‘Something I said?’
She laughed at him, then went across and put her arms around his neck, kissing him deeply on the mouth.
‘Probably,’ she joked. ‘It’s probably all your fault.’
He looked at her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear with the tips of his fingers. It was a familiar, proprietorial gesture and Kate liked it.
‘I better go and check on her,’ he said. ‘See if she’s OK.’
‘Yes, you do that. I’ll finish up down here.’
Jake went upstairs and Kate took out the macaroni cheese, allowing it to stand and sizzle on the counter as she put together a green salad. She sliced the cucumbers and peeled an avocado and by the time Jake came back into the kitchen, she was halfway through making a vinaigrette.
‘All OK?’
‘Yes, fine,’ he said and he reached across to the chopping board and popped a piece of cucumber in his mouth.
A few minutes later, just as Jake was laying the table and lighting the candles, they heard Marisa scream. Jake dropped the knives and forks with a clatter and ran upstairs and Kate, heart beating wildly, followed close behind. As they reached the first-floor bathroom, the door swung open and Marisa darted out, her cheeks wet, holding a pregnancy test aloft.
‘We’re pregnant!’ she said, half shouting across the landing.
‘What?’ Kate said, feeling as though she might faint. ‘What?’
Jake’s shoulders shook and he started to cry. ‘I can’t believe it,’ he kept saying. ‘I can’t believe it.’
He went to Marisa, hugging her tightly, and then Marisa was crying too and Kate, pressing herself against the wall to steady the sudden shakiness of the world, sensed her knees give way as she slid to the floor. She clasped her head in her hands and wondered who was sobbing until she realised the sound was coming from her.
23
The three of them settled into a routine. The pregnancy now became the focal point around which the household was run. Marisa had to sleep as much as her body told her she needed, so Kate and Jake were quiet in the mornings, leaving the house on tiptoes, gently closing the door behind them so it wouldn’t slam. Kate bought folic acid and pregnancy multi-vitamins, stacking them in the cupboard above the sink. She Googled the best foods for early pregnancy and cooked healthy, colourful meals full of leafy green vegetables and oily fish. Marisa, pale with nausea, couldn’t eat most of it so Kate ate for her, as if she could transmit all the necessary nutrients via osmosis.
For the first month, Kate wouldn’t allow herself to believe in it fully. She kept asking Marisa to take new pregnancy tests and Marisa sweetly obliged.
‘Here you go,’ Marisa would say, handing over the stick with the two pink lines or the digital aperture displaying the single word ‘pregnant’.
‘Thank you,’ Kate answered.
Marisa hugged her.
‘I don’t mind.’
Kate built up a fairly substantial collection of positive pregnancy tests, storing each one in the drawer of the bathroom cabinet which stood by the basin. Sometimes she would open the drawer just to look at them, stacked neatly side by side, so that she could be reminded of this essential truth: theywerepregnant. After so long, after so much yearning and loss, here the fact was.
Marisa took to her new condition with ease. She appeared calmer than she had done for ages and Kate began to think it hadn’t been fairof her to judge. They had all been living on frayed nerves for too long. Now the pressure lifted, and it felt like a cool breeze rustling through grass after a heatwave.
In bed at night, Kate fell asleep in Jake’s arms, not waking until morning. Her sleep was dreamless and solid and she woke rested. Jake started texting her again during the day, little messages to say he was thinking of her or that he loved her or that he couldn’t wait to fuck her later. Reading these texts at her desk, Kate hadn’t realised how much she had missed them. When they made noiseless love, they did so urgently, as though they couldn’t physically get close enough, as though they both wanted to consume the other.
In the second month, Kate started thinking again of baby names. It was a discussion she and Jake had had countless times before, but when her IVF cycles had started failing, they had shelved it without anything more being said. It was too painful to imagine a baby with a name because it gave them expectation, and expectation was the cruellest trick when you weren’t expecting.
This time, with Marisa carrying their twin top-grade embryos, Kate was more confident. She liked Maya and Eva for girls and Leo and Oscar for boys, but she didn’t say anything to Jake because they both knew fate was too unpredictable to be tempted.
After waiting for so long, nine more months now seemed nearly impossible to endure.
They took to telling the babies they loved them, bending down to Marisa’s tummy and whispering ‘I love you’ directly into her belly. Marisa smiled benignly as she watched them do this, joking that her stomach had never had so much attention.
For a while it was perfect. It was important for Kate to remember that, later, after everything that happened. For a while, it seemed to be going so well.
At first it was the small things that edged uncomfortably into Kate’s consciousness, like the distant slap of a wasp thudding against a window.
