by Stella Duffy
Stella Duffy was born in London and brought up in New Zealand. She has lived in London since her early twenties. She has written thirteen novels, ten plays, and forty-five short stories. She won the 2002 CWA Short Story Dagger for her story Martha Grace, and has twice won Stonewall Writer of the Year in 2008 for The Room of Lost Things and in 2010 for Theodora. In addition to her writing work she is a theatre performer and director. She lives in London with her wife, the writer Shelley Silas.
Praise for Fresh Flesh
‘Packs a punch … highly recommended’ Diva
‘Spooky, sexy, cool’ Crime Time
‘Duffy is another distinctive author on the up slope … Duffy gives good story’ Time Out
‘Duffy’s quickfire wit is still strongly in evidence but the final emotional charge is deep and insidiously moving. A promising writer has matured into a classic’ Maxim Jakubowski, Guardian
‘With her four Saz novels Duffy has proved herself to be one of the very best of the younger generation of crime writers. It is far too soon for her to bow out’ The Times
‘Saz Martin is one of the best fictional investigators around … A shocking, intelligent and sympathetic thriller which shows why modern crime fiction can be trusted to handle serious issues’ Telegraph
FRESH FLESH
Stella Duffy
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001087179
A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request
The right of Stella Duffy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Copyright © 1999 by Stella Duffy
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and
not intended by the author.
First published in 1999 by Serpent’s Tail,
4 Blackstock Mews, London N4 2BT
website: www.serpentstail.com
First published in this 5-star edition in 2001
Set in Century Book by Intype London Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham plc,
Chatham, Kent
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
for Yvonne Baker
with love
Thanks to:
the mothering advisory service – Maki, Sarah, Janet, Esther
and Jo; Duffy sisters/in-law; Shelley and Yvonne; and
Laurence for sunny cordiality, arguably.
ONE
Sara was screaming. Screaming in her head, screaming through every bone and muscle in her body, screaming out loud, dry mouth ripping at the corners of her broken and chapped lips, harsh other voice, not her own voice, pushing through her body, through the pain and into the cold nothing on the other side of her skin. Screaming beyond what she thought she could even bear to hear herself, into her own eardrums, blood pulsing and scratching against the tiny bones, beating a non-stop rhythm. Except the people kept telling her not to make a noise, lined up against her pain, denying the distress. Telling her to concentrate. To breathe. To shut up and just do it. You’re not special. Stop it. Stop it right now. It’s far too late for that kind of thing. Screaming won’t help you now.
They were right. The screaming didn’t help. Didn’t make the pain go away. Didn’t make them go away. But then she couldn’t help herself either. Couldn’t stop the noise of the great pain, welling up and forcing its way through her. Pushing against them, against the moment, wanting them all away. Not able to believe this was still happening to her, not knowing how it could ever stop. And from far inside the pain and the harsh noise and the searing white light, not wanting it to stop either. Not wanting to move on to the next moment. Pushing against and holding in anyway. And then, despite herself, the last abrasive lament and over and all finished and all done.
They were not used to screaming, wanted their quiet again. They brought the rubber mask back to her face, clamped the sickly gas to her mouth, her nose, no choice but to breathe it in, to take it into her. Arms too weak to push them away, no fight left. Breathe in deep, breathe it all in, there we are, that’s it, hush now, good girl, good girl. But she didn’t know who the good girl was. It certainly wasn’t Sara. Trying not to breathe it in, not to sink back down, but she couldn’t scream with the thick black mask over her face, couldn’t make it go away either, arms, legs growing limp, drifting away from her, body and head almost held together by a thin ether thread, almost set free. Hush now, that’s enough, it’s done. Go to sleep, it’s nearly over, you’ll feel better when it’s over. But Sara didn’t want to sleep, didn’t want to be put away, didn’t want it to be over.
And then it was dark and Sara woke with pins and needles stabbing half-sleeping feet and arms, twisted sweating in thin sheets, lumpen pillow bunched under one shoulder. She came to in the sterile night, back in bed, quiet room, five others deep sleeping around her, breathing slowly through the aching dark, the three o’clock Town Hall chimed atonal in the distance. She lay still, empty and hurting, body beaten and bruised, vomit retching through her scream-ripped throat, up and into the plastic bowl by her head, bloody vomit, bloody bed. She wiped her face on the rough sleeve of the regulation nightdress, laid her aching body out in the silence and cried herself back to sleep, dry tears smothering her pillow.
TWO
Saz Martin ran through a summer shower, short breaths of cool morning air stabbing the back of her throat. She crossed the road from the Heath, turned the last painful half mile uphill, took another left turn and slowed to a jogging walk around the corner of the big old house, three ugly wheelie bins lined up as testimony to the London tradition of house conversion. She walked up the last four stairs to the flat, fumbled in her zipped pocket for her house keys, managed to drop them almost immediately, bent down to pick them up again, ripped the wailing Neil Young from her ears and heard the phone ringing from inside.
“Shit, fuck, shit, damn it, fuck.”
Her agitated fingers then dropped the walkman and it clattered down the concrete stairs behind her. She chose to ignore the sound of splintering plastic. Eventually she twisted all three keys into each of the correct locks and flew into the flat, slammed open the kitchen door and reached for the phone past two dirty coffee mugs and a barely touched bowl of soggy muesli. “Hello?”
“Any news?”
“Oh fuck, Carrie, it’s you.”
“Great reception, thanks. Now if I were you and I had been given this opportunity to realize that my oldest and dearest was so concerned for your future and your welfare, not to mention that of your charming girlfriend …”
Saz interrupted her ex-girlfriend before she had a chance to get into her stride, “Carrie, I’ve just got in from my run—”
“Late for you, Richard and Judy are already halfway through their second bottle. I thought you usually ran first thing in the morn—”
“Carrie! Enough. I wanted to be with Molly this morning. I waited to go for my run until she’d left.”
“I thought you were going to go to the hospital with her?”
“I thought so too. I was until this morning. Then Molly woke up even more nervous than she was last night and decided she needed to be alone. That’s also why I went running so late, we had a huge fight about it this morning. She didn’t want me to go with her, wanted to get the news by herself.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes, no, I don’t know. I mean, I understand that in many ways this is much harder for her than it is for me …”
“It does involve both of you.”
“Yes, but fuck, Carrie, it doesn’t matter right now. And I don’t want to talk about it, not with you.”
“Thanks.”
>
“This is between the two of us. And it’s passed now too. It’s irrelevant. Molly’s doing what she wants to do.” Saz looked at the kitchen clock, “And she should be on her way home by now, so that means she’s done what she wants to do.”
“You shouldn’t let her take control like this, Saz.”
“Carrie, I don’t want you slagging off Molly.”
“I wasn’t slagging her off. I was bolstering you.”
“I don’t need bolstering thank you. You’re not my therapist, you’re my ex-lover.”
“And tenant.”
“More’s the pity.”
“Illegal tenant.”
“And another month overdue with the rent.”
Carrie was uncharacteristically silent for a moment.
“That shut you up.”
“I’m only trying to help.”
“I know.”
“Any advance on Chris’s parents?”
“No news, Carrie, and no gossip either. Now piss off. I want to check my messages, I want to lock the back door, I want to retrieve my walkman which I dropped while rushing to answer your phone call and which is now either lying in a crumpled minor technological heap at the bottom of the stairs or has no doubt been stolen by any one of the evil local urchins lurking in my back garden.”
“They don’t do evil urchins in your part of the world, Saz, they do designer babes, accessory children. You should know.”
“Carrie, will you please get off the fucking phone? I’ll tell you as soon as I hear anything. OK?”
“Fine, whatever, but make sure you call me first. Bye!”
Carrie hung up as cheerfully as she had called and Saz went outside to pick up the detritus of her morning’s run. She collected her walkman, bruised and slightly battered, but not broken, from the bottom of the steps leading up to their flat, locked the door behind her and went into the lounge. There were three messages on the answerphone, one from her mother and one from her sister, Cassie, both urgently asking if there was any news.
The third was from Molly, “Hi babe. I’m sorry about this morning. I know you wanted to come with me. I just … oh whatever, of course I know what you want and you know I wanted to be by myself to do this. Anyway, I’m on my way home now. I’m OK, but I want to talk to you in the flesh, not leave a message, I don’t want to do this on the phone. I’ll be home soon.”
Saz’s stomach turned, tight intestinal coil pushing out against the worked-on torso, old burn scars covering clearly delineated muscles, body flinching, preparing itself for whatever blow was about to land on her. She slammed off the machine, furious with Molly for not leaving her a full message, dying to see her girlfriend and hating the fact that she had no choice but to wait.
For the next forty minutes Saz paced the big, airy flat. She washed the barely used breakfast dishes from a meal that had been more argument than nourishment and then made herself a pot of too strong coffee she couldn’t drink. She tidied up the clothes that had made their scrambled way all over their bedroom floor and then returned to the kitchen where she took a bite from a fat danish she couldn’t even chew, let alone swallow. She made their bed, opened curtains and windows, moved flowers around from one vase to another and ran a foaming oils bath she would leave to go cold. She glanced at three different newspapers, turning two pages at once and not reading any of them, and flicked through half a dozen cable TV channels. All the while she was checking clocks, her watch, and calling Molly’s number every five minutes. Molly’s mobile remained resolutely switched off. Finally she heard a key in the door, ran to the hall holding her breath.
“Moll?”
She ran up to her lover, scanned her face, every muscle in her body aching with the tension of needing to know.
Molly stood a foot from her and nodded, arms out to hold her girlfriend, “Yes. It’s yes, Saz.”
Saz burst into tears.
THREE
Saz pulled Molly into the flat, slammed the heavy wooden door behind them, held her lover tight to make the new words real, to make the new truth felt as well as known. Held her as tight as she could while also suddenly feeling that the woman she was holding was now made of translucent fine bone china, “Oh God.”
Molly nodded, “I know, it’s bloody terrifying.”
“It’s fucking fantastic.”
“That too.”
The two women stood rooted to the spot in the sunny hallway, the enormity of the news hitting them both, planting their feet on the smooth wooden floor. They stared at each other for a moment and then Saz spoke aloud what neither had been brave enough to even whisper for the past couple of months, except for dark minutes in the quiet of the night, except alone to herself in the bath, in the empty flat – with loud music in the background drowning out the fear, “Oh my God, Moll. You’re going to be a mother.”
Molly shook her head. “We’re going to be mothers Saz.”
“Christ, we must be grownups.”
The two women slowly moved through to the lounge, the morning showers gone, sun was now pouring through the long windows lining one wall of the room, twenty degree light burning off the damp London morning. Together they sank to the floor and sat for a while in silence, arms around each other, each one contemplating her new, radically changed future. Leaning against the sofa, Saz’s head on Molly’s shoulder, they looked out the balcony windows to the Heath beyond.
“So, Moll, they’re sure that it, the baby, the foetus is – you know …”
“Viable?”
“Yeah, viable.”
Molly shrugged her shoulders and launched into circumspect doctor speak, “By three months, as long as it has implanted properly—”
“And this has.”
“Yeah, it would seem that this one has, and as long as that’s all OK, then the rest of the pregnancy should be as per usual. You know, nothing’s really certain until the baby is born, we can’t take anything for granted until then, but at this stage, from now on, everything ought to just be like any other pregnancy. Normal.”
Saz laughed, “Bloody expensive kind of normal, babe.”
“Yeah, but worth it.”
“Oh yes, very worth it,” Saz sat up, the better to kiss Molly, then she drew back to look at her, shook her head in utter astonishment, “God, Moll, we’re actually doing it, all that planning, and the clinic and treatments and everything. We’re doing it. You’re having my baby.”
Molly nodded, “Just don’t sing me any crap ’70s songs. I’ve made an appointment for the scan next week.”
“Brilliant.”
“Do you want to call Chris?”
“Don’t you?”
Molly shook her head, “No. I don’t actually. I thought I would, but now I think you should tell him. As one gene pool to another. And make me a cup of tea while you’re at it.”
Saz went to put the kettle on and call Chris from the kitchen and Molly stretched herself out on the floor. The morning’s fear and nerves and excitement and elation had worn her out, not to mention the nausea she’d woken with. Or the tedious argument they’d been through before she left, determined to do this alone, nervous enough for herself but even more concerned for Saz. Saz’s huge desire for this baby, what would inevitably be her major depression if this attempt had also failed like the last one, like the one before that. Molly knew that if there had been bad news to break, she wanted to be the one to tell Saz. A doctor herself, she didn’t want to leave it to yet another insensitive white coat. She also knew that if things worked out well she wanted the opportunity to deliver that great news in person.
When Saz came back into the room twenty minutes later she saw Molly sleeping soundly on the floor. She sat beside her and drank the tea herself, watching her girlfriend’s rising and falling breath, each exhalation of air clearly delineating the tiny stomach that had grown on the tall, slim woman in the past three months, a stomach that no one else would ever have noticed, a tiny belly that Saz and Molly had laid all their hopes on. For ten minutes Sa
z was completely lost in the incredible nature of the feat they appeared to have achieved. After a while Molly woke, too uncomfortable on the floor to do more than half sleep in the sunshine.
“What did Chris say?”
Saz laughed, “His exact words were – I would be grateful if the donor of the egg would convey to the keeper of the child the warmest wishes from the donor of the sperm.”
“Idiot.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Idiot?”
“No. I called him a fucking tosser. He also invited us over for drinks.”
“Good.”
“Champagne for him and Marc and me, water for you.”
“Great. Can’t wait.”
“And he asked when we wanted the documentary film crew to come round.”
“You told him to piss off?”
“I told him there was nothing to document. What’s so unusual about one woman carrying another woman’s foetus?”
“Perfectly normal.”
“Exactly.”
Molly paused a moment and then added, “He didn’t really ask that, did he?”
“Whoops, hormones taking over the sense of humour already. No, of course not,” Saz hesitated for a minute. “But he did ask if you’d decided about Marc videoing you, though.”
“That sounds more likely. Well, I think it’s OK, I mean, I don’t know about the actual birth, I saw enough of that sort of thing in training to know I think it’s a bit naff at the very least and pretty gross at the worst. But the progression of the growing bump, that ought to be fine. I just didn’t want to make a decision until we knew how successful this had been.”
“They know that.”
“I suppose when you do find his birth parents it’ll be nice for him to be able to show them the whole story.”
“Don’t get too excited – if it was that easy, I’d have got it all sussed by now.”
“You’ve barely started. But at least you’re not going to be taking world trips and dashing off from me in the middle of the night to hunt his mother down.”
“She might have moved away from England.”
