Something I'm Not (26 page)

‘God, it's cold out there,' cries Matt, entering the waiting room. He warms his hands in his armpits. Amber instinctively moves to his side. She thinks of her impending sedation, and the complex spirals of DNA looped within her precious eggs.

The clinic's medical director enters the room and renews her acquaintance with each of them. Pleasantries are exchanged, and then she asks to speak to Amber alone.

As they mount a flight of graceful Georgian stairs, Amber strokes the waxed wood of the banister. It seems to her that she is accessing a celestial world, intoxicating in its atmosphere of heightened emotion. After a lifetime of confusion, this is no small consolation. There is an irony, she can see now, in feeling at her most complete when part of her body is about to be removed for ever.

‘Please. Take a seat,' says Dr Ramji, once they reach her tidy consulting room. ‘I expect you're feeling rather nervous.'

Amber takes a chair opposite a polished desk. She nods, captivated by the woman's eyebrows: immaculate crescents of smooth, dark hairs along the line of the brow.

‘I know you've signed all the papers and have met a few times with our counsellor. But it's my duty to have one last little chat. You are aware that this procedure may not work. You're at the upper age limit for donors, after all. I just want to confirm that, even at this late stage, you are fully committed. Are you ready to take the risk?'

*

Closing the front door, Dylan finds Tallulah circling his ankles. She rubs herself against him, using his shin as a loofah. ‘Don't worry,' he says. ‘They'll be back soon.' And he picks her up and carries her down to the kitchen. In the fridge they find an open can of food. The word ‘Sunday' has been scratched on to the label in biro. After she eats the portion he scrapes out for her, he carries her upstairs to the drawing room, where he puts on a CD of a West End production of
Company
, and falls asleep to the familiar music. The cat nestles in his lap.

*

Amber is still not entirely certain what triggered her decision to donate her eggs to Jenny. When she was a child, she subscribed to the view that it was her role to keep her parents happy. That they were clearly miserable became for her not only a source of great imminent threat to her personal salvation, but a slur on her ability to function successfully. She sees now that such doubt in her own abilities was misplaced, a delusion based on inadequate information. It was never her duty to repair the damage of her mother's misfortunes. Perhaps egg donation is her last hurrah in making someone happy.

*

Ginny's view is that it is the universe itself, not God, which is mysterious. (Dylan pretends to be appalled, but he has rather fallen for Ginny. He has begun seeing her once a week. So far, his sinuses are clearer and his intolerance to cat fur has stopped, so he's prepared to indulge her in her primitive superstitions.) It is a simple view, and one with which Amber agrees. The alternative theory – that the world is logical and that all future disappointments can be eliminated by advanced planning – has been proved of late to be somewhat outdated.

*

Before replying to the doctor, Amber sits for a moment in thought. New life, she considers, does not begin with birth. It extends further back than even conception. We are so much a product of what has gone before. So it is with rebirth. We cannot eliminate our history but can learn to accept it, tolerate it even, and integrate it into our new being. Like a painting, she thinks, painted over an existing one on the same piece of canvas. The old paint still exists, giving depth to the new.

I don't know
, she suddenly wants to ask Dr Ramji
, if you ever catch Robbie Taylor on London Talks radio
. Because in her mind Amber has so much she wants to say, by way of explanation. There is always the choice to do things differently.

But she stops herself. Maybe there has been sufficient analysis, sufficient interpretation.

Instead she finds herself smiling spontaneously.

‘I'm ready,' she says. ‘I'm ready now.'

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people:

Virginia Whetter, for her care, wisdom, and the occasional timely kick up the backside; Ta i Long, for knowing something about absolutely bloody everything, and for teaching me to breathe; Paul McWilliam, for more dinner discussions about writing and publishing than a good friend should have to endure; Jeremy Vine, for motivational pep talks when the going seemed too tough – oh yeah, and the small matter of the title.

I also wish to thank:

Jill Robinson, & the Thursday night Wimpole Street Writers, for good food and feedback; Harry Bingham, Tricia Wastvedt, and Ashley Stokes at the Writers' Workshop for their perceptive criticism and guidance; Radhi and Vikram Mathur, for help with the finer points of Delhi slang; Jane Livesey, for long conversations on topics central to this novel; Christopher Eyden, Joseph Hawes and Piers Northam, for matters religious (AMDG!); Peter Bezuidenhoudt, for help with South African history; Laurel Remington, for heroic eleventh hour insights.

Special thanks to:

All at Duckworth, especially Caroline McArthur and Suzannah Rich, for making it happen; Michael Alcock, my agent, for his steady hand, for loving this book, and for shedding that tear.

But above all, to my husband Guy, whose precious presence in my life is both humbling and inspiring: thank you for finding me.

In memory of Christian Robertet, who made me promise never to give up on my dreams

Life is nothing without friendship