Dead tide, p.2
Dead Tide, page 2
‘Thank you,’ the woman said. ‘Now, I’ve got everything out that I think I might need,’ she added unnecessarily, and he didn’t break his smile as she got settled next to the window, pushing her things into the seat pocket.
The man who accompanied her remained standing, aware others were coming behind. He had a sharper tone in his voice as he spoke. ‘Be sure, love, because we don’t want to be pests.’ He glanced at their neighbour. ‘Hi, I’m Pete, and this is my wife, Sue,’ he said, slipping into the row next to his wife.
‘Greg,’ he replied, pressing himself up against the seats so a family carrying a young child with red and watery eyes could move through.
The men’s eyes met. ‘Let’s hope he sleeps,’ Pete said, sounding wearied already.
‘I hope I won’t need to bother you, Greg,’ Sue said, peeping around her husband standing in front of the middle seat. She was holding her iPad, touching the glasses that were held on a shiny rope around her neck and checking again that a toiletries bag was at her feet. Two passports and a pen were tucked into the seat pocket in case they were needed, as well as her husband’s paperback.
‘Charger?’ Greg offered. ‘It’s a long flight between here and Sydney.’
‘Charger!’ she exclaimed. ‘Thank you.’ And they had to get down her hand luggage once again, Pete rolling his eyes. ‘I’ll scream if I run out of power for my iPad,’ she explained.
‘Sorry about this, mate,’ Pete said.
Greg shook his head kindly as if it really was trifling, despite inwardly screaming at the tedium of it all.
‘Right, settled?’ Pete said, eyeing Sue. He took his seat in the middle.
‘All sorted,’ his wife said.
‘Don’t worry, just let me know if you need anything,’ Greg said, taking the bag and replacing it overhead, checking once again that his backpack was flush against the side of the luggage compartment and had not been disturbed. He finally sat.
Across the aisle, a much younger man with gingery blond dreadlocks, joshing with his mate who was seated and chewing gum, heaved a bag carelessly into the same compartment.
‘Hey, be careful,’ Greg said, his tone changing for the first time. He stood up again.
‘Sorry, mate. You’ve got loads of room in there.’
‘Fine, but don’t fling stuff around.’
‘I didn’t fling,’ the dreadlocked fellow said, sounding indignant.
Greg could see the green gum at the corner of the younger man’s mouth. A waft of peppermint sat between them.
‘Can I help?’ the flight attendant asked, his cologne swirling towards them before he did as he sensed a problem and arrived into the tension. The cologne mixed with peppermint created a strange aroma that was sickening at two o’clock in the morning.
‘Nah, all good,’ Greg said. ‘Just sorting out space.’
‘Is that fragile?’ The attendant, who was Filipino, Greg thought, wore a badge that denoted him as Benjie. He nodded towards Greg’s backpack. He wore a bright, white smile that he’d obviously practised a lot.
Greg gave a shrug. ‘Well, not fragile, but I don’t really want other stuff thrown against it.’ He knew he sounded petulant, and he watched the dreadlocked man from 54E roll his eyes. Benjie, meanwhile, schooled his features to neutral, but Greg could tell that behind his even expression he wanted to do the same.
Pete and Sue were watching him too, Sue casting him a reassuring nod of sympathy, as though she agreed that people had lost their manners in modern air travel. He half expected her to say to anyone who might listen, ‘Gone are the days of dressing for travel. This tracksuit laziness shouldn’t be allowed!’ but she didn’t; instead, she began fiddling with the articulated folds of her iPad’s leather cover and keyboard, which seemed to baffle her momentarily.
‘There’s plenty of room,’ Benjie confirmed, pointing to yawning bins elsewhere that had little in them. ‘It’s not a full flight tonight.’ His look suggested that Dreadlocks could make the standoff disappear if he would only move his gear. Another flight attendant excused herself as she pushed past them all and whispered something. Benjie gave the air a kiss in her direction to make her laugh.
‘S’okay, mate. I can use that one,’ Dreadlocks said, bringing everyone relief.
‘Thanks,’ Greg said calmly, inwardly relieved.
‘No worries,’ Dreadlocks breezed and he winked at his mate in 54D, who grinned back, mouthing something cheeky.
Greg finally settled himself back into seat 54C but his mind was churning. He could lipread and had just caught what the man in the seat opposite had said: Let’s hope it’s not a bomb in that backpack!
On the other side of the world, in metropolitan South Australia, a woman in her early thirties accepted the encouraging smile of her husband and felt the squeeze of his hand while they waited.
‘We did the right thing,’ Simon said, as if able to listen in and answer the question that had been bouncing around her mind for months.
She nodded. They’d talked it over so many times. Her nerves felt stretched so tight they were like cling film over a vessel; she was convinced her mind would make a drumming sound if it were tapped. Her treacherous eyes began to leak helpless tears.
‘Anna, you do want this, right?’
‘Of course,’ she ground out through the emotion choking her throat. ‘I want this more than anything but . . .’
‘But what? We can still pull—’
‘No, no, that’s not what I mean. I just wish they were mine . . . ours. From both of us.’
His expression crumpled. Simon wasn’t prone to tears but his eyes became moist as he nodded. ‘In a perfect world,’ he murmured. ‘But this is the only way, Anna.’
She squeezed his hand back to get his full attention. ‘I’m just feeling nervous and it’s making me go over old ground. We’ve talked this over and over and we wouldn’t be here right now if we both didn’t believe this was the way – something we both want.’ She sniffed, starting to get on top of the crush of anxiety. ‘I love that we at least have you in all of this. I feel jealous that we don’t have me, that’s all.’
‘We do though,’ he pressed, his tone earnest and full of reason. ‘After today it’s all about you. You alone can make this happen.’ He bent closer to ensure she understood. ‘I love you, Anna. Today we start our family.’
‘What if it doesn’t—?’
‘Shhh.’ He covered her lips with his fingertips. ‘It will.’
The door opened and the gynaecologist bustled in. Anna could tell he was smiling behind his mask. ‘Ready, Anna? Simon?’ he asked, sounding bright, full of optimism. They’d met so many times, had him commiserate so often, that they greeted each other like friends. He seated himself on a stool between Anna’s bent legs. Her feet were in stirrups, and he now pushed her gown halfway up her thighs. He too was fully gowned, his thatch of blond hair, which Anna had previously noted was just beginning to show silvery flecks at the temple, caught up in a hat that looked like an old-fashioned shower cap. His eyes smiled at her behind the lenses of his clear glasses. ‘Feeling powerful, Anna?’
‘I’m ready,’ she said, her voice almost cracking on the surge of anticipation she was sure they were all feeling.
‘Believe, okay?’ He waited for her nod. ‘Right, now relax all your muscles for me.’
So easy for a bloke to say that. It wasn’t his vagina. He didn’t even have one to know how wretched the process felt. She felt the cool of the speculum enter her body and curve up before she heard the horrible ratcheting noise of the screw being turned to open the walls of her vagina. She was used to it. Didn’t stop her hating it, of course, just like every other woman on the planet who had experienced a pelvic examination or pap smear. For Anna, though, it was just another uncomfortable, sometimes painful, hurdle to get over that took her closer to the finish line.
‘Inserting the tube now. Relax for me, Anna,’ he said again, sounding more commanding. ‘I know that’s counterintuitive but everything now is about you losing all the tension in your body. Be ready to greet your embryos. Make it feel welcoming, not hard and hostile.’
‘Trying,’ she panted, wanting to add, you bastard. But he was simply doing his best by her, she knew that.
‘I know, I know. All my patients wish I could be a woman for just one day and have this done to me.’
At least he understood that much. She tried to smile but only managed to nod through tears, then watched him reach towards the hatch in the wall where a masked clinician – she couldn’t tell whether it was a man or woman – also fully robed, reached through to hand the doctor a tiny syringe. My future, she thought. Please, babies. Please . . . one of you hang on for me.
‘Thanks,’ the doctor said and quickly inserted the syringe into the thin, flexible tube already in place in the opening of her cervix. ‘Here we go, Anna and Simon. We are putting in two beautiful embryos that you’ve created.’
It was kind of him to say it that way. Both she and Simon knew the magic had happened in a laboratory. It was Simon’s sperm, but not her egg. They’d chosen the donor from a catalogue and although she’d tried to put it out of her mind and she’d certainly not aired the notion, it had felt like shopping. At first it had been fun, and she’d felt full of excitement as she stared deep into the faces of the women who were prepared to donate their eggs.
They were all young in the section that Anna and Simon had chosen from. All fertile twenty-somethings and, in this group, all Caucasian. Anna was blonde and Simon was dark-haired, so a child with their genes would likely be dark too; she felt lucky that any of the donors would be suitable in this respect. She and Simon were both blue-eyed, so that cut down the choices to the donors with blue, green or grey eyes. Anna didn’t want to think of herself as shallow enough to be drawn to the women whose features sat together in a way she considered pretty; it seemed ludicrous that in her situation of being so desperate to have a baby she would let the looks of the donor be important . . . and still they were. Somewhere in her desperation of not being able to use her own genetic material, she wanted the child to possess some of her physical attributes. They wouldn’t have her personality or character traits but she could live with that, as the child would share some of Simon’s, and he was the loveliest man next to her father who walked the earth, she was sure. She adored Simon, so she would adore his child, assuming she could carry it to full term. But it still grated that these women were fulfilling her role, that it was eggs from one of their ovaries that would make her baby. If the child’s looks echoed her own somehow, it would help make sure she was never tempted to think of her child as anything but hers.
They’d whittled the catalogue of potentials down to two donors. No names or addresses were shown. The two they’d chosen were ‘A from UK’ or ‘C from Denmark’. Both were blonde, blue-eyed. One was pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way. The other was more classically pretty with elfin features and a dreamy expression. Simon liked the Dane. But Anna felt herself drawn to the British girl. She looked normal, down to earth, and while none of the photos showed the girls smiling – they were all like passport photos – the UK donor looked like she was suppressing a smile.
Anna liked that because she knew at one time, before babies became the single topic on which her thoughts turned, she’d been like that, full of secret smiles about everything from the man she was falling in love with to her career as a children’s book illustrator. It suggested the donor was giving her eggs with joy . . . a gift of pleasure. Sure, she was being paid for her DNA material, not that the catalogue mentioned the ugly business of money. Instead, it emphasised how much these young women wanted to help others to have children. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe it. But somewhere over the course of her years of trying for a baby, with the miscarriages and failed IVF cycles, she had fallen into a state of cynicism. For a start, A from UK didn’t look old enough to be in the years of motherhood, so her supposed desire to help others experience the joy of being a parent felt insincere. But Anna didn’t care. She was glad to have access to A from UK for the gift of her healthy young eggs. She already knew A’s eggs had accepted Simon’s sperm – a fact that somehow, ridiculously, made her feel a pang of jealousy, but deeply grateful at the same time.
‘Watch the screen, you two . . .’ The gynaecologist paused dramatically. ‘And a flash . . .’ he said. ‘Did you see it?’
They both murmured into the silence that they had. Anna felt Simon squeeze her shoulder.
‘That was both embryos going in. And we’re done,’ he said, sounding triumphant. ‘Now you take over, Anna. You and Mother Nature are going to work this out.’
She felt the withdrawal of the equipment from her body and the slight soreness left behind; she was probably bleeding slightly. It meant stinging when she urinated for a day or so, and there would definitely be no sex. All that counted now was the two embryos that had begun to divide and show their potential, to make themselves comfy within. She just prayed that they kept dividing, kept growing.
3
LONDON
Jack looked out into the class as his students got settled. It was the penultimate tutorial he would hold before returning to his old life as a detective, and as much as he knew it was time to get back into the saddle, he wondered if he was ready. Maybe he should accept the offer of another semester at the university. It was tempting, and would please the Dean.
Lecturing was certainly a change in pace and perspective from life working an op. And after the last one, which had involved so much death and despair – not to mention a hospital bed – he had welcomed the absorbing distraction of working alongside seemingly carefree university students. Officially he was still convalescing, but soon he’d have to notify his boss about returning to work. He’d already decided it was going to be a desk job for a while.
He was still seeing Lauren Starling, but he had sensibly kept this lovely woman at a distance. Not so far as to be insulting but just enough so that neither of them got carried away with notions of permanency. He suspected Lauren’s ambition would take care of that soon anyway, and for now it was a comfortable and affectionate romance. There had been honesty from before the first kiss; he’d warned her not to get in too deep, although he’d said it as much for himself because Lauren was the type of woman one could fall over the cliff for and never want to land. She had it all going on. She was a catch. She was a joy. She was texting.
Jack glanced at his phone, on silent, and clicked the message.
News! Tell you tonight. That could only mean one thing: the promotion to editor of the New York weekend magazine. Well, good, he supposed. She would now be moving to a new city and that meant the decision had been made for them. They’d become the best of friends, who just happened to have dated.
He looked up from his phone, waved it and spoke to the class. ‘Everyone in?’ He scanned the room. ‘How about phones onto silent, everyone?’
The class obeyed, although he heard one text message ping its arrival somewhere, and as they busied themselves with sorting out their phones, he felt a private pang of regret regarding Lauren, which he knew was of no use to either of them.
‘You always ask so nicely,’ one of the female students remarked as she slung her phone back into her bag.
Jack grinned, put his phone into his pocket and let the thought of losing Lauren go. It had always been the plan. ‘Well, in my day they used to throw chalk at us to get our attention. And Mr Lovejoy, who regularly defied his name, used to throw the wooden blackboard cleaners at us. Those hurt. I’m afraid that’s not allowed any more. I figure good manners work, right?’
The student smiled back at him. There was promise in that smile and he held his breath momentarily, taken aback by the raw sexuality on display in some of these youngsters. He felt old and looked away deliberately to let her know there was absolutely no chance of that, then scanned the room again.
‘Miss Rundle? Where is your friend, Miss Peters? Surely not sick again.’
The student’s face crumpled and she began to cry. Others noticed and Jack’s expression fell to mortified as he stepped around his desk and moved towards the teary student. More than a dozen gazes followed him; he sensed they knew something, if his instincts were serving him. ‘Madeleine, isn’t it?’
She nodded. ‘Maddie.’
Jack cleared his throat. ‘Okay, everyone, go over Chapter Six, will you? You need to know that procedure off by heart. We’ll tackle that next lesson and you’ve all still got your papers due by tomorrow, so why not take some time in class to finesse those.’
A collective groan sounded, though it had no heat, but Jack was already looking back at his tearful charge.
‘Come with me, Maddie, please.’
While the class began flicking through their books to find the chapter, Jack escorted Maddie outside the classroom and closed the door, frowning. He dug into his pocket for a handkerchief. ‘Here.’
She took it, sniffing, and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Smells of you.’
‘Does it?’ He drew away slightly. These girls were all so direct. ‘What’s happened to your friend, er, Amelia? That is her name, isn’t it?’
‘She preferred Millie, always called me Mads,’ she said, opening up the handkerchief to its full square and covering her face with it momentarily. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come into class – I just didn’t know what to do when you asked about her. I thought . . . I thought you knew.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Hang on – what should I know?’ he asked.
Maddie’s expression folded in on itself again. ‘That she died. Her funeral is tomorrow,’ she said, and her bluntness felt like he’d been clubbed; it made him hold his breath. ‘Her brother just sent me a text message about it as you asked us to put our phones on silent.’
Jack’s mind instantly reverberated with a sound similar to the steady, single tone of the test card he remembered on the BBC before twenty-four-hour television existed. Its piercing tone, akin to tinnitus he was sure, drowned out thought for a few heartbeats as he stood there, mouth slightly ajar, trying to make sense of what Maddie had just uttered. He hated to be so predictable and obvious when words finally arrived. ‘Funeral? Madeleine, how did she die?’
