She stared at the yellow linoleum between her feet until the nausea passed. It appeared she wouldn’t throw up after all, small mercies. She peed and left the cubicle, stood in front of the mirror and splashed water on her face. She looked at her reflection and saw her tiredness, as well as something else. Her hair was thicker, perhaps, her face a little plumper, her breasts fuller – and it was only a matter of time before the men in the office noticed that.
She smoothed her hand over her shirt and felt the modest curve she’d so far successfully managed to hide under shirts and jackets, but it was getting warmer, and she would get bigger; she knew she couldn’t hide it for long. She’d have to tell Roger soon, but the thought made her feel sick again. She didn’t want him to know. Didn’t want her colleagues to know. She didn’t want to be one of those women who fucked up a promising career by having a baby. Though she was confident the new employment protection law meant Roger wouldn’t sack her for being pregnant, who knows if he’d agree to any maternity pay; that part of the legislation hadn’t come into force yet, and there was no formal arrangement at her paper. She knew some editors agreed to paid leave if they valued their female journalists – but did Roger value her enough? She wasn’t so sure.
She sighed. Just a little longer and then she’d face it.
‘Sylvia, dear, are you quite all right?’
She looked up and whipped her hand away from her stomach. She hadn’t heard Valerie come into the bathroom.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m fine. Just a little hot.’ She dried her face with a paper towel and reached into her pocket for her lipstick.
‘It is rather muggy outside,’ Valerie said. ‘Let’s hope we get that much needed rain soon.’ She came to stand next to Sylvia and looked at her in the mirror as she applied a slick of lipstick. ‘You look a little off-colour.’
She smiled. ‘Nothing a cup of Betty’s coffee won’t knock out of me.’
‘When’s the trip?’
‘Denmark? Next week.’
‘Quite a coup.’
‘Thanks. I’m pleased.’
‘You should be.’ Valerie plumped her hair in the mirror and turned to look at Sylvia directly. Her eyes flicked up and down her body, and there was something about her gaze that unnerved her. ‘You’ll be having my job if I’m not careful.’
Sylvia forced a laugh. ‘Hardly. I’m sure the Queen of Fleet Street is safe on her throne for a long while yet.’
Valerie smiled. ‘Ridiculous title,’ she said, but Sylvia saw the glint of pride in her eyes. ‘Anyway darling, must dash. Look after yourselves in Denmark.’
And she was gone.
* * *
The sickness eased after her spell in the toilet and she passed the afternoon researching Warburton’s life and career from cuttings and library books. She’d spent several years working for the UK’s mission to the United Nations in Geneva, and Sylvia wondered what she thought of Switzerland and its record on women’s rights. What it felt like to have risen so high in a predominantly male profession, and to have made such an impact at the Foreign Office that the prime minister made you an ambassador, the first British woman to take up such a prestigious post. How she felt about working for an organisation that, until just a few years ago, would demand she resign if she married. Is that why she never had? There was so much she wanted to ask her that she almost didn’t know where to begin.
Roger stalked over to her desk in the early afternoon. ‘Tallis, a word.’ He retreated to his glass lair, clearly expecting her to follow.
She threw a glance at Max, who pulled a face she couldn’t interpret.
‘Denmark. Change of plan. I’m going to send Max Harmer instead,’ he said when she closed his office door after her.
‘I’m sorry?’ Sylvia’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Why is that?’
‘Because I can’t send a pregnant woman on a foreign assignment.’
Her stomach plummeted and she felt heat rise up her neck. ‘I was going to tell you.’
‘Well, someone else did first,’ he said, reprimand in his tone. ‘And congratulations on tying the knot, by the way.’
Her brain raced through the people who knew about her pregnancy and precipitated wedding and she only came up with one who would also have the means to slip a quiet word to her boss over a drink in the pub: Jim. But surely not; surely reliable, kind Jim wouldn’t do that to her.
She thought back to the morning after their argument. He’d said little as they got up, showered, rummaged in overflowing suitcases for their least creased clothes and tried not to set the bread on fire under a grill they weren’t yet used to. He’d kissed her as he went out the door before her, affection on his face, and she’d thought he was over it. After all, Jim was a calm, rational person. It was one of the things she sometimes found infuriating about him – a fire could be raging inside her over some issue or other, but he could always douse it with his calmness. So she’d figured he’d think it through and see she was right, and she would go to Copenhagen as planned.
‘Who told you?’
Roger waved his hand. ‘That’s hardly the issue. Look, Tallis, your personal life is none of my business, though of course we’ll have certain considerations to discuss. I suppose you’ll be wanting leave, so we’ll have to think about getting in a replacement…’ he rubbed his eyes, as though the thought of it was giving him a headache already, ‘but the most immediate concern is that I can’t have a pregnant woman out in Denmark. We don’t have the insurance.’
What? Her neck beaded with sweat. ‘Roger, I can do this. My pregnancy has no bearing on my ability to do my job. I fully intend to continue working as long as I can and come back as soon as possible afterwards and—’
He held up his hand. ‘I can’t be responsible if something should happen. Keith and the board would have my guts for garters.’
Sylvia thought the editor-in-chief would care less about her being pregnant and more about her bagging a sought-after interview, but she didn’t say so. ‘Nothing’s going to happen, this is ridiculous,’ she said, adding, a little more forcibly than she intended, ‘This is my story. I got the interview. Warburton said yes to me, not Max.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Don’t get too big for your boots, Tallis. You’re good, but so are plenty of others. Harmer will do a perfectly decent job.’
‘Roger, please.’ She worked hard to keep her voice even. ‘There’s no issue with this,’ she gestured towards her stomach. ‘I’m willing and able to go and do my job.’
‘Look, just take a step back this time and then after all this,’ he waved his hand, ‘we’ll see about getting you back on track, if you’re not too distracted by motherhood.’
He said it as though she should be grateful, but indignation made her head swim. ‘I don’t have to be off track.’
‘Tallis, I’m not changing my bloody mind. Now fuck off out of here.’
As she took the few steps to the door, she felt her legs shaking – from fury or shock she wasn’t sure.
‘Oh, and get down to personnel,’ Roger shouted after her. ‘We can’t have a pregnant reporter going by her maiden name – you’re Sylvia Millson now.’
She couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day. She stared at her notebook, pretending to work, though she could barely see the words on the page. She wanted to run out of the office and head straight down to Jim’s place and have it out with him.
‘He didn’t tell me why. No hard feelings, I hope?’ Max put a cup of coffee on her desk and she looked up, shook her head. The smell of the coffee made her want to retch.
‘Not your fault. But you may as well know, I’m going to have a baby. Roger seems to think that’s incompatible with doing an interview in Denmark.’
‘Fucking hell,’ he said, and then caught himself. ‘I mean, congratulations to you and your er… Jim.’
His slight smile and raised eyebrows induced a flush of embarrassment, before anger flooded through her. Why should she feel embarrassed to have a ch
ild? Why had other people’s embarrassment pushed her into a shotgun wedding? Why on earth should she stop doing a job she loved months before the baby had even arrived?
‘Thanks, my husband’s delighted,’ she said. She wanted to just end this, to let him go back to his desk so they could both pretend to work in peace. ‘Enjoy Copenhagen. I hear it’s beautiful at this time of year.’
It was all around the office within the hour.
* * *
She left the building on the dot of 6pm, turning down Max’s invitation for a quick snifter with the boys at the Old Bell, and was home before Jim this time. She sat on the hard floorboards, avoiding that damn armchair out of principle. The wait felt interminable, the flat so silent she could hear the tick of her watch, counting down the seconds until he arrived.
‘Please tell me you didn’t do it?’ she said when he walked in the door.
‘Hello to you too, darling.’
‘Because you had absolutely no right.’
He took off his coat and hung it on the back of the door and turned back to her. Calm, steady. She felt her heart pulsing hard in her chest.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.
‘Did you tell Roger I was pregnant?’
‘What?’ he said. ‘Well, no. Hadn’t you?’
‘No, Jim, no I hadn’t. But someone did, today, and as a result I am no longer going to Denmark to interview Anne Warburton because Roger says they haven’t got the bloody insurance, although I’m sure that’s a pathetic made up excuse simply to punish me for getting pregnant. So if it was you, Jim, if it was you who took this away from me then please be honest and admit to what you’ve done.’
He rubbed his hand over his eyes and looked at her, hurt carving creases into his features. He came over and crouched down in front of her, took her hand in his and looked her right in the eyes. ‘No, I didn’t. I promise you.’
She stared right back and saw he was telling the truth and something eased inside her. ‘Okay,’ she said. Then who the hell else did?
Jim sat down beside her, his back resting against the bare wall. ‘I’m sorry, Syl, I know you were excited about the trip.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘But I can’t say I’m not a little relieved. You should be taking care of yourself now, not rushing around like a mad thing to foreign countries.’
He smiled and nudged her as he said it, but his words reignited something in her and she turned to face him. ‘Jim, don’t be ridiculous, I’m perfectly capable of going abroad. I’m fine, the baby is fine. Roger’s decision is completely unfair and I’m going to try to fight it. I just don’t know how yet.’
‘You’re four months gone.’ He turned to her. ‘And yet you don’t seem to be accepting that this is happening. You say the baby’s fine, but how do you know? You’re not going to your midwife appointments, are you?’
She started to protest and then pulled herself up short. ‘Have you been snooping on me?’
‘Hardly. You left your diary lying around, I happened to glance at it and I saw you’d crossed out an appointment at Guys.’
‘Look, work’s been busy. Anyway, I can uncancel it now I’m not going to Denmark.’
‘Please do.’ He sighed and rubbed his eyes, the resignation of a parent trying to talk sense into a child. ‘Syl,’ he said slowly, ‘you have to accept that things have to change. We’re going to be parents – our priorities will be different.’
‘Our priorities?’
‘Yes!’
His confused expression sparked a hot rage in her and she fought back the angry tears that threatened to undermine her.
‘As far as I can tell, everything you’re doing and saying is about me changing my priorities. Well, what about you? Are you going to be forced to give up your job, to throw away the position you’ve worked so hard to get and let someone who isn’t as good as you step into your shoes? Are you? Because if not, Jim, then your priorities aren’t changing – not really. You know nothing about how it feels to have a… situation you didn’t want impose itself on you and alter everything.’
He looked down at his shoes and then back at her. ‘You don’t want this?’
‘Honestly?’ Her voice wavered. ‘No. I don’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want to get married in a rush, as though I should be embarrassed by my predicament. And I don’t want to give up the job I’ve always wanted and am just starting to make a success of – not even for a minute, let alone months or years or however long you are expecting me to change my priorities for.’
‘I didn’t know you felt this way. We always said we’d have kids.’
‘Yes, but later. Not now, not at twenty-three.’ Perhaps not ever, she stopped herself saying. ‘We talked about this.’
‘I know, but I didn’t think you were so firm about it that you wouldn’t want a baby if an accident happened. I mean, it’s a happy accident, isn’t it?’
She stood up, walked over to the window, looked out at the row of terraced houses opposite. The spring sunlight was fading and lights were already on in some. A cosy living room. A woman washing up at a kitchen sink. Kids opening a front door, stepping into an illuminated hallway.
Happy accident.
‘I nearly had an abortion,’ she said, her back to him. Her watch ticked on. She turned around and saw hurt and confusion on his face. ‘Before I even told you. I was debating not having the baby.’
‘You would have done that?’
‘Well, clearly not. I couldn’t go through with it.’
‘But you thought about it? I can’t believe it, Syl.’
‘I had the signed forms. I went to the clinic. I was about to take the pills. So, yes, I could have done it.’ She saw his sadness, his hurt, and part of her wanted to hug him tight and say, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have even thought about it, I should have told you, everything will be okay now.
But she wouldn’t. Because she didn’t believe any of those things. She wasn’t sorry. She didn’t think everything would be okay. And she needed him to know that.
‘I was scared, Jim. And I still am. This isn’t what I wanted and I’m scared I’ve ruined my life, scared my career’s been nipped in the bud before it’s even got going; that I’ll be stuck at home, bored and unfulfilled, looking jealously on as you climb the ladder. I’m scared I’ll be a terrible mother. I’m scared I’ll resent the baby. I’m scared of… everything, it seems. And all because the stupid pill failed. Not because we chose it, rationally, by talking together and deciding, but because a contraceptive that’s meant to liberate women has ended up doing the complete opposite to me…’
He looked up at her and she hoped he understood. That’s all she wanted: for him to understand how this felt for her. But then he stood up, came over to her, put his hands on her arms and looked her in the eyes, and she knew, even before he said it, that he hadn’t.
‘Syl, darling, you’re overreacting. It’s a baby, not a life sentence.’
She smiled, shook her head, shrugged his hands off her arms. She picked up her jacket from the back of the armchair, walked out the door and slammed it behind her.
JULY 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
JESS
I always wondered why Mum and Dad never had another child. I remember asking them once, separately. Mum said I was all she needed. Dad said Mum didn’t want go through it all again. I knew I wasn’t exactly a planned baby, and sometimes – usually when I’d had a row with Mum over homework or chores or how late I could stay out – I wondered if perhaps she’d have preferred not to have had me. Once, in a fit of rage, I slung that accusation at her like an uppercut. I remember how she flinched like I had physically hit her, how she put her hands on my arms and looked me right in the eye and said, No, never, not for one second.
Growing up, it didn’t really matter to me not to have a sibling. I had plenty of friends, a conveyor belt of piano lessons and netball games and drawing classes to keep me entertained, sporadic but thrilling excursions with Maggie, and the undivided
attention of my parents when they were home. But now I yearn for a brother or sister, someone who could really understand what it might feel like to be told your parents aren’t your own.
Dear Mr Buchs,
I can’t really explain on email why I need to find Brigitte/Anna – it’s a long story. In short, something happened to my mother in 1976, and I think Anna may know what that was. Please, are you able to give me her number or email address?
I sit back in the garden chair and survey what I’ve written. And does she have a daughter living in Montreux? That’s what I want to ask. The thought of her name – my probable biological mother’s name – on the letter in Julia’s drawer makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle.
Admittedly, my internet search for Anna Meier turned up millions of page results, so there’s clearly more than one out there. But can it really just be a coincidence that Julia knows an A. Meier, that her own maiden name is Meier? I stare at her through the window, pottering about the kitchen, going to the fridge, grabbing glasses from the cupboard. I can’t face the idea that she could be…
‘Here.’ She emerges onto the veranda and puts a bottle of wine and two glasses down on the table. She’s changed out of her work clothes into a pair of yoga pants and a vest top. Her dark hair is swept up into a loose bun that looks effortlessly stylish in a way my own dirty blond mop never quite manages. Her skin looks flawless in the dusky light. She sits down opposite me and I force a smile, trying to silence the constant questioning in my head. Does she look like either of them? Can I see a hint of Dad’s nose? The shape of Mum’s eyebrows?
I shake the voice away. It’s incomprehensible. It’s ridiculous. This perfect woman cannot be her; she cannot be my parents’ child instead of me.
She hands me a glass. ‘Santé.’
‘Cheers.’ I tap hers and look her in the eyes, as is the Swiss way.
The Other Daughter Page 15
