June
Some days, I came and went without speaking to anyone.
After my morning run and breakfast at home with Noah, I would arrive at the studios, slip on my noise-cancelling headphones and in an instant be both startlingly present and entirely absent.
I don’t always listen to music – at times, I need to be laser-focused.
When I do, it’s always the same mellow playlist. I let it run from start to end, the songs shuffled, a background beat that doesn’t require me to think about what to listen to next or whether I don’t like something and want to skip forward.
As I chipped away at the thick layer of paint on top of the whale’s blubbery belly, the tempo was rising.
I remember daubing a spot of lead white with solvent as one song came to an end, a full stop.
During my lunch breaks, I read books and articles on historical whale strandings.
My research might have started out as a diversion, but before long it became an obsession.
In the Netherlands, throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, these tragic incidents happened roughly every two years, with at least forty strandings recorded.
The cause : the North Sea. After migrating north in the summer, male sperm whales returning south to their families during the autumn would become disorientated by the shallow, silty waters.
Nature played a cruel and irreversible trick on them.
I tried not to linger on the thought that it might also be playing a trick on me, pointlessly poking holes in the loving status quo that Noah and I had built. I certainly felt disorientated.
One Tuesday lunchtime I was reading in the Guardian about a more recent stranding, a little like the one my mother and I had experienced all those years ago in Norfolk.
When I reached the end, I clicked on the homepage and saw, just below the photo of the whale, an image of a baby’s dummy frozen in a block of ice accompanying another article.
Doctor Day’s deep voice sounded in my ear : If you’re not ready …
I glanced around the brightly lit café interior.
Everyone was either absorbed in conversation or thumbing their phone.
I sat up straight, clicked on the image and began to read about egg freezing.
That evening, I took the long route home, which entailed catching a couple of buses rather than the Tube and the overground.
I needed more time, more signal. After tapping in, I shuffled down the aisle and squeezed into a free seat.
When the small child behind me started kicking at my chair, and her father said nothing, his nose in his newspaper, I turned towards the window.
It was still light out, the sun winking through the buildings.
The kicking became more persistent, and I shot the child a look.
I wouldn’t usually mind. On this occasion, it made me queasy.
There were more articles to choose from than there had been fertility clinics, which reminded me – there was some information on freezing on the website of the clinic I’d visited at London Bridge.
This time, when I came face to face with the wholesome-looking mother and her cherubic son on the homepage, I decided that, yes, there was a father.
Like my own dad, he was always the one behind the camera.
He was there and he was happy. They all were.
I found the page I was looking for and skim-read, my eyes snagging on the three reasons why egg freezing might be used to preserve a woman’s fertility :
Ahead of medical treatments such as chemotherapy Ahead of gender reassignment surgery To alleviate apprehension about age-related fertility decline (otherwise known as ‘social’ egg freezing)
First Fertility MOT . Now social egg freezing .
This industry really knew how to put off potential customers.
As the bus pulled over and the child and her father stood up to leave, I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.
This would be about more than offsetting my concerns.
It would be about taking the time to consider things properly.
It would be about keeping the option open in case one or both of us changed our minds and suddenly felt the pull more forcefully.
Again, I turned towards the window, but my view was blocked by another bus, this one advertising a summer rom-com.
And if only one of us felt it? I bookmarked that thought and scrolled on.
There was information about the process and a few fairly vague indications of the success rate.
At the bottom, a big blue box invited me to book my place at one of the clinic’s free monthly open evenings.
I clicked on the link and saw there was one scheduled for the following week.
A few minutes later, the bus dinged and lurched back towards the curb, and I looked up just in time to see that we were at my stop.
Time to change. I took a screenshot and slipped my phone into my pocket.
I got back to the flat around half-past seven. Noah was on the phone with his brother. I could always tell who he was talking to from the tone of his voice. With Daniel, it was warm and good-humoured.
‘Right, I better—’ Noah clamped his lips together.
Evidently, Daniel wasn’t done talking. Noah mouthed a ‘sorry’ in my direction and I blew a kiss in return.
‘Cathy sends her love,’ he said, smiling.
‘Yes, she’s just walked in, so …’ No luck.
He raised one hand in the air in mock desperation while nodding and emitting the odd ‘yes’ or ‘uh-huh’.
I kicked off my shoes and headed upstairs.
After washing my hands, I splashed my face with cold water.
I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered whether any of the little lines ticking up at the outer corners of my eyes were new.
I tested the effect of a little lift above my upper lids, then I pressed my hips up against the sink and leant forward to inspect my hair for greys.
After sweeping the strands left and right, I let out an audible sigh of relief.
My skin might have started to wrinkle, but I had only dark hairs on my head.
They were still on the phone when I came back downstairs. I found a half-drunk bottle of white in the fridge from the night before and poured myself a glass.
‘Right, will do,’ said Noah, nodding enthusiastically when I raised a second glass in question. ‘I’m sure that works, but I’ll check and if we have any plans that I’m unaware of – ha, exactly – I’ll let you know.’
I furrowed my eyebrows and before I passed him his wine, he lovingly clapped a hand to his heart.
‘Yes, yes, speak to you then. OK, love to Griz and the kids. Bye bye, bye.’ He exhaled and deposited his phone on the side.
‘How’s Daniel?’ I asked, sinking into the sofa.
‘Chatty.’ He came over and kissed me hello.
‘I gathered.’
‘No, he’s good,’ he said, sitting down at the opposite end, putting his glass on the coffee table, and drawing my feet up onto his knee. ‘They’ve invited us for lunch on Saturday.’
‘Hm, I have a feeling …’ I checked the calendar on my phone. ‘Yes, sorry, can’t – I said I would spend the day with Anna.’
‘Oh well, don’t worry. I’ll go solo.’ He began to massage my feet, one at a time, starting with the right, kneading the sole in the way he knew I liked. ‘How’s she doing?’
‘She’s OK, I think.’ I paused, staring at the yellow liquid in my glass until my eyes lost focus. ‘Sad, but OK.’
‘Of course.’
My phone was nestled in the palm of my hand. I pictured the baby’s dummy frozen in the block of ice and felt myself shiver.
‘You’re not cold, are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ I breathed in and out and, in as breezy a voice as I could manage, said : ‘Actually, I was reading an interesting article on fertility today.’
He reached for his wine, took a sip, then continued to apply pressure to my foot, unfazed by the segue. ‘You were? What was it about?’
‘Egg freezing, mostly.’ I recited the facts and figures that had somehow lodged themselves in my brain in the same way that paint gets trapped beneath my fingernails after retouching an artwork. ‘Interesting, isn’t it?’
‘Interesting,’ he agreed. He moved on to my left foot, starting with the heel.
I took a sip of wine myself, swallowed, and asked, ‘What do you think?’
At this point, the massage was put on pause.
He looked me in the eye – the first time we’d spent an evening alone together, it was his unwavering eye contact that got me.
The corner of his mouth twitched. ‘What do I think about egg freezing from a medical or ethical point of view?’ he asked, calmly, still holding my gaze.
‘Or what do I think about you saying you’re considering it?
’ When I didn’t answer, he added, softly, fairly, ‘You said you were only having doubts because of Anna.’
‘I think it might be more than that?’ I didn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but when it did, I decided to wait for him to answer. When no answer came, I said it again, with more certainty : ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s more than that.’
He closed his eyes, his fingers curling gently around my toes.
I hesitated, then told him about the Fertility MOT.
He too flinched at the name.
‘I wanted them to tell me it wasn’t possible,’ I said, laughing just a little – a little hysterical, maybe. ‘Because if it wasn’t possible, we could forget the whole thing.’
Slowly, as if they might be breakable, he lifted my feet up and off his knee and lowered them back down to the floor.
I tested a crack between two floorboards with my toes. ‘But it is, Noah. It is possible.’
He picked up his glass and walked into the kitchen. I followed and watched as he retrieved a packet of vine tomatoes, a bunch of parsley, some parmesan, and a tub of mascarpone from the fridge. ‘Is anchovy pasta all right?’