Oh no.
This is the only thing I want.
“Never mind,” says the photographer. “That’ll do.”
I rub my temples and head for the exit. It’s only 4:30. I don’t really need to stay here an extra night. I could be home by 1:00 a.m. I call James as I walk through the forest.
“What are you up to?” I ask. I’m supposed to be on a regular diving job, not a sat dive, so thank heavens I don’t have to fake a high-pitched voice.
“Waiting on my last customer. A Polynesian sea turtle.”
“You’re giving a turtle a tattoo. Ha.”
“How’s Liverpool?”
I look around me, at the log cabins, dog exercise areas, and play parks. “Busy, but good,” I say. I’m walking up a path that runs alongside a lake. “Water stuff is going well.” “Water stuff”? Can’t I bring myself to use the word diving?
“I’m looking forward to seeing you tomorrow,” says James.
“Hope Cola’s behaving.”
“I’m sorry we didn’t get more time to talk after you started your, you know, your period. We’ll get there, Solvig. It’s a gamble. We’ve only got a 25 percent chance in any given month.”
“Twenty-five seems high,” I say, plucking a leaf off a bush. As it happens, I know that the figure is more like 10 percent for someone of my age, but even that feels high too.
“Better go,” James says quickly. “I can see my customer heading up the street. Call me tonight if you have time. Anouk and I are taking Nike surfing after I’m done here. Good waves today.”
“Right,” I say. “Speak later, then.” I hang up, feeling inexplicably annoyed that my boyfriend and best friend are going surfing together. And with a kid too. If James can’t have a baby with me, then he’s putting together a backup family.
Obviously, that’s nonsense. Anouk is James’s friend and physio. She was the one who encouraged him to get back into surfing after the accident, and even helped him source a custom-made wetsuit.
The crash happened six years ago. By the time I met James, he seemed like he’d come to terms with it. He told me it couldn’t have been a more Cornish crash: he was meandering around a narrow country road, five miles per hour over the limit, when he came face-to-face with a combine harvester. The combine had broken down, but its lights weren’t working. James swerved to avoid it and went face-first into a truck, which happened to be carrying St. Austell Brewery’s signature Cornish pale ale, Tribute. The truck was barely dented. James’s Mini crunched up like a used Coke can. James suffered a fractured pelvis, a shattered tibia and fibula, a torn artery, and three severed tendons.
Turns out, James’s left calf had been home to his only tattoo: a crucifix. As a lapsed Catholic, James enjoys telling people that the car crash was God’s revenge. Ink-free after the amputation, James decided he wanted a new tattoo. It was the first tattoo he ever drew himself: a three-toed sloth, the slowest mammal in the world. Underneath, the words “Steady does it.”
I’m still holding the leaf, scrunched tightly in my fist. I let it fall to the ground.
•
I end up beneath the great glass dome of the Subtropical Swimming Paradise. There are palm trees and plastic chairs, and an entire clientele (apart from me) dressed in bathing gear.
I buy a pint of 6 percent hard cider from the poolside bar, then seek out the driest place to sit. The cider is vinegary and expensive, but it’s good to have a drink. That’s two days in a row I’ve had alcohol now. I can feel my fertility draining away with each mouthful.
A week ago, I might have told people I was desperate for a baby. Yesterday morning, I might even have said the same. But how can you ever know for sure that you want to do something as huge as create a human? When I was a kid, I used to ask my dad how I’d know when I’d found the right person to settle down with for the rest of my life. “You’ll just know,” he’d say, with a mysterious wink. Well, I still don’t know the answer to that question, let alone the one about having a baby. I think an easier question for me is whether I want to get pregnant. I mean, I don’t look forward to being pregnant. But I know that I want to get pregnant. I can’t bear not achieving my goals.
“Solvig, mind if I sit with you?”
It’s Evie. Have I conjured her here by thinking about pregnancy? I shake my head. “Please.”
She sits, catching her breath, and puts a blue Slush Puppie on the table. “How did your afternoon session go?”
“It was hard work,” I say. “Demonstrating what a capable team worker I am. How fanatical I am about Mars. What an accomplished astronaut I’d make. While at the same time showing off my smashing sense of humour.”
Evie laughs. “It was a bit like that, wasn’t it?” She slips off a shoe and rubs her foot. “There was one young man in my group who I think would have gladly chucked everyone out of the rocket and flown to Mars all by himself.”
I roll my eyes.
“Women,” Evie says, chuckling, “they might be from Venus, but they belong on Mars.” I can’t help but notice that Evie looks at me when she says “women.” For some reason, it feels good to be categorised.
“But how would we populate Mars?” I ask mischievously.
Evie fixes me with a puzzled expression, then imbibes Slush Puppie through a red straw.
“There’ll be no populating up there, I’m afraid,” she says. “I mean, technically, it’s possible. The African clawed frog was proven to ovulate on the space shuttle Endeavour. And the pregnant rat that the Soviets took up gave birth afterwards. Offspring were a tad weak to begin with, but they soon caught up.”
It’s weird to hear a pregnant woman talking like this, in such
