Sam reminded me that the chances are that these ones won’t either and I know that, of course, but I’m sure that mental attitude has an effect on the physical self. I know I can’t will it to happen, but the least I can do is give Dick and Debbie the most positive start in life that I can.
Yes, all right, I’ve given them names! And I’m not embarrassed about it either. They’re mine, aren’t they? They exist, don’t they? At least they did when the picture was taken. And now? Who knows? I could see that Sam was not at all sure about personalizing things in this way. But why not? They’re fertilized embryos! That’s a huge step for us. Something we might easily not have been able to do. We have to be positive, we’re so far down the road.
Sam reminded me yet again that it’s only a one in five chance. Well, I know! I know. Of course the odds are long, but they’re not impossible. Twenty per cent isn’t a bad shot. When my photo was taken they were alive.
“Think about that, Sam,” I said. “Two living entities created from you and me. All they have to do now is hang on inside for a few days. They just have to hang on.”
It’s funny, but Lucy’s enthusiasm, the strength of her will, is infectious. Because the more I looked at that photo, the more real those two little translucent splodges became. They are, after all, already embryos. They’ve already passed the beginning of life. And I couldn’t deny that in a way they looked pretty tough, I mean for three- celled organisms, that is, obviously.
“Of course they’re tough,” said Lucy. “Think what they’ve been through already! Sucked out of me by vacuum cleaner, pumped out of you into a cold plastic pot. Whirled around in a centrifuge, shaken up until they bash into each other, smeared on a microscope slide then sucked up again and squirted through a syringe. It’s a positive assault course. Dick and Debbie are SAS material!”
She’s right, of course. If they do make it back out of her they’re going to be either commandos or circus performers. And they might make it. They could make it. I mean, why the hell shouldn’t they? If they can just hang on for a few more days while they grow a few more cells.
Then Lucy whispered at her stomach.
“Come on, Dick and Debbie,” she said. It was sort of as a joke, but I could see that she meant it, so I said it too but louder.
“Come on, Dick and Debbie!”
Then we started shouting it.
Funny, really, the two of us sitting there, laughing and shouting at Lucy’s stomach.
Whatever happens now, that was a good thing to do.
Dear Penny
I wonder if this will be the last sad letter that I ever write you? The long wait is coming to an end. One more vaginal suppository is all I have to take (there’s been nine, plus three more spikes in the bum). I hope Dick and Debbie realize what I’m going through for them. Sam says that if they’re as tough as we hope they are, in eight and a half months I’ll be able to tell them. I hope we’re not hoping too much. It’s only a one in five chance, after all.
Sam said that any child of mine would be one in a million.
Then we kissed for ages.
I can’t deny that I feel good. I’m not even slightly periodic and normally I can feel my period coming for a week. Sam agrees that that has to be a very good sign.
Oh well, the day after tomorrow we’ll have the blood test and then we’ll know. I’ve made Sam promise that he’ll take the day off. He’s been working so hard recently (God knows what on – Charlie Stone just seems to say the first thing that comes into his head, which is usually “knob”). Anyway, I definitely don’t want to get the news alone.
After we had kissed, Sam got very serious and said that when it’s all over, for better or… well, hopefully for better, he wants to talk. I said fine and he said, “No, really talk, about the last few months, and all that we’ve been feeling and going through together.” This is a very encouraging sign for me because as I’ve said before, Sam is not always the most communicative of people. He says he wants to talk about where he wants to go as a writer and what sacrifices we would both have to make for it and, well, lots of other things.
He says he wants to go away this weekend. Whatever the news is and… well, talk.
I said that I thought it was a great idea. We can take Dick and Debbie on their first trip.
We thought about that for a while and then we kissed again and then he said he loved me and I said I love him and there was more kissing and Sam put his head on my tummy, where it is now. One thing is for sure: whatever happens, whether Dick and Debbie make it or not, IVF has been good for Sam and me. It’s really brought us closer together.
It’s twelve-thirty at night. Lucy and I have had a lovely evening together and we’ve agreed to go away together next weekend. I’ll tell her everything then.
She’s been asleep for an hour now. But I couldn’t sleep because as I lay there thinking about Dick and Debbie I decided on the way my film is going to end. I’ve just written it up and faxed it to Ewan, who, as far as I know, never goes to bed.
INT. DAY. COLIN AND RACHEL’S HOUSE.
The news comes in the afternoon. Colin and Rachel are sitting, anxiously awaiting a phonecall. They take strength from each other’s presence. They hold hands. The phone rings. Colin tries to answer it but Rachel is holding his hands too tightly. There’s a moment of comedy and emotion as Colin has to remove a hand from Rachel’s traumatized grip in order to pick up the receiver. He listens for a moment. In Rachel’s eyes we see the hope and the fear of her entire life. Colin smiles, a smile so big, so broad it seems to fill the screen. He says, “Thank you,” and puts the phone down. He looks at Rachel, she looks at him, he says, “They made it.” The End.
That’s it. Whatever happens to Lucy and me, that’s the end of my movie. It’s the ending I felt tonight, the ending I want.
Ewan just phoned. I hope he didn’t wake Lucy.
“It’s mawkish, over-sentimental, middle-class English shite,” he said. “I love it.”
Everybody seems to have been up late tonight. Petra called as well and George, who never sleeps at all any more because of Cuthbert.
Petra was hugely relieved. “The right decision, Sam,” she said. “I might as well tell you now. If I’d gone to LA with anything other than a developing foetus, they’d have withdrawn their funding.”
I’d unplugged the phone in our bedroom and was having a last whisky (which I’ve been allowed since making my last deposit) when George phoned.
“Well done, mate,” he said.
I told him it was what I felt like writing.
Somehow I think that now everything will be all right.
Dear Penny
Today I got my period.
It started at about eleven this morning. It came without warning but it’s a heavy one and it means that all my dreams are dead.
I’m not pregnant. I’ve never been pregnant. The two embryos I called Dick and Debbie died a week ago.
I sat on the lavatory for about an hour, crying. I don’t believe I’ve ever cried as much in my whole life as I did today. My eyes are swollen and sore. They feel like they have daggers in them.
I wasn’t just crying for the loss of the babies that never existed. That was only the beginning of
