Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

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СКАЧАТЬ women had so much trouble balancing kids and work that it was probably easier at this point in her life not to have a child. Then, after a year of baby-making, Alex became sick. It seemed incredible that it had taken so long to get a diagnosis and they had gone through the seven valleys of hell before they’d found out what it was. Even now, Daisy quaked at the thought of what it could have been. She and Alex had suspected leukaemia. Now, she always put money in collection tins that had anything to do with cancer as if to ward off the evil.

      But the bugbear had been Epstein Barr, an autoimmune disorder that turned normally energetic people into wrecks. Hard to detect and even harder to cure, the illness had taken its toll on both Alex and Daisy. Baby-making had not been on the agenda then, but it was at the back of Daisy’s mind constantly, the sense of time passing slowly and of her elderly eggs getting even older. She also worried, although she would never say it, that Alex’s illness was part of the problem.

      And now they’d come out of the fire, together. For the past two years, Alex had been healthy and said he felt great. She felt great. She was going to get pregnant. It was her time, time to find out why she wasn’t conceiving, if there was a problem with Alex’s sperm due to the Epstein Barr, and to do something about it. The student was ready.

      Standing in front of the mirror in their bedroom on a dark Sunday afternoon, Daisy said it out loud: ‘I’m ready. I’m ready to get pregnant. Now.’

      Nothing happened. No thunderbolt from on high to tell her that God was listening, no rustling of curtains to tell her that her guardian angel was hovering and would do his or her best.

      There was no sign, just as there had never been any sign before.

      ‘Alex, I want us to have tests to find out what’s wrong. We can’t afford to wait any longer. I’m getting older and…’ Daisy’s monologue to the mirror trailed off. She didn’t want to tell the mirror – she wanted to tell Alex, and now.

      She’d spent the weekend thinking of nothing else because, with Alex away, she had lots of time to reflect. He was in London with a group of investors on what he described as a ‘bank hooley’, where good food and expensive wine were laid on to help lubricate people’s cheque books.

      Although she hated being alone, his being away gave Daisy a chance to catch up on all the boring household chores, like cleaning the oven before it went up in flames. The oven now gleamed, thanks to much scrubbing on Saturday. But the wardrobe tidying had proved to be a bit of a marathon task.

      She’d kept some of her ‘fat’ clothes for when she was pregnant. That silky sweater from Italy, the flowing Pucci shirt, they’d look lovely over a pregnant belly. Daisy had such plans for being a fashionable pregnant woman and now, faced with these clothes and no use for them in sight, her heart ached.

      By five on Sunday afternoon, as she turned the bedroom lights on, Daisy realised she’d like nothing better than an early dinner in front of the box, but she still had to put away loads of clothes. At least fifty per cent of everything she owned was in heaps on the floor.

      She was holding up a sweater – black, and expensive, so how could she get rid of it, even though it didn’t really suit her? – when the phone rang.

      ‘Alex, hello.’ Daisy sank onto his side of the bed, cradling the phone into her shoulder, her voice softening with love. ‘How are you? Miss you, you know.’

      ‘I know, Daisy. But I’ll be home tomorrow evening.’ From his businesslike tone, it was clear that he wasn’t alone.

      ‘Can’t talk, huh? No problem. How’s it going?’ she asked, suppressing the slightest tinge of irritation that he hadn’t slipped away from the group for a moment to phone her privately. He was on his mobile, it seemed, and she hated those brusque ‘All fine here, how are you?’ conversations.

      ‘All fine here,’ said Alex, right on cue. ‘And at your end?’

      Daisy laughed and did her best to let the irritation slip away. She could hardly have said, ‘Let’s do something about why I’m not getting pregnant,’ over the phone, could she? ‘My end is great but it’s lonely because it doesn’t have your end to snuggle up against in bed. It was freezing here last night,’ she added. ‘I had to resort to my fleece pyjamas and my bedsocks as I didn’t have you to warm me.’ She couldn’t resist the joke. He hated her bedsocks.

      ‘Really?’ said Alex blankly, but Daisy knew he must be grinning. Only someone who knew him well would hear the amusement over a crackly mobile and hundreds of miles.

      ‘Really. So hurry home. Me and the bedsocks miss you.’

      ‘You too. Better rush. We’ve got another meeting before dinner and it will probably be late, so I won’t phone again. See you tomorrow.’

      ‘Yes, can’t wait.’ She had so much to talk to him about. ‘I know you can’t talk, Alex,’ Daisy said quickly, ‘and you don’t have to reply but I love you.’

      There was silence in her ear. He’d hung up.

      Daisy made herself put the receiver back without slamming it into the cradle. How was it that women invariably wondered what was wrong, even when there was nothing wrong, and men never divined anything out of the ordinary when emotional war was about to be declared? She’d like to see how pleased Alex would be if she’d hung up on him when she was working away and when he was burning to tell her something.

      She dismally surveyed the piles of clothes on the beige carpet. Everything in the apartment was decorated in subtle shades of beige and caramel, with dark brown accents. Alex loved modern minimalism.

      Daisy had once wondered how their flat would cope with a small child in it. She loved planning new floor coverings and washable paintwork, or working out how to lay out the baby’s room. How sad was she?

      That was it: her enthusiasm had vamoosed. She’d stack everything on her side of the room and do it during the week. There was a pepperoni pizza and oven chips in the freezer, a bottle of chilled wine in the fridge and probably some slushy romantic film on the movie channel. She could even give herself a manicure. And she’d put a conditioning treatment in her hair to bring it back to its glossy, strawberry-blonde glory. Her straightening irons and the colour played havoc with the split ends.

      She’d look fabulous for when Alex saw her and he’d be flattened with both guilt and longing, and then she’d tell him what she’d really wanted to talk to him about.

      

      Georgia’s Tiara had two windows looking out onto Delaney Row, a street of grand, three-storey houses on the northern side of Carrickwell, and both windows had the words ‘SALE’ emblazoned across in giant, art deco lettering. Decorated in proprietress Mary Dillon’s favourite lemon yellow, the shop was a clothes lover’s paradise and included a tiny accessory department that sold shoes, bags and costume jewellery, three large changing rooms and, most important of all, sympathetic mirrors.

      Mary had most of her warpaint on and was on her second cup of hot water and lemon – awful, but great for the insides, she’d read – by the time Daisy got into the shop on Monday morning.

      ‘Sorry, traffic was brutal,’ Daisy said, which was pretty much what she always said. The snooze button was just so seductive in the morning. She’d always been able to identify with the Chinese mandarin who insisted on being woken at four every morning just so he had the luxury of knowing he didn’t have to get up yet. ‘And the roadworks on the bridge…shocking.’

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