'But she and Oliver don't want children! Erika was always so vocal about not wanting children!'
'She wants me to donate my eggs to her,' said Clementine blandly. She had been putting off telling her mother about Erika's request, not wanting Pam's forthright opinions further complicating her own already complicated feelings, but now she was conscious of a childish desire for her mother to fully comprehend the continuing cost of being Erika's friend. Look what you asked of me, Mum, even now all these years later, see how kind I am, Mum, I am still being so KIND.
Although who was she kidding? Donating your eggs was the sort of purely philanthropic act her mother would have killed for the chance to perform. Clementine used to tell her father that if she were ever in a car accident, he needed to double-check that she really was dead before her mother began enthusiastically handing out Clementine's organs.
'Donate your eggs?' said Pam. She gave her head a little shake as if to make things settle back into place. 'But how do you feel about this? When did she ask you?'
'The day of the barbeque,' said Clementine. 'Before we went next door.' She thought of Erika and Oliver sitting so straight-backed and tense on their white leather couch (only a childless couple would own a white leather couch). They both had such neat little heads. Oliver's spectacles were so clean. They had seemed so endearing in their earnestness. And then, that instant feeling of distaste at the gynaecological word 'eggs', and the irrational sensation of violation, as if Erika were proposing she reach right over and help herself to part of Clementine - to some deeply intimate part of her that she'd never get back - followed instantly by that old, familiar shame, because a real friend wouldn't think twice.
She had thought she wouldn't need to feel that awful shame ever again, because Erika was fine now, 'in a good place' as people said, and no longer asking for more than Clementine could give.
'Oh my gosh,' said Pam. 'What did you say?'
'I didn't say anything at the time,' said Clementine. 'And we haven't talked about it since then. I think Erika is hoping I'll bring it up soon, and obviously, I will, I'm just picking the right moment. Or I'm procrastinating. Maybe I am procrastinating.'
She could feel something ascending within her. A rising scale of fury. A melody from her childhood. She looked at her mother's familiar face: the grey fringe cut in that unflinching straight line over her protuberant brown eyes, the big, determined nose, the large, utilitarian ears, for hearing, not earrings. Her mother was all strength and certainty. Never a moment's doubt over a spider or a tight parking spot or a moral dilemma.
'That little girl needs a friend,' she'd told Clementine the first time she saw Erika in the school playground. The different kid. The unpleasant-looking kid sitting cross-legged on the asphalt playing with old brown leaves and ants. The kid with the greasy blonde hair flat against her head, the pasty dead white skin and the scabby sores dotting her arms. (Flea bites, Clementine learned many years later.) Clementine had looked at the little girl, and looked back at her mother and felt one enormous word caught in her throat: No.
But you didn't say no to Pam, especially not when she used that tone of voice.
So Clementine went and sat down opposite Erika in the playground and said, 'What are you doing?' And she'd glanced over at her mother for the nod of approval, because Clementine was being kind, and kindness was the most important thing of all, except that Clementine didn't feel kind. She was faking it. She didn't want anything to do with this dirty-looking little girl. Her selfishness was a nasty secret she had to hide at all costs because Clementine was privileged.
Pam was a woman ahead of her time in her use of the word 'privilege'. Clementine learned to feel bad about her white middle-class privilege long before it became fashionable. Her mother was a social worker, and unlike many of her exhausted, jaded, bitter-jokes co-workers Pam never lost her passion for her vocation. She worked part-time while bringing up three children and she loved to share unflinching accounts of what really went on in the world.
Clementine's family wasn't particularly wealthy, but privilege was measured on a different scale when you saw what Pam did. Life was a lottery and Clementine knew from a very early age that she had apparently won it.
'What are you going to say to Erika?' said Pam.
'What choice do I have?' said Clementine.
'Of course you have a choice, Clementine; it will be your biological child. It's a big thing to ask. You don't -'
'Mum,' said Clementine. 'Think about it.' For once she was the unequivocal one. Her mother hadn't been there at the barbeque. Her mother didn't have those ghastly images burned forever across her memory.
She watched her mother think about it, and come to the same conclusion.
'I see what you mean,' she said uneasily.
'I'm going to do it,' said Clementine fast, before her mother could speak. 'I'm going to say yes. I have to say yes.'
chapter nineteen
'Are you okay? You're not still upset about our friend Harry?' said Vid, lying next to Tiffany in their dark bedroom while the rain continued its incessant soundtrack.
Thanks to their red velvet 'absolute blackout' curtains Tiffany could see absolutely nothing but black. Normally the darkness felt luxurious, like a hote
l room, but tonight it felt suffocating. Like death. There was too much death on her mind these days.
Although she couldn't see Vid in their king-sized bed, she knew he would be lying flat on his back, his hands crossed behind his head like a sunbaker. He slept the entire night like that without changing position. It still made Tiffany laugh after all these years. It was such a casual, confident, aristocratic approach to sleep. You may approach, sleep. So very Vid.
'He wasn't our friend, was he?' said Tiffany. 'That's the point. He was our neighbour but he wasn't our friend.'
'He didn't want to be our friend, you know,' Vid reminded her.
It was true that if Harry had been at all interested in friendship with them he would have got it. Vid was open to friendship with anyone he encountered in his daily life: baristas and barristers, service station attendants and cellists.
Definitely cellists.