The Surrogate Read online

  Upstairs I put my shoulder against the white gloss door leading to the nursery and push my way inside. I’m about to become a mum. A mum. I roll the word around my mouth, tasting all the implications it brings. Dropping my bags, I sink into the chair I’ve bought for feeding and dig my toes into the soft digestive-coloured carpet, gently rocking back and forth, the lavender from the plug-in air freshener filling my lungs.

  Today. We could hear today.

  The room isn’t ready. A border covered with sleeping bunnies wraps itself around all four baby blue walls. Nick had been reluctant to decorate; didn’t want to tempt fate, I suppose, until Dewei was here and, in retrospect, he was right. After work one day, he had stuck his head around the door. I was balanced precariously on a ladder, feathering my brush against the ceiling, singing along to S Club 7’s ‘Reach for the Stars’ blaring out of my Roberts Radio that, despite being digital, still sometimes crackled and hissed. He disappeared, and I thought he was annoyed, but returned minutes later, having replaced his suit with an old pair of jeans and a faded Levi’s T-shirt. He crunched his way across the plastic sheeting covering the carpet, kissed me hard on the lips and picked up a paintbrush. We didn’t talk as we worked but the silence was comfortable. Easy. An hour later we had finished but we couldn’t bear to leave. Nick nipped out for a takeaway. We sat on the floor, avoiding leaning against the tacky walls, eating chips soaked in salt and vinegar, discussing what we thought Dewei would be when he grew up. We went from F1 driver (Nick) to actor (me) but in the end we both settled on happy, and although he is now not ours, that is exactly what I still wish for him.

  Now, as I look around, I think tomorrow I’ll buy some pink paint and decorate for Mai and, as much as I am looking forward to her arrival, regret lodges in my throat as I think I will be painting over Dewei. Saying goodbye to the family we never got to be. I swallow back my tears. I’ve had a good day and won’t spoil it now. Instead, I kneel in front of the white wardrobe and begin to unpack my shopping. Cream Babygros with pink butterflies, tiny white socks with a lacy trim, a bib with ‘Daddy’s girl’, pastel vests with metal poppers and the softest fleecy lemon blanket with a giraffe in the corner. I fold everything carefully and pull open a drawer. My heart skitters at the sight of baby blue clothing. I lift everything out as carefully as I can, holding each item to my nose, breathing in deeply as though I can smell the baby that was never really mine to love. That didn’t stop me loving him anyway. My emotions rage against each other. I could cry at the injustice of it all and yet, as I cradle the stuffed rabbit I’ve bought for Mai, with ears that crinkle, and a bell in the tail that tings, I can’t help but feel hopeful.

  A mum.

  I’m going to be a mum, and the enormity of it overwhelms me. I’ll have a tiny person to protect, and panic twists in my gut. What if I can’t protect her? What if I let her down too? But I tell myself it isn’t the same. I’m not the same person I was then.

  I am so lost in my thoughts I don’t hear Nick as he comes home, and it isn’t until he crouches beside me and takes my hand in his I know something is wrong. His cornflower eyes are filled with regret, and the scar on his forehead he’s always so self-conscious about shifts as he frowns. Somehow, I know what he’s about to say before he speaks and I pull back almost as though I can stop the words coming.

  ‘Kat. I’m so sorry,’ he says, and I try to stand but he doesn’t let me go. ‘Richard has called. There was an issue with the paperwork. Secretly he thinks someone has slipped a back hander. Mai has gone.’

  And just like that my world crumbles. He holds me as my grief soaks his shoulder, his shirt darkening with the force of my tears.

  ‘We shouldn’t have instructed Richard. What were we thinking? He’s a commercial lawyer.’ I am desperate for someone to blame. ‘We should have used an international adoption solicitor. A specialist.’

  ‘Richard wouldn’t have agreed to help if he was out of his depth. I trust him. He has consulted with the other partners. There was nothing anybody could have done differently.’

  ‘Can we offer more money?’ Anger begins to bubble. I won’t take this lying down. I can’t.

  ‘It’s too late,’ Nicks whispers into my hair. He sounds as wretched as I feel.

  ‘What about if we fly out there?’

  ‘Kat.’ He speaks slowly. Patiently. And I catch a glimpse of the father he could be. ‘She’s been given to someone else.’

  ‘But…’ I want to say they won’t love her like we would. Like I do. But I don’t know that, do I? There are other women whose desire to hold a baby burns hot and bright. Why should I be more deserving? You’re not whispers that little voice, and all at once it feels like karma. Payback. I’ve moved away but I haven’t been able to escape myself – the things I’ve done.

  ‘What are we going to do? Should we try the UK? At least this sort of thing won’t happen.’ I raise my tear-stained face to Nick’s but he can’t look me in the eye.

  ‘I don’t think so. Remember the orphanages, the conditions? It’s much better to offer a home to one of those babies but we need to think very carefully about whether we can go through it again. It’s traumatic. For both of us.’ He envelops me in his arms, and I slump against him, numb and mute.

  The moon shines through the window illuminating the nursery rhyme mobile that’s hanging over the crib, Humpty fat and round, spinning slowly. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

  * * *

  Much later, Nick is gently snoring. Sleep hovers in front of me and every time I snatch at it, it is whisked away from my grasp. My eyes are gritty with tiredness as I pad into the nursery. The rabbits stare down at me from the border on the walls judging me: how could you let another baby go? The wood creaks as I lower myself in the chair. I rock back and forth. Seconds, minutes, hours tick by. Dawn breaks and it’s impossible to keep my eyes open any longer. Just before I slip into blackness, I remember Lisa’s words: ‘acting as a surrogate is definitely something I’d consider again.’ Hope begins to unfurl once more. After all, she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge at all, does she?

  4

  Now

  ‘This isn’t legal,’ Richard says as I try not to squirm under his disapproving gaze, or say anything stupid. There is a lot riding on this meeting.

  My fingertips flutter to the gold cross around my neck, the way they always do when I’m anxious. The wait seems endless as Richard shuffles through papers on his desk. My mouth is dry but my palms are slick with sweat. I discreetly wipe them against my trousers before I stretch out my hand towards Nick. He links his fingers through mine.

  ‘I must say I was surprised to get your phone call but I’ve done some research and had a chat with the chap who specialises in family law here. The laws for surrogacy are sketchy at the very least. You won’t be protected if anything goes wrong.’

  It’s so hot in the office. A too large executive desk fills the space, sucking the air out of the room. Richard’s aftershave is always overpowering: something expensive, no doubt. I half-wish I hadn’t worn my cashmere jumper as I feel another trickle of sweat snake between my shoulder blades but I had wanted to appear confident and in control, but in control is the last thing I feel.

  ‘Nicholas?’ Richard asks in that tone of his which always makes me painfully aware he has never really approved of his best friend’s choice of wife. I’m not sure why he has never warmed to me. In our wedding photos, he stands expressionless next to Nick, not even a hint of a smile on his too-handsome-for-his-own-good face. Neither Nick nor I have family to speak of, or that we really speak to, and it had meant a lot to me we had friends who could join us. But as Nick and I swayed to Jason Mraz’s ‘I’m Yours’ in the tiny venue that was still only half-full, I was aware of Richard’s cold, hard stare following me around the meagre dance floor lit with flashing blue and green lights. The taste of the garlic mushrooms we’d eaten for our wedding breakfast kept rising in my throat.

  I glance out of the window and wish
Richard would crack it open. A pigeon rests on the sill; his wings glint silver and purple in the weak winter sun.

  ‘This is what I want.’ I sense rather than see Nick look at me. ‘This is what we both want.’ He gives my hand a reassuring squeeze, and I am grateful we both want to build a family. Early on, he told me his parents were dead, and he didn’t want to talk about them. I told him mine weren’t but I didn’t want to talk about them either, and it brought us closer. Bound by our loneliness. Our secrets, some might say, but I don’t think there is anything wrong in a fresh start. Looking towards the future instead of the past. I had asked Nick, of course, about his childhood and he’d said there was nothing to talk about, but the tell-tale tic in his jaw, the vein that throbs at the side of his head, told a different story, as did the scar that streaks across his forehead. He hasn’t had it easy, I know, but that only makes me love him more. Over time I have stopped asking questions because it’s never one-sided, is it? Finding out information. If we have that conversation, sooner or later I’ll be the one expected to talk about my parents, my past, and that’s the last thing I want to do. Anyway, ultimately, we are all the same, aren’t we? Skin and bones. Truth and lies. We all have our stories to tell. Regret we bury. Hope we try to tether lest we begin to think we can be something we’re not.

  My hand trembles as I lift my glass and water sloshes over the edge, soaking my knees. It is cold and uncomfortable but it will dry quickly here. The radiator next to me blasts out heat. I am beginning to feel dizzy.

  ‘Surrogacy is a very grey area,’ Richard says. ‘We can certainly draw up an agreement to protect your interests, as much as it can, and ask the surrogate to sign a letter of intent, but neither is legally binding if she changes her mind during the process. There is no law that can force a mother to give away her child, no matter what she has promised.’ Richard steeples his fingers together and stares directly at me. ‘It’s a shame the adoption fell through again. I did all I could but that’s the way it goes sometimes. You win some, you lose some.’ He doesn’t sound sorry, or look sorry, and for an instant I wonder if he has sabotaged the process, but why would he? I dig my nails into my palm. If I ever found out he was responsible for me losing Dewei and Mai I’d kill him with my bare hands.

  I try to keep my features neutral; I won’t let him get to me. I won’t.

  ‘The surrogate we want, Lisa, she’s done it before. I trust her.’

  The napkin with Lisa’s mobile number on it had been stuffed into the bottom of my bag, and I’d smoothed it out, carefully practising my speech. I would explain the adoption had fallen through and we were interested in learning more about surrogacy, but as soon as I heard her voice, the bond we’d shared as teenagers tugged the words from my lips, the emotion from my chest. I’d sobbed and sobbed down the phone. ‘I’ve lost Mai, Lis. It’s happened again.’ She’d soothed and sympathised, and we had talked for hours. In the following days she had rung me every afternoon, and I was grateful for her support. For the chance to chat. Sometimes about our school days. My obsession with Desperate Housewives, her obsession with Justin Timberlake. Sometimes about nothing. But our conversations always circled back to Mai and the loss I felt and, in the end, it was her who brought up surrogacy first.

  ‘Look, Kat,’ she had said. ‘I don’t want to push you into anything, but… surrogacy?’

  The pause seemed endless as I had silently urged her on. Was she really going to offer? Somehow, I didn’t feel I could ask. My hand gripped the telephone receiver, fingers tightly crossed.

  ‘You know I’d do it again. For you.’

  ‘But you don’t even know Nick.’ I left my weak protest hanging in the air, waiting for her to bat it away.

  ‘I didn’t know Stella’s husband, at first. I didn’t even know Stella that well, but you and me, we have a history, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word came out with a rush of relief. I was saying yes to everything.

  I’d held her offer tightly in my hands like a gift and, later, unwrapped every last detail of our conversation before recounting it to Nick.

  He wasn’t sure, at first. As we sat at the kitchen table I had spread out page after page of information I’d printed off the internet: beaming couples holding tiny bundles, surrogates standing behind them, smiling serenely like proud aunts.

  ‘The chance of a surrogate getting pregnant…’ Nick rifled through the papers. ‘You’ve looked for all the success stories but what about the ones that go wrong? The couples who are still left childless. I can’t face it again. Seeing you so upset. I can’t put myself through it. Is it really so important to have a baby? We’re okay, aren’t we? We’re happy?’

  ‘Yes, but…’ I bit my lip. Sifted through my mind for the words to communicate the huge gaping hole inside of me. It was like a wound almost. Sometimes I thought I was healing until I’d walk past a mum pushing a pram proudly through town, stand in a queue behind an expectant mother stroking her belly, and I’d feel the scab being ripped off. It hurt every single time. It never lessened, the searing pain; if anything, it was only getting worse. Sometimes it seemed the whole world had what I so desperately wanted. How could I convey that to Nick? That longing. But somehow, I must have because he said yes.

  ‘And you’re happy with this Lisa, Nick?’ Richard asks.

  ‘I’m happy if Kat is,’ Nick says. ‘But before meeting her I wanted to discuss the legalities. Hear your thoughts.’

  ‘You could always buy a kitten or a puppy,’ Richard says.

  My breath catches in my throat. ‘It’s not quite the same, is it?’ I try to make my tone sarcastic but my words are shaky. I don’t know how much longer I can hold it together. It’s all right for him. He’s so focused on his career he doesn’t want kids, but he must have some compassion: he wouldn’t have wanted to set up Stroke Support otherwise.

  ‘No, I suppose it isn’t,’ he relents. ‘If you want to go ahead it won’t take long for me to do the paperwork. We just need to agree on the finer points. Reasonable expenses can be paid to Lisa—’

  ‘We don’t mind what it costs,’ I jump in.

  ‘You probably don’t,’ says Richard, and I sit back, feeling my spine press against the wooden chair, as though I have been pushed. There’s a part of me that wants to retort we wouldn’t have to worry about money if I drew a salary from the charity set up for Richard’s grandmother and we didn’t rely solely on Nick’s property business for our income, but today, I want to keep us all focused on the baby.

  ‘You do want to stay on the right side of the law, don’t you?’ Richard’s stare is unwavering, and I squirm uncomfortably. Sometimes I feel he can see right through me.

  ‘What’s the legal amount to pay?’ Nick asks.

  ‘This is where it all gets rather murky.’ Richard swivels from side to side in his chair. ‘It’s illegal to arrange a surrogacy for profit, but not illegal for a surrogate to profit.’

  ‘So Lisa could charge what she wanted?’

  ‘Not exactly. As I said, it’s not cut and dry. Before the family court will issue the parental order, they must assess what payments have been made. If they believe more than “reasonable expenses” have changed hands then the court has to authorise each payment before the parental order can be granted.’

  ‘So, we could get to the end of the process and the court could say no?’ There is so much that could go wrong. Frustrated tears prick the back of my eyes as I stare down into my lap.

  ‘It’s extremely unlikely the court wouldn’t approve – they do have to take into account the welfare and best interests of the child – but it would greatly complicate the process if inordinately large amounts of money had changed hands. Expenses can include any outlay while trying to conceive, during the pregnancy, and expenditure during the postnatal period,’ Richard continued.

  ‘What sort of things would we need to cover?’ Nick asks.

  ‘There’s quite a range. Costs involved while you’re getting to know each other, travell
ing. If Lisa feels she needs counselling that’s your responsibility financially, as are maternity clothes, trips to the hospital, any loss of earnings. We call the payments “expenses” but there is of course a degree of unspoken “profit”, as it were. After all, the surrogate is inconvenienced for a prolonged period of time.’

  It irks me he can refer to a pregnancy as an ‘inconvenience’ but I do understand what he means. It’s a huge sacrifice Lisa would be making. If it were up to me I’d give her every penny I could get my hands on.

  ‘How much do you think?’ Nick asks.

  ‘It varies but the general rule of thumb is anything between £7,000 and £15,000. More than £20,000 would potentially trigger alarm bells to the court. Expenses prior to conception are usually covered as you go along, and then once the surrogate is pregnant it’s up to you. You can hand over a lump sum or pay a monthly amount. There’s no hard and fast rule.’

  ‘Is that okay?’ I turn to Nick. ‘We can cover Lisa’s expenses?’ It will wipe our savings out.

  ‘If you use a clinic it will cost more, of course,’ Richard says.

  ‘How much extra do you think a clinic might be?’ I’m worried we can’t afford it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nick says. ‘I don’t really want to take out another loan; the repayments for the buy-to-let mortgages are so high.’

  ‘Perhaps you should give it some more consideration,’ Richard says.

  I almost laugh. Nick and I had thought of and talked about nothing else these past few days and had finally made our decision yesterday. My mobile had rested on the kitchen table between us as I called Lisa. The relief in her voice as it drifted out of the tinny speaker was palpable, and I had been touched to realise how much she must want to do this for me.