How Was It For You?

by Carmen Reid

  But Rosie, maybe seeing Pamela clock the jacket, said: ‘Lachlan’s sorry he’ll miss you. He’s picking the children up from school and taking them out somewhere. Giving me a bit of a break.’ Rosie tucked in a little smile at this. Giving nothing away.

  ‘So, you’re starting with the hall?’ Pamela asked. The long corridor was covered in a patterned wallpaper which had been over-painted in white.

  ‘Yes. Egg yolk yellow, that’s the plan. It shouldn’t look too bad with the carpet.’ Rosie pointed at the brown, battered old weave beneath them.‘No funds to change that just yet.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Pamela assured her.‘Yellow and brown, very warm, rich.’ She would have offered to look around and listen to Rosie’s other ideas, but Rosie didn’t suggest it, so neither did Pamela. Maybe the last thing Rosie wanted was Pamela even standing inside her home.

  So they went into the scruffy kitchen and concluded business quickly.

  Once Pamela had Rosie’s cheque in her bag, there was no reason to linger. She stood up from the table to take her leave.

  ‘How are you enjoying farm life?’ Rosie asked.‘Do you think you and Dave will stay?’

  It seemed an intensely personal question in the circumstances and Pamela struggled with the answer: ‘Ummm . . . yes . . . It’s very different. I’m still settling in – I feel very new to it. Dave loves it, though . . . I think.’ She couldn’t help putting in the doubt at the end. What did she know now about what Dave thought? Would they stay on? She had absolutely no idea.

  Back at home after the meeting with Rosie, she’d thought she wanted the comfort of tea, but rifling through the varieties in the cupboard she didn’t feel as if she could face any of them. She was so tired and so wound up – to the point of feeling physically sick. She had felt like this for over a week now. No wonder, she’d thought at first, all this bloody stress. But then over the past few days she’d worried, in the back of her mind, if maybe it wasn’t the beginning of something more sinister, so she’d decided to try and speak to the IVF doctor who had treated her last.

  She’d left several messages for him and now, just towards 5 p.m., the house phone was ringing and it was Dr Rosen, finally calling her back.

  As charming as ever, he asked how the move was going and wanted to know if she and Dave were planning to come back to London for further treatment. Pamela answered the questions, then began to outline her current symptoms and her fear that her pre-menopause was kicking in.

  ‘I have dizzy spells,’ she confided.‘I’ve skipped two periods, I feel sick and a bit strange, not at all myself. I think I need a check-up. I’m worried that this is it. The end of the road and I won’t be able to try again.’

  The doctor asked further questions and listened carefully to her.‘Something seems to be up,’ was his verdict.‘It could be a number of things . . . or it could be nothing. Like you say, you should come in and have a check-up. Those are of course typical early pregnancy symptoms,’ he added, followed swiftly by, ‘Although I suppose in you and your husband’s case that’s very unlikely. Still –’ authoritative doctor voice – ‘we’d want to check that out.’

  ‘Pregnancy??!!’ she repeated. He couldn’t have said anything more surprising to her.‘Pregnancy?’ she asked once again.‘Hello. This is me, we’re talking about, the woman whose body has rejected the finest embryos medical science could provide. No, definitely not pregnant.’

  But even as she said the words, she could feel the conviction draining from her. In her and Dave’s case it was very unlikely, yes, but what about . . . her and Lachlan!? In her mind, suddenly, he was there, his mouth pressed right up against her ear, gasping . . . Pregnant? Pregnant?

  What if . . . somehow . . . by some miracle, Lachlan had succeeded where medical science had failed?

  ‘How would I know?’ she asked her doctor, almost dazed with the idea . . . with the problems . . . with the possible . . .

  ‘Just take a pregnancy test!’ She heard the bemusement in his voice.‘If it’s negative, make an appointment to see me and we’ll check you out. If it’s positive, well . . . maybe it’s your husband who should come in for a check-up!’

  Then he added, ‘Look, I don’t want to give you false hope, Pamela, it is unlikely, but then again we don’t have all the answers. I’ve come across all kinds of inexplicable pregnancies which have happened when couples weren’t trying.’

  Not trying? Well, she and Dave certainly hadn’t been trying, but wasn’t it possible, just maybe, way in the back of her mind, that she’d thought it was worth a try with Lachlan? – No need to be careful – That she’d known there was always the remotest, slightest of chances? Wasn’t a huge part of his attraction that he had to be one of the most fertile men she could have picked for herself? But it hadn’t really been like that! She checked herself. He had wooed her, seduced her . . . she hadn’t coldly picked him out as possible genetic material!

  As soon as Pamela put the phone down, she had to have a pregnancy test. It was ten past five. If she raced to town, there was a chance of catching the chemist’s, which she knew closed at 5.30. She grabbed her bag and keys and rushed out of the house, into the Landy and down the road as fast as she dared.

  The blinds were being pulled down in the shop as she got there, but she knocked on the door and the woman inside opened up.

  ‘Something urgent?’ the woman asked Pamela.

  ‘Yes, if it’s OK. It won’t take a minute.’ Putting aside the thought of how this might be quite the talk at the Hacienda for days to come, she said, ‘I need a pregnancy test.’

  ‘An over the counter one? Or the pharmacist’s own? They take 24 hours and I’d need you to come back in the morning,’ the woman said. Still standing in the doorway, she hadn’t let Pamela into the shop yet.

  ‘An over the counter one, please. Please can I get it now? It’s very important.’

  She was ushered in and directed to the shelf.

  ‘I’ll take these two, please.’ She handed the boxes to the assistant.

  ‘They have two tests inside,’ the assistant explained.

  ‘Well, even so. I want to be on the safe side.’

  The woman nodded and took her money without asking Pamela any of the things she’d been bracing herself for: Is this your first? Have you been trying long? Are you hoping for good news?

  ‘Thanks. Sorry to keep you,’ Pamela said, bundling the packets into her handbag, thinking only of getting home as quickly as she could.

  No minute in her whole life had ever taken as long as the minute needed for the test result to develop. She turned the indicator over in her hands with her eyes closed, holding her breath. Finally, she allowed herself to look and saw that it was positive.

  Positive. Two straight lines.

  She gasped with the shock of it, then did the only thing she could think of in the enormity of the moment – opened another test, to do it again.

  Then another . . . then once again . . .

  Until all four had indicated the same result. Pregnant. Absolutely, positively pregnant.

  In the past, she’d always imagined that the positive pregnancy test moment would be one of the happiest in her life – but then she could never have imagined circumstances like this.

  She could feel the rush of dizziness, the ominous sway of the room, so sat quickly down on the lid of the toilet to steady herself.

  This was terrible but wonderful, awful but glorious, a disaster . . . a miracle! She was pregnant! But by Lachlan. She might have a baby! But Dave would never forgive her.

  The flood of tears loosened in her now.‘This is so unfair!’ she sobbed into her hands. Seven years of trying with Dave. Seven years!

  It had only taken Lachlan about seven minutes.

  So unfair! So unfair. Not how it was supposed to be at all. This was like a horrible fairy tale, where someone is granted their one and only dearest wish, their heart’s desire, only to make a total balls-up of it.

  Chapter Thirty-two

/>   SUNDAY MORNING, A full 36 hours later . . . Pamela woke up to full-beam August sunshine glowing through the faded green curtains. Surfacing from sleep, she remembered where she was, why she was alone and then, with a rush of reality, the pregnancy. Definitely real, very real, she hadn’t dreamed it, this was happening . . . she acknowledged the accompanying merry-go-round of feelings: high, low, up, down, happy, terrified.

  No denying how different she felt, almost weightless, full of energy, slightly manic even. The low-level grind of depression she had lived with for so long now, so long she had almost stopped noticing it, had magically lifted and although there were unimaginably big problems ahead, she knew she could . . . she would meet them head on.

  Her brother’s voice, his favourite phrase, was in her head: ‘Live for the moment, Pammy, what else is there?’ For once, that was what she was going to try and do. No regrets for what had happened, no projecting forward to how it was going to be . . . she was going to try and calm down, concentrate on today.

  Wrapping her dressing gown around her, she went down to the kitchen, enjoying the lurch of nausea brought on by the smell of tea bags, the secret thrill of what that meant.

  Already the sunshine and warmth of the day were calling her out of the kitchen, so she set up a breakfast tray and took it to the garden with a chair. In the spring, Dave had thrown a packet of wild flower seeds over the lawn, deciding that he had no time to mow the grass, so he would let it grow up tall and wild all summer long. Now it was scattered with white, yellow and blue flowers, pale poppies, which let sunlight stream through their petals: all alive with bees.

  The twin thoughts stole uninvited into her mind that this would be the perfect place to bring up a child and that Dave would still – no matter if he was in love with her or not – make a wonderful father. She considered them carefully, then tried to put them away, out of her head. It felt too soon to begin to think about all that. She was still trying to adjust to pregnancy, to being here, in the place she’d tried so long to get to.

  And anyway, she had plans for today. It was Sunday, no vegetables to pick, so she was going to open windows and doors wide, throw the house open to the sunshine and start decorating.

  The farmhouse had been dull, gloomy and unloved for too long. Today she would at least make a start on the process of transformation.

  And she wasn’t going to do anything that Dave wouldn’t approve of either. In this house, all the ideas she’d experimented with in her nurseries were finally going to come together. The doors, window frames and woodwork would all be gently peeled back so they could be sanded and lavishly oiled. The walls taken back to plaster, repaired, then painted with breathable non-toxic paints. This house was going to be full of wood . . . sisal . . . pure wool . . . untreated cork. There would be reclaimed wooden shelving . . . antique wardrobes . . . faded mirrors . . . recycled curtains sewn together . . . She had all sorts of ideas. Was buzzing with ideas, desperate to start.

  Once she was in her work clothes, she brought ladders, scrapers and the wallpaper steamer into the sitting room, pushed all the furniture into the middle of the room, covered it in dust sheets, plugged in the radio and began.

  Gradually, layers of wallpaper peeled off and slid onto the floor all around her, layers of house history. This room had once been green and flowery, before that, dark blue and flowery, pale pink and right at the bottom, a faded orangey-yellow. She worked slowly, wanting to do it perfectly, as if she had all the time in the world. The conviction growing in her with every section of bare wall she revealed, was that this was the house she wanted to be in for a very long time to come: the family home.

  Late in the afternoon, when she’d sat down to rest and examine the damage she’d inflicted on the room so far, all of a sudden out of the radio, a Dave song came at her.

  Acoustic guitar, clever chords filling the room. She knew this song – what was it again?

  Lloyd Cole. The student bedsit days, Dave with a tape recorder at the foot of his messed bed blasting this song out over and over again, even though she would hit him with pillows and beg him to stop or at least move on to the next track. Dave, her husband, stroking her face, looking into her eyes, making her tea, pouring her wine . . . trying, always trying, to kiss it better. There was no denying how much she missed him. Three weeks exactly he’d been away, the longest they’d ever been apart.

  Having a baby without him just wasn’t in the plans. That was the problem. Every fantasy she’d ever had about having a baby was about having one, somehow, with Dave.

  When the song was over, she felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes but picked up her scraper and set back to work, soon so absorbed in what she was doing, she didn’t hear the tyres on the gravel, nor the back door catching in the breeze and closing with a slam. So it was something of a shock to turn mid-scrape, still singing along with the radio, and find Dave standing in the doorway.

  ‘Hello!’ they both said at the same time, the new and unfamiliar awkwardness between them apparent immediately.

  She came down from her ladder and went over to the radio to turn the volume down because going over to kiss him, the way she would always, unthinkingly, have done before, seemed impossible now.

  ‘Hello,’ she repeated, standing up to look at him properly.‘This is a bit of a surprise.’

  ‘So is all this—’ he gestured at the room.

  ‘Well, I thought it was about time I started . . . and it’s all going to be totally ethical. You don’t need to worry. Biodegradable, non-toxic – and it does need redecorating, one way or another . . . I mean . . .’ she stammered to a standstill. It was just a little bit early to be kicking off the divorce/sell the farm discussion.

  ‘No, you’re right,’ he agreed.‘It needs work. It all needs work.’

  ‘So . . . how are you?’ she asked, but she could see already that he looked well. Looked good, in fact. It was obvious he’d had a rest, been well cared for. He’d even put on a little weight and was wearing a new shirt, something Ted must have helped him to pick out.

  ‘I’m OK,’ was all he said.‘How about you?’

  ‘Fine . . . fine.’ The gap between ‘fine’ and how she really was seemed so insurmountable, she wondered how she would ever tell him. How would she even begin?

  ‘D’you want some tea or something?’ she asked instead.‘I’ll finish this corner and come through.’

  ‘I’ve brought wine, shall we open that?’ Wine for a serious, maybe difficult, discussion. She could see the logic. But she was planning never to drink again. Well, not until . . .

  ‘You have wine, but I need builder’s tea – it’s thirsty work.’ Her jokey excuse seemed to ease the tension between them.

  ‘I’ve already had a look around . . . at the cows and in a few of the fields. You’ve been doing a pretty good job,’ he told her with a smile now.

  She could only smile back and confess: ‘I’ve really enjoyed it. I didn’t expect to, but I have . . . farming in my high heels.’

  Just as he turned to go out of the room, he added: ‘You were singing . . . I haven’t heard that for ages.’

  Across the kitchen table they began talking, first of all about Ted, Liz and their children, and then with far more difficulty about themselves and what to do next.

  The smiles and friendliness Dave had shown when he’d first arrived back were all gone now and he was very serious . . . talking in a calm, detached way about selling the farm, dividing their assets . . . splitting up.

  What else had she expected? she kept asking herself, trying to stay calm, trying to breathe through her rising panic: some impossibly romantic reunion? He didn’t want to be with her any more . . . and this before he even knew she was pregnant with someone else’s baby.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ she wanted to know, ‘once we’ve sold . . .’ she didn’t want to finish the sentence.

  ‘Carry on farming,’ he answered.‘I’ll definitely carry on farming . . . I might be able to scrape together t
he money to buy a big enough place somewhere else, or I might go abroad and do it.’

  ‘Where?’ Her horror at this idea. She thought she could just about cope so long as they could remain friends, stay closely in touch, but now he was thinking about moving right out of her life, out of the country.

  ‘I’ve been looking into Eastern Europe . . . land’s much cheaper . . . the climate’s good.’ He kept his eyes on his wine glass, didn’t look at her.

  She couldn’t understand where this plan had come from, he’d never seriously talked about going abroad before: ‘Is this what you really want?’ she asked.

  He lifted his glass and took a drink before answering: ‘I’m trying to make the best of this – do some things I maybe wouldn’t have done if we’d . . .’ he broke off.

  She didn’t know what to say, could only think how stupid, how pointless and sad it was to discover that you really loved a place and really loved a person just when you’d messed it all up and had to leave.

  ‘Divorce is sometimes the happy ending – or at least a happy new beginning,’ Dave said, reaching over to touch her hand.‘Well, so Ted kept telling me.’

  Ted?! Oh he did, did he? She would smack him the next time she saw him.

  ‘You look really upset,’ he said now.‘But you’ve been telling me for ages we can’t go on like this . . . and you were the one who . . .’

  She nodded, blinking hard.

  ‘Is this what you want?’ she asked again, just to be sure.

  ‘I think so . . . No great rush. I’m sure you’ll need to sort out what you’re going to do next, where you want to go. Have you thought about that?’

  ‘No,’ she swallowed back the sob at this.‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Well, as I said, no rush.’

  He finished off the wine in his glass and looked as if he was about to get up, draw this talk to a close for now, so she knew she had to stop him. Tell him the two most important things, however hard it might be.