Page 29 of The Life We Almost Had

‘Congratulations, by the way,’ I said as he filled the kettle. ‘It’s great news.’

‘Thanks.’ He turned to me with the biggest grin on his face. ‘I can hardly believe it – me a dad!’

It was a punch to the gut. I sank onto the kitchen chair while Chris carried on talking. ‘I know it wasn’t planned but Nell will make the best mum, don’t you think?’

‘I… I have to go. Sorry, I’ve just remembered… something.’ I rushed towards the front door, reaching it at the same time that Nell reached the bottom of the stairs.

‘Is everything okay, Anna? It’s the crack of dawn!’

‘I was just out for a run but—’

‘A run? Now I know something’s wrong. Shit. It was your laparoscopy results yesterday, wasn’t it? Sorry, it slipped my mind.’

‘That’s okay, you’ve a lot to think about with… with the house move.’

‘What were your results?’ She looked at me with concern.

‘They were fine. Nothing wrong at all.’

‘That’s fantastic!’ Her face broke into a grin. ‘So you could fall pregnant any day now?’

I swallowed around the lump in my throat. ‘No. We’ve decided to wait. We’re so young and I want to at least be head of department before I take maternity leave, if not deputy head. There’s no rush.’ My smile was so fake, my face in danger of shattering.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I get that your career’s important and I know you want to follow in your dad’s footsteps and make head teacher, but I thought—’

‘You thought wrong.’

She studied me for a moment. I maintained eye contact, certain she could see all of the pain inside me.

‘It’s enough for us to know that when the time is right, there’s no medical reason why we can’t conceive,’ I said.

She waited for me to say something and when I didn’t, she asked, ‘Are you sure there’s nothing wrong, Anna? You would tell me if there was?’

‘Of course.’ This time I couldn’t force a smile. ‘We share everything, don’t we?’

‘Always,’ she said. I understood her reason for not wanting to tell me she was pregnant but it smarted.

I felt something shift in our relationship. She was slipping away from me.

She had lied to me. I had lied to her.

Everything changed from that day forward. It wasn’t that I resented her but it hurt, every time she rubbed her bump, complained about backache, bad skin, morning sickness. I wanted it so badly. I wanted it all.

Alfie was born seven months later and I fell in love with him instantly. I told myself that it was enough being a surrogate auntie. I told myself not to feel jealous that Nell had made new friends, all part of the first-time mums’ club that I didn’t know if I would ever join. I tried to keep her in my life, but she was engulfed by sleepless nights and baby swimming and massage and yoga and a million other things that I didn’t know babies needed.

Nell accidentally fell pregnant again just three months later and it was hard. It was so bloody hard to maintain our friendship that I stopped trying. I didn’t know then the tragedy that waited for me ahead. I didn’t know then how much I would need her afterthatday.

How much Adam and I would both need her.

Chapter Sixteen

Anna

Five years. It had been almost five years since we married. Sixty long months in which I hadn’t been able to give Adam the thing he wanted. The thing we both wanted more than anything else.

We were two. We were still two. Not three or four. No pram blocked our hallway. Our lounge was impossibly tidy, no plastic toys to throw into tubs at the end of the day. The spare room housed years of accumulated junk instead of a cot. Since my endometriosis diagnosis I’d twice undergone surgery to remove adhesions and taken fertility medication. The doctor had said Icouldconceive but…

My eyes strayed to the black and white framed photo of our wedding day hanging on the wall at the foot of our bed. It was the last thing we saw before we turned off the lights, the first thing we saw every morning. It used to make me smile. Now it made me sad. The picture was so intimate, our foreheads touching as we’d leaned towards each other.

---