‘I don’t need you,’ I say.
She looks a bit affronted. ‘Who said you needed me, Mabel?’
‘No one. But I don’t. I don’t want you to think you have to look after me just because I’ve got no one else.’
‘The thought never crossed my mind,’ she says.
That time I can tell she’s lying. She looks off to the left. I saw something about that on a documentary about lie detector tests. Gotcha, I think. So that means she wasn’t lying before, then, about her reason for staying on.
‘Do you mind me asking why you didn’t have any children, Mabel?’
‘Do you mind me asking why you didn’t?’
She takes a sharp breath. Is it too late for her? You hear all kinds of stories these days, don’t you? Twins at fifty, all sorts. Once I hit my mid-thirties, people assumed I was past it, but it’s not so simple now. Maybe she still holds out some hope. Although with her husband gone, it’s not looking good.
‘We tried for years,’ she says, and the sadness drips from her voice and I wish I hadn’t asked.
‘Years?’ It’s just a word, just something to say.
‘Years. I got pregnant three times, in all. The first time, we got to the twelve-week scan, all excited, holding hands, only to be told there was no heartbeat. Then nothing for a year or so, and just when I’d stopped expecting it, another late period. I couldn’t believe it when I did the test. Martin was worried, though. I thought it wouldn’t happen twice, but he was more cautious. And then a few weeks later, I started bleeding. I went to hospital, begged them to do something, but they said there was nothing they could do. That if you’re going to miscarry, you’re going to miscarry. I remember the smell of disinfectant in the room when the doctor said that, and the lack of sympathy. They sent me home. And I sat on the toilet for hours, cramps coming and going, until it was over.’
She shifts a bit on the sofa, as if she’s physically uncomfortable telling the story. Olly’s lying next to her, and she absentmindedly leans in to stroke him, but he pulls away.
‘Martin said we should stop trying, that it was too painful. He was worried about what it was doing to my body and to both of our hearts, too. But I was desperate for a child. And all my friends were having them, of course. Falling pregnant by accident, having twins, all that. We nearly split up over it. He said I was obsessed. And I was, I think, for a while. That third time was a good five years after the first, and as soon as I got the positive test, I told Martin I was giving up work. That I was going to lie in bed until the baby came. He said I was mad, that we couldn’t afford it, and we couldn’t, really. But we didn’t need to because six weeks in, more bleeding.’
I’m staring at her, mouth hanging open, probably. It’s horrendous. But women have these stories, don’t they? So many women. They carry them around. They carry on.
‘He put his foot down, then. Flatly refused to try again. Said enough was enough. I was all ready to go down the IVF route, but he said not with him. That if I wanted a baby that much, I could do it with someone else. Well, of course that wasn’t what I wanted, was it? I wanted a baby that was mine and his, had daydreamed for years about whose nose it might have, whose chin. He had the snip without telling me. Said he’d done it for both of us.’
She looks at me, and I expect to see tears in her eyes, but they are dry. Perhaps she’s cried them all. And I think that the sadness I always notice in her isn’t just about Martin leaving. It’s about this, too. The family she wanted and never had.
‘So that’s why I didn’t have children,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry.’ It’s such a meagre thing to say.
‘That’s all right,’ she says.
It’s clear that it isn’t. But she’s gone. She’s miles away.
‘I didn’t want to,’ I say. ‘Arthur did. Stalemate. I shouldn’t have married him, without letting him know.’
Julie shrugs. ‘You can’t blame yourself for that. He should have asked before he went down the aisle, if it was so important to him. I wish I’d asked Martin how hard he’d try, if it came to it. Whether he’d give up if it didn’t fall in our laps. But I didn’t ask, and here we are.’
We are quiet, and I sip my tea. The air in the room is heavy with the weight of our regrets.
‘I wonder whether your friend Dot had any,’ she says.
I try to imagine Dot with children but it’s impossible. She’s a girl, giggly and full of mischief. She isn’t a mother. And yet, I know the chances are slim. Women like me, like Julie, who end up childfree – we’re the minority. The outcasts.
When Julie goes, I put the fire on and stretch out my legs, going back over what she told me. All that heartache. All that pain. She hides it fairly well, most of the time. I wonder whether I do, too. In bed that night, I close my eyes and play a scene I haven’t lingered on for a long time. Arthur and me, lying next to each other in our first house. On our sides, facing one another. The window open and cars rushing by outside. It was summer, and we just had a sheet on, no blanket. Arthur reached across and pulled me a bit closer.
‘I just thought we would,’ Arthur said. ‘Once we were married. It’s what people do, isn’t it?’
He’s right, it is. But how strange it is, that creating new people is just a thing people do, with barely a thought.
‘I don’t want to,’ I said.
‘You’ve been lonely, since Dot left. You’ve never made another friend like her. Aren’t you ready for things to change? To leave your job and be at home? We can manage it on my salary, if we’re careful.’
It’s like he didn’t hear what I said. Not that I wasn’t ready, or that I wasn’t sure, but that I didn’t want to. I turned my body away from him.
‘Mabel, talk to me.’
‘You don’t listen,’ I said.
‘Tell me why.’
‘There is no why,’ I said, turning back so I could see his eyes as I told him. ‘It’s just not something I want.’
Would it have been different, with someone else? Someone I loved more, loved properly? Maybe. Or maybe not.
12
‘I want to do something I’ve never done before.’ It’s the first thing I say to Julie when she arrives.
She doesn’t know the courage it takes. Doesn’t know how out of character it is, because she doesn’t know me. That’s what allows me to do it, I think. If I’d said that sentence to Arthur, he would have fallen out of his seat in shock. But Julie doesn’t bat an eyelid.
‘Good morning to you, too, Mabel. Right then. Something you’ve never done before. Okay, let me think.’
She’s been buzzing about the place for half an hour before she brings me a mug of tea – too much milk, and definitely added after the water, though I’ve told her my preference – and says it. ‘I could take you to that ballroom dancing class I sometimes go to.’
‘I’ve done ballroom dancing,’ I say.