Page 12 of Villa of Secrets

Rebecca peered into his eyes. They dulled as his emotions shut down and her dreams imploded right there in his arms. She forced a smile and nodded, the lump in her throat hard and painful.

‘Don’t worry, darling. It can’t be helped, I guess,’ she managed.

She was ovulating now. Not something to be rescheduled for next week, but she would gain nothing by pointing this out. Fritz had so much going on, he needed to stay focused on the business. She slipped her arms inside his jacket, around his waist, and squeezed. She knew how much Fritz hated the IVF clinic.

‘Right, then,’ he said, pulling away and forcing a boardroom smile. ‘You’ll make me even later, Mrs Neumanner. Don’t wait up, I’ve no idea what time we’ll finish.’

*

Rebecca decided to take the four-thirty bus into town. She enjoyed people-watching on public transport, and it took her mind off the clinic. The passengers were a mixed bunch. Junior school children chatted to their mothers, and older girls whispered and giggled, flicking their hair and glancing around, while teenage boys talked too loudly.

Was she doing the right thing? Yes, yes, of course.

Last time, after she’d miscarried, Rebecca buried herself in photography. Insane with grief, she trekked the parks and city streets through rain, sleet and snow. She tried to find the meaning of life through a Canon lens, tried to focus, tried to zoom in on the beauty of it all.

Rebecca hoped for a girl and, although they never talked about it, fearing a jinx, she suspected Fritz would prefer a boy. There was something not right about going to get pregnant without your man. But, despite her phobia of needles, she’d braved two weeks of fertility injections to increase her egg production. Exactly thirty-four hours ago, she had suffered an injection of something she didn’t remember the name of but was nicknamed ‘the hormone of pregnancy’. This caused her eggs to mature and loosen from their ovary walls.

The treatment was precise.

‘You’ll ovulate thirty-six hours from now,’ the doctor said as the needle plunged into her flesh.

She nodded, winced, and stifled a cry of pain.

The medical staff scheduled her egg retrieval for thirty-five hours after that jab. To re-schedule, as Fritz suggested, was impossible, but perhaps he had too much on his mind to think it through.

Everything had changed a little since their last attempt at IVF, which failed after only two weeks. She’d started to bleed, her emotions plummeting. This time it would work. She refused to consider failure again. All that self-blame . . . hysterical crying, the feeling of worthlessness.

Rebecca got off the bus. The IVF clinic was a hundred metres from the stop. Her boot caught a broken curb. She stumbled, lurched and almost fell. Calm down, she told herself. What difference did it make that she was alone? She could do this . . . yes, she could! Yet her quaking insides did nothing to boost her confidence.

Her thoughts were all questions. Would it work? Would she tell Fritz immediately, or wait until she was sure? Would she hold a perfect baby in her arms in nine months’ time? There lay her greatest nightmare: what would she do if she learned her baby wasn’t perfect? The very thought made her ill. ‘Usually, nature aborts if the foetus isn’t developing perfectly,’ the specialist had said. What if it didn’t, and she gave birth to a grossly deformed child. She’d wanted to ask, yet hadn’t, oddly superstitious about tempting fate.

The building loomed before her. She stared at the double doors. Time to turn back? Phone and cancel? She’d paid up front and prepared. Wouldn’t it be foolish to walk away now? But her feet wouldn’t move forward.

‘Mrs Neumanner, how nice!’ A cheery voice to her left. Her heart thudding with indecision.

She forced herself to turn, smile, and say, ‘Hello’ to her middle-aged gynaecologist, Quentin Alsop.

‘Come, I’ll walk with you. A big day today, yes?’ he said.

She swallowed hard. ‘I’m a little nervous.’

‘You’ll be fine. Don’t worry.’ He cupped her elbow and steered her towards the doors; an action Rebecca hated but she resisted a petulant urge to pull away. Get used to being manhandled, she told herself.

Come on, Rebecca, woman up!

They would put her to sleep and, guided by ultrasound, push a hollow needle through her vagina wall into her ovaries, to suck out the liquid. The embryologist would then search the fluid for eggs.

Please, let there be an egg.

*

Rebecca awoke bleary-eyed and dry-mouthed. A nurse entered.

‘How are you, Rebecca?’

‘Groggy,’ she said. ‘Is there any news?’ There was no need to expand.

The nurse beamed. ‘Ten eggs. Well done, you!’