Magpie

  Mr Abadi was pleased with Marisa’s progress.

  ‘Very good,’ he said, checking her charts. ‘That’s looking very good indeed.’

  He beamed at Marisa in a way he never had at Kate.

  Jake went into another room to provide his sample. He re-emerged half an hour later, hands in his pockets. Kate couldn’t meet his eye. As much as she tried to rationalise the process, it was still disarming to think of his sperm being used to fertilise another woman’s eggs. What did he think of when he masturbated? she wondered. Was he thinking of her? Of someone else? Or was he flicking through the dog-eared porn magazines the clinic provided?

  For the collection process itself, Kate and Jake were directed to a waiting area.

  ‘I promise I’ll come out and tell you how many we get as soon as possible,’ Mr Abadi said, ushering Marisa behind a screen.

  ‘Bye guys,’ Marisa said as she left. ‘Here’s hoping.’

  She crossed her fingers and they crossed theirs back.

  ‘You’re doing amazingly,’ Kate said, forcing herself to sound positive. She told herself to remember Marisa’s generosity and not to focus on her own sad memories of this exact room in this exact clinic. This was how it had to happen.

  Jake gripped her hand tightly.

  ‘You OK?’ Kate asked him.

  He nodded, his jaw set in a rigid line.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.

  Marisa produced fourteen eggs. Mr Abadi was in ecstasies.

  ‘It’s a very good number. Very good,’ he kept saying. ‘Very good size.’

  Fourteen, Kate thought. It was excessive. It was as if Marisa were trying to prove a point.

  Beside her, Jake’s shoulders relaxed and he broke into a smile.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, standing to shake Mr Abadi by the hand.

  ‘Yes,’ Kate added quietly. ‘Wonderful.’

  The next day, Kate’s mobile rang with an unknown number. It was Mr Abadi, to tell her that eight of the eggs had fertilised. She called Jake at work, and they both knew it was good news but that they would have to wait until they could be sure of it. The fertilised eggs now needed to divide and multiply their cells at the requisite rate for five days until they could be deemed worthy of transfer. On day five, Mr Abadi called again to tell Kate that they had ‘six perfect blastocysts’. A blastocyst, she already knew, meant that the cells were starting to separate into those that would form the baby and those that would grow into the placenta. She knew that the blastocyst would have hatched, like a chick from an egg, sprouting from its protective shell to form the zona pellucida. She had looked up the etymology of this term during their first IVF cycle and found that it meant a shining bright ring. She imagined this ring now as a flaming loop around their planet of three, a protective shield of light.

  Mr Abadi suggested transferring two embryos, ‘but with embryos of this quality, I warn you: you must be prepared for twins!’ He sounded almost giddy on the phone, full of an avuncular good cheer Kate had never heard before. ‘And then we can freeze the remaining four, and you will be able to have more children than you can shake a stick at.’

  They followed his advice, as they always had. It was now a force of habit, as though, in their desperation to be parents, they had lost the power of critical thinking. Two embryos were transferred later that same day and the three of them got a black cab back from the clinic to Richborne Terrace. None of them talked in the taxi. The driver was listening to Magic FM, so the back of the cab was filled with easy listening pop tunes. Marisa, sitting next to Kate, leaned back with a sigh. Jake, perched on the jump-seat opposite her, asked if she was feeling tired.

  ‘A little, yeah. Must be the sedation. Mr Abadi said it felt like drinking two gin and tonics and he wasn’t wrong.’

  Mr Abadi had used the same line on Kate, but she didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marisa cradling her stomach. Overkill, she thought uncharitably.

  There was a fortnight’s wait, during which Marisa was counselled not to take overly hot baths or to do any strenuous exercise.

  ‘No more yoga,’ she said to Kate. ‘What a shame!’

  ‘I don’t think that class could ever be categorised as strenuous,’ Kate replied. ‘But you absolutely must rest.’

  Every day for two weeks, Kate brought Marisa breakfast in bed.

  ‘You don’t need to do this,’ Marisa said, reaching for the hot buttered toast as she spoke.

  Kate sat at the edge of the mattress, sipping her coffee as Marisa ate. They chatted a little, about how Marisa’s painting was going, about the films Kate was promoting, about everything other than the thing that was actually consuming them. Kate felt closer to Marisa than she had done in weeks. She began to allow herself to feel the slenderest filament of optimism. She felt like cooking again, and made Jake his favourite dishes. Roast chicken with home-made bread sauce. Nigel Slater’s classic ratatouille. A recipe for Moroccan lamb and prune tagine she had picked up in a free supermarket magazine.

  And then: macaroni cheese, which she cooked one night with Marisa sitting on the sofa watching TV. It was the thirteenth day of their two-week wait. Tomorrow, Marisa would take a pregnancy test in the morning, first thing after she woke up when the hormone levels would be at their highest. That way, there would be no false positives.

  Kate was nervous, but also excited and as she waited to hear the turn of Jake’s key in the lock, she experienced a fluttery sensation in her stomach, as she had in the first days of their dating. She wanted to be close to him and to feel his arms around her. When he got home, he walked into the kitchen and smelled the melting cheese emanating from the oven and went straight to Kate’s side, trying to open the oven as she swatted his hand away, telling him it wasn’t ready yet.

  ‘OK, OK, I promise,’ he said, shrugging himself out of his jacket and loosening his tie.

  ‘Hi,’ Marisa said from the sofa.

  ‘Oh, hi Marisa,’ Jake replied, cheerfully waving towards her.

  He turned to get himself a glass of water and as he did so, Marisa dashed out of the room, her head lowered.

  Kate slid her hands out of the oven mitts, leaving them on the counter.

  ‘What was that about?’ Jake asked.

  She shrugged.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Something I said?’

  She laughed at him, then went across and put her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply on the mouth.

  ‘Probably,’ she joked. ‘It’s probably all your fault.’

  He looked at her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear with the tips of his fingers. It was a familiar, proprietorial gesture and Kate liked it.

  ‘I better go and check on her,’ he said. ‘See if she’s OK.’

  ‘Yes, you do that. I’ll finish up down here.’

  Jake went upstairs and Kate took out the macaroni cheese, allowing it to stand and sizzle on the counter as she put together a green salad. She sliced the cucumbers and peeled an avocado and by the time Jake came back into the kitchen, she was halfway through making a vinaigrette.

  ‘All OK?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ he said and he reached across to the chopping board and popped a piece of cucumber in his mouth.

  A few minutes later, just as Jake was laying the table and lighting the candles, they heard Marisa scream. Jake dropped the knives and forks with a clatter and ran upstairs and Kate, heart beating wildly, followed close behind. As they reached the first-floor bathroom, the door swung open and Marisa darted out, her cheeks wet, holding a pregnancy test aloft.

  ‘We’re pregnant!’ she said, half shouting across the landing.

  ‘What?’ Kate said, feeling as though she might faint. ‘What?’

  Jake’s shoulders shook and he started to cry. ‘I can’t believe it,
’ he kept saying. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  He went to Marisa, hugging her tightly, and then Marisa was crying too and Kate, pressing herself against the wall to steady the sudden shakiness of the world, sensed her knees give way as she slid to the floor. She clasped her head in her hands and wondered who was sobbing until she realised the sound was coming from her.

  23

  The three of them settled into a routine. The pregnancy now became the focal point around which the household was run. Marisa had to sleep as much as her body told her she needed, so Kate and Jake were quiet in the mornings, leaving the house on tiptoes, gently closing the door behind them so it wouldn’t slam. Kate bought folic acid and pregnancy multi-vitamins, stacking them in the cupboard above the sink. She Googled the best foods for early pregnancy and cooked healthy, colourful meals full of leafy green vegetables and oily fish. Marisa, pale with nausea, couldn’t eat most of it so Kate ate for her, as if she could transmit all the necessary nutrients via osmosis.

  For the first month, Kate wouldn’t allow herself to believe in it fully. She kept asking Marisa to take new pregnancy tests and Marisa sweetly obliged.

  ‘Here you go,’ Marisa would say, handing over the stick with the two pink lines or the digital aperture displaying the single word ‘pregnant’.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kate answered.

  Marisa hugged her.

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  Kate built up a fairly substantial collection of positive pregnancy tests, storing each one in the drawer of the bathroom cabinet which stood by the basin. Sometimes she would open the drawer just to look at them, stacked neatly side by side, so that she could be reminded of this essential truth: they were pregnant. After so long, after so much yearning and loss, here the fact was.

  Marisa took to her new condition with ease. She appeared calmer than she had done for ages and Kate began to think it hadn’t been fair of her to judge. They had all been living on frayed nerves for too long. Now the pressure lifted, and it felt like a cool breeze rustling through grass after a heatwave.

  In bed at night, Kate fell asleep in Jake’s arms, not waking until morning. Her sleep was dreamless and solid and she woke rested. Jake started texting her again during the day, little messages to say he was thinking of her or that he loved her or that he couldn’t wait to fuck her later. Reading these texts at her desk, Kate hadn’t realised how much she had missed them. When they made noiseless love, they did so urgently, as though they couldn’t physically get close enough, as though they both wanted to consume the other.

  In the second month, Kate started thinking again of baby names. It was a discussion she and Jake had had countless times before, but when her IVF cycles had started failing, they had shelved it without anything more being said. It was too painful to imagine a baby with a name because it gave them expectation, and expectation was the cruellest trick when you weren’t expecting.

  This time, with Marisa carrying their twin top-grade embryos, Kate was more confident. She liked Maya and Eva for girls and Leo and Oscar for boys, but she didn’t say anything to Jake because they both knew fate was too unpredictable to be tempted.

  After waiting for so long, nine more months now seemed nearly impossible to endure.

  They took to telling the babies they loved them, bending down to Marisa’s tummy and whispering ‘I love you’ directly into her belly. Marisa smiled benignly as she watched them do this, joking that her stomach had never had so much attention.

  For a while it was perfect. It was important for Kate to remember that, later, after everything that happened. For a while, it seemed to be going so well.

  At first it was the small things that edged uncomfortably into Kate’s consciousness, like the distant slap of a wasp thudding against a window.

  At the weekends, Marisa stayed in her room until late afternoon. Kate would knock on the door, wondering if she wanted a cup of herbal tea and there would be no answer. When Marisa came out, she was uncommunicative, responding to questions with single word replies, eating her dinner without joining in the chat. They asked her if she was feeling OK, if she needed anything and what could they do.

  ‘I’m just tired,’ Marisa would say. ‘It’s fine, honestly.’

  During the week, there was no way of checking up on her. Kate started ringing the house from her office in the middle of the day but Marisa never picked up the phone. She had never been good at answering her mobile, so there was no point trying. The buzzing of the wasp got nearer and louder. Marisa spent longer and longer in her room, and when Kate asked her why, Marisa told her she was working, trying to meet a flurry of deadlines.

  ‘I’d love to see some of your new paintings,’ Kate said, trying to start a conversation.

  Marisa looked at her oddly.

  ‘I’m not painting as much. More writing at the moment,’ she said.

  ‘Oh!’ Kate continued brightly. ‘You’re so clever to be able to do both.’

  It was true that she noticed Marisa writing more. When she was sitting in her usual place, on the far side of the kitchen sofa in front of the television as Kate or Jake cooked, Marisa would be scribbling rapidly in a notebook, the scratch of the pen providing an irregular rhythm to their conversation. Kate wanted to ask what she was writing but something about Marisa’s mood left her too scared to do so.

  ‘Am I being stupid?’ she asked Jake one Saturday when they had gone for a walk in Battersea Park.

  ‘No. I’ve definitely noticed the change in her.’ The sun came out in one of those unexpected bursts so familiar to London, and he fished out his Ray-Bans from his jacket pocket. ‘I’ve had a word with her about some of it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, that business with the milk boiling over, and I didn’t know whether to tell you this but—’

  He looked out towards the river, refusing to meet her eye.

  ‘What?’ Kate said. ‘Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘Um. My mother paid her an unscheduled visit.’

  ‘Annabelle?’

  Jake smiled.

  ‘I do only have the one mother.’

  ‘Thank goodness,’ she said.

  He told her then about how Annabelle had turned up on the doorstep and Marisa had invited her in for coffee and Kate didn’t know whether to be furious at the imposition or grateful that she’d taken an interest.

  ‘I think,’ Jake continued, as they walked past the pagoda, ‘that she found my mother a bit forceful.’

  ‘I bet. Poor Marisa. I guess it makes sense she’s been a bit jumpy since then.’

  Jake took a sip from his disposable coffee cup and when he lowered it, there was a thin trail of cappuccino foam lining his upper lip like a moustache.

  ‘I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,’ he said. ‘It’s probably just hormonal, isn’t it?’

  ‘First trimester stuff,’ Kate replied.

  ‘Exactly. You’re meant to go a bit loopy, aren’t you? She’s probably feeling sick and exhausted and not wanting to bother us with it.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Kate was relieved to be reassured.

  ‘If anything,’ Jake said, putting his arm around her shoulders, ‘it’s a good sign.’

  But back at home, the unease lingered. Kate had hoped that, by inviting Marisa to live with them, it would quickly become a normalised arrangement. Instead, it had begun to feel like living with a teenage lodger who had unpredictable mood swings but had to be indulged in order to keep the peace. When she asked Marisa what she had thought of Annabelle, Marisa seemed shocked.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Jake told me.’

  Kate couldn’t understand why Marisa had been so unforthcoming about it.

  ‘I know Annabelle can be … a lot,’ she said, trying to gloss over it.

  ‘I thought she was wonderful,’ Marisa repli
ed. ‘I really admired her.’

  Kate didn’t push it. She told herself it was a positive thing that Marisa should feel this way and that perhaps it would encourage Annabelle to support the arrangement too. So she and Jake continued to treat Marisa as a fragile, precious fledgling which must be cosseted and handled with great care. Marisa was shielding their baby and they in turn had to shield her. Kate attributed her listlessness and occasional absent-mindedness to pregnancy tiredness, and turned to the online fertility forums to find the evidence she needed to back this assumption up.

  ‘Never felt tiredness like it,’ wrote @wheresthegin42. ‘I went to bed for three hours every afternoon.’

  ‘When I was pregnant with DD, I was so sick,’ added @MummaBear. ‘Like the worst hangover but no wine lol. Making up for it now though!’

  ‘You go girl,’ replied @northlondonprincess. ‘Us mommas need some me-time!!!!’

  The weekend before their twelve-week scan, Kate and Jake had been in the sitting room reading the papers while Marisa was upstairs. It was comfortable, the two of them like this, just as it had been in their Battersea flat, and Kate wanted to put on some music that would remind them of those earlier years, before life had got so serious. She flicked through the playlists in her phone until she found an old Oasis album, then she plugged it into the speakers, turned it up and allowed the drums to kick in.

  She started singing the lyrics, jumping up and down and letting her hair fall over her face like she was at a festival, and then Jake was next to her, dancing with one hand up in the air as he always did, and they were both singing the chorus now, feeling the bass thrum up beneath their feet, sending a vibrating jolt through their bodies. It was so good to let loose like this, to allow the air into their lungs, to move like they didn’t care, to forget their adult selves for a brief moment and she was grinning wildly at Jake, and then the song stopped and there was a pause before the next banger kicked in.

  They were both out of breath, so they leaned against the mantelpiece to recover, allowing the album and its memories to blaze through them as they nodded their heads to the beat.