When Simone finally felt as though she could control her voice, she looked up at Star.
“I feel so sad all the time,” she said in a voice still shaking with sorrow.
Star nodded, her eyes shining with tears. “I know.” She sniffed. “I know.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll work it out. Together.”
She didn’t know how long they’d been sitting on the bench beneath the window, but Simone suddenly realized that she was very cold and if she was cold wrapped in two blankets, Star must be freezing. She took a shaky breath.
“Fancy a hot chocolate?” she asked, her voice catching in little hiccupping spasms, the aftermath of crying for so long.
“I thought you’d never ask.” Star smiled, the lift of her cheeks causing the tears balancing on her lashes to spill over. She sniffed, wiping her face with her coat sleeve. “Watery eyes. Must be the cold.”
“Must be.”
With frozen fingers, they managed to get the front door open. Without saying a word, Star helped to build a fire in the hearth and then followed Simone out to the kitchen to make hot chocolate. Simone knew that her sister was staying close while giving her space. She appreciated it. She felt rinsed out. Tonight had been cathartic but exhausting. She wasn’t cured. She hadn’t expected to be. But her chest felt looser somehow.
They took their drinks back into the sitting room, and Star pulled the two armchairs in front of the fire. They sat: frozen fingers curled around hot mugs, the firelight casting dancing shadows on the walls.
“I don’t know where to begin.” Simone stared into the flames.
“Start at your first round of IVF. Tell me everything. And I mean everything—don’t leave anything out.”
“That’s going to take a while.”
“I’ve got time.” She blew on her hot chocolate and took a sip.
Simone sighed and closed her eyes. What she’d have liked to do was go to bed and sleep for three days, forget any of this happened, go back to stuffing it all down. But Star was right. She needed to say it all and she needed to say it now. To creep back into denial would be easier, but it wasn’t going to help her mental health and it certainly wasn’t going to save her marriage. Now was the right time.
She started right at the beginning, that first appointment in their local GP surgery. Back when she was convinced that it would be easy, despite all the warnings from friends and health professionals not to get her hopes up. How could she fail to get pregnant when every fiber of her being was telling her she needed to be a mother? It was inconceivable that someone with such a strenuous desire to become pregnant could fail.
The first few sentences stuck in her throat. She felt mortified, like she was making a fuss or being a bore—two things she couldn’t abide in others and especially not in herself. But as she went on, her words no longer felt like they were laced with razor blades. The edges smoothed and the words flowed, and she found she couldn’t stop.
“We signed up to a fertility clinic that had good feedback from other female couples and then we found a great sperm donor. He’s Evette’s complexion and hair color but with green eyes, tall, athletic build, and an academic.”
“He sounds like a catch. Do you have his number?”
Simone spluttered out a snotty laugh. “You know, I kind of thought we’d done all the hard stuff. I’d had my eggs harvested and we had the donor and I had successful embryos . . . After all that, the actual getting pregnant part felt like a foregone conclusion. It isn’t like they didn’t warn me, they did, I just didn’t imagine it wouldn’t work. But they just wouldn’t take.” Her voice cracked again. “My womb is a fucking inhospitable environment. Why wouldn’t they stick?”
Star reached over and took her hands. “I don’t know.” She said. “I don’t know why. But I’m sorry.”
Simone looked down at her sister’s freckled skin, fingernails bitten down to the quick on child-sized hands. She sniffed and swallowed hard. “So, I’ve still got embryos frozen. I mean, technically, if we had the money, we could just go on and on trying.”
“And would you? If money wasn’t an object?”
She started sobbing again. It was like she had an endless supply of tears. “I don’t think I can. I think to keep going will end me. It will definitely end my marriage. But at the same time, how can I give up when there’s still a chance? When I’ve still got healthy embryos on ice?”
“Do you need someone to give you permission to stop?”
Simone looked up sharply. How can she know that? More tears, falling and falling, dripping off her nose and chin in a stream.
“Yes!” she managed to gasp out.
Star nodded and said quietly, looking into her sister’s eyes, “I give you permission to stop. You’ve tried really hard. And now it’s okay to stop.”
There was more to be said. Things that she couldn’t say to anyone else, even Evette, for shame and fear of judgment. Star listened, never taking her eyes off her, prompting Simone gently when the silences fell and asking questions about terms she was unfamiliar with. After an hour, Simone was tired of the sound of her own voice, and she felt sure her sister must be too, but Star remained attentive.
The hours ticked past. It was gone two o’clock when they climbed the stairs, and Star, dressed in a pair of Simone’s pajamas with the legs and sleeves rolled up, climbed into bed with her sister.
“I love you, Twinkle-Star.”
“I love you too, Simona-Mona.”
They slept in a spoon shape, Star’s arm draped over Simone’s waist, Simone holding her sister’s hand to her chest in both of hers, just like they used to when they were children. Evette had been right: Simone did need her sisters.
29
Star had called a family meeting. She had made up her mind last night, lying beside Simone, who had fallen into a heavy exhausted sleep. But to be sure, she had spent all day listening to her inner self, meditating and testing that her determination stood firm in the cold light of day. It did.
On this chilly Tuesday evening, they were now sitting in the cozy sitting room in Augustus’s flat. Star had lit candles along the fireplace and an incense stick smoked lazily on the coffee table.
She had deftly navigated the conversation around to Simone, and after some gentle cajoling, Simone had opened up to Maggie in the way she had to her the night before. It was important that Maggie knew the full story before Star made her proposal.
“The thing is,” she began when Simone had finished speaking. Suddenly she felt nervous. “The reason I called this family meeting is because, well, I’ve thought a lot about it, and I know this is the right thing for me and I think for you too . . .”