Simone spun on her heel. “How dare you! You know nothing about my marriage. Nothing! And you know even less about me.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I know that you and Evette are the strongest couple I have ever seen. I know that you love each other fiercely. I know that the only reason your wife would have let you come down here to sort Augustus’s shit out alone is if she was at her wit’s end. And I know that every time you see a pregnant woman or a baby it cracks your heart into a million pieces.”
The truth of her words hit Simone like a slap. The shock of it stole her breath and smashed a fist through the wall she’d been hiding behind. Suddenly it was all too much, the repressing and pretending.
She covered her face with her hands as she gasped for air. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Her sadness was a hand around her throat, choking her. She couldn’t breathe. She kept trying to pull in air, but it came in tiny gasps she couldn’t seem to let back out. She thought her sorrow might actually kill her if she kept it in, but she didn’t know what would happen if she let it out. She felt Star wrap her arms around her.
“Let it out,” she said softly. “I’ve got you and I won’t let go. Let it out.”
“I—I can’t,” she stammered.
“Yes. You can. You must. You have nothing to lose with me.”
She found herself gripping hold of the back of Star’s coat, her open mouth pressed to her sister’s shoulder as she tried to stifle her sobs. Star was so much smaller than she was and yet she was practically hanging off her and Star was holding her firm.
“What if I can’t stop?” she managed to gasp.
“Then I’ll wait with you until you can.”
Simone sagged further. The weight of this interminable grief wanted to pull her under the earth and bury her alive.
“Come on,” Star said. There was a garden bench tucked beneath the front bay window, hidden from the street by an arbor, draped in the forlorn limbs of a rambling rose. Simone allowed herself to be guided to it and almost collapsed onto the cold wood. Just inside the porchway behind the log store was a basket of thick blankets—Mrs. Dalgleish liked to drink her morning coffee sitting on the bench, whatever the weather—and Star hastily grabbed two, shaking them out and wrapping them around Simone before pulling her close.
Simone allowed herself to be swaddled by her baby sister, leaning in and resting her face against Star’s chest. Star rocked her gently and she didn’t fight it. The tenderness of Star’s hands rubbing her back through the thick blankets finally untied the tourniquet around her chest.
For a few minutes she couldn’t speak. There was no room for words as the grief spilled out of her in wracking sobs and a high-pitched keen. Her sadness was visceral, primal, every lament convulsive. Star didn’t speak either; she simply held her tightly, still rocking her, letting Simone know that she wasn’t alone, that she was safe.
It took a long time.
When Simone finally felt as though she could control her voice, she looked up at Star.
“I feel so sad all the time,” she said in a voice still shaking with sorrow.
Star nodded, her eyes shining with tears. “I know.” She sniffed. “I know.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll work it out. Together.”
She didn’t know how long they’d been sitting on the bench beneath the window, but Simone suddenly realized that she was very cold and if she was cold wrapped in two blankets, Star must be freezing. She took a shaky breath.
“Fancy a hot chocolate?” she asked, her voice catching in little hiccupping spasms, the aftermath of crying for so long.
“I thought you’d never ask.” Star smiled, the lift of her cheeks causing the tears balancing on her lashes to spill over. She sniffed, wiping her face with her coat sleeve. “Watery eyes. Must be the cold.”
“Must be.”
With frozen fingers, they managed to get the front door open. Without saying a word, Star helped to build a fire in the hearth and then followed Simone out to the kitchen to make hot chocolate. Simone knew that her sister was staying close while giving her space. She appreciated it. She felt rinsed out. Tonight had been cathartic but exhausting. She wasn’t cured. She hadn’t expected to be. But her chest felt looser somehow.
They took their drinks back into the sitting room, and Star pulled the two armchairs in front of the fire. They sat: frozen fingers curled around hot mugs, the firelight casting dancing shadows on the walls.
“I don’t know where to begin.” Simone stared into the flames.
“Start at your first round of IVF. Tell me everything. And I mean everything—don’t leave anything out.”
“That’s going to take a while.”
“I’ve got time.” She blew on her hot chocolate and took a sip.
Simone sighed and closed her eyes. What she’d have liked to do was go to bed and sleep for three days, forget any of this happened, go back to stuffing it all down. But Star was right. She needed to say it all and she needed to say it now. To creep back into denial would be easier, but it wasn’t going to help her mental health and it certainly wasn’t going to save her marriage. Now was the right time.
She started right at the beginning, that first appointment in their local GP surgery. Back when she was convinced that it would be easy, despite all the warnings from friends and health professionals not to get her hopes up. How could she fail to get pregnant when every fiber of her being was telling her she needed to be a mother? It was inconceivable that someone with such a strenuous desire to become pregnant could fail.
The first few sentences stuck in her throat. She felt mortified, like she was making a fuss or being a bore—two things she couldn’t abide in others and especially not in herself. But as she went on, her words no longer felt like they were laced with razor blades. The edges smoothed and the words flowed, and she found she couldn’t stop.
“We signed up to a fertility clinic that had good feedback from other female couples and then we found a great sperm donor. He’s Evette’s complexion and hair color but with green eyes, tall, athletic build, and an academic.”
“He sounds like a catch. Do you have his number?”
Simone spluttered out a snotty laugh. “You know, I kind of thought we’d done all the hard stuff. I’d had my eggs harvested and we had the donor and I had successful embryos . . . After all that, the actual getting pregnant part felt like a foregone conclusion. It isn’t like they didn’t warn me, they did, I just didn’t imagine it wouldn’t work. But they just wouldn’t take.” Her voice cracked again. “My womb is a fucking inhospitable environment. Why wouldn’t they stick?”
Star reached over and took her hands. “I don’t know.” She said. “I don’t know why. But I’m sorry.”
Simone looked down at her sister’s freckled skin, fingernails bitten down to the quick on child-sized hands. She sniffed and swallowed hard. “So, I’ve still got embryos frozen. I mean, technically, if we had the money, we could just go on and on trying.”
“And would you? If money wasn’t an object?”