Page 35 of The Facilitator: Part 3
We sat for a half hour on the terrace in the backyard. “Slightly different view to Broadstairs,” I said, looking at a brick wall and then another multi-million pound property behind that.
“What do you want to do?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I loved the location; it’s within a reasonable travel to London. As you said, the configuration could do with some work, but that’s minor. If not for us, they might make me money as high-end holiday rentals. I’ll have to do some research,” I replied.
“I loved them. The more I think about it, that sitting room could be a nursery. We could redevelop that floor to section off that room and add a new door to the hall.”
She seemed excited by the prospect.
“Do you want to buy them?” I asked.
“It’s a lot of money,” she said.
“It’s less than this is worth,” I added. Our home was worth over ten million.
“Really? Blimey,” she said, and then laughed.
“Call him, tell him we want them both but for eight mill. See what he says,” I said, pushing my phone toward her.
“You call,” she said, sliding the phone back.
“Lauren, call him.” One thing I’d notice that annoyed me was how Jim deferred to me constantly. He was dumb; selling those properties should have been to my wife. The female, if there was one, of course, was always to best to get on your side first.
She bit down on her lower lip and dialed. “Hello, this is Mrs. Miller. I’d like to make an offer on the two properties,” I heard. She paused. “Mr. Miller isn’t here, doesn’t need to be here, as I’m more than capable of making an offer. You can accept it now, or not since, if you don’t, I’ll move on to an agent willing to.”
I gave her a wink, loving her sass. That was the very reason I’d told her to call.
“That’s great. I’d like to offer eight million for thetwo.” She paused and listened. “Wonderful, get back to us and let us know,” she said, then replaced the handset. She covered her mouth with her hands and stamped her feet quickly. “Oh my fucking God, I might have just spent eight million pounds of your money!” she laughed.
“Our money, Lauren,” I corrected and laughed with her.
Even after we’d climbed into bed that evening, she still chuckled and repeated that she spent eight million pounds on one phone call. I was loathed to tell her that the developer might not take that offer, even though it was a good one. Normally, I’d go in lower and let them bid me up. I didn’t want the hassle; I didn’t want to waste the time. If we were going to rebuild, I wanted that done before any fertility treatment started.
Annoyingly, the offer was refused. I gave Lauren the instruction not to up our offer. The properties had been up for sale for a while and I had no doubt they’d come back to us at some point. We left the offer on the table for a month.
Chapter Ten
We sat in front of Sam at his clinic and he explained, although I hadn’t received the letter from him, what the next steps were. Lauren asked him loads of questions, specifically, if he was able to extract living sperm what happened to it while we prepared for IVF. We were told, in Sam’s usual comedic way, that it would stay on ice.
She had him tell her everything that he had told me and he printed off the letter that never got sent and handed us a copy to read later. We had a stack of pamphlets to study as well.
“Since we’re not talking a straightforward IVF system here, I suggest that, should you want to go ahead, I recommend a fertility specialist here so we can coordinate,” he said. That made sense to me.
“What do you think are our chances of a successful fertilization?” Lauren asked.
Sam sighed, he steepled his fingers. “Honestly, I’d say fifteen percent.”
“And I only have a what? Twenty-five percent chance of this working?”
I wasn’t prepared for those figures, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear them.
Sam nodded. “It’s a risk, Lauren, and one you’ll need to carefully consider. There will be a lot of medication, daily injections, and surgical procedures to extract eggs for which you’ll likely be sedated. And counseling. I’d highly recommend you accept that.”
She nodded slowly but didn’t respond. We left the meeting a little more deflated than we’d arrived. She held my hand as we drove back home.
“How do you feel?” I asked, as we coasted along the motorway.
“I’m not sure, to be honest. I know roughly what IVF entails and I’m not worried about that. I’m more worried about the fallout if it doesn’t work,” she said, and turned to me. “Can you cope with the failures, because the chances are there will be some?”
