by Tony Parsons
‘Easy for you to say.’ Suddenly Michael seemed like the angry one. He towered over his brother, his fists clenched by his side. ‘I can deal with the broken sleep – night after night, month after month. This permanent state of being totally knackered – I can live with that.’
‘That’s big of you.’
‘I can even handle Naoko going off sex,’ Michael said. ‘Or being too tired to even think about it. Or not fancying me any more. Or whatever it is. I can handle that.’
‘Michael – you’ve got this beautiful little baby. For once in your life, stop thinking about getting your end away.’
When they had both been a lot younger, Paulo had admired Michael’s easy way with women. The way they flocked to his brother, the way they fell for him, and the way that he was always moving on. Now it seemed like a burden. Paulo had thought Naoko – so physically different from the blondes that Michael had knocked around with in Essex – would put an end to all that. Now Paulo wondered if it would ever end.
‘When a woman has a baby, everything is different,’ Michael said, quietly now. He wanted his brother to understand. ‘You can never mean as much to her again. You can never take up so much space in her heart.’
‘You’ve got this perfect family,’ Paulo said. ‘You really want to break it up? Is that what you want? You want Chloe to grow up without her dad around? Like so many of the poor little bastards around here?’
Michael shook his head. ‘You think it’s so simple, don’t you, Paulo? You think you get the job, get the girl, get the house – and get the baby. And then live happily ever after.’
‘What more would you want? You should be grateful. You should consider yourself lucky.’
‘Don’t lecture me. I love my daughter, you self-righteous fuck. And I love my wife. I love her as much as I can love anyone.’
‘Funny way of showing it.’
‘But a baby doesn’t complete your world. Not if you’re a man. A baby is a rival. And you can’t compete, you just can’t compete.’ Michael took the wrench from Paulo’s hand and placed it gently on the table. ‘She’s found someone much more loveable than me. Our daughter. So where does that leave me?’
‘Go home, Michael. And count your blessings.’
‘When a woman has a baby, she changes. I don’t know how to explain it.’ Michael smiled sadly at his big brother. ‘It’s almost like she has fallen in love with someone else.’
‘My poor baby,’ said Megan’s mother. ‘It’s a rotten thing to go through, I know.’
Olivia let her youngest daughter into her flat. Heels and make-up, thought Megan, as her mother clicked across the floor. She even wears heels and make-up when she’s home alone.
‘We all have these little accidents. I had to have myself seen to before we shot the second series of Vicar. And long before that – before your father, even – there was a photographer who was helping me put a portfolio together.’ Olivia, who rarely touched her children, rubbed Megan’s back, gauging her daughter’s condition. Still beautiful, thought Megan. She could understand why men her own age turned for a second look at her mother.
‘I have to say, dear, you really don’t look too bad.’
‘I’m keeping it.’
‘What?’
‘I didn’t go through with it, Mum. I’m keeping the baby.’
‘But – why would you do a thing like that?’
Megan shrugged. She couldn’t tell her mother about Mrs Summer. She couldn’t explain that having this baby was hard, but not having it would be infinitely harder. How can you explain that feeling of being torn? She sat down on the sofa. The bouts of nausea were passing, but she was starting to feel tired all the time.
‘I want to have it,’ Megan said simply. ‘I want this baby.’
‘But – you’re too young to have a child!’
‘I’m twenty-eight, Mother. A bit older than you were when you had Cat.’
‘I was married, dear. With a ring on my bloody finger. And it was still a fucking disaster.’
‘This isn’t going to be a disaster.’
‘Where’s the father? Is he in the picture?’
‘No, he’s out of the picture.’
‘Megan, do you have any idea what you’re taking on? The sleepless nights, the exhaustion, the screaming and the shitting and hysterical fits?’
‘And that’s just the mother, right?’ Megan let out a breath. ‘I know it will be hard. I know it will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
‘You have no idea. It’s hard enough if you’ve got a husband and a nanny and a few bob in the bank. Try doing it alone on whatever pin money the NHS is chucking your way.’
‘Jessica says she is going to help me.’
‘Jessica has got her own life.’
‘She means it. I know she does. She says she gets sick of going shopping and having facials and waiting for Paulo to come home. Jessie will be glad to look after the baby while I’m at work.’
‘And what if Jessica finally gets knocked up?’
Megan hadn’t thought about that. After all the sights she had seen in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries, was it really possible her mother knew more than she did? Megan felt a shiver of fear. What if there was no one to help? What was she getting into? She saw the years stretching ahead – an eighteen-year sentence. Then she saw her mother’s painted face twisted with anguish and she thought, perhaps you are never free of your children.
‘What about your career? What about all those years at college and all those exams?’
‘I’m going to keep working.’ She didn’t sound quite so sure of herself now. ‘Of course I am. I can’t afford not to. As you say, I don’t have a ring on my finger.’
‘You little fool, Megan.’
Her mother’s voice was thick with disapproval.
‘Why are you so angry with me?’
‘Because you’re throwing your life away!’
‘Is that it? Or is it that you hate the thought of being a grandmother? Because it will be the final confirmation that you’re no longer in the first flush of youth.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Please. I don’t want you to be angry with me, Mum. I want you to be happy.’
‘Happy? My daughter acts like some stupid little shop girl and she wants me to be happy?’
‘I want you to love this baby. I want you to be happy.’
‘Then go,’ said Olivia. ‘If you want me to be happy – just go.’
So Megan went, and for the first time the hard practicalities of her new life crowded in. Where would this nameless, unimaginable baby sleep in her tiny flat? Would the music played by the neighbours downstairs keep it awake? What would actually happen when Megan was at work? Would Jessica really be able to care for it during the day, every day, as if it was her job? What would the nights be like with the baby sleeping – or screaming – by her side?
Then Megan had her first scan, and although the doubts and the dark stuff did not disappear, someone or something seemed to whisper, the right thing, the right thing, you are doing the right thing.
Cat changed after Megan decided to keep the baby.
Rory couldn’t understand it, but suddenly she seemed to act like his operation was a big deal.
The cut. The snip. The bollock-tampering. That had never been the case in the past. She didn’t want children! God knows, he didn’t want children. So the vasectomy was, if anything, a bit of a bonus. Then Megan cancelled her appointment at the clinic and things were somehow different.
Perhaps it had as much to do with his ex-wife as with Megan. One day Ali turned up to claim Jake with her five-year-old, Sadie, in tow.
There was undeniably something impressive about Ali. Rory had to admit that, even though their love was dead and buried years ago.
Ali was small and blonde, but she had made a little go a long way – she was tanned and toned, with a prettiness that had made it into middle age without seeming absurd. She had an air of quiet
authority about her. Jake was almost meek in her brisk, bossy presence, as she stood there watching him gather his belongings, and lug them out to her big BMW X5 off-roader – perfect for taking Sadie to her ballet class.
‘Why has Jake-Jake been staying here, Mummy?’ asked Sadie.
‘He’s just been spending a little time with his daddy, darling,’ said Ali. ‘Now it’s time to come home.’
‘He’s welcome any time, the old boy,’ said Rory, clapping his son on the back.
Stooped with teenage self-consciousness, Jake carried on gathering up the CDs that were strewn all over the coffee table, not meeting his father’s eyes.
‘But maybe next time he could leave his Rizlas at home,’ Cat said quietly.
Rory and Ali stared at her.
‘Mummy?’ said Sadie.
Cat knew it was a mistake to say anything. But she couldn’t help herself. Just because Rory and Ali were forced to negotiate an emotional minefield, that was no reason for her to pretend that Jake wasn’t a walking nightmare.
‘What are you suggesting?’ Ali said.
‘That Jake’s too young to take drugs,’ Cat said.
‘Cat,’ Rory said.
‘How dare you?’ Ali said. ‘How dare you push your face into my family’s business?’
‘I can’t help it. Sorry. I’m just saying – you let him get away with too much.’
‘I’m ready, Mum,’ Jake said.
Sadie took his hand, beaming up at her big half-brother.
‘Jake-Jake,’ she said.
‘My son has been under enormous pressure,’ Ali said, trembling with emotion. ‘But I wouldn’t expect someone like you to understand.’
‘Someone like me?’
Ali smiled thinly. ‘Someone who has never had a family of her own.’
‘I’ve got a family,’ Cat said, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘I don’t have children, it’s true. But don’t you ever tell me I haven’t got a family.’
Then they were gone, and Rory was trying to make up. Too late. Cat was furious – with Rory, for letting his ex-wife walk all over him. With Jake for coming into their life. With Ali, for being such a cold, self-righteous bitch. And with something else that she couldn’t name. It was something to do with the limitations of her life. She didn’t want limits put on her life. She wanted her options to be permanently open.
‘Cat?’
‘I’m going.’
‘Stay! Come on. We’ve finally got the place to ourselves.’
‘She really kept her options open, didn’t she?’
‘Who?’
‘Who? Your ex-wife. Ali got a second chance to get it right, didn’t she? Another marriage, another kid, another life. You and her – that was just her starter marriage. Her dry run. She got another go.’
‘Why are you so mad at me?’
She turned on him, white with fury and tears in her eyes. It frightened him. He was losing her, and he didn’t want to lose her.
‘Why did you have that stupid operation? Why? Cutting yourself up like that. Doing it for that cold bitch who went straight out and had a kid with the next man who came along. Why?’
Rory held up his hands. ‘Because – because we didn’t want any more children. Because it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.’
‘So she got another go. But you don’t. You’re stuck with the past, and all its fucking mess. And me too. I’m stuck with your past too. You didn’t just limit your options, Rory. You limited mine.’
‘What’s this all about? Megan’s pregnant, so you suddenly want a kid of your own? You’re talking like you want a baby.’
‘It’s not that. Where would I put a baby, for God’s sake? But why couldn’t you keep your options open? Ali did.’
‘I can’t give you a baby, Cat. You knew that when we started.’
‘I know. And why should you? You’ve done it, right? Done it and got the T-shirt. And I don’t even want a baby, do I?’
‘So what’s the problem?’
Cat shook her head. She couldn’t explain it to him. She didn’t suddenly want a child. She really didn’t. But she wanted to be part of a family. When Ali had told her she didn’t have a family, it had cut her to the core.
Cat was starting to understand that children gave you a stake in the future, and they gave you a family. They gave you a new family just when your old family was starting to drift apart, when your old family was starting to go its own way, making new families with their husbands and their babies. Without children all you had was now, and reminders of the past.
Rory stared at Cat, watched her anger fading away. He knew he didn’t want any other woman, only her. But when she walked out the door, he didn’t try to stop her.
Women got it wrong, Rory thought. They believed that they were victims of some ticking biological clock, and yet men could go on having children for as long as they liked. And it just wasn’t true.
Because you got tired. You made that journey – from the nights when your child stayed awake teething, to the nights when your child stayed awake taking drugs – and it exhausted you. It just wore you out.
Even without his operation, and the divorce, and all the poison between him and his ex-wife, Rory would have found it hard to go through all that again. Time performed its own kind of surgery on you. And even if it was a possibility, which it wasn’t, it would be absurd to choose to go through all of that again at his age, wouldn’t it? By the time the kid was sixteen, he would be well into his sixties. It was tough enough dealing with a teenager in your forties. How could you do it as an old man?
It would take a lot to decide to go through all that again.
You would really have to love someone.
Megan gripped Jessica’s hands as the sonographer put cold jelly on her belly and pressed down hard with the scanner.
The pressure felt too hard, far too hard, but the twinge of anxiety was forgotten because suddenly there it was on the screen, Megan’s baby, this unplanned little human, looking like an alien in a snowstorm.
Its head too big, fingers like threads in a spider’s web, and lidless eyes, unseeing and all-seeing. Megan and Jessica laughed out loud, laughed with delight and disbelief. Megan looked at her sister and was filled with gratitude for her love, and for her generosity, and for the fact that she was there to hold her hand and share this moment. Jessica was as thrilled, and as moved, as Megan. It was almost, Megan thought, as if the baby belonged to both of them.
Megan looked at the hazy profile on the scan and felt a connection that she had never felt with another human being. The baby was part of her flesh and blood and yet entirely separate, at once as familiar as her own face and yet as mysterious as an angel. It was just a fuzzy black-and-white image on a screen. That’s all. The sonographer probably did a dozen a day. And yet it provoked feelings inside Megan that she had never known existed.
Maybe the neighbours downstairs would play their music too loud. Maybe there would be days when Jessica couldn’t baby-sit. Maybe it would be harder than Megan could possibly imagine. But these worries all seemed to diminish in the presence of that blurred image. How could you worry too much about the neighbours or sleepless nights when you were in the presence of magic?
When Megan left she was given a slip of shiny black paper with the baby caught in heartbreaking, big-headed profile. That little alien in a snowstorm. The first picture of the baby.
Megan was told a date for the birth, a day that seemed ridiculously distant, almost meaningless, as though it had been plucked from the calendar at random. But she knew it would come.
And she knew it was a date with another kind of life.
Jessica and Paulo talked to their doctor about going for IVF.
Paulo had been shocked by the discussion – shocked by both the cost (thousands) and even more the odds (about a one in three chance of success, and that was the most optimistic prognosis). Most of all, he had been shocked to hear that there was no time to waste.
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��But she’s thirty-two!’ he said to the doctor.
‘Exactly,’ said the doctor. ‘A woman is born with the only eggs she is ever going to have. And there’s a marked deterioration in fertility after thirty-five. Best to get started before you get too old. Who knows how many cycles you’ll need?’
‘I want to do it,’ Jessica said on their way home. ‘I don’t care what we have to do to get the money. I don’t care how many times we try. But I want to do it now.’
‘What does your sister say?’
‘Megan?’
‘Does she think IVF is a good idea?’
‘I didn’t talk to her about it. She’s got enough on her plate. I don’t want to worry her that I won’t be free to look after her baby. You know. When I get pregnant from the IVF.’
So that’s what they were going to do. Their GP referred them to a private clinic out in rural Essex with one of the best rates of success in the world. And Paulo went along with it because he would do anything for Jessica. Almost anything.
‘I’m not going to let this baby thing break us up, Jess,’ he said when she came into the bedroom that night.
‘What?’
‘I’ve never complained. And I never will. All the tests and the consultations. All the wanking into little jugs and the rest of it. All the text messages telling me to come home and shag you because you’re ovulating. I’ll go along with all of it. You want IVF treatment? Fine. But I’m not going to let this break us up.’
‘Why would it break us up?’
He sat on the bed and took her face in his hands. He loved that face.
‘Because it has become more important than anything. More important than you and me. This baby thing – it’s taken over our world.’
‘You know how much this means to me.’
‘Of course I do! But if it doesn’t happen, if it never happens – well, I’ll still be in love with you. I know you want a kid. Me too. But it’s not the most important thing in my life. Because you are, Jess.’
She shook her head.