My Sister's Child Read online

  As Isla looked down at her niece, it suddenly hit her. When she had donated her eggs to Jo and Ryan there were two embryos created – one that grew into Réiltín and another one that they had hoped would be a future brother or sister for her. They had never used it. But what if the other embryo was still in storage? She could have a child of her own, just like Réiltín, if the embryo was still there. As she stroked her niece’s hair, she couldn’t help feeling the excitement start to bubble up inside her. She felt as though her mind was buzzing and alive like someone had switched on a thousand light switches inside her head and the synapses were fired up. Her mind started to drift off as she let herself wonder if it could still happen and the sense of loss from the last few weeks instantly lifted. What if her chances weren’t really over, as she had thought? Yes, it was a long shot – she would need to talk to Jo and Ryan to make sure that they still had the embryo – the embryo that was created using her egg. Even if they let her have it there was no guarantee that the treatment would work but still it was a glimmer of hope in what had been a dark void over the last few weeks. There was another way for her to have a baby. She knew that it wasn’t the most straightforward of ways but there was still a chance. There was another way of doing it.

  The buzzer sounded shortly after and she knew that it was Jo arriving to pick up Réiltín.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jo asked, coming into the room and observing Réiltín’s red eyes. “Did something happen?” She automatically looked over at Isla for answers.

  “No, Mum – it’s just this film we were watching – it’s the saddest movie I’ve ever seen.”

  “Well, maybe it wasn’t entirely suitable then.” Jo looked over at Isla reproachfully. “What was it?”

  “Life is Beautiful,” Isla said.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Do you want to stay for a coffee?” Isla reached up to take down two mugs from the cupboard above the cooker.

  She found herself unable to look Jo in the eye; she was afraid that she would read her thoughts. Now, in the actual presence of her sister, she felt guilty just thinking about it. Could she really ask her sister for her embryo? Even though it was made using her eggs? She knew it was a long shot but she also knew that she had to try it. Suddenly the dreams all clicked into place. She felt that this was what it had been trying to tell her: the baby had been there all along but she hadn’t realised it. If she wanted to have a baby – which she did, badly – well, then, this was her only hope.

  “No, I can’t, we’re having friends over for dinner. What’s wrong with you, Isla? You’re looking very peaky – are you feeling okay?”

  “Oh, I . . . eh . . . just had a late night last night.” Her heart was hammering inside her chest.

  Jo pursed her lips in disapproval before turning to Réiltín. “Come on, love, your father will be waiting for us.”

  Chapter 19

  A Question

  After Jo had brought Réiltín home, Isla didn’t sleep that night. Her mind was too awake, too wired. Her head was buzzing thinking about that one remaining embryo. She kept imagining the baby in her head. She knew she needed to ask Jo – it was her last chance and she couldn’t move on and accept that she had done everything possible to have a child of her own unless she did. She had lain awake imagining the conversation with Jo and how it would go. Would Jo be shocked or would she want to help her just like Isla had helped them all those years ago? What if she asked Jo and she said she had destroyed it, what then?

  She made up her mind to go over to Jo that morning; there was no sense in delaying it any longer. She needed to know whether they still had the embryo or whether she was getting her hopes up for no reason.

  She jumped into the shower and let the water rush around her. She quickly dried herself off and got dressed. She didn’t bother doing her eye make-up. She was anxious to get over to see Jo as quickly as she could. Réiltín had said that her dad was taking her to a hockey match so Jo would be alone.

  When she got to Jo’s house she let herself in with her key and called out to Jo as she walked down her Victorian tiled hallway. “Jo? It’s me.”

  “I’m in the kitchen!”

  Jo was sitting at the table, still in her dressing gown, with her glasses on as she read the Sunday papers. Oscar rushed out from his bed to greet Isla and she tickled him behind his ears. Jo had the French doors opened out onto the garden and the smell of salty sea air filled the room.

  “Want a coffee?” Jo asked.

  “Yeah, go on. I thought you didn’t drink coffee?”

  “Well, I don’t usually but it’s a Sunday morning treat to myself.” Jo got up from the chair and stood in front of the doors and surveyed the lawn. The breeze played with the delicate silk fabric of her robe. “Isn’t it glorious out? The hydrangeas have just started to bloom – they’re late this year. It’s so lovely to see that summer has arrived at last.”

  Isla sat down and Jo placed two coasters on the table while they waited for the coffee to brew in the machine that she had integrated into the presses. When it was ready, she pressed a button so that it filled the two mugs.

  “So how’ve you been?” she said, placing them down on top of the coasters as she sat at the table across from Isla.

  “I’m good.” Isla tried to keep the nervousness from her voice. It felt as though the words were building up pressure inside of her, that they were waiting to escape her head and become real on the air around them.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. So you’re okay about . . . everything then?”

  Isla knew what she meant. Jo didn’t want to raise the subject again.

  “I’m still finding it hard to accept that I will never have a child of my own. Very hard. For the last few weeks it’s almost been like I have been grieving that that part of my life may never happen.”

  “Of course it has, Isla.” Her voice was soothing. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this.” She reached across and squeezed her younger sister’s hand.

  “But I’ve been doing some thinking . . .”

  “Go on?”

  Suddenly with Jo here before her, it didn’t seem as certain a possibility as it seemed in her head earlier on.

  “Well, last night I remembered something – something that may just be my last chance.” She took a deep breath. “I have something that I want to ask you, Jo . . .” Her heart was pounding through her chest. She could hear the blood ringing in her ears.

  “Go on . . .”

  “Remember when you were trying to have Réiltín?”

  “Yes . . .” Jo’s tone was cautious. Measured.

  “There was a second embryo created, wasn’t there?”

  Jo nodded.

  “Well, I hope you don’t mind me asking but what did you do with it?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Well, I know it sounds a bit crazy but I was wondering if . . . well . . . if you still had it, if you would be prepared to give it to me . . . I mean, I know you’d need to talk to Ryan first but . . .”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “The second embryo that was made but wasn’t implanted – I still really want to have a baby and if you still have it that’s my only option, Jo.”

  “I can’t give you our embryo!” Jo spluttered. “Jesus Christ, Isla!” She stood up from her chair and took off her glasses. She began pacing around the room.

  “So you do still have it then?”

  “Yes, but you can’t have it! I’m just waiting for one of those hidden cameras to pop out and tell me that this is all a joke! You must be out of your mind coming over here to ask me that!”

  “But you’re not ever going to use it!”

  “And you know why! Because I nearly died having Réiltín!”

  “Well, then, surely it’s not that big an ask?”

  “Well, from where I’m standing, it’s pretty huge! Jesus, Isla, I can’t believe you just asked me for it! What on earth goes on inside your head?”


  “Come on, Jo, it’s not that outlandish – it’s my only chance to have a child of my own.”

  “Well, we haven’t decided what we want to do with it yet . . .”

  “But it’s not as if you can have another baby, Jo!”

  “Stop it, Isla! Look, it’s absolutely absurd – the child would be a genetic brother or sister for Réiltín. Surely even you can see that that is just too complicated? I’m sorry, Isla, I can’t do it. I don’t feel comfortable even discussing it!”

  “But you felt comfortable enough to take my eggs.”

  Jo’s eyes met hers and she stopped dead on the kitchen floor. “Look, I appreciate so much what you did for me. You know that I do – I wouldn’t have Réiltín if it wasn’t for you but what you’re asking me to do now – it isn’t fair.”

  “Please, you’re my last chance, Jo. If you turn me down then I can never have a child of my own . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Isla, but there is just no way that I can give you that embryo. The answer is no.”

  At that moment the wind blew a gust of wind into the kitchen, blowing over the pages of the newspaper and sending a chill through the room.

  Isla pulled Jo’s door shut behind her and walked over the dove-grey pavement. The traffic crept on the road alongside her but Isla was unaware of it because her mind kept on replaying the conversation she had just had with Jo. She knew that what she had asked for was a big deal but she still hadn’t expected her reaction to be so full of vitriol. She had obviously underestimated the strength of Jo’s feelings about the embryo. It was only occurring to her that perhaps Jo had pushed out of her head what they had done all those years ago. In her head had it all been left firmly in the past as soon as Réiltín had been placed into her arms? Perhaps time had allowed her to forget the origins of her daughter. Maybe the years had layered distance, and lacquered some of those thorny memories. As Isla walked along, she wondered how she had got it so wrong? She had just hoped that, because she had helped Jo once, she would be willing to help her in return but it seemed that she had sorely misjudged it. Isla wondered if she had re-opened those thoughts, the ones that Jo had long suppressed into the darkest corners of her mind, where she had thought they would stay forever? Was Isla like the pike that clouded up the riverbed?

  But she wasn’t going to let it go that easily; she couldn’t. It was all that she could think about. The urges were calling to her, they were screaming at her to do something. Sometimes when she watched a mother with her child in the café, it felt like a piece of twine was wrapped around her insides, around her heart, and someone was pulling either end of it so tightly that she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t just want to have a baby; she needed to have a baby. And Jo didn’t seem to understand it.

  Jo was stunned after Isla had left. She sat at the table, head in hands, unable to process what her sister had just asked her. Sometimes she felt as though she didn’t know her own sister at all. She knew that she and Isla were very different people; they were born to the same parents, they were fed the same food, they wore the same clothes – Isla wore all of Jo’s hand-me-downs – and they went to the same schools, yet they still turned out like two completely unrelated beings. She had to wonder what on earth went on inside Isla’s head for her to ask a question like that.

  When she heard Ryan and Réiltín come in through the door a while later, she couldn’t even get up off the chair to greet them like she normally would. Réiltín went straight upstairs to the shower while Ryan strolled into the kitchen to fill himself a glass of water.

  “How was the match?” Jo asked distractedly.

  “Great, they won. Was that Isla I just passed in the car? How is she?”

  “She . . . you’ll never guess what she just asked me for?”

  “What?”

  Jo lowered her voice to a whisper. “The embryo – the one in storage – she wants to use it – she wants to have a baby!”

  “Isla wants to have a baby?”

  Ryan seemed to be as shocked as she was.

  “She’s already been to a fertility clinic and had tests done. Apparently she’s in premature menopause and has no egg reserve left of her own so her only hope is to use a donor.”

  “This is Isla we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes, this is Isla. Who else do we know that would be crazy enough to think of something like that!”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “I told her there was no way I could give it to her.”

  “You did?”

  “Well, of course I did – I mean it’s ludicrous!”

  “But it was conceived using her eggs.”

  “And your sperm! It would be a genetic brother or sister for Réiltín! Ryan, it’s complete madness!”

  “Well, I suppose I can see where she’s coming from . . .”

  “What?”

  “I just think, to be fair to her, she donated her eggs to us without even a second thought –”

  “That’s because Isla never thinks about anything!” She got up, tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and mopped up the water droplets that Ryan had trailed along the marble counter top until it was shiny once more.

  “Well, she must really want to have a baby then, I guess.” He lifted an apple from the fruit bowl, turned and walked out of the room, leaving Jo sitting in their kitchen stewing.

  It annoyed Jo that Isla thought that it was her right to have a child. Like it was her right to buy food to eat or to have a home to shelter in. Isla thought she could just decide whimsically that she felt like becoming a mother because she was almost forty. Knowing Isla, that was probably the only factor in her decision-making, thought Jo wryly.

  Jo disagreed with people who believed it was their automatic right to have a child and that people were entitled to procreate as they wished. One of the newspapers had run a poll recently about whether there should be a limit imposed on the number of children people living on social welfare should be allowed to have. People had erupted over it, saying that it was human nature and money should never be involved in a decision to have children. Jo had listened to a radio show discussing the issue that evening and, as the debate wore on, she found her shoulders getting ever tenser until she was almost going to throw something at the radio. It was all these leftie liberals who were to blame for it. They were constantly spouting nonsense like that in the media and she disagreed with it wholeheartedly. People placed too much emphasis on the ‘human nature’ side of things. It irked her that there were children’s lives being destroyed every day in the name of ‘human nature’ and the ‘right’ to have children. Jo often wondered why, then, if nature was such a powerful force, were there children being harmed mentally and physically at the hands of their own parents? She believed that while nature gave us the physical things like what our hair would look like, how tall we would grow, whether we would be prone to certain diseases or were going to have our bones curled by arthritis in our old age, that it was nurture which gave us the people that we loved. It was nurturing which gave the bonds and relationships and how far one would go for the loved ones in one’s life. That was what made a person, thought Jo. It was not what they looked like; it wasn’t their physical attributes. Every child needed to be nurtured. In the Victorian days, who was it that formed the bonds with the children? It wasn’t the parents to whom the children were presented for half an hour before bedtime every evening, it was the nannies that cuddled them, tucked them up in bed and ultimately were mothers in all but name to these children. They were the ones that stayed in the minds of the children when they became adults themselves. She believed that the mind began as a blank slate and the person that we would grow into was determined by our experiences and not the genes that we were born with. Tabula rasa.

  It was a privilege to have a child, she thought, and if you were so blessed as to have one, then you should thank your lucky stars every day for the rest of your life because it didn’t happen like that for everybody. She of all people
knew that. If nature was allowed to take its course, she knew that she and Ryan would still be childless. If nature was allowed to take its course, Réiltín would have died but because of technological advances through the ages there were machines that could keep her alive until she had been strong enough to fight back herself. After a long journey to get their Little Star, they felt blessed to have her in their lives and, from the first time that they were allowed to hold her, she had lit up their world. Jo knew that nurture was what was truly important. Nurture was what really mattered.

  Jo would never forget what Isla did for her, the dark hole, that hellish place that she brought her out from. For the rest of her life she would be indebted to her younger sister but what she was asking of her now was too much, even for her.

  Chapter 20

  Secrets

  Over the next few days life went on as normal as Isla tried to acknowledge the fact that she was never going to become a mother. She went to work. She served up mugs of tea and plates of food and collected them again afterwards. She stacked the dishwasher and unloaded it again when it had completed its cycle. Then, in the evening, as the day’s customers started to trickle out, she started to get ready for the next day.

  She was trying to tell herself that she just had to accept that this was the plan that life had made for her and there was nothing that she could do about it. It seemed that everywhere she went, though, she was confronted with babies. She was supposed to call over to Vera to meet her new baby but her heart broke just thinking about it. She felt so empty. The yearning was like a gnawing hole inside her, eating its way through her, but now she knew that there was nothing that she could do to satisfy it. She had to make a conscious effort to stop and catch herself whenever she started to get upset by it because she knew it was futile – it wouldn’t change anything.