Page 29 of A Christmas Wish for the Village Midwife

‘You don’t feel we’re complete?’

He shook his head, gaze on the ground as they walked. ‘No, that’s not what I mean. Forget I said that. It feels like a natural step, though. We’re good together, happy; we’d get married and then we’d have a baby. That’s the way.’

‘What year is this? Have I time-travelled because last time I checked, those weren’t the rules.’

‘Don’t be offended. I knew you’d take it the wrong way. I only mean I love you, and is it so bad to want a child with you?’

‘No, but I think Mother Nature has other ideas. You already know all this – you were in the meeting with the consultant.’

‘But it can’t hurt to store some of your eggs. They said that was an option, so what have you got to lose?’

‘Nothing on a practical level, but that’s not the end of the story, is it? I have to go through the procedure to get them, and while they exist in some freezer somewhere, I’m never quite free of the decision whether to use them or not. If I don’t store any, the decision is already made. If I don’t have them, I can’t use them.’

He paused, and then just as Zoe wondered if he was going to abandon the discussion, he spoke again. ‘I don’t understand why you’d leave yourself with no options. It makes no sense.’

‘I don’t suppose it does to you. It does to me. I can come to terms with a future when I know exactly what it is.’

‘Nobody knows that.’

‘True… I’ll know what it isn’t though. I’ll know that it doesn’t involve trying and failing to get pregnant, over and over. It won’t involve losing another baby.’

‘That’s your final decision?’ He shot a hurried glance at her and then shook his head. ‘Actually, forget I said that. Forget I even brought it up. You’re right – you should take as much time as you need until you come to a decision that you know is the right one.’

Zoe let out a sigh. Grizzle was digging at the base of a tree, but she was too distracted to worry about it, and as Alex didn’t move to stop him, she supposed he was too.

‘I know I said I’d think it over for longer, but I can’t see how leaving it any longer will change my mind. I don’t want to store my eggs. And even if you say to me there’s nothing to lose and we ought to just in case and I did, I can’t see a day where I’d want to get them out of storage to try for a baby. This relationship is not ready for a baby yet, even if we could do it naturally. And like you said, I’m not getting any younger. Maybe I’ll never have one… probably I’ll never have one of my own, and I’m starting to feel OK with that.’

Alex stared beyond her. She could see him thinking about her words, that he disagreed with her and he wanted to say so, but he couldn’t figure out how without turning this into an argument.

‘I did say this to you in the beginning, and you agreed to respect my wishes.’

‘That’s not exactly what you said.’

‘OK, I said I needed time. Maybe I shouldn’t have led you on like that. I should have said exactly how I was feeling right then, not what I thought you wanted to hear. I suppose I wondered if things would change and I’d start to feel differently after some time to reflect. But nothing changed, and I don’t feel differently. I wanted a baby for the longest time, before I lost one and before I discovered how difficult it would be for me to conceive again. In my heart, I still want one, but I don’t think I’m strong enough to go through what I’d need to, only to keep failing.’

‘So you weren’t being honest with me?’

‘I was confused, and I was processing a whole load of stuff, and it’s unfair of you to hold me to things I might have said as soon as I came out of the appointment.’

‘You said those things when we talked about it afterwards too.’

‘About a week after!’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘I thought you might change your mind. You seemed as if you would. My mistake, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to feel pressured.’

‘I’m not feeling pressured – that’s not what I’m saying!’ She let out a sharp sigh. ‘I knew this would happen.’

‘Don’t be like that. You can’t blame me for hoping.’

‘Why do we have to complicate things? It’s stressful enough to go through all this without trying to make it harder. I’m only just getting my head around my infertility, and I’m making my peace with a future that doesn’t include a baby, and it would make it so much easier to know you could do the same. In fact, you have Billie, which is more than I have.’

‘That makes me sound so selfish and unreasonable for wanting more. I love Billie and Louisa too, and of course I’m so happy to have them in my life, but I wanted… Well, I thought you did too. I thought it would be the missing piece for us. To have a child together.’

‘It would have been if things hadn’t gone the way they have. I’m sorry if you don’t feel the same, but I’d rather move on and enjoy what we have than spend my life hoping for something and being destroyed every month it doesn’t happen.’

Zoe reached for his hand and felt him tense. He wanted to pull away, but she knew she couldn’t let him. She needed him to feel what she felt, that even though she wasn’t going to back down, it didn’t mean she loved him any less. And she firmly believed that her decision would be good for him in the end, and that eventually he’d see it her way too. She’d often had a ringside seat when it came to couples struggling to conceive; she’d seen how hard it had made life for them, how it often affected their relationships. People persevered when it was right for them, when it mattered above all else, and that was only fair and proper, but there were others where she’d been able to see that one half of the couple didn’t have the faith or the need that the other had, who felt their life was being put on hold for a thing that might never happen. It made them miserable and it unbalanced their relationship. She didn’t want that for her and Alex.

‘It doesn’t mean that we can’t go on as we are, or that I’d be upset if we did conceive naturally⁠—’