Surrogate – a psychological thriller (10 page)

Lying in bed that night, Mole snuggled up to me, draping her leg over my thigh. I buried my head in her neck and breathed deeply. She smelled delicious. Lifting my head, I moved a stray blond hair away from her forehead and looked deeply into her eyes, noticing how they seemed to change colour from blue to green to grey. How could I have been so stupid to do what I did?

"I expected you to put up more of a fight about Alice," Mole sighed.

"I want her out once she's found her feet. I don't want her moving in here permanently. Once she's found a job, she goes. Agreed?"

Mole nodded and moved even closer. "I just want to get the baby established. If she could stay two or three months ... Once she gets past the first trimester, there's less chance of anything going wrong."

Three or four months?

"I was thinking of a couple of weeks at most. To be honest, I'm a bit beyond flat-sharing. She can move close by so you can be near her, but I don't want her in the flat all the time. You know what they say, two's company."

"Okay, but let's get past September. Not really anything can go wrong after that."

Three months. Ninety days. More than seven hundred hours. Surely Alice and I could behave as if we hadn’t transgressed for that long. What I’d done, imperilling my marriage like this, had been absolutely insane. But I figured that adultery was like stopping smoking: it was the first cigarette you lit up after quitting that was the decider – every cigarette after that becomes easier and easier. Perhaps it was the same with cheating on your wife. I had already crossed the line, so next time wouldn't be so difficult. God forbid there would be a next time, though. Really staying faithful in a relationship was the hard part: everywhere you looked there was pressure to have what we wanted, right now. Monogamy was the last holdout. Oh stop trying to justify yourself, I thought. You did what you did. Mole gazed up at me, so trusting, and I felt like an absolute speck of dirt for having betrayed her.

"You make me the happiest I have ever been in my entire life," she said suddenly.

I studied her face and leaned forward to kiss her. "You say the sweetest things sometimes," I said.

It had been one hell of a day, and now I wanted it to end. I reached across my wife and snapped off the bedside lamp.

Alice came down from Manchester with her stuff the next afternoon. Mole had asked me to help her move in, so I went to meet her at Euston station. Watching Alice walk along the platform, I compared the two women. Snow White and Rose Red: they could not have been more different. Alice was dressed in a rugby shirt and shapeless tracksuit bottoms; I compared her to Mole in one of her prim-yet-sexy outfits that showed off her delightful figure. Alice raised her hand when she saw me.

I took over pushing her luggage trolley towards the taxi rank. One of the wheels was wonky and kept veering sideways. "How was your journey down?"

"It were fine. Dead easy."

"Emily's made up the bed in the spare room for you. Until you find your feet."

"I've got an interview with an estate agent this week."

"About a job or somewhere to live?"

"They're advertising for a junior lettings agent. I emailed my CV."

By now we had wheeled her trolley across the station concourse. I decided not to tiptoe around the subject any longer. Rip the plaster off, expose the wound and just be done with it. "So listen, once you've found somewhere to live, I want you to move out. I don't care what Emily says about you staying for three months. We both know the reason why," I said, trying to be as gentle as I could.

"I've already said I'm sorry. It was bloody 'er idea, not mine."

Well, that told me. "No, you're right. It's just that this whole thing feels like a pressure cooker. What we did– was wrong. Despite everything, I want us to be friends, yes?"

Alice nodded and got into the back of the waiting taxi. I wrestled her suitcases onto the floor, pointedly taking the fold-down seat opposite. I wanted to be absolutely clear: from now on, we were going to keep our distance from one another.

Mole was cooking risotto when we got back, a dish Alice had never eaten before. She watched Mole closely as she poured a glass of vermouth over the sizzling rice and breathed in the heavenly-sharp evaporation as it boiled away. "That smells bloody lovely," said Alice, who later compared it to "cheesy rice" after we’d sat down to eat.

Despite our conversation in the taxi, Alice did not move out.

Instead, we settled into a domestic routine, with Alice slopping around the flat in her dressing gown and absurd Eeyore slippers at night. She kept out of our way, spending a lot of time shut in her room, updating her Facebook page or visiting other internet sites she favoured. She always seemed to be online.

Slowly the wound of what we had done healed, and skin grew over the fading scar. Sometimes I managed to forget that we had even gone to bed together. Alice was becoming more like a younger sister to Mole, and, one day I found my heart singing, nearly convinced that this whole thing had been a nightmare I would soon forget. The kaleidoscope had shifted, and the incident would soon be a distant memory.

How naive I was.

Alice's body was changing, too. She was putting on weight as our baby grew inside her. Mole told me she had booked Alice in to see her smart gynaecologist, the handsome Doctor Forget, for the first scan at seven weeks, so I cancelled a meeting with Nigel Rosenthal I’d scheduled for that afternoon, secretly glad not to have to pore over Excel spreadsheets with him. I kept glancing at my watch to see whether it was time to leave the office yet.

My wife and Alice were in the waiting room when I arrived, sitting opposite a chic Arab woman. "Bit different to what I'm used to," said Alice. You could tell she was a overawed by her surroundings. This clinic was so dignified that you felt nothing bad could happen there. How wrong you could be.

Doctor Forget put his head around the door, and the three of us followed him to his consulting room with its bubbling gas fire. It seemed like only five minutes ago that we had embarked on this great adventure, and now here we were: our surrogate lying on his examination table carrying our child. I felt both excited and apprehensive. "Now, if you could lift your blouse, I've got cold hands," he said. Alice bunched up her shirt and Forget squirted some gel onto her stomach. "Not too cold?" he asked. Alice shook her head. Forget ran what looked like a supermarket price-checker over her tummy, and the TV monitor came to life. At first, I couldn't understand the garbled black-and-white blur. But then it settled down and I saw, really
saw
, our baby for the first time. Forget began a running commentary: "There's the head and lungs, and look away now if you don't want to know whether it's a boy or a girl."

"I want to know," said Mole. She looked to me for approval and I nodded.

"Well then ... it’s a girl. You’re going to be the proud parents of a baby girl."

A girl. Somehow the question of what sex our baby would be had never crossed my mind. Just as long as it, or should I now say she, was healthy. I felt an overwhelming rush of tenderness towards this tiny image, which looked so defenceless, like a tadpole swimming inside Alice’s belly. This was our little fishy, Emily and my DNA combined.

"Good. Everything is looking fine." It hit me for the first time that this was really going to happen, that our lives were about to change forever and a new cycle of life was beginning.

We took a taxi back home via the supermarket, chatting about the scan at the doctor's. Somehow the idea of having a baby had taken hold. Mole got busy chopping vegetables when we were home, and I poured us both a glass of wine as she whizzed some disgusting-looking green drink in the blender. Spinach and apricots and yoghurt. Good for expectant mothers, apparently. I loved watching Mole in the kitchen, where I truly believe she was at her happiest. I sipped my wine and reflected on my good luck: I had narrowly steered the ship away from rocks that would have destroyed us and brought us safely into harbour. "Here, take this though to Alice, would you?" Mole said, licking some drops off her fingers.

I found Alice on her single bed, hugging her knees and crying. She was rocking herself backwards and forwards.

"Hey, are you okay?" I said, putting the smoothie down next to a box of tissues. Inwardly, I braced myself for the worst. Just agree with everything she says and get the hell out of there. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing," she said, dabbing her eyes.

"I thought today was a happy day, seeing the scan and everything."

"It were. I s'pose that's why I'm crying. There must be summat wrong with me."

"What do you mean? There's nothing wrong with you."

She laughed through her tears. "I wish I could believe that. I've never even had a boyfriend and now I'm having somebody else's baby. Like a bloke's going to fancy me now."

I felt myself stiffen. "Look, Alice, I thought we'd agreed–"

She looked up, sniffed and reached for my hand but I was not going to play that game.

"Listen, Alice, you'll meet the right person and then, boom, you'll know when it happens."

"Is that what happened with you and Mole?" I nodded. "She has everything. The perfect flat, the perfect car, the perfect husband–"

"No, that's not true. There are problems in every relationship. The important thing is to keep it fresh – you know, like the front page of a newspaper. You have to try and keep the relationship interesting."

She sniffed hard and dried her eyes. I waited for a moment before setting the glass down. "Feeling better?" I asked. She nodded, and I was handing her the smoothie when she gasped and sat up. "Alice, are you all right? What's the matter?" She cradled her tummy. "The baby. Come here. I can feel it moving," she said. Alice took my hand and hitched up her blouse, but I couldn't feel anything. "Are you sure?" I said. "It's awfully early." She moved my hand around her stomach. And that was how Mole found us, me with my hand on Alice's stomach with her shirt ruched up to her breasts. "What's going on?" she said sharply.

"The baby. I thought I felt it move," said Alice.

"Don't be silly. It's far too early," said Mole.

"I can't feel it now," Alice said. "It's not there anymore." She sounded disappointed.

"Probably just trapped wind," said Mole sourly. "Anyway, supper's ready." Was my wife becoming jealous of our surrogate? That was the one thing she had promised never to become.

We watched television while we ate supper, and occasionally I stole a glance at Alice. Despite everything, I found myself wondering what it would be like to slip my hand under her rugby shirt and unhook her bra. For God's sake, stop it, you can't think like this. You have a beautiful, loving wife, and yet here you are, letching over some dumpy girl who's barely more than a teenager. The problem was that, unlike Mole, who sometimes, truth be told, could come across as ever so slightly cold and disdainful, Alice simply reeked of sex. I turned to my wife and smiled meaninglessly, rubbing her thigh as if to apologise. She can't read your bloody thoughts, you fool.

I loaded the dishwasher while the women finished watching the TV news. "I'm ready to turn in," Mole yawned, handing me the last of the dirty plates.

Padding back towards our bedroom, I noticed that Alice's bedroom door was still open. "Goodnight," I said, pulling the door closed. I caught a glimpse of her sitting up in bed surrounded by her stuffed toys. She barely looked up from her laptop. She was always on the bloody thing. Whatever had got her so upset before supper had gone away again, and I reflected that anything between us was now ended. Good. I congratulated myself once again on my lucky escape.

Mole was immersed in a book when I turned in. She had her reading glasses on and was wearing the pretty nightdress I had bought her. I sat down heavily and started taking my socks off. For some reason I still found the image of Alice's tummy swollen with our baby intensely erotic. Draping my shirt and suit trousers over a chair, I knew my wife and I would have sex that night.

"It says here that some men get jealous of women when they're breastfeeding," Mole said. "You can buy a holster with bottles in it so men can pretend to breastfeed the baby."

"Please, God, no. Tell me that you're making it up." We both started laughing, and I took the paperback from her. There was a photograph of a frizzy-haired hippie-ish woman on the back. "My God, look at her. 'Doctor Fran Olsberg is a therapist and healer at the London Centre for Spiritual Studies. She is a birthing leader at the Rainbow Women's Centre, Hackney.' You couldn't make this stuff up."

We were both still chuckling as I slipped my hand under Mole's nightdress. She stopped laughing. "I'm sorry, tiger," she said. "My period's started. I told you it was coming on."

Disappointed, I chatted with her for a bit more before I turned my light off. We both just lay there, and I could tell Mole was thinking in the darkness. "It was wonderful seeing our baby today, wasn't it?" she said after a while.

"Yes, it's finally becoming real. I saw its little feet and its little hands. Did you see how he was sucking his thumb?"

"Hey, who said it was going to be a boy?" Beat. "Our little fish is swimming around inside Alice's tummy. It makes me so happy."

Soon gentle snoring was coming from Mole's side of the bed, and she moved closer to me in her sleep. I just lay there. Sleep would not come, and I kept replaying the pulsing, moving image of our baby on the foetal scan. Then my hand resting on Alice's stomach. Was it my imagination, or had I too felt something move across our surrogate's tummy, as gentle as wind rippling a wheat field?

Eventually I sat up, realising that I needed the toilet. Remembering to slip on my boxer shorts, I felt my way down the pitch-black hall, disoriented in the dark. Even half asleep, I registered that the bathroom light was on as I pushed the door open.

Alice was in the bath soaping herself.

Her hot, pink body glistened with soapy water. "Oh God, I'm so sorry," I mumbled, pulling the door to. Well, not quite shut. Something stopped me from closing it completely. "I'll be out in a minute," she called.