Page 3 of The Life She Could Have Lived

They lived in a two-bedroom flat in Clapham.

It was a Victorian conversion, and they had the downstairs, which meant they had a garden, but it also meant they could hear their upstairs neighbours walking around at all hours.

Edward let them in and Anna put the kettle on.

When she brought the drinks through to the living room, he was looking at the door, as if waiting for her .

‘Sit down,’ he said, patting the space next to him. He reached out and took one of the mugs she was holding, and she put the other one down on the coffee table and sat. ‘I want to talk to you about something.’

Perhaps he was about to suggest a holiday, she thought, or even a prolonged period of travelling.

He knew that Anna regretted not taking a year out like so many of her friends had, that she’d never backpacked around Asia visiting temples and experimenting with Buddhism.

Would she be a different person, if she had?

Maybe he was going to suggest taking some time out of their lives and exploring.

She pictured herself, barefoot on a beach.

Edward reached for her hand, took hold of it.

‘I want us to have a baby,’ he said.

A baby. Anna felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach.

It wasn’t like they’d never talked about it, but it had always felt abstract, somehow.

Something for the future. She hadn’t expected to be making a decision about it yet.

But she had to ask herself why not. She was thirty.

She was married. She owned her home. Some of her friends were starting to have babies.

Why did the suggestion come as such a surprise?

Anna closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself as a mother. A baby in her arms, in this flat. Edward a proud father. She could see it; of course she could.

When she didn’t say anything for a few moments, he began to prod her with words.

‘You know, I understand your reluctance,’ he said.

Anna looked at him. Did he? She wasn’t even sure she did.

‘We won’t be like your parents,’ he said.

Anna felt rankled. She’d done her fair share of moaning about her parents to him, but it felt different when he mirrored that back. Harsher, somehow.

‘My mum did her best, she just had to work so hard, because of my dad leaving…’

Edward picked up her hand from where it was resting on her lap. ‘But I won’t leave, and you won’t have to work hard, and it will all be so different for us. I promise.’

At the mention of working hard, Anna thought of another objection.

‘I just started in my new role,’ she said. ‘What will they think?’

‘Anna,’ Edward said. ‘That’s your job, and this is your life.’

It was true. But it had taken her so long to get to this stage, and it was only the first step on the ladder she wanted to climb.

She went back over his words. It will all be so different .

Would it be different? Anna had sometimes thought that you must learn how to be a mother from your own mother.

And she didn’t feel like she’d learned so much.

What if she made the same mistakes? Never saying I love you, never saying she was proud.

What if that was just a pattern she was destined to repeat?

‘Anna?’ Edward asked. ‘What do you think?’

‘Talk to me,’ Nia said.

Anna had locked herself in the bathroom to call her best friend. She kept her voice low, tried to remember how to breathe normally.

‘Edward wants us to have a baby,’ she said.

‘And? What do you want?’

What did she want? When they’d been about fifteen, Nia sleeping over at Anna’s house, both of them lying on Anna’s bed at two in the morning, they’d talked about the future.

About what they wanted, what they dreamed about.

For Nia, it had been clear. She’d wanted a job in TV production (she had a cousin who did something similar) and a husband who was funny and rich (possibly the star of one of the TV shows she worked on), who had dark hair and blue eyes.

She wanted children, a busy house, school photos on the wall and notes stuck to the fridge with alphabet magnets.

Anna had struggled to articulate her own dream, which was fuzzier, more blurred.

She’d talked about feeling content, secure, loved.

She didn’t know by whom. It was more a feeling than a vision.

She wanted to be part of a team. She wanted someone who knew all her stories and still laughed at them, who made her feel like she was important.

Who didn’t try to change her into something else.

Nia had listened and said that she could do all that, and didn’t Anna want passion and everlasting love, too?

And shortly after that, Nia had fallen asleep and Anna had gone on thinking about it.

‘Remember when we were teenagers and we used to talk about what we wanted our futures to look like?’

Nia laughed. ‘Anna, that is half our lives ago. And yes, of course I remember. You rambled about this feeling that you were looking for… and you had no idea what it should look like, in practical terms.’

‘And I still don’t, Nia. I still don’t know what it should look like. I think that’s the problem. I’ve always thought I would have children, because it’s just what you do, but when Edward suggested actually doing it right now, I felt like I couldn’t breathe.’

‘Try to calm down,’ Nia said. ‘Close your eyes. Think of yourself holding a baby, with Edward next to you. Now, how do you feel? ’

Anna shrugged, though she knew Nia couldn’t see her. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Not that elusive feeling?’

‘I mean, maybe. I just don’t know. I can’t feel it. I can’t tell.’

Anna paused, unsure whether she wanted to ask the question that kept coming to the forefront of her mind. ‘Nia?’

‘Yes?’

‘When Edward and I first met, you said you didn’t think we fitted. Do you still think that?’

Nia was quiet. Then, ‘Did I say that?’

‘You know you did.’

‘Okay, I’m sorry, Anna. You know me. I was probably drunk. You fit. You totally fit. I think it was just because of what Magda said…’

Eight years earlier, Nia’s neighbour Magda had read their tarot cards.

She’d said Nia would have one big love and one child, and then they’d moved on to Anna.

Magda had frowned, said that there would be some tragedy, but there would also be love.

She had taken Anna’s hand and said that the great love of her life would have a name that started with J (Nia had gasped and clasped Anna’s arm, and mouthed ‘James!’) and that he would have something to do with food.

James, the perfect guy from the perfect date, hadn’t worked in food, and he had never called.

But Nia had taken it upon herself to lead a quest to find this man for Anna.

So when Anna had brought Edward to meet her best friend, Edward, who worked in finance, Nia had been disappointed.

When Anna had said she was going to marry this man, Nia had bitten her lip and nodded, looking like she was about to cry.

‘Nia, I can’t base my entire life around a prediction that some crazy tarot lady made when I was twenty-two!’

‘Okay, first of all, Magda is not crazy. Magda is a genius. ’

‘And second of all?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t have a second of all. Do you ever think about him, still? James?’

‘No,’ Anna lied. ‘Okay, maybe.’

‘You chose Edward,’ Nia said, gently. ‘You married Edward.’

‘I know that.’

‘So what did you tell him?’ Nia asked. ‘He’s not still waiting for an answer, is he? What did you say?’