Letters to Iris

by Elizabeth Noble

  And this was the price she had to pay – three or four times a year she played his ‘trailing spouse’ (this, apparently, being a real expression) at these ghastly events, held regularly, no one quite knew why, in the banqueting rooms and Freemasons’ halls of the City. Tess dressed up, lipstick and everything, and tried hard not to mind when whichever man she was seated beside glazed over when she answered the inevitable question about ‘what she did’. Thank God, she had always consoled herself, that at least she didn’t have to say ‘homemaker’ or ‘stay-at-home mother’. Now her stomach lurched. It couldn’t possibly be the tiny foetus lurking in there, protesting, but it felt like it might be.

  So, today, she had a statement necklace and four-inch heels in her tote bag, posher hair and actual lipstick. The tools with which to transform herself from real working woman into an adornment who’d had nothing else to do all day but prettify herself. Christ, it was such a ridiculous anachronism. All she wanted to do was to crawl home, change into her pyjamas and eat a pint of ice cream in front of Netflix. Call and check on Iris. Text a bit with Holly. And fall into bed.

  She needed to digest this. She had never wanted to talk to Iris as much as she did now. The ache of knowing she couldn’t – or, at least, that she could, but that Iris wouldn’t respond, not properly – sat painfully in her sternum. She pulled her phone out of her bag and scrolled through the contacts, her thumb hovering over Holly’s number. But that wasn’t fair. It was Sean she needed to tell. It was Sean’s baby.

  She tried to imagine the conversation, realized she couldn’t. She didn’t know how he’d feel. Hell, she wasn’t entirely sure how she felt. It wasn’t real yet. Saying it out loud might make it real, but she was lost for words. Something odd was gnawing at the edges of her mind. Something off note. It was frightening. It wasn’t as it should be, even if you accepted that life was not like movies and television.

  She needed a plan of action. And the brain space to come up with a plan. Not tonight. So that was the plan so far …

  Tess shook herself out of the reverie. She was calmer now, but she was getting cold too, and she was officially almost late. Sean didn’t like late. Cinderella: you and your as yet secret unborn child shall go to the bloody ball. Like it or not. The rest will have to wait.

  She had her game face on by the time she walked into the hall ten minutes later. And her Tom Ford power lipstick. She picked up a glass of champagne from a tray held by a waiter. Put it down again. Picked up a glass of orange juice. And scanned the room for Sean. He was right at the back – she spotted him immediately, towering over his companions, and waved to get his attention.

  He was at her elbow a moment later. ‘Hello, darling. You made it.’ He kissed her cheek. She wondered randomly when he’d started calling her ‘darling’. Possibly just this evening. Possibly just on these evenings.

  ‘Am I late?’ He didn’t appear to notice the orange juice. Although after the embarrassing incident (that was what they both called it: she’d groped someone’s bum, back in the early days when lust was liable just to come on with the speed of an anaphylactic shock, and the bum turned out to belong to a senior partner, not Sean), it was probably what he expected.

  ‘Barely … Come and meet Guy … I’ve told you about him.’

  Tess fixed her smile and fluffed her hair. She’d never heard of Guy. And they were off …

  December

  Okay. Deep breaths. You’re okay. I mean, I’m okay. You’re probably okay too. I’ve no idea, actually. It’s Week 4. I think. I googled, and tried to work it out. Work out exactly how old you were in there. Not pinpoint the actual moment of conception, you understand. My sex life isn’t exactly E. L. James-worthy but it isn’t so tragic that I could do that … It’s very early, anyway. If I wasn’t so ridiculously set-your-watch regular, I probably wouldn’t have a clue yet. If pregnancy tests weren’t so incredibly scientifically advanced and accurate, I’d still only be wondering. I took three tests on three different days, two more after that one in the office, and they all said the same thing. It’s about four weeks. The website I found (I read these things avidly, and then delete my search history more often than a teenage porn addict) tells me the embryo – who up until now I have thought of as a sort of nebulous and shapeless fizzing and sparkling collection of cells, performing magic on itself like in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but it’s you – splits in two this week. One half will become your placenta. That’s the bit that is going to connect you to me absolutely, albeit all grossly and bloodily: some women eat it afterwards, apparently, or wrap it in a muslin cloth with herbs and carry it around until it falls off of its own accord. Ew. Ew. Ew. I’m the ‘please, never show me that’ type of mother, baby mine. Hope that’s not a disappointment. This way what I eat can nourish you. (Note to self: must replace Pret à Manger almond-croissant-and-large-latte breakfast with yoghurt with fruit and seeds and healthy tea if can find one that doesn’t smell funny.) What I breathe will be what you breathe too. (Next note to self: no more following smokers down the street like a nicotine Bisto-kid, you filthy, regretful ex-smoker who still loves the smell so long as it’s fresh and not stuck in curtains.) The other half of the embryo – that’s actual, real you. Everything that will ever be you is you already. It’s hard to get my head around. We did this at school – never had a notion of what an extraordinary, mind-blowing thing it is that my body can do this. I’m Boudicca, Joan of Arc and Xena, Warrior Princess, all in one. And your body is doing this. YOU ARE SO CLEVER. Growing and developing at a faster rate than you ever will again.

  You’re not a lump of cells. You’re the miraculous start of a tiny human. In Week 4 you become an actual baby, though to be honest, in the image on my laptop, you don’t look like much of one. And so, I become your mum, ready or not. Willing or not. Able or not. It’s rather extraordinary that all this action can be going on deep in my belly with absolutely no outward signs or feelings. Turns out my body makes me more aware of itself and its workings when I’ve eaten too much white bread than it does when I’m splitting an embryo. And the truth is, baby mine, I’m not sure how I feel about you yet. You weren’t planned. Sorry, but you weren’t. You weren’t even – what do people say – a twinkle in your father’s eye. Five days ago, you were a vague, long-time-off, ‘we will because that’s what people do’ kind of a notion. Like everything else about my life, I realize. I’m not sure I’m ready. I’m definitely not sure Sean is. Oh God. Sean. But look … I’m thinking about what I need to eat, about not inhaling smoke from passers-by. That tells you something, and it tells me too. I just need a minute.

  It certainly wasn’t unusual for Sean to be up before her, but this level of – well, chirpiness – was as unusual as it was unacceptable so early in the day. They’d been home late, from an interminable dinner. He’d been in a very good mood, expansive, chatty and affectionate. He’d told her he’d been proud of her, that she’d looked gorgeous. He had wanted to make love, and she’d put him off by feigning exhaustion, realizing only as his hand strayed across her backside in a very familiar opening gambit that she couldn’t, yet. That something was very different now. Admittedly, he’d gone straight to sleep, not noticeably frustrated by her refusal, leaving her staring at the ceiling for ages. Par for the course. She’d always thought of the two of them as broadly compatible in most areas, except this one. Sean was the proverbial lark, she the proverbial owl. No, that wasn’t true. Owls came to life at night. Tess peaked for a couple of hours around 6 to 8 p.m., and was pretty much comatose (in bed or upright) by 11 p.m., always had been. She wasn’t sure what kind of animal that made her. But since it was appreciably more true in the winter, perhaps she was the proverbial tortoise or brown bear. She had new thoughts to keep her awake now. Thoughts Sean had no notion of.

  Tess had never been ‘a baby person’, as she thought of them. Not, at least, a person who felt sure and certain babies must be in her future in order for her future to look rosy. And complete. She wasn’t even sure she liked babi
es. They seemed to be a lot of work and worry, and to offer relatively little reward for both. Women at work had babies. Tess handled their maternity leave. Mopped their hormonal tears, allaying their professional fears as best she could. Bought cakes and balloons for their leaving parties and took their phone calls when they were anxious about coming back to work. When the tiny people who had caused so much disruption appeared in the office in their car-seat thrones several weeks later, and everyone crowded around to coo and marvel, Tess felt fairly ambiguous. They weren’t all beautiful. Some she struggled to find a compliment for, sure at least that one ought to be forthcoming. ‘Adorable outfit’ was a safe standby if all else failed. And some of them were far too noisy. Which invariably led their nervous, fluttery mothers to proclaim that they were hardly ever this unsettled, which Tess invariably did not entirely believe. Their arrival did not make her uterus contract with envy or anticipation, and their departure was usually a relief.

  She had felt differently about Dulcie, her god-daughter, the first baby she’d been very involved with. Dulcie had been beautiful, and placid, and Tess had loved her from the first moment she saw her, as she loved Dulcie’s mother, Holly. Her little cries had seemed like communication and not like complaint. Her every sneeze and shrug and wriggle had been miraculous, and not boring at all. Tess had fallen in love, but didn’t remember even a tinge of envy. She’d been the first non-‘bloody relative’ to visit the hospital. Holly had sent her husband, Ben, away, and the two of them had sat on the bed with Dulcie sleeping between them, and gazed at her while Holly graphically recounted the horrors and indignities of labour. The gentle sing-songy tone of her voice, and the way she couldn’t take her eyes off the baby, convinced Tess that she didn’t mean a word of it. Tess had picked up Dulcie and deeply inhaled the scent of her, and listened to the tiny snuffling sounds of her, and wondered at her delicate fingers and the dark sweep of her long eyelashes, and she’d loved her straightaway. There’d been no deep ache in her womb for one of her own, or even a frisson of excitement at the notion that one day it would be her turn. Holly doing this was like all the other things they had done differently from each other. Right for her friend, she was sure, but not for Tess. And now that the peaches and cream baby was fourteen years old, she loved her still. Tess was definitely heading Holly’s way at last. She put her hand on her flat belly, dipping as it still did between her hipbones as she lay on her back, and wondered …

  Sean’s iPhone sprang to life with the egregious sound of a clanging church-bell tower at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday, a full hour before Tess needed to be roused. Her phone was altogether gentler with her – it made the sort of sounds they play in posh spas – but Tess always felt slightly like she should stand to attention and be wearing some sort of uniform that included spurs when Sean’s went off. On the average day, by the time hers – located on the chest of drawers across the room so that it forced her out of bed – did its thing, Sean would have cycled at least five miles on the racing bike he kept anchored in some sort of contraption in the sitting room, facing the television. He’d have wiped down the bike (which always made Tess laugh – gym etiquette at home, where she never went anywhere near the bike unless they had people over for dinner and she wanted to hang their coats on the handlebars). He’d have eaten his healthy breakfast, showered, dressed … and left. It was how it had always been. Even when they’d first been together, and everything had been a novelty, she’d seldom been able to tempt him to stay in bed, instead of jumping up to check the markets in Tokyo, even with her best tricks.

  This morning, though, the spa chimes had rung, Radio 4 had delivered the seven o’clock news, and Tess was considering what she might wear, focusing on the minutiae of her day to avoid the enormous subject of the busily splitting embryo within, as she had been doing for almost a week now. She knew – it had registered from day one – that it wasn’t quite right, wanting to keep it all to herself. She ought to be bubbling with the news, fizzing with it. Maybe that would take a while. Maybe it was shock … She’d wake up one morning brimming like she was supposed to, and she badly wanted to wait for that morning, project everything as it was meant to be. So she planned her outfit, her hands resting on her still very flat tummy under the duvet, and listened to the news.

  And yet Sean was still here.

  And he was humming loudly. That almost never happened. Frank Sinatra. That never happened. He was more of a Drake kind of a guy.

  Tess rolled out of bed and, wrapping herself in her dressing gown, padded into the kitchen where the humming was coming from. Sean was apparently scrambling eggs. He smiled cheerfully at her over his shoulder.

  ‘Morning. Want some?’

  Tess shook her head and groaned. ‘Too early …’

  ‘I’ve made you tea.’ He gestured towards a mug on the table. ‘I was going to bring it in.’

  ‘Have I slept right through the rest of the week, and it’s actually Saturday?’

  Sean laughed. ‘No. It’s definitely Thursday.’

  ‘You never cook breakfast in the week.’

  ‘God. I’m that much of a creature of habit?’

  ‘You’re really asking me that?’ He was the actual living definition of a creature of habit. He knew it and she knew it and everyone who knew him knew it.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  She liked this Sean, though. He was … light somehow. Almost frivolous. This Sean would probably take baby news very well. She wondered how long he was hanging around for.

  ‘So what’s it all about, then?’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s … 7.15, and you’re still here. You’re eating’ – she went over to the stove – ‘eggs and bacon. It’s a Thursday.’

  He couldn’t have guessed, could he? As the thought suddenly flooded her brain, she wondered whether it would be a relief, and decided that if it made him smile and scramble eggs on a Thursday and be like this, perhaps it might be. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. Now she wanted to hum.

  ‘All right, Inspector Clouseau, there is something.’ Her heart pounded. Sean’s back was to her, as he spooned egg on to toast beside the stove. She wondered if her chest was flushing pink, like it always did when she was nervous, and pulled the dressing gown tighter around herself. ‘Sit down. Drink your tea.’

  ‘I need to be sitting down and drinking something hot and sugary?’ She tried to laugh at her own vague attempt at humour, but even to her the sound was just a little brittle. She sat down, and cupped the mug in her hands to stop from fidgeting.

  He joined her there, with his plate and cutlery, and didn’t speak while he ground salt and pepper on to his food. Tess realized she was holding her breath, while he carefully and precisely, as was his way, cut off a square of the toast with his knife and fork.

  ‘How do you feel about New York?’

  Tess blinked and swallowed as the conversation veered off the track she had imagined for it.

  ‘New York City?’

  ‘Yep.’ His voice was patient and slow, like a teacher talking to a kindergartener. ‘New York City. How d’you feel about it?’

  She shrugged. ‘I … I like it.’

  ‘You loved it, didn’t you?’ Objection. Leading the witness.

  ‘Loved it? I mean … I had a good time.’

  ‘We had a great time. Didn’t we?’

  They’d been Christmas shopping there. Two years ago. Their first Christmas. A long weekend in a nice hotel in Midtown, facilitated by air miles and financed by the anticipation of a nice work bonus. Sean’s work bonus. She hadn’t thought about it in ages. But they had had a great time. She remembered that now she’d had a few seconds to readjust to the fact that he did not want to talk about her pregnancy, the pregnancy she’d been keeping from him for, oh, five days now. A great, clichéd, skating-in-Central-Park, ram-raiding-Macy’s, too-much-bacon, cinnamon-on-your-hot-chocolate, sex-in-the-morning-as-well-as-at-night-because-we’re-on-holiday time.

  He was watching her face, smiling broadly. She mirrored the smile, c
onscious that it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  ‘Why are we talking about New York?’

  Sean took a deep breath, his eyes never leaving her face.

  ‘Because they’ve offered me the New York job.’

  He said ‘the New York job’. Not ‘a New York job’. The job. It felt like the completion of a conversation she hadn’t been present at the beginning of.

  ‘What New York job?’

  ‘The New York job.’ There was an almost imperceptible note of irritation in Sean’s voice. They both heard it, and Sean corrected it when he spoke again. He put his hand across hers, back to being the kindergarten teacher.

  ‘They want me to run the New York office.’

  It certainly and instantaneously explained the Frank Sinatra. New York.