Magpie

  Jake kept topping up his mother’s glass so that she became gradually softer and more tipsy as the lunch went on. By the time the pudding arrived, Annabelle had been successfully disarmed and was starting to ask Kate what films she’d recommend seeing at the cinema (this was always Annabelle’s way of breaking the ice, as if she knew a single fact about her son’s girlfriend’s work and clearly intended to deploy it frequently to show how much she cared).

  ‘We actually had something to tell you guys,’ Jake said, resting his spoon and fork on either side of a warm chocolate soufflé.

  Annabelle, who had her glass of wine halfway to her mouth, placed it back on the table.

  ‘Oh, I was hoping you might!’ she said, and she winked at Chris and mouthed, ‘Told you so,’ across the table to him.

  It dawned on Kate that Annabelle thought they were going to announce their engagement.

  ‘We’re not getting married,’ she blurted out. There was a stunned pause. Annabelle drew her pashmina closer to her, looking wounded.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘What is it then?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kate added, a few seconds too late. ‘I just …’ She had no idea how Annabelle managed to make her feel so on edge all the time.

  ‘We’re not getting married,’ Jake said levelly. ‘But we do have exciting news. At least, we think it’s exciting.’

  ‘You’re pregnant!’ Annabelle shrieked. ‘Oh Kate, how absolutely wonderful, I know how much this means to you and I’ve been praying – praying – every night for this.’

  She put her arm around Kate’s shoulders and pulled her into a hug. When Kate extracted herself she was astonished to see there were tears in Annabelle’s eyes.

  ‘Annabelle,’ Kate said. ‘That’s so lovely of you.’

  ‘I just know how wonderful it is to be a mother, and I want that for you so much.’

  This sincerity was so unexpected that Kate felt herself on the brink of crying. All the stress of the last few years, and the more recent tension of having Marisa in the house with them, churned up inside her and she had to press her fingernails into the palm of her hand to stop it from spilling out.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not pregnant,’ she managed to say. ‘But I – we – are hoping to be parents.’

  ‘Aha,’ Chris said, and then relapsed into silence.

  The waiter came then, at just the wrong moment, to ask if they wanted teas or coffees. Jake asked him to give them a minute and the waiter stalked off, offended.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Annabelle said.

  ‘The thing is, Mum,’ Jake started out shakily. ‘As you know, we’ve been trying, and nothing has worked – to put it bluntly. It’s been a terrible strain on Kate, who has been a trooper …’

  He caught her eye and she gave a minute shake of the head. She did not want him to go into how it had been for her.

  ‘But, on medical advice,’ Jake continued, getting the message, ‘we’ve decided to explore a new option, which is surrogacy.’

  ‘Surrogacy?’ Annabelle said, as if trying out a new foreign word for the first time.

  ‘Yes, it’s where another woman carries our baby—’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And, extremely fortunately, we’ve found a surrogate!’ His tone was breezy now, trying hard for nonchalance and not quite achieving it. ‘Her name is Marisa. She’s very generously agreed to help us and we can’t quite believe our luck, but there we have it.’

  Annabelle stared at Jake as if she had been slapped. Kate had never seen her lost for words. Her cheeks were hollow, her mouth slightly agape. She sat perfectly still except for her hands, which fidgeted in her lap like small birds.

  Chris took his napkin and, folding it up neatly, put it on the side of the table.

  ‘Well I think that’s something else to celebrate, don’t you?’ Chris said and it was the longest sentence he’d uttered since the meal began. He began filling their glasses and when he got to Annabelle’s, he leaned across the table and smiled at her, nodding his head as though encouraging a young child.

  ‘Thank you, Chris,’ Kate said.

  ‘Yes, thanks, Dad.’

  ‘Can’t have been easy,’ Chris was saying now. ‘I admire that you haven’t given up.’

  ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Jake asked.

  ‘What? Oh. Yes. Yes. Perfectly all right. I’m sorry. I’m just … taking it all in.’

  Kate reached out and pressed her hand softly against Annabelle’s upper arm. The silk felt cool and soft and slightly sticky beneath her palm.

  ‘It does take a while to get your head round it,’ Kate said. ‘Sorry to spring it on you like this.’

  Annabelle turned towards her.

  ‘But … surely you can’t be serious?’ she asked, with those sharp, hawkish eyes. ‘How do you know this Marisa woman?’

  ‘We met her through a surrogacy network,’ Jake answered, even though Annabelle was still looking directly at Kate, her distaste evident in the twist of her mouth.

  ‘It’s all above board,’ Jake said. ‘We’ve signed an agreement and we will be the legal parents—’

  Annabelle cut across him. ‘Legally, maybe, but what about genetically? These kinds of things are important. Especially for men. I read somewhere that they need their babies to look like them so that they can bond.’

  Kate almost laughed. Then she almost cried.

  ‘It’s not what we would have chosen,’ Kate said quietly.

  ‘But it’s where we are,’ Jake interjected smoothly. ‘Besides, nurture is far more important than nature.’ He paused and Annabelle lifted her fist to her mouth as if she were about to cough, but no sound came.

  ‘There are similarities where it matters,’ Jake continued. He told her a bit about Marisa’s background, emphasising the fact that she was an artist, which he knew would appeal to Annabelle’s cultural snobbishness.

  ‘An artist?’ Annabelle shrieked. ‘She must be desperate for cash. How much are you paying her?’

  ‘We’re not paying her anything,’ Jake said, ‘because that would be illegal.’ He left a pointed gap in the conversation before taking up the thread again. ‘We pay her reasonable expenses.’

  ‘What, like her rent? How much is that setting you back?’

  ‘Annabelle,’ Chris said softly. He made a shushing sound and motioned up and down with his hand, as though pushing a quiz show buzzer.

  Annabelle took a deep breath. She exhaled impatiently, then poured herself some sparkling water.

  ‘We’re not paying her rent—’

  ‘That’s something, I suppose,’ Annabelle said.

  ‘Because she’s living with us.’

  Annabelle put down her glass so quickly, the water spilled over the edges.

  ‘She’s living with you? Are you … I mean … have you … have you both taken leave of your senses? Surely that’s far too close for comfort? This isn’t parenthood, it’s a ménage a trois! Is the idea that you’ll have to’ – her voice dropped to a whisper – ‘impregnate her?’

  Kate could have hit her. Instead, she rose from the table and walked briskly to the loo. She almost lost her footing on the stone spiral staircase on the way down to the basement. She locked the cubicle door behind her and tried to regulate her breathing. When she emerged, there was an older woman standing at the basin next to her, reapplying lipstick in a virulent shade of pink.

  ‘You all right?’ the woman asked her.

  In the mirror, Kate noticed her cheeks were pale and that her mascara had run.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t apologise.’

  The woman finished putting her lipstick on and rubbed her lips together.

  ‘Family lunch?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Kate smiled as she washed her hands.

  ‘They�
�re the worst.’

  Kate dried her hands on a thick paper towel as the woman put the cap back on her lipstick and slipped it into her handbag which, Kate noticed, was vintage Chanel.

  ‘Good luck with it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Kate said, calmer now. ‘I like your bag, by the way.’

  ‘Oh, you are kind. It was given to me by my daughter.’

  Then she asked the question; the question that Kate always knew was coming – sometimes she could count the number of seconds it would take to be said out loud.

  ‘Do you have kids?’

  She shook her head. No, she thought, no I don’t have children. But if you knew how much it costs me to answer that, you wouldn’t ask.

  ‘I don’t,’ Kate said, balling up the paper towel and throwing it in the circular hole cut into the marbled counter-top.

  ‘Ah well. There’s still time.’

  Kate found it extraordinary how much ownership strangers felt they had over her uterus. People she had only just met would imagine they knew her age, her sexual proclivities and her maternal urges. There was an assumption, implicit in the question, that all women should want to have children and that those who didn’t were somehow lacking. It used to infuriate her. Now it just left her hollow.

  She let the woman leave the toilets first so that they didn’t have to walk back upstairs together. When Kate returned to the table, an impasse had been reached. Clearly words had been exchanged in her absence. Jake had probably told his parents what an unbalanced nutcase she was, Kate thought, and how she had been driven obsessive by the desire for motherhood and her failure to conceive. It was unfair of her to think like this, she knew. But she had to put her hurt somewhere.

  Annabelle stood as Kate reached the table and walked towards her, arms outstretched so that the blue sleeves hung down like drooping crocus heads.

  ‘Darling Kate. I’m so sorry for being insensitive.’

  Annabelle hugged her. The affection was administered like the bruising pain of a deep tissue massage: uncomfortable but ultimately a relief.

  ‘I’m very old-fashioned and ill-informed when it comes to these issues, and Jake’s explained it all to me and I do understand, truly I do. I think it’s tremendously brave of you to do this, knowing that the baby won’t be genetically yours. I suppose I was just worried about you both, that’s all. I apologise if I expressed myself badly.’

  Kate drew back but Annabelle wouldn’t let go.

  ‘Thank you, Annabelle.’

  ‘Can you ever forgive me?’ Annabelle said, lapsing into hyperbole so that there was no option but to say yes, of course she did, and no, don’t worry, she wasn’t offended and yes, she understood that it was an unconventional arrangement, and no, Annabelle mustn’t worry, it was all above board and yes, naturally she was glad Annabelle was excited about becoming a grandmother.

  Kate spent the rest of the lunch in a sort of daze, sipping her coffee and eating the chocolate truffles in a series of automatic movements that seemed beamed in from another galaxy. Chris ordered her a brandy, although she couldn’t remember having asked for it, and she downed it in three gulps. She was grateful for it and when Jake asked for the bill and paid and they went outside to hail a black cab to take his parents to the hotel, she felt at one remove from the world around her.

  She supposed she was sad, but the sadness now went so deep she had forgotten how to understand it.

  22

  It was Marisa, now, who was injecting herself every day with fertility drugs in order to stimulate egg production. It was Marisa who stored the little glass vials in the fridge, mixing the powder with the requisite amount of liquid, piercing the top with a needle and sucking it up inside the syringe. It was Marisa who would sit on the sofa in the kitchen, lifting her pyjama top to slide the needle into a firmly held section of her belly, and pressing down on the syringe. It was Marisa who released her hold on her flesh at the same moment as the drugs seeped into her bloodstream. It was Marisa who put the used needles into the yellow and purple sharps bin provided by the hospital, which they stored on top of the fridge. Kate would catch sight of it every time she opened the door to retrieve the milk and she would be reminded of all the times she had tried and failed to carry out the same process.

  It was Marisa who was the object of Jake’s solicitous enquiries as to how she was feeling, and did she need any help, and could he get her anything from the shops? It was Marisa who was the golden one, the chosen one, the fertile one, the one who would make all their dreams come true except their original dreams never involved a third person; except they had to adapt their dreams, to cut the starry cloth of their imaginings to fit the circumstance of their reality, and although they never spoke about it to each other, they both felt the lack of that ignorant innocence the lucky ones can bathe in, the ones who get pregnant and stay pregnant and believe that’s just how it happens; the ones who never have to think of the alternatives; the ones who don’t check for blood every time they go to the toilet; the ones who take parenthood as their due, as if plucking apples from a tree that will forever grow fruit.

  Kate tried in various small but significant ways to make herself a part of it. She told Marisa she wanted to be there for every injection, even offering to press the plunger down on the syringe herself.

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Marisa said. ‘I’m fine, honestly.’

  But I want to, Kate didn’t say.

  She included Marisa in their conversations, and asked if she was getting enough sleep or drinking enough water. She wanted to express kindly concern but Kate could tell that Marisa found it annoying coming from her rather than Jake, and even intrusive, so Kate began to censor herself, stopping her thoughts before she vocalised them. She was anxious about doing anything that would irritate or upset Marisa, who must be cocooned and insulated from stress. It meant that at mealtimes, Kate would often be almost entirely silent, while Jake and Marisa chatted easily. Jake was always so much better at that kind of thing.

  He was in a good mood about it all, extremely hopeful and optimistic that they would have their baby soon. He took to whistling around the house, and working out more in the garden, his chest lean and shiny with sweat as he performed Romanian deadlifts and lateral raises with ever heavier dumbbells. As the weather got warmer, Marisa would sit outside as he grunted and groaned, reading a book on the bench, saying she liked the company. Kate, observing them through the glass doors in the kitchen, thought how similar they looked: both blonde and glowing and healthy and vital. In the mirror each morning, Kate was met by her own narrow face and darkened eyes. There was a gauntness to her collarbone and her jeans were loose around the waistband. Her natural slenderness had edged into skinniness and it didn’t suit her. It made her look older but she was powerless to change it. Her body no longer felt like hers. It had its own set of impermeable rules. She was stupid to have ever thought otherwise.

  One day, she mentioned the pregnancy yoga class to Marisa, telling her she’d read an article about how being around pregnant women could boost fertility. Kate asked if she wanted to go.

  ‘Sure,’ Marisa said, giving her the luminous smile that always made Kate feel she had imagined any previous strangeness. ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  ‘Great. Let me know when you go and I’ll come with you.’

  Marisa raised her eyebrows by a fraction of a millimetre, then smoothed her face out as if nothing had occurred. But Kate had already seen. Or she thought she had seen, she couldn’t be sure. Marisa never did tell Kate that she was going to yoga. It was only by chance that Kate saw her leave the house one morning with a mat rolled up under her arm. She put in a call to the office to say she’d be working from home and then changed into her tracksuit bottoms and T-shirt. She tried to catch up with her but didn’t make it in time. When she got to the class, all the other women were in situ on their mats and ambient music was playing.

 
; It was a boring class, all the poses designed for the advanced stages of pregnancy, and Kate couldn’t wait for it to be over. Marisa was at the front of the room, trying her best to follow the instructor, but she moved in a lumbering, inelegant way that suggested she was a novice. Kate felt a glimmer of pride that she was better at yoga than Marisa. It seemed one of the only ways in which she was.

  After the class was over, Kate waited for Marisa to roll up her mat and leave. She said hello to her and was surprised at how cold Marisa was, how taken aback she seemed to see her. Kate tried to make light of it, filling the awkward conversational gaps with small talk designed to lift the mood.

  ‘I thought it would be a nice thing to do together, you know?’ Kate said.

  ‘Except we didn’t,’ Marisa said.

  ‘Didn’t what?’

  ‘Do it together. You skulked at the back.’

  Kate forced out a laugh.

  ‘I wasn’t skulking! I just wanted to give you your own space.’

  They walked out into the street together and Kate asked Marisa if she wanted to go for coffee so they could catch up and have a chat. Marisa said no, that she had a work deadline, and that was that. Kate stood on the kerb and watched as Marisa walked away from her, then turned back, looking over her shoulder. Kate raised her arm and waved, hoping she hadn’t offended her.

  They did the egg retrieval on a Wednesday. They took the afternoon off work to go to the clinic with Marisa. She was in a good mood, the business about the yoga class apparently forgotten. She was wearing a bright blue shirt, tucked into baggy corduroys that had a white paint dot on one knee. There was always something about her that looked unmade, unfinished – as though she hadn’t had time to get properly dressed. But at least, Kate thought, she hadn’t worn those hideous sandals she usually clomped about in when she worked.