If I put things right for her, then maybe she won’t hate me as much. Maybe this noose of guilt would loosen around my heart. Maybe … I glance down at the photos again. Maybe …
“They didn’t even …” I raise my eyebrows, twist my face a little, there is no way on earth I can say “sex” in front of my mother-in-law—she’ll have to work out what I am saying from that. “I—I can’t … Babies, you know? I can’t. Nova agreed to help us.” My eyes are transfixed by the little boy grinning at me. My beautiful little boy. “She was going to have a baby for us.”
I can’t look at Meredith, but I know she is shocked. I can feel it mushroom like a nuclear cloud over us, and with every word I speak, every truth I reveal, her shock grows and spreads, until it fills the room.
“Nova was our surrogate, Leo was meant to be my son.”
CHAPTER 11
K eith is sitting on the four-poster bed when I come into the bedroom after my shower. A tsunami of terror erupts at my core, crashing and crushing through me.
“What’s happened?” I ask as I clutch my white towel around me. I am suddenly light-headed and numb. Numb from the ends of my hair to the edges of my toenails.
“Nothing,” Keith says. “Nothing’s happened. Leo’s fine.” He considers this. “Nothing’s changed,” he amends.
The relief lets me breathe again, allows blood and feeling to return to my body. “Why are you here, then?” I ask Keith. I haven’t been gone that long. At most three hours to do the baking, ten minutes sitting frozen on the doorstep, and ten minutes at the very most in the shower. “Who’s with Leo?”
“Melissa. The nurse. She’s off duty, she said she’d stay with him until we get back.”
I may not be jealous of the attention my husband gets from other women, but I do object to him using the fact someone fancies him to get them to do something for him. Especially when it’s something as important as this.
“Why?” I ask through gritted teeth.
He moves his long legs off the bed and sits on the edge. His eyes run up and down my body in a lascivious manner. “We need to spend some time together,” he says. “Once your family arrives, that’ll be it. We won’t get any time to be alone together.”
“We spend time together all the time,” I say, playing dumb. I know what he means. What he wants. What he probably needs.
Keith leaves the bed, comes over and circles his arms around me. Usually I melt against him at this point, lust and desire swamping me. Usually it’s only seconds before we’re entangled in bed—sometimes we won’t make it that far. Usually all Keith has to do is put his arms around me and I start to crave more: his touch, his kisses, his body, his eyes as they stare into mine. That is usually. This is not a usual time. I’m unmoved as he moves his hands up and down my towel-covered back.
“You know what I mean,” he says.
Yes, I know what he means.
He starts to nuzzle my neck, failing to notice that I’m not as fluid as usual. I have stopped responding to Keith. It is nothing to do with Leo’s condition—I stopped responding to him about three months ago. Right after “the conversation.” Since then, sex has become the very last thing on my mind. Way down after checking the oil in the car, checking whether the guttering needs clearing and finding a new supplier for stronger bin liners. It isn’t Keith, it’s me. It’s how I feel about what he wants. He insisted we talk three months ago about trying for more kids—“We’re not getting any younger, Lucks, and we always knew we would”—and after that I couldn’t have sex. The thought of it …
I’ve always wanted three children, that was until what happened last time. This situation is completely different, and in my head I know it won’t happen again, but in my heart, the fear of it runs unbridled.
And because Keith doesn’t know everything about how I came to keep Leo, I can’t explain it to him. Instead, I have avoided intimacy. Not simply sex, but also hugging or kissing or snuggling when we’re alone because it may lead to more.
As Keith continues to nuzzle my neck, my eyes slip shut, in ecstasy, Keith probably thinks. I’m trying to convince myself I can do this. I can relax and let it happen. I’m also trying to remember the last time I took the Pill. All my routines are all over the place and I can’t remember popping one out of its packet and swallowing it in a while. I can’t exactly ask Keith to pause while I go and check how many are left. And I can’t remember when my last period was. It’ll be impossible to ask him to wear a condom.
I try to relax, try to go with this. I’ll go with it, then I’ll get the morning-after pill from the hospital pharmacy. Because I can’t get pregnant again. I just can’t. Not now, maybe not ever.
His lips—wonderful and full and one of the many reasons I fell for him—press a soft, gentle peck over my mouth. My heart dips a little in disappointment: he doesn’t want a quickie. He wants the whole thing: caresses, soft-spoken words, nail-digging clings, lingering kisses, lazy talk afterwards. I could maybe have gone through with a quickie, anything more is too much.
His mouth moves to my neck whilst one arm holds me close; the fingers of the other hand untuck my towel and pull it away, so it falls in a pool to the ground.
“Oh, God, Lucks,” he whispers against my throat, his desire reverberating across my skin. “It’s been so long.”
He needs this. And he made it snow for me. And he loves me. And I love him. And we need something that will ground us together.
I reach for his shirt buttons but my fingers are numb and the buttons have shrunk, I can’t get my fingers around them. Keith’s kisses move to my shoulder, and I move my hand, trying to caress his neck but my fingers still can’t feel the heat or smoothness of his skin. I throw my head back, it is what he expects. His hands move lower, grab me close.
I can’t. I can’t.
He takes my hand, presses it against his hardness, groaning as my hand makes contact. I’m numb. My whole body is completely inured to everything outside of me. My blood has run cold, my mind has switched off. I feel nothing.
“Stop, stop,” I say. In my head I am screaming it, but it comes out a whisper from my numbed lips.
Keith doesn’t hear, his mouth continues to kiss me, his hand moves between my legs and his fingers push deep inside me. He groans loudly, clutches me closer.
“Please, Keith, stop,” I say, managing to raise my voice above a whisper.
He immediately stops, pulls away. “What’s the matter?” he asks.
I lean down, grab the towel, clumsily wrap it around me. “I’m sorry, I can’t,” I say.
His eyes are still aflame with desire, his chest heaving. “What’s the matter?” he repeats.
“I don’t … I can’t. I’m sorry,” I say. The feeling is returning to my body. “Please don’t be angry with me.”
“God, I’m not angry,” he says, coming toward me. “I’m just worried about you.” He hugs me this time, with only comfort on his mind. He rocks me, lulling me.
I press my head against his chest, feel his heart beating, steady and regular. When a heart beats like that, it shows that the world is steady and regular. Nothing bad happens, nothing good happens. It is all steady, flat, unsurprising. Normal.
That’s what I want. I want Leo to wake up and for it to be normal. I want him to come home and for it to be normal. Not something out of the ordinary, something that needs celebration. Because if it is good, then something bad might happen to balance it out. I just want everything to go back to normal. Is that too much to ask?
“Tell me he’s going to be OK,” I say to Keith.
“He’s going to be more than OK,” Keith replies. “Yeah? He’s going to be more than OK.”
He doesn’t understand. I don’t want more than OK. I just want OK. We don’t need any more than OK, we don’t need more than normal. We just need it to be normal. OK.
“I’ll go make some coffee while you get dressed. And then we can go back to the hospital,” he says.
“Yeah, that’d be gre
at.”
He kisses the top of my head and leaves the room. Instead of moving to the wardrobe, I sit heavily on the bed, clinging to the towel.
My eyes go to the spot of crimson on the beige carpet beside the dressing table, where Leo dropped a red permanent marker pen without its lid on and I hadn’t seen it for a few hours—not until it had created a spot the size of a two-pound coin. “Do you do these things to upset me?” I’d shouted at him. It was the end of a long, ragged week and this was the final straw. “Or do you like me shouting at you?”
“I’m sorry,” Leo had said.
“But I don’t think you are.”
“I am!” he’d implored. “I’m sorry!”
“Yeah, so am I,” I’d replied. “It’s going to cost me a lot to get this stain cleaned off. So that means no more new toys, no more new computer games. I might even have to sell the PlayStation to pay for it.”
Leo had fled and I’d heard his footsteps running to his room—probably to wedge himself between his wardrobe and the window. Which is where he went when he wanted to cry and suck his thumb without anyone seeing. I had, of course, burst into tears, too. It hadn’t been the carpet I was that annoyed about. I didn’t in the grand scheme of things care about it—it was the fact that Leo had done something I told him over and over not to: he’d gone into my room with markers. He’d disobeyed me. Which was all a part of his growing up; growing up and growing away. Which scared me. He had always relied on me for everything, to know right from wrong, and he was starting to push the boundaries more and more. But that was normal. I knew that. I knew that then, I know that now. I wanted to lose him in a normal way. Like most mothers lost their children to time and adulthood. I don’t want to lose him like this.
I want normal again. I want OK again.
Is that really too much to want? For everything to be normal?
Maybe it is, because the way Leo came about was not normal in the everyday sense. Maybe this is happening because Leo was never meant to be mine.
“I wonder how the baby gets out of the mummy’s body?” he asked.
They were walking through the park. He wasn’t cold even though Mum had gone on and on and on about him wearing his special coat. The one with the sticky strip and zipper and buttons. They weren’t even going to the beach, where it was really, really, really windy and sometimes he had to hold on to Mum because he might get blown away. He liked that idea. Being blown away. Right out to sea. But only if Mum would get blown away, too. It’d be like flying.
Mum was wearing her duffel coat, which was his favorite. It was like Paddington’s and she had a stripy scarf around and around and around her neck. She was wheeling his scooter along the path.
Mum looked scared when he asked her the question, like when he jumped out from behind the door. This time she didn’t scream and clutch her chest, but she looked scared. Then she looked up at the trees because she was pretending she couldn’t hear. It was like when he put his hands over his ears so he couldn’t hear Mum when she called him to come in.
“I wonder how the baby gets out of the mummy’s body?” he asked again. “Do you know, Mum?”
She sighed, and stopped to lean on his scooter. “Yes, I do,” she said.
His eyes widened. “How?” he asked eagerly, ready to remember every word so he could tell Richard and David and Martin on Monday.
“Sweetheart, I really don’t want to talk about it right now,” Mum said. “I don’t think you’re old enough.” At least she didn’t crouch down when she said this, which would make him feel so much worse.
“I’m six!” he said.
“I know.”
“That’s really old.”
“I know.”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“I know you’re six and I know you’re old, but as I said, I don’t think you’re old enough.”
He folded his arms across his chest, stamped his foot. “That’s not fair!” He frowned at Mum, scrunched his arms even tighter, lowered his head so he could glare at her through his really narrow eyes. If he narrowed them enough, they might shoot laser beams, then Mum would know he was old enough. Someone who could shoot laser beams would be old enough then.
“I know,” Mum said. Then she did the worst thing in the whole world, she crouched down so they were the same height. He knew she was taller than him, almost all adults were. So why did they have to make themselves shorter when they didn’t have to? “OK, let me put it this way as well, I’m not old enough to tell you. How about that? Will that make you feel better?”
Leo nodded.
Mum beamed at him. He liked it when she smiled. When she smiled she looked like the sun—big and warm and beautiful. Dad always said Mum’s smile lit up his world.
Mum stood up, and he heard the cracking in her knees. “Whoa!” Leo gasped. It was cool when she did that.
They started walking again, toward the other end of the park to see if there were any ducks in the pond, then he’d be allowed to scoot all the way along the path and go in front and Mum wouldn’t run after him until he was really, really far away. She let him do things like that and it was fun. Sometimes it was extra fun when it was just her and him. Dad was great, but it was even greater when it was just him and Mum.
Mum reached out and jokily pulled his hood up on his head. He shook it off and laughed. They walked along for a while. The quiet in the park was so cool. There weren’t many people out because it was really early and cold. Mum had to go open the café soon so they went for the walk really early.
“I wonder how the baby gets into the mummy’s tummy?” he asked.
Leo, age 6 years
PART FOUR
CHAPTER 12
I can’t look at Meredith, but I know she is shocked. I can feel it mushroom like a nuclear cloud over us, and with every word I speak, every truth I reveal, her shock grows and spreads, until it fills the room.
“Nova was our surrogate, Leo was meant to be my son.”
It started in the supermarket, of all places.
In the washing powder aisle. I thought it would be the sight of a young mum sharing a tender moment with her child that would ignite the maternal spark in me, but it was the exact opposite. It started with a little boy, in a blue anorak and green combats, throwing himself on the floor, writhing and twisting like a goldfish that had accidentally leapt out of its bowl onto the carpet, whilst screaming as though he was being murdered by a rusty hacksaw. Like all the other shoppers who had been down that aisle when the epic tantrum began, I stood, watching him, horrified at the spectacle and impressed at his freedom.
After a few seconds, my eyes, like all the other shoppers’, moved to his mother. She stood stock-still in front of the washing powder, her half-full cart beside her, her eyes fixed on the detergents, to all intents and purposes deaf to the noise her son was creating. When we looked at her, we were all surprised because she wasn’t hastily trying to secrete about her person the rusty hacksaw with which the boy was being murdered. The only outward clue that she was with him and that she could hear him was that color sat high in her face, resting on her cheekbones like two streaks of paint, and her eyes were glossy with tears.
I realized, then, that she was trying to wait out the tantrum. Giving in, even when it was causing her immense embarrassment and every witness intense discomfort, would mean he would do this again. And again. And again. He would realize that misbehaving in public would be the quickest and most effective way to get what he wanted. Having said that, it was clear that it wasn’t working. He had tenacity, this young boy—his tantrum, its loud, insistent wail, was not abating.
My heart went out to her. I wanted to pick him up by the scruff of the neck, I wanted to put my arms around her. I wanted, I realized with a start, to be her. Because I would do it differently. I would give in, I would allow him what he wanted now, then take away something at home. I wouldn’t allow him to embarrass me in public, I would simply punish him in private. I wanted to be her.
> I wanted to be a mother.
I wanted to have a child of my own.
I abandoned my cart there in the aisle and walked out of the supermarket, the sound of the stranger’s cries and his mother’s loud, silent humiliation drilling into me what I wanted and what I couldn’t have.
Everything was flat after that day.
Flat and meaningless. Dull. The shine was buffed off everything, the joy drained out of life. No matter how fast I ran at night, how far I stretched, how much weight I lifted, pushed and pulled, it was still there. The cloud. The knowledge. The unending gray that was my life. My reality.
I have moods. Like any other person, I have moods. Sometimes mine last a bit longer, seem a bit deeper, but that’s because I feel things with a depth most people don’t allow themselves to experience. I worry, I fret, I take things to heart and I keep them there. When our dog, Duke, died when I was thirteen, everyone—my mother, my father, Mary, Peter—cried. But they all “got over it.” They could all leave it behind. I loved Duke more than them, that was obvious, because months later I still cried for him. I still missed him. I still hurt like it had only just happened. I could feel, more than most people. Now, after the incident in the supermarket, there was nothing to feel.
The landscape of reality showed me this: there was no point to it. To anything. Don’t we exist so we can create? Procreate? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. Therefore, what was the point of me? What was the point of any of it?
I didn’t talk to Mal about it. Why would I? This was all down to me. He could have children. He wasn’t the faulty one. I was. It was all my problem, why burden him with it? When I told him originally about my history, what had happened to me, why I couldn’t have children, he had accepted it like he accepted every other thing about me. He accepted that as a teenager I had been branded a slut-whore. He accepted that I’d got pregnant at fifteen. He accepted and understood about the abortion and how, because of that, because of complications, I was unable to have children. He understood it as a part of who I was. He was unwavering in his support. But still, I could not tell him everything. Not every thing.