Page 39 of The Life She Could Have Lived

NO

Sarah stood with her hands on her hips, looking around.

‘This place is gorgeous,’ she said.

Anna smiled. She loved the flat she and Ben had bought together.

It was part of a Victorian terrace, and none of the walls were straight, as she’d discovered when tiling and wallpapering.

But the way the light flooded through the front windows in the afternoon was breathtaking, and there was a small, square garden that she liked to sit in on warm evenings, and they’d filled the rooms with colour and art.

It had made her wonder why she’d never put this kind of love into any other home she’d lived in.

She thought it was connected to her state of mind.

She was happy and in love, and she wanted to reflect that in her surroundings.

‘Thank you. We love it.’

Sarah was over from New York for a week and Anna was so happy to see her.

At the airport, they had hugged for a long time and Anna had found it difficult to let go.

They caught up regularly on the phone, but she hadn’t seen her friend, hadn’t been in the same room as her, for years.

Everything about Sarah was comforting, her smell, her smile.

And now she was in Anna’s home, the home from which Anna had called her at least once a month since she’d moved in, and it felt wonderful.

‘What do you want to do?’ Anna asked. ‘Do you want to sleep?’

‘No, I need to get on London time. But I don’t think I’m up for anything too full-on until tomorrow. Can we just catch up, have dinner here?’

‘Of course.’

‘Oh, I have a book for you,’ Anna said, picking it up off the coffee table and handing it to Sarah.

‘I might have told you about it. I worked on it last year and just fell in love with it, but I don’t think it was published over in the States.

It’s so good on friendship and deciding whether or not to have children, and I knew I had to get copies for you and Nia. ’

‘Thank you. You know, when we met I was so sure I wouldn’t have children but I thought you would, despite what you said. Do you ever regret it?’

Anna loved the way Sarah cut straight to the heart of things. She always had, and Anna was pleased she still felt like she could, despite the distance between them.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘There’s this part of me that wonders about how it might have been, to be a mother.

But I get a view into parenting through Ben, and I get to be a stepmum to his daughters, and that feels like a privilege, most of the time.

I just don’t think it would have been right, for me.

I think a lot of women just do it because their body tells them to, or because it’s what people do, and I didn’t want to do it without really knowing it was the right decision. And I never did. ’

Sarah drank her coffee, nodding. She was taking in what Anna had said. She would respond when she was ready.

‘And how is it, with Ben’s girls?’

Anna thought about how to answer this. It wasn’t easy, but when it was good, it was really good. She felt a closeness with Stella that she still hadn’t reached with Tess, who was having a rocky time with puberty and seemed determined to take everyone down with her.

‘If you’re their parent, they just love you, don’t they?

It’s biology. I mean, you see those documentaries, about parents who’ve done nothing for their children, who’ve treated them appallingly, and they still love them, still crave their parents’ love.

If you come in as a step-parent, you’ve got nothing.

You’re the one who isn’t their mum, or isn’t their dad.

Plus they associate you with their parents’ split, even if you didn’t meet them until afterwards, like Ben and me.

So if they end up liking you, it feels like a real achievement.

And I think they like me, most of the time. ’

‘And do you like them?’

Anna smiled. She thought about the time she and Stella had gone swimming in the sea on an Easter break to Cornwall, the way they’d huddled together afterwards for warmth and shared a flask of tea.

How it had felt like nothing else she’d ever known.

About the way Tess switched from pre-teen rage to pure joy and back again, how she talked passionately about the environment and animals.

How she’d turned vegetarian the previous year and stuck to it, despite finding it hard.

Anna admired her dedication, her enthusiasm, her energy.

‘I really do,’ she said. ‘They make me so hopeful, about the future.’

‘What do you mean? ’

‘Just that the future’s in good hands with people like them and their friends. They’re all so passionate and liberal.’

‘Ah, but isn’t that just being young?’

Anna thought about that. She wasn’t sure she remembered how she’d felt at eleven, or thirteen.

‘Maybe.’

There was an easy silence, and Anna watched the specks of dust in the air. She finished her drink and went to the kitchen to get a packet of biscuits. When she returned, Sarah spoke again.

‘Alex wants us to look into adoption.’

Anna was surprised. Sarah was the same age as her, and she always thought of them as too old to become parents. But she remembered that Alex was a few years younger. And that adoption didn’t necessarily have the same restrictions, when it came to age.

‘And you?’

‘I want her.’

Anna nodded. ‘Enough to go down that road?’

Sarah shifted a little on the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her.

‘That’s what I’m trying to work out. I know what it entails, and I’ve always said I didn’t want to.

And I don’t want to do it just to keep her.

It wouldn’t be fair. So I’m talking to everyone I know who’s a parent or’ – she gestured to Anna – ‘a sort of parent, and I’m trying to figure things out. ’

Anna let out a big breath. ‘I hope it works out. Whichever way you go.’

‘Well, Alex is pretty set on it, I think. She’ll do it with or without me. So it’s just down to whether or not I can.’

Anna realised then that she didn’t know what Sarah’s reasons were for not having children. They’d just told one another, when they first met, that they didn’t think it was for them, and that had been that .

‘Is something holding you back?’ she asked, then. ‘I mean, I often wonder how much my reluctance to do it was linked to my relationship with my mother. The worry, that I’d be cold and distant like her. But you’re close with your parents, right?’

Sarah was silent, and when Anna looked up again, she saw that her friend had tears in her eyes. She crossed the room, pulled Sarah into a hug.

‘I was pregnant, once, when I was sixteen. I hadn’t figured out that I was gay back then, or at least I hadn’t admitted it to myself, and I had this boyfriend for a year or so in high school.

I got pregnant, and my parents said they wouldn’t support me having an abortion, and my boyfriend was clearly not going to be involved, and I sort of resigned myself to this life of teenage single motherhood.

And then I lost the baby, in the fifth month.

And I had so much guilt, because I hadn’t wanted it, and I felt like I’d made it happen.

I had to go through labour, all that. And I just said to myself, back then, that I’d never put myself through it again.

I think it was partly about feeling I didn’t deserve to have a child, and partly about knowing I couldn’t go through something like that again. ’

Anna had learned that sometimes there was nothing to say, so she just held her friend while she cried.

‘God, I wasn’t expecting to bring all of this up with you,’ Sarah said, at last.

‘I’m glad you did, though.’

‘Who knew I was such a mess, underneath it all?’

Anna smiled. ‘Now, this one I know. We’re all just as messy as each other. Some of us hide it well, but you don’t get to our age without having been fucked up by something or other.’

‘Oh yes, and what’s your thing?’

Anna shrugged. ‘Distant mother, no dad, couldn’t commit to having children, fell in love with a man who wasn’t available. ’

‘I wondered whether we’d talk about David.’

‘How is he?’ Anna asked.

She found that, now she was happy with Ben, it was really okay to ask. She didn’t really care what the answer was.

‘David’s David,’ Sarah said. ‘He’s married now, and his wife’s about twenty years younger than him.’

It had taken Anna a long time to get over David, but she had.

She didn’t feel jealous of this young wife, didn’t think for a second about going over there, on the pretence of visiting Sarah, to try to see him.

Sometimes, she thought that if she hadn’t spent those years in New York, she would have been a lot happier.

And it was probably true, but she wouldn’t have Sarah in her life either, and she might have been ready to settle down years before meeting Ben, so she probably wouldn’t have him.

Everything was connected to everything else.

You couldn’t just pull one strand out without the whole thing coming unravelled.

There was the sound of a key in the door, and Ben came into the room and smiled at them both.

‘You must be Sarah,’ he said, going over to hug her.

Afterwards, he came to Anna and she stood up and he kissed her. ‘Anyone ready for a glass of wine?’

He went to the kitchen to open a bottle and Sarah did that thing that female friends do, where she quietly communicated her approval of a friend’s partner.

‘You seem settled,’ Sarah said. ‘No, not settled, more… I don’t know, peaceful, I guess. Like you’ve found it.’

‘Found what?’

‘You know, “it”. The secret. The answer. That feeling you talked about. So much for Nia’s psychic.’

Despite her better judgement, Anna had thought a lot about Magda since meeting Ben.

She’d got it right for Nia, after all. One big love and one child.

So why not Anna? There had been the tragedy, which could have been her marriage falling apart or could have been falling in love with David.

But now she had Ben, and he didn’t fit the profile, didn’t work in food or have a name beginning with J, but she was certain about him.

She shook her head. She couldn’t tell Sarah what she was thinking.

And then she laughed, because if she pushed aside those ridiculous worries, Sarah was right.

There were problems, like what Tess’s mood swings would be like when she next came to visit, or how she was going to get any publicity for some awful book she’d been landed with, or the weight that seemed to be steadily creeping on as she neared fifty, but none of them were big enough to really worry about. She was happy.