Dear Thing

by Julie Cohen

  ‘Posie. I do not have cancer.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to make me feel better. But I’m old enough. I can know the truth. I want to know the truth.’

  A tear ran down Posie’s cheek. Romily took her by both shoulders and looked her in the face.

  ‘Mariposa J. Summer. Listen to me. I am telling you the truth. I do not have cancer. How long have you been thinking this?’

  ‘I don’t know. A while. Since you’ve started having all these private conversations with Ben and Claire.’

  Weeks, then. And Romily knew how Posie built things up in her imagination. Every detail, every dramatic possibility there could be.

  ‘Oh, Posie,’ she said, taking her daughter in her arms. Posie buried her face in Romily’s neck and sobbed loudly. Romily stroked her hands down her back, patting and whispering that it was okay.

  How long had it been since she’d held Posie as she cried? She’d held Posie all the time when she was very little, after falls or bumps or disappointments. When her best friend hadn’t liked her any more or when she’d lost her favourite teddy. And before that, when she’d been tiny, and her cry meant anything and everything.

  It had been some time since.

  She held her daughter and breathed in the smell that was only hers, felt the tears falling hot on her skin. Posie was really upset. Just because she was clever, just because she lived in a world of her own, didn’t mean that she wasn’t affected by what was happening. This was what came of hiding things from her and planning things that didn’t include her. This precious child, hurting.

  ‘I’m so sorry, little girl,’ she murmured, as the sobs quietened and Posie began to draw in long, hitching breaths. ‘You must have been very worried.’

  Posie sat up. She rubbed the tear trails from her face with a hand. ‘I wasn’t worried about myself. I knew that if you got very sick or died I’d go to live with Claire and Ben.’

  Of course she did. Romily remembered the birthday party, and nearly shook her head. It wouldn’t be such a bad result for Posie, in the long run. Oh well, at least Posie had been worried about her.

  ‘If you died,’ Posie said, ‘would I be an orphan?’

  Romily bit her lip. ‘Uh. Well, technically maybe not, since both of your parents have to be dead for you to be an orphan.’

  ‘And you don’t know where my father is.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Could he maybe be dead?’

  ‘It’s statistically unlikely.’

  Posie thought about this, wiping her nose on the sleeve of her jumper.

  ‘Not on your sleeve, please, Pose.’

  ‘So what is wrong, if you’re not sick? Is something wrong with Claire or Ben?’ She looked panicked.

  ‘No. No no no, nothing is wrong with Claire or Ben. The thing is, Posie …’ Romily took a deep breath, feeling her breasts aching and her body exhausted. ‘The thing is, that I’m pregnant.’

  Posie’s eyes grew very large. Tears had clumped her normally pale eyelashes together, making them dark. ‘You’re going to have a baby? I’m going to have a brother or a sister?’

  ‘Well, no, not that either.’ She took another breath. ‘You know how Claire and Ben don’t have children?’

  ‘They have me.’

  ‘I mean children of their own, who live with them all the time in their house. They’ve wanted to have children very, very much, but they haven’t been able to.’

  ‘Don’t they know how?’

  ‘No, they – they know how, but something is wrong that means that they can’t conceive a baby by themselves. Claire’s been seeing lots of doctors and they’ve been trying to help, but nothing has worked.’

  ‘She isn’t sick, is she?’

  ‘Not sick sick, but she has problems. You remember how human babies are made, right?’

  This had been the subject of many earnest and detailed discussions about a year ago, but Posie hadn’t brought it up for a while.

  The child recited: ‘A man’s sperm meets with a woman’s egg when they have sex and they both use half their chromosomes to make a whole baby, but it happens inside the woman’s body and she doesn’t lay the eggs like insects do.’

  ‘Some insects,’ Romily corrected automatically. ‘Well, Claire’s eggs are apparently not very good for making babies. So I offered to let them use mine. I said I would get pregnant for them, and when the baby was born, I would give it to them and it would be theirs.’

  ‘Whose sperm did you use?’

  ‘Ben’s.’

  Posie screwed up her face. ‘You had sex with him? Ugh.’

  ‘No, we used artificial insemination.’

  ‘That’s when you breathe into someone’s mouth.’

  ‘That’s artificial respiration. For this, Ben put some of his sperm in a little container. We didn’t have to touch each other.’

  ‘And you put the sperm in your vagina so it would meet your egg.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you’re pregnant.’

  ‘Yes. And that’s why I have sore boobs and why I’m tired and why Claire is sending us all kinds of vegetables to eat so that the baby grows up nice and healthy.’

  ‘Are you allowed to have a baby for someone else?’

  ‘Of course you are. It’s called being a surrogate.’

  Posie thought about this for some time. ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘that’s not such a big deal.’

  ‘I’m glad you think so.’

  Posie settled herself more comfortably on the sofa, her legs draping over Romily’s stomach. Romily adjusted them slightly so they weren’t pressing down on her bladder.

  ‘Where will the baby live?’

  ‘At Ben and Claire’s house, with them.’

  ‘It won’t have my room, will it?’

  ‘I really don’t know which room they’ll choose for the nursery. But there’ll always be space for you at their house, I’m sure.’

  ‘If it’s a girl I’ll let her play with my castle doll’s house.’ Posie said it with the air of someone conferring a great favour.

  ‘Hey, don’t gender stereotype the kid before it’s even been born. A boy might like to play with a doll’s house too.’

  ‘It’ll be my little brother or sister.’

  ‘Except that it’ll have different parents.’

  Posie jumped up. Romily winced as a sharp elbow grazed her chest. ‘This is so exciting! I’m going to go and make a card for the baby to say congratulations for being made.’

  ‘I think the baby would like that very much.’

  ‘If it’s a boy, he should be called Rupert. And if it’s a girl, she should be called Rapunzel. No, Guinevere. Guinevere Mariposa, after me. And I’ll help look after her and I can push her around in the pram and everyone will know that we’re sisters.’

  ‘Well, biologically you’d be half-sisters, but in fact—’

  ‘Can I use your phone? I’m going to ring Claire and tell her about my ideas for names.’ All traces of tears were gone.

  ‘I don’t know if Claire’s around this afternoon,’ Romily said carefully. ‘Maybe you should text Ben instead. That way he’ll get it as soon as he finishes work.’

  She dug in her pocket and handed Posie her mobile, which she scampered off with towards her room. At the door, she paused and looked back.

  ‘I’m glad you don’t have cancer,’ she said.

  14

  The Mother Theme

  EVERYONE IN THE clinic thought they were a couple.

  In the Rose and Thistle, all of the regulars were locals and they always asked about Claire, who came in with Ben sometimes for a meal. At the football, Romily and Ben were obviously mates in supporters’ tops. Through the years she’d been his little female sidekick, his buddy, an honorary man.

  In an ultrasound clinic waiting for the dating scan, holding her pregnancy notes in a plastic folder, she couldn’t be taken for an honorary man. Of course, Ben was wearing a wedding ring and she wasn’t, but
she could have taken hers off for any number of reasons. Or lost it. She probably looked like someone who would lose her wedding ring.

  Stop it, she thought.

  Ben looked up from his sheaf of papers and smiled at her. ‘I’m sorry I’m not much of a conversationalist today,’ he said. ‘I need to go through all of this before tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s okay. I’m glad you could take the time off to be here.’ Besides, it’s easier to construct elaborate fantasies if you’re not talking.

  ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. The first chance to see our child.’

  She knew who the ‘our’ was that he was talking about, and immediately said, out of guilt, ‘It’s too bad Claire couldn’t make it.’

  ‘It’s hard for her to get time off during the term,’ said Ben, though it didn’t sound entirely convincing. As Romily had not set eyes on Claire for nearly two months, she suspected it was more than that. But Ben hadn’t said a word about Claire having second thoughts, or about the obvious fact that Claire couldn’t stand her and didn’t trust her. He was adamant that everything was fine. Probably because he wanted to spare her feelings.

  And the sad truth was that it was easier for Romily if Claire wasn’t around. Except for these errant thoughts, which were probably the result of hormones, and which she really should get under control.

  ‘Romily Summer?’ The ultrasound technician poked her head outside of the scan room, a file in her hand. Romily got up. The technician had short greying hair; she could be the same technician who had scanned Romily when she’d been pregnant with Posie. She thought it was probably the same room, though she didn’t remember it all that well. All scan rooms no doubt looked just about the same.

  ‘Lie down, please, Romily. Is this Daddy here with you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ben, and Romily could see his chest puffing out a bit with pride. In Romily’s opinion, it was a little bit creepy to call the man ‘Daddy’, as if the baby could hear or as if he were Romily’s own father – but she knew it was the first time Ben had been called ‘Daddy’.

  ‘You can sit by the side there. Now I’m going to need your top up, please, Romily.’

  ‘He’s not my husband,’ Romily told the technician. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was saying this, after basking in mistaken impressions in the waiting room, but it seemed important now. For the record.

  ‘We have all kinds of families here,’ the technician said. ‘Top up, please?’

  Reluctantly, Romily pulled up her T-shirt. Ben had never seen her bare belly before. ‘It was artificial insemination,’ she said. ‘I’m a surrogate. I’m not keeping the baby.’

  The technician seemed entirely unfazed. ‘Do you want me to turn the monitor away so you can’t see it?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sometimes women who are giving up their babies for adoption say they don’t want to see the scans so they won’t bond with the baby.’

  ‘At ten weeks, a human foetus looks like a cross between ET and a tadpole,’ Romily said. ‘I don’t think I’ll be bonding with it.’

  ‘I will,’ said Ben.

  The technician squirted the warmed gel on Romily’s stomach. That was something that had changed, at least; she remembered the gel as being freezing cold. ‘So this is your dating scan, so we’ll know when your baby is likely to be born.’ She applied the scanner to Romily’s belly and started rolling it around.

  Ben watched the screen. Romily watched Ben. She could see the exact moment when the baby appeared because his eyes got wider, his face softened in wonder.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yes. Here’s the head, here’s the spine. You can see the heartbeat is good and strong.’

  He leaned closer to the screen. Romily could feel the warmth from his body. ‘Hello, little thing,’ he said.

  Romily followed his gaze. The baby was a white shape, a little body in a sea of black and grey. ‘It looks like you,’ she said.

  ‘Can I have a printout? I’d like to share with my wife.’

  ‘Of course. Do you want one too, Romily?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘It’s so tiny,’ Ben said, and she was drawn to him again instead of the screen. She had never seen him looking so rapt. So in love.

  Right now, right at this very moment, Ben was looking at their baby. He was looking inside Romily’s body and seeing his child taking shape.

  In the empty classroom, Claire removed student work from the bulletin boards and replaced the fading coloured backing paper with a fresh sheet from the roll. It was busy work; the display wasn’t that old and didn’t strictly need to be replaced yet. However, it kept her hands occupied.

  She’d had ultrasounds before. Lots and lots of them, to see what was inside her. To see what was wrong.

  In the diagrams of a woman’s reproductive system, everything was clear and neat: ovaries, fallopian tubes in a pair, uterus in a delicate curve, nestled inside the body. In her ultrasounds she looked as if she was made up of a maelstrom of clouds. Chaotic and imperfect. She hadn’t been able to identify any of her parts, but nodded as the consultant had pointed them out.

  She stapled the paper to the board, neatly, every three inches. One dull thunk after another.

  ‘Hey Mrs Lawrence, do you mind if I come in and practise?’ Max lingered at the door, holding his guitar.

  ‘Max? Of course, you’re welcome.’ He came into the classroom and headed for a stool in the corner. ‘Weren’t any of the practice rooms free?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like being on my own so I thought I’d see if you were here.’

  ‘As long as you don’t mind the sound of my stapler.’

  He shook his head and bent over his guitar. Claire watched him for a moment as he strummed a few preparatory chords, his slender fingers holding the instrument as if it were part of him. But she got the feeling that while he wanted company, he didn’t want to be watched, so she turned back to her display board.

  She’d been that way with music, once. She took every opportunity to play, to lose herself, following the notes without even thinking of her fingers or the score or who else was around. Her father used to tease her, tell her she’d never find a husband if she spent all her time practising the piano.

  ‘I don’t need a husband,’ she’d told him. He’d laughed as if he knew better.

  Her mother talked about her becoming a concert pianist, travelling the world, but she didn’t care about that, either. It was the music that mattered. Not boys, not money, not the world.

  And then she’d met Ben.

  She glanced at Max, utterly absorbed in what he was doing. He’d segued into a soft, slow progression of chords, lilting like a lullaby. It was a teenage thing, that absorption. You couldn’t afford it once you were grown up. No matter how beautiful the music was, there was still the mortgage and the credit cards. The laundry and the garden. The reports to be written, the lessons to be planned, the dozens of little tasks and annoyances that weighed down your hands.

  The other woman who was carrying your husband’s baby.

  She finished with the backing paper and began cutting lengths of scalloped edging to finish off the sides. She had some photographs she’d printed out of the autumn concert to put up; maybe she’d include some of Year Seven’s drawings, too – the ones they’d made whilst listening to Mendelssohn. Some of them were quite exquisite, whimsical like the music. Claire went to the filing cabinet to find them. Leafing through them, she found that she was humming: a soft, slow progression of notes.

  She looked at Max at the same time he looked up at her, and a small smile touched his face. He’d heard her.

  ‘Did you write that yourself?’ she asked him. ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Just something I’ve been working on.’ He dropped his gaze back to his guitar, and then looked up at her again.

  ‘It sounds like a lullaby. Safe and warm.’

  ‘It’s the mother theme.’

  He blushed as soon as he said it, as if he had
n’t meant to, and Claire put the drawings down and came to lean on a chair across from him. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘A theme, not a song? Is it part of a bigger composition?’

  Max nodded. ‘I’ve – I’ve got it in my head. Different people, with a different bit of music each. You put them all together, weave them through.’

  ‘It’s very ambitious. Is that what you’ve been working on writing down?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How much of it have you worked out?’

  ‘A few bits.’

  ‘Can I hear another?’

  He played a hard and fast riff, bluesy and dirty. She’d heard it before, tacked on to the end of another song he’d been playing, and assumed it was in the charts at the moment.

  ‘That’s Alan,’ Max said. ‘The bloke at the newsagent’s at home who ogles all the young girls.’

  Claire laughed. The sound surprised her a little. ‘Have you done anyone I know?’

  ‘Mrs Greasley,’ he said, and blushing again, played a few bars of a sweet tune to the beat of a militant march that suited the headmistress exactly. Iron fist in velvet glove, that was Veronica Greasley. Claire clapped her hand to her mouth and he smiled at her, shy and proud.

  ‘That’s incredible, Max.’

  ‘It’s just something I’m doing.’

  ‘Well, I’m very impressed.’

  ‘It’s nothing, really.’

  ‘It’s more than nothing. Have you played the mother theme to your mother yet? I think she’d be very touched.’

  Max scowled. He gripped his guitar. ‘She’s my stepmother. She’s too busy. And she doesn’t like music anyway.’

  Claire paused. She was a music teacher, and that was all. At St Dom’s, the division was quite clear: the teachers taught, and the students’ emotional well-being was looked after by the pastoral staff – the heads of house, and the deputy head in charge of boarding. When a student told you something personal, an issue that might affect their happiness or their education, as academic staff it was your duty to pass it on to the appropriate member of the pastoral team and bow gently out of the conversation.

  If Max said anything else to her, anything that indicated there might be trouble at home, she’d have to advise him to talk to his head of house about it.