Postscript(24)

‘I’m winning already. Where’s yours?’

‘I’m surprised that you’re so quick off the mark. Some of us have to buy soil and seeds. Even though I haven’t planted anything, I’m still winning because all you did was plant beans in cotton wool,’ he says, and doubles over laughing.

‘You wait. I want to be a mother, I will grow these beans with sheer determination alone,’ I say, grinning, loving the sound of the words aloud. I want to be a mother! Gerry is right, such certain words from me are rare, and it’s exciting to be a person who knows what she wants for once. But I am also stubborn and often choose to stick to my side of the argument whether I believe it or not. But not in this case.

Two days later when I go downstairs in the morning, I notice that one of the beans has started to sprout a small root, which is visible against the glass. I grab the jar and race upstairs. I jump on the bed, waking him, annoying him, and bounce up and down with my prospering bean.

He rubs his eyes and stares grumpily at the jar. ‘That’s impossible, how the hell is it growing in cotton wool. Did you mess with it?’

‘No! I’m not a cheat. I watered it.’

Gerry doesn’t like to lose. That evening he returns from work with a packet of sunflower seeds, but he has forgotten to buy a pot and soil.

On the fourth day, when he has only planted the sunflower seeds, my bean root has little tendrils.

Gerry takes to talking to his sunflower seeds, he reads the seeds a book. He tells the seeds jokes. He carries out full-on conversations with the seeds while I laugh. Two more days on, while Gerry’s sunflower seeds are still beneath the soil, my beans sprout shoots. Gerry carries the sunflower seed pot to the bean bags where he plays computer games with his pot, even going so far as to place a controller in front of the pot.

One morning I walk into the bathroom to find the sunflower pot sitting on the toilet seat lid, with an open dirty magazine.

After ten days of this carry on, I call it.

‘OK, admit it: I’ve won.’ My beans have sprouted and grown shoots, and there is a large network of shoots off the main root, with a sturdy stem growing straight upwards and out of the cotton wool.

But of course he won’t give in.

The following morning, he gets out of bed and goes downstairs to make our morning coffee before I do, which is a rare and precious thing, and I know something is up. He starts yelling, frantically, and I think we’ve been burgled. I fall out of bed, stumble downstairs and find him dancing around in his boxers, holding his potted plant with a single two-foot-tall sunflower climbing high.

‘It’s a miracle!’ he says, wide-eyed.

‘You’re a cheat.’

‘I did it!’ he dances around with the sunflower, following me to the kitchen, and points a finger at me accusingly. ‘You thought you could bury me, you didn’t know I was a seed.’

‘Cute,’ I nod. Game over. ‘So now we can have a baby?’

‘Definitely,’ he says, serious. ‘It’s what I’ve always wanted.’

On a high from our decision, we drink our morning coffee, him from his Star Wars mug; we’re grinning at each other like lunatics, as though we’ve made the baby already. The post lands on the hallway floor.

Gerry gathers the envelopes and brings them to the kitchen, flicks through them and one takes his interest. He tears it open and I watch him, grinning at my gorgeous husband who wants to make a baby with me in my new house with a staircase that brings you upstairs from downstairs and downstairs from upstairs, feeling like life couldn’t be any more perfect.

I study his face. ‘What is it?’

He hands me the letter. ‘I got the appointment for the MRI.’

I read the letter and when I look up, I can see he’s nervous.

‘These things are standard procedure. It just rules things out.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he says, kissing me quickly, distracted. ‘Still hate it. I’m going for a shower.’

‘Where? Upstairs? To our shower upstairs?’

He stops at the bottom of the stairs and smiles, but the light has gone out in him. ‘The very one. You take care of Esmerelda. She likes porn and video games.’

‘Esmerelda?’ I look at the sunflower, and laugh. ‘Nice to meet you, Esmerelda.’

Esmerelda doesn’t live much longer; our collective sense of humour stalled somewhat after the results of the MRI. But we don’t know that yet on that morning. That morning we’re busy planning life.

Gerry runs up our new staircase and then I hear the shower water running.

He’s twenty-seven years old.

I finish my walk through my rooms at the door to my bedroom. I scan the room. It’s not the same at all. New bed, new headboard, new curtains, new paint. New large strong protective lump beneath the duvet. Gabriel stirs, and a hand reaches out for me in the bed. It feels around. He lifts his head from the pillow, scans the room and finds me at the door.

‘Everything OK?’

‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘I was getting some water.’

He looks at my hands, which are glass-of-water free; he can’t be fooled. I climb into bed and kiss him. He lifts his arm and I turn my back to him and reverse into his warm body. He closes his arm around me and I’m instantly cocooned. He can protect me from the past that’s chasing me, build a bubble around me where memories and emotional backtracking can’t penetrate me. But what happens when he lets go, when the streaming light of morning stirs him, and the safety of slumber slithers away revealing truth? Much as I want to, I can’t hide in him forever.