Dreams Before the Start of Time Read online

  She hears a pod door slide open behind her; she swivels around and waves. Millie slams the door closed and walks straight over to Toni, giving a perfunctory wave to Nicol. Toni embraces her friend. “Early for once?”

  Millie’s wearing her charcoal-grey sports gear with a lime-green skel, whereas Toni prefers her black skel, which merges well with most of her clothing.

  “Tempted to cry off actually,” Millie says, “but I needed to see you. I nearly buzzed you last night.”

  Toni continues with her warm-ups, as if trying to say, Look everything’s normal, no need to stress. She twists at the waist, hands on hips, then throws her arms out to each side in turn to increase the stretch. “So what’s the matter?”

  Millie pulls sweatbands from her pocket, accidentally dropping one on the grass.

  Nicol is approaching, so Millie replies abruptly, “I’ve hardly slept.” She makes a half-hearted effort at her stretches, but her eyes are darting.

  “You shouldn’t be doing a session if you’re knackered,” says Toni.

  Nicol reaches out, proffering her bracelet. Toni and Millie each touch their bracelets to hers—Millie showing one red light, and Toni showing two green.

  “You’re a bit below par, Millie. Don’t overdo it today. Let me check you again after we’ve finished skating. You’re fine, Toni.”

  Three more members of the group have arrived. Nicol walks away and calls over her shoulder to Toni and Millie, “Get started. Don’t wait for everyone else.”

  “Is it Simone? Has she upset you?” says Toni as she snaps on her skates.

  “No, it’s Rudy.”

  “Come on. Let’s chat while we’re skating. Anyway, how’s little Julia?” She knows the mention of Julia’s name will lift Millie.

  “Lovely as ever.” Though Millie offers a smile, it’s evidently an effort.

  They set off together, but Millie struggles to find a rhythm. Toni drops her pace so they’re able to skate side by side along the quiet stretch of path on the southern perimeter.

  “I’m not thinking straight. I know you’ll help,” says Millie.

  Toni accepts that she’s Millie’s mainstay. Millie’s sister died four years ago, and in any case, Millie’s never had the support that Toni’s had from her own family. Through all the years of their friendship, Millie has run on half-empty. She’s got Rudy, for sure, but you can’t expect your children to prop you up. That’s contrary to the natural order, Toni feels.

  Up ahead, a pram jogger joins their path, so Toni and Millie skate on either side.

  “After all these years. I can’t believe it,” says Millie.

  Toni slows down. “What are you talking about? Spit it out, for heaven’s sake.”

  “He wants to meet his biological father.”

  Toni takes Millie’s hand and synchronizes to Millie’s pace. “No way. I thought he wasn’t bothered.”

  “He wasn’t. I should have realized things would change. He’s a father himself now.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “I kinda got upset, and then he started getting snarky”—her voice snags—“about how reckless I’d been to use a donor, that I’d known next to nothing about this man. I said, ‘Well, everything worked out fine. Look at yourself.’ But he got irritable. He said that wasn’t good enough.” In her agitation, Millie skates faster.

  “But Rudy hasn’t taken a conventional path himself. You used a donor, he went solo.”

  “Don’t get me started. I only used a donor because I’d no other option. I told him so, and do you know what he said? He said, ‘You didn’t have to have a baby. The fact that I’m here in the world doesn’t justify your decision.’ I can’t get over it. I can’t sleep.”

  After skating, the two friends bow out of Nicol’s game session and slope off to the pavilion. Millie takes a seat, clearly downcast, while Toni fetches drinks.

  “We didn’t have a full-blown argument. We weren’t shouting. I told him I knew enough about the donor to put my own mind at rest. The donors were all medical-checked and police-checked by the donor service that supplied the clinic. I specified a private-sector professional—preferably in engineering, because my grandfather was a draughtsman. I liked the idea of having some continuity, and I didn’t want a medic like both my parents.” She laughs. “Ridiculous, isn’t it? I wanted to believe the donor didn’t need the money, had a streak of altruism. But what did it matter, really?”

  “Millie . . .” Toni shifts in her chair and lowers her voice. “What’s the real reason Rudy wants to find the donor? Did you find that out?”

  “He’s been fact-checking about donor semen, researching the defunct operators and their processes, tells me the medical checks were never exhaustive. Some medical conditions develop in later life—could have happened to my donor. So he’s decided to go ahead, find out if his father is still alive. Christ, he’s already calling him his father. It makes me feel sick. Going back into all that. I mean, if I could have gone solo, like Rudy, I’d have jumped at the chance.”

  Toni struggles to say something helpful. Suddenly it seems she and Atticus did everything the simple way. “He sees everything differently, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m staggered; he waited until he was forty-seven. And, he wants to know if he has any half-siblings.” She throws her head back and blinks away the tears. Then takes a deep breath and forces it out as though blowing out a candle. “You know, Toni . . . about Rudy and Simone . . . they’ve never explained why they have no contact at all with her family. I sometimes think there’s a mass murderer on Simone’s side.”

  That evening, Toni’s mood lifts in the instant that Atticus pushes open the front door. He’s carrying his suitcase. She doesn’t fuss. She says, “Would you like to unpack before dinner?” He replies that he’ll do exactly that. They hug one another as tightly as their exo-skels allow. She watches him climb the stairs. All these years. She sighs. They hadn’t had the most romantic start to their lives together—a source of regret on her part—but that could have been the secret. No love bubble, no delusions. They’ve simply taken care of one another, allowed one another to follow an occasional romantic impulse. And, of course, they’ve always put Marco first. There’s no easy explanation for their contentment.

  She says, “Add to my list. Number twenty-two. When Atticus comes home.”

  LEAVE THE BABY TO CRY

  September

  Nancy needs to stand still, take a rest. Her calf muscles ache from walking along Brighton’s pebbled beach. She knows her sister Nicol won’t be flagging; she’s as fit as a damned flea after running around Battersea Park all week. But then, keeping fit is her job.

  So Nancy stops on the pretext of admiring a group of middle-aged women emerging from the waves breaking along the beach. As they battle against the waves’ undertow, the bathers become stooped, their knees bent and feet splayed—closer to Neanderthal than Homo sapiens. They all wear black one-piece bathing costumes. Nancy assumes they’re eccentric members of a club, committed to swimming in the sea every day of the year, whatever the weather. They’re no longer tied to children or jobs, she reckons, and they’ve found a new physical challenge. It’s their thing. Nancy imagines that when she reaches their age, she’ll simply stay at home, catch up on forty years of films—feet up, cup of coffee and a comms auto-response: I’m afraid I can’t talk just now. Please try later.

  Nancy’s admiration for the bathers morphs into a morbid inspection. People seem stripped of their personalities when their hair is plastered flat to their skull. She pouts. Humans are actually pretty ludicrous. During her last lesson on Friday afternoon, she taught fourteen-year-olds about species diversity in the tropics, taking frogs and toads as examples. Unsurprisingly, her pupils were repulsed by the sliminess of frogs and the wartiness of toads—“That’s gross, miss.” But looking at these bathers, Nancy sees that human skin isn’t so beautiful; it’s creased and roughened at every joint, sagging and seemingly splattered with its own warts, sen
ile angiomas and liver spots. God-awful under a microscope, that’s for sure.

  Now Nancy sees that, viewed with detachment, a human head is an ugly thing, a form delivering multiple functions, a cavity in the face to accept fluid and organic matter—with a fleshy protuberance edging the entrance of that cavity, testing temperature and keeping the cavity airtight; a cartilage-supported protuberance to gather and filter inhalations; twin protuberances to receive sound waves. Inwardly, she recoils. How can one human be regarded as a better-looking specimen than another? She casts a glance at her sister, Nicol. Thick, glossy hair. Manicured and lithe. Even though Nicol carried her pregnancy, she resumed her pre-pregnancy shape within a few weeks of Clara being born. Of course, looking good is sine qua non for a fitness instructor; it’s not imperative for a biology teacher. Nancy closes her eyes, feels the salt breeze prickle her skin. She’s tired all the time these days. It’s out of the question to start any fitness routine.

  “I can’t imagine getting an undisturbed night’s sleep ever again,” she says. “I can’t remember what life was like before Timmy was born.” She’s annoyed with herself. Here they are, unencumbered for an hour while their partners entertain the kids on a beautiful sunny afternoon—a rare day trip to the beach—and so far they’ve talked about nothing other than their kids.

  Nicol says, “I don’t know how you can leave Timmy to cry like you do, Nancy.”

  Two elderly bathers, still in knee-deep water, reach out to one another and grasp hands. Evidently, if they were to be dragged under, they’d rather not be alone. Nancy feels dragged down herself.

  “I’m out of bed at six fifteen, Monday to Friday. You can sleep in if little Clara sleeps late.”

  “That’s not true. I’ve two early starts each week, and Saturday is full on for six hours in Battersea Park. From nine onwards with—”

  “Timmy’s not hungry, you know. He wakes up and wants to play. If we picked him up, he’d have us in and out of bed all night. And Sean is away every other week, so we have to be consistent. We can’t pick Timmy up when Sean is here and not pick him up when I’m on my own. You’re just lucky with Clara. If you have another . . . I mean, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t wish a bad sleeper on anyone, but next time you could have one like Timmy.”

  Nancy sets off walking before she’s fully rested. Nicol catches up and says, “Sorry. I’m not criticizing. All I mean is, I don’t know how you cope with the crying.”

  “Not much choice. And, don’t listen to Mum. I know she says stuff—more than she says to my face. If she mentions my childbirth choices one more time . . .”

  Nicol links their arms. “She doesn’t understand. She carried her pregnancies; all her friends did too. Her main bugbear is your work ethic.” She laughs. “Supremely ironic coming from a pushy parent.”

  “All that pushing, and now she complains I’m a workaholic. She’s convinced I didn’t carry Timmy because I was chasing a promotion. It’s not true. It’s bloody awful being pregnant in my job. I’m on my feet in class for six hours some days. Then I’m walking between the teaching blocks.”

  “How do other teachers manage?” asks Nicol.

  Nancy doesn’t like the sound of this question. She wants to believe that Nicol supports her against their mother, but maybe she shouldn’t count on it. “They just do. That’s their choice. But you remember Melissa in Chemistry? She came to my birthday party? She carried her pregnancy and then had horrible complications with haemorrhoids. She’s still not right.”

  “That’s unlucky.”

  “She was exhausted when she came back from maternity leave, but no one, absolutely no one, made any special allowance for her.”

  Nicol places her hand on Nancy’s back. “You got so little maternity leave, Nancy, because you chose clinic gestation. I’d hate that. Didn’t you want more time at home with Timmy before going back to work?”

  “Well, yes. It would have been nice.”

  “So next time . . . ,” says Nicol.

  “There’s no next time for us.” Nancy feels tears coming and prays Nicol will let it drop.

  “When you’re older, Nance, I don’t want you to feel you’ve missed out. It’s lovely to carry your baby. You feel so . . .”

  “Bonded. That’s what you mean.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “For Christ’s sake. You’re not being fair, Nicol. Stop putting this pressure on me.”

  “Don’t get mad.”

  Nancy walks down towards the shoreline and stands there daring the waves to break over her feet. After a few moments, Nicol joins her, pulls her away from the waves. “Don’t get wet.” Nancy doesn’t resist. They continue their stroll.

  In measured words, Nancy says, “My Timmy would not be a better sleeper if I’d carried him. I know that’s what Mum thinks.”

  “But you might not let him . . .”

  “What? What? I might not let him cry? Bollocks. You agree with Mum, don’t you?”

  “Please don’t get mad. We can talk about it, you and me.”

  Nancy and Nicol had learned during childhood that they could vent with one another—vent and move on. Clear the air, etcetera. They walk out of step for a couple of minutes. Nancy turns to her sister, asks how the skating sessions are going with the old folks. Nicol prises a smile out of Nancy, and then a giggle, admitting she can barely keep up with the old dears in their exo-skels. Nancy feels calmer, but the sound of pebbles grating underfoot keeps her earlier aggravation in play. And she knows herself too well; if, below the surface, a thought is niggling her, she’s compelled to vocalize.

  “I wasn’t intending to tell you this, Nicol . . .”

  Nicol raises her eyebrows. “Ominous.”

  “I had a chat with Dad last week. I didn’t start it. I found him in his shed tinkering around. I think he was brooding on it when I turned up.”

  “Brooding? On what?” asks Nicol.

  “He just came out with it. He said, ‘I wanted more children, another one or two.’”

  “What? I’ve never heard that before. He never talks about anything so personal.”

  “I asked if he’d always wanted a boy. If that was it. If he’d really wanted a boy. He said he simply liked the idea of a bigger family. So I said, ‘Well, why didn’t you have one?’”

  “What did he say?” Nicol stops, sits down and reaches up to her sister. Nancy sits down next to her, close.

  “He said it was Mum’s decision. He couldn’t persuade her. She didn’t want to go through it all again.”

  “The sleepless nights?”

  Nancy picks up a handful of pebbles, starts dropping them one at a time, as if she’s weighing up whether she’ll divulge the full story. Yes, she will. No, she won’t. Eventually, “It wasn’t the sleepless nights. He said that Mum couldn’t face the pregnancy and birth. He said to me—there in his shed—that he tried to persuade her to use an artificial womb.”

  “No way! He didn’t,” says Nicol.

  “Yep. He said she wasn’t interested.”

  “It was new then.”

  Nancy drops the rest of the pebbles. “She wasn’t scared or anything. He said she didn’t like the idea of leaving the baby in the prenatal unit, leaving it in its ‘little bottle,’ as she called it.”

  “I suppose after she’d carried two babies, it wouldn’t seem natural. So, does this explain why Mum gives you grief about your decision?” asks Nicol.

  “That’s immediately what I thought. I thought Mum rejected the whole idea and feels I was . . . heartless, leaving the baby in the hospital. Just visiting during gestation.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “But here’s the thing, Nicol. Dad then said—believe me, I am not making this up—he said, ‘I think she’s having regrets. Seeing you. Seeing you and Timmy. And you feeling no guilt.’ I think he wanted to cry. He said, ‘We all have to live with our decisions.’”

  JITTERY GOOD, JITTERY BAD

  Amelie Munroe wakes up feeling jitter
y good—because her dad has finally agreed to take her to London, to Tate Britain—and jittery bad, because she may have chosen the wrong painting and the wrong museum. She sits up in bed and smacks the bedcovers with both hands. It’s the right painting.

  Last night, she considered asking her dad if he liked the painting, but she chickened out. Anyway, it’s her private project, and she wants to keep it that way. It started with the art books she borrowed from Nan Toni—the ones with all the Madonnas. She found more Madonnas online, and now she has six pinboards, and she hasn’t shared any of them. They’re all marked secret. Earlier this week, Amelie checked every single page in the best of Nan Toni’s books—The Pre-Raphaelites—and the painting on page 79 is the one she’s going to see today. She told her dad she liked the “Pre-Raphs,” which she knew sounded casual and amazingly au fait, but she didn’t say which Pre-Raph painting she liked the best. After that brief conversation, she knows her dad’s hoping she’ll become a big-time artist like Great-Grandad Dominic, hopes she’s following the family’s special art interest. But her dad’s not a real artist; he’s an industrial designer.

  She stretches and yawns. She needs to get in training for teenage years; communications with her dad should be strictly need-to-know.

  Marco takes Amelie’s hand as they walk along the Embankment—away from the Houses of Parliament and towards Tate Britain. She skips.

  “Excited?” he asks.

  “Kind of.” She swings her arms.

  “It’s great having a day out. I’m glad you didn’t invite Bethany.”

  “That’s really mean, Dad. Bethany has hardly any friends, and her mum is horrible.”

  “It’s just nice to have a day together. You and me. We haven’t done this for ages.”