never having sex for fun any more because sex is only about having a baby which never arrives.
Just before I close my laptop for the night, I decide to google and find out who the first woman to swim the Channel was. Everyone keeps talking about Captain Matthew Webb – the merchant seaman with the walrus moustache who was immortalised on a box of matches – but there must be a woman. I discover that she was an American named Gertrude Ederle. I laugh when I read that one of her most famous sayings was ‘I eat whatever I want, whenever I want it.’ She was definitely my kind of girl. So I get out my list of women who changed the world and add a special entry. Number twenty-one: Gertrude Ederle. Her position on the list seems serendipitous – the exact number of miles from England to France. She lived to the age of ninety-eight and it turns out she’s another woman who never became a mother. I wonder why and whether the sea was her ‘darling child’.
I put down my laptop and think about Ms Stiller’s email. It was nice of her to reply when I wrote and she’s right, of course: I’m never really going to know what Jane Austen, Gertrude Ederle or any of the women on my list truly thought about not having children. I’m never going to know how happy it made them that they did something big instead. Then I close my eyes and think about Optimist, the support boat available on the neap tide starting on 21 August next year. And then I think about the little girl with her pink suitcase and I wonder if that’s a tide that can ever turn. And thinking all these things, I eventually fall asleep. But the next day, as soon as I wake up, I send an email to Paul the pilot to book his boat. I’ve had an idea about how swimming the Channel might help me decide what to do next in my pursuit of motherhood. Besides, I can always cancel the booking, if that baby does decide to arrive.
Half a Biscuit
BBC Radio 4 is coming over to interview me about my IVF story. This is a major moment. Seeing my legs in the most read tabloid newspaper in the world is nothing compared to hearing my voice on Radio 4. I love Radio 4. I have done since I was at university and a boy I had a crush on persuaded me to start listening to it. The crush was unrequited, but a lifelong radio love affair began. I just wish I hadn’t had to fail at having a baby in order to succeed at being on it. But putting that aside, it’s Radio 4. RADIO 4!!!
Now, I’ve been asked to be part of a documentary which is going to be written and presented by a BBC journalist who has decided to come out for the first time about her own struggle to conceive. The producer calls and says they want to do at least part of the interview with me at home. Apparently background sound is very important in radio as it adds colour. They want to record me boiling the kettle, that kind of stuff. I’m not sure how I feel about this. If I’m honest I don’t really want them to come round. Not just because I’ll have to tidy up but also because it feels like a further ‘opening-up’ of our life that I’m not sure even I’m comfortable with.
A few days later, hesitation cast recklessly aside, the producer and presenter arrive. The presenter is petite, pretty and clearly clever. We stand together talking in the kitchen whilst I put the coffee on – one of those silver stovetop pots that heat up on the hob. The producer points her furry microphone towards it. As the water comes to the boil it makes a satisfying bubbly sound. The producer moves the microphone closer. We carry on talking. I offer to warm some milk. It boils over, white foam cascading over the top of the saucepan. Embarrassed, I take out mugs from the cupboard. Huge ones – the size of bowls – decorated with beautiful multicoloured streams of paint that looks like it’s running off an easel. I like them a lot. They’re my best mugs. I pour out the coffee. It looks a bit weak. Then I pour over the burned milk. It curdles.
This isn’t going well. I want to come across as someone who is confident with people in the kitchen. I have always dreamed of living in a country farmhouse: a well-used wooden table on a flagstone floor surrounded by family; bread and cakes cooling on wire racks; homemade jams and pickles in Le Parfait jars. The sort of place where there would always be people talking, laughing, eating and drinking and I would be mother-cum-maître d’. Instead we live in a shoebox in central London which is so small we rarely have people round. We don’t have a table to speak of and, it seems, I’ve even lost the skill to make a visitor a cup of coffee. How is it that my life is so far away from the dreams I had? There’s nothing to stop me living in a farmhouse. I could still make cakes and jam. But I don’t, and there is something about where we’ve chosen to live that I know is a by-product of our childlessness.
We sit down. The presenter is on a chair, balancing the cup, which is almost as big as her, on her knees. She doesn’t look comfortable; I’m not comfortable. It makes me wonder why I’m putting us all through this. Then I remember the biscuits.
‘I bought biscuits,’ I say, jumping up excitedly and nearly knocking over my own cup. ‘Two packs. Posh ones – pistachio or sultana. Which would you prefer?’
The presenter and the producer both make mmm-ing sounds but don’t give me a definitive answer, so I open both packets and put a few of each in a bowl. The producer takes one. The presenter politely refuses. She doesn’t look like the sort of woman who eats a lot of biscuits. I decide not to have one either.
And so the interview starts. Here we go again. Infertility. IVF. The sadness. The shame. The envy. The emptiness. At one point the presenter cries, and then shares a little of her own story. She’s Asian and I had wondered if this might have its own particular challenges. She tells me it does, that in traditional Asian communities, couples without children are shunned and women are often the ones who are blamed. And then she suddenly takes a biscuit, breaks it carefully in half, puts one half down and starts eating the other.
After two hours of conversation, the producer thanks me. She says we’ve generated some great material but she’s wondering whether there’s anywhere else they could record me – ideally with interesting background noise?
‘Somewhere else?’ I say, half in question, half in astonishment that two hours of intimate disclosure in my kitchen and a bubbling coffee pot hasn’t been enough.
‘Have you got any friends or family that are having a children’s party in the next few weeks?’ she asks. ‘That might work well.’
‘Not that I can think of, ’ I say. (Knowing I can’t think of anything worse.)
‘Or do you have any particular hobbies or places that you like to go that have a good soundscape?’
‘Well, there is somewhere,’ I say, desperate to respond with an alternative to the humiliation of a children’s party. ‘I’ve started swimming at the Serpentine in Hyde Park some mornings. It’s got ducks – could be good for radio?’
‘Yes … that could work,’ the producer ponders.
‘So you’re a swimmer?’ the presenter asks.
‘Not exactly,’ I reply. ‘Although I do have this crazy idea that I want to try and swim the English Channel next year.’
‘Wow,’ the presenter and the producer say in unison.
We then have the no-wetsuit and it’s-going-to-take-at-least-fifteen-hours conversation.
‘Wow,’ they both say again.
‘So is this about you trying to move on?’ the presenter asks.
I notice that something inside me feels immediately defensive and, as if she senses that she’s pressed a bruise, she doesn’t wait for my answer and says instead: ‘Are you doing it for charity?’
Ever since I publicly announced my Channel aspirations at work, people have been asking this question, and I haven’t had an answer. What am I doing it for? I realise I lied to my colleagues when I said I’d never done a sponsored anything before. I did a sponsored walk once, when I was at primary school, and raised about 20p. I had been hopeless at asking people for money. So I sidestep this question too by saying I haven’t decided yet but that I do have another idea.
‘Yes?’ the presenter says looking interested.
‘To be honest, I haven’t told anyone