Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  ‘Christ. What a nightmare.’ My words sound lame, and I look around the room, casting about for something else to say. ‘Does this sort of thing happen often?’

  ‘Not really. Not without a clue. No one has come forward with any leads at all. That makes us fear the worst. Ron wouldn’t say anything to you or to your friends, but I think he is falling to pieces.’

  ‘Had they been together long?’

  ‘Seven years. Anneka is devoted to Ron. They were great together. She is a wonderful human being, and he would do anything for her. Just the way he would look at her . . .’ She stops for a moment, breathes deeply, and carries on. ‘You know, Ron was married twice before, but he always said that meeting her was like coming home. It was the first time he knew how beautiful a relationship could be.’

  ‘Has he got any children?’ It had never occurred to me before to wonder about the fertility of the fertility guru. I wonder whether anything in his own experience is propelling him to provide babies for others.

  ‘He has a son from his first marriage, Troy. Troy’s seventeen now. He’s something of a wayward child.’ Aurora smiles. ‘It’s his age. He’s a wonderful boy really. He is a great comfort to his father in this dark time. Anneka and Ron had just started trying for a baby together, you see. I didn’t know.’

  I hug her again, and wonder what to say. Every phrase that comes to mind sounds trite and insincere, but I suppose that to utter a cliché is better than to utter nothing.

  ‘That is absolutely terrible,’ I tell her. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’ I almost say that it’s a blessing that she wasn’t actually pregnant, because at least Ron didn’t lose his baby too, but I stop myself. He lost his potential baby at the same time as he lost his potential baby’s mother.

  We sit in silence for a while, my hand over her shoulder. When the phone rings, it shatters the silence and startles both of us.

  ‘My Lord,’ says Aurora, a hand to her chest. ‘Evie, I am so sorry. I hardly know you and here you are comforting me like an angel.’ She snatches up the receiver and speaks urgently. ‘Good morning, the Babylove Clinic, this is Aurora speaking, may I help you?’

  While she talks, I stand up, and notice Megan standing in the doorway looking concerned. With a glance back at Aurora, who smiles and waves me away, I follow Meg back to the drawing room, and accept the large milky coffee that she hands me. Then I pile three pastries on to a plate. For the moment I don’t care about my figure, the gym, or the Lincoln Center. I need a sugar rush.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ I tell her. ‘Sorry to swear, but Christ.’

  She laughs nervously. ‘I have nothing against swearing, remember? It doesn’t offend me. It offends me more that I’m still controlled by the evil nuns. What is it?’

  I tell her everything Aurora told me.

  ‘Ron’s dealing with this,’ I finish, ‘by getting completely involved in his work. So let’s just hope that when they come back, all three of them have got smiles on their faces.’

  We sit and eat and drink and look out of the window. This place is lovely, but it suddenly seems soulless. It is a pretend stately home, a fake English manor house. The aristocratic façade hides the laboratories where sperm are chosen under microscopes, and mixed with eggs in test tubes, or on petri dishes, or wherever test-tube babies are actually created. This place is at the cutting edge of science, yet it goes to great lengths to hide that fact.

  ‘What do you think of the place?’ I ask Meg, for something to say. I gesture around the room, taking in the French windows, which are open today, and lead out to the grass and the cedar tree.

  ‘I adore it,’ she says fervently. ‘It is utterly glorious. When I’m rich and famous my hideaway will be exactly like this.’

  I look at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. I want a big secluded place in the middle of the country, maybe not in America, though. Although, in fact, America is as good a place as any. I always thought I’d create my ideal hideout in Nepal, before, up in the mountains. But I would stand out there so much. I hate that expat thing, the fact that even as a backpacker with three pounds a day I was richer than the vast majority of people in the countries I visited. So building myself a mansion in a developing country might be a bit rude and I don’t think I’d be able to live with myself. At least everyone else would be loaded around here. So yes, here will do me fine.’

  ‘Meg, are you serious? You want to hide away from the rest of the world? From what?’

  She laughs, with a hint of bitterness. ‘Well, right now, obviously, from Mummy and Oliver. But from London, from that stalker who’s after you, from crowds and people and jobs that I hate. From weird boyfriends who I don’t trust any more, and the glamorous women they write to. All I need is unlimited cash, and I’d get myself a great camera, lots of books, lots of classical music, a couple of friends around from time to time. I swear, I’d be a pig in clover.’

  ‘Truly?’

  She stands up and walks to the French windows. ‘Of course. Wouldn’t you? Isn’t that what everyone wants - an escape? I like my own company and I know I could cope with it. All I need to do is to win the lottery, and that’s not going to happen.’

  ‘You never know,’ I remind her. ‘Someone has to win it.’

  ‘Well it won’t be me, because I never buy a ticket.’

  ‘Good point. Me neither. You know, not everyone has that fantasy. I don’t. I’d hate to be stuck out in a fauxgenteel place like this on my own.’

  She turns and looks at me with interest.

  ‘So what’s your ideal life?’

  I think about it, edit out the one thing that would make me complete. I am almost tempted to tell her about Elizabeth, and I would do if it wasn’t for Guy. She might go home and fall in love with him again, and sooner or later it would slip out.

  ‘A supportive network of people,’ I say finally. ‘I haven’t really analysed it before, but it’s very important to me to have friends and family around who I can trust. No secrets. I suppose I’d like to live in the countryside somewhere, like this, near a big city, but I’d like the place to be full of people who love me. I know it’s asking a lot. It sounds like some ridiculous utopian community, doesn’t it?’

  Megan laughs. ‘Evie, hello? Surely everyone does love you?’

  ‘What? Of course they don’t. If everyone loved me I’d be happy and secure and, well, I certainly wouldn’t have a stalker rattling the door, wanting to rape me. I wouldn’t pick fights with friends for the hell of it.’

  ‘Yeah, but the stalker is someone who doesn’t know you. I can’t believe what you’re saying. Ever since the day you came to look round the flat I’ve envied you. You turn up with two lovely friends. You’ve got a fantastic family, and you get on not only with both parents, but also with your stepfather and your stepmother and your stepbrother. That has to be unique. Your ex-husband would do anything for you. You sell bucketloads of records because you’re so gorgeous and talented, and you’re about to play the most prestigious venue in America. And you say that all you want is to be loved? What more is there?’

  My baby, I want to say. My baby is what I want. That is why I crave love. I don’t tell her. I just shrug and join her at the window.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ I say, as lightly as I can, ‘is that I am not cut out to be alone.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  There is a light tap on the door, and we both look round.

  I can’t stop myself gasping loudly at the sight of them. I hadn’t realised, until this second, how much Kate’s baby means to me, as well as to the rest of them. I want a baby in my life. It is not going to be my own just yet.

  My legs go weak, and I grip the window frame to keep myself upright. Ron, Ian and Kate are standing there. I scan their faces.

  I can tell the result from their eyes, and draw another sharp breath. Then I ask anyway. ‘Well?’

  I haven’t seen Kate grinning like this for years. She runs towards me and throws her arms around me. ‘January the
seventh. Keep it free. It’s the day my babies are due.’

  Ian hugs Megan, and I look over Kate’s shoulder, as her tears wet my shirt, at Ron. He is smiling indulgently, and I am as glad for him as I am for them. I see him looking at me, see him registering that I know. He holds a hand up, to say ‘not now’. I nod.

  ‘Kate,’ I tell her, ‘congratulations. You’re going to be the best mother in the world. And this baby, these babies - do you know how many there are?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Not yet,’ says Ian. ‘But Ron’s going to do an early scan when we get to seven weeks, and then we’ll find out, and after that we’re going to fly home.’

  ‘Once we’ve seen a heartbeat, or heartbeats,’ Ron says drily, ‘my work is done. I will be happy to hand over to the National Health Service, although I would be happier still, of course, if all four of you, plus the embryos, would stay with us here in New York. I will miss seeing the pregnancy progressing. With my local patients, I like to deliver the babies myself.’

  Kate and Ian look at each other. ‘Could we have them here?’ Ian asks.

  Ron shrugs. ‘It could be done, I’m sure. It would cost more money, but on the plus side your babies could have US passports. That is certainly not a decision you need to make now.’

  Ron’s pager goes off. He picks it up and reads the display.

  ‘Ah,’ he says. ‘My next patients are in reception. Do stay here as long as you wish. Please, please, eat the food.’ He glances at the plate. ‘I see you girls have made good headway. And, Evie, I shall be coming backstage for an autograph next week. I’m bringing my son with me. I imagine that he will be most taken with you. To tell you the truth, he already is. I even caught him with a bottle of that iced tea the other day.’

  I laugh. ‘Really? I didn’t think anyone actually drank it.’

  Ian frowns at me. ‘Evie, you can’t be like that about it. That drink pays your rent and buys your clothes. It’s arrogant to sneer at the people who buy it.’

  I smile. ‘Oooh. Sorry. You’re right.’ But I am stung. I feel as if Ian is always criticising me.

  Ron turns and looks behind him. Aurora is leading a couple into the room, and I quickly collect our cups and plates into a neat pile. Ron introduces Kate and Ian - ‘who,’ he says proudly, ‘have just had some extremely successful treatment, some very good news’ - to Koreena and Daniel, ‘who are just embarking on the same process’. I am certain he would have avoided the introduction if the IVF hadn’t worked. Koreena and Daniel are older than we are, and are dressed extremely expensively in shades of beige and brown. Their outfits may coordinate, but I notice in passing that their perfumes clash. His aftershave overpowers her scent, which in itself is not subtle.

  ‘Good luck,’ I wish them, as I leave the room.

  ‘Yes,’ says Kate, who is glowing. ‘I really hope it works for you. I’m sure it will. Ron is the greatest. Take care.’

  ‘Thank you, and congratulations,’ says Koreena, in a husky voice. ‘We hope to follow in your footsteps.’ As we follow Aurora to reception, I hear Koreena saying loudly, ‘But they are so young! Was IVF really necessary, Ron?’

  I hug Aurora on the way out, and settle Kate in the back of the car like an invalid. Ian climbs in next to her and holds her hand.

  ‘No mad driving,’ he tells me sternly. ‘Baby on board.’

  ‘I will do thirty all the way,’ I promise.

  ‘Can we stop at a drugstore?’ Kate asks breathlessly. ‘I need to buy a couple of pregnancy tests, just to confirm it.’

  As I drive, I half listen to the excited baby talk in the back. Kate has never been pregnant before, has never had a positive test, has never been through this euphoria. She and Ian talk incessantly about names and numbers and the chances of their coming back here to have the baby, or babies, with Ron. This is clearly a ridiculous idea, but I don’t tell them so. As soon as they get back to London, they’ll realise.

  Megan joins in with them when she gets the chance, commenting favourably on their choices of names, and agreeing with them that they should assume that only one embryo has implanted so that they won’t be disappointed at the scan if there’s only one heartbeat. I drive slower than normal, determined not to upset anyone by being reckless. As I do so, I almost slip into a trance.

  I try not to think about Ron’s girlfriend. I don’t know her, and there’s nothing I can do. I suppose I’ll send Ron a card to let him know that I’m thinking of him, but it ends there. I can’t bear to tell Kate or Ian at the moment. They are too happy. They would be horrified if they knew that Ron’s life partner (or at least, I think cynically, the latest in a string of life partners) had vanished and he hadn’t even mentioned it to them; that he was putting their happiness before his grief.

  I like Ron. Guy doesn’t, and in a way that endears Ron to me further. I cannot shake off the feeling that both of them are somehow caught up in the letters which, presumably, are still piling up for me on a doormat somewhere. Ron may be extremely rich, and he might have charged Kate and Ian £10,000 for a procedure that would have cost them a couple of thousand at home, but he seems to me like a good man. Obviously, in an ideal world, he would be doing the procedure for a little more than what it cost him, but life isn’t like that, and at least they have their tiny embryos.

  Suddenly I realise that I want to talk to Ron. I want to tell him about Elizabeth. He works in a related area. He might know someone who might remember me, the awkward British teenager who had the Caesarean then went away. If they didn’t remember me - and they wouldn’t, really, not after all this time - then maybe they could look me up.

  I am frantic with the urgency of my need. I have to know what sort of a home she went to. Who her new parents were, and whether they were New Yorkers. When I saw Koreena and Daniel, the first feeling I had was that they were the sort of people who might have taken my baby. Obviously they haven’t - they are too young, they are having fertility treatment - but they are as I imagine her parents to be: New Yorkers through and through. I try to picture my little girl now.

  I think about her all the time. I project her on to every teenager I pass on the streets. One of them might have been her. I could have brushed past her on Fifth Avenue, stood pressed up against her on the subway, queued behind her in Starbucks, and I would never have known. This is driving me crazy, and I can’t bear to wait till she’s eighteen, and then to start waiting for her to contact me. I need to know that she’s all right now.

  I succeeded in shutting her out for fourteen years. It was Louise who made me do it. As soon as she spread my news around the school, I realised that I’d lost my best friend as well as my baby, and the best friend part of the equation was easier to assimilate. I threw all my energies into hating Louise, and assured Mum that I wasn’t missing Elizabeth at all. It was strange, because, before that, I had liked her slightly too much. She had always been the more popular of the two of us, though neither of us was particularly sought after, and she knew that I looked slightly better for hanging around with her. I was useless, as a teenager. From the age of eleven onwards I was paralysed with shyness, and could hardly bear to speak to anyone at all. I hated the way I looked, hated my height and the brace on my teeth, and I hunched my shoulders and looked at the ground and did my best to pretend I was somewhere else, or someone else. In photos, my pain shines out of me. I was awkward and miserable, the definitive inept teenager. Being good at music did not make me cool either: at my particular school, girls who did music lessons were sad. I knew I was destined to be a loser all my life. Louise rescued me, somewhat, and she knew that this meant I owed her.

  I sigh. I was unlucky. I was emphatically not the sort of teenager who gets pregnant. If you’d asked anyone at school to list our class in order of the likelihood of underage sex, my name would have appeared close to the bottom, if not at the very base of the list. It wasn’t meant to happen. It shouldn’t have happened.

  I did it to impress Louise, because she dared me. Sh
e set it up, agreed with Mark that he would ‘do it’ with me, and sent me to him, taunting me that I was too scared. I was too scared, but I was even more scared of having no friends at all, so I gritted my teeth, kept as many of my clothes on as I could, and went through with it. As Mark pushed into me, I thought he was going to kill me. I vowed never to do it again in my whole life. I knew about condoms, of course, but I could not say a single word to him, on any subject, so I told myself he had probably taken care of that side of things. I had not been watching his actions very closely.

  Mark was spotty. He was scrawny and white with thick, greasy hair. Nonetheless, he was sought after, and I was, as Louise always reminded me, lucky that he had wanted anything to do with me.

  I tried to speak to Louise a couple of times, after she betrayed me, but she wouldn’t let me say anything. I wasn’t very good at being assertive. I waited for her after school, walked alongside her and said, ‘Louise? Why did you tell them?’ I can picture myself now, desperate, in spite of everything, to have my only friend back. I had no self-esteem, no pride. If Louise had made an excuse about how they had tricked her into telling them, I would have made myself believe her, and I would happily have taken my place back by her side.

  ‘Because you deserved it,’ she said sharply. ‘Go away, Evie. I’m not your friend any more, all right?’

  Looking back, I am incensed. Incensed at what she did to me, and incensed at the way she spoke to me then. I hate the way she implied that it was my fault that she’d betrayed me. When I’d first told her I was pregnant, in a phone call on the day my mother rumbled me, she’d been falling over herself to be nice to me. She had come straight over to the house after school, and put her arm around me and promised me that everything was going to be all right and that she would keep it secret.

  ‘It’s Mark’s?’ she asked, knowing that it could not possibly be anyone else’s. I nodded mutely. ‘Are you going to tell him?’