Mona screws up her face. ‘Single parenthood. God. Can you imagine?’ She pours more wine and then looks at Ash, a frozen look on her face making it clear she’s just realised perhaps she has misspoken. ‘I mean, all power to you if you did want to fly solo and have a kid,’ Mona says. ‘I just … well. Seems like a lot of work to me. Lonely, too.’
‘Yeah,’ says Ash. ‘I don’t think it would be for me either. I always thought there was a romance to like, night feeds when your husband comes in to take over, or somebody cooking you dinner as you do bedtime routine, you know? Building a family as a team sport, I suppose.’
‘So if you can’t do it with a fella, you’d rather not do it at all?’
‘Is that bad?’ asks Ash, pulling a face. ‘Am I supposed to be stronger than that?’
Mona rolls her eyes and glugs down her wine. ‘Fuck no,’she insists. ‘Single parenthood to spite the patriarchy? Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face.’
Ash smiles gratefully. She’s relieved there’s never a wrong thing to be said to Mona. There’s something about an older woman who has seen so much more of life that makes her feel at peace. She doesn’t have to say the ‘right’ thing, only the honest one.
‘Look,’ says Mona. ‘If you don’t have this family, don’t get married and do two-point-four kids and two holidays a year and a nice detached house with a front and back garden, please hear me when I tell you this: you will be just fine. All of that, it’s just one way of doing things. And don’t for one second think anyone who has all that doesn’t ever think of what it would be like to be a single woman on a solo Lisbon adventure, in the same way that you can be here and wonder about this other life you could have lived, if things had been different. Maybe whoever said to you that if you really wanted it, it would have happened by now, is right – maybe you would have. Maybe you would have settled with Mr Wrong, or done an accidental-on-purpose whoopsie, or even done it by yourself. Maybe our decisions about these things aren’t a simple “want” and “don’t want”, but are on a sliding scale, you know? You’ve just tipped the scales on “staying childless” by an nth of a degree, and somebody else had kids by that same slide to the other side. Sometimes they’ll regret it. Sometimes you’ll think you missed out. But I’m pretty sure the only thing certainty gets you is idiocy. I don’t trust people who are one hundred per cent behind their bets – a small amount of doubt is normal.’
Ash nods along furiously, following Mona’s argument.
‘But to answer your question, what has it been like not to have kids? It’s been all the things I’d imagine it is to have them. It’s been fun, lonely, difficult, glorious … Me and my ex, we enjoyed our money, travelled, ate at good restaurants and stayed in fantastic hotels, and we slept in when we wanted, went out five or six nights a week for a while there, too. We’ve lived, it’s just been in other ways. Sometimes it made me sad not to have more than two stockings to stuff at Christmas or a nativity to go to. But after a while my life just became my life, and I found all the ways I could to enjoy it. Same as a parent has to. God, the shit some of my friends went through with their kids. Sleepless nights. My friend’s son took a knife to school when he was fourteen, god knows why. Another friend’s daughter got pregnant at sixteen and she had to take her for an abortion. I know another woman who suffered sixteen rounds of IVF to get her rainbow baby, couldn’t enjoy a single second of pregnancy because she was terrified it would all go away, and to be honest, I don’t even think she ended up liking her son very much. He married a Filipino girl, lives in Manila now. My point is, doll, we just have to play the hand we’ve been dealt, don’t we? I do want to say, though, it took me years to understand that not being a mother didn’t make me less of a woman. If I could tell every woman on the planet that carrying a child doesn’t make you any more or less of a woman, I would.’
‘I think that’s what I’m afraid of,’ Ash says, her voicesmall. She’s never thought of it like that before. ‘If I don’t do it, then what am I here for?’
Mona reaches out a hand, cups Ash’s and squeezes hard.
‘You’re here to simply be here,’ Mona says. ‘There’s no trick. It’s as simple as that, doll. Being you, as you are, is enough. It’s all you’ll ever need to be.’
Ash feels hot, wet tears push against her eyes, welling up until they threaten to spill over.
‘Shit.’ She tries to blink them away by looking up at the sky. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise how much I needed to hear that. Fuck. Argh!’
‘Don’t say sorry for crying, it’s OK,’ Mona says. ‘Fuck, I could do with letting myself cry a bit more, to be honest. Look at us, eh? Just two girls in the big wide world, trying to find the fucking meaning of it all, eh?’
Ash forces a smile. ‘Is it pathetic?’ she says. ‘To be on this … quest? For meaning?’
‘Pathetic?’ squeaks Mona. ‘Piss off! It’s fucking brave, Ash. We’re the bravest women in Lisbon, feeling this fucking afraid and facing up to ourselves anyway. A lesser woman could never. Jesus.’
Ash notices their glasses are nearing empty, and despite valid reservations about ever finishing a bottle of wine with Mona, ever again, she refills them and lifts one to cheers.
‘I am so bloody lucky to have met you, Mona,’ Ash says, and Mona clinks her glass to Ash’s and barks a laugh as she says, ‘You really fucking are, love.’
17
CJ
If Ash seems reluctant to approach CJ as everyone assembles at the meeting point outside of CoLab, CJ must take it on the chin that, indeed, she has been hot and cold with Ash, despite the last time they saw each other being warm, and as such it will, of course, be up to her to give the first hello. There’s fifteen of them for fado night, an event to be held at one of Bairro Alto’s best restaurants, less than a ten-minute walk away, and as Luis checks everyone off the list and leads the way, CJ weaves her way through the others to fall in step with Ash.
‘Evening,’ CJ says, with a small wave. Interestingly, she’s cautious, low-key fearful that the other night didn’t mean as much to Ash as it did to her, maybe, worried that whilst CJ thinks she’s made a new friend, she could just as easily have misunderstood. Ash is the sort to make friends everywhere she goes, after all. How odd, though, to have all these thoughts. How unlike CJ to let concern wash over her like a wave, stilting her normally unruffled demeanour.
‘Oh, hey,’ Ash replies.
Whoever she was walking with – was it Jenny, the American? – is busily relaying a complex theory about centric politics and the unintended effect it has on deforestation to two bored-looking Brits, and as such nobody notices Ash peel away. The pair, CJ and Ash, fall to the back of the group awkwardly, a pair of high schoolers who bonded in detention and now don’t know how to engage out there in the big, wide normal world of regular school.
‘Tonight should be good,’ CJ offers. As conversation starters go, it’s not the worst. It’s also not the best. ‘I’ve not seen traditional fado since I was a kid. You’d think they’d revoke my passport for such offences. Disinterest in my culture, or similar.’
Ash laughs, lightly. She’s pulled her hair back into a loose bun at the back of her neck, a few tendrils tugged free to frame her face. She’s in horseshoe leg medium-wash jeans and a soft-looking, cream short-sleeved sweater. With her tan flats and straw bag she looks relaxed, chic. Monied. CJ has never been interested in pulling ‘outfits’ together, and it has never really occurred to her to notice what other people wear. Bodies are either covered, or they’re not. But with Ash, CJ somehow always ends up clocking the cut of her trousers, the fall of her hem, the shape of her neckline. Perhaps that is what style is – making others pay attention when they otherwise would not.
‘I barely even know what fado is,’ Ash admits. ‘In my guidebook it says people sing traditional songs between courses? I’ve not got much further than that in my research, which isn’t like me. But singing, that sounds … fun?’
‘That’s one word for fado, I guess,’ CJ says. ‘But. Itissometimes called Lisbon’s blues. Mournful and haunting ballads about lost sailors, broken hearts, bittersweet romance …’
‘Ah, where the three points of my Venn diagram overlap,’ jokes Ash. ‘My kind of night.’
