The Good Sister(9)

I tend to fall asleep all right, it’s the waking that’s the problem. Once, twice, sometimes three times a night. I wake abruptly, my body rigid and my breathing ragged. Generally, I’m twisted sideways with my hands tangled in the sheets, a death grip, as if I’m trying to strangle them. Usually it takes at least an hour of deep breathing before I can calm myself enough to drift off again.

I never wake screaming like they do in the movies. In a way, the silence is the worst part. It reminds me of that silent night by the river when I was twelve, when I did that terrible thing.


Most days at work, I break for lunch for half an hour, during which time I eat a honey sandwich and a muesli bar at my desk in an attempt to eschew lunchtime conversation with my colleagues (it rarely works). But Fridays are different. On Friday lunchtimes, most of my colleagues at the library go down to the Brighton Hotel for lunch. Today, the group going are Gayle, Linda, Bernadette and Trevor. The ‘social ones’. One of us is required to stay back to ‘hold the fort’ and, week after week, I happily oblige. I enjoy the peace and quiet. Still, I’ve come to enjoy the ritual of being asked followed by the quick, unoffended ‘no worries’ that precedes my colleagues vacating the building. All seems to be going to plan today. I offer my usual, ‘No, thank you,’ but instead of replying, ‘No worries,’ Carmel says, ‘You might enjoy it if you came along, Fern.’

Carmel is my boss. With a thin stern face, she resembles a humourless boarding school mistress from an old English novel. She has coffee breath, and whiskers on her chin, and spends most of her shifts pushing her cart around, huffing at people who ask for a recommendation. Carmel says our job is to stack books and help people with the photocopiers. (‘Libraries aren’t just about books,’ Carmel had said to me once, and I had laughed out loud. At least, unlike boarding school mistresses, she has a sense of humour.)

My old boss, Janet, had a round, smiling face, an enormous bosom and resembled a kindly matron looking after soldiers in a postwar infirmary. Janet had read every book in the library and told staff that our job was to be a frontline soldier in the war against illiteracy and lack of imagination. I told Carmel this once and she frowned at me as if she was trying to work out a complicated maths puzzle.

‘Fern?’ Carmel prompts. ‘Would you look at me, please?’

I keep my eyes on my computer and start typing quickly, as if I’m doing something so urgent I can’t possibly be interrupted, not even to respond to Carmel. This technique is successful about fifty per cent of the time. Not great odds, but I do find it cathartic, bashing at the keyboard, filling up the silence and expectation hovering over me. The silence stretches on until Gayle comes to my rescue: ‘Right! We don’t want to miss our booking, do we? Linda, grab Carmel’s bag.’

I keep typing. In my peripheral vision I see that Carmel keeps watching me for several seconds, but then, mercifully, Gayle sweeps her up in the flurry of people exiting and she is gone.

It is quiet in the library for the next hour, leaving me with some free time to do some research on the computer. I am an avid book enthusiast, but even I can admit that when it comes to research, you’d be hard-pressed to find a tool more useful than the internet. It’s been three days since Rose confided in me about her fertility issues, and twelve hours since she boarded a plane for London. I’ve used that time to conduct a thorough investigation into what is involved in having baby for your sister. As it turns out, there are numerous options available. You can be a surrogate, which means you use your own egg . . . or you can be a gestational carrier, which means you are implanted with an embryo conceived using a donor egg. If you are using your own egg, you can become pregnant using artificial insemination, where the sperm of the intended father is inserted into your body . . . or you can use in-vitro fertilisation, where the pre-fertilised egg is implanted. In some cases, the surrogate has sexual intercourse with the intended sperm donor, but this is exceedingly rare which is an enormous relief. As fond as I am of Owen, and as much as he’d likely prefer his own sperm to be used, the idea of having intercourse with him is startlingly unappealing.

After thinking long and hard and making a spreadsheet of the pros and cons of each option, I conclude that the simplest way to have Rose’s baby would be to become pregnant naturally by a man who isn’t Owen. This method would have no prohibitive costs, no medical treatment, no need for Rose or Owen to be involved at all. In fact, if I were to become pregnant quickly enough, I could even surprise Rose with news of my pregnancy upon her return from her trip to London! What a happy homecoming that would be! I would, of course, require a man to have intercourse with, but that shouldn’t be too difficult. By all reports, men are desperate for intercourse. Apparently, they can be found at nearly every bar and club, prowling for women to have no-strings-attached intercourse with. Unfortunately, I don’t go to bars or clubs. But surely men congregate in other places too.

I am still researching when the rest of the staff return from lunch, smelling of beer and garlic and talking several decibels louder than before they left. I continue my research a little longer as, judging by the way everyone makes themselves scarce, they aren’t bothered by what I’m doing. Even Carmel and her ever-present cart are nowhere to be seen for most of the afternoon. Thus, I am knee-deep in research about an online dating app called Tinder when a patron appears at the desk.

‘I’m having some trouble with the printer.’