Just the Two of Us

by Georgie Capron

  For the rest of the week she slept a lot in the familiar comfort of her little floral bedroom up in the attic, the wooden beams stretching over her head and the small window with views down to the beach. She phoned her boss and arranged to take a couple of weeks of her annual leave to give herself more time. Word of her break-up was clearly spreading around the office, as shortly after hanging up the phone she received an email from Jack saying that he was sorry to hear the news of her and Alex. She was touched that he had made the effort to write.

  That afternoon she phoned Tor, who had been texting and calling non-stop since hearing the news from Claudia.

  ‘Lucy my love, how are you?’ said Tor as she answered the phone. ‘I’ve been so worried about you.’

  ‘Sorry it’s taken me so long to call,’ apologized Lucy. ‘I’ve been hibernating.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Not too great to be honest.’

  ‘What a massive shit! How the hell could he do this to you?’ asked Tor, her frustration on Lucy’s behalf clearly evident down the phone line.

  ‘Do you know, I’m not even that angry now. Just incredibly sad,’ said Lucy, rubbing her temples as a wave of exhaustion swept over her. She stifled a yawn.

  ‘He is such an idiot. Does he not realize what he is letting go?’ asked Tor.

  ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that,’ said Lucy. ‘He just can’t see a future with me and he doesn’t want to settle for less than perfect.’

  ‘But you are perfect, Luce,’ said Tor. ‘That’s what I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well I’m not perfect for him,’ said Lucy, her eyes welling up with tears.

  ‘You will be perfect for someone better though, Lucy, I promise you that. Sooner or later we will be looking back on this very conversation, remembering how we didn’t know what was going to happen and thinking if only we had known then what we do now,’ Tor reassured her. ‘It could be just around the corner.’

  Lucy tried to believe it could be true but her gut was telling her the opposite. She promised Tor that she would call whenever she needed to talk and thanked her for being there for her. She knew that she was supported one hundred per cent by her friends, and for that she was extremely thankful.

  Often, in the middle of the night she would wake up, drenched in tears, aching for Alex, hugging her pillow in his absence and praying for him to come back. Her gut would twist with pain and she would scream into her pillow with grief. She spent hours thinking obsessively about what had gone wrong, wondering if she could have done things differently, what it was about her that had caused the relationship to fail. Why couldn’t he love her enough? She felt so sure that if she could just see him again he would change his mind. She would daydream about scenarios where this might happen, playing hundreds of different happy endings in her mind. At times she thought about whether he might be with another woman, perhaps there had been someone else involved? She sent him messages begging him to come back to her. He would reply to each one with the same, steady apologies, the same certainty that this was the right decision, that he wouldn’t change his mind. This did help her to begin to fully realize the unacceptable truth that he had gone. He didn’t want her. He did love her, she was sure of that, but he didn’t love her enough. That kind of love wasn’t built to last a lifetime. It wasn’t strong enough to raise a family, which would eventually end up suffering from the broken relationship at its core. She knew that if he wasn’t happy, if he wasn’t sure, then something was deeply and fundamentally wrong. Maybe she was too blinkered by love to see their relationship clearly. She had to believe that he was right and try to be thankful. It was the only way she knew how to move on.

  As she slowly got used to her new circumstances she went for increasingly long walks, sometimes for hours at a time, finding a good spot to stop and sit, lost in her thoughts. Ginny fed her up with nourishing home cooking, making all of her favourite meals. Her appetite gradually began to pick up because of all the fresh air she was getting. Lucy spent her afternoons searching for cowry shells on a little sun-drenched beach just a bit further along the coast from her house. A twisting, treacherous-looking path cut through a hedgerow of wild flowers and led to a hidden cove where the tide washed them on to the seashore. In the olden days they had used cowry shells as currency in certain parts of the world. Lucy adored these shells; they were tiny and pale pink like the inside of a conch. Each shell looked as though it had been hand-sculpted in porcelain, curling delicately in on itself with crease marks like miniature wrinkles etched across. If you walked to the end of the beach you could find them nestling amongst the mussel shells and seaweed that the tide had washed in. Lucy and Ginny had spent hours there during her childhood, sifting through the pebbles on the beach, searching for these precious trophies. It was incredibly cathartic, a sort of mind-numbing therapy, and she spent hours on the beach lost in the rhythmic process.

  When Lucy finally broke the news to her, Granny Annie was full of words of wisdom and encouragement. ‘He was not good enough for you, darling,’ her voice crackled slightly down the telephone line. ‘I knew it all along.’

  ‘I could tell you weren’t quite convinced by him,’ said Lucy. ‘In fact, I find it quite reassuring in a strange way. Perhaps you had some kind of hidden intuition.’

  ‘When you meet the right man, darling, I will know,’ Annie said. ‘There was something about him that I didn’t warm to. He was a nice enough young chap, don’t get me wrong, but not quite right for my little Lucy.’

  ‘I just hope he wasn’t all I was going to get!’ laughed Lucy wryly. ‘My time seems to be running out, I think I might be a hopeless case.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said Annie. ‘Everything will work out just as it is meant to. You’ll see.’

  As she passed the telephone onto Ginny for her nightly catch-up with her mother, Lucy remembered an article she had read that said it takes half of the amount of time that you are in a relationship to get over someone. Lucy surmised that she had a little under six months until she would truly be feeling fine. It was June now, so that gave her until November. She took out her phone and put a reminder alert in her calendar for the 13th November: By today you will feel normal. Giving herself a deadline made her feel strangely better, as though she had something to work towards. It was helpful to believe that these feelings of utter despair would not stay with her forever. She clung to the old Persian saying that ‘this too shall pass’ and repeated it to herself daily, like a mantra, over and over again.

  Tor sent her a card which she had blu-tacked to the wall above her bed. It said:

  God only ever has three answers to our prayers:

  1) Yes

  2) Not right now

  3) I have something better in mind.

  When she read this she felt empowered. It wasn’t a yes for her and Alex, and that wasn’t going to happen again in the future, of that she could be sure. So God must have something better in mind for her. Lucy was going to find out what it was; she was going to take control of her life and her circumstances for once and for all.

  After two weeks had passed, she had phoned her boss and asked her if she could take two more weeks of annual leave before returning to work. She was thankful that she had only taken five days for Sicily and that she had plenty left. It was a quiet time of year in the office as everyone wound down for the summer, and so her boss didn’t mind her taking all her holiday in one fell swoop. She knew it meant she would be manning the fort in July and August as the rest of the troops set off for family holidays overseas.

  In the next couple of weeks she intended to come up with a plan for the next phase of her life. She thought about her future and what she wanted. At this point in time she had reconciled herself with the fact that she wasn’t going to find someone to share her life with. She longed more than anything for the kind of unconditional love and security that only a family could bring. Her mind kept on returning to the same thing, day after day, hour afte
r hour, minute after minute. It was so clear to her. She wanted a baby. Her whole body ached with the desire to have a child. She had been ready for years, just waiting for the right man to come along so that she could start a family. The realization that was beginning to dawn on her, as clear as day, was that she was no longer willing to wait. She knew that she was going to try and have a baby on her own.

  Lucy sat down one evening with her parents and waited for them to help themselves to the shepherd’s pie that was fresh from the Aga. As they sat down at the table she broached the subject, unsure of how they might react.

  ‘Mum, Dad, I want to talk to you about something,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ said Ginny. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘I have been doing a lot of thinking recently about my future, and I think I’ve come to a decision about what I need to do.’

  ‘About returning to work, you mean?’ asked Ginny, mid-mouthful.

  ‘No, not work related. I know my job isn’t the best in the world but it’s not that that’s really upsetting me.’

  ‘What is it, darling?’ asked Gus, pouring them all glasses of red wine.

  ‘Well I know that I’m still getting over Alex, there’s no denying it. But I’ve been thinking about what has upset me the most about our break-up. The loss of Alex, yes, but also the loss of everything he represented, everything he offered. I realize now that what upset me most about him leaving was the prospect of having a family being ripped from my grasp.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Ginny, putting down her knife and fork to give her daughter her full attention. ‘What can you do about that?’

  ‘Well these days there are options to a single woman of my age,’ explained Lucy. ‘Lots of people do it.’

  ‘Do what exactly?’ asked Ginny, looking somewhat alarmed.

  ‘Have a baby by themselves,’ said Lucy, determined to maintain eye contact with both her parents.

  ‘That’s the most ludicrous idea you’ve ever had!’ said Ginny.

  ‘Ginny! Just let her explain. Go on, love,’ said Gus.

  Lucy felt a pang of love for her gentle father, always calm, always supportive, even with something that Lucy knew would be far outside his comfort zone.

  ‘The thing is, Mum, I know it sounds ludicrous, but I cannot imagine a future without any children. What will I do when I am your age? Who would be there for me? Who would I talk to? Life would be so empty and unfulfilling without children. I really can’t imagine it and I know that I will do anything to stop that from happening,’ explained Lucy.

  ‘I can see that life would be pretty different if we hadn’t had you and Ollie,’ acknowledged Ginny, ‘but being a single mother all alone, are you sure that is better?’

  ‘I have never been more sure about anything in my life,’ said Lucy, determined to convince them, and herself, that she was doing the right thing. They spent the rest of the evening talking about it and, though initially extremely suspicious of the whole idea, Ginny began to come around when she realized how deadly serious she was about it. They both acknowledged that she could keep on waiting for the next couple of years to meet someone, but that by then it could be too late for her to conceive. She would be forty in four years’ time. It was a risk that she just wasn’t willing to take any more.

  She was pleased that her brother Ollie, whom she had been Skyping regularly, backed her decision. The free spirit that he was, he told her that the modern family unit was as varied as could be, and that he knew she would be a fantastic parent, which was all a child needed.

  She spoke to Claudia and Tor for hours, discussing the pros and cons, the minute details and contemplating thousands of possible scenarios that may happen along the way.

  ‘I don’t know, Luce, what’s so wrong with not having kids?’ asked Claudia. ‘I’m not going to!’

  ‘I know you don’t want to, Clauds, but you and I are wired so differently,’ explained Lucy.

  ‘I think it would be fun if neither of us are lumbered with puking, snotty children. Think of the holidays we can go on! Think of the freedom we will always have,’ said Claudia.

  ‘But that’s the problem! I want all of that, the puke, the snot, the mess, the chaos! I know it’s hard for you to understand but the idea of not having that is awful to me. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why you don’t want to go down that route, of course I do, but I just have to be a mother,’ said Lucy. ‘I have to have a family.’

  ‘Dan and I can be your family,’ said Claudia.

  Lucy laughed, ‘That’s very kind of you but probably not quite the same!’

  ‘If you do decide to go ahead with this, you have to know that it’s going to be totally shit at times,’ said Claudia, who was renowned for her bluntness. ‘You are going to feel lonely, overwhelmed, you might have doubts or regrets. Are you sure you are willing to sign up for that?’

  ‘I know it’s not going to be easy, Clauds.’

  ‘I will be there to support you, no question, if you go ahead. But I do think you need to spend more time thinking about it. Have you done any research?’

  ‘I haven’t done much but I am definitely going to do as much research as possible before I commit to anything,’ said Lucy.

  ‘How about talking to someone who has been through it?’ suggested Claudia.

  ‘Yes good idea, I’ll see what I can find online.’

  Lucy spent the rest of the day googling ‘single parents’ and reading lots of blogs and posts on various single-parenting forums. There were some interesting articles, websites and support groups available to those who were keen to learn more about it and she realized that she was in no way the only person who had come to the conclusion that they wanted to have a baby by themselves. She registered on a support group as a starting point to finding out more about the whole process, keen to talk to other women who had been in a similar position or who were currently contemplating it. It was called singlemothersbychoice.org, and she read the statement from the founder: ‘The word “choice” in our title has two implications: we have made a serious and thoughtful decision to take on the responsibility of raising a child by ourselves, and we have chosen not to bring a child into a relationship that is not a satisfactory one.1’ Lucy felt that this echoed her own thoughts exactly and was excited at the prospect of happiness at long last now that she might finally be able to fulfil her dreams and have her own child. The testimonials she had read made her eyes well up with tears, these women were so happy with their decision, they felt so blessed to have been able to have a child. She thought the whole thing sounded surprisingly empowering.

  Lucy knew that it would take time to research everything, to get the money together and to prepare herself fully for the procedure. She thought about whether she might adopt but she decided that she wanted to experience the miracle of being pregnant. She wanted to see her genes in her child, to be connected by that physical bond that adoption couldn’t provide. She would use a donor’s sperm and she would carry the baby herself, supported by her family and friends. She didn’t need a man’s help.

  1 https://www.singlemothersbychoice.org/about/philosophy/

  Chapter Nineteen

  Midway through June, Alex sent Lucy a message telling her that he had moved his stuff out of the house and posted the keys through the letter box on his way out. She dreaded returning to the empty flat, knowing that it would feel eerily quiet without his presence, that it would be so painfully obvious where the gaps were in the cupboards and drawers. Fortunately, Cornwall was so breathtakingly beautiful in the summer months; it truly worked wonders for the soul. It was as though all the rugged wilderness of the coastline, combined with the crashing power of the waves, had a healing effect on her. She would sit on the little stone bench at the top of the hill above the golf course and look down at the estuary, mesmerized by the give and pull of the tide, the waves rolling in constantly, hypnotically.

  She continued to find out more about single parenting. The more she found out the more empowe
red she felt. She started running again, building up her strength. She felt like the faster she ran, the more she could distance herself from Alex, as if she could get rid of him, bit by bit, through her own sweat and tears, exorcizing him from her system. By the end of June she felt ready to return to London, strong enough to deal with work and the empty flat, full of determination to move on, and pleased with her progress so far. She was still overcome by frequent bouts of painful, harrowing sorrow, but they were becoming less frequent as she slowly learnt to live with her new reality.

  She gave Gus and Ginny a hug at Bodmin Parkway, thanking them from the bottom of her heart for being there when she needed them most and promising to call if she had any low moments. She watched them drive off in their Land Rover, Tiggy resting both paws on the rear windscreen as if waving goodbye. Gathering her bags, she collected her ticket from the ticket machine and made her way to the platform to wait for her train.

  As the train rumbled out of the station and made its way through the sun-drenched fields, she remembered making the same journey with Alex the previous summer. The emotions that she thought she had done such a good job of repressing bubbled to the surface once again. She tried to look ahead and think positively. This was a new phase in her life. She told herself to be strong, that she would be okay by herself, that she didn’t need him or anyone else.

  Having made her way through Paddington station and the throng of commuters that were heading out of the city, she descended into the underground, rummaging in her bag for her Oyster card, which hadn’t been used for quite some time. It felt good to be back in the hustle and bustle of the city. She had relished the peace and quiet of Cornwall during those weeks of rest and recuperation, but there was something incredibly satisfying about the hubbub of city life. She felt like a tiny, insignificant cog in an ever-changing machine, and that anonymity reassured her. She knew that her decisions and her life were of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. It was a thought that gave her a healthy dose of perspective, an antidote to any self-pity that she might have been feeling, and she drew strength from the knowledge that whatever she might be going through, there were always people who were coping with worse.