But my focus is now on a different expansion of Team Lowe. I found that I couldn’t concentrate on work for very long, not really caring if someone hadn’t paid their invoice for six weeks or whether the order was going out correctly. Greg suggested I take some time off, but instead of relaxing, I find myself trawling the internet looking at nursery ideas, baby names, anything related to a child I haven’t had yet and feeling the weight of it all crushing my chest. The nursery has been redecorated after every failed pregnancy because I don’t want my child to be haunted by the ghosts of siblings past. Greg just agrees to anything I suggest, despite the cost.
He’s good that way.
I can feel tears pricking at my eyes as we climb into the car. I don’t want to face another disappointment. But I can’t not keep trying. The idea of the family we want consumes me.
I don’t want to think about what will happen if I never achieve my dream – or the lengths I will go to make it happen.
I know I will do anything.
6
Maddie hung her house keys on a nail behind the door when they returned to her flat.
‘That’s a good idea, that is,’ Jade says, pointing at the keys. ‘I can never find mine.’
Maddie went into the kitchen to find wine, glasses and some crisps or something. The morning’s excitement had left her starving. The wine was Jade’s idea. ‘Somewhere in the world it’s five o’clock’, she’d said and Maddie could do with steadying her nerves. She still felt twitchy and nervous, like ants were crawling on her skin. She expected her phone to ring at any moment, Gemma shouting at her, accusing her, or Greg telling her how disappointed he was.
Instead, it was Jade’s phone that chirped, but Maddie still jumped. Jade was reading the text message and smiling. ‘Ben is coming home, so there’ll be plenty of time for you to take him swimming tomorrow if you still want to,’ she said.
‘That’s great! You know, I’m happy to babysit any time if you need a night out with Deon or some time for yourself. You just have to ask.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
‘You’ll have to start thinking about schools soon, won’t you? He’ll be four before you know it.’
Jade paled. Perhaps she wasn’t as tough as she made out as the idea seemed to upset her.
‘You’ll miss him when he’s at school all day, I bet,’ Maddie said softly. ‘Still, it means you could get a job, which would work in your favour for the custody arrangement.’
‘Yeah, I guess.’ Maddie handed Jade a wineglass and Jade drank half in one gulp. ‘I’m hungry,’ she said. ‘Let’s get Chinese – you got any money? I’m so skint at the minute.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Maddie said, the earlier nervous energy replaced by bubbling excitement at seeing Ben tomorrow.
*
Maddie watched as Jade poured herself another glass of sauvignon blanc. She offered the bottle to Maddie, but she waved it away. Her glass was still full, but Jade was knocking it back. She kept fiddling with a necklace at her throat, a delicate silver chain with a small lightning bolt hanging at the nape of her throat. It was very pretty, not something she would’ve thought was Jade’s taste.
They’d had Chinese food delivered and the empty plastic containers littered the coffee table.
‘That is quite a house you had,’ Jade said. ‘Your Greg does well, doesn’t he?’
‘He’s not mine anymore.’
‘Yeah, but I bet he could be if you wanted him. Sounds like he’s still very much in the picture.’
‘With Gemma having Jemima, that would never happen. He’s devoted to Jemima and they’re trying for another baby apparently.’
‘Why didn’t you have one yourself? Unexplained infertility, you said. What’s that then?’
Maddie’s stomach lurched, as it did every time someone asked why they didn’t have a family.
She swallowed. ‘We tried. I was pregnant a number of times, miscarried every time. Then we tried IVF, did the whole sex on demand thing, temperatures, ovulation charts, all of it. It became a bit like a business transaction. Greg and I were always so into each other, but after a while it was like my body was failing us and sex was just a means to an end.’ She swigged on the wine. ‘With every miscarriage, a part of me died too, until there was very little left. But we kept trying.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jade said, unexpectedly putting a hand on Maddie’s knee. It was hot and heavy, not the least bit comforting, but Maddie let her leave it there.
‘It was shit. Harder for me than Greg. I think it’s easier for men to move on from these things because it’s not their body. Not that he wasn’t understanding or didn’t grieve because he did – but he had work, friends, a life away from it all, while being pregnant and having a child was my sole purpose and I was so single-minded about it that everything else became unimportant. I didn’t see friends. I stopped talking to Greg. It was no wonder he turned to Gemma really.’
‘Er, hang on! There’s no excuse for him turning his back on you to shack up with that boobed bitch. If anything, he should have been more understanding and stuck by you!’
‘I suppose everyone grieves in different ways though. I shut myself off. I was like a ghost and he was lonely. I don’t blame him and I wish it could’ve been different, but it’s selfish of me to expect him to put his dream of a family aside because I’ve got a faulty body.’
‘Wow, you really are something, you know that?’ Jade said with sudden venom and Maddie recoiled at her aggressive change of tone.
‘Tell me what you really think,’ Maddie said, diluting the criticism with more gulps of wine.
‘I am, because you’re making him out to be a saint! He should’ve stood by you, no matter what, not hopped into someone else’s bed at the first sign of trouble. For better or worse and all that!’
‘It wasn’t the first sign, as you put it. This all went on for years.’ Maddie was starting to get angry at Jade – for meddling, for telling her things she already knew but didn’t want to hear. But she couldn’t be angry at Greg, mostly because she didn’t feel much other than sadness when she thought about her marriage. The whole experience of it was cloaked in a thin, grimy layer of disappointment like a lingering bitter aftertaste from a pill. There had been so much promise that it had left a gaping hole when it all collapsed in on itself. All of it had engulfed Maddie for so long that she felt hollow. It took a moment to fall apart, but a lifetime to pick yourself up from it.
‘Let’s talk about something else,’ Maddie said. ‘This is a really tough subject for me.’ She drained her glass and refilled it straight away.
‘No! You need to start standing up for yourself, fighting back! He shouldn’t get away with it, Mads. They should both pay. Make them realise that we are not doormats for men to wipe their feet on.’ Her voice was brittle.
Maddie knew she was right, but there wasn’t much fight in her. She was trying to be more independent and taking baby steps away from Greg, but he kept drawing her in and a part of her still wanted him to.
‘It’s funny, I never thought I would end up getting divorced from Greg. When I married him, it was very much till death do us part.’