in fits and starts, between coughs, until she could speak again.
‘I want to know because I want to decorate the nursery. If we’re only going to do this once I’d like time to be prepared.’
Joe suspected that meant that they would find out the sex. In his experience the woman got her way in these things. But who would have the final say? Who would the doctor listen to? Technically, Kitty was the mother. What would she say? He didn’t want to ask that question. He decided to stick to a safer topic. ‘Only once, you say?’
‘I’d be happy with one,’ Cam said. ‘It’s one more than we thought we’d have.’
‘I’d like more, but I’m not going to be greedy,’ Jess admitted.
‘Let’s just get this one here safely,’ Cam said.
‘I know, I’m not going to get ahead of myself but I loved growing up with a sister. I couldn’t do this without her,’ Jess said as she took the ultrasound picture back from Joe and hugged Kitty, ‘and I’d like to think of my own children having the same relationship with a sibling.’
Joe had brothers and sisters, but none of them were full siblings, and he certainly didn’t share the bond with any of them like Kitty and Jess had. ‘There’s no guarantee that they’d get along, you know. I’ve got five siblings and I don’t really get along with any of them.’ In fact, he had always thought Kitty was more like a sister than his real ones. Until the past week at least, when he’d started having very unfamilial thoughts about her.
‘I find that hard to believe,’ Cam said. ‘I picked you as one of those blokes that gets on with everyone.’
Joe laughed. ‘Maybe that says more about me than them.’
Kitty came to his defence. ‘You’re not really close in age to any of them and you didn’t really grow up together. That makes a difference.’
‘I guess what I’m saying is that I grew up virtually as an only child, and in a lot of ways I think I had a happier childhood for it.’ His teenage years maybe hadn’t been quite so happy, but that was because he’d been old enough to realise that he didn’t really fit in with any of his families. But that wasn’t because he didn’t have siblings—that was because his mum and dad hadn’t been able to stay married. To anyone. And that had meant he’d constantly had his boundaries and his living arrangements changed around him, completely out of his control. He hadn’t like that and had become rebellious, which had made him difficult to live with. Not just for his parents but probably for some of his brothers and sisters, too. It was circumstances that had made him.
‘I didn’t know you were one of six,’ Jess said.
‘Two half-siblings and three step-siblings. In some ways I’m surprised it’s not more. My parents divorced when I was four. Mum was Dad’s second wife, but they’ve both been married three times now. That’s a lot of families to juggle and a lot of different dynamics. I think I preferred it when I was on my own. In a lot of ways it made life easier.’
Joe didn’t think much of a typical family unit but he knew his reservations were due to watching his parents struggle to keep marriages together. Although struggle wasn’t the right word—neither of them really seemed to put much effort into making their marriages last. They both seemed to prefer just to give up and move on to the next one. Joe knew that Kitty and Jess had grown up in a stable family unit, at least until tragedy had taken both their parents when Kitty had been nineteen, and he could understand why they expected to have the same stable environment. But in his experience that was virtually impossible. The impossible dream.
‘I think we’ll just take this one step at a time. One baby at a time,’ Cam said as he kissed his wife. ‘And see how we manage.’
Joe thought Cam’s logic was practical and sensible. There were a lot of unknowns in Cam and Jess’s future. The new baby was only one of them.
* * *
Dinner was finished—steak and a glass of red wine for Cam and Joe, fish and lime-flavoured sparkling mineral water for Jess and Kitty. Cam cleared the plates and said to Joe, ‘Come and join me for a beer while I clean the barbecue.’
Joe followed him over to the grill and took a swig of his beer. ‘Do you think this surrogacy thing is a good idea?’ he asked as he stood watching Cam work. ‘Actually, scratch that. You must.’
Cam didn’t answer immediately. ‘It’s what Jess wanted. I love my wife. I want her to be happy and this is what she wanted. I didn’t have the same burning desire to have children. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against the idea, but if it didn’t happen for us I was OK with that. But Jess wants kids. I’m doing this for her. That’s what love is all about.’
Joe figured he wouldn’t know anything about all that but all the same his gaze was drawn to Kitty. He could see her through the window. She was standing by the kettle, pulling mugs off the shelf.
‘Speaking of love...’ Cam’s voice made Joe jump. He dragged his eyes off Kitty and back to Cam, wondering where he was going with this topic, but Cam was scraping the barbecue, seemingly disinterested in who or what Joe was watching. ‘Kitty tells me you’re seeing someone. Is it serious?’
Joe almost choked. ‘God, no. I try to avoid serious relationships.’
‘Maybe you just haven’t met the perfect girl yet,’ Cam said, echoing the words of so many of Joe’s friends, but Joe thought differently.
‘No one’s perfect,’ he said, ‘and nothing lasts for ever. I don’t see the point in starting something that won’t last.’
Even Cam and Jess’s relationship, as perfect as it might look from the outside, had its downsides in Joe’s opinion. Jess’s cancer and inability to get pregnant was far from their idea of perfect. But Joe wasn’t about to make an example of Cam’s own marriage as his argument.
‘What about Kitty?’
‘Kitty?’
‘Is that so hard to imagine? You and Kitty? You must like her.’
‘Of course I like her, she’s my best friend.’
He’d been trying to remind himself of that every day since he’d nearly succumbed to temptation and almost kissed her. He continued to tell himself he was glad he’d resisted. That would have been disastrous.
‘C’mon, Joe. You don’t think Jess and I haven’t talked about this? We think you guys would be good together.’
Joe wasn’t so sure. As tempted as he had been the other night, he was still convinced that a quick tumble between the sheets would have been a sure way to ruin their friendship. But that hadn’t stopped him thinking about it. And opting to take Victoria home that night instead hadn’t stopped him thinking about it either. But thinking about it was one thing, acting on it was another thing altogether, and there were dozens of reasons why he would steer clear. Starting with the biggest one—he and Kitty wanted different things out of relationships.
‘I’m not the right man for her,’ he said. ‘Kitty is looking for someone who can commit to her, someone who will promise to never leave her. I don’t believe in happily ever after. We’d be a terrible combination.’
‘You
