I feel Libby’s hand slip into mine and with her other hand she cups my head and pulls it onto her shoulder where, in the middle of an art gallery full of women, some of whom are crying as openly as I am, I fall apart at the seams.
We leave a few minutes later, unable to cope with the images of grief so close to us. It is unbearable, like looking into the sun. We walk to the station, me still crying silently, Libby looking at me with the desperate need to make it better, but she can’t. I wave away her offer to take me home and insist I am fine. I’m alone now and I have to get used to it. I get onto my train and she follows me. She sits on the other side of the carriage, takes a book out of her bag and reads it for the entire thirty-minute journey. We get off the train at Crystal Palace and she walks the fifteen minutes back to my house, always a few steps behind me. I walk down the path to my house, put the key into the cheerful, red door of my home and turn around. Libby is standing, smiling at me. “You’re not alone. I love you,” she says, and turns around to make the hour-and-a-half journey back to her own home.
Perhaps it is the images of Marcus and his wife at the gallery, or Libby’s kindness or the heavy silence of my house, but I lie down on the sofa in the living room and keep weeping as though I hadn’t ever stopped. It’s a faucet of grief that has released itself and as I listen to the thoughts racing I realize that I have to forgive myself. I did the best I could. I couldn’t hold his hand; I was protecting Theodore. I couldn’t tell him I loved him as he took his last breath; I was protecting Theodore. Anthony wanted me to keep Theodore safe with every fiber of his being. He didn’t blame me for leaving him alone at his time of greatest need, but I have blamed myself. I’ve blamed myself for the deaths of my husband and son, for my failure to protect them, and my failure to save them. That belief—that I had wronged my family and brought doom upon myself—is preventing me from acting upon the need I desperately feel to have another baby. I want another baby. I want to be a mother again, I want to have a child and to have a family. I want to gain someone into my life rather than merely cope with the aftershocks of loss. Surviving and living a life I want are very different things.
I go to the tab I have saved on my computer. My local authority has opened, as of today, an application process for fertility treatment using donor sperm for women who no longer have any living children. It’s time to move forward. I complete the application form, which is surprisingly simple. I confirm I have had a child before and list my health history. I expect it to ask me to list any miscarriages, fertility drugs taken and any other details but it doesn’t. Perhaps they will take this straight from my medical records.
I send the form and text a photo of the sent e-mail to Libby.
Thank you. I love you too.
Now, I need to try desperately to forget about it. I don’t know the odds of being accepted and even if I managed to get treatment, I have struggled to conceive in the past. But it is a chance, and that’s more than I’ve had in years. For the first time since they were put up there, years ago, in another lifetime, I go upstairs to the loft, where all of Theodore’s baby clothes, crib, pram and baby toys are stored. I haven’t touched them. I thought it was because it would be too painful, but now I think it’s that I always hoped. I allowed myself to have moments of hope but the pain of acting on it was too great. And so the relics of my former life sit here, untouched and precious. I so desperately want for them to become part of my future.
AMANDA
Glasgow, the Independent Republic of Scotland
Day 1,531
Being in charge is not overrated. I fired someone today, which was completely deserved. I finally tracked down the man who ignored me in November 2025. Or to be more specific, the man who told Leah, my university friend who worked under him, that I was—let me quote the e-mail—“a stark raving lunatic who is trying to waste the limited resources and time of this institution. Not to mention my patience.” His name is Raymond McNab and I had the immense pleasure of finally wrangling access to the e-mails today, which gave me the proof I needed. It should never have taken me so long to access the bloody e-mails but he had deleted everything before he ran up north with his wife, abandoning his position here to try and save himself.