A person you could mess up.
Because she had such a great track record with relationships. Because her own mother hadn’t loved her, so why would a child be any different?
She was going for a preliminary consultation, Juliet reminded herself. Nothing was definite. She just wanted tosee.
She drove the forty miles to Carlisle past rolling sheep pastures, the fells a gray-green smudge in the distance, the sea falling away on her left and signs for the nearby lakes of Crummock Water and Buttermere on her right. It was always a bit of a jolt to come into Cumbria’s only city and see the rows of terraced houses, the massive Carlisle Castle with its ruins of Hadrian’s Wall. With seventy thousand people, Carlisle felt like a teeming metropolis in comparison with Hartley-by-the-Sea.
The private fertility clinic she’d furtively looked up online last night was in a concrete building on the far side of the city, with tinted glass doors and a discreet sign with the letters cfc. Juliet parked in the near-empty lot and headed inside.
The lobby could have been the waiting room for any office; there were the standard uncomfortable sofas and chairs, a coffee table of fake wood, and the usual collection of year-old issues ofGood HousekeepingandWoman’s Weekly, plus the odd, ancient copy of the more upmarketCumbria Life. A couple sat on one of the sofas, holding hands and looking down at their laps. Juliet looked away from them.
She gave her name to the bored girl at the desk and was handed a clipboard with a ream of forms to fill out. Her knee started to jiggle as she began to write.
“Miss Bagshaw?” A round-faced man in a creased shirt and gray trousers came to the door just as Juliet was filling out the last page; it was almost as if he’d timed it. “Would you like to come through?”
Stony-faced, clutching the clipboard to her chest, Juliet nodded and followed him to a small office that was decorated with the same utilitarian furniture as the waiting room.
The man rounded the desk, gesturing to one of two chairs in front of it. Juliet sat down, glancing at the empty chair next to her, and felt more alone than she wanted to in this moment.
“So. I’m Dr. Allen.” He folded his hands on the desk and gave her a smile that felt cringingly compassionate. She wished he were wearing one of those white lab coats, something to give him a little distance. “You’re here today for a preliminary consultation about fertility options?”
“Yes.” Her voice emerged as a croak, but clearing her throat felt too revealing. Her gaze moved to the window and she looked out at the square patch of pewter sky, unable to bear looking at Dr. Allen’s face again. Coming here had been a mistake, a moment’s idiocy.
“Let me just look through your medical history,” Dr. Allen murmured, and she heard the rustle of the pages she’d painstakingly filled out and handed to him. She kept staring out the window. “I see you’re interested in an IUI with donor sperm,” he said after a moment, and Juliet nodded, forcing her gaze back to Dr. Allen. “I also see that you’ve indicated on your medical history that you have only one functioning Fallopian tube.”
“Yes.” Her throat had gone tight and her hands were clenched in her lap; she was sitting so rigidly she knew he must see and feel her tension. “I had an ectopic pregnancy eleven years ago.”
“And it burst, causing damage to the tube?” Wordlessly she nodded and Dr. Allen glanced back down at her notes. “And you’ve also suffered from endometriosis?”
“Yes.”
He took off his glasses and gave her a smile of such genuine sympathy that Juliet wanted to slap him. “I have to tell you,Miss Bagshaw, that IUI might be difficult for you.” She didn’t say anything, didn’t think she could, and he continued in that same kindly tone, “With your medical history, implantation of an embryo would be challenging. Of course, we’d do a full physical and fertility assessment first, and I should let you know that counseling is required when using donor sperm. Would you be using the sperm of an acquaintance, or would you prefer to go through a sperm bank?”
Juliet stared at him blankly.From an acquaintance?Whom on earth could she ask to give her some sperm? “A bank,” she said, and Dr. Allen nodded.
“Then you should know that you would, in all likelihood, have to go through another country. The United Kingdom has very few sperm donors on register. Most people use a bank in the United States or Denmark, which have the largest number of donors. But it can be expensive.”
Juliet’s jaw bunched even more tightly. “I see.”
He cocked his head, his gaze sweeping over her. Juliet didn’t like to think about what he saw. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice so very gentle, “this is something you need to think about for a little while.”
Five minutes later she was back out in the parking lot, the rain spitting down, her car keys clenched in one hand, cutting into her skin. She’d envisioned the appointment taking most of the morning, not just ten minutes, although granted, that had been long enough. But some naive part of her had vaguely imagined coming out of the clinic with a plan, a promise. Maybe even a pregnancy.
She was utterly hopeless. What on earth had she been thinking, making that appointment? What would everyone in Hartley-by-the-Sea have said when she was suddenly pregnant? Not that it was even likely she could get pregnant. She’d known going in that it was a remote possibility, and yet still she’dhoped. She’d clung to the possibility because at least it had beensomething.
The rain was coming down harder now, stinging her face, and Juliet got back into her car. She didn’t want to go home yet, not when she’d intimated to Lucy that she’d be gone for most of the day. And frankly she wasn’t ready to face Lucy at all. The sympathy she’d seen on her sister’s face last night . . . even now it made her wince. The last thing she wanted or needed was Lucy’s pity.
She ended up parking the car in the center of town and walking around the shopping area known as The Lanes, gazing unseeingly into shop windows and feeling aimless. She had no guests due at Tarn House until tomorrow, and the house was already clean, the beds made up, the towels laid out. She had absolutely nothing that needed doing and she wanted to be busy, too busy to think, to feel.
She ate lunch at the café on top of Debenhams department store, amidst other chatting shoppers, bags piled by their feet; she watched as two women around her age gossiped over a piece of chocolate fudge cake they were sharing. One of them let out a crack of laughter, and the sound seemed to slice right through her. She turned to gaze out at the rain-washed streets as she picked at a lukewarm slice of steak and mushroom pie and tried to act as if she liked being alone, as if this were her choice.
Chapter nine
Lucy
Saturday dawned, rather predictably, wet and windy. By the time Lucy came downstairs, Juliet had already left for Carlisle, and after a quick breakfast of cereal and tea she decided to walk the dogs early, while the tide was out; the tide clock above the Aga informed her she had at least two hours before the sea started its relentless surge back towards shore.
She wrapped herself up in a fleece and waterproof, yanked on her already mud-splattered Wellies. “All right, you two,” she told the dogs, who trembled in their beds, tails thumping on the ground as they eyed her with trepidation. When Juliet fetched their leads, the dogs raced for the door, quivering with joy. When Lucy did it, they dropped their heads onto their paws.
