‘Some coffee, Annabelle?’ Kate asked.
Jake was sitting opposite his mother, ostentatiously reading a copy ofThe Economistso that he didn’t have to interact.
Annabelle shook her head, resting a hand on her clavicle as she did so.
‘I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn,’ she said finally, her voice clear. ‘I didn’t realise … it was such adifficultsubject for you both.’
Jake didn’t say anything, but he raised his head from the magazine and met his mother’s eyes. Well, Kate thought, I suppose it falls to me to explain.
‘The thing is, Annabelle, we’ve been having IVF.’
Annabelle looked blank.
‘Fertility treatment,’ Kate said. ‘I can’t seem to conceive naturally.’
‘Wecan’t,’ Jake corrected her softly.
‘Oh, I see. And, what do the doctors say the chances are?’ Annabelle enquired politely.
‘Around 30 per cent,’ Kate said.
‘We’ve had two cycles,’ Jake added. ‘Unsuccessfully. They advise three.’
Annabelle reached for the marmalade and started spreading it on her cold toast. She replaced her knife carefully on the plate and took a small bite, chewing thoughtfully. They waited for her to swallow and for the next, inevitable comment to slice into the room.
‘I’m just worried about you both, that’s all.’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Jake said.
‘I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up only for them to be dashed,’ she continued, frowning with concern. She reached across the table and rested her hand on Kate’s arm.
‘You know my dear friend Trisha? Her daughter had IVF five times and no luck. They don’t know why. I suppose it’s just one of those things. And it must be awful for you to go through, darling Kate. I worry that doctors suggest all sorts of medical procedures when maybe there’s nothing to be done, and the procedure itself can be so draining, can’t it? From what I understand, I mean. Of course I’ve never been through anything like that myself.’
Kate tried, as much as possible, to let Annabelle’s words wash over her. A year ago, she would have been righteously indignant at the invasive nature of Annabelle’s opinion but now she no longer seemed to have the mental or physical capacity to make her case. And really, she told herself, it was none of Annabelle’s business. She wished Jake hadn’t told her.
‘It is draining, yes,’ Jake said. ‘Kate’s been heroic.’
Annabelle blinked slowly, those clear blue eyes seeming to become even clearer as she spoke.
‘Poor Kate,’ she patted Kate’s arm. ‘It must be so tough. I read somewhere that giving IVF to women who aren’t able to conceive is a bit like giving chemotherapy to a terminal cancer patient.’
For a second or two, Kate wasn’t sure if she’d heard her correctly. She shifted her arm and Annabelle’s hand dropped onto the table. She stood, pushing her chair back so quickly that it slammed onto the floor. Jake reached out for her but she wouldn’t go to him. Not now. She was furious with them both. With Annabelle for saying the things she did and with Jake for being related to her.
‘That’s not helpful, Annabelle,’ Kate said quietly. Then she left the kitchen and walked out of the house, forgetting her coat, so that when she returned two hours later, she was cold and damp. Jake greeted her with a hug in the hallway.
‘She’s gone,’ he said. ‘We had a massive row. I’m sorry. She won’t be speaking to you like that again.’
Kate allowed herself to be hugged but didn’t say anything. She marvelled at how, even in this close physical proximity to the man she loved, she could possibly feel so alone. But she did.
The third cycle produced nine eggs (‘You’re going up every time!’ Mr Cartwright said with a cheeriness that made Kate want to punch him). Four of them fertilised and two were placed back in her womb, so that now she was technically pregnant with twins, except this time she didn’t feel pregnant at all. She accepted that the cycle would fail with a fatalism that seemed safer than the alternative hope, so when she started bleeding again, this time on the final day of the two-week wait, she wasn’t surprised or even particularly upset. She had, over the preceding eighteen months, become immune to fluctuating emotions. She was like one of those robots she had once seen in Seoul airport when travelling back from a film festival. The robots had scooted along the terminal floors, with a friendly expression on their faces, and a touchscreen you could press to find the right answers. This is what she became: at work, at home, with Jake. She answered questions and tookpart in conversations but she had no real feeling beneath the surface. If she allowed herself to feel the smallest things, Kate knew it would lead ineluctably onto the bigger things and then that would be the start of a fatal unravelling, like a single dropped knitting stitch that ruins the whole pattern.
They went to a private clinic. It was situated in a building on Great Portland Street next to an expensive deli that sold slices of lemon polenta cake and rosehip tea. No more chocolate muffins or men on drips, Kate thought the first time they went there.
The clinic gave them a plastic card, as if they were joining the library, and they were instructed to go upstairs for their consultations and they sat in waiting rooms crowded with white upholstered mock-leather furniture and coffee tables on chrome legs filled with back copies ofTatlerand leaflets featuring soft-focus pictures of babies’ feet held in adult hands. They thought that going private would be the equivalent of flying business class after economy, but the appointments still ran late and the consultants’ offices were still cramped and papered with more baby photographs and thank-you cards Blu-Tacked to the walls, and Kate still felt like a malfunctioning female being told that her ovarian reserve was too low, that her womb was ‘inhospitable’ as if she were being rated like a terrible bed and breakfast on TripAdvisor.
Their consultant – another man, this time an Israeli doctor called Mr Abadi – was matter-of-fact about their dwindling chances but said that they were in the right place to get ‘your preferred outcome’. At their first appointment, he performed an internal scan on Kate and stood there, eyes averted, as she took off her jeans and pants and struggled to cover herself with a scratchy paper towel before he turned around.
For cycles four and five, she still did not respond to the drugs and Mr Abadi upped the dosage so that she felt constantly on the brink of weepy meltdown. These cycles didn’t work and so there were more tests for things called natural killer cells and DNA fragmentation and uterine scarring and they were both put on long courses of antibiotics during which they couldn’t drink and became crotchety with each other.
