Nine Perfect Strangers

‘So you might not be pregnant?’ asked Ben. Jessica couldn’t tell if his shoulders dropped with relief or disappointment.

‘I am,’ said Jessica.

‘What makes you think so?’ asked Carmel.

‘I just know,’ said Jessica. ‘I could tell. As soon as it happened.’

‘You mean you knew at the moment of conception?’ said Carmel. Jessica saw her exchange a look with Heather, as if to say: Can you believe this shit? Older women could be so condescending.

‘Well, you know, some mothers do say they could tell they were pregnant at the moment of conception,’ said Heather kindly. ‘Maybe she is.’

‘I bet a lot of women think they “know” and then it turns out they’re wrong,’ said Carmel.

‘What’s the big deal?’ said Jessica. Why did this strange fuzzy-haired woman sound so angry with her? ‘I mean, I know, we weren’t meant to be touching during the silence.’ She glanced up at the silent dark eye of the camera watching them. ‘We weren’t meant to be taking drugs either.’

The sex had happened in the dark on their second night at the retreat. Not a word spoken. It was all blind, silent touch, and it had been raw and real, and afterwards she lay awake and felt a wave of peace wash over her, because if their marriage was over, so be it, but now there was going to be a baby, and even if they didn’t love each other anymore, the baby was created from a moment of love.

‘But wait, she’s on the pill,’ said Ben to Heather and Carmel, as if Jessica weren’t even there. ‘Can that happen?’

‘Only abstinence is one hundred per cent effective, but if she’s . . .’ Heather looked at Jessica. ‘If you’ve been taking the pill every day, at the same time, it’s probably unlikely that you’re pregnant.’

Jessica sighed. ‘I went off the pill two months ago.’

‘Ah,’ said Heather.

‘Without telling me,’ said Ben. ‘You went off the pill without telling me.’

‘Uh-oh,’ said Lars quietly.

‘You didn’t mention this last night,’ said Ben. ‘When we were “speaking from our hearts”.’

He sarcastically quoted Masha, his face stone-hard, and Jessica thought about last night, and how their words had flowed like water. But she hadn’t told him last night about going off the pill. She’d still kept secrets even when she was high. Because she’d known it was a betrayal.

She should have said it last night, when his face was all soft and she felt like they were two halves of one person. She’d felt like that was a beautiful truth the drugs had helped her discover, but it had been a beautiful lie.

‘Yeah,’ said Jessica. She lifted her chin and remembered the kissing and how, as they’d kissed, a single thought had blinked on and off like a neon sign in her head: We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re okay.

But they weren’t okay. Nothing she’d thought last night had been real. It was all just drugs. Drugs lied. Drugs fucked you up. She and Ben knew that better than anyone. Sometimes Ben’s mother sat and cried over the pictures of Lucy before she fell for the lies of drugs. Now that was a ‘transformation’.

‘Don’t waste your money on this stupid retreat,’ Jessica’s own mother had said before they came here. ‘Give all that money to charity and go back to work. Then your marriage will be just fine. You’ll have something to talk about at the end of the day.’

Her mother seriously thought Jessica could go back and work in that shitkicker job when she now earned more in bank interest in just on

e month than she used to earn in a whole year. Jessica couldn’t make her mother understand that once you had that much money you were changed forever. You were worth more. You were better than that. You couldn’t go back, because you could never see yourself that way again. Rationally, she knew it was just dumb luck that had got her rich, but deep, deep down an insistent voice in her head told her: I deserve this, I was meant for this, I AM this person, I was always this person.

‘Oh dear. Take it from someone who knows: getting pregnant is not the best way to try to save a marriage,’ said Carmel.

‘Well, thanks, but I wasn’t trying to save my marriage,’ said Jessica.

‘What were you trying to do, Jess?’ asked Ben quietly, and for a moment it was like last night, just the two of them together in their little boat floating down a river of ecstasy.

‘I wanted a baby,’ said Jessica.

She was going to document her journey on Instagram. Sideways shots of her ‘baby bump’. A stylish gender reveal party. Blue or pink balloons would fly out of a box. Hopefully pink. People would put heart emojis in the comments.

‘I was scared you’d say no,’ she told Ben. ‘I thought if we were going to break up I’d better hurry up and get pregnant.’

‘Why would I say no? We always said we’d have children,’ said Ben.