by Jo Lovett
Anyway, the room was lovely as waiting rooms went. But it was not comfortable being here. She really needed something to do. She got her phone out.
She should have googled ‘what to expect at your first fertility appointment’ in advance. She’d kind of been blanking it out until now, when blanking was no longer possible, since it was happening. Thinking about anything ob/gyn-related brought back terrible memories of losing the baby. Her last appointment had been six weeks afterwards, and she’d had to have an unexpected internal scan (bad) done by a man (even worse). She’d then had a discussion with a female doctor who’d told her with an ill-placed big smile that all was well and you’d never know she’d ever been pregnant. Especially because I don’t have a baby to show for it, Cassie had screamed. She’d thought she’d screamed it out loud and had then realised that the noise had only been inside her head, and had wondered if she was going mad with grief.
Actually, she’d moved on enormously from there, to be able to be sitting here perfectly normally.
And now she was finally reading what Google had to say about what to expect. Basically, it varied. Sometimes there was an internal scan to check your ovaries and uterus, sometimes there wasn’t. Maybe the leaflets the clinic had sent would have told her but she’d been too stressed to read them. There was likely to be a lot of chat. Maybe some blood tests.
In summary, it was likely to be a crappy morning. But it would be more than worth it if things worked out.
Yep. It had been a crappy morning. Cassie walked up the steps from the clinic onto Harley Street. Funny how out here the world was just going on as normal, while in there such huge things happened.
A man in paint-splattered overalls bumped into her and said, ‘Cheer up, love, it might never happen.’
And that was the whole point. It might indeed never happen. Oh God. Her eyes were filling again.
She’d spent the entire morning in there. She’d had a couple of blood tests and was going to have to go back next week to have some more on a different day of her cycle. As feared, she’d had an internal scan, which had actually been better than expected because the woman who’d done it had been very understanding and had said that she knew that no woman ever was keen to take her underwear off, hitch her dress up, cover herself in paper and stretch her knees ‘wider please, if you wouldn’t mind’.
As it turned out, those had been the best parts of the morning.
The bad part had been the ‘chat’. Cassie had cried. She clearly wasn’t the first, because they’d had tissues on hand and had seemed completely unsurprised, but still.
Now she had a headache and a lot to think about. If she was going to go ahead, she needed to choose her sperm, from a well-regulated supplier. And she had to attend ‘implications counselling’. She needed to be aware that there was the risk of failure. Well, duh. And that going through pregnancy and looking after a baby by yourself were both hard. Again, duh; and also, yes, going through pregnancy by yourself would be a challenge, but, frankly, it would be a hell of a lot easier than going through it with a selfish, uninterested partner.
To be fair, there was a lot to consider. Doing it by herself would be very stressful and there could be a lot of heartache involved. Maybe she should explore adoption.
Too many thoughts.
What Cassie needed now was some carb and chocolate-heavy lunch and to distract herself with work.
She began the afternoon with a walk round South Kensington for research purposes, past immaculately kept white stucco houses in side streets, and then up Exhibition Road past the famous Science, Natural History and Victoria & Albert museums and into Hyde Park. She saw beautiful architecture, and beautiful trees and shrubs in the park. And, honestly, what felt like literally thousands of beautiful babies. Everywhere. In buggies, strapped to people’s chests, being carried in people’s arms, some older ones toddling around very gorgeously. And when she tried to look away from the babies, her gaze just encountered glowing pregnant women. Literally everywhere. It was like she’d been transported into some baby-filled parallel universe.
It had been like this after she’d had the miscarriage. Everywhere she’d looked there’d been happy parents with babies and young children.
If she did IVF and it didn’t work out, it would be so hard. And now she was feeling physically sick to the stomach at the memory of when she’d realised that something had gone terribly wrong with her pregnancy.
Could she do it? Would she regret it if she didn’t try?
A gorgeous nutmeg-brown Labrador ran past her, chasing a stick.
Maybe she should get a dog. She loved the alpacas and the chickens. Animals were great. She’d explored the IVF idea, which had been the right thing to do, and now she should move on. Having a baby would be a huge undertaking by herself. Island living was hard in the winter. She was lucky. She had a lot of friends and the animals. Better to move on from the baby plan and, yes, get a dog, and focus on the good things in her life, including work and her new books.
A text pinged through from James.
Cleaner – don’t worry – I have her covered.
Okay, well that was nice. There was still something very irritating about him, though. And what was even more irritating was that every time she thought about him, she remembered how hot he was. It didn’t seem right to find supremely irritating people attractive.
Nine
James
James picked his coffee cup up to head back inside after sending Cassie a quick text. If he was honest, he knew he should have replied politely to her Wi-Fi apology message but he’d been too angry, and now it felt like the moment had passed. Anyway, whatever, he was still paying for the cleaner and neither of them was going to get angry about that. The Wi-Fi situation was still really pissing him off but hopefully he’d be able to get it sorted soon.
‘Hullo. You must be James.’ A middle-aged woman carrying a lidded casserole dish had come round the side of the house. ‘I’m Isla Brown, Don’s wife.’ She said it like James would know who Don was. There was a lot of extreme friendliness on this island. ‘How are you doing today? I know Cassie left a lot of meals for you but she only cooks European food and her fancy Middle Eastern dishes. I thought you’d like to have a New England speciality. I have Maine-style clam chowder for you.’
‘Thank you. Very kind of you.’ It was kind of her, but he hoped she didn’t want to question him the way Laura had.
‘It’s my pleasure.’ She was beaming at him. ‘We’re so pleased that you’re here. We were so sad when our wonderful Cassie said that she was leaving for a few months, and we already miss her so much, but it’s great to have a new neighbour to get to know.’ Wonderful Cassie. Really? ‘Have you settled in? What do you like to do in your spare time? We have a lot of different activities on the island. There’s something for everyone.’ Isla looked like she was keen to linger. She was edging towards the kitchen door.
‘That’s great.’ James stepped forward and took the casserole from her. ‘Thank you again for this. I’d love to chat but unfortunately I have a conference call starting in a couple of minutes.’
‘Another time. Perhaps at the weekend. Good to meet you. Enjoy the chowder.’
‘Thanks.’ James carried the casserole dish into the kitchen, telling himself that he really didn’t need to feel any guilt about rejecting her obviously well-meant friendship advances because he was busy.
James sat back and stretched. Cassie’s desk chair was fantastic, he had to give her that. He wondered what she did for a job, given that you could do pretty much anything remotely now. She’d said ‘Writer’. That could mean a lot of things or it could be a cover. Chief exec of a major corporate. Underwear designer. Spy. He’d discovered via Google that her last job was as a solicitor in Glasgow. Her digital trail had ended pretty abruptly four years ago, when she moved here.
What time was it now? Good God. Only half four. Time was pretty much standing still today. Shocking to realise how much your phone and your
colleagues distracted you, and also made your day go faster. Maybe he should have invited Isla in for a cup of tea. Nope. He wasn’t that lonely.
Time to stretch his legs and check his phone.
It was raining but maybe he’d take a walk up to the end of the garden and to the field, take a look at Cassie’s animals.
The alpacas were taking refuge from the downpour under a large, wide tree. They were clearly the source of the clicking he’d heard a couple of times.
Where were the chickens Cassie had referred to? It was hard to see. Would they have some kind of chicken house? Yep, there was an enclosure in the top corner of the field, containing a wooden hut surrounded by a large wire enclosure. The chickens must be inside, and who could blame them.
‘Hey.’ The woman’s voice in James’s ear was a shock. The sound of her approach had obviously been masked by the pounding rain. ‘I’m Dina. You must be James.’
James took the hand she was offering for a sodden handshake.
‘Yes, I am. I presume you’re one of Cassie’s neighbours?’ She had to be the woman who’d waved manically at him a couple of times while he was swimming and who he glimpsed walking up the garden past the house from time to time. ‘Are you the person kindly looking after the animals?’ Why was he feeling grateful to her? They weren’t his animals and there was nothing wrong with his choice to have nothing to do with them.
‘Yes, I’m Cassie’s neighbour and we’re also very good friends. I live just around the headland. And, yes, I’m looking after the animals while she’s away. It’s great to meet you.’ Dina was around his age and was wearing a lot of glossy, bright-red lipstick and a large smile. Applying serious make-up didn’t seem like an obvious choice before going to feed animals in heavy rain, but maybe that was island life for you. Maybe this was going to be the highlight of her day and she was dressed for it. Or maybe her island life was a lot fuller than James’s was shaping up to be, and she was on her way somewhere else.
‘Good to meet you, too.’ Sad to say, he wasn’t lying. There was only so much isolation a person could enjoy. If he’d known how time was going to start dragging, he probably wouldn’t have ignored her when she waved at him.
‘I’m just here to collect the eggs. Wanna come see?’
James opened his mouth to say thanks but no thanks, and then thought about his plans for the evening. Work. The chowder – might as well eat it. Whatever there was on US terrestrial TV. Yeah, he could stand to spend a few minutes looking at chicken eggs with an attractive woman.
The egg collecting surprised James. There were more eggs than he’d expected, and they varied in colour and size a lot more than he’d thought they would. There were blue – properly blue – ones, some regular egg-coloured ones, some very pale ones. Apparently most of the chickens laid an egg most days, especially during the summer; and the gigantic ones were double-yolked and from the youngest hens.
‘Does each chicken lay the same colour egg each day or do they vary?’ he asked, genuinely interested in the answer. Really, almost nothing had happened in his life today.
Dina laughed. ‘Spoken like a city boy. Each chicken lays pretty much the same coloured eggs each day.’
‘And what do we do with all the eggs?’ We. Like this was anything to do with him.
‘Cassie gives them to her neighbours. There’s a lot of that on the island. People sharing their produce. Laura contributes a lot of blueberry bakes.’
‘That’s nice.’ In a weird, living-in-a-nineteenth-century-children’s-story kind of way.
They were walking back towards the house now. Dina seemed like good company by any measure. Compared to having no-one other than Laura to talk to, she was great company. James was almost tempted to ask her in for coffee, except she’d already told him that she was single and she’d been directing a lot of her red-lipsticked smiles at him. He really didn’t need another dating-type misunderstanding in the near future. Maybe something could happen towards the end of his stay, when it would be obvious that he’d be leaving soon.
‘So I’ll maybe see you at the island dinner on Saturday evening?’ Dina was hovering but he wasn’t going to ask her in for coffee.
‘Island dinner?’
‘It’s in the community hall, at seven. Everyone on the island goes.’
James hesitated for a second. Life here was not exciting. Saturday was going to be a slow day. But, no, going to a dinner with everyone on the island would really not improve the day. There was bored and there was desperate.
‘Yeah, unfortunately I have plans,’ he said. Plans? What plans could he possibly have?
‘Okay, well, if you change your mind, you know where I am. Next door, that way.’ Dina pointed, shot him another big red smile, and sashayed off round the side of the house.
In fact, checking out the chickens was the joint highlight of his day, along with getting a Wi-Fi engineer to agree to come out by the end of next week. Next week, and James wasn’t even tempted to tear a strip off him, he was so grateful. Turned out telecoms engineers had an aversion to doing jobs on islands.
The low point was being bored enough to open an email from his father. He nearly didn’t open it. He should stick to his resolve not to engage. Although when you were on the other side of the world, on a fairly remote island, with a new phone number that you’d only given to people you liked, it felt somewhat as though you were protected. If he read it, his father would never know. So he opened it.
It was the first time the man had been in touch since the death of James’s mother nine months ago and he hadn’t referred to her at all. He wanted to borrow some money from James because he was raising capital for an investment in an organic vineyard in the Greater Manchester area. James wasn’t an expert in viticulture but he was pretty sure that all the signs were that this wasn’t a great business opportunity. Also, over his dead body would he go into business with his father. He pressed Delete.
Bad idea even to read the email. He shouldn’t have given his new email address to his father. The email had made him think about his mother, and that had made him think about Ella and Leonie.
He sent Ella a guilt message telling her about the island and the alpacas and chickens, for his nieces’ benefit. She was up late and sent an immediate – very chatty – reply, with a couple of references to Leonie, which James couldn’t deal with. He’d get back to her in a week or two, when enough time had elapsed for him not to need to refer back to what she’d written.
Not a great evening.
When Dina went past in the morning on her way to feed the animals, he was almost tempted to join her.
He flicked through the animal part of Cassie’s notes while he was eating his breakfast. Extraordinary. The top part was actually an animal master list. There were sub lists. Feed. Exercise. Vet numbers. Egg collection instructions. Egg distribution suggestions. And so on. The three alpacas and the eleven chickens had names. Of course they did. He was guessing that none of the chickens would be ending up as a roast dinner.
Maybe he should start helping Dina with the animals.
Yeah, maybe not.
The solitude was definitely getting to him. Good job he’d be going down to Boston and New York for the occasional night on business.
Early afternoon, after several hours of back-to-back Zoom meetings moving an uncomfortable (brightly coloured) metal chair around the garden the whole time to get out of the sun’s glare, he took a kayak out.
This was the first time the sea had been calm enough for him to go far. Twenty minutes’ hard paddling took him round the headland and into a bay with a shallow beach bordered by shrubs and woodland.
James paddled himself over to the beach and got out.
Wow. This was like a little piece of paradise. It was completely secluded. All he could see was the ocean in front of him and vegetation behind and to either side. This must be a wildlife haven. Tourists would love it.
Whoever owned the land and beach had to be sitting on a goldmine. Or, who
ever found the owner and bought the land would be sitting on a goldmine. James needed to do some research. You could build an eco-hotel here and charge rich people a fortune to fly from the far corners of the world to take a green holiday. You could include a charge for offsetting on their behalf the carbon footprint for the flights they’d take. You could have them fish for their own supper and cook it themselves and thank you for it. In fact, you could charge rich people to come and build the hotel for you as an experience-vacation. This was the perfect project. Total serendipity that there looked to be an amazing business opportunity right under his nose.
It took several hours of digging to find the owner of the plot. C. Adair. Cassie, or a relative. Had to be; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. If it was Cassie herself, she must be quite wealthy. Inheritance? Or whatever job it was she did? She’d really covered her tracks, like she really hadn’t wanted anyone to know that she was the owner, which was slightly odd.
So far, he’d found her pretty annoying, and in an ideal world, he’d minimise conversations with her until they ended the swap, and then not speak again. But he knew he’d regret it if he didn’t at least try to buy or lease the land from her. Unfortunately, they weren’t on great terms, post the Wi-Fi argument. He was going to have to swallow his pride and improve relations between them.
The woman herself gave him the ideal opportunity the next day.
Hi James,
I hope you’re settling in. Hope it hasn’t been too rainy for you – it isn’t normally that wet on the island, especially as we head into the summer, honest (!!).
I’m writing because there’s a little favour that I’d like to ask that I didn’t really want to put in the notes I left for you; and it’s too long for a text…
