Sophie had popped over to her parents’ two Saturdays ago, on her own this time, giving Tom the chance to catch up on a bit of admin and (she hoped) finally clean his side of the bedroom. It had been pleasant, driving along in the July air, knowing that all that stood between her and her summer was a week of activities – sports day, a theatre trip, presentations, and barely a meeting in sight.
‘Come over for tea,’ Mum had said on the phone. ‘It’d be nice to see you.’
And Sophie had thought nothing of it. Why should she have?
It was a bit odd, granted, that Dad had to pop out so soon after she’d arrived, but the prospect of sitting and having a chat with Mum was a pleasant one. Only when Mum had set the porcelain mug in front of her on the pine table and sat opposite her, her face had looked different.
Instantly, Sophie had been on her guard. ‘Everything OK?’ she’d asked, trying to keep her tone light.
‘Oh, yes,’ Mum had smiled. ‘Yes, all good here!’ She’d given a little high laugh, different from her ordinary one, and taken a sip of tea, gasping slightly at its heat. Then she had set the mug down and looked at Sophie with a small, kind smile. ‘Just thought we could have a little chat.’
Having a little chat was Mum-speak for a serious conversation.
‘Oh, God. What is it, Mum? Are you sick? Is Dad sick? Is Sam OK?’
Mum had laughed. ‘Sorry love. We’re all fine. I didn’t mean to alarm you. We’re all fine. Don’t worry.’ She’d reached over the table and covered Sophie’s hand with hers. ‘I just wanted to see how things are going with Tom?’
‘Oh!’ Sophie had frowned. ‘Well, yeah, we’re good.’
‘Good. Good.’ Another pat of the hand. ‘Any… plans?’
‘Well, other than Paris, no. We thought we’d just take it easy this year. Tom’s only got a couple of weeks booked because his work is?—’
‘No, I meanplans.’Mum had looked at her meaningfully.
‘Sorry… I?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Sophie! You’ve been married for a year!’ Mum had shaken her head as if Sophie was being completely ridiculous. ‘I’m talking about babies!’
Mum had never seemed particularly comfortable discussing what she called ‘ladies’ things.’ Periods, ovulation,contraception, conception, babies. She’d always preferred to smother them in euphemisms so vague that sometimes Sophie wasn’t 100 per cent sure what they were talking about. This was a case in point.
‘Oh!’ Sophie had said, and laughed. ‘No. Not for a good few years, I think.’ She looked at her stomach. She had put on a little weight over the term – too many generous staff members bringing in biscuits – but surely she didn’t look pregnant?
‘Well, you might want to get on with it a little more quickly than that.’ Mum’s tone was suddenly serious and something in Sophie’s stomach dropped.
‘What do you mean?’
Mum had explained, in a meandering way, how conceiving Sophie and Sam had been a little difficult. ‘We waited almost two years for you to come along, then it was a bit easier with Sam. But then, well…’ and her expression had darkened as she’d told Sophie about the brother she’d almost had, the miscarriage and the early menopause that had followed.
It must have taken a lot out of Mum to be so open with things she’d kept close to her chest all Sophie’s life. It would have been worse if she hadn’t told her at all, if she’d left her to find out the hard way, Sophie had tried to console herself as she drove home, her shoulders rigid with stress. But it was still a bombshell. Still, something she might have been grateful to know earlier.
‘Well, when you said you were getting married so young, I thought I might not have to tell you,’ Mum had said when she’d raised it. ‘And if you planned to have a baby right away, well. Perhaps you’d never have needed to know. You’ve got a few years yet, I’m sure.’
But did she? Mum had gone through menopause in her mid-thirties, suffered odd symptoms for a few years beforehand which may have been why her wanted third child had never materialised. And she’d chosen now as the time to tell Sophiethat if she didn’t – as her Mum rather indelicately put it –get on with it, she might never be a mother.
Sophie stuffed another dress roughly into her case. She hadn’t even known for sure if she wanted to be a mother. She’d assumed it was something that she’d eventually feel something about one way or the other. But not yet. Not in her twenties. It hadn’t seemed to matter, particularly.
Now, knowing that she might be denied the chance at all – and with a freshly received private blood test result confirming her ovarian reserve was, as the doctor had put it, ‘suboptimal’, she felt a craving to bear life. Where had it come from? Was it ridiculous – a weird, childish ‘wanting what I can’t have’ impulse? Or was it something deeper, biological? Something that she’d never had to consider fully before – this strange, desperate need to be a mother?
‘Thanks a lot, Mum,’ she said to nobody as she zipped the case closed. Gone was her hope of a relaxed holiday. Instead, this was the holiday she’d have to sit her husband down and tell him they had to decide whether they wanted a family or not – and if they did, that the odds were against them.
The worst thing was that, in her first year of marriage, the only complaint she’d had about Tom was that he sometimes seemed a bit immature. ‘I feel like his mum,’ she’d raged to Sam on the phone more than once when she’d found his clothes draped over the wash-basket, or discovered he’d neglected to pick up any milk on the way home. ‘He’s just so used to having these things done for him!’
Sam had laughed. ‘I think that might just be “being a man”,’ she’d joked.
‘Well, not on my watch.’
‘It’s fine. You can train him out of it.’