Page 64 of So Thrilled For You

It’s strange, the things you get jealous over when you can’t conceive. Ovarian cysts, polyps . . . things that would usually be a painful cause of concern are covetable because at least they’re an explanation. A week later, our results were read out to us. The results were that there were no results. There were no obvious reasons why we couldn’t conceive. When I cried about it to Lauren down the phone one night, she said I was ‘lucky’ at least that we had Seth’s private health insurance to run these tests. That it was a ‘privilege’to afford to know there was nothing clinically wrong with either of us. A ‘privilege’ we were able to go down the IVF route privately rather than wait on the NHS list.

I guess I was soluckythat we could afford three rounds of IVF before giving up. Three times I wasluckyenough to ride the insane hormonal rollercoaster that it made my previous PMS look like I was frolicking in a field of wheat. I wasblessedto do an £8000 wee on a pregnancy test following each implantation only for only one line to show up. What I’ve learned since this infertility nightmare is that luck and privilege are such a messy scrawl of concerns, with no logic to them. In my darkest moments, I’d believed women who had miscarriages wereluckybecause at least they knew they could get pregnant. Women who had fertility issues that could be explained by science wereluckybecause at least science could likely mend them. And yet,I waslucky,because I could afford to pay for tests that told me nothing was seemingly wrong. I waslucky,some might argue, that there’s nothing wrong, and therefore I can hope my barrenness is just a statistical quirk – sperm and egg just missing each other in my uterus, like the two leads in a rom-com, that you just know will find one another by the end of the movie. I’mluckyI’m straight. At least I got to try the traditional way. I’mluckyI’m not a gay man, where the only uterus available is via surrogate, and, only then, usually theluckygay men who can afford to pay for a surrogate abroad. Some women on the infertility chat rooms were devastated they couldn’t get pregnant with their second child, but I consider them lucky they’re able to have one at all. After Lauren fell pregnant, bless her, we all went out for dinner, and, when I came back from the toilet, I overheard her telling Nicki and Steffi that she hadn’t expected to fall pregnant straight away. I loitered behind a pillar as she bit her lip and confided that she felt shocked and a little bit freaked out at how quickly they’d conceived.

‘We were told it would take months,’ she’d complained, not eating her food because the lucky cow had pregnancy nausea. ‘You’re told your whole late twenties that your eggs are combusting into cobwebs after the age of thirty.’ She’d sighed.‘I know I should feel lucky, especially with what poor Charlotte is going through, but I feel blindsided. Of course I can’t share any of this with her . . .’ She’d then spotted me and I’d pretended to have only just arrived. Chirpy and saying we should definitely get a selfie in the toilets because the mirrors are really cool. When, inside, I sort of wanted to scream.

Nicki rips into another present. As predicted, she’s speeding up a bit as she realises how many she needs to get through. I’ve stopped taking pictures. I really should start taking more. She won’t want anything missed. But, as I feel more blood trickle into my makeshift pad, dread freezes me to my chair.

How could I ever have been jealous of this? This panic? This insurmountable loss if the worst really is happening?

I was awful to think that about miscarriage. I know this now. I knew it at the time too, as I was thinking it, but that experience of seeing those two lines, of knowing there’s a baby inside me, knowing its due date . . . therealnessof it. The thought I might lose it now . . . No. It can’t be happening. No. Please. I’m sorry. I take it all back.

Nicki holds out a light-yellow duck towel with a beak hood and everyone coos appropriately. I need to strategise. If I start bleeding more heavily, I’ll need to leave early. If I start to bleed heavily, making today perfect clearly hasn’t worked on the universe anyway. I bite my lip and weigh up whether to call Seth and panic him by telling him. Not yet. No. I can hold on. It’s nothing. It’s going to be nothing. It’s going to be alright. But I need a backup plan, just in case.

To my left, I see that Lauren and that Phoebe woman who knocked on the bathroom door have got up together and made their way over to the punch bowl. I jot down the duck towel and make a bolt for it.

I catch them as they’re sipping their drinks. Lauren’s thrown her head back laughing and seems transformed from before Woody’s nap.

‘Hey lovely ladies,’ I say, wondering why I sound like a caricature of myself. ‘Can I have a seccy?’

Intrigued, they lower their punch glasses and I steer them further into the kitchen, away from Nicki’s eye-line.

‘Is everything OK?’ Lauren asks.

‘The peonies aren’t wilting, are they?’ Phoebe says. ‘That would be a disaster!’

I know she’s taking the piss out of me but it really would be a disaster, actually, as we have another load of photos to take in front of them when this baby shower turns into the gender reveal. The fact they’ve not died is a) a miracle, and b) because I’ve been spritzing them with a water bottle whenever I have the chance.

I ignore what she’s said and launch into it. ‘It’s not a big deal. But I may have to dash off as something’s come up. I’ve got this surprise planned and I need someone to step in to help with it if I do have to go.’

Lauren puts a hand on my shoulder and tilts her head. ‘Is everything alright?’ She knows something’s significantly off if I’m bailing on today. I feel a deep twinge of love that she knows me so well.

‘It’s fine, it’s just something with my grandma,’ I lie, now worrying I’m accidentally manifesting my nana’s untimely death. ‘I’m waiting to hear. She’s not going to die,’ I added, just to let the universe know I’m not willing to throw Nana under the bus of fate for the sake of a small lie. ‘But . . . there’s a bit more to today than meets the eye.’

‘A stripper! I knew it!’ Phoebe says, clapping, and I resist this strong urge to stamp on this rude woman’s toe.

‘Actually, Matt is turning up as a surprise,’ I inform her. Phoebe’s smirk vanishes but I don’t have time to analyse this now.

‘Wow, OK . . .’

I give them the details as quickly as I can. ‘You know how Nicki says she didn’t want to know the gender of the baby?’

‘The sex of the baby,’ Phoebe interrupts. ‘We don’t know what gender it will be yet. The child gets to decide that.’

‘Yes, whatever.’ I shake my head. ‘Anyway, it turns out Nicki was just trying to be cool. She’s desperate to know. So, Matt and I rang the hospital for the results from the twenty-week scan. We’ll go outside for the piñata and then Matt will appear, all ta-da! And then I’ve got the gender reveal firework thing lodged in the decking to go off. Isn’t that great?’

I quickly run through the timings. I explain he’s on his way in a taxi and we’re currently running over schedule. I point out the window. ‘All I need one of you to do is . . . when he comes . . . the firework is there. I’ve taken the top off the smoke grenade and wedged it into the decking, with the ring pull poking up. Literally all you need to do is yank it and it will go off and the smoke will come out. There’s a bucket of water right next to it. When it stops burning, please put it in there because it’s obviously a million degrees outside.’ I take a breath. ‘But you probably don’t need to knowanyof this because my nana is going to be fine.Fine.’ I add. I give them a giant smile as they digest their new roles. Roles they totally won’t need to fulfil because it’s all going to be alright.

Evidence recovered from Vista Cottage

Evidence item no. 24

A thoroughly charred ‘Windee’ was recovered from the ashes of Vista Cottage. The device, which we’re assuming was a gift, acts like a reverse accordion to remove gas from an infant’s anal cavity.

Evidence item no. 27

Burned wire sculpture of what appears to be a human vagina. Witnesses say it was hanging above the smoke grenade which caused the fire.

Evidence item no. 32

---