But Erika couldn’t speak. Her mouth felt dry and hollowed out. The tablet, maybe. It was probably a side effect. She’d meant to read the little leaflet about side effects. She fixed her eyes on the yellow daisies on Clementine’s skirt and began to count them.
Oliver spoke up, like an actor saving the day by taking someone else’s line in the script. There was a thin edge of hysteria to his voice. ‘Clementine,’ he said. ‘We’re asking … the reason we wanted to talk to you today, well, we’re wondering if you would consider being our egg donor.’
Erika looked up from the daisies at Clementine’s face and saw an expression of utter revulsion fly across it as fast as the flash of a camera. It was there and gone so quickly she could almost choose to believe she’d imagined it, but she hadn’t imagined it because reading faces was one of her skills. It was a legacy of a childhood spent reading her mother’s face, monitoring, analysing, trying to modify her behaviour in time, except that her skill rarely allowed her to get things right; it just meant that she always knew when she got things wrong.
It didn’t matter what Clementine said or did next, Erika knew how she really felt.
Clementine’s face was composed and very still. It was the look of focused concentration she got when she was about to perform, as if she were taking herself to another plane, a transcendent level of consciousness that Erika could never reach. She pushed back a stray lock of hair behind her ear. It was the same long curly lock of hair that fell towards her cello when she played, somehow never quite touching the strings.
‘Oh,’ she said steadily. ‘I see.’
chapter seventeen
The day of the barbeque
‘So, this is a big thing we’re asking of you, and it’s absolutely not something we’d expect an answer on right away,’ said Oliver. He leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands locked together. He brought to mind a mortgage broker who had just given a lengthy explanation of a complex loan arrangement.
He looked gravely at Clementine and indicated a cream manila folder on the coffee table in front of him.
‘We have some literature ready for you.’ He enunciated the four syllables of the word ‘literature’ with tiny lip-smacks of satisfaction. It was the sort of word that both Oliver and Erika found soothing. Like documentation. Like procedure. ‘It explains exactly what would be involved. Frequently asked questions. The clinic gave it to us to pass on, but if you’d rather not take it now, that’s fine, we don’t want to overload you, because at this stage we’re just, you know, putting it out there, I guess is the right way to describe it.’
He sat back against the couch and glanced at Erika who, bizarrely, had chosen this moment to kneel down beside the coffee table and cut a piece of cheese from the (tiny, Clementine didn’t know they made them that small) wheel of Brie.
Oliver looked away from his wife and back at Clementine. ‘All we’re saying today is: Is this something you would possibly consider? But, as I said, we don’t need any response at all from you, and, by the way if, down the track, you were to say you would consider it, there’s a mandatory cooling-off period of three months. And you can pull out any time. Any time. No matter how far we progress. Well, not quite any time. Not once Erika is pregnant, obviously!’ He chuckled nervously, adjusted his glasses and frowned. ‘Actually, you can pull out right up until when the eggs are inseminated but at that point they legally become our property, um …’ His voice drifted. ‘Sorry. That’s far too much information at this early stage. I’m nervous. We’re both a bit nervous!’
Clementine’s heart twisted for him. Oliver generally avoided hazardous topics of conversation – anything political, sexual or overly emotional – but here he was soldiering on his own through this most awkward of conversations because he wanted so badly to be a father. Was there anything more attractive than a man who longed for children?
Sam cleared his throat. He put his hand on Clementine’s knee. ‘So, mate, I’m just getting my head around this. It would be your …’
‘It would be my sperm,’ said Oliver. He coloured. ‘I know it all sounds sort of …’
‘No, no,’ said Sam. ‘Of course not. I’ve got a good friend who went through IVF so I’ve got a basic sort of understanding of the, you know, ins and outs.’
The ins and outs.
She’d tease him about that unfortunate turn of phrase later on. Clementine knew Sam was talking about his friend Paul, and that in reality Sam had been entirely oblivious to the ‘process’, except for his joy at the outcome: a baby boy for Paul and Emma. Sam loved babies (in Clementine’s experience no man loved babies more; Sam was the first in line for a cuddle of a newborn and would scoop older babies straight from their parents’ arms) but he hadn’t wanted to hear Paul and Emma talking about ‘egg retrievals’ and ‘embryo transfers’.
Erika lifted a cracker between her fingers. ‘More cheese, Sam?’
Everyone stared at her.