by Emily Barr
I shook my head. ‘It’s not his fault,’ I said bravely.
She told me that she would be there for me, that this was what friends were for. I can picture her now, too clearly, sitting there in her school uniform. Her black fringe fell into her eyes, and she sat very close to me. Her young body was spiky and angular. Mum brought us tea and chocolate biscuits, and Louise put her hand on my stomach. After a few minutes the baby stuck out a limb.
Louise leapt back. ‘Oh my God! Your baby kicked me!’
I smiled. ‘I know.’ I had been ignoring these movements for weeks, pretending to myself that I had indigestion, that my bowels were acting strangely, that my period was about to start (though that was a line of thought I did not pursue). Even when I could clearly see the outline of a little hand or foot sticking out of my belly, I pretended nothing was happening. I was waiting for someone else to see, and to take control. It was nice to be able to talk to Louise about it, fleetingly.
‘That is the sweetest thing,’ she said, smiling. ‘Wow. Your baby kicked me. Do you think it knows my voice?’
‘Probably.’
‘You’re definitely doing the best thing,’ she said solemnly. ‘I mean, growing up in America, that is the best gift you can give your little child. Evie, you’re going to have an American kid! You and Mark!’
‘But I’ll never know him. Or her.’
‘But you’ll know he’s happy.’
I thought I was lucky to have such a good friend. It didn’t matter that I didn’t really have any others: she was all I needed.
In a sense, everything I have done since then has been to show Louise that she was wrong about me. People think boys are the mean ones, but there was not a single girl in my year, or in the entire school, who expressed any sympathy towards me, or performed even the tiniest act of kindness. They gossiped incessantly, and called me names. They looked at me slyly and looked away when I caught their eyes. I hate every single one of them, and I always will.
I denied it. I said I’d been ill, and Mum told the headmistress, who made sure that everyone was told that I’d had glandular fever. Our teacher announced to the class that she was disappointed by the malicious gossip that certain people had been spreading - I watched her look at Louise at that point, and watched Louise gazing innocently back - and finished by saying, ‘I want to make it clear to everyone that Evie Silverman has been ill with glandular fever, and does not deserve to be the subject of these absurd rumours.’ I kept my eyes fixed on Louise, who no longer sat at the desk next to mine, and watched her catching people’s eyes, shaking her head, and pulling her jumper out to form a big belly. I saw Mrs Gibbs watching her too. She turned her eyes to me and they were full of impotent sympathy.
I find it strange to remember that even then, I was Evie Silverman. I am proud to have reclaimed the name. At school, those two words conveyed everything that was dorkish and forgettable, until the gossip began. Then my name became synonymous with scandal and huge cock-ups, with undertones of ‘but who would want to do it to her?’ and the whispered reply, ‘Mark Parker.’ I thought I would forever be tarnished by my name. I even considered changing it and starting again as someone else. For a while I had an alter ego called Roxy Fontaine. I almost went to sixth-form college under her auspices, but Mum stopped me at the last minute, when she caught me filling in a form, and I’m glad she did.
Now Evie Silverman summons up glamour and talent and mainstream success, from the outside at least. I did start again, but I did it as a better version of myself, one that was not going to be prone to cock-ups like the previous model. Part of me lives in constant fear that the real Evie is lurking inside, ready to come out one day. There is a dork inside me, and not many people know that. That’s why I’m so happy to have had my nails done: they keep Teenage Evie at bay.
I hope Elizabeth hasn’t inherited my teenage ineptitude. I hope she is popular, pretty, and thoughtful. I hope she would be kind to a girl out of her depth in a terrible situation. I hope I meet her.
I park in a horrendously expensive car park in central Manhattan, and hand my keys to a young man who pops his gum at me.
‘Shuts at seven,’ he says. ‘Penalty for overnight stay.’
‘That’s fine,’ I tell him haughtily. I turn to the others. ‘Shall we go for a drink?’
To my surprise, Kate and Ian decline, and say they’re going back to the hotel for a rest. Megan practically runs away from me, announcing over her shoulder that she wants to go to MoMA. I would go with her, but she clearly doesn’t want me to. Ian suggests we all meet again by the boating lake in Central Park in two hours. Suddenly, I am alone. I put my car keys in my pocket, and look around. I’m a couple of blocks from Fifth Avenue, so I decide to go shopping.
I stayed away from FAO Schwarz when I was here fifteen years ago, because I hated the idea of seeing anything that made me think of babies and children. I couldn’t bear to see them streaming in there, with their parents and their nannies. I hated the queues and the men in toy costumes policing the revolving door. I hated everything about it. This time, I go in.
It is a noisy shop. The same tune plays over and over again, and after five minutes I find myself singing ‘Welcome to our world of toys’ in time with the clock, without even knowing what I am doing. I consider buying something for Kate’s baby or babies, but it’s too soon, and it would be madness if I started a collection of dolls or books for Elizabeth. Instead, I watch the children, relieved that nobody here is old enough to be my daughter. I bet she has been here. This is the one place in New York that I can be absolutely certain she has visited. In a way, this knowledge makes me feel closer to her. I am clutching at straws.
The little girls are expensively dressed, with glossy hair and shiny shoes. The younger ones hold hands with their mothers. I try to picture my little girl holding hands with her adopted mother, choosing an elaborate doll that her birth mother, at that point a music student, could not have afforded to buy her. They bustle around, picking up toys. I ride up in a lift shaped like a transformer robot, and stumble into the Barbie department. These dolls look like me on performance night, so I shudder and leave.
I head straight over the road to the Plaza. The doorman smiles and calls me ma’am, and I head busily for a corner of the bar and order a vodka martini. Then I sit back. It is quiet in here, and it smells expensive. Nobody takes much notice of me. I smile around, and pick up a newspaper that someone has left nearby. My martini disappears surprisingly quickly.
I check the listings for my concert. Sure enough, it is there. I am second on the bill (of two), behind a famous and brilliant pianist who is also a publicity junkie. I am described as ‘British cellist from TV’. This in itself is enough to make me order a second drink. I will have to leave the car overnight, after all, and go home on the train.
Then I notice another listing. It is for tomorrow night, and it is a very small entry.
Dan Donovan, it reads. Two nights only. British singing sensation.
He is playing at a small club in SoHo. I smile at that. We are all desperately trying to break America, and it would seem that I am doing rather better than my erstwhile lover. I will not go along to gloat, although it is tempting.
I sit on a bench by the boating lake, and wonder where the others have got to. I’m looking around, but although there are plenty of people here, none of them are my friends. It is beginning to get cold. I do up my cardigan and wish I had brought a jacket. The weather is changing. Clouds are rapidly filling the sky, and my feet are suddenly numb with cold in my new sandals. The stubble is standing up on my legs. I wish I had worn jeans, rather than a skirt with bare legs. I was too excited by the reappearance of spring to consider that it might be temporary.
I begin to curse them. I am waiting, on my own, in the cold, and it’s just about to rain. This is not fair.
He sits next to me. I don’t look round, at first.
‘Hi, Evie,’ he says softly.
I look up, expecting Ian.
‘Jack?’ I stare at him, frowning. It can’t really be Jack.
‘Hello.’
‘What are you doing here?’ I still don’t believe it’s him. Jack is in Camden.
‘I’ve come to see you, sweetheart. I’ve come to sort things out, once and for all.’
‘Sort things out?’ I am beginning to dread what is coming. ‘Did Kate and Ian set me up?’
‘Of course they did. Brilliant news, isn’t it, about the pregnancy?’
‘Yes.’ I am distracted. ‘Fantastic. But you came all this way to see me? Not to find out about the pregnancy?’
‘Of course. We’ve been messing around for too long.’ I look into his face. It is open, and he is beaming. Jack really believes he has come to reclaim me. ‘I love you,’ he says happily. ‘And you love me. You said so. Ian said you do. Everyone knows it. You’ve been confused, I’ve been confused, you messed around with that boy, I ran headlong into a rebound relationship. None of that matters. I want you to come back with me, Evie, and I want us to start again. As if we’d just met. I want us to get a new house, maybe out of London, and have babies. We can renew our marriage vows, invite all our friends back again. We can make this into the best thing that ever happened to us.’
A couple of drops of rain land on my face, and I shiver. ‘You came all the way over here for me?’
‘I’d have gone to Timbuktu for you. I’ve been looking at places for us to live. I’ve brought some details for you. We could have a cottage in the country, and I could easily make it into London for work, or I might even give up my job. Perhaps even try some portrait painting.’
‘Are you serious?’
He is looking at me. I can see how scared he is. I have been married to Jack for over eight years, and I have never known him to make a gesture that is anything like this. Jack likes an easy life. I assumed I could drop him and that he would move on. He did move on. I dragged him back to me because I wanted to be sure I didn’t need him before I let him go. This is my fault.
I stand up. He stares at me for a while, then stands up too. I walk to stand under a tree, to shelter from the rain.
‘What do you say?’ he asks, his voice cracking.
‘I’ve got a concert next week,’ I tell him. ‘I have to stay here.’
He laughs. ‘Oh, I know that. I’ll be in the front row. Well, the sixth row. It was the best I could do. I got my ticket weeks ago. I wouldn’t dream of not supporting you. It’s a wonderful opportunity.’
‘Yes it is.’ I am sad and heavy with guilt. A small part of me wants to agree to all Jack’s suggestions, to force myself to go back to the marriage, to tell him all about Elizabeth, and to see what happens. In a way, I love him. If we had no secrets, I could have some more babies.
I try to make myself smile and nod and say what he wants me to say. But I can’t.
‘Jack,’ I tell him gently, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do it.’
He stares at me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I do love you, but I can’t go back to you. I wish I could, but I can’t. Go back to Sophia, Jack. You’re much better off with her.’
‘Evie?’
I walk away from him, through the rain, and I don’t look back.
chapter seventeen
The following afternoon
Ron offers to fit me in for an hour between appointments, and I make the familiar drive to the clinic. It takes over an hour, and I try to make my mind blank all the way. Jack started to follow me across the park, but I didn’t slow down, or look back, and by the time I reached the zoo he had gone. I can’t believe he misjudged me so badly. I can’t believe I allowed it to happen. I knew exactly what I was doing. I was using him. I was using him because that’s the kind of thing I do.
Yesterday was when my marriage really ended. I haven’t heard anything from Kate or Ian since, and though Megan turned up early in the evening, at Howard’s, I hid from her, using my cello as an alibi.
I try to forget Jack and to panic about the concert instead. It is six days away. I played for hours last night, and for three hours this morning, waking the house up as I did so.
I don’t want to do it. I’m not good enough. The old Evie, the one who was never good enough for anyone, is threatening to break out of her coffin and perform this concert herself. That would be a disaster. The posture would be atrocious, the intonation random, the concerto barely audible above the orchestra. I have humiliated my husband, and I’m going to be a disaster on Thursday.
Ron, at least, is glad to see me. Aurora smiles warmly as she begins to page him. He forestalls her by appearing in the doorway.
‘Evie,’ he says, and his voice is full of emotion. ‘Come along, we’ll go to my living room.’
‘Thanks,’ I say, and smile back at Aurora as we leave the reception area. She gives me a little wave. She looks better than yesterday: she has applied her old mask of make-up, and her hair is coiffed almost as professionally as it used to be.
Ron leads me upstairs, and I peep into rooms as we pass them. I see several bedrooms, like the one where Kate rested after her implantation. They are all impeccable, like bedrooms in the Waldorf Astoria, and I know they each have a bathroom of a level of luxuriousness to which I would never think of aspiring in my daily life. Some doors remain shut, and I wonder how many patients are reclining behind them, praying for the fertilised egg to like its new home, to decide to stay there and grow for nine months. Others must be waiting for the unpleasant-sounding ‘transvaginal ultrasound’ which Kate had for her egg removal. There must be hundreds of procedures carried out here of which I know nothing. There are doors, slightly ajar, revealing slices of consultation rooms which look like cosy sitting rooms, yet which somehow retain an air of reassuring professionalism. We pass men and women, some in clinical white coats, others dressed as maids and clearly servicing the rooms as they would in a hotel. Ron greets each of them with a nod and a clipped ‘good afternoon’.
His living room is surprisingly small, and is lit by a full-length window. It is more functional than the rest of the clinic: the furniture is plain, not pretentious, and there is a small television in the corner. Nothing is varnished, and the walls are plain white, unadorned by any sort of art or any photos of babies. He offers me the small blue sofa, and I kick my shoes off and tuck my feet up, taking the opportunity to admire my pink toenails and their viciously tamed cuticles.
I decide to speak first.
‘I’m so sorry, Ron, about Anneka,’ I say quickly. ‘Is there any news?’ He looks at me, opens his mouth, closes it again, and sits down.
‘Thank you, Evie,’ he says in the end. ‘I appreciate that. No. No news. It is beginning to seem to me, and I hate to say this, that it is now just a matter of time before they find . . . well, before they find a body. Anneka’s body.’
‘I can’t imagine how it must be for you.’
‘No,’ he agrees. ‘I could never have imagined this myself.’
I can’t think what else to say on the subject, so wait for him to speak. In the end he stands up, leaves the room, and comes back in with a tray of coffee. There is also a card, still in its cellophane wrapper, and a pen on the tray.
‘Milk?’ he asks, and I nod. ‘Sugar?’ he continues, and I shake my head. He hands me the cup, and I take a sip.
‘It’s great coming here,’ I tell him. ‘You know you get good coffee.’ In fact, the coffee is mediocre and tastes as if it has been standing in the machine all day, but I needed something to say.
‘We do our best,’ he says, then sips his own. ‘Evie, you are being too kind. This is not good coffee.’
‘It’s coffee.’
‘True.’ He pushes the card and pen towards me. ‘Will you do me a favour?’ he asks wanly. ‘Write this card? We need some new ones on reception and none of my babies are due for the next couple of months.’
‘You want me to write it?’
‘Dear Ron, How can we thank you for the joy you have brought into o
ur lives? Baby Blah Blah was born yesterday morning, etc, and you can make up a name. And the baby’s name too. This demonstrates how much I trust you, Evie. It shows you what kind of man I really am.’
I look at him and can’t help laughing. ‘You cynical git! How many of those cards on reception are fake?’
He shrugs a shoulder. ‘One third? One third to one half.’
‘OK.’ As I write the card, I cannot stop myself putting the name Elizabeth. My baby never had a middle name, so I make one up. She becomes Elizabeth Miranda. Before I sign it, I look up and ask, ‘Can it be from lesbians?’
‘Sure.’
I write their names with a flourish, ‘Roxy and Tallulah Fontaine’.
‘Roxy and Tallulah Fontaine?’ Ron asks sceptically, perusing my handiwork. ‘They ’re married? Are they from Vermont?’
‘Tallulah took Roxy’s surname because it was so much more fabulous than her own. Which was Snodgrass.’
He smiles. ‘Fair enough.’
I wait, then decide to launch into it. ‘Ron,’ I tell him, ‘I need your advice. I’ve never told anyone about this. I hope you don’t mind.’
I tell him the whole story, beginning a month after conception and ending at the present day. When I finish, Ron nods his head. He’s looking thoughtful.
‘And you’re hoping I could help you find out what became of her?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry, it’s probably a really insensitive thing for me to do, offloading on you at a time like this.’ I look at him, but he shakes his head.
‘You have no idea what a favour you’ve just done me,’ he says. He looks exhausted, but there is the beginning of a sparkle in his eyes. ‘You’ve given me a project. Aurora thinks I’m screwy, but I have to keep myself busy to make it through the days. I’m busy looking for Anneka, but now I have to accept that there’s only so much I can do. For the first week I had a full-time job convincing the police that she wasn’t at the bottom of my lake, cut into pieces.’ I wince. He ignores me. ‘Kate’s result was good, but this is better. Everything is a drop in the ocean . . . I know it’s a difficult thing for you, Evie. I do know a couple of people who might be able to help.’ He pauses. ‘So you had her at St Vincent’s. I was affiliated there myself for a while, but that would have been after your time. I’ll make a couple of calls. First of all, though, we should discuss what you’re going to do. You do know you don’t have the right to contact your daughter? Until she’s eighteen, and then only if she wants contact with you. You can fill in a form and add yourself to the Adoption Registry so she can find you if she wants.’
