Anita was staring at the floor, embarrassed. Aisha shifted in her seat, worried, and Hazel made some comment under her breath. For God’s sake, it sounded like.
Cathy scowled. ‘But you’re having one.’
Jeremy shrugged. ‘Adoption. And I’m not immune to the drive to reproduce, none of us are. I just think it’s interesting, is all. From a philosophical standpoint.’
Monica said, ‘People will always have children. The undereducated most of all – it’s our duty to keep intelligent genes going too.’ I could have sworn she flicked a quick glance at Kelly here.
‘Well, this is what my research is about. What stops people having children – work, life circumstances, worries about the planet – and what spurs them on. Social competition. Gender roles. Fear of old age, of loneliness.’ Then suddenly he looked at me. ‘You, Jax – you’re in your late thirties, yes? What was it that stopped you having children before?’
All eyes on me. ‘I . . . I was single I suppose. Didn’t want to do it alone.’
‘So, life circumstances. It’s an equation – your fear of leaving it too late wasn’t greater than your wish to be in a stable partnership first.’ Jeremy crossed one leg over the other, becoming properly animated for the first time that I’d seen. ‘Did you ever think of simply not having any?’
Had I? I must have, in those years when there was no man on the horizon, and my age ticked up every month. When I imagined my life, I had always assumed I would have children. It was just what you did, as Cathy said. Nothing happened without it. No inheritance. No continuance. No ongoing resentment. No man handing on misery to man.
Nina stepped in before I could answer, a frown on her lovely face. ‘This is very interesting, but I feel we should move on now . . .’
It was then that we heard the commotion.
Someone was standing in the door of the meeting room, swaying vaguely as if drunk or, guessing at his piggy red eyes, high. A man, a few years younger than Aaron I’d guess, white, with a shaved head and grey tracksuit. So many young guys who lived near us seemed to dress exclusively like this and I didn’t know why.
Kelly stood up, alarmed, scraping her chair. ‘Ryan!’
So this was him. The elusive boyfriend. I saw Monica nudge Anita and whisper something. I saw Nina frown; she did not like being interrupted. ‘Can I help you?’ she said.
‘That’s my baby in her belly.’ He started to walk over. ‘Entitled to be here.’
‘Ryan, is it? Kelly’s partner? Of course you’re welcome, Ryan, but we don’t normally advise joining a group midway through.’
He glared at her, cross-eyed. ‘You’re the one, are you? Your stupid homework. Family tree. Not everyone has a bloody middle-class family, missus. You should know that.’
Privately, I agreed, but it was somehow shocking to see someone stand up to Nina. Not even Monica had ever dared go this far.
Kelly was looking terrified. Her hands were splayed over her bump, as if trying to hide it from him. ‘Ry, hon, why don’t you wait for me in a cafe, get a coffee or something, yeah? I’m almost done.’
‘You don’t want me here, that’s it?’ He hadn’t sat down but was sort of pacing behind the seats. I was craning my neck to keep track of him, the way you would with a dangerous dog in the room.
Kelly’s voice was weak. ‘It’s not that, hon, you know I wanted you here, but well . . .’
‘What?’
‘You’re drunk, aren’t you?’ And more than that.
‘You fucking cunt.’ The word was vicious; I saw Anita’s head snap back. I wondered had she ever heard it spoken aloud before. ‘I got a right to be here.’
Aaron stirred beside me with some kind of primal memory of violence, a fear that gets into your every cell. Although he was a tall man, his urge was still to freeze, to make himself as small as possible, like the child he’d been. I’d seen this before when we encountered violence, as you do in London, drunken punch-ups outside pubs, harsh words on the bus. Aaron was scared. And suddenly I was too. All of us in the room, so pregnant, so vulnerable. I think it was then I realised I’d never be truly safe again.
Ed spoke up. ‘Now listen, mate, this really isn’t on.’
‘Fuck off, you yellow-cords twat.’ I almost gasped, with fear, with a wild terrified joy that someone was saying these things I had not dared to. Ed glanced in outrage at his mustard-coloured trousers.
Monica rose, her chest swelling like her bump in rage. ‘How dare you speak to my husband that way!’
‘You can fuck off an’ all, Boden bitch.’
Monica turned puce. I looked at Aaron – we have to do something – but he was frozen still.
‘Nina, Nina, we need to have him removed, is there security in this place?’ That was Monica. I highly doubted a community hall hired by the hour had anyone we could call – we were on our own here. Without really realising it, I had begun to edge my chair away, hands over my belly. If there’d been a cupboard I would have hidden in it.
‘Right.’ Ed advanced on Ryan, rolling up the sleeves of his pink shirt. ‘I’m not having this, chum. Jeremy, mate, give me a hand?’
Jeremy blinked. ‘Me?’
Even I could see Jeremy was no fighter. But it didn’t matter, because just then Rahul stepped forward, put Ryan in a restraint hold, and marched him out of the room.
Alison
She checked the address. Was this really it? The person who lived here had been in the same group as Kelly Anderson, with her tiny one-bed flat? She marvelled again at what a leveller it was, fertility, childbirth, babies. It didn’t matter how much money you had; you couldn’t always buy your way to a healthy child. ‘Nice, isn’t it,’ she offered to Diana.
Diana wrinkled her lovely nose. ‘These old places can be really damp.’
Anita and Jeremy Matheson-Coulter had a lovely house on the edge of Beckenham Place Park. Smaller than Monica’s, maybe. Certainly more tasteful, in red brick with clematis on the front, a garden full of wild flowers and roses. Alison knew the husband was an academic, so it must be Anita’s money, or else family money. She liked the house much better than that glass palace of Monica’s – everyone would be looking in at you there, looking down your neck, as her mother would say. The door was opened by a thin, nervy woman, one hand clutched to her throat. ‘Oh! Hello. You must be . . . Um, come in, come in.’
The place was very clean, like Monica’s. That was a mark of class also, houses kept tidy by the unseen hands of other women paid to clean and melt away, as servants in the olden days had turned their faces to the wall when their masters passed by. Paid to be invisible. Alison and Diana were led into a very tidy living room, red leather chairs and dark wood, like a men’s club. Framed on top of the (small) TV was an ultrasound picture. ‘Is that . . . ?’
‘Yes. Victoria.’ Anita gave a small nervous laugh. ‘At least, that’s what we plan to call her. Planned. Honestly, I don’t know what to say about it.’
Alison knew things hadn’t quite worked out with their adoption – at any rate, there was no baby in this clean and tidy house. She was dying to ask for the details. ‘I’m sorry. Shall we sit down?’
‘I must make tea! Or would you like coffee, or a soft drink, or something else?’
Alison was tempted to ask for a G ’n’ T, the day she’d had, but settled for tea.
‘I have Earl Grey, or I think maybe there’s some builder’s . . . ?’
Alison suppressed a smile. ‘Earl Grey would be lovely. DC Mendes?’
Diana looked disapproving. ‘A glass of water would be nice, thank you.’ Alison sighed. Times like this she really missed Tom, who’d once eaten an entire roast dinner at a witness’s house.
The tea came in a leaf-tea pot, with some shortbread on a little floral plate. It looked home-made. This house was heartbreaking, everything done so well and so thoroughly, and yet empty all the same. ‘Jeremy should be home soon. The trains, you know.’
‘And do you work?’
‘Oh y
es, I’m a lawyer, but I took some adoption leave. That’s what they class it as, not maternity. I suppose that makes sense.’
Alison waited as she poured the tea, offered milk, straightened everything on the tray. Sometimes people had to work their way up to telling a painful story.
Diana prompted, ‘In your own time, Anita.’
‘The adoption is proving harder than we thought,’ Anita admitted, finally. ‘We’d been told the baby was due two weeks ago, hence why we joined the antenatal group. The flyer said it would cover baby care, not just the birth process, so we thought, why not. But then it all went quiet. The agency in America said the due date had been wrong, the mother was confused, it would be another while yet. But now I don’t know. I can’t even get through to them, and they’re not replying to anything.’ Her hands had gone white clasping each other.
‘And you’ve paid for this service?’
‘All the mother’s medical bills, plus a big donation to the agency, yes.’
‘So you were expecting to have a baby when you went to the barbecue?’
‘Well, yes. There should have been six babies. Poor Kelly.’ Two out of six babies not arriving. That seemed unusually bad odds.
‘But you went anyway?’
‘I wanted to see the others. And I thought the baby was on her way, a little delayed perhaps.’ Alison thought how that would be, for Anita and for Kelly too, walking into a house full of babies, none of them yours. Having to smile and coo and pretend your heart wasn’t breaking. It was all too easy to imagine, because she’d been to many a baby shower herself, a hideous American import. Soon it would be gender-reveal parties, and Alison did not know enough swear words to express what she thought of those.
Diana clearly didn’t have much patience for this baby talk. ‘So the day of the barbecue. Did you see the incident take place?’ The murder, as Alison thought of it. But they couldn’t call it that until they knew for sure, and still there was no concrete evidence, only some hairs in a bracelet and a feeling in her gut. The only person who’d clashed with any of the group was Ryan, Kelly Anderson’s partner, and everyone said he hadn’t even been at the barbecue.
‘No. I was waiting for Jeremy to come back from driving Kelly home – I was in the side garden of the house, watching for his car.’
‘He wasn’t back before the . . . incident?’
Anita shook her head. ‘Not quite. To be honest, I thought we might leave when he got back. After what happened with Kelly, it was a bit . . . It didn’t feel like a party.’
Aha. Finally some answers. Alison said casually, ‘Oh yes, we heard there was some issue with Kelly. Could you talk us through that, do you think?’
The day of – Anita
1.45 p.m.
She knew rationally there weren’t that many babies there. Only four, not the six there should have been. But all the same they seemed to be everywhere as she moved about Monica’s (huge yet somehow tasteless) house. Arthur in the living room, being shushed by Cathy. Hadley alone in a bouncy chair outside, which worried Anita – what if she rolled out, what if an animal came along and bit her? Then there was Isabella, who had been brought down from her nap and was being passed around like a little doll in pink frills, and upstairs, when she went to wash her hands, Hari being fed by Aisha, a blissed-out zen look on both their faces. Anita wondered if she would ever experience it. Not the feeding, she’d never have that. But just a baby, to hold in her arms, to call her own.
Her baby was a girl. She was going to be called Victoria, after Anita’s mother, who had died five years before. Before she died, she’d pressed a gold locket into Anita’s hands, a family heirloom. ‘For your daughter, my darling.’ Anita’s mother had not been that old – barely seventy – and Anita sometimes felt everything had gone downhill since she’d lost her, the one person who’d always been there for her. She’d been quite old before she realised not everyone’s mothers were like this, loving and supportive and always, always in your corner. Look at Jeremy’s, a cold-voiced tartar who’d sent him to Harrow at seven and still never hugged him now. Any affection she had was reserved for her brood of Labradors.
Five years ago, Anita had been thirty-six. She and Jeremy had been talking about children for years, on and off, but something always came up. Her promotion. His elevation to department head, with the increase in hours it brought. Then moving house, going on holiday, possibly being exposed to the Zika virus in South America, which meant waiting six months just in case. Always something. Then trying, failing. Then finally going for tests, and the news – she was in premature ovarian failure. She would not be pregnant, not ever. That part of the female experience was cut off from her, and never had she felt it more than when walking into the antenatal group, the swelling ripeness of all those women.
It was funny how far you could slip into madness before you realised. First it had been years of trying – cough syrup, legs in the air, expensive vitamins for both of them, though she was sure Jeremy didn’t remember to take his all the time. She didn’t want to examine that too closely, her sense that Jeremy’s enthusiasm, never great to begin with, was waning, the fact that he hadn’t turned up to some of the group sessions. Then IVF – private, since the NHS thought their chances were too low to fund it. IUI. IVF. ICSI. A parade of acronyms. A womb-scratching procedure that made her howl with pain, like an animal. A Chinese medicine doctor who stuck pins in her feet and made her drink foul-smelling herbs brewed up in tea. Nothing.
So then you asked more questions. Could we cope with adoption? Even though there were no babies available in their borough, just older children who’d been through hell and whose birth families were still fighting to have them back? Could we try egg donation? A child that was not hers, but would be Jeremy’s? You couldn’t pay for it in the UK, which led them to America, a land where everything opened up with money, even the womb of a stranger. Eventually, when Jeremy’s sperm count also came up as inadequate, they settled on adoption, which in the States you could arrange before the child was even born. The woman who was having Anita’s baby was called Brandi, though she wasn’t sure it was her real name. They’d been sent pictures of a homespun, slightly overweight girl in her twenties, smiling broadly with her hands on her bump. Was the picture even real, or just a stock image? Anita had spent so long staring at it, imagining the child inside the bump. Victoria.
That day, at the barbecue, Monica had come bustling into the kitchen where Anita stood, holding Isabella slightly away from her, as if the baby might soil the white dress she was wearing, which was a very strange choice for a barbecue. Anita was wearing a dress from Boden, striped pink and white, but it felt all wrong on her. A dress for someone soft and yielding, not someone with a phone in each pocket (it had pockets, yes) waiting for New York or Dubai to call with yet more work for her to do. Always more work, despite the leave she was supposedly on. ‘There you are! So no baby?’
Anita forced a smile, which was getting harder and harder. ‘Not yet, no.’
‘Wasn’t she due two weeks ago?’
‘Yes. But these things can be wrong.’ The idea was she and Jeremy would fly over when the birth seemed imminent. But it would take at least twelve hours to get there, and the silence from the US was deafening. Panic rose up in her again and she pushed it down, like someone cramming a jack back into a box. ‘But look at Isabella! Hello, sweetheart.’
‘Here you go.’ Monica passed the baby over like a tray of canapés. ‘I must get Ed on to that barbecue, or no one will eat!’ Ed and Jeremy had disappeared off somewhere, and Anita was vaguely annoyed with him for leaving her like this in a sea of babies.
Now Anita stood alone in the kitchen, the baby in her arms. It felt so right. The squashy little helpless body, the tiny curved toes. The hands that had never held anything. I could run with her. I could just go now. She shook her head to clear the thought, then looked up to see a teenage girl lurking in the doorway, dressed bizarrely in a too-big floral dress. ‘Hello.’
T
he girl said, ‘She needs her neck supported more.’
‘Oh.’ Anita blushed. Even this girl – Monica’s older daughter? Had she been mentioned before? – knew more about babies than she did.
The girl held out her arms. ‘I’ll take her.’
Anita handed her over. What else could she do? Maybe some women just weren’t meant to be mothers. Maybe she’d never have had a child, even if she’d started at twenty-one the way people used to. Something fundamental in her body seemed just . . . not to work. I’m sorry, Mummy, she thought, adjusting her expensive dress, on which the baby had left a small trail of drool that didn’t bother Anita in the slightest. I tried. I really tried.
Jax – seven weeks earlier
After Rahul pushed Ryan from the room and Kelly lumbered out after them, a stunned silence fell. Ed looked wrong-footed. ‘I’d have sorted him,’ he said plaintively. ‘Bloody bad manners, scaring the ladies.’
Monica looked like she might blow her top. ‘It’s unacceptable, Nina. You have to do something. Nina!’
Our leader had been sitting in a sort of trance since Ryan kicked off. Now, she stirred herself. ‘Everyone, please stay here. I’ll handle this.’ She got up and moved out, unhurried. The rest of us sat for a moment, looking at each other with pale scared faces. Myself, Cathy, Monica, Aisha were holding on to our bumps as if we could protect them that way. Stupid. Beside me, Aaron was also frozen. His eyes vacant.
I nudged him. ‘Babe?’
He didn’t move or answer. I found myself getting to my feet, with difficulty, and moving to the door. No one stopped me, as I had vaguely thought they might, and I didn’t know what I was doing, although I’d had mediation training through work, and angry young men were something I had experience of. Except, of course, I hadn’t been pregnant then.
The group were gathered at the end of the corridor. Rahul had Ryan against the wall, pressing his face into the chipped paint. He must be a lot stronger than he looked. Ryan was complaining, ‘Oi, it hurts! It hurts!’
The Push Page 12