OK then.”
“Nice.”
“No. I was being sarcastic.”
“I’ve given up the ganja, but she can’t keep me in all the time.”
Why not? One morning your lovely son goes out and that afternoon comes back all f-ing and blinding and confounding you with middle-class “street” talk.
“Just coz she never went out.”
Manipulative little bugger. I didn’t mind letting Caspar think he was getting one over on me when it came to treats and extracting extra pocket money but I wasn’t going to be complicit in his plans to get one over on his parents. Not knowingly, anyway.
“Don’t twist my words. They were much older than you are.”
“Come on, T-bird, you know the score. It’s all relative. Please. They’ll listen to you.”
T-bird? I had no idea what he was talking about. “I’ll talk to your mum, but get one thing straight, she’s the boss.”
He laughed.
“I’m being serious,” I insisted, trying to sound like a real grown-up.
After the call, Caspar’s laugh came back to me. We’d laughed a lot over the years—it was the basis of our peculiar friendship—but that wasn’t the jolly, heart-warming laugh I’d heard before. That had been a thinner, meaner laugh, and it repeated on me like cheap meat.
If teenagers were advertised in nappies on the telly all the time, perhaps I wouldn’t feel the pinch of my ovaries so much. My sympathy for Francesca and Nick was on the increase. Looking after babies was tough, no doubt, but kidulthood, now there was a challenge. I know Fran got a great deal of backchat from Katie and Poppy, especially Katie, who seemed to have an answer for everything, but they could still be sent to their room, or made to sit on the naughty step. What did you do when they were bigger than you? What did you do when they laughed at you?
I returned to the desk and closed my laptop. I felt a huge sense of achievement as I tidied my papers away, put the laptop back in its case and slid the printer back under the small Ikea desk that inhabits a little corner of the room. It was no good worrying about everyone else all the time, I had to get on with my own life. I washed up the cafetière and mug I’d been using. My flat is too small to leave anything lying about so it has taught me to be tidy. Naturally I’m very messy, so it took a huge amount of energy to locate and train my tidy gene. Now I’m like a reformed smoker, I detest mess. Probably because I know that my whole life is only one dirty coffee cup away from chaos.
That Monday, however, despite everything that had happened I felt under control. I’d made a huge first step to reclaiming my life and decided to reward myself with an outing to the video store. I could order movies over the Internet—I used to—but I worried that it closed off another avenue to the outside world, so since leaving work I’d stopped doing it. Organizing food, laundry, books, CDs and gifts on the Internet meant my field of contact had vastly diminished, which meant I often nipped into the pub to make up for it. Now that I had more time I realized this wasn’t necessarily a good thing, so I put on a better pair of jeans and walked to the video store. I always enjoy chatting to the dweeby film boffins behind the counter, though, like everyone else, they seem to be getting younger. They advised Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner—the original, naturally; it has been a mission of mine to watch all the great films. I’ve barely scratched the surface.
At eight I watched the film. At ten I ran a bath. At ten-thirty I went to bed. At half past one in the morning I was still staring at the ceiling. My resolve to forget about Ben had crumbled. Suddenly I got it. I could deal with teenagers. I could deal with the whole damn lot. I wanted stretch marks. Bring on the piles, collapse my uterus and make me incontinent if that’s what it would take to make me whole. I wanted children, God, not godchildren, and I knew who with and where he was. I propped myself up on one elbow, opened the bedside-table drawer and pulled out the photograph of Ben with his leg in traction. I placed the cool glass against my cheek and lay back down on the pillow. I felt the same now as I had then. No, I felt more. And it really, really hurt. The photo was a strange sort of comfort blanket, but I was at a strange sort of age. I needed reassurance now more than I ever had at any time in my life.