by Lisa Jewell
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Lisa Jewell
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: 1979 Glenys
Chapter 2: Rodney
Chapter 3: 1998 Lydia
Chapter 4: 2009 Lydia
Last Summer
Chapter 5: Robyn
Chapter 6: Now
Chapter 7: Dean
Chapter 8: Maggie
Chapter 9: Robyn
Chapter 10: Dean
Chapter 11: Maggie
Chapter 12: Lydia
Chapter 13: Robyn
Chapter 14: Dean
Chapter 15: Maggie
Chapter 16: Lydia
Chapter 17: Robyn
Chapter 18: Dean
Chapter 19: Maggie
Chapter 20: Lydia
Chapter 21: Robyn
Chapter 22: Dean
Chapter 23: Maggie
Chapter 24: Lydia
Chapter 25: Robyn
Chapter 26: Dean
Chapter 27: Lydia
Chapter 28: Maggie
Chapter 29: Lydia
Chapter 30: Dean
Chapter 31: Maggie
Chapter 32: Lydia
Chapter 33: Robyn
Chapter 34: Lydia
Chapter 35: Daniel
Later that Day
Chapter 36: Dean
Chapter 37: Robyn
Chapter 38: Maggie
Chapter 39: Lydia
Copyright
About the Book
In a hospice in Bury St Edmunds, a man called Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sits with him every day; she holds his hand and she listens to the story of his life, to his regrets and to his secrets. And then he tells her about the children he has never met and never will. He talks of them wistfully. His legacy, he calls them.
Lydia, Dean and Robyn don’t know each other. Yet. And they are all facing difficult changes. Lydia is still wearing the scars from her traumatic childhood and although she is wealthy and successful, her life is lonely and disjointed. Dean is a young man, burdened with unexpected responsibility, whose life is going nowhere. And Robyn wants to be a doctor, just like her father – a man she’s never met. But is her whole life built on an illusion?
Three people leading three very different lives. All lost. All looking for something. But when they slowly find their way into each other’s lives, everything starts to change …
Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Her first novel, Ralph’s Party, was the bestselling debut of 1999. She is also the author of Thirtynothing, One-Hit Wonder, Vince & Joy, A Friend of the Family, 31 Dream Street, The Truth About Melody Browne and After the Party, all of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
www.lisa-jewell.co.uk
Also by Lisa Jewell
Ralph’s Party
Thirtynothing
One-Hit Wonder
Vince & Joy
A Friend of the Family
31 Dream Street
The Truth About Melody Browne
After the Party
This book is dedicated to Sarah and Elliot Bailey.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Sarah Bailey, Jonny Geller, Kate Elton, Louise Campbell, Georgina Hawtrey-Woore, Claire Round and absolutely everyone at Arrow and Cornerstone, to Google, Wikipedia, my family, my children, my husband and to all the superb people on the Board.
Thank you to Marae for typing skills and to Maggie Smith who let me use her name in return for a donation to the excellent charitable concern, Room to Read. It was a very lovely name to work with.
Thank you as well to all my lovely friends and supporters on facebook and, on occasion, in real life too. In particular, thank you to Yasmin, Janet and Denis for loyalty, enthusiasm, bear hugs, playlists and champagne. To my followers on twitter all I can say is I am sorry. Not a natural born tweeter.
1979
GLENYS
Glenys Pike was thirty-five years old. She had long dark hair and a neck like a swan. Her husband was called Trevor and was five years younger than her. The idea was that he would keep her feeling young. The truth was that the fact that he had not yet reached his thirtieth birthday made her feel about as old as her grandmother. Trevor meanwhile still had all the swagger and sway of a young man, his hair a fat plume of mahogany, his stomach as smooth and hard as set cement. He lived like a young man, too; still went to clubs with his mates until the early hours; last summer he’d even taken a Club 18-30 holiday, just because he could. Trevor was fit and strong and smoked a cigarette like a cowboy. Trevor was a god.
But Trevor was also, Glenys had just learned, shooting blanks.
Well, she didn’t know that for a fact. God, no, Trevor Pike would never wank into a jar, not for anyone, least of all a female doctor. But she had to assume it because there was nothing wrong with her. Nothing whatsoever. Five years they’d been trying to make a baby, five years of phantom symptoms and two-week waits and false hopes and lying with her bloody legs in the bloody air after bloody sex, and nothing. Not even a miscarriage to show for it. And this morning she’d been to see a doctor up at the fertility unit for some results and there it was, plain as your face: Perfect Working Order.
‘What about your husband, Mrs Pike, has he been to see us for tests?’
Glenys had snorted laughter out of her nose. ‘God, no,’ she’d said, ‘I don’t think my husband even knows that there’s such a thing as male infertility.’
‘Macho man?’ asked the doctor.
‘And some,’ agreed Glenys. ‘Party animal. Good Time Guy. Carouser.’
‘Well,’ the doctor had sighed, and leaned back into a chair as though she’d heard it all before a thousand times, ‘in that case I suggest you try and change his lifestyle. If he’s living that kind of life, it’s probably not doing his sperm any good. Does he smoke?’
‘Forty a day.’
‘Drink?’
‘Forty a day.’ Glenys had grinned. ‘Just kidding. Though some Saturday nights, probably not far off.’
‘Healthy diet?’
‘Chips? Are they healthy?’ Glenys winked at the doctor who just blinked back at her unsmilingly. ‘No,’ she continued, somewhat unnecessarily, ‘I’m just kidding with you. He does like his chips, but he likes pasta, too. His grandmother was Italian. Says it’s in his blood. And he does like two veg. Peas. Potatoes. Carrots. He always eats his veg.’
‘Exercise?’
‘He is fit, I’d say. He plays football of a Sunday. He walks to work. He’s got amazing stamina, you know, when we’re at it.’
‘Well, anyway …’ The doctor ignored the unwanted insight into her patient’s love life. ‘It sounds like there is plenty of room for improvement. Try a bit for another six months or so, no smoking, no drinking, and if there’s still no change, we’ll have to get your husband in for tests.’
‘Six months?’ Glenys had squeaked. ‘But in six months I’ll be thirty-six. I thought I was going to be a grandmother by the time I was thirty-six! I can’t wait six months! My eggs—’
‘Your eggs are fine,’ the doctor had reassured her. ‘You are fine. If you can just get your husband to change his lifestyle. Oh, yes, and no tight trousers, no tight underwear, you’ll need to get him some cotton boxers.’
Glenys had snorted again at the thought of her Trevor in cotton boxers. Trevor was proud of his packet. He wanted people to be able to admire it, not cover it up in baggy old vicar knickers. And rightly so. ‘You know,’ she said to the doctor, ‘I know my husband. And I know for a fact that he won’t go for any of this stuff. He won’t g
o for baggy pants and no fags. In fact, it’s the tight pants and the fags that make him feel like a man. Without them he’d feel like, well, he’d feel like a nancy. You know.’
The doctor leaned across the desk towards her. ‘Well, then,’ she said, ‘you might need to start thinking about some other options.’
‘Options. What sort of options?’
The doctor sighed. ‘Well,’ she said, ticking them off on long fingers, ‘fertility tests for your husband, lifestyle changes, those would be the first things to think about. But after that, well, there’s adoption, sperm donation, IVF …’
‘Sperm donation?’
‘Yes.’
‘What, like, some fella just gives you their sperm, like?’
‘Well, no, he doesn’t give it to you. Not directly. He donates it to a fertility clinic and the clinic matches the right sperm to the right recipient.’
‘And, golly, how does it … you know?’
The doctor sighed again. Glenys knew she was just a silly girl from the valleys, she hadn’t given much of her life over to thinking about the big, wide world. She didn’t really follow the news or anything like that, just lived in her lovely little bubble of Glenysness. She’d heard about a woman in the next village who’d stolen some sperm from her boyfriend, sucked it out of a used condom with a turkey baster and blasted it up herself. Got pregnant but the baby didn’t catch. Almost like it knew it was the result of some badness. But this, men giving away their sperm to strangers, this was news to her.
‘It’s inserted vaginally, using a syringe. Obviously when a woman is at her most fertile.’
‘Wow, a strange man’s sperm. And my egg. Fancy that. So, how do they decide whose sperm to give me? I mean, how do they choose?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say they choose. But you are given a few salient details about the donor. Height. Hair colour. Eye colour. Nationality. Education.’
Education. Glenys liked the sound of that.
‘What, like, they could be a professor or something?’
The doctor shrugged. ‘In theory. Though more likely to be an out-of-work actor or a student.’
Actors. Students. Professors. The very thought of it. She did love her Trevor. She worshipped her Trevor. He was the sexiest guy in the world. He was cool and handsome and rough and tough and everything a man was supposed to be. Every time he looked at her she got goose skin. But he wasn’t clever, her Trevor, not in that way. He knew a lot about the things he liked, like rugby and cricket and football and fish. He could even speak a few words of Italian. ‘Ti amo, mi amore.’ Made her want to stick her hand down the front of his trousers and just grab him when he said that to her. But in some ways, well, it pained her to say it, but in some ways he was really quite stupid.
She hadn’t been able to shake the idea of another man’s sperm from her consciousness after that. Walked around for the rest of the day, imagining herself on a white bed, legs in stirrups, introducing the fruit of a stranger’s loins to the darkness of her waiting body, imagining the eager little things scurrying their way up there towards the golden light of her radiant egg. Then she thought of Trevor’s sperm. Drunk sperm, too busy showing off to each other to find their way through the gloam. She imagined them squaring up to each other: D’you want some? Well, do you? Stupid sperm. Stupid, lazy, macho sperm.
By the time she got home from the clinic she was really quite angry with Trevor and his sperm and had all but made up her mind that she was going to do it, she was going to go to a sperm clinic and ask for some sperm from a nice, clever teetotal man. But there he was, as she walked in the door of their cosy little flat just outside Tonypandy. He was filleting a fish on the kitchen counter, wearing his silly apron, the one with the picture of the naked woman on it that his brother had bought him for Christmas the year before, and his face lit up at the sight of her and he was so gorgeous and so silly and so damn perfect, she couldn’t help it, she just wanted to cuddle him and kiss him and not talk about sperm or babies or cotton boxer shorts.
It wasn’t until she woke up four mornings later and felt the wetness between her legs, the arrival of another monthly curse, that she began to feel angry again. What use was a man who fired blanks? What use was a man who could fillet a flounder and kick a ball into the back of a net if he couldn’t even stop drinking for long enough to let his sperm sober up?
That was the morning that Glenys Pike decided that she wanted a baby more than she wanted a man. That was the morning that Glenys Pike decided to do it herself.
RODNEY
Rodney Pike had been in love with Glenys since the very first day he’d laid eyes on her. It was in his mum’s front room, the day before Rodney’s birthday. Not that that was why Glenys was in their front room. She was just waiting for Trevor who was upstairs fiddling with his hair in front of the bathroom mirror. There was often a girl on the sofa waiting for Trevor to finish fiddling with his hair. Usually they were blonde, trendy-looking types with fringes and cheap plastic earrings. But this one was different. She had sleek black hair, and a long, elegant neck. She was wearing plain clothes; a white shirt with a belt round the waist, sky blue cotton trousers and silver shoes like a ballet dancer might wear. And she sat very straight, as if someone had taught her how to do it properly. He’d expected her to open her mouth and talk like Audrey Hepburn, but she hadn’t. She had a broad valleys accent and when she smiled her face turned into a caricature of itself. But for that first formative moment, Rod had looked at Glenys Reeves and thought that she was an exotic creature sent from another world to steal his soul, and he never quite lost that feeling.
Trevor showed more intelligence in the thirty seconds it took him to propose to Glenys Reeves a year later than he’d shown in the rest of his life put together. Rod had nodded approvingly when Trevor and Glenys had sat on that same green sofa and he told the family: ‘I’ve asked Glenys to marry me, and, well, you’ll never guess what – she’s said yes!’ He would have been mad not to. The girl adored him, that much was clear, and not only was she the prettiest girl that Rod had ever seen, she was kind and loving too. And you didn’t stumble upon a girl like that every day. Rod had never stumbled across a girl like that. He’d never stumbled across any girls at all really. He was too small for most of them. Welsh girls liked big men and Rod was not a big man: 5′ 6′′ and built like a forest imp. He had the same even features as Trevor, just on a smaller scale. He’d always assumed he’d grow to be as big as his elder brother, but it wasn’t to be. Stuck the size of a schoolboy forever more.
Over the years Glenys had always done Rodney the great service of flirting with him mildly. She’d say things like: ‘Oh, maybe I married the wrong brother,’ and always insist on sitting next to him in pubs and restaurants. Rodney, unlike his brother, was not stupid. He knew she was just being kind. He knew that she knew how he felt about her, and he knew that she knew how he felt about himself and was just trying to give him a little confidence boost, a little fillip. It worked. Rodney always felt about 5′ 8′′ when he was with Glenys.
And so, when she came to him one morning in early 1979, elegant as ever in a tailored skirt and frilled chiffon shirt, and put her hand over his and said: ‘Rod, I need you to help me. I’m desperate,’ he’d known already that whatever she was about to ask of him, he was destined to say yes.
It hadn’t made any sense at first, what she was saying to him.
‘It’s Trevor … It’s his sperm. They’re no good. That’s why we haven’t had a baby yet, Rodney.’
He pushed his glasses higher on his nose and peered at Glenys through them. ‘What do you mean, they’re no good?’ He found it very disconcerting to be in a room alone with Glenys and for her to be using the word ‘sperm’. He’d never heard her using dirty language before. It made him momentarily deaf to the essence of what she was trying to say.
‘They’re duds, Rod. He’s firing blanks. You know, a Jaffa.’
‘Oh, my goodness gracious.’ Rod slapped his hand to his mouth
, realisation dawning. ‘Are you sure?’ he said next, because really and truly, how could Trevor be a Jaffa? You only had to look at him to see how virile he was.
‘Well, yes, I’m pretty sure because I’ve been up to the clinic at Llantrisant, like, and they turned me inside out and upside down and hung me from the ceiling and there’s nothing wrong with me and it’s been five years, Rod. Five years, and it’s not, well, you know, it’s not for lack of trying.’
Rod blinked slowly, wanting the image of Glenys and his brother ‘trying’ gone from his head.
‘And the doctor up there said it’s his drinking, you see. And his smoking. And I can’t tell Trevor he’s not to drink and smoke. And the tight trousers. I mean, imagine Trevor in baggy strides? Really.’ She shook her head sadly. Rodney shook his head, too.
‘Have you told him?’ he asked.
‘Oh, my goodness, no! Can you imagine! He’d be apoplectic. I don’t think he’d ever forgive me, do you?’
Rodney nodded slowly. She was right. Trevor was not the sort of man who would take a suggestion that he was not fully the man he thought he was very lightly. Rodney caught his breath. There was something massive coming up, something seismic attached to the end of this conversation. He could feel it in the air and see it in the tight contours of Glenys’ lovely face. He tried not to let the obvious thing take root, it was too mind-blowing. There was no way in a thousand, million, trillion years that Glenys would ask him to father her child. Absolutely no way. He shook his head subconsciously against the thought. No, that would mean either betraying his brother or getting involved in messy mechanical stuff with tubes and syringes and God knows what and, really, the thought made Rod feel quite queasy. He and Glenys were of a like mind, he knew that. Gentle people, they were, wholesome you might say, not given to swearing and talking about filth like some. Glenys wouldn’t countenance it and neither would he. So he sat and he waited to find out what she would say next.