by Julie Cohen
‘Does your husband give you flowers?’ the first woman asked Claire.
‘Er … sometimes.’ There had been a bouquet on the table when she came downstairs this morning.
‘I got flowers for Valentine’s Day last year!’ said the second woman. ‘Ellie ate them. We had to go to A&E. I didn’t get flowers this year.’
‘Were they poisonous?’
‘We were mostly worried about the cellophane wrapper. She didn’t do a poo for three days. I was terrified.’
‘Once, Alfie didn’t do a poo for two weeks. I shovelled enough puréed prunes into him to choke a horse.’
‘You have all this to come,’ said the first woman to Lacey. Lacey sat in a flowered armchair in the sunny, cramped front room of her flat, her hands folded over her protruding stomach. She smiled as if the idea of shovelling puréed prunes into a baby’s mouth was just about the best thing in the entire world.
Claire thought that probably wasn’t too far from wrong.
‘Wine?’ Lacey’s mother, who was a sweet lady with very red hair, was circulating the room with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Claire shook her head and held up her glass, already full of mineral water. ‘That’s a beautiful cake you’ve made,’ Lacey’s mother said. ‘And so delicious. Aren’t you having any?’
‘Thank you. And no, I don’t really eat cake.’
‘Are you gluten-free?’ asked the first woman. ‘No wonder you’re so slim. I just look at a piece of bread and I gain half a stone.’
‘I just try to eat healthily,’ said Claire. ‘But I love making cakes.’
‘What’s the baby going to be called?’ someone asked Lacey.
‘We’re calling him Billy.’
There was a collective sigh of appreciation.
‘I like the simple names,’ said the first woman. ‘There are too many trendy names around. There’s a girl at Alfie’s nursery called Fairybelle.’
The women launched into a discussion of their children’s names: what they were almost called, what they were glad they weren’t called, what they would have been called if they had been born the opposite sex. The woman whose daughter had eaten the cellophane off her flowers got up to use the loo and Georgette, the other St Dominick’s teacher, slipped into the place next to Claire.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all baby talk.’
‘It’s okay. I’m used to it. Besides, it’s Lacey’s day. She looks wonderful, doesn’t she?’
They both looked at Lacey. She was generally the sort of person who didn’t call much attention to herself: a hiker, a camper, a good teacher.
She looked wonderful.
‘Still,’ said Georgette, ‘I think that people could be a little bit more sensitive. Not everyone wants to talk about babies all the time.’
Georgette had two children. Claire remembered when the youngest had been born; it was about the time Claire herself had gone through her third and final IVF treatment that had been allowed on the NHS, before they’d gone private. Claire had been given an invitation to the christening, but there was a little handwritten note in it: I’ll understand if you don’t want to be around babies.
She hadn’t gone to the christening, not to avoid the babies but to avoid the understanding.
The women in this room were complaining about their lives, but underneath they were happy. Claire could almost smell it, with the nose of an outsider. They exuded warm yeasty contentment. It was the same way, she noticed, whenever women with young children got together. The conversation revolved around little sacrifices or disasters, about mishaps and made-up worries, but its function wasn’t to communicate information: it was to establish relationship. To mark out common ground.
We are mothers. We do battle with nappies and Calpol. Look upon our offspring, ye mighty, and despair.
The truth was, she would give up anything to be like the women in this room. She was tired of feeling the sharp stab of pain every time she passed a playground. That raw ache of yearning at Christmas. She was tired of feeling like a failure, once a month, like clockwork.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it. Or to be pitied.
And now she didn’t have to be.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s fine. I’m really happy.’
Georgette widened her eyes. ‘Oh my God, has something happened? Are you …?’
‘I think Lacey’s going to open her gifts,’ Claire said, and Georgette transferred her attention to the main business of the afternoon.
Claire thought back to the warm moments in bed with Ben this morning before he’d woken up, imagining a little one cuddled up with them. She could picture Ben’s expression as he watched her feeding their child from her body. Warm and sweet. That would make up for any blip in their sex life. Or the several blips over the years as they’d adjusted from thinking of sex as something fun, to thinking of it as something that was supposed to make babies but didn’t.
They’d talked about names a long time ago, when they thought it would be easy to have children. Back when they’d been actively trying not to have children – she’d gone on the pill before they’d started having sex, and at first she’d made him wear a condom as well. Ben called it ‘double bagging’. They’d lain in bed together in his single bed at university, or still later, in their first real double bed as a married couple, and planned their family. A boy first, named Oliver. A girl called Sophie. Or perhaps a girl called Olivia and a boy named Sid. The names had seemed so new and yet traditional, then; now, with the passing of years, they were too popular.
They hadn’t talked about names for a while now. It seemed such an innocent thing to do, but it was too much like tempting fate. They’d have to talk about it again soon. She liked her father’s name, Mark, if it were a boy. Or Lucille, if it were a girl, after Ben’s grandmother. Old-fashioned names, with a connection to family.
Or maybe they could go for something totally left field, like Fairybelle. Thumbelina. Bathsheba. Excalibur, for a boy. Excalibur Hercules Lawrence.
Claire smiled. Maybe it was even safe to joke about it.
‘Oh, lovely!’ cried Lacey, opening a box of Babygros. Her mother cooed and passed around a plate of biscuits. Claire felt a twinge in her abdomen, down near her bladder. Too much mineral water.
‘What did you give her?’ whispered Georgette.
‘A photograph album. Excuse me.’ She got up and slipped out.
The bathroom was through the bedroom. There was already a Moses basket set up on a stand next to the bed, lined with fluffy blue blankets. A mobile made of orange fish hung from the ceiling, low, where the baby would be able to see it. It swayed gently with the breeze of her entering the room.
The twinge became a drag, and then a pain. She put her hand low down on her stomach, where the pain was. She’d been told not to panic if she felt the odd twinge or pang. There was a lot going on inside her body, but everything was in the right place. Her baby was nestled safely within her, fed by her blood, swimming in fluid. Claire breathed deeply, breathed smoothly, as she’d learned in her Yoga for Fertility class, and watched the toy fish dancing.
The pain twisted and sharpened. It sank its grip deeper, into her lower back. A moan escaped Claire, mid-breath, and she put both of her hands on her belly now.
She only just got to the bathroom as the bleeding started.
Claire sat, staring at the pink shower curtain, but not for too long. Not so long that the others would notice. Then she moved with brisk efficiency. She found Lacey’s store of sanitary towels under the sink and took two; she didn’t think Lacey would mind. She wore one on top of the other. Then she flushed the toilet twice, washed her hands and touched her temples with her wet fingers. Not more than that, or she’d ruin her make-up. She kept her gaze averted from the Moses basket and the mobile as she exited through the bedroom. She picked up her handbag from the floor in the hallway, where she’d left it, and then hesitated before going into the kitchen. Lacey’s mother was alone in there, opening
another bottle of wine.
‘I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go,’ said Claire. Her voice sounded too loud to her, too rehearsed. ‘I don’t want to disturb Lacey while she’s opening gifts; can you say goodbye for me afterwards?’
Lacey’s mother looked at her with quick concern. ‘Are you all right, dear?’
‘Oh yes, fine. Ben’s just called me. He’s lost his car keys so he needs me to drive over and pick him up.’
‘Oh, what a nuisance. I’m sure Lacey will be sorry you’ve had to leave early. Do you want some of this food to take home with you?’
‘No, no thank you.’ From the living room, she could hear all of the women cooing over the latest baby item to be unwrapped. Tiny clothes, tiny toys. Everything soft and pure.
‘Are you sure you’re all right? You’re looking quite pale. Georgette tells me you’re expecting.’
‘Georgette must have got the wrong end of the stick, somehow.’ Claire forced a laugh. ‘No, I’m just sorry I have to leave the party. Thanks for giving Lacey my apologies.’
She escaped to her car. The fresh air stung her eyes. Other than that, she didn’t feel anything.
Claire drove straight to the M4. She turned off the radio and listened to the sound of the car. She didn’t seem able to think, but the site was programmed into her satnav and her body seemed to take over the driving by itself. It was good for that, at least. She got off at the correct junction and followed the B roads between hedges and around curves, obeying directions from the calm, impersonal electric voice.
The Kahns’ site was over the county line in Oxfordshire. She turned down the unfinished lane, the car lurching over the ruts and bumps, wondering where the nearest chemist was. She was going to need more towels.
The house was a skeleton of metal beams. Ben was in a Hi-Vis jacket and a hard hat, showing something on his iPad to Mr and Mrs Kahn and their eldest son, also in protective gear. They were smiling, looking pleased about the new home Ben had designed for them. In the next field over, she could see their other three children playing football.
He spotted her car and, after apologizing to the Kahns, came over. He opened the door and his smile melted away.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think I’ll need you to drive home.’ Her voice caught.
‘Claire? What’s going on? Why didn’t you ring?’
‘I needed to see you.’
Now that she’d stopped, she didn’t feel as if she could get out of the car. It was safer in here. She slid somehow from the driver’s seat to the passenger seat, over the gear lever and her handbag. She heard distant laughter in the field.
Ben got in and put his cool hand on her forehead.
‘You’re white as a sheet.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. She closed her eyes and curled up in the seat like a child.
She felt Ben drop off to sleep sometime around three o’clock in the morning. She lay there for a while, thinking, until the pain in her lower back wouldn’t let her be still, and then she slipped out from his arms, got up and took some painkillers. There was no point in being careful any more.
Downstairs, she made herself a cup of strong tea with milk and sugar. She found her laptop and powered it up on the kitchen table. It was better to keep busy, or at least to keep her hands busy.
That was where she was, squinting at the screen, when Ben came downstairs just after six, rubbing his face. His eyes were puffy, the T-shirt and pyjama bottoms he’d slept in wrinkled. ‘How are you?’ he asked.
‘I’m doped up on Ibuprofen.’ She put the cursor in a new cell in the spreadsheet and carefully typed in chocolate fondant.
‘I’m glad you took some. You have a little bit more colour.’ He put his arms around her from behind as she sat. ‘Shall I make us some breakfast? You didn’t eat anything yesterday after we got back from hospital.’
‘Okay.’
He looked more closely over the top of her head. ‘What are you doing? You’re not marking, are you?’
‘I’m not marking.’ She typed vanilla, and then checked the calendar, deleted it, and typed Victoria instead. She was careful not to look at him, not at his slept-in clothes nor the grief in his face. She couldn’t afford to change her mind.
‘What are you doing, then?’
‘I’ve made a spreadsheet of cakes,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘Do you know how many cakes I’ve made over the past six years? Take a guess. Don’t look.’ She covered the screen with one hand.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Just a rough estimate. I’ve made a cake for all of our birthdays, for Posie’s, for your dad’s, Christmas cakes. Cakes for bake sales at St Dom’s and for my tutor group. Village fêtes. Then there were all those coffee mornings for the Fertility Support group. And the ones I’ve brought round to dinners and lunches. Guess how many.’
‘Sweetheart, I know you need a distraction. But you should be resting.’
‘I’ve counted eighty-six cakes. That’s counting a batch of cupcakes as one cake, though I’m not sure that’s precisely accurate. And I’d usually make four lemon drizzles at once and freeze some, because the fertility ladies kept on asking for them. I’ve counted that as one cake too.’
‘Okay,’ said Ben. ‘You’ve been very prolific in the cake-baking area. You’re very good at it.’
‘Do you know how many I’ve eaten? Not the whole cake, obviously. I mean a slice.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘None.’ She put her finger on one spreadsheet entry. ‘Remember that coffee-walnut cake with the espresso ganache I made for your birthday? I really would’ve fancied that.’
‘You can’t have baked eighty-six cakes and not eaten any of them.’
‘I didn’t even lick the spoon.’
Ben paused at that.
‘But,’ said Claire, ‘I don’t have to worry about that now. I’ve decided, Ben. I’m through.’
‘Through with what?’ She couldn’t see his face as he stood behind her. But she knew him. She could feel his expression in his hands.
‘With this,’ she said. ‘With all of this. The dieting to stay at the optimum BMI for fertility, the hormones, the injections. The down-regulating and the stimulations. Peeing on sticks. Having my eggs taken out of me and fertilized in a test tube and put back into me.’
‘You don’t mean that,’ said Ben. ‘You’re upset because it didn’t work this time. But it’ll work the next time, Claire.’
‘I do mean it.’ She closed her laptop with a snap.
Ben took his arms from around her. He pulled out a chair and sat beside her, closely, eye to eye. She gathered her courage and looked him in the face.
‘You haven’t had to do what I’ve had to do,’ she said. ‘All you had to do was come in a cup.’
‘I’ve been through it too,’ he said quietly.
‘You’re not bleeding our child out right now,’ said Claire. Ben flinched.
‘That’s not fair,’ he said.
‘I’m not feeling very fair. None of this is fair. I was at a baby shower yesterday when I started miscarrying.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m not going to any more showers, either. Why should I torture myself?’
‘Well, I can understand that. But we mustn’t give up. We still have lots of chances left, and we shouldn’t rush into any big decisions when we’re in an emotional state.’ He took her hand. ‘Maybe we need a holiday.’
‘We can’t fix this with holidays. We can’t afford one, anyway. We’re already in debt enough with the IVF.’
‘Let me worry about that.’
‘I’m a failure. That’s not going to change.’
He squeezed her hand. ‘You’re not a failure, Claire.’
‘It’s my fault we can’t have children.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘It’s my eggs. None of them is any good. You’ve heard the doctors as much as I have. We’ve tried IVF ten times now.’ She held up bo
th her hands, fingers splayed. ‘And this was the only time out of ten that we’ve had a positive result. I was born with those eggs. I didn’t make them faulty. They just are. I’ve been faulty all my life.’
‘You’re not faulty,’ said Ben. ‘You’re perfect.’
‘I’ve lost weight. Then I lost too much weight, so I had to gain weight and then I gained too much so I had to lose it again. I’ve taken vitamins and done meditation and read a library full of books. Every single thought I’ve had for the past six years has been about fertility. I’m tired of it, Ben. I can’t do it any more. If we’re not meant to have children, we’re not meant to. We might as well accept it.’
She got up and put the kettle on again.
‘I haven’t suffered as much as you have,’ said Ben. ‘But this isn’t unusual. IVF only has about a thirty per cent success rate. We’ve known that from the start.’
‘That’s not good enough for me. Not any more.’
Ben stood. ‘I know you’re hurting. But if we give up, we’ve been through all of this for nothing.’
‘Don’t you think it’s time to cut our losses?’
‘Let’s have a break, and think about it some more.’
‘I shouldn’t have let myself love it,’ she said. ‘I knew there was a good chance it wouldn’t make it, that it wouldn’t become our child. I knew it was only a bundle of cells. But I could feel it in there, inside me. I thought it was growing. I kept on touching my belly – it was like a little secret. I loved it. I couldn’t help myself.’
He tried to take her in his arms, but she stepped away.
‘It’s okay, Ben. I don’t need to think about it any more. I’m not going to change my mind. I decided this morning while you were asleep, and as soon as I decided that I was stopping, I felt so much better. I’m sad that this didn’t work out, but there’s a huge freedom to it, too. I feel as if an enormous weight has been lifted off me.’
‘But … all our plans?’
‘Our plans are hurting me. I’ve thought constantly about having a baby for so long. And that’s not the worst thing; the worst thing is having hope. Every cycle, I’d get to hoping this was the one, this time it was going to happen. And then … nothing.’