DAY 24
Spend time with children
“Annie! It’s so nice to meet you.” She wasn’t even in the door of Polly’s parents’ house when she was enveloped in a hug from Milly, Polly’s friend. She had a chic dark bob streaked with purple, and sunglasses on her head, though it was nighttime. “Come in, come in, everyone’s here.” Annie trailed after, already wishing she’d stayed at home. Polly had finally organized a get-together with her friends, and had insisted Annie come “for support,” but she was starting to feel like she was the one who’d need it.
Annie paused in the door of the kitchen, her dream kitchen, holding her bottle of wine. It looked like a scene from a catalog. Stylish, beautiful people—Polly, George, their parents, Milly, Milly’s husband, Seb, who had trendy glasses and a cashmere jumper, and Polly’s other friend Suze (mane of blond hair, sky-blue manicure, skinny jeans). She couldn’t have felt more out of place if she’d tried. The red dress and boots felt too try-hard, and she knew she hadn’t done her eyeliner right. She wanted to bolt, but Polly jumped up and put an arm around her. “Everyone, this is Annie, my hospital friend.”
That made her think of puke and tears and linoleum. She waved weakly. “Hi.” She felt so awkward her shoulders were practically meeting in front of her chest. George gave her a friendly smile, but even that didn’t help. He was one of the beautiful cool people, relaxed and confident.
Valerie, Polly’s mum, was wearing some kind of stylish shift dress, with dark-rimmed glasses and recently blow-dried hair. “Hello, darling, nice to see you again.” Annie’s heart began to ache. Her mother was an old lady in comparison, though she was actually younger. Even when she’d been well she hadn’t dressed like Valerie, thinking new clothes a waste of money when she could make her own. It wasn’t fair. Why was it Annie’s mother who’d had such a tiny portion of life? And then lost even that? Who couldn’t even remember that her husband had left her a lifetime ago?
Valerie hustled Annie toward the table. “Now, why don’t you sit over here beside George. I can see you two have been getting on well.”
“Mum...” George was frowning.
“Remind me, Annie, you are single, aren’t you?”
There was an awkward silence. “Well, yes, but—”
“Mum.” George’s face was tight. “We’ve talked about this, okay? Just leave it.”
Mystified, Annie hovered near her seat. Polly squeezed Annie’s shoulder and whispered, “Come on. It’s not so scary.”
Easy for her to say. Didn’t she see not everyone could leap at life, grab it with both hands, be forced into meetings with old friends they hadn’t spoken to in two years, made to dance in fountains and go for dinner with new people and admit they knew nothing about art or music or clothes?
Everyone was smiling at Annie. As if she was the poor relation they had to make a fuss of. Suze said, “So, Annie, I hear you’ve adopted Poll’s dog?”
“Well, I’m just sort of looking after him for now.” Meaning she was the one with the chewed shoes and no sleep and puddles of wee everywhere.
“George could help you with that,” Valerie said, setting down a basket of homemade focaccia. “He loves animals.”
George and Polly exchanged glances. Annie stared angrily at her slate place mat. She didn’t understand what was going on.
Then things got a hundred times worse as there was a noise in the hallway like horses in a cavalry charge, and a wailing like a banshee, and Annie felt her chest close up in fear. Children. There were children here. Why had no one warned her? Two tiny blonde things erupted into the room, one in a pink dress and one in a Breton top and jeans. “Mummy, Harry did a poo in the loo!”
“Mummy, Lola hurted me. Put her on the naughty step!”
Annie watched, rooted in horror, as they threw themselves at Milly, one around each leg. Milly laughed helplessly. “Darlings, say hello to Annie.”
They turned their little faces to her, curious, as if they might come over. Annie couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Their snub noses, their curling blond hair, the little shoes. How old were they? Three, four? Twins. She couldn’t bear it. “I...”
Luckily, Polly must have understood. “Annie and I are just popping out for a moment. Er, secret hospital chat.” And she propelled her out the patio doors into the quiet cool of the garden.
* * *
“Sorry, I just—it was a bit overwhelming, everyone at once.” Annie was desperately trying to get ahold of herself.
“Don’t blame you.” Polly groaned, slumping on a patio seat. “They’re exhausting, those kids. I don’t know how Mill does it. I’m going to have to lie down for a week once they’ve gone home.”
“Mmm.” Annie sat down beside her, wiping the seat first with her sleeve.
“I mean, maybe it’s for the best I never had any kids myself. Imagine how much harder it would be now, with all this.”
“Did you want to?”
“I don’t know. I always assumed I would. I mean, you do, don’t you?”
“Mmm.”
“But I kept putting it off. Told myself I’d try at thirty-three, or thirty-four, or thirty-five. And guess what, I’m out of time. That adorable little baby in the cheesecloth blanket, that’s never going to exist. I leave nothing behind me.”
A pause. Annie by now knew better than to say she was sorry. Polly hated that.
“But maybe it’s for the best,” Polly repeated. “All that screaming and not being able to go to the loo on your own, and look, chocolate smeared on your vintage Chanel.” She held up the arm of her jacket. “At least I got to do things. Travel, and work, and...you know. And Milly changed so much—it was as if the life was sucked out of her. She used to be so fun—last one in the bar, always up on the news of the day—and now she sometimes doesn’t even know what day it is. Of course, neither do I, but that’s because my brain is being eaten by a tumor. Maybe that’s what motherhood is. A tumor.”
Annie gritted her teeth. “Some people would quite like the chance to have that tumor. I’m sure Milly’s happy.”
“I don’t know. Would you be happy covered in baby sick and having to watch Peppa Pig ten times in a row?”
“I was,” she snarled, instantly regretting it.
In the darkening garden, Polly was watching her. “I wondered when you were going to tell me.”
“I wasn’t. Necessarily.”
“Thought not.”
More silence. Inside, the rise and fall of children’s voices. She’d never got to hear Jacob speak, but he used to babble, a rise of clear joyful sounds, like bubbles going up.
Polly waited. “I guess this is something to do with Mike and Jane?”
“Sort of.”
“See? I knew there was more. Annie, you really are trying to knock me off the winner’s podium for ‘most pathetic story.’”
Annie breathed hard. “So you know about the divorce and my mum being sick and my friend running off with my husband. Would a dash of infertility help?”
“Always.”
“I had three miscarriages before Jacob. One at three weeks—ruined the carpet. Blood everywhere. In my hair, in the bed, all over Mike’s pajamas. One at ten—they found out at my dating scan, and I had to have a D and C. And the last at five months. You have to give birth when it’s that far along. It was awful.”
Polly left a moment of silence. “Then you stopped trying?”
Annie shook her head. She picked at her tights with shaking hands. “Um, Mike wanted to stop. But I...I couldn’t. So I tried again. Pretended to be on the pill. He was furious. But then it seemed to work. Jacob was born full-term. Healthy.”
“Lovely name,” said Polly.
“Yeah. I always liked it. Then he—” She hitched in her breath. After all this time, the story still felt like a stone in her throat. “One morning Mike went to get him up. He’d slept through the night, we thought. I was happy! I thought things would be better from then. He didn’t sleep well—we were all knackered. And I had this one moment of being happy—there was sun coming in the curtains, and I thought...I thought how good my life was. But when Mike went in, Jacob was—he was cold. Mike didn’t want me to see but I—I pushed into the room, and he—he was already blue and he... We called an ambulance but he. Was gone. He was gone. Cot death, they said. Just one of those things.” Though she’d torn herself apart looking for reasons. Had he been too cold? Too warm? Had he caught something and she’d just not noticed? She took another breath. “I went to pieces. It was like... I didn’t know who I was anymore. I didn’t know if I’d survive. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat. I used to just lie on the floor of his room all night and howl, like a dog. I didn’t wash. I didn’t change my clothes for two months. And Jane—well. She was my best friend. She was around all the time. Comforting me. Helping. Except she couldn’t even reach me, no one could, so she comforted Mike instead, and then after a while he said he was sorry and it was an accident but they were really in love. I guess because she still got dressed and didn’t cry all the time or refuse to throw away old cot sheets because they were all she had left of her baby.” Annie breathed again. She’d said it. She’d said it and nothing had broken. The voices went on inside: Lola asking for some cake. The bird in the tree kept singing. The noise of the boats on the river kept hooting, mournful, like whale song.
After a while Polly fumbled for Annie’s hand, and slapped it gently, as if handing her an invisible object. “Here.”
“What’s that?” Annie said shakily.
“My cancer card. You get to win for a while.”
“I do?”
“Shit, of course you do, Annie. That’s—I don’t even know what to say.”
“That’s a first.”
“I know. Better send out the press release.” They both laughed for a moment, shaky with tears. “Annie. I’m so—my God. And I brought you here, with the kids—I didn’t know, I swear. I knew there was something but not this. Christ.”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Let’s have a pact, okay? We’re not sorry unless it was our fault.” Annie squinted at her. “So, this was your life before? Everyone talking about, I don’t know, quinoa and the Human Rights Act and arranging weekends in Norfolk cottages?”
“I guess it was. We must seem like a right bunch of pretentious twats.”
“No. It’s just—we’d have had nothing in common, if we’d met before all this.”
Polly didn’t lie. “Maybe not, no. But here we are, and I’m not sure I can get through this without you, so you’re stuck with me now, Annie Hebden. Only person who’s ever beaten me in a sob-story competition. Damn you.”
“Damn you back,” said Annie. She reached for Polly’s cold hand, and squeezed it, and they sat there in the dark for a while, watching the lights of the boats, and the city around them with seven million hearts beating on and on.