Almost Perfect (6 page)

‘What boyfriend?' asked Nick. ‘I didn't know about any new boyfriend.'

‘George doesn't have boyfriends,' Zan scoffed. ‘She has illusions that never quite survive re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.'

Everyone stared at Zan who was calmly sipping her champagne.

‘What does that mean, Daddy?' asked Molly.

‘It means Aunty Zan is being smug,' Nick said, placing a consoling hand on Georgie's shoulder. ‘Come on, tell us, who is he?'

‘He's a figment of Louise's imagination this time,' Georgie said firmly.

‘Nu'uh,' she returned. ‘He came into the shop the second day in a row just to see Georgie.'

‘Yeah, well he won't be back,' Georgie assured them. ‘I'm pretty sure I frightened him off.'

‘What did you do, Georgie?' Molly was staring up at her wide-eyed.

Georgie grinned wickedly. ‘I crept up behind him . . .' She flung her arms out and swooped down on Molly. ‘ . . . and I grabbed him and threw him into the air,' she cried, picking her up and flying her around the room, ‘ . . . and then I tossed him out onto the street,' she finished, skittering out through the front door while Molly squealed and Grace ran behind them, giggling wildly.

‘I would have liked to have seen that,' Nick muttered.

Georgie looked over her shoulder at the kitchen bench and counted the number of empty wine bottles. Three, as well as the open one on the table. That
wasn't so bad, considering there were five adults. Though Jules didn't drink at all and Louise was a Cadbury's drunk – it only took a glass and a half. Zan liked a drink but she was disciplined. On a weekday, two would be her absolute limit. Dammit. That left only her and Nick, and Georgie suspected she'd had the lion's share of the rest, which was why she couldn't quite focus all the way across to the bench. She turned back to the faces around the table and discovered she was having trouble focussing on them too. Bugger, she had to work tomorrow, and it was so much harder to ring up and fake a sickie when you were the boss. Not that she'd be faking it: there was every chance that worker Georgie would be feeling quite sick tomorrow morning. But she would know it was self-inflicted, which never carried quite as much sympathy from boss Georgie.

‘Great dinner, Nick, as ever,' said Zan, sitting back in her chair. Zan and Georgie were in awe of their brother's ability to cook because that particular talent was beyond them both. Jules did all the cooking in their household, and Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and any number of talented southeast Asian chaps did the cooking for Georgie.

‘Anyway, Jules and I have an announcement to make,' Zan said importantly.

Everyone was waiting. Zan reached for Jules's hand and cleared her throat. ‘We're going to have a baby.'

It took a few moments for the words to sink in. When two people made that announcement it was usually a fairly straightforward concept. When it was
two people of the same gender, there was a little more to it. For starters, who was going to be the mummy?

‘Wow,' Nick was the first to speak. ‘Ah, which one of you . . .'

‘It'll be Jules,' Zan said in a matter-of-fact voice, and strangely, Georgie could feel the collective sigh of relief. ‘But it hasn't happened yet.'

Now Georgie's head was hurting. This was going to be hard to follow. She'd better just shut up and listen.

‘Look, I know it's a big deal that we're choosing to do this as a same-sex couple,' Zan said squarely. ‘You're my family, our family, we wanted to run it by you, so you'd know what to expect. It'd hardly be fair to foist it on you once we were already pregnant.'

‘How are you planning to go about it?' asked Louise, refilling her glass. ‘Will you go to a sperm bank, or um, will it be someone you know?' She hoped no one noticed this was her second glass of wine. But as she had sat there taking in the news, the first question that had come into her head was who the father was going to be. And then her thoughts had spiralled out of control. What if they wanted to ask Nick? It was not as perverse as it first sounded. Zan wasn't intending to carry the baby and Jules wasn't related to Nick, and if they used Nick's sperm it was a way for the baby to be genetically linked to Zan, but it would be Nick's child and Louise couldn't pretend otherwise and she certainly knew Nick couldn't either and had Zan thought about that?

‘We're going to a sperm bank,' said Zan.

Thank God, thought Louise, gulping down half her glass. When she looked up, Nick was regarding her quizzically. She just winked at him.

‘We had been thinking about approaching a couple of gay guys we know,' said Jules. They all looked at her, startled. Jules didn't say much, ever, sometimes they got a shock when they heard her voice. She was a quiet, doting woman, a few years older than Zan, a fact which did not, however, make her the dominant partner. No one dominated Zan. They had met at uni, where Jules was trying to find herself after a brief but stormy marriage. Instead she found Zan.

Jules glanced lovingly at Zan. ‘But we want to be the baby's parents. We don't want to have someone else involved. Using a sperm bank keeps it anonymous.'

‘Besides, he'll have a male role model in his Uncle Nick,' Nick added.

‘Actually,' said Zan, ‘we're looking into sex selection so that we can increase our chances of having a girl.'

‘Jeez, not another one,' Nick whined. ‘Don't you think the gender bias is unnaturally lopsided in this family?'

His sisters, his wife, his daughter, and Jules – he wasn't sure how to refer to their relationship – all glared at him. ‘Oh come on. Give a guy a break. There's so much oestrogen around here, sometimes I think I'm going to have a period.'

Zan laughed, ‘You're confusing your biochemistry there, bro. Oestrogen has to drop before you have a period.'

‘What's a period, Mummy?'

‘What are you doing up, young lady?' Louise demanded, twisting around in her chair. ‘Daddy put you to bed more than an hour ago.'

Molly sidled closer to Georgie. ‘I was firsty.'

‘Have you had a drink?'

She nodded.

‘Then why are you still up?'

She coiled her arms around each other, clasping her hands together. ‘Because . . . I can't sleep.'

‘I can't sleep standing up in the middle of the living room either,' Louise returned. ‘Off you go back to bed now please, Molly.'

‘But I have to ask you something.'

‘What?'

‘You better make it good, kid,' said Nick.

‘What's a sperm bank?'

‘Bed!' Both her parents chorused.

‘I'll take her,' said Georgie, rousing. She didn't want to hang around for the rest of the conversation anyway. She was spectacularly unqualified to proffer any opinions about making babies, artificially or otherwise.

She walked behind Molly up the narrow staircase to where the girls slept. Nick had built a room in the roof space, modelled on the children's bedrooms in quaint English books like
Peter Pan
– dormers and window seats and whimsical four-poster beds and French doors opening out to a Juliet balcony. Or at least that was the plan. Nick described it as a ‘work in progress'. Louise was more prosaic; she simply called it ‘unfinished'. Though at least that way it matched the rest of the house.

Grace was sleeping soundly in her cot and Georgie had to keep reminding Molly to keep her voice down. But she had a lot of questions tonight.

‘Is Zan having a baby?'

‘No, Jules is going to have a baby, but not just yet.'

‘But Zan said she was having a baby.'

‘Well, they're both having a baby.'

‘Are there going to be two babies?'

Georgie sighed. ‘No, just one baby.'

‘Is it going to be in Juleseses tummy or Zanses?'

‘It's going to be in Jules's tummy.'

‘How is it going to get in there?'

‘Pardon?'

‘How is the baby going to get in Juleseses tummy?'

Oh God, surely she didn't have to explain that. ‘Well . . .'

‘Daddy said the daddy puts the seed in the mummy's tummy.'

She had been spared. ‘Well, there you go, that's how the baby will get into Jules's tummy as well.'

‘But how?'

‘Just like Daddy said.'

‘There is no daddy but. Jules doesn't have a daddy, she only has Zan. Does Zan have seeds?'

‘No, Zan doesn't have any seeds.'

‘But where will they get the seeds from?'

Georgie paused. ‘Well, there's a special place where you can get seeds if you don't have a daddy with seeds of his own.' Or if his seeds were no good, she pondered, but there was no need to go off on
that particular tangent with Molly. ‘Time for sleep now, shh.'

‘Will you stay with me for a little little while?' Molly asked, holding her fingers barely apart to illustrate the modesty of her request.

‘Okay, just for a little while.' Georgie climbed onto the bed behind Molly and snuggled into her.

‘Maybe you can go to that special place, Georgie,' Molly whispered.

‘Pardon?'

‘You can go to the special place and get some seeds so you can have a baby of your own.'

Georgie felt a tightness rise up in her chest and into her throat. ‘Go to sleep now, Molly.'

She tried to swallow down the tears but it was no use. They'd been welling since Zan made her announcement. She felt them filling her eyes and dripping onto the pillow. Everyone was having sex except for her, and now everyone was having babies except for her. Even when there was no sex involved. Maybe Molly was on to something. Georgie should just take herself off to the sperm bank, fill out a withdrawal slip and make a date with a turkey baster. But the idea was repellent to her. That wasn't the way to have a baby. She wanted to have a family like Nick and Louise. She didn't care if she had boys or girls, she just wanted a family of her own. She wished she didn't. She wished she had some important, all-consuming career with no time for boyfriends or marriage or babies. Then perhaps she wouldn't miss them so much.

Georgie heard the door open behind her as light
spilled into the room. She lifted her head as Nick approached the bed.

‘Were you asleep?' he whispered.

‘Nearly.'

‘Come on,' he said, helping her up. ‘We were all wondering where you'd got to.'

They crept out of the room, closing the door behind them. Under the light in the stairwell, Nick noticed Georgie wiping her eyes with the palms of her hands.

He looked at her tenderly. ‘Hey, what's this? You can't cry on your birthday. You know what Mum used to say, “Tears on your birthday, tears the whole year through.”'

And that was supposed to console her? A sob caught in Georgie's throat and she covered her face with her hands. Nick drew her head against his shoulder and held her tight, rubbing her back to soothe her. After a while he motioned for her to sit down next to him on the stairs.

‘It's the baby talk, isn't it?'

She nodded tearfully. ‘Even my lesbian sister is going to have a baby. I mean, I don't begrudge her, really I don't, but that's how it'll look. I didn't want them to see me getting upset.'

‘Zan would understand.'

‘Zan thinks I'm a flake.'

Nick put his arm around her. ‘No she doesn't,' he chided gently, rubbing her shoulder.

‘You heard what she said about my pathetic love life.'

‘Come on, that's just Zan.'

‘But she's right. How did I get to this age without one decent stab at the brass ring, or the gold ring or whatever it is? Am I so ugly, or unappealing or stupid–'

‘That's enough,' said Nick, nudging against her. ‘You know it hasn't got anything to do with any of that. You've never seen an ugly married person? Or a stupid one?'

Georgie leaned her elbows on her knees and rested her chin in her hands. ‘Then what's wrong with me?'

Nick sighed heavily. ‘Do you really want me to answer that?'

She looked around at him, frowning. ‘Yes,' she said in a small voice.

‘You don't sound convinced.'

‘Well, what is it? You obviously have some theory all worked out.'

He took a deep breath. ‘Georgie, according to my reckoning there have been plenty of guys, plenty of chances at the brass ring as you put it. But do you ever wonder if you're a little fussy sometimes?'

She thought about it. ‘You think my standards are too high?'

‘No, don't get me wrong, I don't want you to settle for second best, that's not what I mean. I just don't know whether you give guys much of a chance. It seems to be over before it gets started.'

‘That's not always my fault. Remember Scott? He thought we were getting too serious when I made a booking at a restaurant two weeks in advance.'

Nick regarded her dubiously. ‘I bet for every Scott there're three others you've dumped first.'

‘Prove it.'

‘Okay,' He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Matt from the Surf Club, whatever happened to him after the second date?'

‘You've answered your own question. He was absolutely and entirely “Matt from the Surf Club”. He ate, drank and breathed the Surf Club. He didn't have any other life.'

‘Okay, then there was Ben the book rep?'

‘Ben drank like a fish.'

‘David, the Reillys introduced you at their party?'

‘Well, he was just boring.'

Nick cleared his throat. ‘Your honour, I give you Exhibit A, Exhibit B and Exhibit C.'

Georgie pulled a face at him.

He leaned back, resting his elbows on the step behind him. ‘Do you ever think that maybe what happened between Mum and Dad has made you a little, I don't know, skittish?' he asked carefully.

‘You think?' she arched an eyebrow.