What's Yours Is Mine (4 page)

Six years later, when I turned thirty-five, we decided it was time for a baby. It never occurred to either of us that it wouldn't happen. Why should it? Neither of us had ever failed at anything before.

CLAUDIA ARRIVES JUST
as Blake disappears down to the cellar to fetch a second round of home brew. I suppress a sigh. It's not the smell of Tom's beer that bothers me (though the entire house now smells, not unpleasantly, like a rotting apple orchard) so much as the unfortunate effect it has on his digestive system. You could power the southeast of England with his farts.

Claudia unwinds her scarf and takes up her accustomed
position perched on the closed stove lid of the Aga. She's like a cat, always seeking a warm place to sleep. She blames it on her South African heritage: her mother is Sowetan, her father Boer. They fled to England before Claudia was born to escape a regime that deemed interracial relationships not only illegal, but a sin against God. In vain I point out that I'm always cold in this house too, and you can trace my genes back to our fog-bound island's indigenous Celts.

“You do realize your moat has actually frozen over, Grace?” she complains, wrapping her arms around herself and tucking her hands beneath her armpits. “Everyone else's daffodils are out, but you're still stuck in the Ice Age.”

“We have our own micro-climate,” Tom says blithely. “When global warming turns the rest of Oxfordshire into a desert, you'll be begging us to let you move in.”

Tom and I live in a marvelous example of a Victorian folly: a miniature Gothic castle, complete with rounded turret, gargoyles, stone battlements, and, yes, a moat; all this despite the fact that the entire property is no bigger than your average four-bedroom semi. It was built smack in the middle of a quaint Oxford village on the site of a fourteenth-century cemetery by a nineteenth-century entrepreneur, who'd made his fortune selling armaments to both sides in the American Civil War, and had little regard for either superstition or history.

It's bizarre, impractical, monstrously expensive to run, and Tom and I both fell in love with it the moment we saw it a year after we married, driving back to London
from a pediatric conference in Oxford. It wasn't officially for sale; we'd stopped at the pub across the road for a quick bite, and couldn't resist strolling over for a closer look. At which point Fate took a hand: the estate agent who'd just been saddled with it after the death of the previous owner (penniless and in debt to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, something we didn't discover until it was far too late) happened to be there, walking the property. He must have thought his ship had come in when we turned up before he'd even had a chance to write up its particulars.

We agreed to a price that at the time we thought was a steal, and in retrospect turned out to be daylight robbery. In the seven years since then, we've replaced the slate roof (twice; the first builder used tiles that didn't conform to its Grade II listed status), dredged the moat of bicycles and beer cans, spent three months camping out in Claudia and Blake's spare room while the asbestos lagging on the pipes was replaced, awoken one Christmas morning to find eighteen inches of raw sewage in the basement after the cesspit overflowed, rewired the place from top to bottom, and coped with a thousand minor inconveniences from backed-up lavatories to rising damp. It's cost us everything we made from the sale of our London flat, plus Tom's inheritance from his parents and a small legacy from my maternal grandmother, but it's been worth it. I love this house. I want to grow old here.

The only room we haven't yet touched is the third-floor turret nursery, which came to us complete with an
original carved Victorian rocking horse. We were waiting to see if we needed to paint it pink or blue.

Blake clatters up from the basement, but instead of two glasses of Tom's brew, he's clutching a bottle of champagne from their last boys' booze cruise to northern France, which he and Claudia store in our wine cellar.

Tom looks confused. “Cracking open the bubbly? Am I missing something, mate?”

Claudia smiles secretively, and her hand flutters to her stomach. She doesn't know Tom and I have been trying for a baby. It's always seemed too private to share; something that belonged only to Tom and me.

She's my best friend, and I love her, but oh, God,
it isn't fair
.

LATER, AFTER BLAKE
and Claudia have left, awash respectively with champagne and delight—“I know we said no more babies until the twins were at school,” Claudia whispers, as she hugs me goodbye, “but we just couldn't wait”—I finally sit Tom down and tell him about my conversation with Dr. Janus.

And Tom doesn't mind. He's upset for me, of course, because he truly loves me and he knows how much this means to me; but he's not upset for himself.

I should be pleased; relieved, even, that my husband finds me enough. He wanted children, certainly, it was his decision to try for a baby as much as mine, and he would have been an involved father, a “hands-on dad”; but it
seems he's equally happy now to adjust his ideas of the future to focus on just the two of us. But I'm not pleased or relieved. I don't feel thankful he feels this way. I'm hurt and angry. His stoicism seems like a betrayal. How can he not grieve the way I do? Why isn't he railing against Fate? How can he just
accept
this?

“One thing I don't understand,” Tom says, as I sit on the bed and furiously brush my hair. “If it's inherited from your mother, why didn't it affect Susannah?”

The million-dollar question.

Carefully, I put the brush down, fighting the impulse to throw it at the wall. “The drug was only prescribed until the early seventies, to prevent miscarriages and premature babies. My mother had lost two babies before she had me. But by the time she was pregnant with Susannah three years later, it'd been taken off the market.”

“You're going to be all right, though?” Tom asks anxiously. “You're not going to get sick, or anything?”

I want to scream, No, I'm not going to be all right! I'm
already
sick! My mother took a drug that has robbed me forever of my chance to have a child, and it wasn't her fault, of course it wasn't, I know that, and I wouldn't wish this on anyone; but if it had to happen to one of us, if it really
had
to happen, why me?
Why not Susannah?

I was the
good
daughter. I was such a careful, conscientious teenager. I didn't stay out late, date unsuitable boys, shoplift, play truant. I never gave our parents a moment's worry, other than fear that I'd collapse from studying too hard. Susannah's the one who messed everything up. She
was just thirteen when she ran away the first time; less than ten years later, she'd already been married and divorced. She never even wanted children. She's lied, cheated, and betrayed everyone who ever loved her to get what she wanted. I could never rebel, because Mum and Dad needed to have one child they could be proud of. So why, then, am
I
the one being punished?

I say none of this aloud, of course. I never do.

Tom hesitates a moment, then sits down beside me, the bed rocking gently under his weight. My tears splash on his green-dyed fingers as he takes my hand. “Have you spoken to your mother yet?” he asks softly.

“I wanted to tell you first.”

It's not quite the whole truth. I'm not strong enough yet to deal with my mother's disappointment on top of my own despair. She's rung my mobile three times this afternoon, and for once, I've ignored the calls. I
will
talk to her. Soon. When I've had some time to get used to this.

When I've stopped feeling
so fucking angry
.

“Grace, there are other options,” Tom says carefully. “There are so many children out there who need a home. We could give them a good life. I know you probably don't want to think about it now, but later on, perhaps—”

“We can't adopt, Tom. I've already looked into it.”

“Oh, come on. We're not too old, surely? We've got enough money, and I'm sure we can round up a few deluded souls who'll say we'd make great parents—” He stops, and his smile suddenly fades. “Oh, I see. It's
my
fault.”

“No more than being barren is mine,” I say bitterly.

Tom pulls me into his arms, and I tuck my head into his shoulder with a sob. “Grace, Grace. I love
you
. I married
you
. If children had come along, that would've been great, but it's you I want, it's you I've always wanted.”

I raise my chin, and he kisses me, his tongue slipping between my lips, warm and sweet. I'm surprised by a sudden flare of heat between my legs. Sex between us has become so laden with expectation since we started trying to conceive, there's been no room for anything as simple as desire.

Now, though, I'm consumed by a hot, unexpected, animal need. I wrap my legs around his waist and fall back on the bed, taking him with me. I physically ache to have him inside me. My fingers tangle in his thick curls as I press his head to mine, my kiss hard and demanding. Tom's response is just as heated. Lust races between the two of us like a prairie fire. We bite each other's lips, claw at each other's clothes. Roughly he frees my breasts from my nightdress, and I groan with pleasure as he bruises my nipples with quick, hard bites.

I pull up his shirt and yank at his belt buckle. My hands corkscrew around his cock, but as I reach to guide him inside me, he pushes my knees apart and slides down between them instead. I buck as his tongue finds my clitoris, flicking back and forth across it like a serpent. In a sudden shower of sparks, I explode, my orgasm sheeting across the surface of my body like a summer storm at sea.

Tom covers my body with his own, pinning my arms on either side of my head, and pushes himself inside me. I
tilt my hips to meet him, using my thighs to pull him deeper into me. Sweat drips from his hair into his eyes; darkly intent on his own need, he doesn't even blink. The naked lust on his face is startlingly erotic. I find myself in the grip of a second orgasm, more intense than the first, and lose any semblance of sense or control. With a hoarse cry, Tom comes with me, pounding into me with something that feels very close to fury.

Afterwards, we lie side by side for a long time on the rumpled bed, without touching. Tom's breathing slows, and gently settles into the rhythm of sleep. No longer warmed by our lovemaking, I shiver in the cold room, and pull the edge of the duvet across me.

The movement causes Tom's flowback to trickle wetly between my legs.
Tom's seed, falling on barren ground
. Seared with misery, I leap off the bed and run into the bathroom, scrubbing and scrubbing at my thighs until no trace is left.

Bones and heart aching, I climb back into bed. I close my eyes, praying for sleep to come quickly.

But I'm still awake when, at 3:48 a.m., the phone rings.

You'd think she could've sprung for business class. After all, this whole dramatic race-and-rescue nonsense was her idea. I'm like a bloody battery hen stuck back here in economy, with all these screaming kids and sunburnt tourists in tracksuits and “comfy” sandals. And they have the cheek to look at me like
I'm
the freak they don't want to sit next to.

“I've arranged for you to pick up your ticket at the airport,” Grace told me bossily last night, without bothering to check if I
wanted
to come rushing home. “It's all paid for. And make sure you bring enough clothes for at least a couple of weeks. I don't know how long you'll need to be here.”

I didn't bother pointing out everything I owned could fit into a single suitcase.

“It's not that easy for me to drop everything,” I said perversely. “I'm an
artist
, Grace. I get paid on commission. If I don't work, I don't eat. And if I just up and leave without notice, I may not even have a job to come back to.”

“This is an emergency, Susannah. How can you even think about money?”

“Because, unlike you, I
have
to.”

A long-suffering sigh, then, “Fine. I'll look after things while you're here.”

Oh, I'm so grateful. Like she couldn't afford it. Mind you, it'll be for rather longer than she was thinking, given that after leaving the U.S. I won't be allowed back in without a visa; Grace didn't need to know that yet.

“You'll have to stay with us for the time being,” she added crabbily. “Obviously Dad won't have you, and clearly you can't afford a hotel.”

“Can you send me some cash? I'll need a taxi to get to the airport—”

“There won't be time to make a wire transfer before your plane leaves in the morning. I'm sure you have
someone
who could give you a lift,” Grace said, meaningfully.

Bitch. She's right, though. I always have
someone
.

I was about eleven when I noticed I possessed a certain something that set me apart from other girls my age; something quite important. It wasn't just that I developed proper breasts while they were still stuffing tissues in their training bras, or that my periods started before Grace's (which
really
pissed her off). Boys liked me. I mean, they
liked
me. Men, too. I saw the way my father's friends looked at me, then looked away, shocked by their own response.

Whenever we played
It
, I was the one the boys chased. They jostled me to the ground, even when I yelled “
Pax.
”
They snatched my lunch box and held it over their heads, so I had to wrestle them to get it back. It seemed there was always a knot of boys hovering near me, drawn like bees to a honeypot; or, as Dad charmingly preferred to put it, like flies to shit.