Eventually, they hailed a cab and went back to her flat, undressing each other as soon as they got in the door. Their clothes lay in a tangled trail to her bedroom. Jack pushed her down on to the bed and forced any lingering thoughts of Alex firmly out of her mind, once and for all.
Afterwards, Lucy drifted in and out of sleep, waking up in the morning with a pounding head, an aching body and an empty space next to her. She felt a strange mixture of elation and guilt. She reached for her phone. Sure enough there was a message from Jack:
Last night was amazing. I’m sorry I didn’t have better self-control, I couldn’t resist you. Hope you are okay? J xx
Lucy could tell that he wanted to make sure she was all right. He probably felt as if he had taken advantage of her.
My self-control also to blame. And it was great, L xx
Jack replied:
I’m sure I don’t need to say this but can we please keep this between ourselves? X
As she read this, Lucy felt slightly sick. She suspected he was regretting mixing business with pleasure. Not to mention the thought of Penny finding out if word got out that they had slept together. Given how up in the air things were between them that would be the last thing he needed. Her eyes filled with tears. She should have known better. It was impossible to have a night like that with someone like Jack and stay emotionally unattached. They had been colleagues for so long, and she had always been so attracted to him. She had thought it would make her feel better but she felt worse. Why was it that all the men she had feelings for didn’t quite reciprocate in the way she wanted them to?
Mum’s the word!
Replied Lucy, cringing at the false joviality of her text as she wrote it.
With a sigh she got up and made her way to the shower. She wanted to wash the night away. She felt very uncomfortable about Penny. She had vowed that she would never touch Jack, that he was completely out of bounds as long as he was married. She felt ashamed of herself that she had given into temptation, and for what… one night of fun? It had been amazing but that didn’t make it all right. He wasn’t single, that was a fact, and so what they had done was wrong. She vowed not to tell anyone about it, ever. Not even Claudia. She would never risk it getting out. It wouldn’t be fair to Penny or Jack for this to become public knowledge. Most importantly, it wouldn’t be fair to his children.
On the twenty-third of August, Lucy went for her initial consultation with The London Women’s Clinic. She was impressed by the reception area. With two huge green plants on either side of a black and white, chequered marble floor and a sweeping, wrought-iron stair case ascending from behind the wooden desk, it looked more like the reception area of a smart hotel than a clinic; the only telltale signs were the artistic images on the wall, clever photographs of sperm, eggs and embryos rather than the usual landscapes. As she sat in the waiting room, she was enchanted to see a beautiful little dark-haired girl with the most gorgeous ringlets toddle over to her. She must have been no more than two years old. She was drawn like a magpie to the fake jewels on Lucy’s gold sandals and kept trying to pick them up. Her mother came over to try and dissuade the child from bothering her, saying apologetically, ‘I’m so sorry, she just loves sparkly things!’
‘Don’t worry at all, she’s adorable!’ said Lucy.
‘She really is, isn’t she?’ said the woman, looking lovingly at her child. ‘Although I know you’re not supposed to say that about your own child! I’m Nicola and this is Maisy,’ said the lady, brushing her long dark hair over her shoulder and picking up her daughter. Proffering a slender arm that jangled with bangles, she said, ‘Nice to meet you.’
‘I’m Lucy,’ she said, shaking her hand and watching with amusement as Maisy clambered onto Nicola’s lap, pulling at the stretchy fabric of her mother’s navy maxi dress.
‘Have you been to this clinic before?’ asked Lucy. ‘It’s my first time, so I’m a little nervous!’
‘Oh poor you, don’t be nervous! Everyone here is so lovely, honestly. I remember feeling the same when I first came here, several years ago now!’ Nicola confided. ‘Is it your first consultation, then?’
Lucy nodded. Deciding to be brave, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’m thinking of having a baby but I don’t have a partner. So I’m contemplating DI.’ She knew that she would have to get used to talking about it without feeling ashamed.
Nicola nodded her head and pointed at Maisy. ‘That’s exactly what I did. Look at me now!’ she said, kissing her daughter on the head, who had now decided to curl up and have a rest on her mother’s lap. Lucy couldn’t believe her eyes, she didn’t know why but she hadn’t suspected that Maisy could be a donor baby. Chiding herself for her own narrow-mindedness, she realized that she hadn’t thought someone as gorgeous as Nicola would have been down this route.But why on earth not, she thought to herself,if I am?
‘That’s amazing!’ cried Lucy. ‘Oh wow, it’s so inspiring to see you now, on the other end of the process. To think that I could be you in a couple of years!’
‘I’m in for a possible round two now,’ whispered Nicola. ‘I want her to have a brother or sister. I’m going to try and use the same sperm so that they are genetically full siblings.’ Lucy hadn’t thought about that possibility yet, but she was impressed that it was feasible to have a real family, sharing the same genes, through DI.
Lucy and Nicola chatted about her experiences during her last round of treatment. It had taken her four attempts, or cycles, of IUI before she had become pregnant. Lucy felt as though she had found a real kindred spirit in Nicola, a high-flying accountant who said she had genuinely never had the time to meet anyone and settle down. She had been thirty-seven when she fell pregnant with DI, and at thirty-nine she knew that she was cutting it fine but had decided to try again. As Lucy was called in for her appointment, Nicola offered to swap phone numbers, saying that she would really love it if they could stay in touch, and that she would be happy to answer any questions Lucy had if she decided to go ahead with it. Lucy gratefully accepted and they saved each other’s details in their mobile phones.
She left the waiting room and shook hands with her doctor, a beautiful Asian lady with a kind smile, following her up the staircase and along the corridor into her office.
Lucy was relieved to find the clinic a warm and friendly place where her doctor, a fertility specialist, was able to explain answers to the hundreds of questions that she had amassed over the last couple of months. She was reassured to find out that, in co-operation with the London Sperm Bank, this clinic had the largest donor insemination programme in the UK. She felt in safe hands.
The doctor explained the steps that would follow if she decided to go ahead with the treatment. She would have roughly an eighteen per cent chance of each cycle working. She worked out that she had enough money in her savings to have three rounds of treatment before she would have to start saving up all over again. She prayed that this would be enough.
Lucy waited with bated breath as the doctor did a pelvic ultrasound scan on her. She thought of all of her friends with children and wondered whether they had any idea just how lucky they were that they had got pregnant naturally, that they had met their partners at the right time to start a family. After an agonizing few minutes she was relieved to hear that everything seemed to be in perfect working order. Despite her relief she couldn’t help but wish that all of this hadn’t been necessary. It seemed like an enormously long road ahead and the chances seemed all too slim. She knew that all she needed to do now was make her final decision and get the ball rolling.
