The Longing: A bestselling psychological thriller you won’t be able to put down. Jane Asher

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СКАЧАТЬ And who has things stuck up her all the time.’

      ‘Don’t knock it, darling.’ Harriet raised her eyebrows. ‘Some of us could do with a bit more of that, I can tell you.’

      ‘Oh no, you’re not pulling that one on me! It’s the most unpleasant experience and even you couldn’t possibly find anything remotely sexy in it at all. Much more fun to produce them the way you did. Michael and I haven’t had it for weeks now. It’s really weird – all those times we were so careful when we were going out together; we’d have given anything not to have had to worry about condoms and all that, and now that there’s no need, it – well, sex just doesn’t seem to have any point somehow.’

      ‘Mmm. I guess so.’ Harriet took another swig of her wine, covering up the old familiar wince she felt at the reference to love-making with Peter. He had called her the previous night to talk about Adam’s problems at school, and she had hated hearing the television on in the background, unable to stop herself picturing Lauren’s horribly long legs tucked up on the sofa while she watched News at Ten; Lauren’s large, long-lashed eyes fixed on the screen; Lauren’s perfect pink ears half aware of her lover on the phone to his old, discarded, sagging wife.

      Professor Hewlett was studying Juliet’s latest scan report and smiled up at her. ‘Well, Mrs Evans, we’re ready.’

      How strange it is, thought Juliet idly, that this man who has looked up, through and round me still doesn’t feel he knows me well enough to call me by my Christian name.

      ‘Oh good. So when do I—’

      ‘Right, this is what happens. I’ll make an appointment for you to come in tomorrow morning with your husband. We’ll give you a very light anaesthetic and pop you under for a little while. Collect as many decent eggs as we can and introduce them to your husband’s sperm, and then it’s over to Nature for a bit. It’s a very minor procedure and you’ll feel absolutely fine once you’ve woken up and had a cup of tea.’

Chapter Five

      It was a particularly beautiful October day; after a brief shower the sky had cleared and as the taxi took them up through Hyde Park the sun caught the few wet leaves still hanging on the trees in glints of liquid gold that were almost dazzling. Juliet had taken trouble with her hair and make-up and was wearing a cream jumper under a tan wool suit that, set against the yellow of her hair, echoed the autumnal colours around them. Michael glanced across at her and saw how good-looking she was. The lines beginning to settle into her skin around her eyes and mouth seemed merely to add to her beauty, giving her face a look of thoughtfulness and weariness that made him long to stop the car, take her in his arms and squeeze the unhappiness out of her until nothing remained but the carefree young girl he had first met. But he too sensed the solemnity and significance of the occasion and had put on one of his best dark suits and the blue patterned silk tie Juliet had given him the previous Christmas, as if the indignity ahead of him could be mitigated by an appearance of ordered formality.

      They hadn’t wanted to bring the car, not knowing how long they would have to be, and not trusting to their hitherto good luck in finding a nearby parking space. The taxi dropped them off on the corner of Wimpole Street and Weymouth Street and they walked the few yards to the door of the clinic. Although the building was familiar after Juliet’s many visits for her injections, today it felt different and somehow threatening, and her physical discomfort added to her feeling of unease. Her abdomen felt more bloated than ever, and it frustrated her to carry round what felt like a grossly distended belly and to look down on herself and see a shape only fractionally more rounded than her usual flat contour. The feeling of fullness that she had longed for more than anything in the world was a sham – and to know she was filled not with a baby, but with a chemically induced swelling of her ovaries made it all the harder to bear. On the way there, she had found herself noticing, as she always did, just how many prams and pregnant women they passed on the way. The world seemed to be entirely populated by successfully fertilised females, and she could swear they smiled at her mockingly as she stared at them out of the taxi window. They seemed to belong to a club that was at one and the same time exclusive yet – for everyone but herself – easy to enter.

      ‘Come with me now, Mrs Evans. The big day, eh?’ Juliet was pleased when Janet’s friendly face appeared round the waiting-room door. The friendly Irish girl was her favourite nurse, and she was relieved to find her on duty. ‘I’ll take you through to change, my dear, and Mr Evans – can you go and do your duty upstairs now?’

      Juliet was whisked away and Michael was ushered upstairs to where he was to produce his sperm. This interesting and quirky little room wasn’t new to him; on their very first visit for the initial consultation he’d had to come up here and produce a sample, but today he saw it completely differently. It was one thing to ejaculate for the purposes of investigation and diagnosis, but quite another to produce on demand the sperm that would be used to grow his child. The responsibility weighed heavily on him, and he sensed failure hovering like a nasty taste at the back of his mouth.

      Juliet, too, was feeling tense. She was out of the smart tan suit now and wearing one of the strange white cotton gowns that open down the back. Her Irish friend had disappeared to attend to someone else, and another young nurse, new to Juliet, had to tie the tapes for her, adding to her feeling of being out of control and powerless. Perhaps that’s why they put you in these things, she thought idly, so you can’t even dress yourself, so you know you’re completely in their hands.

      ‘Right, Mrs Evans,’ the nurse said to her briskly but sympathetically, ‘let’s get you along into theatre ready for Dr Northfield who’ll be looking after you today. Just pop these little cotton slippers on and I’ll take you through.’

      It looked more like an office than an operating theatre. It was on the ground floor, only about twelve feet square and had grey Venetian blinds at the windows, a black articulated couch that reminded Juliet of a dentist’s chair, a couple of television screens on a table next to what appeared to be a large glass box with a covered tray in it, and a further screen on the other side of the couch. The only obvious sign of the true business of this room was the pair of metal upright rods attached to the lower end of the couch, from which hung two leather loops. A picture flashed through Juliet’s mind of her body stretched out on the couch, legs wide apart, feet strung up in the loops, and eggs being pulled out of her on a string like flags from a conjuror’s hat. She shook the image away as the nurse laid a large sheet over the couch and settled her on to it, leaving her legs for the moment mercifully down and tightly held together.

      ‘I feel a bit jittery, I’m afraid. I’m not very good at this sort of thing.’

      ‘It’s all right, Mrs Evans,’ said the nurse, adopting a comforting, motherly tone towards this woman twice her age: her uniform, capability and the nervousness of her charge giving her perfect credibility as being at this moment the more mature and responsible of the two. ‘It’s only natural. But you’ve nothing to worry about. When the anaesthetist gets here he’ll explain it all to you; they’re very good now, you know, you’ll only have a very light anaesthetic and you’ll wake up feeling right as rain and it’ll all be over. I’ll have a lovely cup of tea waiting for you.’ She slipped a black blood pressure cuff over Juliet’s arm and closed the conversation by putting the ends of her stethoscope firmly into her ears as she began to pump up the pressure.

      Juliet lay her head back on the couch and took a deep breath to try and calm herself, suddenly sensing, in a flash of insight, just how extraordinary this situation really was. Her husband was somewhere upstairs on his own and she was lying downstairs in an operating room surrounded by virtual strangers, and yet within the next few minutes both of them would attempt to extract СКАЧАТЬ