The Godmother (17 page)

“It was awful,” I said. “We were painting the nursery, giggling about the dire state of my love life—I think Claudia was suggesting I become a lesbian or that I am a lesbian and somehow don't know it yet; she simply put down her paintbrush and went off to the loo laughing at her own phenomenal sense of humor. No warning, nothing. I just went on painting, I didn't even realize
she hadn't come back. She didn't make a sound when it happened. She just sat on the loo and that was where I found her.”

While food came and went I told Sasha about the blood, the cramps, trying to clean everything up. I told her about the hospital and how I had cried into the arms of a nurse and hadn't put her right when she thought I had lost a baby. I told her about the strange globules of blood that stuck to the bottom of the toilet bowl. I told her about the thick, industrial-sized sanitary pads and watching Claudia's eyes roll into the back of her head as the anesthetist counted down from ten. I told her everything, in excruciating detail, until it came to tucking Claudia into bed. Then I skipped a bit.

“Ben left, I sort of slept on the sofa until Al came home at six and then I went home.”

“And how was she today?”

“Blaming herself and very drugged. Al doesn't want her to go through it again.”

“I'm surprised they've gone through it as many times as they have.”

I've thought much the same myself. But every time they thought about giving up there would be a new technique, a new man with a new method, better statistics. Medically, IVF is an incredible growth area; a lot of the cutting-edge treatments come out of genuine clinics with good intentions, but not all of them. Claudia spent hours on the Internet; somebody else's miracle story would grab her and off she'd go down another fertility worm hole.

“She isn't even the gullible type,” said Sasha.

“But she wants it to be true so much. Talk about a soft target.”

“Why don't they just adopt? I don't understand.”

“They tried,” I said. “It didn't work.”

“Years ago.”

“I think they're considered too old to adopt now.”

“Maybe in this country, but not in China.”

“I've had this conversation with Al. He says they'll look into it.”

Sasha pulled a disbelieving face. “Now, after nine years they are going to look into it?”

I held out my hands. Sasha was repeating my very thoughts. “I guess it is very hard to go through IVF several times—all that invasive treatment, the
complete eradication of sex for sex's sake—without believing 100 percent that it will work, and if you can convince yourself it will work, then you do it again and adoption seems second best. I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me.”

“You and Ben don't feel particularly strongly about kids, so it wouldn't.”

Sasha pulled a strange, disapproving face, but she didn't deny it. “Do you want children?”

“Of course I do.” If I were absolutely honest I would tell her that the single thing that terrified me the most was the thought that I wouldn't have any children. I didn't want it to, but it did, it terrified me. How could I tell Sasha that? How could I tell her that my desire for children had begun to affect how I behaved? How it was eschewing my judgments. How it made me look at her husband with a longing I didn't know what to do with. I couldn't tell her that. “I was crying in the hospital yesterday because of this fear I have started to feel.”

“Fear of?”

“Not having kids. Sasha, I cried because of the imaginary children I might never have while Claud was having a real baby cut out of her. I'm despicable.” I was despicable, but not necessarily for that reason.

“No, you're not, Tessa, come on. I think being single at your age must be hard sometimes, but you know, having kids isn't necessarily the answer.”

“That's because you don't feel like this. I envy you. It's a horrible feeling and it makes me feel desperate. I never thought I was desperate, the very word makes me…” I rubbed my eyes. “I don't know.”

“You're wrong. I do feel desperate about having children, Tessa.”

I glanced up from the food I'd been fiddling with and stared at Sasha. “Huh?”

“I feel very strongly that people have children too often for the wrong reasons.”

I was confused. “How could wanting to have a baby be a wrong reason?”

“Because there is a huge difference between wanting to have a baby, and wanting to be a parent. I think the baby thing gets in the way. The perfect Pampers baby that we're all supposed to have.”

“It's maternal instinct.”

“No, it isn't. It's a desire to procreate.”

“Sasha, come on. I don't want a mini-me, I want a baby, a child, a person, to love. An individual.”

“Then go to China and get one.”

“It's not as simple as that.”

“Because…” Sasha let the question hang in the air.

Because I do want a child of my own? Because I do want a mini-me? Because I do want a husband who adores me, a picket fence, a baby with his eyes and my legs? Because I want what everyone else has? “I can't even manage the boyfriend bit.” It was a pathetic duck and Sasha knew it, but she didn't pull me up. Instead she ordered decaf soya latte and carrot cake. I was feeling defensive and angry with her. I felt Claudia and Al needed our support, not an intense examination of their motives. I overlooked the fact that Sasha was saying almost exactly what I had said to Al myself. But I was still angry with her.

She was right, of course. There was a huge difference between wanting to have a baby and wanting to be a parent. One was selfish, the other selfless. If they happened to come together, wonderful. But they often didn't, because if they did, there would be no such thing as a bad parent. And as Ben, Helen, even my own mother, could testify, there were plenty of bad parents out there. I was angry with Sasha because I wanted to be. I was angry with Sasha because in the middle of the night I imagined she was married to the father of my unborn children. I was angry with Sasha because I adored her and knew she was married to the right man and I would never have those children.

The waitress put the cake and coffees down.

“I'm sorry, Sash, I'm all over the place.”

“Don't ever apologize to me. You have nothing to apologize for.”

For some reason the bite of carrot cake I put in my mouth didn't taste nearly as good as it should have. I watched Sasha as she stirred brown sugar into her coffee, slowly and methodically.

“I'm the one who should apologize,” she said. “It is a subject I get too involved with, too personal. What Claudia puts herself through is her own business.”

“She just wants to be a mother.”

There was that same strange, disapproving look. “That's exactly what I'm talking about.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“If all women thought like Claudia, I wouldn't have a mother.”

I frowned. “But you have a wonderful mother who would do anything for you and your brothers.”

“Yes, I do. But as you know perfectly well, she didn't give birth to me.”

I sat back in my chair. Of course…Sasha's biological mother ran off when she was still a baby. Her father remarried when Sasha was about six. She was the person Sasha called mum. I'd completely forgotten that she wasn't Sasha's “real” mother. Clearly, that was her point.

“Stop thinking about having a baby, Tessa, and start thinking about whether you really want to be a parent. Not the fantasy—bouncing baby, adoring husband, picket-fence stuff—the real nitty-gritty, life-altering, mind-blowing responsibility that is being a parent with all the risks it involves, and if the answer is yes, then you can. These days there is nothing stopping you. If you really want to.”

That morning I had woken with a head full of desperate, self-piteous, downright treacherous thoughts but I walked back into my flat lighter for having had lunch with the one person I could have sworn I didn't want to see. Even my mercy mission to the shops to buy things for Claudia and Al was merely a dressed-up good intention. I couldn't bear my own company since the only thing I could think about since my eyes had opened was Ben. It was easier to throw myself back into Al and Claudia's drama because it meant I didn't have to think about Ben any more. A scary fantasy had begun, with alarming detail and repetition, to play over and over in my head. Ben announcing his undying love. Sasha and Ben amicably agreeing to go their separate ways and Ben and I dancing off into the sunset to have several little Bens and Tessas. It was hideous. It was delicious. It was enticing. It was revolting. It was perfect. It was utterly stupid.

I kicked my shoes off and sat down on the sofa. First things first. Yes, we had crossed a boundary. But only for a split second. It was a need born of dire circumstances. And by that I meant the dire circumstances that were taking place in our oldest friends' lives. Not the current state of my life.

We had both run the moment we heard Claudia's voice. If we were true charlatans we could have ignored Claudia's delirious mumblings and gone at it like hammer and tongs. After all, she was heavily sedated and would not
have known about me coming in and rearranging her pillows, pulling up her sheet, fussing with the window. She was not aware of the procrastination taking place in the disguise of good nursing. Ben left. He did not wait to acknowledge, discuss or reignite what had happened. The spell had been broken. There was no cyclist careering towards a lamp-post. No damage had been done. Nothing was broken. Nothing had been done that couldn't be undone. It had been a moment and the moment had passed. I lay very low for the rest of the weekend.

The best thing to do, the only thing to do, was to forget about it and concentrate on the future. My future. There were headhunters I needed to call. There were hours and hours of research to do about where else my legal training could take me, if not directly back into law. Irony of ironies, Sasha had inspired me. It was time to think about what I really wanted out of life and then go and get it. Did I want to be a parent? That was too big a question to start with. That was jumping the gun. What I needed to do was work out what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. How and why—not who and when. At nine o'clock sharp on Monday morning I was ready. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

“Hello, this is Tessa King, I'd like to talk to your legal recruitment department…”

“Just putting you through.”

I waited. The reason why I'd been putting this off was because I couldn't face explaining why I was currently out of work. But I had to move on. I had to put an end to the halt that man had caused to my life. By that I meant my ex-boss, but thinking about it…

“Tessa King, I'm Daniel Bosley, head of legal. I've been hoping you'd call.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, you've been on my radar some time, but I didn't think we'd ever prise you out of your chambers.”

“Well…” I took another deep breath.

“Don't need to say a thing. I know all about it. Don't worry about that, draw a line, we can move right on…”

The conversation went on nicely from that point. I was to send in my CV,
which was good, there were no sordid details on my CV. In fact, my CV put me in my best light. Consistent. Conscientious. Untroubled by the world of chicken pox and sports days. I could come to work early and I could leave late and the risk of maternity leave was rapidly diminishing. I'd employ me.

Emboldened, I carried on and called another. Why are these sorts of calls rarely as bad as you imagine them to be, yet you always imagine the worst? I worked away the rest of the day. I printed off forms and filled them in, I ticked boxes, I printed off my CV several times on smart, stiff paper then realized everybody did everything by email. Times had changed since I was in the market for a job.

When my phone rang I was so engrossed in work mode that I didn't recognize the voice at first.

“Hello,” said a deep male voice.

“Hello,” I replied.

“Tessa, is that you?”

My lungs suddenly constricted. “Who's this?” I asked.

“Caspar,” said Caspar.

I exhaled loudly. I slowly unclenched my fist from around the phone and exhaled again. My palms had gone all sweaty. When did Caspar's voice get so deep?

“Tessa, are you there?”

Not as breezy as I thought. One step forward. Three steps backwards. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. “Sorry, sweetheart, what can I do for you?”

“Just ringing to say hi.”

Oh, really? “Bullshit, my darling boy. What is it?”

“Really, I just wanted to say thanks for bailing me out last weekend.”

“Caspar, I love you, you know that, but in sixteen years you've never called me unless you wanted something. It's all right, I don't mind, that's what I'm here for.”

“I love the iPod.”

He was tenacious, I'd give him that. “Good. Got music on it yet?”

“Yeah. I went to this kicking place where you can download 800 tunes in…” I phased out about here. Caspar is a bit of a techno-geek. Always got great marks in maths and physics and IT. He was a genius with computers.
Without the IT guy at work to come and sort out my laptop problems I was hopeless. I did that girly thing of rebooting at the first sign of trouble.

“…I can come and update yours if you want. Surely you're getting bored of Abba by now.”

“Oi, I'd like to have you know that I'm listening to Eminem right now.”

“Ooh—a white rapper. Very cutting edge, Tessa. What will she do next?”

“Caspar, you are a gruesome child. Anyone told you that?”

“Constantly. Have you spoken to Mum and Dad recently?”

“Why, what's happened?” This was the reason for the call, then.

“Well, Mum is really on my case again. I was wondering if you could have a word with her.”