The Widow(35)

Lisa was lonely and we got along like a house on fire, so I went around to hers mostly, to save disturbing Glen.

I used to tell her the stories I heard at the salon, and she’d laugh her head off. She loved a good gossip and a cup of coffee. She said it was an escape from the kids. She had two by then—a boy and a girl, Kane and Daisy—while I continued to wait for my turn.

After our second wedding anniversary, I went to the doctor’s on my own to talk about why I couldn’t get pregnant.

“You’re very young, Mrs. Taylor,” Dr. Williams said. “Relax, and try not to think about it. That’s the best thing to do.”

I tried. But after another year without a baby, I persuaded Glen to come with me. I told him it must be something wrong with me, and he agreed to come, to support me. Dr. Williams listened and nodded and smiled.

“Let’s do some tests,” he said, and our treks to the hospital began.

They did me first. I was willing to do anything to get pregnant, and I put up with the specula, the examinations, the ultrasounds, the endless prodding.

“Tubes as clean as a whistle,” the gynecologist said at the end of the tests. “Everything healthy.”

Glen went next. I don’t think he wanted to, but I’d been through it all and he couldn’t really back out. It was awful, he said. They made him feel like a piece of meat. Samples, plastic cups, old torn porn magazines. All that. I tried to make it better by saying how grateful I was, but it didn’t work. Then we waited.

He had almost a zero sperm count. And that was the end of it. Poor Glen. He was devastated at first. He felt he’d be seen as a failure, less of a man, and was so blinded by this that perhaps he couldn’t see what it meant for me. No babies. No one to call me Mummy, no life as a mother, no grandchildren. He tried to comfort me at the beginning when I cried, but I think he got bored with it and then hardened to it after a while. He said it was for my own good. That I had to move on.

Lisa was brilliant about it and I tried not to hate her luck, because I liked her, but it was hard. And she knew how hard it was for me, so she said I could be the kids’ “other mother.” I think it was a joke, but I gave her a hug and tried not to cry. I was part of their lives and they became part of mine.

I persuaded Glen to make a gate between the back gardens for them to come in and out, and I bought a paddling pool one summer. Glen was nice with them, but he didn’t get involved like I did, really. He’d watch them through the window sometimes and wave. He didn’t try to stop them coming around, and sometimes, when Lisa had a date—she went on those websites to try to find the perfect man—they stayed in the spare room, sleeping top to tail. I would do fish fingers and peas and tomato sauce for dinner and watch a Disney DVD with them.

Then, when they settled down in bed, I’d sit and watch them go to sleep, drinking them in. Glen didn’t like that. Said I was acting creepy. But every moment with them was special. Even changing their nappies when they were little. As they got older they called me “Geegee” because they couldn’t get their tongue round Jean, and they would fling themselves at my legs when they came around, so I had to walk with one on each of my feet. My “sweet peas,” I called them. And they’d laugh.

Glen would go up to his study when our games got too wild—“too much noise,” he’d say—but I didn’t mind. I preferred having them to myself.

I even thought about giving up my job and looking after them full-time so Lisa could go out to work, but Glen put his foot down.

“We need your money, Jean. And they’re not our kids.”

And he stopped apologizing for being infertile and started saying: “At least we have each other, Jean. We’re lucky really.”

I tried to feel lucky, but I didn’t.

I’ve always believed in luck. I love the fact that people can change their lives instantly. Look at Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? And the lottery. One minute ordinary woman on the street. Next, millionaire. I buy a ticket every week and could while away a morning fantasizing about winning. I know what I’d do. I’d buy a big house at the seaside—somewhere sunny, maybe abroad—and adopt orphans. Glen didn’t really figure in my plans—he wouldn’t have approved, and I didn’t want those pursed lips wrecking my daydreams. Glen stayed as part of my reality.

The thing was that the two of us weren’t enough for me, but he was hurt that I needed anyone but him. That was probably why he wouldn’t consider adoption—“I’m not having someone prying into our lives. No one’s business but ours, Jeanie”—let alone something as “extreme” as artificial insemination or surrogacy. Lisa and I had discussed it one evening over a bottle of wine, and it all sounded possible. I tried to introduce it casually into a conversation with Glen.

“Disgusting ideas, if you ask me,” he said. End of discussion.

So I stopped crying in front of him, but every time a friend or a relative said they were pregnant, it was like having my heart ripped out. My dreams were filled with babies, lost babies, endless searches for them, and sometimes I’d wake up still feeling the weight of a baby in my arms.

I began to dread sleep and was losing weight. I went back to the doctor, and he gave me tablets to make me feel better. I didn’t tell Glen. I didn’t want him to be ashamed of me.

And I began my collection, quietly tearing out the pictures and slipping them in my handbag. Then, when there were too many, I started sticking them in my books. I’d wait until I was alone and get them out and sit on the floor, stroking each picture and saying their names. I could spend hours like that, pretending they were mine.