Magpie

  ‘Yes, I’m sure the work commissions are piling up,’ Kate says.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Annabelle pipes up, ignoring the fact that Kate has spoken. ‘They’re gorgeous.’ To Jake she adds, ‘I’m going to get one framed and hang it in the hallway. It’ll look perfect there. Just above the umbrella stand.’

  ‘You mustn’t feel obliged to hang my art in your house, Annabelle!’ Marisa says. ‘You’ve been so generous already.’

  At this point, Annabelle reaches across the table and pats Marisa’s arm. Kate, disbelieving, has to double-check whether she’s seeing things but no, there is Annabelle’s hand, the semi-arthritic fingers sporting familiar thick gold and jewelled rings, resting on top of Marisa’s sleeve. Marisa pats Annabelle’s hand with her own.

  ‘I want your picture on our wall because I happen to think it’s fantastic – no other reason,’ Annabelle says.

  ‘I’d love to see it,’ Jake says finally. ‘We both would.’

  Marisa shakes her head prettily.

  ‘No, honestly, I’d be too embarrassed. It’s not ready yet.’

  ‘I understand,’ Jake says, leaning back in his chair and stretching out his arms with a groan. ‘It’s artistic prerogative. You must only show your work when it’s ready.’

  Kate snorts. It’s all such nonsense. She’s fed up of everyone pandering to Marisa’s every whim, as though one misplaced word might send her teetering back into the abyss. It is hurtful, listening to her boyfriend and his mother suck up to Marisa as if Kate weren’t also sitting right there. It’s as if she doesn’t have any place here. It’s as if they’d find it easier if she didn’t exist.

  The thought settles around her shoulders like a harness, buckles tightening themselves across her chest, and she realises her hands are gripping the arms of her chair, fingers curled under the edge of the wood like claws.

  ‘Are you OK, Kate?’ Marisa asks. When Kate looks up, she is met by Marisa’s gaze, a faint frown-line between her eyes. ‘You look a bit pale.’

  ‘What? No. I’m fine.’ She releases her hands and forces herself to breathe. ‘Sorry, I was miles away. Just thinking about this thing at work that’s stressing me out – there’s a big PR push next week before the Toronto Film Festival.’

  The company had taken on too many films at the same time and she and her colleagues were currently besieged by deadlines. The time difference with Toronto didn’t help either. It was her fault, as she was the one in charge of shaping their promotional schedule, but she had wanted to prove something. She had wanted to show herself that she had worth outside of the surrogacy; that she was still good at her job.

  ‘There are a lot of premieres to organise apart from anything else, and you know what these high-maintenance types are like,’ she is telling Annabelle now. She doesn’t know why she’s gabbling. She wants to stop talking but can’t. ‘And, well, it’s hectic,’ she concludes, weakly.

  ‘Gracious,’ Annabelle says. ‘I hope you’ll start winding down before the baby comes. You can’t be handling all that with a newborn.’

  ‘Thank you, Annabelle,’ Kate says, with deliberate politeness. ‘I’m sure we’ll be OK.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that in my day. All you working women, with your full-time careers, wanting to have it all …’

  Kate offers to make the teas. She turns on the cold water tap and watches it run for longer than she needs to before filling the kettle. Jake comes to help her, gathering mugs from the cupboard and loose-leaf tea from the pantry. He taps her on the elbow and mouths, ‘You OK?’ She nods.

  ‘Right, well I’ll get on with clearing the table then,’ Annabelle says.

  Jake and Marisa simultaneously protest.

  ‘Oh no, you mustn’t do that, let me …’

  ‘You’ve made the whole lunch, Annabelle – I’ll clear up …’

  But Annabelle has already started collecting the empty bowls, stacking each one with a bright, clattering sound that seems specifically designed to draw attention to itself. Marisa, hoisting herself out of her seat, lumbers over to the dishwasher and opens the door, sliding out the cutlery tray in readiness.

  It is as she is waiting for the kettle to boil that Kate turns around and sees the two women standing side by side in front of the dishwasher. From the back, they look almost identical in their navy tops and their light, pinned-up hair. Both of them are broad-shouldered and strong-limbed, narrow waists curving into wider hips exactly as women are biologically designed to be. The similarity is so pronounced that Kate wonders why she has never properly noticed it until now. She shivers and looks away. Heat from the kettle has steamed the window. Her vision blurs and when she makes the tea, her hand shakes as she pours.

  31

  After that, Kate decides to stay away from the red-brick house in the country as much as possible and Jake handles the day-to-day dealings with Annabelle. Being around Annabelle has always made Kate question her own strength of mind, and she feels drained by every encounter. If she doesn’t interact with her, Annabelle loses the power to hurt her, Kate reasons.

  Jake tells her that she’s taken his mother’s comments out of context, that she’s in danger of losing perspective by ‘obsessing over every tiny perceived slight’ and that she needs to give herself space ‘for her own peace of mind’. Jake says all this kindly, insisting he is on her side, and she nods silently, not wanting to make the situation harder than it currently is. Besides, they both end up wanting the same thing, which is for Kate not to be around his mother more than she absolutely has to be. But inside, Kate is worried.

  She calls Ajesh. They haven’t seen each other for months. After he brought Jake to her thirtieth, they hung out as a threesome a few times, but something about it didn’t quite work. It always felt as if one person never fully belonged, as though the re-establishment of different lines of intimacy could never be triangulated.

  Kate hadn’t really noticed when they fell out of each other’s lives. In the early days of her romance with Jake, the relationship between the two of them had seemed the most important thing in her life, and a lot of her friends had fallen by the wayside. She only became aware of what had happened when it was already too late: her contemporaries were having babies at just the same time as she was having to contend with infertility and surrogacy and she found she had no time or inclination to keep up with WhatsApp groups and shared voicenotes and regular coffees after yoga or evening glasses of Pinot. She was an unreliable friend, and perhaps a resentful one. She had never got the knack of cultivating a closeness to other women. They seemed to feel that Kate didn’t need them, but she did – it was simply that she could not express her own neediness without feeling bitter about their uncomplicated paths to motherhood.

  Ajesh was different. He had no desire to settle down and had never had a girlfriend for longer than six months. His own unpredictability meant that Kate didn’t feel judged for her failure to return phone calls or emails. He would dip in and out of her life at irregular intervals, having just returned from a hiking trip around Bhutan or an Ayurvedic retreat in Somerset, and they would stay in touch in a tenuous sort of way.

  When she calls him and he answers, and she hears his voice for the first time in ages, she realises she is lonely and longing for his flirty irreverence. Everything else has become so serious. She wants Ajesh to remind her she exists as her own person; that she is fun and not just insecure and preoccupied.

  When she meets him for coffee on the Southbank, she tells him about her dealings with Annabelle, without going into detail about anything that has happened with Marisa. She likes Ajesh but she doesn’t fully trust him, and she and Jake have agreed that the fewer people who know about Marisa’s breakdown, the better. It is precarious enough already, without unwanted outside intervention. So she explains that Marisa is staying in the countryside with Jake’s parents, so that she can get regular fresh air and be out of London, and so tha
t they can maintain a closeness to her without overstepping any boundaries. She brings him up to date on Annabelle’s antics.

  ‘Mate, it’s not good for you to be around toxic people,’ Ajesh says. They are sitting on the outside terrace of the Royal Festival Hall so that Ajesh can smoke.

  ‘Want one?’ he asks as he rolls himself a thin cigarette. It is windy and yet he licks the paper with practised ease, not losing a single wisp of tobacco. At university, Ajesh was always the best person to roll joints at a party. He would call them ‘dense but chic’ which got shortened to ‘DBC’ in their friendship group.

  ‘No thanks.’

  Almost as soon as Kate has said it, she changes her mind, wanting suddenly to be the younger her, the one who existed before babies and dysfunctional surrogates and who didn’t worry about smoking hand-rolled tobacco because, back then, it seemed cool and like something you’d do in a French movie. ‘Actually, go on.’

  He passes her the cigarette he’s just rolled and lights it for her. She inhales and the nicotine hits the back of her eyes, thudding through her synapses. She is light-headed and her thoughts unfurl, like sea anemones.

  ‘Wow,’ she says. ‘I’m out of practice.’

  Ajesh laughs.

  ‘You know it’s not weed don’t you, fam?’

  ‘Yeah, OK, I’m not a complete twat.’

  ‘Never said you were. You were always the coolest out of all of us.’

  ‘As if.’

  ‘Seriously. Jake got very lucky with you.’

  He looks at her steadily.

  ‘You’ve been through a lot, Katie,’ he says. ‘And Annabelle sounds like a right bitch. So, y’know, fuck her. The most important thing is that you’ll be a mum in a couple of months and that’s great. So, so great.’

  She takes a second drag and then a third.

  ‘It’s all gonna be OK,’ he says.

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘More than OK. It’ll be brilliant. You’ll be an amazing mum. Jake will be the world’s cutest dad. You just need to get through this rough patch and you’ll be golden. Trust your old uncle Ajesh.’

  She smiles at him. Ajesh has always had this ability to make her feel special, as though she can handle anything. It’s nice to be reminded of it.

  ‘You’re so sweet, thank you.’

  He leans back, turning up his collar and folding his arms. He is wearing a suede coat, a grey cashmere scarf and black jeans half tucked into oversized army boots.

  ‘Of course,’ he says, casually blowing a smoke ring. ‘What are friends for? You better make me godfather, that’s all I’m saying.’

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘Just stay away from Annabelle as much as you can,’ he says. ‘Dial down the volume on her.’ He mimics turning a radio dial.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says, dropping the cigarette onto the ground, stepping on the butt with her boot and crushing it.

  ‘The universe is unfolding exactly as is intended,’ Ajesh adds.

  ‘When did you get so wise?’

  ‘To be fair, that’s not me. That’s a poet called Max Ehrmann.’

  They laugh. Ajesh walks her to the tube with his arm around her shoulders. She returns home feeling lighter than she has done in months. When Jake gets back from work, she goes to greet him at the door and kisses him, holding him tight, pressing the bulk of him against her. He looks pleased and things are a little easier between them after that.

  When they are seven and a half months pregnant, Annabelle surprises them by suggesting a baby shower.

  ‘I thought it would be nice,’ she says over the phone. ‘You know, they’re very popular.’

  ‘Oh,’ Kate replies. ‘Yes. Um. OK.’

  In truth, she can think of nothing more garish and over-sentimentalised than a baby shower.

  Even Jake thinks it’s ridiculous.

  ‘It’s the most un-Mum thing I’ve ever heard,’ he says when Kate tells him. ‘She didn’t even believe in Valentine’s Day when we were growing up. Said it was an American invention.’

  But they agree, of course, because it’s Annabelle and they have to play nice, at least until the baby arrives.

  This time, the car is full, packed with six blue helium balloons and a cake with blue icing and the words ‘Baby Boy’ emblazoned across the top in fondant copperplate, all of which Annabelle ordered online from London shops, having found the boutiques of Tewkesbury wanting.

  ‘Why on earth couldn’t she get them delivered to her?’ Kate asks.

  ‘She said the cake “wouldn’t travel well”.’

  ‘And the balloons?’

  ‘She’s gone mad,’ Jake jokes as they turn out of Richborne Terrace and he struggles to see out of the rear-view mirror because of all the paraphernalia in the back. ‘It’s finally happened.’

  The baby shower felt dangerous in its presumption, as though she were daring fate to snatch away the thing she most wanted. Last week, Kate had told her work about the pregnancy and it had been difficult to explain to her colleagues that yes, she was having a baby but no, she wasn’t actually having it.

  ‘Wow,’ her assistant Monique had said. ‘That’s so cool.’

  ‘Really?’ Kate asked, taken aback. She’d anticipated questions and widened eyes and maybe even some mild disapproval, but everyone was immediately supportive and accepted the situation with a matter-of-factness that left her slightly deflated.

  ‘Yeah,’ Monique said. ‘It’s so badass being a woman who knows what she wants and just, y’know, goes out and gets it.’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than that,’ Kate said gently. ‘But thank you. That means a lot.’

  Even then, Kate worried she was speaking too soon, that it might not happen the way it was meant to, that Marisa would change her mind about handing their child over, or that she would have another psychotic breakdown or that any manner of unanticipated events could harm the future they craved. But she couldn’t hope to explain any of this to the outside world.

  A baby shower is the last thing she feels like.

  They arrive at the farmhouse shortly after midday.

  ‘Jesus,’ Jake says. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  Kate follows his eyes and then she sees it: a banner hung across the front door, silvery blue letters hanging from a string spelling out ‘About To Pop’.

  She starts to laugh and then Jake joins her and for a few seconds, they are unable to stop themselves. He is doubled over, hands on his knees, and she is wiping tears from her eyes when Annabelle opens the door.

  ‘What on earth is the matter?’ she asks them. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Jake says, collecting himself. ‘Hi Mum. Great banner by the way.’

  Kate chews the inside of her cheek to stop herself from breaking into laughter again.

  ‘Oh that,’ Annabelle waves her hand. ‘Just a bit of fun. Chris found it in the village shop, can you believe it? The stuff they have in there!’

  ‘Catering for every conceivable occasion,’ Kate adds, sotto voce.

  Annabelle looks at her in that way she has, as though only just remembering her existence. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What a lovely occasion,’ Kate says, more loudly.

  Annabelle is in a diaphanous floor-length dress which seems to be made up of several intertwined pieces of fabric, gathered up and tied in a rope-like construction at her neck. She looks like an imposing Greek goddess, the kind they built 13-metre-high statues to in the Acropolis.

  ‘Come in, come in. I’ve set everything up in the drawing room. Marisa’s so excited about seeing you, the darling girl.’

  Kate stops in her tracks. She glances at Jake. He looks away and lowers his head and she knows he has heard it too and doesn’t know what to do with himself. The darling girl, Kate thinks? Annabelle ha
s never been so casually affectionate with her.

  Jake reaches out to take her hand. Kate does not give it to him. They walk into the drawing room where Chris is ensconced in his usual armchair.

  ‘Ah, here we all are,’ Chris says, rising to greet them both.

  Marisa is sitting on the flowery sofa to one side, wearing a bright blue smock dress Kate has never seen before. Marisa stays seated when Kate walks over to her.

  ‘Sorry,’ she titters. ‘It takes quite a lot of effort to stand up from a sofa these days.’

  Her pregnant belly sticks out half a foot in front of her, a mountainous beacon of her indisputable womanhood, announcing itself proudly to the room. She proffers her cheek to be kissed by Jake and then by Kate, whom she grabs by the hand, saying fervently, ‘It’s so good to see you. Baby will be here any day now!’

  Kate nods, teeth gritted, and although she wants to be aloof towards Marisa, she also can’t help but be drawn, ineluctably as though to the edge of a waterfall, to the baby bump. She places her hands on the solid warmth of it. Without warning, there is a thumping beneath her left palm.

  ‘Oooh, someone wants some attention,’ Marisa laughs. ‘He’s been kicking all night. Barely had a wink.’

  Kate’s heart beats faster. It is as if her baby has given her a sign that he knows she is here. His mother. The real one.

  ‘I remember Jakey was just the same,’ Annabelle says. ‘Quite the little kicker, wasn’t he, Chris?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘We were sure you’d be a rugby player,’ Annabelle continues, fiddling with her earring and gazing into space.

  ‘Can I feel?’ Jake says, kneeling down beside Kate. Reluctantly, Kate shifts to one side and he places his hands on Marisa’s tummy. Kate watches as those familiar knuckles and close-cut fingernails rest on another woman’s body, and then she turns away and asks Chris if she can have a drink, and he says of course, how remiss of me, and he pours her a gin and tonic that is at least a double measure and probably a triple.

  ‘Did you bring the cake?’ Annabelle asks.