And then, before we had our session, when she asked if I needed to use her bathroom, as she always did, I said yes, because I actually really did.
Out of habit, I automatically opened the mirrored cabinet above her sink. I wasn’t really that interested. I knew exactly what I’d see: the supermarket brand moisturizer, the contact lens solution, the deodorant and razors, the handful of lipsticks and the little bottles of essential oils.
I nearly missed it. I was about to close the cupboard door when something different caught my eye: a long, flat rectangular box.
I picked it up without much interest, and then I felt something snag in my chest, like a sharp hook dragging and tearing at my heart.
It was a pregnancy test. I recognized it because I’d used this same brand myself. Many times.
The box was open.
I opened it and pulled out two long white plastic sticks. She’d already done both tests, wanting to double-check the result.
The little window on both tests showed the same symbol. The symbol I had longed for but never, ever seen.
The hypnotist is pregnant.
Chapter 9
You shall see nothing, hear nothing,
think of nothing but Svengali,
Svengali, Svengali!
—Svengali’s instruction to Trilby O’Ferrall in the classic novel
Trilby, by George Du Maurier
She kept forgetting for minutes at a time and then remembering.
It was only seven hours since she’d done the test. After putting down her diary and staring out the window for at least ten minutes, she had suddenly gone into a frenzy, as if someone else had taken over her body. She’d thrown on dirty clothes, driven into the village and double-parked in front of the local chemist, which was only just opening. The chatty gray-haired lady who normally sold Ellen hay fever medication had kept her face politely uninterested when Ellen asked her for a pregnancy test and double-sealed the top of the white paper bag while talking about the funny weather for this time of year.
Her first appointment of the day had knocked on the door while Ellen was still sitting on the edge of her grandmother’s bathtub, holding both undeniably positive pregnancy tests in her limp hand.
The morning passed in a blur. She had no idea whether her work had been abysmal or brilliant. She had chatted and listened and induced trances and written out receipts while an amazed voice in the back of her head chanted over and over: I’m pregnant, I’m pregnant, I’m actually pregnant.
It was much too soon. Only three months! Their relationship was far too new for the words “I’m pregnant.” It felt tasteless and tacky. Like something that happened to a teenage couple on a soapie.
Also, it was too medical. My period is late as a result of your sperm accidentally colliding with my egg through something faulty or slippery or otherwise relating to our condom usage, and I did a test that confirmed the level of pregnancy hormones in my urine and there you have it.
Putting that aside, did Patrick even want another child? At all? Ever? She thought he did, but now that she considered it, she saw that her beliefs were based on flimsy evidence, such as the fact that he adored his son, and she’d once seen him smile tenderly at a stranger’s baby, and his mother wanted him to have more children and he seemed very fond of his mother. Also, he was a lovely man, and lovely men should automatically want more babies because it was a biological imperative that they pass on the loveliness gene.
In fact, it was quite possible he’d smiled at that stranger’s baby because he was thinking, Thank God that’s all behind me.
She felt a cold chill at the thought. It was ridiculous. She knew so much about him—he was frightened of spiders, he couldn’t see the point of cucumber, he’d once punched a boy called Bruno—but she didn’t know this one essential point.
And let’s assume he did want another child, what would they actually, literally do?
Would they move in together? Into her house or his? Get married? She didn’t want to live in his house. The bath was too shallow and the kitchen too small and the color of the living room carpet was bad for her soul. She loved her grandparents’ house and working in this room and falling asleep to the sound of the sea. But maybe it would be disruptive to Jack to move him out of his home? And what about Jack? Was he ready to have a little brother or sister?
A little brother or sister. That gave her another fresh start. The baby was either a boy or a girl. That was already decided. Oh my goodness, she was having a baby. She suddenly felt weak with a strange feeling that she thought might be equal parts hysterical terror and blinding joy. A baby.
“Ellen? Could we get started?”
It was her two o’clock. Luisa. She had just returned from using Ellen’s bathroom and was looking at her with a faintly angry expression on her attractive, sculpted face. Ellen had always sensed an undercurrent of barely controlled fury in Luisa. She was a relatively new patient, a daughter of a friend of Julia’s mother. She was seeing Ellen for “unexplained infertility,” and she had made it quite clear that although she didn’t actually believe in “this sort of mind control stuff,” she had got to a point where she was willing to try anything. She said she was also seeing an acupuncturist, an herbalist and a dietitian. Imagine if Luisa knew that Ellen had accidentally, clumsily, foolishly, inconveniently become pregnant. The world was an extremely unfair place.
I was in my late thirties when I met Patrick, so I knew if I was ever going to have a baby he was my only chance. It wasn’t like I had to beg him or anything. He said yes straightaway. He even seemed excited by the idea—he kept talking about how he didn’t want Jack to be an only child—but then, as the months went by without anything happening, he seemed to lose interest.
He didn’t want to talk about it and he refused to see any doctors. He didn’t even want to try on the right days. He said, “I don’t want to hear that you’re ovulating.” As if ovulating was something disgusting.
In all honesty, he was a bit of a bastard about it.
I forgave him. I understood that it was different for men. They don’t have the biological drive.
He said, “Saskia, my love, if it’s not meant to be, it’s not meant to be.”
Which was true. We had Jack.
Except that it wasn’t true. He had Jack. I didn’t have Jack at all. And I wasn’t his love.
Turned out that it was meant to be. He was meant to have another baby, just not with me.