Not My Daughter

‘Will we tell them about the IVF?’ Matt asks.

‘Well, yes. Why shouldn’t we?’

‘And the egg and sperm donation?’ I hesitate, and he nods, as if I’ve said something important. ‘I know. I don’t want it to become this big thing. I don’t want to have to tell people all the time.’

Like I had to with my adoption. No, I definitely don’t want that, and yet it feels like something rather big not to say. It feels like a betrayal of my original desire to make this a conscious choice, a celebration, the vision I sold to Anna. But it’s not as if we have to go around shouting it from the rooftops, surely. People don’t trot out these kinds of facts at a dinner party. But then, this isn’t a dinner party.

‘I don’t know,’ I say slowly. ‘I know Mum and Dad would understand, but it feels private. I don’t want loads of people knowing before we’ve told our own child.’ Because all the literature I’ve read about egg and sperm donation advises you to tell the child about their origins from the outset. Honesty all the way.

And, if I’m painfully honest, I don’t like that idea much either. Forget that rosy vision I had, it all feels different now. It feels fraught, opening my child – and Matt and me – up to myriad complications and pain. Questions and doubt and that abominable caveat: These are my parents but…

‘Perhaps we should have thought about this earlier,’ I say as Matt takes the exit for Chepstow. ‘It feels a bit late now.’

‘There’s no need to rush anything. We don’t have to tell your parents everything right away. And, like you said, it’s private. Not telling them now doesn’t mean not telling them ever.’

It sounds so simple right then, almost obvious, and yet as we turn into my parents’ drive, part of me already knows we’ve made a big decision by keeping this secret, and it wasn’t one we said we were going to make. But right now, as Matt helps me out of the car, it feels like the right decision. The only one.

When she hears I am pregnant, my mother is both incredulous and tearful.

‘But this is so amazing… why didn’t you tell us?’

‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, until it was more certain.’ I hug her, and then apologise again, because that’s what I often do with my parents. ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t that we were trying to keep something from you…’

‘No, no,’ she says, patting my back, seeming a bit distracted. ‘It’s wonderful news. Truly wonderful. To think you’re going to have a baby, Milly…’ But I know, just as I’d predicted, that she’s hurt, and I feel terrible.

‘Champagne, I think,’ my father says grandly, and then winks at me. ‘Except for the mother-to-be! Milly, I can hardly believe I’m saying the words.’

I smile. ‘Me, either.’

‘We’re so thrilled for you, darling.’

And I know they are, of course they are, but I still feel guilty.

‘I should have told them before,’ I say to Matt when we’re driving home. ‘Mum feels I’ve kept something from her, hidden it. It’s like a betrayal to her.’

Matt shakes his head. ‘They’re thrilled, Milly.’

He never picks up the minuscule signals the way I do; he’s not finely tuned to that life channel. To him, the afternoon was an outstanding success: we toasted the baby, my dad shook his hand, my mum hugged us both, and they asked us questions about due dates and names, inspecting the blurry print-out of the scan as if they were studying a painting by a grand master.

But to me, despite all the happiness and excitement, the afternoon was marked with those infinitesimal moments of tension and disappointment. I felt it in the way my mother shot looks at my dad, the slight shrugs he gave her in response, the silences that stretched on before she struggled to ask another question. Matt saw none of that; he never has.

‘Anyway,’ he tells me gently as we turn into our road, ‘remember, your mum has cancer. If she seemed a bit, I don’t know, low energy, I’m sure that’s why.’

I say nothing, because I can hardly argue with that, and it’s not as if I’ve forgotten that my mum has cancer. Yet I know it was more than her illness today. I suspect I’ll receive a call from my dad tomorrow, when he’ll gently tell me about my mum’s hurt, in a way that isn’t meant to make me feel bad, but often does.

And, sure enough, that’s what happens. During my lunch break, while the Year Ones are running amok outside enjoying the spring sunshine, my dad’s number flashes up on my phone.

‘Milly.’ His voice sounds so warm, I feel guilty for resenting his phone call. ‘I just wanted to ring to say how absolutely thrilled we are with your news.’

‘Thanks, Dad.’

‘We were just a bit surprised, that you kept it to yourself for so long,’ he adds after the tiniest of pauses. ‘Considering how important it is, and how supportive we’ve wanted to be of you and your fertility treatment.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad, but I told you why we didn’t say anything.’ I speak as gently as I can. ‘It was just too hard, in case things went wrong.’ Which they still could. I’m only thirteen weeks; a miscarriage is definitely not out of the question.

‘Yes, but this is us, Milly. Your parents.’ He imbues the word with the special emphasis he and my mother always give it, as if they are somehow more my parents because I am adopted. They’ve certainly been more invested, and I am grateful for that. Of course I am.

‘I know, Dad. And I am sorry. But this felt like the right decision to us.’ I almost add that they took a few weeks to process my mother’s momentous news, but I don’t. It wouldn’t accomplish anything.