The Winter Children (2 page)

This is the earliest possible date she can know whether or not this round has been successful.

Don’t get too excited
, she tells herself strictly as she slides down her pyjama bottoms and picks up the glass. She’s been here too many times before, with the test
registering negative. And a few times, it’s been positive and she’s been through all the elation and hope, only to have it dashed a week or two later when everything ground to a
halt.

But this time it’s lovely fresh eggs, not my tired old things. This time we have a chance.

She holds the glass in position and carefully does her wee. She knows that morning urine is best because it has the highest concentration of the human pregnancy hormone in it. She puts the full
glass down and unwraps the pregnancy test. She could do it blindfold now but she reads the instructions just in case, sets her phone to the stopwatch function, dips the end of the stick in the
glass of warm urine, holds it for five seconds, then replaces the cap and sets it down. The patch of damp passes through the control window and shows the pink line that confirms the test is
working. Now she must wait two minutes. She presses the button on the stopwatch and tries to think of something else.

I’ll clean my teeth. That will waste some time.

At the basin, she watches her reflection clean its teeth slowly, her blue-grey eyes observing herself.

Are you pregnant or not?

There certainly isn’t any sign of it on her face. She felt no different on the return journey from Spain, after the eggs had been implanted, but there’s a strange fizz of hope inside
her that this time, after all the pain and misery and all the spent money, their luck is bound to change.

She stares at herself as she rinses.
We would be good parents, I know it.
She raises her eyes to heaven, to whatever power is there, and thinks,
I promise I will do everything I can
to be the best mother in the world and bring up a happy, loved child, if you’ll only grant me the chance. No one will try harder than me. I swear it.

She glances over at the stopwatch. Only one minute gone. How can it go so slowly? This is worse than in the gym when she has to do the plank for a minute. That is slow, but it’s like a speed race compared to this.

Not knowing what else to do, she starts to rearrange the bottles of bath oil on the shelf, and then thinks how much she would like a bath right now. As it’s so early, she has hours before
they have to get up, plenty of time to have a nice long soak. And by the time the bath has run, she’ll know whether she’s celebrating or commiserating with herself.

Slowly and carefully she chooses mandarin and ginseng bath oil, a gift in her stocking last Christmas.

That sounds nice. But will it be more like a giant cup of herbal tea than a bath?

The stopwatch alarm begins to pulse and makes her jump.

That’s it. It’s ready.

She goes over, her fingers trembling just a little, and looks at the window. She stares blankly, confused. What does it mean? Frowning, she goes over to the leaflet and unfolds it with fingers
that are suddenly stiff and uncooperative.

‘If there is no line, you are not pregnant,’ she reads. ‘If there is a line, you are pregnant.’ She stares at the stick. There is a line. Faint but there. She checks
again. ‘If there is a line, you are pregnant.’ Joy races up inside her, an effervescent fountain of it, and she hugs herself with glee.

I knew it. I just knew it.

Putting the test down, she hesitates then pads back to the bed and climbs in, snuggling up to Dan, stroking him and kissing his shoulder until he comes to wakefulness. He grunts lightly.
‘Morning,’ he murmurs, then yawns. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly six,’ she says. ‘Well, quarter to. Dan, can I ask you something?’

‘I hope it’s important,’ he mumbles into his pillow. ‘Because I could be asleep right now.’

‘Of course it is.’ She kisses him again, and runs her finger over the soft dark fuzz at the nape of his neck. ‘Dan . . . do you think you could ever love anyone as much as you
do me?’

Dan turns over, his expression quizzical. ‘Love someone as much as you? Don’t be silly, of course not. I’ll always love you best, you know that.’

‘Well,’ she says with glee, ‘you’re going to have to try!’

He looks confused. ‘What do you mean?’

She beams at him. ‘Dan, we’re pregnant! It’s worked! We’re going to have a baby!’

He stares at her for a moment, taking it in, and then he whoops wildly. ‘It’s worked! We’re pregnant?’

She nods, laughing with happiness. ‘Yes! I knew that we’d be lucky this time. I just knew it!’

He laughs too, and they hug hard, both knowing how long and tough the road here has been.

‘It’s early days,’ she says quickly, not wanting to jinx her chances with too much certainty.

‘We mustn’t get overexcited,’ he cautions. ‘We’ve been here before, remember. We’ll have a long wait before we can be sure.’

‘I know.’ She smiles broadly at him. ‘We should be sensible. But I have a feeling about this one. I don’t know why. They must be lucky eggs!’

His smile freezes just for a second and then he says heartily, ‘They must be. Oh my goodness, this is so exciting.’

She hugs him again. ‘I love you, Dan, and I know you’re going to be a great father.’

‘I love you too, sweetheart.’ He holds her tight. ‘And you’re going to be an amazing mother, just like you’re an amazing person all round.’

‘I can’t wait to meet our baby,’ she says. ‘I wonder what it will be like.’

He kisses her softly and says, ‘Time will tell.’

Francesca sits in front of her dressing room table, smoothing cream into her face. The small white pot contains an ordinary-looking white substance that costs hundreds of dollars and promises
miraculous results. This one she bought in duty-free on her way back from skiing in Colorado, so she feels she deserves it. Whether it works is another matter. But then, as Dr Schruber also tends
her skin at vast cost – lasering, peeling, refining and filling, blasting it with oxygen – it’s hard to know exactly which of her many treatments has what effect.

Who cares?
she thinks, examining herself in the bright light that illuminates her face so that she can apply make-up perfectly.
I deserve it all.

This is her consolation. After all, she sits here in this huge house alone. Years ago, just as her life was on the point of collapsing, she escaped London and came here to be with Walt, and
become a wife and mother. Her legal career, forecast to be so stellar, was abandoned, and she became one of those charity wives, endlessly involved in fundraising, arranging glittering galas and expensive balls or auctions where rich people donated things that other rich people didn’t mind paying over the odds for in the name of giving: cases of
wine; use of a yacht; shooting on an estate somewhere; exclusive access to a chalet; a flight on a private plane. There was always a worthy cause to be concerned about, and always the pressure to
be doing something to help. What with the charity work and the organising of family life – running the home, coordinating the children’s schedules, arranging holidays –
she’s felt endlessly busy for years, absorbed in the bubble of life in Geneva. But now she wonders if it’s been an illusion, designed to stop her realising that she made a mistake
giving up her chance of a real career. Walt has always told her that she ought to go back but she’s sure she’s missed her chance, and besides, she is someone else now.

Francesca picks up a brush and starts pulling it through her damp hair. The house is so eerily quiet. Not that she could hear anything from downstairs, even if she wanted. Perhaps
Marie-Chantelle, the housekeeper, is bitching to the maid, or maybe the gardener has come in to grumble while he drinks her expensive coffee and eats the Fortnum & Mason biscuits she has flown
over. She has no idea what his gripes might be, but it’s possible. She imagines herself padding down the carpeted stairs, going through the vast, smooth-hinged doors on her way to the
kitchen, and then entering its sparkling whiteness touched by the gleam of chrome appliances. They would turn to her, instantly deferential, quickly returning to their work. They would melt away, the silence would descend and she’d be as alone down there as she is up here.

Alone is her regular state now. Walt has always worked all hours. The children have always been rigorously scheduled. But ever since they went away to their very expensive Swiss boarding
school, she’s had the most curious sense of disassociation from them. They came home from their last holidays, chattering in French and German, languages she can understand but without
natural fluency, and they seemed different somehow. She looked at them and thought,
Are these people really my children?
They dressed in the way of rich Europeans: in low-key but expensive
good taste. Fred had a red jumper slung over the shoulders of his white shirt and wore perfectly pressed chinos and Gucci loafers, with not a hair out of place. He greeted her almost formally,
his ‘Hello, Mama’ subtly accented with an American twang.

He’s not even fourteen years old
, she thought in astonishment.

At fourteen, Francesca didn’t have a tenth of his self-possession. She veered between exuberant extrovert and withdrawn wallflower, painfully conscious of her developing body, her
adolescent skin, her long lank hair. And her clothes came from the high street, her attempts at fashion furnished by cheap miniskirts, baggy jumpers, black biker boots and lots of eye make-up when
she could get away with it.

And then there’s Olympia.

Almost twelve, but polished and sophisticated, Olympia was glued to her expensive phone. She wore make-up, discreet and perfectly applied, nothing garish or too old for her: eye liner, mascara, a hint of blush and rosy lip gloss. Her fair hair hung in shiny sheets, pinned back with velvet-covered clips. Pearls glowed in her earlobes and she wore neat silk blouses,
tight skirts, cashmere cardigans, and ballet slippers. Across her chest she’d slung a mini purse from Fendi. It held that phone, a credit card and lip gloss, and every few minutes, she held
up her phone, took a picture of herself and sent it to her social media accounts with a buzzy comment underneath. ‘Home for the hols, people! Looking forward to some r and r. Enjoy
yours.’

Little glossy strangers.

She’s amazed that she had a hand in creating them. She was so busy making herself into the new, shiny, polished Francesca – a world away from nervous, plain Cheska with her fringe
and her hunched shoulders – that it never occurred to her she’d breed people like her creation and not like herself.

She leans forward to examine her skin even more closely. It’s become her obsession. She judges every day by the words that are now engraved in her mind. Dewy. Glowing. Clear. Fresh.
Youthful. She follows her routines religiously, cleaning, massaging, toning, applying serums, moisturisers, creams, brighteners, concealers . . . Then, only last week, she read an article in a
magazine that said skin was better off without any treatments at all. That all those creams and oils clogged the pores and sped up the ageing process. ‘Think of children,’ the article
said. ‘They do nothing to their skin. And look at it!’

For a chilling moment, she felt as though all her work had been in vain, perhaps had even been having the reverse effect. Then she thought,
What rubbish. Children have perfect skin because they’re young. It all changes when they become
teenagers, doesn’t it? Besides . . .
She called to mind all the rich celebrities successfully holding back the ravages of time, as opposed to the ordinary women she saw on the streets. It
was obvious that money and a good dermatologist got results. She would go on, she would persevere. What was the alternative? Accept the decay, the growing decrepitude? Begin to look old, tired,
dull? Never. It has taken half her life to get here, to get to this place and become this person. She isn’t going to relinquish all she has achieved. Not now. But sometimes she has the
slightly panicky feeling that she’s been heading in the wrong direction all this time, and that she hasn’t properly lived yet; the sense that she still hasn’t worked out if the
choices she made were wrong or right. She feels she needs more time. She has to keep her options open.

But now this amazing thing has happened.
She still cannot quite believe it; it’s all still sinking in. But a door has opened up into a world of new possibilities.

She picks up a tube of tinted cream and prepares to anoint herself with it.

Maybe it’s not going to be so lonely after all.

Walt sits across the table from her. It’s a white table, and she rather hates it, but the interior designer insisted. It was that or glass, which would have been worse. Still, whenever she
eats here, part of her mind is thinking how much she detests this round white table. But the alternative of sitting in the dining room at the great polished mahogany table, an eighteenth-century antique set beneath a vast crystal chandelier, would have been stupid with just the two of them.

Walt is hunched over his plate, shovelling food into his mouth as though he hasn’t eaten all day. She picks at the steamed fish and salad on her plate, aware of a small jet of anger in her
chest, like the blast of hot air from a vent. Walt has a paunch that’s growing by the year, and his skin is tough and etched with lines and creases like a rhinoceros hide. Wiry grey hairs
have started to sprout out of his nose and ears and eyebrows, although his barber deals with them when they get too visible. His hair is metal-coloured and thin over his scalp. No one cares. No one
judges him. If he looks all of sixty-three, good for him. He never has to obsess the way she does. No wonder he’s got time to continue building his fortune when it’s all he really has
to think about.

‘So, honey,’ Walt says, looking up from his plate. ‘What’s the news, huh? What’s happening with you?’

‘Well . . .’ She considers. She could tell him details from her day but they would bore him. They bore her to remember them. ‘I’m working hard on the Red Cross
ball.’