We’ve paid everything—’
‘It’s not the money. It’s about the baby, Julia.’
Her mother-in-law’s face was suddenly slack with shock, and Emelia looked around and realised she couldn’t do this here, in this room, with the lovingly painted little frieze still drying on the walls. ‘I need a cup of tea,’ she said, and headed for the big family kitchen, knowing they’d follow. She put the kettle on—such a cliché, having a cup of tea, but somehow a necessary part of the ritual of grief—and then sat down, pushing the cups towards them.
They sat facing her, at the table where James had sat as a boy, where they’d all sat together so many times, where they’d cried together on the day he’d died, and they waited, the tea forgotten, their faces taut with fear as she groped for the words. But there was no kind way to do this, nothing that was going to make it go away.
‘There was a mix-up,’ she said quietly, her heart pounding as she yanked the rug out from under them as gently as possible. ‘In the lab at the clinic. They fertilised the eggs with the wrong sperm.’
Julia Eastwood’s hand flew up over her mouth. ‘So—that’s another woman’s baby?’ she said after a shocked pause.
Oh, dear. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s my baby.’ And then, because there was no other way to say it, she added gently, ‘It’s not James’ baby, though. It’s someone else’s.’
‘So—where’s his baby?’ she demanded, her voice rising hysterically. ‘Has some other woman got his baby? She’ll have to give it back—Brian, she’ll have to, we can’t have this—’
‘Julia, there is no baby,’ she said, trying to firm her voice. ‘The embryos all died before they could be implanted.’
She let that sink in for a moment, watched Brian’s eyes fill with tears before he closed them, watched Julia’s face spasm as the realisation hit home. The wail of grief, when it came, was the same as when James had taken his last breath. It was as if she’d lost him all over again, and Emelia supposed that, in a way, she had.
She reached out and squeezed the woman’s hand. ‘Julia, I’m so sorry.’
She didn’t react, except to turn into Brian’s waiting arms and fall apart, and Emelia left them to their grief. There was nothing she could add that would make it any better and she just wanted to get out before she drowned in their emotion.
She was superfluous here, redundant, and it dawned on her that their only thought had been for the baby. Not once in that conversation had either of them expressed any concern about her, about how she might feel, about where she would go from here.
Not surprising, really, but it was a very good point. Where would she go? What would she do? She could hardly carry on living here, in the annexe they’d created when James was ill—the annexe where he’d lost his fight for life and which after his death, with the IVF conversation under their belts, they’d told her she should think of as her home.
But not when she was carrying another man’s child.
So she packed some things. Not the baby’s. As Sam had said, they belonged to a child who never was, and they would no doubt be dealt with in the fullness of time. She closed the door without looking at the little frieze in case it made her cry again, and put a few changes of clothes in a bag, enough for a week, perhaps, to give her time to think, although with very little to her name she wasn’t quite sure where she’d go. She just knew she had to, that staying, even one more night, simply wasn’t an option.
She put her case in the car, then went through all the contents of the annexe, piling the things that were hers alone into one end of the wardrobe so they could be packed and delivered to her wherever she ended up, but leaving James’ things there, lifting them one at a time to her lips, saying goodbye for the final time.
His watch. His wedding ring. The fountain pen she’d given him for his birthday so he could write the diary of his last months.
She stroked her fingers gently over the cover of the diary. She didn’t need to take it, she knew every word by heart. Julia needed it more than she did. She touched it one last time and walked away.
Leaving the bedroom, she went into the kitchen and turned out the fridge, staring helplessly at half a bottle of milk and an opened bag of salad.
There was no point in taking it, but it seemed silly to throw it out, so she put it back with the cheese and the tomatoes—and then got them all out again and made herself a sandwich. It was mid-afternoon and she’d eaten nothing since she’d left Sam, but she couldn’t face it now. She drank the milk, because she hadn’t touched her cup of tea, and then put the sandwich in the car with her case for later, had one last visual sweep of the annexe and then she went to say goodbye.
They were in the kitchen, where she’d left them, as if she’d only been gone five minutes instead of two or three hours. She could hear raised voices as she approached, snatches of distressed conversation that halted her in her tracks.
Julia said something she didn’t quite catch, then Brian said, quite clearly, ‘If I’d had the slightest idea of all the pain it would cause, I never would have allowed you to talk him into signing that consent.’
‘I couldn’t bear to lose him, Brian! You have to understand—’
‘But you had lost him, Julia. You’d lost him already. He hardly knew what he was signing—’
‘He did!’
‘No! He was out of his head with the morphine, and telling him she was desperate to have his child—it was just a lie.’
‘But you went along with it! You never said anything—’
‘Because I wanted it, too, but it was wrong, Julia—so wrong. And now…’
Her thoughts in free-fall, Emelia stepped into the room and cleared her throat, and they stopped abruptly, swivel-ling to stare at her as she fought down the sudden surge of anger that would help no one. She wanted to tackle them, to ask them to explain, but she wasn’t sure she could hold it together and she just wanted to get out.
Now.
‘I’m leaving,’ she said without emotion. ‘I’ve put all my things in the end of the wardrobe. I’ll get them collected when I know where I’ll be. I’ve left all James’ things here for you. I know you’ll want them. I haven’t touched the nursery.’
‘But—what about all the baby’s things? What will we do with them?’ Julia said, and then started to cry again.
Brian put his arms round her and gave Emelia a fleeting, slightly awkward smile over the top of Julia’s head. ‘Goodbye, Emelia. And good luck,’ he said.
So much for ‘think of it as your home’, she thought bitterly as she dropped the keys for it on the table. That hadn’t lasted long once she was no further use to them. She nodded and walked away before she lost it and asked what on earth he’d meant about Julia talking James into signing the consent—for posthumous use of his sperm, presumably, to make the baby they’d told her he’d apparently so desperately wanted her to have.
Really? So why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t he ever, in all the conversations they’d had about the
