The Mothers Read online

  Genevieve Gannon is an award-winning journalist and author of four novels. She is presently a feature writer for nation’s biggest women’s magazine, The Australian Women’s Weekly, where she covers everything from crime and social justice to celebrities and cults. Before joining The Weekly she was the chief court reporter for Australian Associated Press in Melbourne. Her journalism has appeared in most major Australian newspapers. She currently lives in Sydney.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2020

  Copyright © Genevieve Gannon 2020

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76087 532 9

  eISBN 978 1 76087 316 5

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Nada Backovic

  Cover photo: Getty Images

  For Vivi

  CONTENTS

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Part Two

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Part Three

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Forty-three

  Forty-four

  Forty-five

  Forty-six

  Forty-seven

  Forty-eight

  Forty-nine

  Fifty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  PART ONE

  One

  APRIL 2015

  It was a perfect baby, slippery and pink. Its legs and arms were tucked into its body and its head was bowed as if sleeping, or praying, like a tiny pious monk. Smooth and compact, shiny and hard, it seemed to be made of resin and sat on the sort of wooden display stand that might hold a Fabergé egg, or a football trophy. But it is a sort of trophy, isn’t it, Grace thought, reaching out towards it.

  ‘Oh!’

  As soon as she made contact, the baby toppled off his wooden stand. His? Hers? Grace couldn’t tell, but she sensed that knocking the model baby across the examination room shelf did not bode well for their appointment.

  ‘What have you done?’ Dan asked, his voice teasing.

  ‘I’m so tense.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘Why doesn’t it get easier?’

  He took her hand in his bearish paw and squeezed it, giving three short pumps in place of a platitude about how everything would be fine. Grace tried to return the baby to its upright position in the display stand but it was top-heavy and refused to stay in the base, which bore the label Twenty-six weeks.

  She stared at the baby’s face, which appeared peaceful and somehow wise. She could scarcely believe that a hot-blooded version of this creature could ever grow inside her, and for a moment she wanted to scoop up her handbag and pull Dan out the door before they caused themselves any more heartache born of false hope.

  Her husband inched closer to her. ‘You’re doing it again,’ he said, sweeping back the stray hairs that fell in pale wisps around her face.

  ‘Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I asked if you wanted me to book those cheap flights to Tokyo. You’re staring at that baby like it leaked the final exam answers to your maths students.’

  This is how they spoke to each other at the clinic: with careful, pointed cheer.

  ‘You know I don’t set exams anymore,’ she replied automatically.

  Grace’s brow creased as she focused on righting the baby, but its slick finish meant she couldn’t get any purchase on the varnished stand. ‘I don’t want to book anything while we’re having treatment.’

  ‘We have to live our lives.’

  ‘I thought we were putting all our energy into this. I don’t want to give up.’

  ‘I’m not giving up. I just think we need a holiday.’

  ‘What’s keeping Doctor Li?’ Grace asked, looking back to the closed office door.

  A cable of tension stretched from the base of her skull all the way down her spine. She rolled her head back until she heard a satisfying crack. The motion gave her a sweeping view of the Empona consultation room—the bottles of hand sanitiser, the mauve and violet décor, the poster showing the cross-section of a woman’s torso that looked like a piece of meat, eerily congruent with the disposable cover that had been pulled across the examination bed like butcher’s paper.

  The door opened and Grace whipped her hands away from the broken baby model.

  ‘Hello, Doctor,’ she said hastily.

  ‘Hello, Ardens,’ Doctor Li replied. ‘I suppose you don’t want me to say it’s good to see you again,’ she said with a wry smile.

  Despite the boxy skirt and prim, tightly buttoned shirt she wore under her white coat, Doctor Li looked breathtaking, as always. Before their first appointment Grace had thought Doctor Ashley Li could not possibly be as attractive as the photos of her in magazines, when in fact, the pictures had scarcely done her justice. Were it not for her plain clothes and her purple rubber Fitbit, Doctor Li could be from the distant future when aesthetic imperfections, such as weak jaws and dry skin, had been bred out of the species altogether.

  ‘How are you today?’ she asked, pert and professional.

  Dan straightened his back. ‘Excellent, Doctor, just excellent.’ He always turned into a prize student in the presence of their doctor, as if he were expecting her to reward his good behaviour by pulling out a vial of magical fluid with a secretive grin and the preamble, ‘I only give this to very special patients …’

  Doctor Li walked purposefully across the room to the sink where she squirted antibacterial gel into her palm and rubbed her hands together before seating herself at her desk.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘We’re going to try again?’

  ‘We should get a loyalty reward card,’ Dan said. ‘Every tenth round is free, right?’

  Doctor Li opened the Ardens’ file. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  ‘Doctor,’ Grace said, pulling a folded ne
wspaper article from her handbag, ‘I wanted to know what you think about trying dehydroepiandrosterone.’ She pronounced the compound carefully. ‘I’ve been reading about a maverick fertility specialist in London. This article says he has the highest success rate in the country. Double the national average.’ She held out the clipping as evidence.

  Doctor Li gave a reassuring smile. ‘Grace, I assure you, you’re getting the very best care here. Everything that can be done will be done. Studies have not been able to demonstrate any real benefit to taking DHEA.’

  Grace silently refolded the article and returned it to her bag. Doctor Li was as compassionate as a patient could want, but every time she scuffed into the room in pastel-coloured ballet flats to deliver bad news with her standard chaser ‘Sometimes it just takes time’, Grace wanted to shake her and shout, ‘Easy for you to say!’ In three weeks she and Dan would celebrate their second wedding anniversary. The happy event had taken place within a year of their meeting on Grace’s fortieth birthday and it had given her a glimpse of the dream she had all but given up on: blanket forts in the lounge room; homemade playdough cooked over the stove on a rainy afternoon; piggyback rides; fairy bread; and bedtime stories told with all the voices. These were things she had always wanted but feared had slipped the noose—until she met Dan. She looked at him now, her shrewd, caring, grizzly bear of a husband, and felt a surge of gratitude and love. She squeezed his knee and he rewarded her with a smile. Her heart lurched. He would make such a good father.

  ‘As this is your sixth round of treatment I feel I should take you through the statistics again,’ Doctor Li said.

  ‘We know the odds,’ Grace said.

  Doctor Li nodded and began tapping her keyboard. ‘I’m going to prescribe human growth hormones.’

  ‘What!’ Dan put a protective hand on Grace’s back. ‘Like the performance enhancers athletes use?’

  ‘They could help improve the quality of the eggs. We haven’t used them before because we don’t like to pump you full of too many drugs. But I think it’s time we give HGH a go,’ Doctor Li said.

  Grace forced a smile. At home with Dan, and out with her girlfriends, she was able to make light of her age—‘You know the Chinese delicacy, the century egg? Well, let’s just say my eggs would be highly prized in Shanghai,’ she’d joke while her friends dutifully tittered—but here, in this clinic, in front of the young specialist who was one part medical prodigy, one part Vogue model, Grace’s sense of humour deserted her and she felt worn out and thin-skinned.

  She swallowed. ‘You think these drugs will give us a better chance?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Doctor Li said. ‘We’ll start you on your FSH injections tonight and in a week you can come back for your first blood test.’

  ‘You do think it will work, don’t you, Doctor? I mean, we’re not wasting our time?’ Grace asked, edging forward on her seat.

  Doctor Li paused a moment. ‘At your age these things can be tricky, but we have the very best staff and equipment here. There’s no medical reason you can’t have a perfectly healthy pregnancy.’

  Grace exhaled and smiled. ‘Okay.’

  ‘So, I’ll see you on the twenty-eighth, and you, Dan, will have to come in too to provide your specimen.’

  ‘Ah, the sweet ambience of the deposit room,’ Dan said. ‘Every time I get a whiff of White King I get aroused.’

  Grace gave a tight grin, grateful for the attempt at levity.

  Doctor Li tapped the end of her pen on her desk. ‘Right.’

  ‘Right,’ said Grace.

  ‘Right,’ said Dan. ‘Once more unto the breach.’

  A light wind was blowing crisp autumn leaves along the footpath when Dan slung his arm around his wife’s shoulder and steered her out of the Empona clinic. It had become routine for them to walk to and from their appointments. Parking was impossible—the clinic was ridiculously busy—and taking the backstreets home to Glebe gave them a chance to digest whatever the latest appointment had wrought. They strolled in companionable silence until Grace said: ‘Caroline Hawkins thinks it was a grape-skin extract that finally helped her get pregnant with Jamie.’

  She was forever venturing theories and half-baked hypotheses for Dan’s consideration. Often they were things she had read on the internet and wanted to gauge how batty—or not—they sounded in the real world.

  ‘I wouldn’t be taking my cues from Caroline Hawkins,’ Dan said. ‘Didn’t you say she paid two hundred dollars for a fertility crystal reading?’

  ‘She’s a doctor.’

  ‘She’s a podiatrist.’

  ‘She’s also a mother. Finally.’

  ‘To a very nice little boy, even though she made George completely re-arrange the bedroom to give it a feminine energy flow. The only time I’d ask Caroline’s advice about anything would be if I had tinea.’

  Grace laughed softly. ‘I know, but maybe there’s a placebo effect.’

  ‘You hate all that holistic, hippie, shaman stuff.’

  ‘The placebo effect is an established scientific phenomenon.’

  They strolled on for a few minutes before she said: ‘What about blood plasma transfusions? That doctor in London uses them. The one with the queues lining up around the corner.’

  ‘The one Doctor Li said was using unproven methods?’

  ‘But if it’s your own blood how could it hurt?’

  He pulled her closer. ‘I wish I’d known when I was buying you that bracelet for Christmas that what you really wanted was blood and crushed-up grape skins,’ he said. ‘I’d have saved a fortune.’

  Grace smiled. The prospect of a new piece of reproduction artillery in the form of HGH had quelled her anxiety, and in its place was sunny optimism. She touched the milky opals set in the gold chain on her wrist.

  ‘I’m sorry about those Tokyo flights. It’s just that I think if I go I’ll only resent the expense. I’ll be thinking about how the money could be being put to better use. I’ll be tetchy. We’ll fight. I’ll ruin it.’

  He kissed the top of her head. ‘Okay, but I want you to ask Doctor Li before taking anything she hasn’t prescribed. That’s what we’re paying her for. We don’t want something in the pills interfering with the treatment.’

  ‘She said most supplements are fine.’

  ‘She said most supplements are benign; that’s not the same thing. We’re going to have a long conversation with her before we commit to anything. Only supplements Doctor Li says are okay.’

  ‘You know I’m not going to do anything dangerous.’

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘I read about this procedure where they scrape the inside of your uterus. It’s supposed to make you more fertile.’

  ‘They scrape it?’

  ‘With a little implement. They go up and sort of scratch away at the lining. Some studies say it doubles the chance of conception.’ ‘Why does everything that helps conception sound like something they’d do to get you to talk in Guantanamo?’

  ‘Or we could try the poppy-seed oil again.’

  A year earlier—after round three failed—Grace’s fallopian tubes had been flushed with iodised poppy seed oil. It was an old way of testing fertility that had been phased out as technology became more sophisticated. A researcher had recently published a paper suggesting women who underwent the procedure had a better chance of having a baby and so it was enjoying a forumfuelled revival.

  Dan stopped walking and turned to face Grace, placing his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘I’m serious, Grace. Nothing controversial. Nothing experimental or untested. No removing your ovaries and dipping them in maple syrup because some woman from Ottawa wrote a blog post about how it worked for her.’

  ‘All right.’ Her voice was small.

  He murmured sceptically and continued walking. ‘I don’t want you putting yourself at risk.’

  ‘We’ll do everything right this time,’ she said. ‘No cheat days. No sneaky glasses of wine. My body is a temple. A child-friendly
one that serves ice-cream and pipes the Frozen soundtrack down my oesophagus.’ She smiled. ‘I feel like we’re getting closer. I trust Doctor Li and the team at Empona.’

  The Empona clinic had achieved an almost mythological status. Its founder, Roger Osmond, was a fertility pioneer the media had dubbed ‘the baby maker’. Like Doctor Li, he had celebrity-grade good looks. He was all jaw and aristocratic cheekbones with a high brow crowned by a straw-coloured bale of hair. Eager women spoke of the clinic with hushed reverence. According to various league tables—mostly compiled by bloggers from publicly available data—Empona was the best-performing clinic in the country.

  ‘We’ll get there,’ Dan said, taking her hand and swinging it.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied with determination, ‘I believe we will.’

  Grace shuffled out of her shoes as soon as she entered their terrace, the cool hallway a relief after the walk home.

  ‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she said, kissing Dan’s cheek.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’

  ‘Showering?’

  ‘With the jab.’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s okay.’

  ‘I’ll get dinner on,’ he said. ‘I’m going to make a curry from scratch, using only organic vegetables and spices. Let’s see if it fires up your insides.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ she called from the bathroom, pulling her dress off over her head.

  Her shoulders tensed at the sound of a crash; he’d opened the cupboard of haphazardly stacked pots and pans.

  ‘Sorry!’

  She grinned as she listened to him bang around in the kitchen and rustle the cellophane spice packets he bought in bulk from a wholefoods store in Marrickville. Grace suspected Dan liked the process of buying the spices more than actually cooking with them. The warehouse displayed a rainbow of seasonings in old scrubbed wine barrels. He loved to browse the aisles, rubbing his hands together saying things like, ‘I feel like an apothecary of yore restocking my powdered newt and ground dragons’ eggs.’

  The day they discovered the store, Dan had spent almost sixty dollars on spices whose pinnacle of achievement would be to funk up the pantry with a musty smell until Grace finally cleaned them out one empty, industrious afternoon. She had foreseen this when he’d purchased half a kilo of cardamom, but it was impossible to reproach him when he was so happy, and every now and then he would be seized by a fit of culinary enthusiasm that made the expeditions worthwhile.