London was full of babies. Miniature chaps in chino shorts, pint-size princesses in sundresses: their fat little legs poking out, kicking merrily. Pregnant women in maxi dresses glided past her on the pavements, red-faced but serene, the globes of their fruitful bellies proudly leading the way. Every direction Sarah looked in, there they were.
The summer had burst like an over-ripe fruit and the days were starting to cool as they headed toward autumn; ironically, it was harvest time. Two more women had announced their pregnancies in the office, moaning light-heartedly about their ‘bad luck’ in having ‘inconvenient’ due dates around the Christmas holidays. Cole’s younger sister and her boyfriend of only six months’ standing had just yesterday afternoon publicised their own unexpected happy news by way of a grainy scan picture texted around the family before being uploaded straight to Facebook (‘Oh, it was a bit of a shock! I was on the pill! But we’re soooo happy!’). When she’d opened that text Sarah had felt like she’d just been eviscerated with her mobile phone. Numbly she allowed Cole to fold her against his chest, searching for comfort, squeezing her eyes shut, pressing down against the spiked ball of pain lodged somewhere deep below her collarbones.
‘Well,’ Cole had said, after a minute’s silence, ‘I guess at least this proves that my family is super fertile.’
Last night, Sarah had run the hottest bath she could stand, a favourite indulgence she’d long been avoiding since reading on the internet somewhere that the heat was detrimental to good ovum quality, and poured herself five generous fingers of whatever expensive whiskey Cole kept in his antique decanter. While she was waiting for the bath to fill she tidied the bathroom. The hideously complicated Clearblue Digital Ovulation Monitor she’d spent the better part of £200 on was quietly packed back into its box and away into the drawer unit under the sink. The His-and-Hers pre-natal vitamins that she kept next to their toothbrushes – so that they never forgot to take them of a morning – followed suit. The small plastic cup next to the toilet that she had dipped what felt now like a million home pregnancy tests into over the past two years she tossed into the bin.
Two years.
Raina, her heavily pregnant colleague, had inadvertently highlighted the length of time Sarah’s womb had remained obstinately barren just that morning.
‘Your wedding anniversary is coming up, isn’t it?’ she’d asked, after she’d finished complaining about how hard it was to be pregnant in the warm weather, and affirming just how much she was looking forward to September (and her maternity leave) arriving. ‘How many years now; is it two?’
‘Yes, two,’ Sarah had confirmed politely, firmly persisting in typing out her email, in the hope that Raina would take the hint and not continue to try to engage her in conversation.
‘Time to start thinking about kiddies soon, surely!’ Raina had chirped, leaning back in her desk chair and placing a protective palm atop her bump, as if her sentence somehow needed further illustration. ‘Most married couples get cracking after the first year!’
Sarah recalled how she’d woken up that morning and not stuck a thermometer straight up between her legs to chart her basal body temperature for the first time in over a year. She’d expected to feel freed. Instead she’d just felt horribly, horribly empty.
‘We’re not quite settled enough yet,’ she told Raina tonelessly; the standard line. ‘We’ve got a lot of stuff going on.’
‘Hmm, well, perhaps you need to re-evaluate your priorities,’ Raina sniffed. ‘You know fertility begins seriously declining after thirty. In fact, you will have already lost up to 90% of the eggs that you were born with!’
‘I’m sure I’ll be just fine,’ Sarah had snapped, standing abruptly and walking off towards the tea point, mug in hand – not wanting the drink, just wanting to get away from smug Raina and her effective fucking ovaries.
Sarah wandered through the aisles of the library. Was there going to be a set of shelves somewhere in this building labelled Infertility? Surely not. Health, then. Sarah ran her forefinger lightly over the laminated spines of the books as she searched for what she needed, past countless books about what to expect when you’re expecting (many of which – shamefully, painfully – she had pre-emptively already read).
She refused to make eye contact with the library assistant who stamped the checkout card of ‘Get A Life: A Comprehensive Guide to IVF and Assisted Conception’.
* * *
Daisy and Darren looked at one another. There wasn’t much more to say.
Months and months of being in each other’s lives, each other’s flats, each other’s bodies and here they were: an awkward silence and a Tesco carrier bag partially filled with odds-and-sods at Darren’s feet. Perhaps the fact that their relationship had boiled down to a toothbrush, a rusted-up razor, a couple of pairs of underwear and some borrowed DVDs was a sign that Daisy was making the right decision.
Darren cleared his throat. ‘So, shall I bring over your stuff from my flat sometime next week then?’
‘I don’t think I’ve got much in your flat Darren, so don’t worry about it,’ Daisy answered carefully. She, of course, had known this break-up was coming so she’d been able to subtly clear out her belongings over her past few visits.
‘You’ve got shampoo and stuff in my shower,’ Darren corrected her, mulishly.
‘It’s fine, you can toss it all.’ That Bumble and Bumble shampoo and conditioner may be expensive, and still half-full, but not having to have another awkward meeting with Darren would be worth the sacrifice.
She’d given the usual spiel: it’s not you, it’s me, and all that. And it was actually pretty true. There was nothing particularly wrong with Darren, for all his oddities and irritating habits; Cleo was right – if Daisy loved him, really loved him, they’d be charming, not irksome. But there was no casual way of informing the man you were dumping that he was being chucked because you still dreamed of one day having someone who made your whole body feel like it was smiling.
‘Okay then.’ Despite his words, Darren looked in no rush to leave. He started towards Daisy, holding his hand forward almost as if he was going to touch her, but thought better of it at the last minute. ‘I’d like us to stay friends, Daisy, if that’s okay?’
‘Sure thing,’ Daisy lied. She’d give it a few months and then she’d subtly delete him from her Facebook friends’ list. The key was to add him to a limited list for a little while beforehand, so he got used to not really seeing her updates on his feed. Sadly she’d had to do this many times before … ‘But, in the circumstances, I don’t really think it’s appropriate for you to come to Nora and Harry’s wedding in December. You understand.’
Darren’s face crumpled a little further, but he rallied like a man: Daisy appreciated that about him. ‘Sure. I understand. Yeah.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Okay then,’ Darren said again, this time stopping to pick up his sad little plastic bag of lifely bric-a-brac.‘I’ll see you around then, Daise, yeah?’
‘See you around Darren,’ Daisy agreed quietly, allowing herself to feel one last pang for one more aborted relationship. She remembered how flushed with anticipation she’d been before their first few dates, how once she’d not been able to get enough of him, how full of hope she’d been that this time it was going to be real and lasting, a grown-up love.
Later that night, Daisy popped her toothbrush into its holder, watching it spin and rattle on its end for a moment before falling still, alone in the ceramic pot once again.