‘I wouldn’t mind some of that hot stone thingy,’ moaned Mary. ‘I wish I had time for it …’
‘Why not?’ asked Paula. ‘We could do it soon. If they’re new, they’l have special offers, and they’re bound to have pregnancy stuff. Special massages and treatments.’
‘Right, I’l check it out,’ said Daisy, fired up by this new idea.
Today was a day for plans. She’d phoned several fertility clinics today and she had news for Alex. Exciting news.
She’d made an appointment for them both with one of the clinics. The only problem was that the appointment wasn’t for several weeks. She’d go mad with anticipation until then. A spa day with the girls was just what she needed to look forward to in the meantime.
Daisy arrived home at seven, swinging the plastic bag of Mary’s self-help books because she had to flick through them some time. The first thing she spotted was Alex’s briefcase sitting on the walnut floor in the hal . What caught her eye was the flash of turquoise peeping out of the black leather folds. A Tiffany gift bag. She considered a quick peek to see what Alex had bought her and then thought better of it.
Imagine if he’d bought her a diamond as big as a marble for their engagement and she’d have to spend the rest of her life knowing that she’d looked before he’d produced it.
How did you and Dad get engaged? the kids would ask, and she’d have either to lie or say, ‘I stuck my big nose into his briefcase and found the ring, so I knew then …’ Not the romantic story she’d like. Anyway, it couldn’t be an engagement ring. They’d discussed that - they didn’t need marriage to cement their relationship. She yel ed a cheery hel o and Alex rushed from the bathroom, looking a bit pale.
‘Dodgy stomach,’ he said by way of greeting, then planted a speedy kiss on her cheek.
‘Is that al the welcome I’m getting?’ Daisy joked, fol owing him into the bedroom where he began rapidly undressing, throwing his jacket and tie onto the silken caramel throw on their king-size bed. ‘Oh-oh, this is the welcome …’ Halfway through pul ing off his shirt, Alex grimaced. ‘Honey, if you knew the weekend I’ve had … Those people wouldn’t spend Christmas. I am so shattered. And the hotel wasn’t good as the last one.’
‘Poor love.’ She held out her arms to him, and for a minute he relaxed against her and laid his head on her shoulder.
Then, he moved away and finished undressing, before putting on jeans and a sweatshirt.
Daisy sat cross-legged on the end of the bed.
‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she began. ‘It’s OK,’ she laughed seeing his eyes widen, ‘I haven’t been fired and I haven’t crashed! the car! It’s about the baby, our baby. Oh, Alex, we’ve waited! so long - let’s do something about it.’ She smiled, having saved’ the best til last. ‘I did some research today and phoned a couple of fertility clinics. With most of them, you’ve got to wait about a month for an appointment but the Avalon - I read about it in the paper and it’s bril iant, although it’s one of the more expensive - had literal y just had a cancel ation. They can see us on Friday three weeks at twelve fifteen.’ Her eyes shone with excitement. ‘Isn’t that fantastic? Please say you can make it.’ Alex, frozen with one black sock on and one off, stared at her.
‘We’ve been waiting for years, Alex. One before you got sick and two since.’
He flinched. She knew he hated being reminded about his il ness.
‘We’ve got to do something before I run out of time. I need to know why I’m not getting pregnant. I want a baby.’ Even saying it made her feel emotional. ‘And I know you do too.
It’s what we’ve wanted for so long, and now it’s the right time.’ She held out a hand to him and, his expression unreadable, he took it, sitting down on the bed beside her.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Daisy rushed in, terrified that he’d say that he didn’t want a baby that much after al .
‘Alex, I think that’s our problem: we think and plan and with some things in life, you can’t think and plan. They should just happen. We’ve been waiting for the right time to have a baby and it’s now.’ Please agree with me, she pleaded silently. ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated.
‘Please, Alex. It’s so important to me and I don’t think we should wait any longer,’ she added softly.
‘I can’t believe you’ve set up a meeting with a fertility clinic without asking me first, Daisy.’
Daisy breathed again. At least he hadn’t said no. It was a start. Shock she was prepared for. Men didn’t like asking for help with directions when they were driving: you’d need to multiply that behaviour by ten to recreate how most men would feel about having to produce sperm in a cup in some anonymous room to make their partner pregnant.
She tried again. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a big step and it can be hard on couples. I’ve read al the articles about fertility treatments.’ Going through the mil of fertility treatment had broken up many couples. But it wouldn’t do that to them, Daisy vowed. Al she had to do was convince him. ‘We can do it, Alex. Please.’ There was doubt written al over Alex’s face. But he hadn’t
said no.
‘Al we have to do is go this one time and see what they say,’ she offered. ‘And if you hate the idea, wel , we can talk some more …’ With this olive branch extended, he couldn’t say no. ‘OK, we’l stop talking about it. You need to think.’
Yes, stop haranguing him. Let him think about it. She changed the subject.
‘Hey, want to tel me what else you were doing in London besides staying in a horrible hotel and ferrying rich, stingy people around?’ she teased, thinking of the Tiffany bag. ‘I can see you’ve been shopping. Anything you want to tel me?’ ‘Daisy …’ he began and stopped.
‘Sorry, I ruined the surprise, did I?’ She was contrite. ‘But it’s not my birthday for ages. I thought it was some fun present, although nothing from Tiffany’s could be strictly classed as purely fun. Serious fun!’
He looked blank.
‘The Tiffany bag?’
Comprehension dawned.
‘Was it for something else?’ It couldn’t be an engagement ring? No, of course not. ‘Our anniversary’s not just yet,’ she said quickly.
Alex shook his head as he left the room. ‘No.’
He returned with the bag in question and put it in front of her without any fanfare. What did she want an engagement ring for anyway? Daisy thought as she opened the bag and took out the Tiffany box. ‘You buying this is a sign,’ she said happily, taking the white ribbon off. ‘A sign that this is a good time to change our lives.’
Inside the box was a silver necklace, not unlike the first present he’d bought her years ago, only this one was Tiffany silver and exquisitely pretty.
It was indeed a sign, Daisy realised. A sign that their love could endure no matter what. Alex needed time to think about fertility treatment and then he’d come round to her way of thinking. Having a family was the most natural thing in the world. It was a no-brainer, as Alex would say.
The first present he’d ever given her, a silvery necklace with a heart on it, was kept in her treasures box, along with the black satin trousers she’d been wearing the first time they’d met. The necklace had tarnished black with age because it was only a cheap thing, but she loved it and wished she could stil wear it, although it turned her neck an alarming shade of green. The matching bra and knickers she’d been wearing the first time they made love were there too. Daisy never told Alex she stil had them; he’d have thought it was a bit sil y, keeping such mementoes many years later.
The satin drainpipe trousers made her cringe now when she looked at them. In theory, satin trousers were sleek, narrow and made for people with hips like a greyhound’s.
At the time, an unbelievable fourteen years ago, Daisy was definitely not a greyhound sort of girl.
The others on the fashion design course wore edgy, frayed black things they’d customised themselves, and were instantly recognisable as design students on the sprawling campus. Daisy alone never wore her own stuff. This was partly because she’d realised, with much misery, that she wasn’t much good at clothes designing. She lived for Vogue, understood bias cuts as if she’d learned at Schiaparel i’s knee, and could draw like an angel. But she couldn’t design for peanuts.
Besides, the sort of clothes she loved were garments made for tal , wil owy brunettes with arrogant eyes and cheekbones like razor blades. Rounded girls with heavy legs and a bust straight out of the wench department in central casting looked better in al black, even black satin trousers topped with a long-line silk cardigan.
Of course, she hadn’t thought she’d looked bad then. She’d thought the black satin disguised the fat bits and elongated her shape so she looked quite good, although hardly supermodel material. And Alex had thought so too, unlike some of the guys in col ege.
It was amazing the way being a big girl made you invisible.
It should have been the other way round - if you were big, there was more of you and people couldn’t avoid you. But they did. They averted their eyes like medieval peasants must have at the sight of lepers, yel ing ‘unclean’.
Alex Kenny, long, lean, dark-eyed and with biceps of steel from being uncrowned king of the rowing club, didn’t avert his eyes.
‘You don’t wear mad stuff like the other design nuts,’ he said in amusement that first time they’d met. ‘You look normal.’ And he’d reached out and lazily twirled a tassel of her rose pink vintage silk scarf, making Daisy turn exactly the same shade of pink.
They’d been sitting in the Shaman’s Armchair, the labyrinthine
off-campus pub favoured by the rowing boys. Jules and Fay, classmates of Daisy’s, were keen on some of the Lazer rowing team and an impromptu outing to the pub had been organised for one Saturday after a race. Wel , it was supposed to be impromptu but Daisy had seen first-hand how long Jules and Fay had taken to get ready. The just-thrown-together look took an awful lot of time to achieve.
Daisy hadn’t done much, make-up wise, but had gone to her usual enormous effort to look thin. Looking thin was her mission in life although she knew that she could never real y manage it.
As Jules and Fay flirted happily in the pub, Daisy sat in a corner nursing her half-pint. She was stony-broke again.
Her grant was almost gone and the pizza restaurant near the flat she shared with the girls didn’t need her for late night shifts. She watched the flirting ritual, thinking how nice it would be to be like Jules and Fay, confident and good with men. She was good with men if she was asking them if they wanted their pizza with extra mozzarel a, but otherwise, forget it. And then Alex arrived, took in the seating arrangements, and very definitely sat down beside her.
Alex Kenny, a man so fine that even Jules and Fay had never thought of setting their cap at him. ‘Did you make this?’ Alex asked, gesturing at her poncho, also black but with tiny jet beads dotting the hem. Daisy laughed. ‘I’m as good at knitting as I am at rowing,’ she said. ‘But I sewed the beads on.’
‘Did you?’ He seemed astonished by this and pul ed a chunk of poncho closer for further examination.
Daisy felt her heart flutter wildly at this intimacy. ‘But there’s mil ions of them,’ Alex added. ‘You’d be sewing for ever.’
‘Sewing is a part of the whole designing clothes thing,’ she informed him gravely. .
Alex’s eyes - coffee brown or melting chocolate, Daisy couldn’t be sure - twinkled. ‘Are you making fun of me, Madame Designer? Do you think I’m a big hick from the rowing team who’s on a sports scholarship and has an IQ in double digits?’ ‘Double digits?’ she asked in mock astonishment. And then ruined it by saying, ‘Sorry, only joking …’ in case she’d upset him.
But Alex only grinned more broadly and wanted to know how long it would take to sew on that many beads.
‘I do it when I’m watching tel y,’ Daisy explained. ‘How can you watch and sew? No,’ he added, ‘don’t tel me. It’s like how do you get to Carnegie Hal - practise.’ ‘Like rowing,’
Daisy added, looking at his muscles, stil very obvious despite the big porridgy sweater he was wearing. ‘I’m out of shape,’ Alex said rueful y. ‘Need to get back in for the season.’
‘And you practise a lot?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘I don’t know anything about rowing.’
‘Good. I hate rowing groupies. They discuss rowing with you like a pro but they’ve never put a foot in a scul in their life.’ And he rattled on, tel ing her about the hours of rowing and gym work, before weaving the conversation back to her and the sort of work it took to get into design col ege.
Daisy’s shyness evaporated. Natural y, Alex wasn’t interested in her in any romantic sense - nobody ever was -
but he seemed to like talking to her, so that gave her an unaccustomed courage. He wasn’t just being kind talking to the shy, chubby girl because he real y fancied one of her friends, kooky Fay, or elegant Jules, who had that Grace,Kel y thing going. He was one of those beautiful people who liked talking to everyone. Daisy had decided that some students in col ege had a scale they worked whereby they wouldn’t deign to talk to anyone below a certain rank. Daisy, no good at fashion design and pretty-ish but too big, was below the bar. The cool women ignored her and the cool men didn’t see her. But life’s gods, like Alex, were above rules and could bestow favour on any lesser mortal. Daisy was fairly sure that as soon as Fay and Jules
drifted in Alex’s direction, he’d stop talking to her and turn that charming gaze away. But for now, he was hers: the aquiline nose above the sculpted mouth, the faint tan that spoke of some sort of exotic Christmas holiday outside Ireland, the lazy smile of the man who knows he doesn’t have to try too hard. Saturday afternoon crept into Saturday evening and hunger hit. The pub did great traditional Irish potato crepes cal ed boxty, so huge plates of boxty and more drink were ordered. The crowd swel ed from the original three girls and four rowers to a big clatter of students. They took up a whole section of the Shaman’s, laughing and joking and swapping stories on how unprepared they were for the new term. Stil Alex sat beside Daisy.
Warmed up by the two hot whiskeys Alex had bought her when she finished her half-pint, she told him that she loved clothes but had come to the painful conclusion that she wasn’t much good at designing, something she’d only told Jules and Fay up to now.