‘You OK?’ Kate asked him.
He nodded, his jaw set in a rigid line.
‘It’ll be fine,’ she said, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek.
Marisa produced fourteen eggs. Mr Abadi was in ecstasies.
‘It’s a very good number. Very good,’ he kept saying. ‘Very good size.’
Fourteen, Kate thought. It was excessive. It was as if Marisa were trying to prove a point.
Beside her, Jake’s shoulders relaxed and he broke into a smile.
‘That’s wonderful,’ he said, standing to shake Mr Abadi by the hand.
‘Yes,’ Kate added quietly. ‘Wonderful.’
The next day, Kate’s mobile rang with an unknown number. It was Mr Abadi, to tell her that eight of the eggs had fertilised. She called Jake at work, and they both knew it was good news but that they would have to wait until they could be sure of it. The fertilised eggs now needed to divide and multiply their cells at the requisite rate for five days until they could be deemed worthy of transfer. On day five, Mr Abadi called again to tell Kate that they had ‘six perfect blastocysts’. A blastocyst, she already knew, meant that the cells were starting to separate into those that would form the baby and those that would grow into the placenta. She knew that the blastocyst would have hatched, like a chick from an egg, sprouting from its protective shell to form the zona pellucida. She had looked up the etymology of this term during their first IVF cycle and found that it meant a shining bright ring. She imagined this ring now as a flaming loop around their planet of three, a protective shield of light.
Mr Abadi suggested transferring two embryos, ‘but with embryos of this quality, I warn you: you must be prepared for twins!’ He sounded almost giddy on the phone, full of an avuncular good cheer Kate had never heard before. ‘And then we can freeze the remaining four, and you will be able to have more children than you can shake a stick at.’
They followed his advice, as they always had. It was now a force of habit, as though, in their desperation to be parents, they had lost the power of critical thinking. Two embryos were transferred later that same day and the three of them got a black cab back from the clinic to Richborne Terrace. None of them talked in the taxi. The driver was listening to Magic FM, so the back of the cab was filled with easy listening pop tunes. Marisa, sitting next to Kate, leaned back with a sigh. Jake, perched on the jump-seat opposite her, asked if she was feeling tired.
‘A little, yeah. Must be the sedation. Mr Abadi said it felt like drinking two gin and tonics and he wasn’t wrong.’
Mr Abadi had used the same line on Kate, but she didn’t say anything. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Marisa cradling her stomach. Overkill, she thought uncharitably.
There was a fortnight’s wait, during which Marisa was counselled not to take overly hot baths or to do any strenuous exercise.
‘No more yoga,’ she said to Kate. ‘What a shame!’
‘I don’t think that class could ever be categorised as strenuous,’ Kate replied. ‘But you absolutely must rest.’
Every day for two weeks, Kate brought Marisa breakfast in bed.
‘You don’t need to do this,’ Marisa said, reaching for the hot buttered toast as she spoke.
Kate sat at the edge of the mattress, sipping her coffee as Marisa ate. They chatted a little, about how Marisa’s painting was going, about the films Kate was promoting, about everything other than the thing that was actually consuming them. Kate felt closer to Marisa than she had done in weeks. She began to allow herself to feel the slenderest filament of optimism. She felt like cooking again, and made Jake his favourite dishes. Roast chicken with home-made bread sauce. Nigel Slater’s classic ratatouille. A recipe for Moroccan lamb and prune tagine she had picked up in a free supermarket magazine.
And then: macaroni cheese, which she cooked one night with Marisa sitting on the sofa watching TV. It was the thirteenth day of their two-week wait. Tomorrow, Marisa would take a pregnancy test in the morning, first thing after she woke up when the hormone levels would be at their highest. That way, there would be no false positives.
Kate was nervous, but also excited and as she waited to hear the turn of Jake’s key in the lock, she experienced a fluttery sensation in her stomach, as she had in the first days of their dating. She wanted to be close to him and to feel his arms around her. When he got home, he walked into the kitchen and smelled the melting cheese emanating from the oven and went straight to Kate’s side, trying to open the oven as she swatted his hand away, telling him it wasn’t ready yet.
‘OK, OK, I promise,’ he said, shrugging himself out of his jacket and loosening his tie.
‘Hi,’ Marisa said from the sofa.
‘Oh, hi Marisa,’ Jake replied, cheerfully waving towards her.
He turned to get himself a glass of water and as he did so, Marisa dashed out of the room, her head lowered.
Kate slid her hands out of the oven mitts, leaving them on the counter.
‘What was that about?’ Jake asked.
She shrugged.
‘No idea.’
