Dear Thing
Authors: Julie Cohen
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Family & Relationships, #Literary Criticism
This is the story of Claire and Ben, who are perfectly in love – in fact, perfect in almost
every
way. Except one. They can’t have a baby.
It’s also the story of Ben’s best friend Romily, who after years of watching Ben and Claire suffer, offers to have a baby for them.
But being pregnant stirs up all kinds of feelings in Romily – feelings she’d rather keep buried, but can’t. Now there are two mothers – and one baby who belongs to both of them, and which only one of them can keep…
Thought-provoking, heart-rending but ultimately uplifting,
Dear Thing
is a book you won’t be able to put down, until you pass it on to
your
best friends…
Contents
Julie Cohen
To Anna, Ian and Kieran
Dear Thing,
I want to tell you a story.
Once upon a time, when we still believed in wishes, there lived a prince and a princess. The prince was handsome and clever, and the princess was beautiful and good, and they were deeply in love.
That’s something you might ask about one day, when you’re older.
What is love?
Some people think it’s magic. Some people think it’s biology. In this case, the prince and his princess seemed meant for each other. It’s difficult to explain why; he liked football and she liked concerts. She liked old things, and he liked new. Their life together was a series of compromises. Maybe that’s what a ‘happily ever after’ really is.
The prince asked the princess to marry him. Their wedding was a wonderful day, full of silver and gold and flowers and joy. The prince danced to ‘Boogie Wonderland’ and nearly knocked over the top table. I wish you’d been there to see it. In a way, you were there; the princess and the prince had certainly thought of you. They already wanted you. A perfect child, who would make their love complete.
But the years went by, and went by … and you never appeared.
It’s not much of a fairy tale, is it?
A Little Secret
THE DAY BEFORE
she was supposed to have the test, Claire escaped the music block so she could look again. Her suede boots spotted with wet as she walked across the grass past the pet shed. Two lower-school boys were checking on their guinea pigs, their breath rising in clouds. She raised a hand to them in greeting and headed for the small path leading into the wood that surrounded the school.
On the field a group of girls were playing hockey. As soon as she entered the wood, their cries of encouragement faded. She tightened her right hand around the objects in her pocket and quickened her steps. She skirted rhododendron bushes, pine needles releasing scent beneath her feet, until she reached the rusted iron gates tucked in a corner near the school boundaries. She pushed open the gate and walked into the cemetery.
The St Dominick’s students rarely came here. The one time she’d brought half a dozen A-level students, thinking it might give them some inspiration, they’d shuddered and told her that they’d been whispering scary stories about the nuns’ graveyard for years. There was a rumour about a crying lady,
and another about a swirling mist. But in the light of day, the graveyard wasn’t frightening: sunshine streamed through the towering pines above and pooled around the grey stones. They were all different shapes and sizes, some very old, some recent. Although St Dominick’s School hadn’t housed nuns for many years now, Sisters of the Order who had moved elsewhere were occasionally buried here, where they’d started their lives of service. The newer graves towards the outside were low granite blocks. One or two had plastic flowers in baskets next to them.
Claire moved into the centre of the graveyard. The engraving on the stones here was nearly illegible. In the trees above, a magpie clattered.
She wore a woollen jacket. The left pocket held her phone. The right held two objects carefully wrapped in toilet paper. Claire looked around before she took them out, though she knew that she was alone. Not even a ghostly nun watched her unwrap the pregnancy tests.
She’d seen the blue lines already; they’d appeared almost immediately when she’d taken the tests, but that had been in the staff toilet, where the light wasn’t good. She couldn’t have been sure it wasn’t wishful thinking. Now, she held up the first test and squinted at the lines.
Positive. A clear, dark positive. Same with the second one. She hadn’t made a mistake.
She sank onto the grass, ignoring the cold and damp, staring at the tests on her lap.
She should ring Ben. And her mum. She wasn’t supposed to take a test yet. She and Ben had both agreed that it would be wisest to wait until she had the proper test, tomorrow morning at the fertility clinic.
But she couldn’t wait. All through the school day, through
the mild rebukes to Year Seven to pay attention, please, through the rehearsals for the Easter term concert and the department meetings, she’d been thinking about one thing: her tiny embryo, hers and Ben’s, the single one inside her, the only one that was good enough.
Please take
, she’d been thinking. Exactly as she’d been thinking for every minute of the past ten days since it had been introduced into her womb.
Please take.
Driving to school. Brushing her teeth. Washing the glasses in the sink.
Please take
. Sharing dinner with Ben. The first thought, waking up and going to sleep.
Hold on and live. I want to meet you.
She left her phone in her pocket. Right now, after everything, she wanted to be alone with her secret. To convince herself it was true.
Claire gently laid both of her hands on her stomach. ‘Hello,’ she said softly.
She lifted her face and let the winter sunshine warm her skin.
‘Only one?’ Romily frowned, glancing across the playground at the little girl and her mother who stood there by the gate, waiting. ‘I thought you were going to ask more.’
‘I decided I only wanted to ask one friend,’ said Posie serenely.
‘What happened to all the invitations you took into school? With the printed-out maps in them? Didn’t you give them out?’
Posie opened her book bag for Romily. Creased pink envelopes lined the bottom.
‘You didn’t give out any of them? Posie, they took ages to do.’
‘I gave out one.’ Posie nodded to the girl.
‘I thought Amber was coming.’
‘No.’
‘You told me last week that she was your best friend.’
Posie started humming. Her heavy blonde fringe was too long; Romily couldn’t quite see her eyes. She could see the girl’s mother checking her watch, however, so she put her arm round Posie’s shoulders and went over. Posie took her friend’s hand and the two of them skipped off.
‘Hi,’ Romily said to the woman, holding out her hand. ‘I’m Romily. Thank you so much for letting your little girl come for Posie’s birthday.’
‘It was a bit of a surprise,’ said the other woman. ‘She only let me know about it yesterday.’
‘Sorry,’ said Romily. ‘Posie tells me your daughter is the only one coming, so I can take her in my car if you like and bring her back after tea. We’re going to her godparents’ house, just outside Sonning. It’s bigger.’
Romily could actually see the mother weighing it up: having a couple of hours to herself, versus the perils of letting her daughter go off with a relative stranger. She could try pulling out her ID; people tended to be a little more trusting once they saw the ‘Dr’ before her name. At least until they found out that her doctorate was in entomology, and that she spent her working life among dead bugs.
‘Mum,’ said the little girl, skipping back, ‘it’s starting to rain.’
‘All right,’ her mother said. Hurriedly, she and Romily exchanged phone numbers, addresses, all the usual responsible-adult ritual, and then she rushed off to her car to get the extra seat for Romily. Another look of doubt crossed her face when she saw Romily’s Golf.
‘I’m a careful driver,’ Romily assured her. ‘I just haven’t washed it for a very long time.’
‘I’ll see you at seven,’ the mother said, giving her daughter a kiss on the cheek and handing her a plastic bag with a wrapped present in it. ‘Be a good girl.’
Waiting in the after-school traffic, Romily checked out the girls in the back seat in her rear-view mirror. Posie’s friend was smaller than she was, with her hair in neat bunches done up with pink ribbons. She sat with her hands clutched together, looking out of the window while Posie sang softly. Her uniform was pressed, her shoes shiny. Romily couldn’t remember ever having seen her before in her life.
Then the heavens opened and Romily had to concentrate on driving around the clogged one-way system and out of town. The landscape opened up as she left Brickham, though the fields were no more than green smears through the car windows. Her best friend Ben and his wife Claire lived on the outskirts of Sonning, a pretty little village on the Thames full of thatched houses and London commuters. She negotiated the tricky right-hand turn into the narrow lane with the ease of long practice, and pulled up on the gravel drive next to Claire’s Audi.
‘Aw, Ben’s car isn’t here,’ Posie said.
‘He’ll be here,’ said Romily, who had noticed already. ‘He sent me a text this morning.’
‘Come on!’ Posie was out of the car before Romily could unbuckle herself, and running up to the front door of the stone house as if trying to dodge raindrops. She opened the door without knocking and went inside. Her friend followed her, skirting puddles that Posie had run through. Rain soaked through the shoulders of Romily’s jumper as she went after them, carrying the box full of party supplies.
Inside, they breathed the aroma of baking and fresh flowers. The air was warm. ‘Wow, this is a nice house,’ said Posie’s friend, gazing at the exposed beams, the living area with its squashy ivory sofas and baby grand piano. Pink and purple balloons hung from the doorways and light fixtures.
‘You can put your present here,’ Posie instructed her, pointing to an occasional table. ‘We can play wherever we want to in the house, but we have to take our shoes off first. Romily, could you please get the animals out of the car?’
‘There are animals in the car?’ Romily had put down the box and her boots were half off already; her hair was dripping down her neck.
‘Yes, I put them in the back seat this morning because they wanted to come to the party. They’re in that bag.’
‘That bag,’ repeated Romily, trying to remember if she’d seen one or not. She didn’t feel like going back to the car for an imaginary bag of leopards. She’d fallen for that one before. ‘What kind of animals are they?’
‘Rita and Lorna and Joe. You know.’
‘Ah, yes. Posie, are you sure that nobody else is coming?’
‘That’s why I brought the
animals
.’
‘Hello, beautiful Birthday Girl!’ Claire appeared in the doorway to the kitchen and crossed the living area to hold out her arms to Posie. ‘Remind me, how old are you today?’
Posie hugged her hard around the waist and kissed her cheek. ‘Seven.’
‘Oh dear, how could I have forgotten? Hello,’ she said to Posie’s friend, who smiled shyly. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Amelia,’ said the girl.
‘Come on!’ Posie bolted up the stairs, her friend following. Claire watched them go. She was wearing slim-fitting trousers and a silk blouse. Her diamond ring sparkled as she
smoothed her honey-blonde hair back and turned her attention to Romily.