Feels Like Maybe

by Claire Allan

  “I left it an hour ago,” I replied, trying not to snap.

  “Sorry,” he replied and that annoyed me.

  He wasn’t supposed to say sorry. That was my line. I was supposed to get in there first to make it all better. Now my sorry would seem a little stupid in comparison – as if I was just trying to keep score.

  “I’ll make you a fresh cup,” I said, walking to the kitchen.

  “There’s no need,” he called after me.

  “It’s okay. I don’t mind. I was going to the kitchen anyway,” I lied.

  I poured his cup and walked back. He was sitting on the sofa – on exactly the same spot where I had spent the lion’s share of the last ten hours. I handed him the mug and hovered nervously.

  “We need to talk,” I said.

  He nodded and I felt tears well up in my eyes. God damn it. How was I going to get through the conversation when I was crying already, before we had even started?

  I knelt down in front of him. Usually at this juncture he would say something entirely inappropriate like “while you’re down there,” with a cheeky wink, but he just looked at me and I could see my sadness reflected in his eyes.

  “I’m so, so sorry,” I said. If I had started to explain exactly what I was sorry for – how much I was sorry for – I feared we would be there all day, so I just repeated the line over again. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I know.”

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  He shook his head, trying to form the words and I searched his expression for any clue as to what he was going to say.

  “I don’t want to lose you either,” he said, “but if I’m honest I’m afraid that I already have.”

  It was my turn to shake my head. How could he think I would leave him? But then hadn’t I admitted to myself that he alone was not enough any more? Could I make it enough? Could we be happy without that missing link I’d wanted all these months? He wanted it too. I knew he wanted it. He’d helped choose the names, he’d found Dr Browne. Could we live together without achieving our goal?

  “I’ve made an appointment with Dr Browne for next week. I’m going to ask for the dye test, and for Clomid. I’ll ask for anything it takes to make this work.”

  “I need you back, Beth,” he said, taking my hands in his. “I need you back to make this work. Can we give the pregnancy effort a break? Even a month?”

  “But I’ve made an appointment!” My heart lurched at the thought of giving it a break. I didn’t want to give it a break. I didn’t want to waste a month for nothing.

  “You can change the appointment,” he said.

  I wondered how he couldn’t hear the thumping of my heart in my chest. It was almost deafening and yet he seemed oblivious.

  “But we might as well go!” I implored him. “It will take a while to set up tests and everything anyway and then we can forget about it for a while.”

  “Beth, please. Before this destroys us.”

  He was pleading now, his eyes filled with tears, and I wanted to make it all better. I wanted to nod and agree just to make him happy but my heart was breaking at the thought of not even trying to get pregnant for a whole month. It was as if the pain of getting my period next month was hitting me now. I was grieving already for another unconceived child.

  I couldn’t talk to him, but I didn’t want to walk away. So I just sat there, staring into space and listening to my husband crying.

  I’d never seen Dan crying before. Well, I lie, he did shed a tear when England got kicked out of the last World Cup but that was more down to the eight bottles of Stella Artois and male pride than anything else. I’m not saying the emotion wasn’t real, but it didn’t make me want to cry too. It didn’t tear at my heart like these tears. It may be unpatriotic to admit it, but when England got kicked out of the World Cup I felt relieved. I would have my husband back.

  I suppose all he wanted now was me back, but I don’t think I even knew who “me” was any more. I knew I was obsessed. I wasn’t blind to that obsession. I could feel myself mull over every twinge, every symptom, every book and website on conception that existed. While at clients’ houses, I would have imaginary conversations in my head where I would tell Dan I was pregnant and he would cry – happy tears this time. For two weeks out of every four I would stroke my belly that little bit when no one was looking, just in case. I wouldn’t climb ladders, or lift heavy sample books or eat soft cheese, or drink alcohol or take Nurofen, just in case. If I’m honest I would push Dan away for those two weeks in case the very act of sex – that which was supposed to foster our love – might damage our mythical baby. I had consumed so much Folic Acid and Pro-Natal that I was sure I rattled when I walked. Could I switch that off? Could I let that go – even for a month?

  I didn’t know.

  All I could do was turn to Dan once again, pleading back at him with my eyes. “I’m sorry, Dan. I’m so, so, sorry.”

  “I know,” he said.

  And we held each other in silence but with so many thoughts racing through our minds, for what seemed like forever.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said eventually and I sobbed – loud gasps racking my body.

  “Thank you! Thank you!” I cried, as he kissed my head.

  “But do one thing for me, Beth. No more secrets. We aren’t going to avoid your mother until you are pregnant. We aren’t going to hide from Aoife any more while you tear yourself apart every time she makes some jibe about us getting our skates on.”

  “I don’t know, Dan . . .”

  “Well, I do know. I’ve watched you tear yourself to pieces all through her pregnancy and you aren’t going to do that any more. Beth, Aoife loves you. She won’t judge you. We can’t keep this to ourselves any more. It’s tearing us apart.”

  “It’s tearing me apart.”

  I put my head in my hands. He had just offered to come to the appointment with me, and now he was asking this one thing of me and I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell. It was as if saying it out loud would make it real. As it stood, I could contain it because only Dan, me, Dr Browne and some “imaginary” friends on the internet knew that we couldn’t get pregnant despite there being nothing wrong with us. If I said it out loud to Aoife – super-fertile Aoife – it would make it more real than I wanted it to be. But if I didn’t tell her then Dan would be angry at me.

  “Okay,” I nodded and he kissed me gently.

  “It will be okay, Betsy,” he soothed. “We will get through this.”

  I really, really hoped he was right.

  

  Chapter 32

  Aoife

  Heather had gone out to see a client by the time we reached the shop. I was sure my face was still blazing from the embarrassing exposure of boobs to Tom Austin, but I forced those thoughts to the back of my head because Beth needed me now and perhaps this was the time when she was going to reveal her big secret.

  I wondered how I should react, given that technically speaking I knew her secret already. I didn’t want her to know that I had been snooping but I always was a lousy actress and an even worse liar. When other teenage girls could have managed to sneak out of the house with make-up concealed in their schoolbags I would blush so furiously that my mother – with her radar for teenage fibs set to high – would suss something was up and stare at me in such a way that I would blurt out my sad little secrets without her even having to confront me.

  As I walked back to the shop I practised a variety of facial expressions. I could do shocked, I guessed, perhaps even outrage at not being privy to this information before. I could do sad. And from the slightly wary look of strangers walking past me as I pulled those expressions, I could clearly do ‘mental’ down to a tee.

  Beth knew me really well. Surely she would see through whatever it was I was trying to pull off. She always was able to tell when I was fibbing. She said there was a second or two’s pause before I spoke which gave me away every time.

  The first time she had experienced
the ‘pause’ hadn’t been long after we’d met. As two eighteen-year-olds out on our own for the first time and feeling a little like fish out of water at our very big university we had found each other and clung on for dear life during our first few weeks in Halls. I had arrived in Manchester knowing no one. The girl from school who was supposed to be my roomie had failed to get the requisite grades to get on her law course, so I found myself alone in a room which bore more of a resemblance to a prison cell than the stylish student digs I had been dreaming of. I set about making it more homely, trailing in remnants of material bought from the local fabric suppliers and setting up my sewing-machine in the corner to batter together some curtains.

  I had been sewing merrily one night when a knock came to my door. I opened it to find a tall blonde firing me rather dirty looks.

  “I’m Beth,” she stated in her plummy southern English tones. “I’m in the room next door. I wondered if you could possibly keep the noise down.”

  “Noise? It’s only my sewing-machine!” I answered and in comparison my Derry accent sounded loud and brash. If I’m honest I sounded like an extra from a dodgy film about the Troubles.

  “It’s eleven thirty,” she said, “and I’d like to get some sleep.”

  Looking down at my watch, I saw that she was right. Shit, how had it got to be so late?

  “God, I’m sorry,” I said. “I got carried away transforming the room. I’ll stop now.”

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling now and looking instantly less scary as she glanced around my room at the swathes of material and piles of lifestyle magazines. “You’re not on the interior design course, are you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “God, so am I. Look, I’m sorry for stomping in here. You must think I’m a real stick in the mud.”

  “No, you’re fine,” I mumbled,

  “And you are a liar,” she laughed.

  I found myself smiling back and I reached out my hand. “Beth, I’m Aoife. Nice to meet you.”

  Nothing had been able to get past Beth since that day so I knew that even with my best face-pulling antics, it was unlikely that she wouldn’t figure out I’d been snooping on her. In fact, oh my God, maybe she already knew and that is why she was summoning me back to the shop? Shit! Did I log her computer out? Maybe she remembered leaving it on, so by logging her off I’d left a trail of clues back to me being a nosey fecker. Arse! I wondered if I could blame Heather. I mean, Heather was kind of disposable anyway and . . . no, I couldn’t think like that. If there was one thing I believed in it was the power of the Karma Fairy to come and bite you square in the arse if you messed anyone else around. No, there would be no pause needed, I was just going to have to throw myself at her mercy and hope she’d forgive me. I wondered, as I walked along, if I could blame my addled hormones. I mean it had only been four weeks since I’d given birth – surely I was allowed some momentary lapses of judgement, but then again, feck, wouldn’t it be highly insensitive of me to blame pregnancy hormones when Beth was trying to get pregnant and couldn’t?

  No, much as I had wanted Beth to tell me this news herself, this was now scary. If I was being honest about it, it was even more scary than my first post-baby poo and that was perhaps the scariest experience of my entire life.

  I suddenly wanted to turn around and run home, but then again running home involved running through the shop and past the kitchen where I could hear Beth pottering about.

  Maggie started to whimper, a cry I recognised as a baby in need of a fresh nappy, and at that Beth walked out to face me.

  “Aoife,” she started and my face started to blaze. She walked towards her laptop and closed the screen shut. “We need to talk.”

  I opened my mouth to chat but I wasn’t sure what to say, given that after all I was standing in front of her now bearing the one thing in my arms that she wanted with all her heart, and I hadn’t even wanted this little creature in the first place.

  Damn. How could I have said all those things? My mind flashed back to a conversation we’d had over at Ivory Towers when I was fourteen weeks pregnant and puking my anatomy on a regular basis.

  “Why would anyone do this?” I’d moaned. “God, there’s no dignity. There is no joy, no maternal glow. There is just me, getting fat – despite throwing up every single thing I’ve eaten over the past ten weeks. And then this, this . . . creature . . . will come out of me and demand my attention for ever more and I’m not ready for it, Beth. I don’t want it. I don’t want this fecking little parasite!”

  Beth had nodded and hugged me, holding my hair back from my face as I threw up but she didn’t say anything and now I knew why.

  She walked past me, as I busied myself changing Maggie’s nappy on the daybed, and locked the shop door, dropping the window shutters and turning off the main lights. Only the glow of Matilda’s light and the fairy lights on the willow branches beside the bed illuminated the room.

  She sat down, gazing at Maggie. Miraculously she didn’t retch at the stench. I noticed her mouth open and close. I knew she was trying to find the words too and yet I couldn’t reach out and talk to her and tell her I understood. At the end of the day. I didn’t understand and I was never likely to.

  “Aoife,” she began, “I need to tell you something and it’s not going to be easy for me. You’ll probably be really pissed off at me, but I need you to hear me out before you respond because I’m hoping you’ll understand once I’ve told you the full story.”

  I looked at her and our eyes locked in that moment. There was so much between us now. This massive secret and all the hurtful and horrible things I must have said about babies and getting pregnant without realising what I was doing and, of course, there was my daughter.

  Beth glanced down at the squirming pink ball on the bed, now trying to reach her hands to her mouth, her perfect blue eyes open wide and gazing at the twinkling lights.

  “I can’t get pregnant,” Beth said.

  “I know,” I answered, before I even realised what I was I saying.

  “You know?”

  “I found out last night. I’m sorry, Beth, you left the computer on and, well, you know what a nosey baggage I am and I looked and I’m sorry – but, Beth, why didn’t you tell me?”

  She looked down at Maggie again and then back at me, tears in her eyes. “How could I have told you, Aoife? With all you were going through?”

  “I would have helped. I would have been there for you.”

  “Aoife, you weren’t even there for yourself. You didn’t need our problems and then, you see, I thought it would go away. I’m young. I thought that given a matter of time I would get pregnant too and we could do this together.”

  “I would have liked that,” I said. “I’m sure your turn will come, Beth.”

  “I wish I was sure. Oh Aoife, it’s been twenty-four months of trying. We’ve had tests, blood tests, sperm tests, checks that I’m ovulating, and they can’t find a reason why I’m not pregnant and yet we’re not and it’s been killing me!”

  I took her hand. I didn’t know what to say. All the thoughts that were swimming through my head were hopelessly insensitive and patronising. I could tell her to relax, but I guessed she had tried that. I could tell her this motherhood malarky was not all it was cracked up to be, but looking at Maggie lying on the bed I knew it was more, so much more, than I could ever have imagined and my heart broke just a little bit for my friend.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Those two words were all I could muster and then I started to cry with her. I reached out, hugged her close to me and we sobbed together. I stroked her hair, soothing her the best I could – but I didn’t know how to take away her pain.

  After a while, we decided to move up to the flat and I made us a cup of tea. Beth told me all about it. It was as if now that she had started talking she couldn’t stop and two years of frustration and hurt poured out.

  She told me all about her decision to start trying for a baby. She told me how Dan had been
so excited and they had wandered about in a daze, lost in each other as they shared their little secret. They weren’t just making love any more. They were making a baby and every time they walked together, and saw a mum-to-be rub her stomach or a father push a pram they would share a secret smile. That would be them some day soon, they were sure.

  And then her period came, and kept on coming. Six months she could cope with, she told me. That was fine. She just thought it was taking its time but then when it reached a year – and she watched my belly swell – something in her snapped. They went and had tests, which gave them no answers and they were sent away again to keep trying.

  Life had become hard. Dan and her, the couple I thought were the most in-love and together couple in world, were having a hard time. My friend – my gorgeous supportive friend who had rubbed my swollen feet and gone to antenatal classes with me – had been going through her personal hell.

  I started to cry, wailing and moaning that I was the most god-awful bitch in the entire world and she must hate me, really hate me for being such a baggage. If we had been the owners of a ceremonial sword I would have thrown myself on it. All we had though was a letter opener with a mother-of-pearl handle, and it was quite blunt and I didn’t really fancy throwing myself on a blunt antique so I cried some more.

  I couldn’t understand how life could be so cruel to some people. What had Beth or Dan done to deserve this? Where was the reason in all this? And yes, maybe it would happen for them sometime but what if it didn’t? I could not be so blithe as to assume everything would work out perfectly because life did not always have fairytale endings. Look at me, a single, frumpy mother of one clinging onto the hope that when Jake came back it would all work out. Look at Anna, widowed in her mid-thirties and having never found love again. And then there were jammy bastards like Joe and his perfect Jacqueline who seemed to have it all and revel in their success even though they wouldn’t know hard work if it came up and bit them square in the arse.