Dear Thing by Julie Cohen Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t trade her for the world. She surprises me all the time. But you wouldn’t say I’m a natural motherly type. You get the soft-focus part of parenthood on the telly. All those toilet-paper adverts with the cute kids and the dogs. There are so many things that you don’t really sign up for. Colic, or carsickness, or nappy rash. There’s a lot of laundry. And all the board games, over and over and over again round and round that little circle till you want to scream. And when they’re hurt, it’s like a chunk of you has been ripped out, you just completely revert to primitive mode. As for the mothers in the playground …’
    If she’d meant to comfort Ben, it wasn’t working. He looked as if she’d kicked him in the stomach.
    ‘Right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Anyway. Enough of that. What we need to do is think up an action plan.’
    ‘I don’t know, Romily. Maybe Claire is right. Maybe it’s not meant to be.’
    ‘Nonsense. Have you ever let me give up? Even when I wanted to?’
    Ben considered his pint. ‘No.’
    ‘Well then.’ She took the abandoned film round sheet, turned it over, and picked up the pencil. GET BEN AND CLAIRE A BABY , she wrote at the top. Then she decided that looked too much as if they were going to pick one up at the local supermarket, so she erased it and wrote HOW BEN AND CLAIRE CAN HAVE A BABY .
    ‘
One
,’ she said, writing it down. ‘
Adopt
.’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘
Two
. Um …’ She scratched her forehead with the pencil and drank some more of her beer. ‘
Get pregnant naturally by mistake
.’
    ‘That’s not going to happen, short of a miracle.’
    ‘Well, miracles happen. Biology is not an exact science. Anyway, this is brainstorming absolutely every possibility. We’ll see if anything sticks. Three.
Try fertility treatment again
.’
    ‘But that’s exactly what Claire swears up and down she won’t do. I wish I could do it instead of her. I wish I could go through it.’
    The expression on his face made her feel sick, but she put some cheerfulness in her voice. She’d always been able to make him laugh, at least. ‘Let’s try another tack.
Four. An incredible scientific breakthrough that hasn’t happened yet e.g. men giving birth
.’
    ‘Romily, this is ridiculous. You should never be given tequila.’
    ‘
Five. Aliens
.’
    He was smiling now, at least a little, and that was worth something. She pressed on. ‘
Six. Borrow someone else’s ovaries
.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Yeah. It’s Claire’s eggs that are the problem, right? Use donated eggs and your own sperm. Then the child will be yours.’
    ‘It won’t be Claire’s.’
    ‘Will that be a problem for her?’
    ‘I … don’t know.’ He thought about it for a little while.
    ‘It’s still more treatment, anyway,’ Romily said. ‘More embryo transfers. So maybe not a good idea.’
    ‘The doctor said she might have trouble keeping a pregnancy, even if we do get an embryo. We have to do more tests.’ Ben rubbed his forehead. ‘She says that the hope is the worst.’
    Romily sighed and studied the list. Her writing was quite wobbly, due to the tequila no doubt. Still, there wassomething in it that was niggling at her. An idea, maybe, that was trying to make its way to the surface.
    ‘Hey,’ said a voice next to their table. They looked up to see Glenn holding two more glasses of tequila. ‘I just brought these over to thank you for failing to do the quiz. We won for the first time.’
    ‘Should’ve taken the bet,’ Romily told him, and accepted the tequila.
    ‘If you could arrange to do the same next time, we’d appreciate it.’
    ‘Don’t count on it.’
    Glenn saluted them and went back to his team, who exchanged high-fives with him.
    Ben leaned his elbows on the table and propped his chin on his hands. ‘I know you’re trying to help, Romily, but this is – I feel terrible. I feel sick. I’ve never argued with Claire. We’ve had little disagreements, but nothing