The Testament of Jessie Lamb (31 page)

I had a vision of a nursery-full of baby Goldings, all with bald heads and little bow ties. How dim am I? It was only then I realised. ‘How many colours are there?' I asked him.

He listed on his fingers, ‘Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, brown. Six.'

‘Including the technicians?'

He nodded. ‘Including Ali and your father.'

We sat looking at each other in the peaceful room. All around us it seemed as if the building was asleep, as if everyone had gone away.

I wondered if it would make any difference to Dad. ‘Would there be anything wrong–?' I asked.

‘Of course not. You are the surrogate. The child's genes are from its mother and father, nothing from you.'

‘She could be my half-sister. Or brother.'

He nodded.

I thought of the baby two floors below me, in the freezer, silently waiting for her life to begin. My half-sister. Mr Golding passed me a box of tissues from the bookshelf. Then he went over to his window and looked out into the night. When I had blown my nose he turned round and said,

‘Jessie. You need to sleep. If you are worried in the morning we talk again, yes?' He picked up the phone and dialled, and I heard him say hello to Rosa. Before I could stop him, he asked her to come and meet me. As I went out of his office I saw her walking towards me along the corridor. ‘Goodnight Jessie,' he said quietly, behind me. ‘Sleep well.'

Rosa followed me into my room and sat on the chair by the dark window. ‘You're not giving up?' she said.

‘No. I was asking him about the sperm donors.'

She nodded, staring out into the blackness. I wanted her to go. But she would be hanging around till the very end; we'd been told that after they implant, you have to wait a few days to see if the pregnancy is confirmed. To be certain the embryo has bedded down happily inside you. I would have to spend the last week of my life with Rosa Davis.

‘I'm tired,' I told her.

But she wouldn't take the hint. ‘Me too. Are you scared?'

Only of other people, I thought. Only of my parents behaving like lunatics. Of Baz, clanging in my head. Of you. ‘No. Are you?'

‘Not really. It's got to be better than this life, hasn't it?'

‘Better?'

‘Better than the rubbish you have to put up with day after day.'

I didn't want to tell her anything about myself. ‘Like what?'

She glanced at me with her straight eye. ‘Not having enough money. Nowhere to live. Everything always turning to shit.'

‘I thought you lived with your Mum.'

‘I can't stay there. Her druggy mates come round and that's that, everything gets nicked.'

I was reminded of Lisa. ‘Well you could go and live in one of the Kids' Houses–the
Rising Sun
, or the place in Wales.'

She didn't know anything about them, and I had to explain the whole idea to her. She shook her head when I said she wouldn't need any money.

‘You always need money. It wouldn't work anyway. They wouldn't want someone like me messing things up.'

I was about to deny it. But what was the point of meeting that with a lie? ‘You're different,' I said.

‘Yeah. I'd piss them off. I'd drink all the wine and screw their boyfriends, and forget to feed the chickens.'

I couldn't not ask her. ‘Did you sleep with Baz?'

‘Sure.'

There was no reason for me to care either way. But tears pierced my eyes.

‘You see?' she said, walking heavily to the door. ‘Now
you're
pissed off with me.' She pulled the door closed behind her.

I dragged the blankets over me and breathed into the warm darkness underneath them, until my own breath had made it all so hot and damp that I had to stick my head out to gasp lungfuls of proper air. My nose was blocked, I was too hot and then too cold. There was nowhere I could go.

I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke there was a breakfast tray on the table by my bed, with orange juice and bread rolls and dinky individual packets of jam. The tea was cold but I drank it anyway. It was a cloudy windy morning, from my bed I could see big masses of cloud trundling past. It was like my bedroom view at home without the beech tree. I sat back against my pillow and stared at the sky.

It didn't matter about Baz. It mattered, of course it mattered, but only if we were both going to live for 80 years. Then there would be time for everything to change. There would be time to understand. Right now I couldn't know if he really liked her more than me or if he was only sorry for her or if he would still have been going out with either of us in a year. Maybe even he didn't know. I had to rip it out of my head. I wouldn't ask her any more about it.

I kept on staring at the clouds. They were moving across the window from left to right, massive blowsy shapes in different shades of grey, and at different heights in the sky. The closer ones were catching up and sliding in front of others which were further away from the earth. I wanted to volunteer because I wanted to make a difference. That was the thing to hang on to. The coming week would be weird–of course. I would have to say the real goodbye to Mum and Dad, which I dreaded. I would have to talk to Rosa. But the rest of it was my own precious time, and I could use it how I wanted. I put the breakfast tray back on the table and got dressed and went across to the office to ask for some paper.

I decided to finish this. Dad can add it to the pile at Nanna Bessie's.

The history of my decision. For you, my child. I want you to know my story–our story, your beginning. So you understand everything I've thought and felt, and so no one can tell you I was a silly brainwashed girl, or a puppet of Iain's. I don't want anyone trying to claim you for a movement or an idea. You're free, and whatever you want to do with your life, the thought of it makes me glad. Above all I want you to know I'm glad. I'm glad this is happening.

I have been writing and writing, till my fingers ache and my neck is stiff; I am going to write myself all the way to the end of my story, and tell you how things have changed this week, and how I am, up to the last possible minute. But now I'm talking to you, I have to give you a name. What can I call you? I don't even know if you're a boy or a girl. I've been thinking about your name for ages and what I came up with was Ray. (Rae, if you prefer.) A ray of golden sunshine, a ray of hope. But I wonder how old you are as you read this? When I was 13 something soppy like that would have made me cringe. You could think of the other kind of ray, the fish gliding along the seabed like an arrow. And the mermaid's purses, you'll find those on the beach, where the ray's eggs have floated safely across oceans. Maybe that will seem alright. If not, look, change it. I won't mind!

It's so funny writing to you–I can't believe I won't see you, Rae. You'll see me–Mum and Dad have loads of pictures, plus video of holidays, you'll be bored to death of seeing me splashing around in the sea and slurping ice-creams. I might look young to you, for a Mum. But no–of course, all the mums are young in your world.

I want to tell you one thing I've decided, my darling. If they implant on Monday and it doesn't work–if my pregnancy is not confirmed at the end of the week–I shan't try again. That chance of me not being pregnant, is the last deciding straw. If I am pregnant then you are meant to be. If I'm not, then you're not–well, you won't be! You won't be reading this. And I'll stay alive and go to Eden.

The sirens have been going mad all night. Early this morning lots of police vans drew up on the side road of the park, and police with riot shields ran across the road. The window here won't open but I could hear faint bursts of shouts and chanting. I turned on the little TV in the corner and it was weird seeing the main entrance of this very hospital up there on the screen. There was a massive protest going on. FLAME definitely, and some women with the purple
Mothers for Life
banners, and a chanting chorus of Noahs. There were Animal Liberation Front kids too, the commentator said the police were taking their threats very seriously. I turned off the sound. I watched the people pushing and struggling and waving their arms at each other, and the police shoving through them, and it made me feel really tired. Let them carry on, I thought. They
will
carry on. They'll carry on like that, thrashing about, hitting each other and smashing things, blindly lashing out at the world–until some way forward becomes clear. Until the new babies are born. I touched the remote and the swirling mass of them disappeared.

Mr Golding came to see me this morning, bringing a consent form for me to sign. He told me that for the time being, no one was going in or out. Staff had slept in the hospital. ‘We are under siege!' he joked. There were FLAME activists picketing all the entrances. Some Animal Liberationists had been arrested. He told me the hospital has all essential supplies. ‘We hope they will get tired and go home,' he said ‘We avoid escalation. But we must explain to your parents.'

I was relieved it was Mum who answered but as soon as she heard my voice she burst into tears. She kept telling me it was too soon. It wasn't a conversation, it was just two people repeating opposite things:

Me–
I'm fine, I'm where I want to be
.

Mum–
You need more time
.

In the end I just had to tell her I'd see her very soon, and put the phone down. I wanted to keep my mind happy and peaceful for you, to stay inside my own calm, and keep floating forward.

I spent the whole day writing, stopping now and then to stare out at the sky, at the slowly, endlessly shifting clouds. Rosa knocked on my door in the afternoon and I told her I would see her later. We had our tea together and sat talking for a long time after it. She was different. I still don't know whether to believe everything she says, but I guess I did believe her when she said, ‘Nothing good ever happens to me.' She never knew her Dad. Her Mum's boyfriend was awful to Rosa and tried to make her have sex with him. There was no one she could tell, there was nowhere she could go. That was when she ran away. She went to London and slept rough and got taken to a hostel. She said she had sex with men to get money. She went back to her Mum's flat after her Mum kicked the boyfriend out, but she and her Mum fought all the time. Rosa met a drummer at a club and it was love at first sight and she moved in with him. But when he'd been drinking he was violent. He beat her up so she moved back to her Mum's again. Her Mum was an agency nurse and that's how Rosa found out about the frozen embryos.

Everyone she met seemed to make Rosa's life worse. All the kids at school–like me. Avoiding her, thinking she was weird, hating her for going with Baz. I thought, she's only volunteering because of us. It was almost as if I was her murderer. I wondered about telling Mr Golding. Then I remembered that Baz had said, ‘You're both mad.' What would she do if Golding told her she couldn't volunteer? Go back to her Mum's? This was the place she wanted to be; like me.

Now we've started telling each other our dreams, and the daft things that pop into our heads. And we've started talking about our babies, and imagining you might be like a sister and brother. She wants her child to be called Zac. I hope the two of you will know each other.

And that is strange. Because you'll know if it's happened, and I won't. Your reality is my dream, and I must lose my reality for you to become real. Then
I
will be just a dream to
you
. Swapping places, either side of the line of being alive. Except you're not dead. You're not alive yet, but I don't have the word for what you are. You're waiting to be alive, they are probably unfreezing you right now, and the whole magic pattern of genes and cells which will grow into you, is triggered. It makes me think of a Chinese shell I got in my Christmas stocking; a dull little grey shell. You drop it into water and slowly the shell opens, and a beautiful pink flower magically spirals out of it. That's you!

The protestors have been going mad and there have been lots of arrests. But anyway, Dad got in to see me. I told Mr Golding I was nervous about seeing him again, so he was escorted to my room by a security guard who waited outside the door. Dad hugged me then he went and sat at the chair by the window. He had a bandage wound round his right hand, with his fingers poking out. I sat on the bed and there was this silence. I tried to think of something to say, then I looked at him and he was crying. I asked him to stop. He got up and turned his back to me, staring out the window and rubbing his eyes. When he was still I crept over to him and he put his arm round my shoulders and we stood looking out the window together at the watery spring sunshine and the buds on the trees in the park.

‘Perfect crime,' he said softly.

‘Yes?'

‘Persuade an innocent, idealistic young girl that the future of the human race depends on her sacrificing her own life. She will come into hospital as trustingly as a lamb to the slaughter. She will welcome the implantation of a baby that will kill her. She'll lie there while her brain is destroyed for nine whole months, and no police will arrest you, no court will judge you, you'll get away scott free. At the end of nine months she'll be taken off life support and she'll be completely dead. And no one will be blamed.'