A Sister’s Gift

by Giselle Green

  ‘NO!’ I tell her bluntly. ‘Thanks for the offer, but absolutely not.’

  ‘Why not, for Pete’s sake? I just…I worry about you sometimes, Hol, you know.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I get the feeling,’ she says carefully, ‘that maybe you just don’t get out enough, you don’t get to taste enough of life. There’s more to the world than just Florence Cottage and your work with the Bridge Trust and your cosy life with Rich and his family and all your little hobbies like – like your knitting.’

  ‘What’s wrong with knitting?’ I give her an injured look.

  ‘Nothing, Hol! But don’t you ever worry you might be becoming old before your time because you never try any new stuff?’

  ‘No. And you can stop worrying too, please, because I’m perfectly content.’

  She only raises her eyebrows in reply, as much to say ‘oh, no, you aren’t’.

  ‘I am, you know. I don’t need any adventures. I just want ordinary things. I’d hate to go up in a balloon. Or go sky diving.’ I look at her. ‘And I am never, ever going to go in the water, so you can forget all about that.’

  This isn’t what I want to talk to her about right now, though. Why won’t she listen?

  ‘You don’t look happy.’ She observes me critically now. ‘You don’t seem very content, that’s all. I’m just suggesting that maybe you need to get out of your rut a little. Do something different that you never thought in your wildest dreams you would do. What have you got to lose?’

  ‘Huh! A limb, maybe?’ I stand up huffily. ‘And I’m not ready to let go of one of those just yet.’

  ‘Nor your fear of…of anything that might be in the remotest bit risky or exciting?’ She throws Ruffles’ towel back at me and I catch it before it hits my face.

  ‘I don’t have wild dreams,’ I say quietly. ‘Just ordinary ones.’

  And even those don’t look like they have the remotest chance of coming true.

  Hollie

  ‘What time are they all arriving this evening, did Rich say?’

  ‘About six,’ I call back to my sister. ‘Chrissie and Bill are getting a lift down with Jay and Sarah, so they should be here in good time for dinner.’

  With their celebratory news, I remember with a pang. ‘At least the preliminary tests on Rich’s dad came out OK.’

  ‘‘Course they did! People worry far too much about stuff, that’s what I think.’ I hear her say now, ‘All I’m worried about now is what I’m going to get you for your Christmas pressie.’ Scarlett’s standing by the grate stoking the fire I lit earlier. It’s Christmas Eve and now she’s worrying about getting presents? I can hear the crunch of the poker against the logs. ‘I already got a little something for Rich,’ she admits, ‘but for you, it’s going to be a book token, you know.’ She calls into the kitchen: ‘Unless you can suggest something else?’

  ‘There isn’t anything, Scarlett,’ I try to say, but the words stick in my throat.

  ‘Remember the year we planned to hijack Father Christmas on his way down the chimney?’ she remembers suddenly. ‘We set that booby trap with a bag of flour.’

  ‘You set the booby trap,’ I remind her. ‘And I was the one who ended up poking around in the dark with a coat hanger trying to dislodge it before anyone found out…’

  ‘I held the torch!’ she protests. ‘I kept thinking if Santa comes in and finds us we’ll be doomed – we’ll lose it all. I was terrified of getting caught.’

  ‘I’m surprised you still remember that.’ I come out of the kitchen with the mixing bowl still in my hand. Is she still going to give me a hand with tonight’s dinner like she promised? ‘You were always getting in scrapes when you were a kid. You’ve been addicted to danger all your life, haven’t you?’ I smile as she comes up and prods me in the ribs.

  ‘It’s not the danger I’m addicted to, believe me. I’ve just got this terrible…’ her eyes roll upwards, searching for the words, ‘This huge urge that always pushes me towards getting what I want. If something’s on my mind, I find I can’t stop thinking about it till it’s mine. Whereas you, darling sister, are precisely the opposite. You never even want anything, do you? I’ve got to get you something for Christmas, there’s only a couple of hours before the shops shut. If only there was something you really wanted…’

  I look into my mixing bowl and give it a little stir but my heart isn’t in it. I can’t ask her. I can’t.

  ‘There is something, isn’t there?’ She’s looking at me triumphantly now. ‘I’ve sussed you out! There’s something you want and you’re not saying. Tell me.’ She shakes my hands insistently. ‘Spit it out! In fact, I promise you right now the answer’s yes, so don’t be coy.’ She does her Jane Austen impression, shaking an imaginary fan in front of her face. ‘Anything you want, dear sister…’

  ‘It’s not quite that simple,’ I croak. I wish that it was. ‘Look, there is something I want. I mean, something you could do for me, but it would involve a huge sacrifice on your part. And it wouldn’t be fair to ask you because your own life is really cooking at the moment – you’ve got everything going on, haven’t you?’

  I bite my lower lip as my sister pressures me further. ‘Ask, Hollie. Just ask. You never know your luck. How much does it cost?’ she teases.

  ‘It’ll cost you not a penny,’ I breathe at last. ‘But maybe a hell of a lot more than that. What I want will cost you perhaps a whole year of your life…’

  Scarlett

  ‘So, let me get this clear…there are these surrogate women in India…’I look up from the BabyinIndia leaflet which she’s just placed in my lap ‘…but you’re telling me that this route isn’t any good for you because…?’

  ‘Because of the low quality of my eggs.’ Hollie’s voice is subdued.

  ‘Bummer,’ I console. But where do I fit into any of this? My sister doesn’t expand, even when I open up my hands in a gesture of where are we going with this? ‘I don’t understand,’ I concede after a while, but a huge silence has opened up in the room. Right now Flo’s old grandmother clock in the hallway is the only thing that’s making any sound at all. Even the fire crackling in the grate seems to be burning lower. I skim over Dr Shandaree’s letter again. Then the penny drops.

  ‘You’d like me to donate my eggs?’ I say at last. ‘Is that it?’

  Of course, that way the baby will be as genetically similar to her as possible.

  I didn’t see that coming. When I said I’d give her anything I never thought she’d be asking for anything quite as…personal as this.

  ‘The timing is not the best,’ I begin, wondering how on earth I’m going to be able to get out of it. The timing is the least of it as far as I’m concerned because there will never be a good time to ask me for something which I have so little inclination to do. But she’s my sister and she’s desperate…

  ‘Hol, are you saying that if you got some good quality eggs you’d be able to have the baby yourself?’

  ‘Unfortunately no. My body doesn’t produce the right level of hormones any more – that’s why the IVF failed. In the beginning, when I was producing the right hormones, the eggs didn’t implant. Now I haven’t got the eggs or the hormones…’

  ‘OK,’ I say gently. ‘So you’ll still need a surrogate. But if I donate the eggs for you, that should do it, right?’

  So why does she need a year of my life?

  Hollie shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. ‘No,’ she says decisively. ‘Thank you but no. I can’t do that because I can’t risk using a surrogate mother who might just change her mind at the end.’

  ‘Why would a surrogate change her mind?’

  ‘She might. There have been cases documented where just such a thing has happened. I can’t risk it.’

  I frown at her stubbornness. ‘Life’s all about taking risks, surely? And…if someone volunteered to do it for you, they surely wouldn’t just change their mind? There must be contracts and things.’ I nudge her elbow when she d
oesn’t respond. ‘What do you mean by that anyway?’

  ‘In this country, the law states the baby belongs to the birth mother,’ she says slowly. ‘People can and sometimes do change their minds. If that happened it would just about finish me off…’

  ‘You’ve just said you’re going to go to India, aren’t you? Maybe the law is different there?’

  ‘Scarlett, I’m not sure if I can explain this to you in a way that you’ll understand it.’ My sister looks up at me now and her dark eyes are hooded with pain. ‘After all these years of trying I feel…battered. Sort of used up. I could go out to India and use your eggs with a surrogate, sure. Originally that’s what I was going to ask you for. But the more time goes by, the more I realise that this has got the best chance of working if you agree to do it for us. Not some stranger, out in some foreign place far from here. But you, my own sister who I can trust and here, in our own home without the need for medical fees and international air travel and all the huge expectation that goes along with it. Here we could do it quietly, privately, without all the risk and the fuss…’

  ‘No!’ My hands fly up to my mouth. ‘Have a baby for you? Are you…completely mad, Hol?’

  There’s a silence again. A wide grey silence that bounces off the walls, gets stuck in the faded yellow hops she’s got hanging from the oak ceiling beams. For a few minutes we both stand there looking at her pastry sitting in a bowl in the middle of the table.

  ‘I can’t.’ It makes me feel queasy even thinking about it. I get up and bolt out of the kitchen door and Ruff follows me loyally out into the garden. How could she ask me that? She’s out of her mind, she knows what I’m like, what my life is like right now and I can’t give it to her. A year of my life. A life sentence more like…

  The crisis in the Amazon – the work I’m doing there – it needs tending to now, it’s not going to wait and I can’t either.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she calls out desperately after me but she doesn’t get up to come after me and I don’t want her to. I need her to leave me alone.

  I need her to let me get on with my own life.

  Hollie

  When I look out into the silent garden, growing dark now with the early evening that’s drawing in, there’s still no hide nor hair of her. For an instant I feel the twinge of an old ache, the familiar worry of not knowing where my sister is, who she’s with, if she’s even all right…

  How many nights would I go out and catch her sitting up on a wall by The Vines. The irony of it never escaped me then, either – that the garden where medieval monks from Rochester Priory once grew grapes for their wine should end up being the place where local kids hang out to drink their cider. And often enough that’s where Scarlett would be, when she should have been in her bedroom, doing homework. But she’s a grown woman now.

  Still though, she’s a runner, Scarlett. She always was. If she didn’t like what was going on she’d scarper. I often never knew where it was she went, though, boy, did I search. She could be away for hours. A couple of times, almost a day went by before I saw her but never quite the twenty-four hours needed for the police to get involved. She was just happy to take it close enough to the wire.

  I wonder if she even knew what she did to me on those occasions when, at fourteen, fifteen, she’d just disappear? I don’t suppose she ever cared enough to consider. She’d be guided by her own moods. If I was upset or worried or concerned…well, why should she fret?

  I straighten now at the sound of Jay’s and Richard’s cars pulling up at the front, feeling a small tensing in my stomach because they’re all here – everyone except her – and any moment now I’m going to officially learn that Sarah is already pregnant.

  I should be glad for the happy couple. I am glad for them. We’re all going to have a new addition to the family, that’s one way to look at it. Rich becomes an uncle. Christine and Bill become grandparents at last. Christmas next year will be even better, I tell myself firmly, because Christmas is a time for kids, I’ve always said so.

  I’m getting jaded, that’s all, and I don’t want to be. I’ve always loved this time of year. All the anticipation and the preparations and the little rituals that surround the Christmas season, I’ve always been in my element.

  So why has this year felt like a huge effort?

  I didn’t want to be bothered with making all my own mince pies or preparing that bowl of mulled wine for my guests. Or laying out the table settings so beautifully as I always do. Or dressing the tree, hanging the garlands.

  I wanted to do…nothing.

  I should never have asked Scarlett to be my surrogate. I should have known what her response would be. I did know it, I just didn’t want to accept it because every so often in life a wave of change comes along and then – given the right tide – things can all work all right. I lean back, closing the curtains, hearing the family’s excited voices approaching now down my drive and wanting to join in their Christmas cheer. But I sense that this year, it’s really going to cost me.

  Scarlett

  Damn it.

  I close my eyes, pull my legs up to my chest on the wooden bench in the gazebo, and Ruffles jumps up after me.

  I saw Hollie’s face when they all trooped in about half an hour ago, announcing the ‘happy news’ that Sarah and Jay were expecting in the autumn. She immediately broke open the champagne, good hostess that she is, but I thought that the effort of smiling was going to make her face crack. Christ, what kind of timing is that?

  I can hear them from here, clinking glasses and laughing and moving about in the kitchen, but I don’t make a move. When I peer through the glass, it isn’t raining outside but there is so much water in the air that long rivulets are running down the windows. I hope they can’t see me in here.

  ‘I can’t stay outside forever pretending to take you out for a walk, can I?’ I lean forward to scratch Ruffles under the chin. ‘They’ll know something’s up.’

  Ruffles growls, as if in agreement. Hollie’s been organising her dinner party all day as if everything is normal, as if we didn’t have that conversation this morning.

  But everything isn’t normal. Ruffles is sitting stock-still, eyes locked devotedly on mine as if he really understands what I’m saying.

  ‘I know she’s upset about this whole baby thing, but I offered her what I could. I said I’d donate eggs for her. And even that is more than I want to do; I only offered because she is desperate and sad and I felt I somehow should! I give Ruffles a rueful smile. ‘Just to give her even more reason to be upset with me, I just remembered I already ate half the raspberries that she set aside for dessert earlier. Just you wait till she discovers that!’

  There is a rap on the wet glass of the gazebo. I sit up guiltily.

  ‘Just you wait till Hollie discovers what?’ Richard enquires.

  ‘I ate Hollie’s raspberries,’ I confess. ‘But apart from that…look, if you’ve been sent out here to fetch me, I need to know she’s not still upset about what happened earlier.’

  ‘Sarah announcing that she’s expecting, you mean?’

  ‘No!’ I give a small laugh. ‘Though I don’t imagine that went down too well. I mean…about what happened between Hollie and me earlier.’

  ‘I don’t know, Lettie.’ He ducks under the doorframe, running his hands through his damp hair and I remember he hasn’t been back home long. ‘Was she upset with you earlier?’

  ‘I think so…’I tell him quietly. He sits down beside me and I shove over a bit. ‘Yes, she was upset with me. She’s been rushing around like a demon all morning…’

  ‘Poor Hol. This dinner party has given her a lot of work, hasn’t it?’

  ‘She loves it,’ I retort. ‘She loves being the hostess with the mostest and having her family all around her…’

  ‘She does,’ he agrees softly, ‘but she’s under a bit of strain right now. Don’t take it to heart if she snapped at you. Is that the reason you’re hiding out here?’

  I shake my
head. He hasn’t asked me what I’ve done to upset Hollie, I notice. Perhaps he already knows?

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! Sometimes families are so complicated, aren’t they?’ Ruffles is standing up on the bench now, nuzzling his face into Richard’s neck. ‘It’s not so for dogs, is it?’

  He smiles into Ruffles’ fur.

  ‘D’you suppose Ruff still remembers the day he and I first came into your life? Is that why he adores you as much as he does?’

  ‘Do you remember that?’ Rich glances at me for a second. ‘I’d never seen such a forlorn sight. That hit-and-run driver just left you with the dog after he’d run over his legs.’

  ‘And you were just on your way to some important meeting. I remember you had your suit on and a briefcase. It was a Tuesday and it was raining and it was dark and there was hardly anybody else about and you picked him up and you told me to come along with you and you said…’

  ‘Whoa! A Tuesday?’ he interjects. ‘You’ve got some memory.’

  ‘You said…’I shoot him a glance ‘…you would take him to the vet’s for me and you did. You put him in your car and then you walked me to Hol’s office because you said I shouldn’t get in the car with a stranger.’

  ‘You were only – what – ten?’ He shrugs.

  ‘I was thirteen. Nearly fourteen. I was a late developer, that’s all.’ My fingers accidentally brush against his as we both stroke the dog and I put my hand in my pocket instead, getting out my mobile phone. ‘Look,’ I tell him, clicking on the photos icon on my phone and changing the subject. ‘These are the people who I need to get the money together for.’

  ‘These are your friends?’

  My friends. Yes. That’s Guillermo standing there in the middle with his arms about my bare waist. I look pretty good in that one. Pretty fit. There’s no mistaking the way he’s looking at me while everyone else is busy posing for the camera. I glance up at Richard to see if he’s noticed but if he has he isn’t showing it.