‘You all right?’ the woman asked her.
In the mirror, Kate noticed her cheeks were pale and that her mascara had run.
‘Yes, thank you. Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise.’
The woman finished putting her lipstick on and rubbed her lips together.
‘Family lunch?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Kate smiled as she washed her hands.
‘They’re the worst.’
Kate dried her hands on a thick paper towel as the woman put the cap back on her lipstick and slipped it into her handbag which, Kate noticed, was vintage Chanel.
‘Good luck with it.’
‘Thanks,’ Kate said, calmer now. ‘I like your bag, by the way.’
‘Oh, you are kind. It was given to me by my daughter.’
Then she asked the question; the question that Kate always knew was coming – sometimes she could count the number of seconds it would take to be said out loud.
‘Do you have kids?’
She shook her head.No, she thought,no I don’t have children. But if you knew how much it costs me to answer that, you wouldn’t ask.
‘I don’t,’ Kate said, balling up the paper towel and throwing it in the circular hole cut into the marbled counter-top.
‘Ah well. There’s still time.’
Kate found it extraordinary how much ownership strangers felt they had over her uterus. People she had only just met would imagine they knew her age, her sexual proclivities and her maternal urges. There was an assumption, implicit in the question, that all women should want to have children and that those who didn’t were somehow lacking. It used to infuriate her. Now it just left her hollow.
She let the woman leave the toilets first so that they didn’t have to walk back upstairs together. When Kate returned to the table, an impasse had been reached. Clearly words had been exchanged in her absence. Jake had probably told his parents what an unbalanced nutcase she was, Kate thought, and how she had been driven obsessive by the desire for motherhood and her failure to conceive. It was unfair of her to think like this, she knew. But she had to put her hurt somewhere.
Annabelle stood as Kate reached the table and walked towards her, arms outstretched so that the blue sleeves hung down like drooping crocus heads.
‘Darling Kate. I’m so sorry for being insensitive.’
Annabelle hugged her. The affection was administered like the bruising pain of a deep tissue massage: uncomfortable but ultimately a relief.
‘I’m very old-fashioned and ill-informed when it comes to these issues, and Jake’s explained it all to me and Idounderstand, truly I do. I think it’s tremendously brave of you to do this, knowing that thebaby won’t be genetically yours. I suppose I was just worried about you both, that’s all. I apologise if I expressed myself badly.’
Kate drew back but Annabelle wouldn’t let go.
‘Thank you, Annabelle.’
‘Can you ever forgive me?’ Annabelle said, lapsing into hyperbole so that there was no option but to say yes, of course she did, and no, don’t worry, she wasn’t offended and yes, she understood that it was an unconventional arrangement, and no, Annabelle mustn’t worry, it was all above board and yes, naturally she was glad Annabelle was excited about becoming a grandmother.
Kate spent the rest of the lunch in a sort of daze, sipping her coffee and eating the chocolate truffles in a series of automatic movements that seemed beamed in from another galaxy. Chris ordered her a brandy, although she couldn’t remember having asked for it, and she downed it in three gulps. She was grateful for it and when Jake asked for the bill and paid and they went outside to hail a black cab to take his parents to the hotel, she felt at one remove from the world around her.
She supposed she was sad, but the sadness now went so deep she had forgotten how to understand it.
22
It was Marisa, now,who was injecting herself every day with fertility drugs in order to stimulate egg production. It was Marisa who stored the little glass vials in the fridge, mixing the powder with the requisite amount of liquid, piercing the top with a needle and sucking it up inside the syringe. It was Marisa who would sit on the sofa in the kitchen, lifting her pyjama top to slide the needle into a firmly held section of her belly, and pressing down on the syringe. It was Marisa who released her hold on her flesh at the same moment as the drugs seeped into her bloodstream. It was Marisa who put the used needles into the yellow and purple sharps bin provided by the hospital, which they stored on top of the fridge. Kate would catch sight of it every time she opened the door to retrieve the milk and she would be reminded of all the times she had tried and failed to carry out the same process.
