Chapter Twenty-Four
When the day came to head home for Christmas, Lucy collected Granny Annie on her way to the train station. She didn’t trust her ninety-one-year-old grandma to get herself to the right place at the right time without any help. Annie couldn’t figure out how to work the mobile phone they had given her last year for Christmas so was unable to communicate with anyone from the minute she left the house. It therefore made sense for her to stay put and for Lucy to collect her en route.
Having fetched Annie and her suitcase and bundled her into a cab along with her own luggage, they set off for Paddington and the great expanse of countryside that they would soon be speeding across before reaching Bodmin and the little village of Trebetheric, their final destination.
Lucy was grateful for their pre-booked seats on the busy train. It was full of people making their way home for the festive season. Sipping cups of tea from the trolley while sharing a KitKat, Annie and Lucy chatted about life, love and family, catching up on each other’s news and reminiscing about years gone by.
The countryside zoomed past the windows; the winter had muted the riotous colour palette that Lucy had seen on her way down to the southwest that summer. Remembering how heartbroken she had been seven months earlier, she felt immensely proud of herself for the long way she had come since. She felt stronger and tougher, as though she had built a little protective wall around her heart. Her grandmother was a source of massive inspiration for Lucy. She had an incredible youthful energy and such a sharp sense of humour, that, despite the occasional muddle where she would forget names or faces, she could keep up with the rest of them without any problem. Lucy hoped that she would be just like her grandmother if she was ever lucky enough to reach that age.
Taking a deep breath, Lucy decided to take the opportunity to talk to her about her decision to go it alone. It occurred to her that now would be the ideal time. There was nothing her grandmother hated more than making a scene in public so she would have to behave herself and control her reaction appropriately, no matter how shocked she might be. The concept would be a hard one for anyone of Annie’s generation to get their head around.
Lucy turned to face her grandmother in the seat next to her. ‘Granny,’ said Lucy, ‘I have something I want to tell you.’
‘Yes darling,’ said Annie, putting her novel down to give her granddaughter her full attention. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, the thing is… I’m not sure you are going to really understand.’
‘What are you talking about, darling? Of course I will understand!’ said Annie, amused.
‘It’s something that would have been unheard of in your day, you see…’ said Lucy.
‘There are plenty of things that were unheard of in my day, Lucy. I can tell you!’
‘Okay, so have you ever heard of a woman having a baby by herself?’ asked Lucy.
‘Of course I have!’ said Annie. ‘I am a woman of the world, I know these things happen.’
Lucy relaxed slightly.
‘I mean, I’d think you were a fool if it happened to you, but I know these things do happen,’ added Annie, inspecting her granddaughter a little more suspiciously. ‘Don’t tell me, you have been sleeping around?’ she asked, suddenly horrified at the prospect.
‘No, Granny, of course not!’ laughed Lucy, amused at the conclusion her grandmother had jumped to.
‘Are you pregnant?’ demanded Annie.
‘No,’ said Lucy, crossing her fingers under the table. She would be finding out whether the cycle had worked while she was in Cornwall.
‘So what are you talking about?’ asked Annie.
‘Well, I have made a tricky decision that I want to share with you. It would mean a lot to me if I had your support,’ explained Lucy.
‘Right…’ said Annie dubiously.
Lucy took a deep breath, ‘I have decided to try and have a baby by myself. Not by sleeping with random strangers. Not by sleeping with anyone at all, in fact.’
‘Are you going to adopt?’ asked Annie, her eyebrows hovering somewhere near her hairline.
‘No, not adoption. There is a different way. It is called donor insemination and they do it at a private fertility clinic.’
‘Hang on a minute, why would you consider having a baby when you haven’t got a boyfriend? Let alone a husband?’ asked Annie, as Lucy had suspected that she would.
‘Because I am getting too old to wait any longer to meet the man of my dreams. I don’t want to waste my last fertile years hoping I will meet someone,’ explained Lucy.
‘But a child needs two parents,’ said Annie, unable to keep the certainty out of her voice.
‘Well, yes, I suppose in an ideal world you would want all children to have a mum and a dad. But I know plenty of lovely, happy people who have been brought up by one parent. Say if the father died and the mother didn’t remarry, the child would only have one parent, and no one would complain about that,’ said Lucy.
‘Well yes but that is entirely different darling,’ replied Annie. ‘You would actively be choosing to bring a child into your life without a father. It wouldn’t be right.’
