Magpie

  ‘Kate?’

  She realised she hadn’t answered his question.

  ‘I’m tired,’ she said.

  ‘What do you think about surrogacy? Or would you rather talk about it later?’

  She began to cry, then, without feeling particularly sad. He handed her a napkin and she blotted her cheeks with it. In the corner of the cafe, a baby started wailing, as if in echo of her own unhappiness, and the mother unbuttoned her blouse and began to breastfeed. The baby, instantly calmed, suckled away intently. Looking at them, Kate was overcome with a mixture of jealousy and awe. She was desperate. She wanted nothing so much as she wanted a baby. She was incapable of seeing anything other than this. She felt she would die if she did not become a mother.

  ‘I think maybe it’s a good idea?’ she said. ‘I just … I hadn’t expected to feel so much grief for something I can’t do.’

  ‘Oh my love,’ Jake said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘And can we even afford it?’

  ‘Of course we can. We can remortgage the house if it comes to it. This is more important, isn’t it?’

  She nodded, then said: ‘Do you still love me?’

  His face broke.

  ‘Why would you even ask that? I love you more than anything. And we’ll get through this. Together. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  Within two weeks, they had contacted a surrogacy organisation which invited them in for a chat. Carol, a competent, grey-haired woman in a plain cotton shirt and sensible court shoes sat down with them and said, ‘I’m going to give you quite a lot of information here.’ She laughed, in a way that reminded Kate of her old Biology teacher. ‘Are you ready?’

  She told them that it was illegal to pay for a surrogate in the UK, other than covering their expenses; that any surrogate would have to be acting out of an altruistic instinct to want to help; that there was then a three-month ‘getting to know you’ period before anyone signed anything; that they would have to decide whether to use Kate’s own eggs, or the surrogate’s; that they had a website where potential surrogates could match with couples like them; that there were regular conferences and social events where prospective parents outnumbered potential surrogates three to one. They took home a dozen leaflets and read them in the kitchen, sitting across from each other, drinking strong mugs of tea. It was nice to have a project, to have something they were more in control of, rather than outsourcing it all to male consultants who spoke in a medical language designed to alienate.

  The following month, Carol invited them to a social event taking place in a hotel in Coventry.

  ‘It’s a theme party. Gangsters and Molls. I don’t know if that’s your kind of thing. But if it is, you should come along. You’ll meet a lot of couples with similar journeys to yours and it can be very healing to share stories with people who understand.’

  Both Kate and Jake hated fancy dress, but they decided it was worth it and so they ordered costumes from Amazon: a cheap polyester flapper’s dress for Kate, accessorised with fake pearls and a cigarette holder; a baggy pinstripe suit for Jake. They drove to the Grand Eastern Hotel in Coventry, a two-storey building in yellow brick with beige carpets patterned with burgundy diamonds. The room was sparsely furnished and sterile: a bed with a foam mattress; a kettle with individually wrapped packets of sugar and creamer; shower gel and shampoo mixed into the same plastic dispenser which was fixed to the tiled wall in the bathroom. The view out of the window was of the car park. They made vodka tonics from the minibar and drank them sitting on the bed, and then they looked at each other and started to laugh at the weirdness of the situation. It was the first time Kate could remember laughing like that in ages.

  ‘Do you think we’re drinking too much?’ she asked Jake, and she wasn’t sure how seriously she meant the question.

  ‘If you can’t knock back a couple when you’ve been through what we have, then when can you?’ he said.

  ‘I guess.’

  They got dressed in their costumes, and Kate put on a dark red lipstick and Jake told her she looked so hot that she would have to wear the same outfit when they got home so that he could have sex with her while she was wearing it. Kate, lightly buzzed from the vodka, felt beautiful again. They held hands as they walked along the corridor to the conference hall where the party was being held. It had been decorated with gold helium balloons and ‘WANTED’ posters of Al Capone. The room was already half full of guests. They headed straight to the bar. Kate was nervous, and didn’t know why. They asked for vodka tonics from the barman.

  ‘Single or double?’

  ‘Double,’ Kate and Jake said simultaneously.

  An unfamiliar voice came from behind.

  ‘I like your style.’

  They turned to find a woman standing there. She had tousled blonde hair, held back with a feathered headband and was wearing a man’s suit, with a silk camisole underneath. Her skin was tanned and she had a nice smile. She was pretty and approachable, the kind of person you would cast as the fanciable sister of a male lead in a mainstream movie.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Marisa.’

  Now

  18

  ‘I feel like I’m going mad,’ Marisa says. ‘I just want to talk.’

  ‘OK,’ Kate says, making her voice as soothing as possible. ‘I understand. Let’s talk. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

  Marisa’s shoulders relax. She immediately seems calmer. She puts the knife onto the hallway table.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ Marisa says. ‘I wasn’t going to use it.’

  ‘I know.’

  She smiles at Kate, a cracked smile that makes the rest of her face look lopsided. Her hair is knotted and unwashed and Kate can smell the other woman’s body odour, the earthy bitterness of it underneath her clothes.

  ‘Oh Marisa,’ Kate says. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Marisa’s chest is heaving now and she is slumped in the chair, the tears streaming down her cheeks. She lifts her head, staring out from beneath her lank strands of hair. Kate presses herself against the wall as if she can make herself disappear through sheer force of will. But there is nowhere to go and her legs are still bound by the rope.

  ‘Marisa, sweetie, please could you undo the rope? I promise I won’t go anywhere, it’s just that I’m a bit uncomfortable.’

  Marisa keeps staring at her, her mouth hanging open. Kate is not sure how much she has understood. Marisa seems almost unreachable. How, Kate thinks, how have we let it get to this? How did this happen? Kate keeps up the soft patter, as though she is taming a wild horse, encouraging it closer with soft-voiced encouragement and a sugar lump in the palm of her hand.

  ‘Please, just untie the rope, darling, and then we can talk. We can sit on the sofa in the kitchen with a cup of tea and we can sort all this out. You’re not in trouble. I’m fine. I’m not angry with you. Please, Marisa.’

  After a few minutes of this, Marisa sits straighter in her chair and scoops up her hair with both hands, tying it in a loose knot at the back. Her face seems clearer somehow, the internal demons kept momentarily at bay. She stands, pressing one palm against her belly as she does so in a protective gesture. She bends to undo the knots in the rope, reaching for the knife to saw through when her fingers don’t work. Gradually, the rope loosens and Kate can feel the blood rushing back to her feet.

  ‘Thank you, Marisa.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the kitchen. We’ll just sit here.’

  Marisa slides down to sit next to Kate, her back against the wall. She is so close that Kate can feel Marisa’s hair tickle her cheek and this is somehow more frightening than when she was looming over Kate with a knife. Kate tries to block out the smell and the terror and to regulate her breathing. She closes her eyes briefly, gathering her thoughts.

  ‘What is it, Marisa?’

  ‘
I know,’ Marisa says.

  ‘You know what?’

  ‘Stop it. I’m not stupid. I’m not a fool even if you think I am, even if I’ve never been as clever as you. I already asked you once. So let me ask you again: how long have you and Jake been sleeping together?’

  Kate is nonplussed.

  ‘Six years,’ she says. ‘You know that.’

  ‘How can you say it so casually? We invite you into our home and this is how you repay me? By breaking up my relationship?’

  ‘Your relationship?’

  Marisa nods and, all at once, Kate gets an instinctive flash of understanding that she immediately wishes she could un-see.

  ‘But … what … Marisa …’ She stumbles over the words. Her voice is hoarse, almost a whisper. It can’t be what she thinks, surely? Marisa doesn’t … she hasn’t … she couldn’t …

  ‘You’re our surrogate,’ Kate says. Marisa looks blank, as if she hasn’t heard.

  ‘You’re our surrogate,’ Kate repeats. ‘Do you understand?’

  Then Marisa does the most curious thing. She takes Kate’s hand in hers and starts to laugh, slowly at first but then the laughter gathers pace and becomes a shrill, unstoppable noise.

  ‘Oh Kate,’ she says, breathlessly between giggles. ‘Kate, Kate, Kate, you poor thing. You’ve got it all wrong. I’m Jake’s partner. We’re having a baby together. You’re our lodger.’

  When Kate was a child her father used to drive to a car boot sale on the second Sunday of every month. Sometimes, if she got up early enough, he would take her with him. They lived at the bottom of a valley and the drive would take them steeply up the road on one side of their house, and then back down towards the nearest village. There were few other cars at that time in the morning, so Kate’s father used to speed up as they climbed the hill so that she would feel her tummy flip as the car careened over the other side.

  ‘Tummy flip!’ she would scream with delight. There was a sort of gleeful terror at the thought that the car could lose control and when it didn’t, her insides seemed to need an extra beat to catch up with the speed of the outside world.

  Hearing Marisa speak to her now, and understanding the depth of her mental imbalance, Kate feels her tummy flip again, except this time it doesn’t return to normal. This time, the car never makes it to the other side. Instead, it flies through the air, somersaulting into the tarmac with crashing, fatal force.

  ‘Marisa,’ Kate says, and she tries to be as clear and concise as possible. ‘Jake’s my partner. We’ve been together for six years. We couldn’t conceive. We asked you to be our surrogate and move in with us. You’re carrying our baby. Ours. Not yours.’

  Marisa doesn’t say anything for a while. She turns away, huddling into herself and Kate can see her picking at the ragged cuticles of her right hand. They sit in silence for several minutes before Marisa opens her mouth to speak.

  ‘The thing is, Kate—’

  She is interrupted by the sound of a key turning in a lock. The front door opens. Jake is home.

  Then

  19

  They couldn’t believe it at first. No one could. Carol said that it took some couples years to find a suitable surrogate. It was very rare to match with someone on your first social event. But Kate and Jake had both felt an immediate affinity with Marisa. Looking back later, Kate would wonder whether it was their desperation that made them want to find this affinity where there was none.

  And yet, the three of them chatted easily that night about both the oddness (and the comic potential) of the setting they found themselves in. Marisa had asked a bit about their fertility journey because everyone called it a journey, like some bad 1980s rock anthem, but her questions had not been intrusive or prurient. She listened, and nodded, and seemed genuinely empathetic. She told them that she had always wanted children, but wasn’t ready for her own quite yet. She said she knew first-hand from older friends and from her own mother how difficult infertility struggles could be.

  ‘There’s seven years between me and my sister,’ Marisa explained. ‘My mother had a string of miscarriages in that time. It was awful for her.’

  Kate looked at her, and wondered if infertility could be genetically inherited. Marisa, as if reading her thoughts, said: ‘But I’ve had everything checked out and it all seems good, and I guess I thought this was something I could do for someone else, while I was still young, in the way no one was able to do for my mother, you know?’

  She had that millennial way of speaking, littered with likes and unnecessary question marks that left sentences trailing upwards.

  ‘If it’s not an impertinent question, how old are you?’ Jake asked. He’d had four vodkas by then and was feeling looser than usual.

  ‘I’m twenty-eight.’

  She spoke with such openness, such a complete lack of guile, that Kate was charmed. She was so used to dealing with cynical media types, their outlook on the world dulled after years of living in a big city where being cool carried a higher premium than being enthusiastic, and Marisa came across as untouched, like a doll who had only just been removed from her cellophane wrapping. She had grown up in the countryside, she said, and to Kate, Marisa still seemed a touch old-fashioned, like a heroine plucked from the pages of a Thomas Hardy novel, with healthy bones and tawny hair and a glowing smile and a sense of oneness with her surroundings. There was a purity to her. Kate could quite easily imagine her with a baby.

  Marisa left the party before they did, saying that she had to be up early the next morning, and Kate liked this about her too: the fact that she was sensible and comfortable enough in her own skin to go when the party was just hitting its stride.

  ‘I’d love to keep in touch with you guys,’ Marisa said. ‘If you felt it was appropriate, of course. No pressure!’

  Jake glanced at Kate, who gave a tiny nod.

  ‘We’d like that too,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you could take my number?’

  ‘Sure,’ Marisa said, and she fished out an old iPhone model with a cracked screen.

  ‘Wow,’ Jake said. ‘You must have dropped this from a great height.’

  Marisa laughed.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to get it replaced, but you know how it is.’

  Jake typed in his number and passed the phone back to Marisa.

  ‘It’s been lovely meeting you both,’ she said. She didn’t make a move to kiss them on the cheek, and Kate was relieved. If this were going to go any further, the boundaries would have to be clear from the start.

  ‘It’s been so great meeting you too,’ Kate said, and she meant it. For the first time in four years, she felt a small bubbling of hope.

  Carol told them not to get carried away.

  ‘There’s a long, long road ahead,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to get to know each other now, to check that you’re really compatible and that you can trust each other with this incredibly precious thing. And Marisa is unusual, let’s not forget.’

  ‘In what way?’ Kate asked.

  ‘Well, she’s younger than most surrogates we get and she hasn’t previously had a baby herself, which we do tend to prefer. It’s not a deal-breaker, obviously, but it’s something to be aware of. She’s also single, so won’t have the support of a partner. You need to be confident that she’ll have a good support network going through this.’

  ‘But isn’t her relative youth a bonus?’ Jake asked. ‘Fertility-wise, I mean.’

  ‘It could be, yes. It’s just something to be aware of,’ Carol repeated. ‘Have you had a discussion about whose eggs you are going to use?’

  ‘I think we’ll go for the surrogate eggs, if that’s an option,’ Kate said.

  She spoke clearly and tried to keep her voice from cracking. They were acting on advice from Mr Abadi, who said this would give them the best possible chance of conceiving in the quickest time, and although Kate tried
to tell herself that it didn’t matter how they got there, that a baby was yours as soon as it was in your arms, she was also struggling to come to terms with it, with the fact that her child would have no genetic link to her.

  ‘All right,’ Carol said. ‘Then you’ll also need to consider if you’re OK with the fact that Marisa looks different from you, Kate?’

  ‘She looks like Jake,’ Kate replied.

  ‘I know, but he’ll be providing his sperm, so …’

  ‘Yes, I realise that. I’ve thought a lot about it.’

  And she had. She had gone over it again and again in her mind, until she had come to the conclusion that all of Marisa’s advantages outweighed this one, rather solipsistic concern. She knew Jake was desperate to be a father and she could no longer bear the idea of letting him down. She wanted to be fine with it, so she told herself she was. Gradually it became a version of the truth.

  ‘I’m fine with it,’ Kate said to Carol.

  In the chair next to her, Jake reached over and squeezed her hand.

  On Kate’s advice, Jake had kept in touch with Marisa regularly by text since the party.

  ‘We don’t want to scupper our chances with her,’ Kate said, half joking. ‘She was probably picking up digits left, right and centre that night.’

  They were sitting on the bench in the garden, admiring the hydrangea which had just started to flower. The sound of a computer game being played at loud volume trailed over the wall at the far end. They lived next to a council estate and a tall red-brick stairwell blotted out a rectangular segment of sky at the end of their garden. It was why they’d got the house for such a good price – the estate agent said the stairwell had put lots of buyers off, but neither Kate nor Jake particularly minded. London, after all, was a patchwork of different housing, the tower blocks springing up in derelict spaces after World War II bomb damage, pressed up against older houses like new gold fillings in a mouthful of yellowing teeth. Living here felt like they were breathing in the actual city, rather than an airbrushed version of it. Kate appreciated the patchwork history.