Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel

by Dorothy Koomson

  “Is that why?” Mal asked.

  “I think so. One of the reasons, anyway.”

  He looked away again, replaying what had happened eight months ago now he could hang it all on a “what.” Mal came back for me, took my hand and we started walking down the bumpy trail again.

  “What are our options?” he asked.

  “None,” I said. “I can’t have children. That’s it. I only told you because I don’t want to start slipping again, not if talking about it will help.” We navigated our way over the path, twigs snapping under our sturdy boots. It was a unique kind of peaceful up here: there were birds and other creatures, but they all made up rather than disturbed the backdrop of silence, so pure and uncluttered. “I didn’t understand what you’d given up until recently, you know. You gave up the chance to be a father to be with me, that’s a huge thing to have done. Thank you.”

  “Do you really want a baby, Steph?” he asked in reply.

  When I thought of babies, I felt emptiness. It was something I couldn’t do. But I wanted one. To have, to hold, to be mine. I wanted someone to take care of, to love. “I really do,” I replied.

  “Then we’ll find a way to make it happen,” he said, as he wrapped his arms around me, drew me toward him, transferred his heat and strength to me with that hold. “OK? We’ll find a way.”

  It all kept coming back to the same thing.

  IVF was out. There was a waiting list on the NHS and it would cost too much privately. And how would all the hormones I had to take interact with the other medication I was on?

  Fostering was not an option. I couldn’t stand to take care of a child for only a few days or weeks and then have to lose them again.

  Adoption was viable, Mal thought. But I was scared. Of the questions they’d ask, what they’d want to know. How closely they would monitor us if they found out about my medical history. What they would demand I do. I could see them making me jump through hoop after hoop so that I could fit their criteria. Mal didn’t think it would be that bad, we should at least investigate it, but then he wasn’t the one who always had to tick “yes” to questions on forms about taking regular medication, he wasn’t the one who had to regularly visit the doctor to have his blood checked, he wasn’t the one who might have to inform the DVLA at any point that he wasn’t allowed to drive. Mal didn’t have what I had, so he couldn’t understand how it felt to be constantly singled out as “other,” “broken,” “damaged.”

  So, it all kept coming back to one thing: find someone to have a baby for us.

  “Victoria is out of the question, obviously,” Mal said. We’d talked and talked about it for weeks and the conversation always went the same way.

  “I don’t know, two Wacken genes combined, it’d be a very cute baby,” I said.

  “Stop it, stop it now,” he said. “It’s too heinous a thing to even joke about.”

  “Mary would tell me that I was cursed and I deserved this. There’s no way on earth I’d ask her,” I said.

  “What about your cousin Paula? She was your bridesmaid, and she’s had two children already.”

  I didn’t really like Paula that much, I’d only asked her because her mum was my mother’s sister and I’d stayed with them once and it was expected. “Yeah, maybe,” I said noncommittally.

  “What about your friend Carole? Or Ruth? Or Dyan?”

  “They’re not those kinds of friends.”

  There was someone else, of course, but in all the discussions, we never mentioned her. I hadn’t because he hadn’t. And I was surprised he hadn’t. I didn’t know why.

  We lapsed into silence and it was at this point one of us would say, “We really need to get to know more people.”

  “We could pay someone, sign up to one of those agencies,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said halfheartedly. “Apart from the cost, I don’t know, it wouldn’t be the same as someone we know. I know you get to meet the surrogate first, become friends with her and everything … but I suppose I want someone I can talk to every day. Drop in and see her, be there with her. Be a part of the day-to-day rather than just seeing her for stuff like the scans and the birth. Do you see what I mean? A friend would let me do that; someone who I’ve become friends with for a specific purpose probably wouldn’t let me take over so much of their life.”

  “If we search for the right person through an agency, we can explain all that.”

  “I suppose so,” I replied.

  At this point he’d bring up adoption again and I’d have to explain why I didn’t want that.

  “Nova,” he said instead of “adoption.”

  “Nova,” I repeated.

  “She’s that kind of friend, she’d let us both be a part of the day-to-day, and the baby would be beautiful.”

  “And half black.”

  “Yeah, and …?”

  He really and honestly didn’t understand. “I know, Mal, in your wonderful, politically correct, rainbow-colored world, such things don’t matter, but here on planet earth, they do. People will look at the baby and know it’s not mine.”

  He paused, thought about it, then said, “So?”

  “So? Mal, the baby would stand out at all our family gatherings, walking down the street, when I take him or her to the park.… The baby would always stand out, people would notice and they’d talk.”

  “Why do you care what other people think?” he asked. He could ask that because he had the confidence not to care. He had the strength to fight anyone who said anything about him and those he loved. I didn’t.

  “I don’t know, I just do,” I said. After I left home, I had rebuilt my reputation, I had become the type of person other people didn’t talk about, I blended in. This would be the opposite of blending in.

  “Steph, things only matter if you allow them to. We all stand out in lots of different ways. That only matters if you let it.”

  “Says the good-looking, white, middle-class man with the white, middle-class life. It’s very easy to talk about things only mattering if you let them when you’re in a position of privilege.”

  “I’m working class,” he said with a bright smile. “And I know things only matter if you let them because all those years that people gossiped about my mother, and the fact my father had been in prison, I only cared when Victoria would say things. Whenever she had a go at Mum for ruining her life, or when she accused me and the Kumalisis of sending her away because we didn’t love her, that hurt. That mattered, because I care what she thinks. Yeah, I got in fights at school over the things people said about my family, but as I got older I realized it didn’t matter. They can say what they like. And if they don’t like something, fuck ’em, that’s their problem. Not mine. If someone doesn’t like the fact my child is half black, they can fuck off out of my life.”

  “I can’t think like that. I’m not like you.”

  “OK,” he said, leaning back in his seat. “Say I had been married before to an Indian woman, had a child with her but got divorced. She gets custody, me and you get together. Then, one day, she decides to go off on a round-the-world trip and leaves our child with me. Us. So, what, you’d say no we can’t look after her because she’d stand out?”

  “Course not, but that’d be completely different.”

  “Yeah, it would. Because you wouldn’t have been holding her since the day she was born, you wouldn’t have felt her moving around in the womb, you wouldn’t have fallen in love with her from the moment she was conceived.”

  When he put it like that, it sounded so possible. A baby of our own.

  “Nova,” I said.

  “She’s the right choice.”

  “If she’s so perfect, how come it’s taken you this long to mention her?”

  “Because you didn’t,” he said.

  “I didn’t because you didn’t.”

  “You didn’t because sometimes you think she and I are too close.”

  “Only sometimes.”

  “Fair enough.”


  “Let me think about it,” I said.

  For three weeks, I thought about it, we talked about it, and it all came back to one thing. One person.

  Nova.

  CHAPTER 17

  W e both know I didn’t really like you when I met you,” Stephanie said.

  Stephanie was about to ask me for something, I could tell. She was carrying out a classic move in trying to get someone to do something for you: lay all your cards on the table. Or, at the very least, appear to do so. She was trying to manipulate me in case I still hung on to any slivers of resentment for what she thought of me before she got to know me. Admitting to not liking me suggested that she was ashamed of it, therefore any hurt I still held wasn’t going to be nearly as deep as hers. She was ashamed, I shouldn’t hold that against her and hopefully we could “move on” and find a new beginning, which would involve me doing whatever it was that she wanted from me.

  “It wasn’t you, of course, I didn’t even know you,” she continued. “It was me, my insecurities.” Her sea-blue eyes flicked upwards as though remembering that time, in a galaxy far, far away. She shook her head slightly, bouncing the waves of her cornsilk-colored hair. Not natural. I knew that now. I knew all these things about Stephanie, the woman who had apparently become my friend over the past four years. I knew she assisted her hair color, I knew she’d had a serious accident just over a year ago. I knew she stopped being office manager in a law firm just over a year ago and now was assistant manager of a clothes boutique. I knew Mal dyed her eyelashes and eyebrows every six weeks because otherwise she would look like she had neither. I knew she ran every day—rain or shine. If the weather was particularly bad, she would go to the gym and run on a treadmill. She practiced yoga, she smoked even though she thought neither Mal nor I knew it was more than a sneaky one every now and again. She drank very little. She had kissed another woman in college. Her left breast was a half-cup size smaller than her right. She plucked the gray out of her pubic hair. She always wore bangles on both wrists, but had recently started wearing more of them.

  I knew a lot of extraneous information about Stephanie, but if God was in the details of knowing a person, then we had a Godless relationship. She was a mistress of disguise; a regular Mata Hari. She put on whichever persona was appropriate for the person she was talking to, blending herself in to fit the background of their personality. With me, she feigned openness. Because I talked far too much for my own good, and tried to think the best of people always, she tried to be like that with me, too. She didn’t realize that I saw through her disguise because I didn’t simply listen to her, I could feel her. She was closed; her aura a tightly woven mass of energy with very defined, sharp edges that would never allow you beyond a certain point. You could spend hours with Stephanie and know very little. You could spend years with Stephanie and know even less.

  “I can’t have children,” she said. Her fingers revealed her anxiety. They laced together, they unwound from each other, they drummed on the table, they tapped on each other, they spun the base of her wineglass in a circle on the wooden table.

  “God, I’m sorry,” I said. Mal hadn’t told me that. Not that he would ever reveal their secrets to me.

  Her hands went to the bag that was sitting beside her on the red leatherette sofa. She rummaged inside, pulled out her pack of Marlboro Lights and lighter. “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked.

  “No, course not,” I said.

  Her body relaxed as she inhaled on her cigarette. As she exhaled, more tension was released.

  “Where was I?” she said after two more draws. “Oh yes. I’d just revealed my big secret.” Her flippancy wasn’t at all convincing. “I told Mal before we got married, when things became serious. I couldn’t ever allow him to tie himself to me without knowing … Without knowing that.” She pressed her hand over her collarbone to show her sincerity and how much it had cost her to reveal her secret to another person. “It’s a medical thing,” she continued. “A mishap …” Tears welled up in her eyes. The last—and first—time I saw Stephanie cry was on her wedding day. She’d been so overcome with happiness that tears cracked her façade. These, I could tell, were not as genuine as her wedding day tears. “I’m sorry … Sometimes I feel like I’ve been cheated out of being a real woman.”

  I nodded in understanding, wondering what she wanted from me. Under normal circumstances, she would not be revealing this to anyone, let alone me. And her aura hadn’t changed at all. The defined, razor edge was still there: get too close and she would cut me off. But she still wanted something that she could only get from me.

  “We’ve been looking into adoption,” she said, “but it’s unlikely we’ll get a baby.”

  “What, a professional couple like you two? Good-looking, successful, all your own teeth? I find that hard to believe,” I said. I knew nothing of adoption, but if I were ever to be responsible for advertising the concept, I would make Mal and Stephanie the poster couple. They couldn’t look any more perfect if they wore matching T-shirts that proclaimed, “We’ve cured cancer, ended world poverty and we’re making great progress on reversing global warming.”

  “OK, I admit, we might. But it’ll take time. A lot of time. And form-filling and people prying into the very details of our lives.”

  “As they should. They can’t just hand over a baby to anyone.”

  “No, quite … We also want a baby that is genetically connected to us.”

  Her aura changed then, the edges softened, reached out to me. I felt a cold chill thrill down the side of my head, into my neck and along my spine. Without meaning to, I leaned back a little. They wouldn’t … They certainly wouldn’t—

  “We’ve been through all the people we know and … We love you so much … There was no one else who would be suitable and who would even think about it. And we’re only asking you to think about it. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else.”

  They would. They had.

  She drew hard on her cigarette, the action hardening her: sharpening up the edges of her face and mannerisms. She was closed off again. As she expelled cigarette smoke, she ran her tongue over her upper teeth.

  “We think you’re amazing,” she said with a wide grin. “And if there is anyone on earth we’d want to carry our child for us that isn’t me, well, it’d be you. Every choice we looked at was no way nearly as … well, you as you.”

  She’s hiding something, crossed my mind. Followed swiftly by, She’s lying. I pushed my thoughts aside. What was there to lie about? What was there to hide?

  “I—erm—I …” I began, not quite sure what to say. I was surprised that it had come from her and not Mal.

  “I asked because I didn’t want you to say yes simply because it was Mal who asked,” she said, reading my mind. “I know what the pair of you are like, you’ll do anything for each other without a second thought. This is a huge thing, though, and I—we—want you to think about it carefully.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll do that,” I reassured her, and grabbed my wineglass and took a gulp. Of course I wouldn’t do it. This wasn’t lending them money toward the deposit on their house (which she still didn’t know about), this wasn’t making an effort with a person who clearly hated me, this was growing a baby inside me and then giving it to someone else. Who could do that? I know people did do that, but who were they? How could they? I wasn’t one of those people, that was for certain. And I was surprised that they thought I was.

  “It’d be traditional surrogacy,” Stephanie said. Her eyes were poring over me, watching for my reaction. She should have tuned in with her other senses, because then she would know: the answer was no. “That’s when you use the intended father’s sperm and the surrogate’s eggs.”

  I wouldn’t be giving them their baby, which I had grown, I’d be—I took another huge gulp of wine. No way! Absolutely no way.

  She rested her hand on my forearm. “Please just think about it,” she said, a quiet, stilling plea. Our eyes met and for the
first time she was open. I could see the emotion in her: sincerity. Her armor, her disguises, her deflections were laid aside and she was sincere.

  When she had done that, had stopped playing the role of Stephanie for a moment and had been Stephanie, the least I could do was think about it.

  Only think about it.

  CHAPTER 18

  S he didn’t say no.

  She had looked shocked, but she didn’t say no straightaway. She didn’t say no at all.

  She was the logical choice, the perfect choice. I could see that now.

  And she was going to help us.

  She was going to help me.

  I was going to be a mother.

  I was going to have the family I’d always wanted. And the life I’d always wanted.

  Everything was going to be perfect. I just knew it.

  CHAPTER 19

  M usic rose up from the street below my window.

  Not from a car stereo, not from someone’s Walkman being played too loud. I recognized the tune almost immediately. The opening guitar strains of “Over the Rainbow.” The Hawaiian version, soft but faster than Judy Garland’s rendition. I went to the window, twitched aside a sliver of net curtain. In the street, below my window, Mal stood playing his guitar. His eyes were fixed on my window and he grinned as he spotted me. It was the mischievous smile he used to give me when we were children and had stolen cookies from the cupboard, or sneaked out of bed and sat on the steps listening to Mum and Dad talking in the front room. It was the smile that made what we shared special and unbreakable. Few people who hadn’t been there from the beginning of our time together could understand it.

  He began to sing and even through the glass and walls, the timbre of his voice touched the very core of me. When he and Cordy used to sing together when we were younger, it made everyone smile. I hadn’t heard him sing in years. Now he was serenading me with his smooth voice at 11 p.m. from the street outside my flat.