by Kate Hewitt
I want to say something, but I’m not sure what, and so we are both silent as Jack opens the passenger door and I slip inside. It isn’t until we’re halfway back to my place that one of us speaks.
‘That was amazing, wasn’t it?’ Jack says, his eyes on the road. ‘Looking at that photo. That baby…’ He trails off, shaking his head. I don’t trust myself to respond, so I stay silent. ‘That baby… it’s half you, half me, Anna.’
I feel a weird tumble of sensations – guilt and embarrassment, longing and something I’m not ready to name. I turn to look out the window, trying to diffuse the sudden intimacy that has fallen on us like a silken blanket. ‘That baby is Milly’s,’ I say as firmly as I can. ‘Milly and Matt’s. Milly did loads of research,’ I add for emphasis, ‘and she actually imparts some of her DNA to the baby.’ Or something like that. I wasn’t quite sure of the details, but Milly was adamant that studies showed a baby had some genetic material of its birth mother, even if she was a surrogate.
‘But Matt doesn’t,’ Jack says, and I turn to look at him sharply. Why is he mentioning that? Why is he making it sound as if there is something questionable here, something we can pry and probe and perhaps even take apart? Because there isn’t. There absolutely isn’t.
‘No, but he shares fifty per cent of your DNA,’ I counter. ‘Those babies will have something – a lot – of Milly and Matt in them, Jack, and that’s without even mentioning the power of nurture versus nature.’
‘I know that,’ Jack says, but he doesn’t sound convinced, and a weird panic sweeps over me, because I can’t let him make me think this way. It feels treacherous, dangerous. Wrong. There’s no point to it, no purpose, no hope.
‘Milly’s adopted, you know. She understands what really makes a mum or dad, and she and Matt will make fantastic parents,’ I say, a determined, almost savage note to my voice. ‘Really amazing.’
‘Oh yes, definitely. Absolutely.’ He lets out a little laugh and shakes his head. ‘No question about that.’ I feel as if we’ve steered away from some unspoken precipice that was looming before us, and only just in time. My heart is still racing, the post-adrenalin hit of having just avoided a danger.
We don’t talk again until we’ve reached my flat; the street is quiet, twilight just settling, the cherry trees in full blowsy blossom, the flower beds bursting with tulips. The whole world in bloom and expectant. Jack turns to me.
‘Anna…’
My breath and heart rate both hitch. Some part of me knew this was coming, after the intimacy of this evening, and I am ready. I am so ready. He smiles and then he reaches for me. The feel of his lips on mine is strange, because it’s been so long. Have I forgotten how to kiss?
His hands tangle in my hair. He moves closer, or maybe I do. I feel awkward, all angles and elbows, having to think before I control each limb, a hand here, my hip there, because I don’t remember how this works. Maybe I never knew.
But Jack knows; Jack knows very well. His lips are sure, his movements too, maybe a little too sure. He’s not worried about my response, and I tell myself I don’t mind. At least one of us should know what we’re doing.
Eventually he pulls away, smiling, and I smile back. At least I think I do. I feel shaken right down to my core, as if I need to reconstruct myself, and it was only a kiss. He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear.
‘See you again?’ he says, and it doesn’t sound like a question. I nod dumbly, and then I slip out of the car. I feel strange, as if I am floating, but also as if I am leaden. I put my fingers to my lips.
I am still thinking about the kiss the next day, when I wait for Jack’s call that doesn’t come. Milly calls, though, clearly wanting the low-down on Jack and me.
‘So what’s going on there?’ she asks, and there is a jolly note to her voice that sounds a bit false.
‘Nothing much, really.’ Already I feel guarded, and it’s so bizarre. This is Milly.
‘Are you dating?’ she asks bluntly.
‘We’re seeing each other,’ I admit. ‘It’s very early stages, Milly.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She sounds hurt, just as I knew she would.
‘I’m not sure. I thought maybe you’d… mind.’
‘Mind?’ Her voice comes out sharp. ‘Why should I mind?’
‘I don’t know. Because it’s a bit strange? Us being, you know…’
‘You being what?’ Her voice hardens, and I feel as if I have suddenly stepped into deep waters, and I am flailing.
‘The donors. I don’t know. It all just seems a bit…’ I trail off, unable to put it into words, wishing I hadn’t said anything.
Milly doesn’t reply, and the silence feels frozen. ‘Why should that be strange?’ she finally asks, and although her tone is matter-of-fact, I sense something dark swirling underneath, and instinctively I back away from it.
‘I suppose it isn’t, not really. Sorry. I guess I wasn’t thinking.’
‘It’s just, Jack is a bit of a player, Anna,’ Milly continues after a strained second of silence. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get hurt by him. He has a lot more experience than you do, and it’s likely that he’s not taking this – whatever this is – seriously.’
‘Thanks for the warning.’ I am stung, and I am also reeling. More hurtful than her words about Jack is the fact that she said them at all. Milly and I never talk like this. We’re not arguing precisely, but somehow it feels worse.
After the call, I end up ringing Jack, which feels a bit reckless. I don’t even know if we’re at that stage yet; we’ve been in the mode of me waiting for his call, not the other way around.
‘I think Milly is a bit weirded out,’ I blurt as soon as he answers.
‘By what?’
‘By… us.’ He is silent, and my hand turns slippery on the phone. Should I not have called? Should I not have said that? But then I suddenly feel exasperated by it all; I am thirty-four, not sixteen, and if Jack is playing games, I want to know. ‘Is there an us, Jack?’ I ask levelly, and he lets out a light laugh.
‘Anna…’
‘I’m not asking for a commitment or a ring or anything like that, just clarification. Are we seeing each other?’
The silence stretches on for a few awful seconds, and then Jack finally replies. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Of course we are.’
And I choose to believe him, even though it comes at a cost: Milly doesn’t call or text for a week, and I don’t reach out, either. It’s the longest we’ve ever gone without being in contact, and it feels awful.
But I make myself not mind, and after a little while it becomes surprisingly easy. I am busy with work, and with Jack, and when he sends me a bouquet of pale pink tulips at work, any concern about Milly goes right out of my head. For once Milly’s friendship is not the centrifugal force in my life. For once I have someone else to think and care about, and that feels like a very good thing.
And then, two weeks later, she does call, her voice full of tears. ‘Anna,’ she whimpers. ‘I need you.’
Eleven
Milly
I knew it was too good to be true. Deep down, I always knew that. And when, at just fifteen weeks pregnant, it all goes wrong, I’m both utterly devastated and completely unsurprised.
It’s the day of my mum’s surgery, and so I’m already on edge. Over the last few weeks, I’ve tried to visit her as often as I can, and every time I see her I’m seized with a terror that she’s already leaving me. Each time, she seems paler, thinner, less. I tell myself things will get better with the surgery, the chemotherapy, but I’m still afraid. A lot rides on today.
Another worry on my mind, albeit low down on the list, is Anna and Jack. After the dinner where we celebrated the end of my first trimester, I turned to Matt as soon as they were out the door.
‘What’s going on there?’
Matt raised his eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Matt. Surely you’re not so clueless that you didn’t realise…?’ I stared at him in disbe
lief. ‘They came here together, in the same car. He put his arm around her…’
‘So?’
‘So? Do you think they’re dating?’
Matt frowned, and then shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s not really any of our business.’
But this was Anna, my best friend, as well as Matt’s brother. Plus, there was the not-so-little fact that they were the genetic donors of our child. Of course it was our business.
I rang Anna the next day and asked her about it straight out, but her calm reply that, yes, they were dating threw me, perhaps more than it should have. On an instinctive level, I didn’t like it, but I didn’t feel I could say that without sounding mean or paranoid. And so I acted as if it wasn’t weird, when we both knew it was.
‘I’m worried for Anna’s sake,’ I told Matt when he reminded me once again that it was not my business. ‘She’s had so few relationships… she’s innocent, Matt.’
‘Milly, she’s thirty-four.’
‘I know, and has she ever had a serious boyfriend?’
Matt shrugged. ‘She’s dated a few guys, hasn’t she? And she’s always seemed happy in her own company, to me. Some people are like that. Jack is like that, for heaven’s sake.’
‘Matt, you can’t deny that Jack is…’ I hesitated, because even after ten years of marriage, I wasn’t always entirely sure about Matt’s relationship to his brother. They were friendly without being all that close, which is how his whole family works. Distant without acknowledging it or feeling there’s anything amiss, so different from my own tightly knit family. ‘He’s a bit of a player when it comes to women,’ I finished.
‘A player?’
‘Serial dater, then.’
‘I don’t know the ins and outs of my brother’s love life,’ Matt answered, ‘but, like Anna, he can make his own decisions. If they want to see each other, we can’t stop them.’
I fell silent, because something about Matt’s repressive tone made me realise he might be almost as uncomfortable with the idea as I was. And he was right – we couldn’t stop them, not that I would actually try. Would I?
But, in any case, I wasn’t thinking about Anna and Jack the day of my mother’s surgery. All day long I was as tense as a wire, ready to snap. I was feeling crampy too, which made me even more irritable and anxious, and then, in the middle of the afternoon, my father rang my mobile.
Although I knew I wasn’t supposed to, I excused myself from the classroom, impressing upon my twenty-eight children that they needed to finish their number bonds to one hundred sheet without any talking.
‘Dad?’ I whispered, my voice urgent as I stood outside the classroom door, my gaze trained on my Year Ones. ‘Is Mum out of surgery?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded so tired. ‘It went well.’
‘It did?’ The surprise in my voice made me realise I’d been expecting bad news, and it took a moment for the relief to flood in. ‘She’s okay? They were able to remove the tumour?’
‘Yes, they said they think they got it all, although it can be tricky to tell. She’ll need to recover for a few weeks, and then hopefully she can start the chemo.’
‘That’s great news.’ I still sounded stunned. ‘That’s wonderful, Dad.’
‘It is a relief, darling, it really is. But I should go now. She’s going to wake up soon, and I need to be there.’
‘I’ll come as soon as I can, after work.’ I glanced back at my classroom, all of them still working on their sheets, as my dad rung off, and then I felt it – a sudden cramp banding across my belly, followed by a gush of fluid. Shock nearly rooted me to the spot. No…
I hurried into the staff loo, unable to keep from crying out at the sight of the blood staining my underwear and tights. No… no. Not this. Not after everything it took to get to this moment. Not when it finally seemed as if things were going well.
I stood up, my mind dizzy with panic, my whole body shaking. I needed to call my doctor. I needed to call Matt.
Matt didn’t answer when I rang, his phone switching immediately to voicemail, and I remembered he had a staff meeting all afternoon. My stomach cramped again. I looked at my phone and then I called the person I’d always depended on, the person I needed. I called Anna.
‘What’s happened? Where are you?’ Her questions were calm and no-nonsense, and they grounded me.
‘I’m at school. I need to get back to the classroom.’
‘You need to get to A&E, Milly. Tell whoever you need to that you have a medical emergency. I’ll meet you at the Royal Infirmary.’
‘You have work…’
‘It doesn’t matter. I haven’t had my lunch break yet, anyway. Do it, Milly. I’ll be there.’
The next hour was a blur, ringing Alicia, leaving a message for Matt, arranging cover for my class and then driving to A&E, terrified. So terrified.
Anna was waiting for me by the front doors, and she pulled me into a wordless hug as soon as she saw me. The two weeks of silence, the tension over Jack, were completely and thankfully forgotten in that moment. All I knew was I needed my best friend. I will always need her.
Now I am here, waiting to be seen, to have a scan, something to tell the doctors what’s going on, even though I am afraid to know. Anna sits next to me, calm and unflappable, acting as my anchor. She’s the one who asks the receptionist for updates, who brings me a bottle of water and finds the best magazines in the pile for me to read, even though I can’t concentrate enough to read them. I am too fidgety, my knee constantly jiggling, my arms wrapped around myself to keep myself from rocking back and forth.
Then they finally call my name and Anna and I head into the cubicle, where a nurse assesses me; I am barely able to stammer out my story – IVF, the blood, the cramping. Finally we’re called in for a scan, and I stretch out and lift up my top, my heart thudding painfully as I wait for the verdict.
The technician prods my stomach with an electric wand and the images jump and blur on the screen. I hold my breath. Then I see it, a beating heart, and I let out an incredulous laugh of both hope and fear, because that has to be good, right? My baby is still alive. Anna smiles and squeezes my hand.
‘You’ve had a small haemorrhage,’ the technician says. ‘But baby still looks healthy. The consultant will tell you more.’
And so I learn that while the baby is healthy, the bleeding and cramping mean my pregnancy is now higher risk, and I’m advised to be on bed rest for at least a week, with more regular assessments to make sure I am not at risk for preterm labour.
‘But there’s no reason to be worried?’ I press anxiously. ‘My baby is all right?’ I want promises, but of course they can’t give me any.
‘The goal,’ the consultant tells me with a sympathetic smile, ‘is to keep you pregnant for as long as possible.’ Considering I’m not even halfway to term, that is not the most reassuring sentiment. The next five and a half months feel as if they will stretch on forever – or not.
Anna comes home with me, fussing over me as she makes my favourite herbal tea and insists I stay on the sofa, feet up, a blanket tucked about me.
‘A week of bed rest is no bad thing,’ she says, ‘although I imagine it’s torture for someone who likes to be as busy as you.’
I am about to make a quip back when my face crumples. ‘Anna,’ I practically gasp, ‘I’m sorry. This whole thing with Jack… I’ve been so strange about it and I shouldn’t have been. I’m sorry.’ And then I am crying, from the emotion of it all – my mum’s surgery, the scare, Anna and me.
‘Oh Milly, I’m sorry, too.’ She hugs me and I press my cheek against her shoulder. ‘I never thought we’d fall out over a man.’
‘We haven’t fallen out, have we?’ I pull back to look at her anxiously. ‘I don’t ever want to fall out with you.’
‘And we won’t,’ Anna says firmly. ‘This thing with Jack… it’s not serious, anyway.’
‘But even if it was…’ I am feeling my way through the words. ‘Anna, you have the right to see anyo
ne you want. Love anyone you want. Marry them…’ But already my mind is racing ahead. If Anna and Jack marry, if they have babies… their children will be full-blooded siblings of mine. That is weird.
As if she can read my mind, Anna smiles and says gently, ‘Just because this is all a bit weird doesn’t make it wrong. Our situation is strange, Milly. We all feel that. We knew going in that it would be, at least a little. But it doesn’t have to define us or change anything. I don’t regret it, and neither should you.’
‘I don’t,’ I say. ‘I really don’t.’ I squeeze her hand, and Anna smiles. I am so thankful to be pregnant. I am thankful to Anna that she made it possible, along with Jack. And yet… she’s right. It is strange, and her relationship with Jack makes it complicated, whether we want it to or not. We all have feelings, instincts, and something about this situation goes against them. That truth is apparent, uncomfortable, but we can deal with it. We can live with it.
Like Anna said, the strangeness doesn’t have to change anything. I hold onto that like a promise, a vow I make to myself and to Anna, even if later I will question everything, and regret so much. Even if those promises will be broken, again and again, by both of us.
Twelve
Anna
A few weeks after Milly’s scare, we’ve got over that hump of awkwardness, and we’re back to our usual routine of texting and seeing each other every few days. Milly is still cautious, and Matt rightly wraps her in cotton wool, but we still manage to go out for drinks a couple of times and even a day shopping for maternity clothes. At nearly the halfway mark, she is finally starting to pop.
We spend a sunny Saturday afternoon at Clifton Village, with its independent shops and gorgeous Georgian architecture. It’s a warm, sunny day in mid-July, and everyone is out to enjoy the weather.
‘I don’t want anything too fussy,’ Milly says as she riffles through a rack of stretchy tops. ‘No bows and buttons, that kind of thing. They’d overwhelm me.’