He was talking softly, but
Stephanie felt that there was a patronising tone to his voice. She reached for
a tissue from the box just in front of her. As she pulled out a tissue, the box
fell onto the floor. Roger picked it up and looked at her sympathetically.
Stephanie felt that he was inwardly laughing at her. He was treating her as he
always did every time she had an idea; as if she was a little girl, unable to
make decisions about anything.
‘Now, let’s forget about all
this, shall we?’ He seemed pleased with himself.
Stephanie took a deep breath.
‘There is someone who is willing to have a child for us; so it’s not a crazy
idea. I’m not just going to forget about it.’ She sat back on the sofa, folding
her arms, and waited for his response.
‘You’re not thinking
straight, darling.’ Roger stood up, he seemed agitated, restless. ‘You are
asking me to have a baby with someone I’ve never even met.’
‘It’s not as if you have to
sleep with her. You just donate your sperm.’
He turned to face her, and
looked directly in her eyes, making her feel uncomfortable with his hard stare.
‘I won’t do it,’ he said, angrily, folding his arms and sitting back down on
the sofa. He leaned forward and picked up his cigarette packet from the coffee
table, his hands shaking.
When he had leaned back
again, Stephanie touched his arm: ‘Roger, dear, I want you to do this for me.
For us. I want a child; our child. You said you don’t want to adopt; well, this
way, the child will be yours.’
‘Why should I have to pay
someone to give me my own child? We can’t afford to pay out money to this
woman.’ He lit his cigarette and shrugged Stephanie's hand away from his arm.
He blew out a circle of smoke, then turned to face her, his dark eyes narrowed:
‘If we could have had a child of our own, it would have been great. But we
can’t. Just face it. We can’t do something like this, it’s wrong.’
‘No, you’re wrong. It’s the
perfect solution.’ Her voice came out high-pitched. She felt a frantic need to
find a way to convince him. It was as if she was holding on to a fraying piece
of rope, her dreams tied to the end; she had to pull in the rope before it
snapped, and he had to help her. But his eyes were distant. There was no
emotion in his gaze. It was as if he had given up and decided she was foolish.
He leaned back on the sofa
and took a deep drag from his cigarette. She watched as he exhaled the smoke in
front of him, staring blankly ahead, but she could see his mind ticking away
trying to think of what he could say to her. Eventually he spoke, without
looking at her.
‘This is the maddest thing
you’ve ever thought of. Sometimes I wonder what is going on in that head of
yours. All you can think about is having a baby. Baby, baby, baby. Blah, blah,
blah.’ Then he turned towards her, irritation showing in his eyes. ‘I didn’t
say anything before, because I know it was hard for you to hear that you can’t
have children. I thought in time you’d come to accept it, but no; you just keep
wittering on and on and on like a broken record. Well, I’m sick of it.’ He
stood up as the ash from the end of his cigarette fell onto the cream carpet.
He stubbed the cigarette out into an ashtray and folded his arms in front of
him looking down his nose at her. ‘You should know that if God had wanted you
to have children, you wouldn’t be bloody infertile!’
Stephanie gasped. ‘How dare
you! You... You... insensitive... bastard!’
Roger looked suitably
embarrassed. ‘Sorry,’ he said, under his breath. ‘I shouldn’t have said that,
but—’
‘This is the most important
thing to me, and all you can do is mock me,’ she said through sniffs and tears.
‘You just don’t love me anymore; that’s the real problem, isn’t it?’ She looked
up at him, her green eyes full of tears.
He handed her a tissue and
sat down beside her: ‘You’re losing touch with the real issue here, Steph.
You’re losing your grip on reality.’
‘What—’
‘Let me finish,’ he said,
agitated. He looked at her and smiled a sad smile. ‘You just said that having a
baby is the most important thing to you. Shouldn’t I be the most important
thing to you? Think about it... you’re the one who’s putting a wall between us.
You’re more concerned about having a baby than you are about the way I feel.’
Stephanie sat in stunned
silence. She knew what he said made sense, but her mind was not ready to hear
that she had to give up her dream of having a child. She wanted to be with
Roger, but she also wanted a child. ‘Is it so bad that I want us to be a
family?’
‘Look, if it will mean I can
get some peace, I will come with you to meet this woman, but I’m not promising
anything. With any luck, you’ll come to your senses and we can leave this in
the past.’
‘You’ll come? You’ll meet
Miranda?’ She smiled through her tears and shrugged away the doubts that were
creeping into her mind. She wanted to focus on the positive. Roger seemed to be
coming around to the idea. At least that’s what she tried to tell herself.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, we
haven’t met her yet.’ His voice was flat, emotionless.
Stephanie put her arms around
him. ‘Thank you, darling, thank you.’ She put her head onto his chest and cried
tears of joy as he shook his head, unable to understand how things had ever
reached this point.
After meeting with Miranda, Stephanie and Roger discussed
the matter again, and Roger’s attitude seemed to have changed. It appeared that
he had recovered some hope, and Stephanie felt that this would indeed be just
the thing they needed to save their marriage: Roger would have a child of his
own, and Miranda would be out of the picture once the baby was born; she’d said
something about wanting to take a year off to travel abroad. Everything seemed
to be coming together perfectly.
Miranda was twenty-two years
old. She was quite ordinary looking; she had mousey-brown hair and was slightly
on the plump side. She was pretty enough that Stephanie didn’t have to be
concerned about what the child might look like, but plain enough so she didn’t
have to worry about Roger taking a fancy to her.
She liked Miranda on first
meeting her; she seemed sincere and very polite. When Stephanie questioned her
about whether she’d given thought to how difficult it would be for her to give
up her child, Miranda had replied:
‘Some women are just not natural mothers,
I suppose. The way I see it is, you want a baby and I can give that to you, in
exchange for the money I need to travel. It’s a fair swap. I don’t really fancy
sleepless nights and endless nappy changing at my age. I want to travel and see
the world. My mum had six children and I’m the oldest; I was always being
called upon to look after the younger ones. I made the decision a few years
ago, when I was knee high in potty training and dirty nappies, that I don’t
want children of my own. Who knows, maybe when I’m older I’ll change my views,
but for now I want to be free to enjoy my life.’
Miranda seemed like the perfect surrogate mother.
Once all the details had been
agreed, Roger became more loving towards Stephanie; he began to pay much more
attention to her, which seemed to be his way of assuring her that he loved her
even though he would be having a child with another woman. He seemed much more
considerate of her feelings and sensitive to her insecurity. It was a side of him
that Stephanie had not seen for some time. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long.
Almost as soon as Miranda
announced she was pregnant, Roger became more distant. He spent most of his
time at work, and would not return home until the early hours. Their relationship
was once again failing, and Stephanie began to worry that they had made a big
mistake in agreeing to the surrogacy. How could they bring up a child together
if they hardly ever communicated? She spent most of her lonely nights crying.
When Alice was born, however,
Roger’s attitude seemed to change again, and they spent a few happy months
together. Stephanie dared to believe that their marriage was back on track, but
the happiness was short-lived. Roger began to stay out late more often. This
led to arguments which became progressively worse. Finally, Roger left.
Stephanie thought back to the time of Alice’s birth. The
surrogacy arrangement now seemed like something murky and unspeakable, that was
better forgotten. Even after all these years, she still could not get her head
around how Miranda had so easily given up her child for a bit of money.
Stephanie wasn’t present at
Alice’s birth, and neither was Roger. Miranda had insisted she didn’t want them
there. This made Stephanie jittery, worried that the girl could easily change
her mind about giving them the baby. Her marriage seemed to be hanging by a
thread at that stage, and her one hope was still that as soon as Roger saw his
child he would become a loving husband again. She sighed at her naiveté
whenever she thought back to that time. It was as if there were red flashing
warning signs all over the place about the dire state of the marriage, but she
chose to ignore them.
She had desperately wanted to
take more of a role during the pregnancy, but Miranda had only agreed to meet
with her and Roger twice in the nine months, and both times she had told them
that she thought it was best if they kept their distance and treated it as more
of a business arrangement so that emotions would not be involved. Miranda
seemed to be acting rather neurotically, so Stephanie thought it best to go
along with whatever she wanted.
When Alice was born, Miranda
insisted that only Roger could attend to collect her from the hospital, as he
could pretend to be her husband. She wanted things to look as normal as
possible to the hospital staff.
Stephanie remembered how she had
waited in anticipation for Roger to arrive back from the hospital with Alice,
and how perfect Alice had looked. They told their friends that they had adopted
her. Stephanie took comfort in knowing that this wasn’t a complete lie as she
did have to adopt her to make everything legal.
Looking up at the kitchen clock,
as she ate her breakfast, her mind soon came back to the present day. She would
have to meet Rita in less than half an hour. She finished her coffee and set
off towards the Tube station.
***
Alice finished her shift at the bookstore at 1 p.m. She
had lunch at a nearby café and then decided to visit her mother. Since
yesterday, Alice had been feeling guilty about upsetting her by mentioning her
father. Her mind battled between not wanting to hurt her mother’s feelings, but
at the same time wanting to acknowledge her own curiosity about the man who had
abandoned her as a child.
On the way to her mother’s flat,
Alice saw a man selling flowers in the street. He had a few bunches of roses in
his bucket, and when he saw Alice approach him, he picked out a bunch of yellow
roses and held them towards her, smiling. His face looked dirty and weather worn,
but his eyes were beautiful, an almost translucent blue. Alice remembered that
Stephanie used to always buy yellow roses for the flat, saying that they
reminded her of the sun and made her feel happy.
Alice reached into her handbag
and took out her purse. The man smiled, revealing surprisingly white teeth.
‘Thank you,’ he said in an accent she did not recognise, as he handed her the
bunch of roses.
The perfume from the flowers
wafted up to Alice’s nose as she walked along the street, the aroma reminding her
of days when she was younger and more carefree, living with her mother. The
flat always seemed to smell of roses in those days.
At 2 p.m., Alice arrived at
Stephanie’s front door. As she opened the door, she could hear laughter.
Realising that her mother was not alone, Alice wondered whether she should
leave and come back another time. She had only really wanted to make sure that
her mother was okay, and not lonely, and she’d wanted to try to make up for
upsetting her. From the sound of the chat and laughter emanating from the
kitchen, she was fine. Alice smiled to herself. She decided she would leave the
roses in the lounge with a note. As she was looking inside her bag for a pen,
she heard a familiar voice. It was Rita’s. The memory of the recent meeting
with Rita in the café piqued Alice’s curiosity. This woman knew about her
father. Maybe it would be better to go into the kitchen and introduce herself.
If she got to know Rita, she could find out all she wanted to know about her
father, and she wouldn’t have to bother Stephanie about it anymore.
Alice closed the front door
slowly, trying not to make any noise; it occurred to her that maybe her mother
and Rita would be discussing old times, which might include some stories about
her father. It was hard to make out what the women were talking about, so she
slowly crept towards the kitchen, glad she was wearing trainers as they didn’t
make too much noise on the wooden floor.
When Alice was standing outside
the kitchen door, she heard Rita say: ‘I still think you should tell Alice. She
has a right to know.’
Alice raised her eyebrows.
‘I can’t. Well, at least not
yet,’ replied Stephanie.
Alice frowned. What was this
secret that her mother was keeping from her? Just then, her keys fell from her
hand onto the wooden floor, making a loud clanging sound as they landed.
‘What was that?’ said Stephanie.
In a panic, Alice quickly opened
the kitchen door and said, ‘Hi, Mum.’
Stephanie’s eyes widened. ‘Oh...
er... hello, darling.’ She was seated by the kitchen table opposite Rita.
‘Hello,’ said Rita, smiling.
‘Hi,’ said Alice, nodding at
Rita.
She was kicking herself for
dropping her keys.
What were they talking about?