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Luke opened the book. ‘It’s an anthology of poetry and quotes and stuff. Romantic things.’ He flipped the pages. ‘I mean, it’s probably mostly pretentious rubbish, but apparently there are a few really nice poems in there.’
‘You old romantic, you.’ I was impressed.
‘That’s not even the best bit,’ Luke said.
I flicked my eyes over him. The man was practically preening.
‘There’s an inscription at the front … read it. This is absolutely the best bit.’
I found it. It read: To my darling wife, with all my love, Luke. 14th Feb, 1954. ‘1954? What the—? I don’t understand …’
‘Some other Luke wrote in the book all those years ago.’ Luke was practically beside himself at this point. ‘The other Luke wrote that to the wife he loved. Isn’t that amazing? I’ve had someone on the case trawling through old books for ages, looking at inscriptions. I was hoping for a ‘To Lucy,’ but this one appeared and I just knew it was perfect.’
I traced my fingers over the writing. It was neat and well-formed – nothing like Luke’s actual writing which was chaotic and sprawling. I flipped through the pages and found a poem called ‘Captive.’ It made me smile. Luke leant over my shoulder and read it.
I did but look and love awhile,
‘Twas but for one half-hour;
Then to resist I had no will,
And now I have no power.
Luke laughed. ‘Ha ha, brilliant. That’s you and me.’
‘Is it? Wow.’ I closed the book and stroked the cover. ‘Just … wow. You’re unbelievable.’
‘Too much?’ Luke’s shoulders hunched and he screwed his face up. ‘I know you hate surprises.’
‘No. No, it’s not too much. It’s perfect. Just … perfect. You’re …’
I was overwhelmed.
‘I love how you crumble in the face of anything truly romantic,’ Luke said, placing a hand on my neck. ‘It’s one of the most adorable things about you.’
Against my better judgement, I started to cry. What an idiot. Buy me a soppy book with an achingly romantic inscription and I become a dribbly mess. Well, in fairness, my tears weren’t just about the book today, but I was still mortified.
Fear gripped my insides in an icy vice. I thought about the vitamins, the acupuncture, the doctors, the therapy, the alcohol avoidance, the hope, the joy and the disappointment. And about what might be ahead for us if nothing else worked.
‘It will happen, Luce,’ Luke said, reading my mind as he gripped my shoulders. ‘We will have a baby.’
I couldn’t meet his eyes. When we first met, eight or so years ago, I wouldn’t have questioned our chances. Eight years ago, I didn’t know the half of it. At the beginning of our relationship we’d been reckless about contraception, because we both wanted children from the outset. We’d been rewarded with an early pregnancy that we hadn’t expected … and then punished when the dream had been cruelly snatched away. And that hadn’t been the only time our dreams had been trodden underfoot.
Luke lifted my chin and kissed me. ‘It will happen. Without a shadow of a doubt.’
He was emphatic. I was cautious. It was how we rolled. He was the carefree optimist; I was one of life’s natural worriers. My extreme need for tidiness and order led my best friend Dee to introduce me as ‘Monica from Friends and then some’ to new acquaintances; accurate, but not the most charming of introductions.
Luke placed a warm hand on my neck, ducking his head so I had no choice but to meet his eyes. ‘Don’t even think we won’t succeed at this, Luce. Because we will.’
‘But we’ve already lost … What if we can’t …’
‘We will.’
‘How do you …?’
‘I just do.’ Luke kissed my forehead and drew me closer. ‘I love you and you love me. There is nothing we can’t achieve together.’
I leant into him, inhaling his strength, breathing in his positivity. He was right. We could do this. I clutched my beautiful book and I held on to Luke and, in that moment, I knew everything would be all right. It was Valentine’s Day and I had a thoughtful husband, an amazing gift – and I had the most important thing of all; I had hope.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_3d90dbc9-a8d1-5418-96db-e3874454c0d9)
Lucy (#ulink_3d90dbc9-a8d1-5418-96db-e3874454c0d9)
September
A woman strode efficiently into the consulting room. I felt panic set in. I didn’t recognise this person. Where were the other ones, the ones who knew what we’d been through, how much this meant to us? Someone had obviously decided that today we should come face to face with the only fertility consultant in Bath we weren’t on first name terms with.
I shifted in my chair, unequal to the challenge of dealing with a stranger. The consultant began hastily perusing our file to familiarise herself with our case, allowing us a brief smile.
A professional smile, I observed with weary expertise. Non-committal, reserved. Not so different to the other consultants, then. They were able to produce an entire repertoire of smiles for each occasion – cautiously hopeful, compassionately apologetic, not-sure-yet-neutral. I studied this consultant. It was a game I had taught myself to play during the agonising waits we were always subjected to when it came to IVF appointments. Don’t get me wrong, the NHS has been superb, but waiting is de rigueur. Bad news might be on the horizon – or not, as the case may be. Either way, sitting patiently wasn’t in my nature.
I settled back in my chair. Did this one have children? Her well-cut suit was spotless, the shoulder pads decorated with shiny buttons rather than milk stains. One tick for non-parent. The freshly-dried mane of dark hair looked as though it hadn’t ever had clumps of Weetabix mashed into it – not this morning or any other morning.
Another tick, I thought with a sinking heart. Unlike most of the others, this consultant bore zero tell-tale signs of a hasty exit from home. It shouldn’t matter but, for some reason, it did, very much. Because if anyone was going to snatch my dream away, I would prefer it to be someone who knew how utterly crucifying it was. How it would feel like the end of … well. I didn’t want to think about that.
As the minutes ticked by silently without a word from the consultant, I felt a strange, silent scream building inside. I’d been behaving irrationally recently; I knew that. I’d been distracted, emotional … that and probably far, far worse. I was spiralling inside, chaotic. I glanced at Luke. His jaw was tight and his hair was messed up, but as he turned to me, he managed a grin. The man actually managed a grin. He had put up with so much from me I wasn’t quite sure how he had coped. The mood swings, the hysterics, the anger … a lesser man might have crumbled. Or, at very least, run a mile. I guess the fact that he wanted this as much as I did saved him.
Sometimes, I wondered what Luke saw in me. Unlike him, I wasn’t especially funny. I mean, I could be highly amusing after a few glasses of wine, but only moderately so without.
Looks-wise, I had dark hair, direct, brown eyes that needed several coats of mascara to bring them out and a slim but rather boyish figure. Based on comments made by friends, I had deduced that I was pretty enough, but in a non-threatening way. Meaning, presumably, that the boyfriends/husbands of my female friends enjoyed my company – may even have found me vaguely attractive – but they didn’t necessarily feel obliged to bend me over the kitchen counter passionately if caught alone with me by accident.
I rubbed my forehead, my fingertips weirdly cool in the sultry heat. And what about all the baby stuff? I reckon the baby stuff had made me seem a little crazy. More than a little crazy.
I watched Luke drumming the fingers of his other hand on his thigh. He was apprehensive, maybe even more so than me.
The consultant looked up apologetically. ‘I’m so sorry, I normally get to grips with new patients before I meet them. Teenage daughters who dawdle all the way to school are a perennial hazard.’ She rolled her eyes to garner our sympathy and returned to the file. ‘Please bear with me …’
I exchanged a glance with Luke, noticing his eyebrow cocked pointedly. I ignored his rubbish Roger Moore impression. Yes, yes; I had presumed that the consultant was childless, but instead, she had older kids. Hence the pristine appearance. I shrugged tetchily. The consultant was still a slow reader. Dee’s daughter Tilly was faster with The Faraway Tree.
Luke tightened his grip on my hand. ‘It’s going to be all right,’ he whispered firmly. ‘This time, everything is going to happen the way it should.’
I nodded. It was one of life’s ironies that the only fly in the ointment, the only tiny but irritating flaw that prevented us from being complete, was that we were here in this office, waiting for a consultant we didn’t know to tell us if our baby might stick around this time. A tedious but excruciating fact: we couldn’t conceive a baby. Not one that stayed put for longer than twelve weeks, anyway.
One in four women experience a miscarriage at some point in their lives and one in five pregnancies end this way, but having eight of them had eclipsed everything else in our lives. We hadn’t conceived a baby naturally for years … at least … no, wait. We didn’t talk about that. We never, ever talked about that. It was the one thing that had caused a major rift between us.
Losing so many babies had changed us irrevocably. ‘Character building,’ Luke used to say bravely, tears streaking down his face as he gathered me up and held my heartbroken body in his arms for the umpteenth time.
Yes. Character building. We had done much of that over the years.
A few years ago, I remember Luke playing with Dee and Dan’s youngest daughter Frankie in the park, using her as a human Subbuteo, swinging her chubby legs and roaring with laughter as they scored a goal. It was an image I still held in my head, although I was no longer sure that it would become a reality for us.
The clock on the wall ticked steadily, mockingly, echoing my biological timer. In my ears, the rhythmic ticks gathered pace, rather like sand slithering at high speed into the bulb of an egg timer.
If only they had been able to find something wrong. But Luke had superb sperm by all accounts, and my ovaries, womb and fallopian tubes were perfectly ripe and healthy. Yet somehow, the stench of failure had been firmly but unfairly placed at my door, or rather, at my womb. Because if I couldn’t conceive, it must mean that my body was at fault. Terms like ‘foetal rejection’ and ‘hostile environment’ had been carelessly tossed on to the table as explanations.
‘Hostile environment’ – have you ever heard such a thoughtless, cruel term? It made me want to scream. It was an onslaught to my womanhood and everything I felt I should be capable of, but what was the point? Everyone would just think I was crazy or hormonal. Or both.
And so it had begun. Three bouts of IUI – intrauterine insemination – that hadn’t worked and, due to my age – thirty-seven, ancient in baby-making terms – we had started IVF immediately afterwards. Hormone injections, accompanied by the dreadful side effects everyone talked about, multiple ultrasound scans to check the size and maturity of my eggs and injections to ‘ripen’ my eggs. The best ones (Luke liked to call these the ‘Eggs Benedict’ of my offerings) were mixed with his sperm (spun, washed and carefully selected, Luke would comment in amusement, as if describing a washing cycle) and these were then hopefully fertilised before being placed back inside my body.
Smear tests had nothing on IVF treatment, I thought ruefully. I’d spent more time with my legs in the air and my parts on show than I cared to admit. Ultimately, all dignity and modesty had been annihilated. My womb had been discussed and scrutinised in such intimate detail over the past few years I almost felt I should give it a nickname. Luke had a choice few, all unsuitable for general consumption, but they made me laugh.
Speak, I pleaded with the consultant mutely. Tell us it’s all right. I pulled at an unravelling thread on my trousers, feeling an affinity with it. We had missed out on the magical moments most parents surely revelled in, such as the deliciously important task of choosing names. (For the record: Jude for a boy, Bryony for a girl.) But such a thing had fallen by the wayside, as had daring to have a preference when it came to the sex of a baby. A preference? Pure self-indulgence. Healthy, that was all that mattered. Just … healthy.
I bit my lip. Recently, instead of flattering talk about what incredible parents we would be, friends and family had mentioned egg donation and surrogacy and, astonishingly, buying a dog. Yes, obviously, we should forget about babies and get a chihuahua. Dee … even Dee, had even suggested giving up. Giving up. It had caused the only major row we had ever had, and it had taken a while to forgive her.
It was difficult for me to explain, but I yearned to carry Luke’s baby. I had this inner ache that I felt only our own child could fill. Luke understood, I thought, although I did have a sense deep down that he might have been more than happy to discuss other options, should we have needed to. I couldn’t think that way, though. I had to believe that this would work.
The consultant finally sat back. ‘Well, everything looks healthy this time round,’ she remarked rather cheerily. ‘Obviously we’re not out of the woods yet and you’ve had quite a journey, but this is the furthest you’ve come, so there is every chance that this pregnancy will develop as it should. Fourteen weeks … this is fantastic.’
The consultant’s gaze softened. ‘Regular scans and check-ups, of course. But that’s all part of the process, as I’m sure you’re aware. Here you are – another set of scan photographs for you to keep. Lovely ones. Look at this one of the baby’s feet.’
I took the photos. I was shaking.
‘Really? Everything looks all right?’ Luke’s elation was evident; his heart on his sleeve, as ever. He crushed my hand accidentally and I loved him for it. My own euphoria tended to be rather more contained these days – a casualty of the process – but Luke was endearingly positive.
The consultant gestured to the test results in the file. ‘It does. The baby is healthy, the heartbeat is strong and all of your tests came back with great results.’
‘A perfectly good oven, as it turns out. I bloody knew it.’ Luke snaked an arm around my neck and spoke into my ear. ‘I told you that old guy didn’t know what he was talking about, Luce. I knew it; I just knew it.’
I burst into tears. An aged, male consultant had once breezily described my womb as a ‘broken oven’ some years back and I had never quite got over it.
‘Let’s just get through the next couple of months, shall we?’ The consultant’s professional demeanour was firmly back in place. She headed for the door. ‘Good luck, both of you, and I’ll see you again soon.’
Was that ‘good luck’ because we needed it, or was she just wishing us well? I caught myself. Would the ball of tears in the back of my throat, caught like a frozen waterfall, ever thaw? I just wanted to feel normal. I wanted to be able to glance at doll-sized babygrows pegged on a washing line without dissolving into tears. I wanted to be able to hand a lonely-looking teddy bear I’d found on the supermarket floor back to its owner without biting my lip until it bled. The sweet scent of downy peach fuzz on the head of a friend’s newborn as I cradled a tiny body? Instant hysteria. Snot, heaving chest … the works. Cue awkwardness all round and cautious comments about it being my turn soon. Yes. My turn.
I traced a finger along the baby picture, outlining its perfectly formed leg. Perhaps this baby wanted us as much as we wanted him or her. As we walked into the heavy summer air, Luke placed a tender hand on the swell of my stomach.
‘Didn’t I tell you to trust me? Didn’t I say it would all work out eventually? We just had to wait for the right baby to come along.’ He was thrilled. ‘This one is special … this one wants us to be her parents. His parents. Whatever.’
‘God, I hope so.’ I touched his face. ‘I’ve been a nightmare, haven’t I? Absolutely barmy.’
Luke caught my hand and held it. ‘Not barmy. Clinically insane. Make that certifiable – joking!’ He doubled over at the bicep punch I threw him, his expression sobering. ‘You want this badly, that’s all. We both want this badly. This one wants to stay in your perfect, perfect oven. This is it, Lucy. This is it.’
I held Luke’s hand against my stomach. A baby of our own – part me, part him. After eight years of trying and after eight, sad little boxes in a cupboard, a baby of our own. At last.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_9347c7b2-eb23-5a50-9679-30b5a5add7e6)
Patricia (#ulink_9347c7b2-eb23-5a50-9679-30b5a5add7e6)
Sitting alone in the florists, Patricia found herself staring down at her notepad. She should be making a funeral wreath for tomorrow morning, but she had been putting it off. It was getting dark outside and Gino, busy putting the chairs inside Café Amore for the night, noticed her from across the street and waved.
Patricia slowly held a hand up in response. She felt weary. And desperately alone. True, she was on her own – in the physical sense – having sent Lucy home hours ago to plan an elaborate anniversary dinner (although with Lucy’s track record, Patricia privately felt more than one evening’s practise might be in order), but still. She felt alone in all senses of the word. Isolated, forlorn, solitary. It was unnerving after all this time to be knocked sideways by this familiar, suffocating feeling, Patricia thought. She steadied her hands on her notepad.
She had felt so disconnected since Bernard’s death. Even after all this time. It was as if she felt set apart from other people much of the time, unable to fully get involved in her surroundings … or involved in life, in fact.
It was Luke and Lucy’s fifth wedding anniversary on Sunday. Their fifth. Five years without a … Patricia forced the thought away and focused on Lucy. She loved Lucy. Not in a ‘you’re-the-daughter-I-never-had’ way, of course, because she had Nell, but there was a genuine closeness between them. Wasn’t there? Sometimes Patricia wondered if she had prevented a real connection from growing. She didn’t mean to be aloof, but she found it hard to be openly affectionate. Patricia wasn’t really sure why. Was that because she had lost Bernard? Had the lack of physical contact made her cold towards others? It was possible, she supposed.
Working together helped; she and Lucy had forged a good relationship over flower arrangements and awkward customers. Lucy had only started working at the florist’s after meeting Luke as Patricia had needed an extra pair of hands and because Lucy was at a crossroads, career-wise. But she had stayed and she seemed to love it.
And now Lucy was properly involved in the business. It irked her that Lucy moaned about the lack of a credit card machine, as did Lucy’s desire for order and symmetry with everything. ‘Getting with the programme,’ Luke jokingly called it and although he took a gentler, more persuasive line, he obviously agreed with Lucy.
The truth was, Patricia didn’t trust modern technology. You always knew where you were with cash and cheques; that was what Bernard used to say and he was spot on. But she was doing her best to embrace new ideas – like those flannel flower baskets Lucy had shown her some months back. It had taken her a little time to see them as a viable prospect, but she was in her fifties; she liked to mull an idea over before she could get her head around it.
If only Bernard were still here; he’d know what to do about all these … Patricia faltered. If only Bernard was still here. Not just to listen to her reservations about the state-of-the-art business ideas she was struggling to understand, but to stop this awful loneliness.
Patricia rubbed a hand over her eyes. She felt faintly foolish. Funeral flowers always did this to her. Despite the length of time Bernard had been gone, she missed him. Every single day. She would wake up each morning and, as she’d read in some of those women’s magazines where they always went on about deceased partners, there would be seconds of blissful, sleepy forgetfulness. Then the haze would clear and she would remember. He was gone. And the anguish would consume her. And she would miss the smell of him, the sound of his laughter and, most of all, the easy history they shared.
They had been a cliché of sorts: childhood sweethearts, married young, devoted to one another. Their lives had lacked notable drama or incident and that was just the way they had liked it. Bernard had worked as a GP in their local surgery, with just the right blend of kindly firmness. He had been well-liked in the community and she had been happy to bring up their three children and be a traditional housewife. When the children were older, Bernard had inherited a sum of money after the death of his parents and, knowing how much she loved flowers, he had bought an empty shop space for her. Patricia had taken a floristry course, even though taking such a step had filled her with anxiety, and Hartes & Flowers had been born. It had been the single most romantic thing Bernard had ever done for her. She thought of him each time she opened and closed the shop. Each time she trailed her fingers along the cream, distressed-effect counter he had chosen.
What made it so difficult was that Bernard had dropped dead one day. Just like that. No warning, no prior symptoms, no goodbye. Just … dead. In a flash, in a heartbeat. Or not, as the case may be. The doctors said Bernard had had an undiagnosed heart condition, that his condition had made him the equivalent of a ticking time bomb. Patricia detested this expression; it made Bernard sound like some sort of sinister terrorist threat. Apparently, it was quite common for people in the medical profession to miss their own health problems – they couldn’t see what was under their own noses.
Thank goodness for Luke, Patricia reflected. Quite simply, he had been the lynchpin of the family since Bernard had died. He shouldn’t have been, but he had stepped up admirably when Ade couldn’t. Just for a nanosecond, Patricia’s heart ached at the thought of her eldest son. But she steeled herself and put that feeling right back in the box it belonged in. Ade was gone and he wasn’t coming back.
But Luke. Luke had gritted his teeth and got on with it. Barely twenty-one and probably ill-prepared for the responsibility of supporting his mother and younger sister through their grief, Luke had knuckled down and coped. It had been Luke’s idea to send Nell to a therapist when all of her problems had started, and thank God they had. Thank God.
Patricia placed the wreath carefully in the fridge in the back office and paused, her hand on the cool, metal door. Her life seemed to be on hold at the moment, had been for some time, in fact. She always seemed to be waiting.
As Patricia drifted back into the shop to tidy up, she noticed a harassed-looking woman wielding a futuristic-looking pushchair with a baby in it. A stroppy toddler tugged at her hand, whining loudly, neither of them noticing when he dropped his cuddly Buzz Lightyear toy.
Patricia dashed outside and picked it up. ‘You dropped this, sweetie.’
The boy took it sulkily, saying nothing as his sticky fingers closed around the green and white figure. The mother turned, frowning. ‘Say thank you,’ she reminded her son, tiredly.
‘Thank you,’ the boy mumbled.
Patricia smiled. ‘You’re welcome. Lovely evening, isn’t it?’
The mother half-smiled. ‘Will be when these two are down for their sleep,’ she replied. ‘Come on, Josh. Let’s go. Say bye to the nice lady …’
Patricia leant against the doorframe and watched them. After Bernard had died, she had hoped and prayed for a distraction. A baby-shaped one, not a new man in her life. A baby she could smother with all the pent-up love she could feel swirling inside, the love that had nowhere else to go. But it hadn’t happened. She had tried to find out what was going on, of course; Luke was her son but he had seemed reluctant to elaborate. Patricia felt helpless. Of course, it hurt a little that Luke didn’t seem to want to confide in her. Thinking about it, that had pretty much stopped when Bernard had died. Patricia guessed they had all been affected in different ways by his absence, but it was a shame, because Luke had always been so open.
Patricia gathered up her bag and locked the shop door. The fact of the matter was, she had this prickle of resentment she didn’t know what to do with, and laying it at her daughter-in-law’s door for not giving her a grandchild gave the feeling a more comfortable home. It was unfair, of course it was. And it might not be accurate. But with Nell in her early twenties and far too focused on her fashion degree to think about kids, Luke and Lucy were Patricia’s best bet.
Patricia pushed all thoughts of a baby to one side. She was being selfish and that wasn’t fair. She needed to keep busy – she needed a few projects of her own to focus on. Patricia glanced back at the shop window. The pots really were beautiful. Perhaps she could do a course, making pots and dishes and things she could use when she baked. Yes, a course of some kind. That would keep her busy.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_8b199b7f-7232-5fac-a818-5745d4dc28bc)
Lucy (#ulink_8b199b7f-7232-5fac-a818-5745d4dc28bc)
