The Mother-in-Law

by Sally Hepworth

  Aarash is holding the vase again, peering into the hole at the top as if it’s a telescope. But hearing his mother’s voice, he sets it down hard on the floor. It doesn’t break but Ghezala puts her hand to her heart and closes her eyes.

  ‘Pick it up,’ I tell him. ‘It’s fine. Play with it.’

  I can’t find jobs for all of Ghezala’s friends, unfortunately. Even if Tom was alive, I couldn’t. I can, however, let Aarash and his sister play with my priceless vase. I can let them hold it or break it or use it as a telescope. And so, I will let them.

  ‘Where are Hakem’s sister and her husband living?’ I ask.

  ‘In an apartment near us,’ she says. ‘They know they are lucky. They’re just not as lucky as us. Not everyone has someone like you, Diana, to take them under their wing—’ We hear a sharp crack and Ghezala’s hands form a tent over her mouth. ‘Aarash! Oh no.’

  The vase is broken into three large pieces on the parquetry flooring. The children stare at it, stunned and terrified.

  I just laugh and laugh.

  52

  DIANA

  The past . . .

  ‘I have something to tell you,’ I say to Lucy, the week after my meeting at VEI. She is standing at my sink, washing dishes. Edie is at her feet playing with Tupperware containers and lids. I want to tell Lucy to leave the dishes, that I can do them myself, but I’m not sure I can. I feel bone-tired, weighed down, like I could lay my head on the kitchen counter and never lift it up again. Besides that, the fact is I’m enjoying being looked after. It doesn’t come close to filling the gap that Tom left. But it fills it a little.

  ‘What is it?’ Lucy asks.

  ‘I saw Dr Paisley last week.’

  Lucy wipes a hair out of her face with a gloved hand. ‘I didn’t know you had a doctor’s appointment.’

  ‘It was a follow-up appointment. To get some test results.’

  She gives me a funny look. ‘Test results for what?’

  ‘Mammogram and ultrasound. My regular two-yearly appointments.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lucy picks up a tea towel. ‘You should have told me, I would have driven you.’

  ‘I’m not an invalid, I can drive myself.’

  Lucy looks hurt. ‘I didn’t say you were an invalid.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say quickly. ‘That was rude. You’ve been a great help to me these past few months.’

  Now she looks touched. How easily words can affect this one. It almost makes me regret what I’m about to say.

  ‘I have breast cancer, Lucy. Quite advanced.’

  She freezes, a plate in her hand. Dishwater drips from her fingertips down onto the floor. ‘Diana, no.’

  ‘I haven’t told the children yet. I will, of course. But I wanted to tell you first. Actually, I was hoping you could help me.’

  ‘Of course I will help you.’ Lucy puts the plate down. ‘I can be here when you tell them. I will help support them . . . and you—’

  ‘No,’ I interrupt. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ I search around for the words I’d planned, but they don’t come to me. All of this is harder than I thought. ‘I need help with . . . something else.’

  Lucy removes her gloves. ‘What do you need help with?’

  ‘I need to buy some things. Online. But, you see . . . I need an encrypted email address and bitcoins. I thought you might know how to get these.’

  Lucy blinks. At first she is confused, but slowly I see it morph into suspicion.

  ‘Have you been taking your medication, Diana?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re feeling better?’

  I shrug. ‘Tom’s still dead. No drug is going to change that.’

  We drift into silence, apart from Edie playing happily on the floor. I watch as understanding comes to Lucy’s face.

  ‘And now,’ she says slowly, ‘you’ve discovered you’re sick and you want to buy something online that requires an encrypted email address and bitcoins?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It’s funny. For so long I’ve felt at such a disconnect with her. And yet it’s amazing what I’ve been able to communicate with her with so few words.

  ‘Diana—’

  ‘If I tell you any more, Lucy, I will be exposing you to trouble so please don’t ask. I’m going to write a letter which will make my intentions clear. No one will ever know you were involved. Not Ollie. Not anyone.’

  She closes her eyes. ‘Diana—’

  ‘Do this for me, Lucy. Please. You’re the only one I can ask.’

  It’s the truth. Ollie and Nettie would never help me. I’m their mother, which means in our relationship they will always be children and will only see things from their own perspectives. They won’t want me to die, and that will be the end of that. But Lucy sees me differently. Like a mother-in-law, yes. But also as a woman.

  Which means, for this, a daughter-in-law is perfect.

  ‘Please don’t ask this of me, Diana,’ she says, and then we stand there in silence while dirty dishwater drips onto my kitchen floor.

  53

  LUCY

  The present . . .

  I take the long way home from the police headquarters. As I drive, questions circle in my head. Is this what you wanted, Diana? For me to go to jail? Was involving me all part of your elaborate plan? Or did your plan go horribly wrong somewhere along the line? My mind swirls with all the possibilities and the worst part is that I can’t simply ask her.

  I left the police station after claiming no knowledge. Now I am going to have to get in touch with a lawyer. Not Gerard, we can’t afford him. Actually, we can’t afford anyone. We’re going to have to declare bankruptcy, we have no inheritance coming our way. I’ll probably have to find someone from Legal Aid.

  I look at all the pieces of my life that have fallen apart in recent weeks. My husband’s business has failed. We’re bankrupt. My formerly pleasant relationship with my sister-in-law has soured. And my mother-in-law is dead. The funny thing is, until recently, news of my mother-in-law’s death wouldn’t have been devastating (beyond the obvious feelings of sympathy for my husband and children). But now the loss cuts deep.

  It’s quiet when I let myself into the house. Then I hear Ollie.

  ‘Lucy?’ he whispers.

  I drop the keys into the bowl and follow his voice to the bedroom. The bedside lamp is on and Ollie is sitting on the edge of the bed in his boxer shorts.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask.

  ‘Not really,’ he says. ‘I want to explain why I was at Mum’s the day she died.’

  Why I was at Mum’s the day she died. It takes me a minute to understand what he is talking about, but then I remember. Before I went to the police station, Ollie had admitted he was at Diana’s house the day she died. That conversation seems like a million years ago.

  ‘Okay.’ I sit beside him on the bed and flick on the bedside lamp. ‘Explain.’

  ‘I dropped in for a visit,’ he says. ‘I wanted to tell her about my business troubles.’

  ‘But . . . why didn’t you tell me that?’ I ask, frustrated. ‘I’ve known for a week about your business troubles.’

  Ollie looks down and suddenly I’m afraid of his answer. I don’t think Ollie is capable of hurting his mother, but obviously something happened during that meeting. Something he didn’t want me to know. I don’t think I can take another shock, another betrayal. But judging by the look of determination in Ollie’s face, it looks like I’m not going to have a choice.

  ‘Because a long time ago,’ he says, dropping his head into his hands, ‘you made me promise I’d never ask Mum for money again.’

  54

  DIANA

  The past . . .

  I meet Nettie at a café, at her suggestion. Nettie and I don’t usually meet at cafés, but nothing is normal lately.

  I told the children that I have breast cancer a couple of weeks ago. Ollie went through the motions of shock and sadness, which I expected. Nettie’s reaction was less expected.
I thought she’d have a controlled but concerned reaction—asking for information, statistics, names of doctors. But she hadn’t asked a single question. Her mind had been elsewhere, even then.

  Since Tom died, I’ve noticed her behaviour has become increasingly odd. Every so often she’ll come to the house, but rather than speak to me, she’ll just wander about searching for Tom in the folds of the curtains and the creases of the sofa. She never says that is what she is doing, but I know because I do it too. Once, just a few weeks after Tom’s death, I came home and found her curled up on his side of the bed. I left her there and snuck away. Sometimes we need to grieve together, and sometimes we need to grieve alone.

  As I approach the café, I notice there’s a playground across the road full of mothers bundled in puffer jackets pushing babies in strollers or shouting up at older kids who have climbed to the top of a climbing frame to come down for morning tea. I am wondering if I should find us a table inside, away from it all—after all, why make it worse for Nettie?—when I see her sitting at a table out the front.

  ‘Mum!’

  I nearly don’t recognise her. She’s thinner than she’s ever been and her skin is sallow and pale, and yet at the same time she looks slightly more alive than the last time I saw her. The idea flickers through my mind that she might be pregnant. I can’t decide if that would be good news or not.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ I kiss her cheek and sit opposite her on a cold metal chair. There are mushroom heaters dotted about and woollen blankets on the backs of the chairs, but it doesn’t replace the shelter of four walls, in my opinion. ‘Isn’t it a little cold out here?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Nettie smiles.

  Nettie comes across, I’m assured by most people I know, as a happy, cheery person who never has a bad word to say about anyone. And she is, indeed, smiley—at least she used to be. But there are some things only a mother can tell. This smile, for instance, is not indicative of happiness. It is a smile of strategy; a smile of digging her heels in. It’s a smile that says: We’re sitting outside. If you don’t want to, you’re going to have to be the one to rock the boat. Every one of Nettie’s smiles means something.

  ‘If you’re fine,’ I say with a smile of my own, ‘we’ll stay.’

  It occurs to me that I should be taking every opportunity to be outside. I should be breathing in fresh air, walking in the mountains and working my way through my bucket list. But my bucket list is fairly short, fairly uninspiring. In fact, the only thing on my bucket list is to spend time with my family, and to make sure they are going to be okay after I leave them behind.

  ‘The website you need for the email address is here,’ Lucy said a couple of weeks ago, thrusting a piece of paper at me. She arrived at my house unannounced again, and started talking double-time, as if she’d chicken out if she didn’t. ‘Regarding bitcoins, the first thing you need to do is get a bitcoin wallet. There’s an app you can download to your phone. Then you need to buy some bitcoins. You should be able to do this direct from the app.’

  I stared at her. She might as well have been speaking Chinese. She’d watched me for a second, then sighed and reached for my phone.

  Now I have two bottles of the drug, Latuben, in my fridge door, ready to drink. (It is tasteless, apparently, and should be drunk by itself, though you can follow it with a glass of wine if you wish.) I’ve written the letter. I need to see Gerard about the will—I will leave every cent to the charity to ensure that none of my family can be seen to benefit from my death. I’ll let the children know what I’ve done. And then I’ll go and see Tom, wherever he is.

  The waitress arrives and Nettie and I both order tea.

  ‘How are you?’ I ask Nettie when the waitress is gone.

  ‘I’m good,’ she says, and then there are a few beats of silence. ‘I mean, I’m not pregnant, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘I did wonder. I’m sorry, darling.’

  ‘Yes, well it’s what I wanted to talk to you about. At the last IVF appointment Dr Sheldon said there were two problems, my eggs and my uterus. She said my best chance would be to use a donor egg and a surrogate.’

  The waitress returns with our drinks and places them on the table before us.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says.

  I lift the cup to my mouth. ‘Really? I don’t even know what I’m thinking.’

  ‘Listen, I get it. It took me a while to process it too. I mean, it wouldn’t be biologically my child, I wouldn’t carry it in my body. At first I wasn’t really on board. Then I started thinking . . . it would be a child created by us, for us. I would be able to be part of the pregnancy, I would be there at the birth. I would still be a mother. And Mum, that is the most important thing to me.’

  ‘What about adoption?’ I ask, and Nettie’s face falls. I realise that this is when I am supposed to get swept up in excitement, and I’ve failed her.

  ‘Do you know how many adoptions took place in Victoria last year?’ she says. ‘Six. Six! Four of which were inter-family. Adopting is nearly impossible in Australia.’

  ‘And surrogacy? That’s possible in Australia?’

  ‘There is altruistic surrogacy here. Where a friend or family member offers to do it. I asked Lucy, but she wasn’t open to the idea.’ Nettie is speaking quickly; she sounds almost manic. Her hands, I notice, are shaking. ‘And it’s illegal to be a surrogate for financial gain. The most common way, and the route our doctor suggested, is to source a donor egg from India and pay a surrogate in the USA. The thing is . . . it’s not cheap. The process, including the eggs, the insemination, the surrogate’s medical expenses and fees, our travel . . . it will all come to well over a hundred thousand.’

  She finally pauses, takes a breath. Her eyes lock on mine.

  ‘A hundred thousand dollars?’ I stare at her. ‘Can you afford that?’

  Nettie holds my gaze. ‘No. But you can.’

  I put my teacup back in its saucer. Suddenly I understand the purpose of the visit. I feel a little foolish that it’s taken me this long.

  ‘You wouldn’t even miss the money,’ she says, already countering my yet-to-vocalise arguments. ‘And it would be a grandchild!’

  ‘But what if it didn’t work?’ I say, turning it over in my mind. ‘What if we found a surrogate and you implanted an embryo and it didn’t . . . take? What then?’

  ‘We’ll try again.’

  ‘How many times, Nettie? At a hundred thousand dollars per go?’

  She shrugs as if it’s a minor detail, something that can be ironed out later. ‘As many as it takes, I guess.’

  How have I not seen this? I knew she was desperate to have a baby, I suspected she might even be depressed because of it. But today I wonder if it’s more than that. If it’s the beginning—or middle—of a descent into madness.

  ‘So what you’re really asking me for,’ I say carefully, ‘is access to unlimited funds.’

  ‘This is my last chance. I need you, Mum.’

  All at once I’m back at Orchard House, sitting opposite my mother, begging. Begging for my baby. I close my eyes, take a breath.

  ‘I’ll think about it, okay?’

  55

  DIANA

  The past . . .

  I’m standing in the dining room sorting through donations of baby clothes when I hear the distinct sound of footsteps on the parquetry floor. I go very still. The footsteps are heavier than Nettie’s, less precise and careful. It is in moments like these that I see my vulnerability—an older woman alone in a cavernous house—and it feels like a shock. I creep a few steps toward the double doors and catch a glimpse of a huge, lumbering shadow.

  ‘Oh.’ I find my heart. ‘Patrick, it’s you.’

  ‘Sorry to sneak up on you,’ he says. ‘The door was unlocked.’

  Patrick doesn’t often drop by for a visit. I’m not sure he ever has without Nettie.

  ‘I need to talk to you about Nettie,’ he says.

  He pulls out the c
hair closest to me and sits. I remain standing.

  ‘What’s wrong with Nettie?’ I ask.

  Patrick raises an eyebrow. ‘Are you seriously asking what is wrong with Nettie?’

  As I recover from my surprise, irritation kicks in. Patrick has a nerve coming here, speaking to me like this, when everyone in the world knows he’s messing around on my daughter. ‘This is about the surrogacy?’ I upend a new bag of baby clothes onto the table.

  ‘What else?’ Absently, Patrick picks up a tiny knitted jacket. ‘I’m assuming Nettie has her wires crossed because she says you’re thinking about paying for it.’

  I fold a onesie and put it into the newborn pile. ‘And you’ve come to plead your case?’

  ‘Actually I’ve come to plead the opposite.’

  I admit I’m lost. In the many visits I’ve had from my children and their spouses, never has anyone asked me not to give money.

  ‘Nettie would kill me if she knew I was here, obviously.’ Patrick looks out the window, onto the garden. ‘She’s on a mission for a baby. She’s obsessed by it.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’

  ‘You don’t know anything.’ He raises his voice, cutting through any pretence of decorum between us. ‘It’s like she’s possessed. Some days I’ll be talking to her and it’s like she’s not even there! Her legs and stomach are covered in bruises from injecting herself with hormones. She spends her entire life on the internet reading stories from people who managed to conceive after years of trying. She trawls through forums of people who have done IUI or IVF or, lately, surrogacy. She doesn’t talk about anything else. Nothing else.’ He tosses the little jacket back onto the table.

  For a moment I’m taken aback. Only a moment. ‘That must have been awful for you. No wonder you had to find multiple girlfriends to ease your burden.’

  Patrick’s eyes creep up to meet mine.

  ‘You’ll need to go a little further away than country Victoria if you want to keep a secret around here, Patrick.’