She’d thought he was referring to his new job at rival newspaper the Echo. She couldn’t stop grinning when he added, ‘Because now I can ask you out.’
They’d spent blissful evenings trawling the pubs of South London and lazy weekend mornings reading the papers in bed. But now she can’t remember the last time they’d done either.
Instead, they’d been referring to ovulation charts before they made love and subliminally avoiding social events with their pregnant and blessed-with-children friends, which seemed to be just about everyone they knew.
In their effort to have a baby, they’d lost the ability to be spontaneous. Ironically, they’d given up what should have been the halcyon days of pre-parenthood to the restrictions of being responsible for another human, despite the painful absence of one.
‘Done!’ says Dr Williams with a flourish. He puts the catheter back on the tray and pings his gloves off.
‘So, we’ve got two more in the freezer?’ asks Matt. ‘Before we have to go through egg retrieval again, I mean?’
‘Yes, we’ve got two more good quality embryos left to go on this cycle.’
‘But even if they don’t work, we can still go again, can’t we?’ Matt continues.
Kate doesn’t want to have this conversation. She has an urgent need to empty her painfully full bladder and all the time there’s a viable chance of a baby being inside her, she refuses to acknowledge that they’ll have to go through this again. Because that would mean that the little human being who is having to work so hard right now isn’t going to make it.
‘Let’s concentrate on the here and now,’ says Dr Williams, as Kate swings her legs down to the floor. ‘So, just carry on as normal, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks’ time for the blood test to see where we’re at.’
Kate looks to Matt and smiles. She can’t help but notice that he’s got his fingers crossed.
2
Kate
‘So, no Matt today?’ asks Rose, Kate’s mum, as she bustles into the dining room carrying a tray of roast potatoes.
Lauren deftly lifts one out as Rose sets the tray down and bites into it, groaning with pleasure as it crunches.
‘Afraid not,’ says Kate. ‘He got called into the office at the last minute.’
‘Ah well, no bother,’ says Rose, going back into the kitchen. ‘I’ll do you a plate to take home.’
‘So, what’s the big scoop of the day?’ asks Lauren’s husband Simon, as he carves into the beef joint that’s resting in the middle of the table. Kate can’t help but feel that he’s taking her dad’s job away from him. ‘Or are you not allowed to tell?’ he goes on.
‘I could –’ Kate lowers her voice – ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’
He laughs heartily at the joke he thinks she’s made, but, truth be known, nothing would give her more pleasure. She and Matt had often lain in bed thinking of ways to commit the perfect murder, and her sister’s husband always topped the list of potential victims. He’s tolerated rather than liked, and if it wasn’t for her mother wanting to keep the Sunday-lunch ritual going, Kate could quite easily never see him again. But hey, you can’t choose your family.
‘Come on, seriously, I wanna know,’ says Simon. ‘Do you and Matt share stories or are you bitter rivals? Fighting each other to the death for the best ones.’
Kate wonders whether he’d prefer to hear about the imminent cabinet reshuffle or the prostitute who’s claiming to have kept a Premiership footballer up the night before a cup final, both of which she knows Matt is working on. She decides not to give Simon the satisfaction of either.
‘I couldn’t possibly divulge our pillow talk,’ she says. ‘Lauren, pass me the carrots, will you?’
‘I can’t remember the last time we were all together,’ says Lauren.
Kate can. It was three weeks ago, and on the way home, her and Matt had discussed how they might be able to stretch the weekly lunches to maybe every other week.
‘I only do it for Mum,’ Kate had said. ‘You know how she loves having us all over.’
‘I know,’ Matt had replied. ‘But it’s dictating our weekends. I don’t get much time off as it is, and when I do, no disrespect, I’d rather us two do something together.’
But in the last three weeks, that hadn’t happened either, as Matt had worked, then Kate had been at a film festival, and now, this weekend, he’s had to go into the office again.
‘It’s just that everyone’s busy,’ says Kate.
‘Everyone but me,’ laughs Lauren. ‘I’ll be sitting at this table waiting for the roasties until my dying day.’
‘Well, maybe you need to get a life!’ Simon laughs.
It’s funny how words are dependent on who says them. If Matt had said that, Kate would have taken it in the spirit it was meant; banter between two people who gave each other as good as they got. But from Simon’s lips, the joke is lost, turning a flippant comment into something that sounds far more disrespectful.
The flash of disdain that crosses Lauren’s eyes tells Kate she’s not the only one who feels it.
‘I’d imagine being a mother keeps you very busy,’ Kate interjects.
Lauren rolls her eyes. ‘You have no idea.’
You’re right, I don’t, thinks Kate.
‘In all honesty, now that I’m back on maternity leave, I don’t know how I had time to go to work,’ Lauren says, laughing.
‘It’s all about time management,’ says Simon. ‘Imagine Kate when she has children; it’ll be like a military operation.’ He laughs again.
‘Not everyone wants children,’ says Lauren, and Kate can’t help but feel dismayed at how misplaced and ill thought out her words are.
She fixes an insincere grin on her face, wondering how much longer she has to keep up with this charade of happy families. If Matt were here, he’d at least take some of the flak for her, stepping in to bat away the barbs.
‘Some women want careers instead,’ Lauren goes on.
Kate struggles to keep her expression neutral, but it feels like her cheek’s been slapped. ‘I don’t think you have to make a choice between having a career and having children,’ she says.
Simon looks at her with an amused expression. ‘You can’t have both.’
‘Why not?’ asks Kate brusquely. ‘We’re perfectly capable. Just because we’re the ones who have babies shouldn’t mean our careers have to suffer whilst we have them.’
Simon rolls his eyes.
Kate looks to Lauren, shaking her head in the hope that she’ll get some sisterly support, but Lauren has turned away. Kate wonders when her sister became so spineless when faced with her husband’s old-fashioned views.
Up until their first child, Noah, was born five years ago, Lauren had dedicated her life to bringing other people’s babies into the world. In fact, Kate couldn’t remember a time when her sister wasn’t surrounded by children. She’d babysat for family friends as a teenager and had studied midwifery as soon as she’d finished secondary school, which was why she was well placed to make comments about forgetting your dignity when you give birth. Logically, Kate knew she should take her sister’s words as they were probably intended, yet she couldn’t help but feel they were aimed at her personally.