Tess Evans - Book of Lost Threads

‘I love summer storms,’ Amy said. ‘It’s worth putting up with the heat just to smell the ozone.’ She lifted her head and took in a theatrical breath, but Linsey was lost in her own thoughts. For once, Amy noticed. ‘You seem a bit preoccupied, Linny. Is something the matter?’

‘No-well, yes. In a way.’ Now the time had come, Linsey was not sure how to begin. ‘I’ve been, um, thinking.’ And she plunged once more into silence, twisting her glass and picking imaginary specks from her sleeve.

‘Come on, Linny. What’s up?’ Amy affected a childlike whine, tugging at Linsey’s sleeve. ‘Tell me. Tell me.’

Linsey put down her glass and grasped the other woman’s shoulders, turning her so that they were face to face. ‘Look at me, Amy. I need you to be serious. Serious-and completely honest.’

‘Of course. You’re not sick, are you, Linny?’ She sounded frightened.

Linsey took a moment to savour the thought that Amy cared. ‘No. I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I want to ask you something. Amy, what would you say to the idea of having a baby?’

‘Who? Who’s having a baby?’

‘Us, Amy. What would you say to the idea of us having a baby?’

‘Us? How?’

‘We could try to adopt,’ Linsey explained, ‘but they won’t accept applications from same-sex couples.’

Amy giggled as she took another sip of wine. ‘So it looks like we’ll have to steal one. I think that’s against the law too.’

Linsey had prepared for this moment. ‘There’s another way.’ Amy was shocked. ‘No, Amy. Not that. We can arrange for artificial insemination. It does work. That’s how Margaret and Kris conceived.’ She looked at the other woman, trying to gauge her reaction. ‘What do you say?’

Amy was dumbfounded. Surprised to discover that she wasn’t averse to the idea; she just needed time for the thought to grow.

‘This is a bit sudden, isn’t it, Linny?’ She held up her glass. ‘Another drink please, darling: I need to think.’

The women sat in silence, each following her own train of thought. It was several days before Linsey got her answer. All that time, Amy was preoccupied, spending much of her spare time on the verandah or in the music room, looking out onto the garden. Meanwhile, Linsey prowled and fretted, tidied and swept, dusted and polished, weeded and pruned, until she was quite exhausted. She knew better than to harass Amy, who, as always, moved at her own unhurried pace.

Amy had always liked children. Babies smiled and cooed at her and her nephews and nieces jostled for her attention. She absently stroked her stomach. Imagined it stretched, rounded. Imagined her breasts dripping milk. She sat on the verandah and tasted the late summer, the teeming life of the sunlit garden: lush green lawns, full-blown roses, fragrant lavender and slow, fat, murmurous honey bees. Slightly intoxicated by sensory excess, she felt her body soften in welcome to her imaginary child. Cupping her breasts in her hands, she resolved to speak to Linsey that night.

A moment later she stiffened in dismay, jolted from her reverie by a sudden thought. What if Linsey wanted to carry the child? She had as much right. Would she, Amy, feel the same way if she were not to be the birth mother? She wasn’t sure that she would. If they were to have a child, it had to be a child of her body, the body she knew was ripe and waiting.

That night, over dinner, she asked the question. ‘Linny, if we have this child, who’d be the birth mother?’ A small knot of panic formed in Amy’s throat, and her words had to push their way out through constricted airways.

On this matter, Linsey had never had any doubt. ‘You, of course, darling. We want our baby to be as beautiful and talented as we can make her.’ She looked at the other woman. ‘Is that what you want? I mean, if you decide you don’t…’

Amy felt the tension drain from her body. ‘A baby would be wonderful,’ she replied. ‘Really, I want to carry the baby, Linny. The answer is yes …’

Linsey left her place and knelt beside Amy’s chair, hugging her tearfully. ‘Just leave the details to me. Darling, darling Amy. I’m so happy.’ And she even giggled a little. ‘Listen, I have a plan.’

Amy settled back to listen. Linsey was a very good planner.

‘We’ll advertise in Vox Discipuli ,’ Linsey told her. ‘Offer money. That should find the target market.’

Target market. Odd language , Amy thought briefly.

Linsey would always look back on the period of Amy’s pregnancy as the happiest of their lives together. After a passing nod to morning sickness, Amy bloomed. Her skin glowed, her dimple deepened and her hair shone. As her belly rounded, she lay on the sun-lounge, sleepy-eyed and full of promise, with a kind of tawny, feline grace that reminded Linsey of the great cats of Africa.

‘But without the claws.’ She laughed as she stroked the burgeoning belly. And Amy laughed with her. At the time, neither of them understood the ferocity at the heart of a mother’s love.

Linsey fussed, of course. And Amy cooperated amiably with the exercise and diet regime that Linsey devised from the many books she’d acquired on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth.

As the pregnancy unfolded, their families, knowingly or unknowingly, participated in the fiction of the two women as housemates. Amy’s mother, Kathy, was very impressed with Linsey’s devotion to her pregnant daughter. ‘Linsey’s so good to her,’ she said to Linsey’s mother. ‘I don’t know what she would have done without her.’

‘I don’t believe it’s such a great burden,’ the other woman replied drily, watching her daughter pour the coffee.

‘Still, I wish she’d tell us who the father is.’ Kathy was mortified at the thought of her daughter as an unmarried mother, let alone the issue of a one-night 35 stand. She still had faint hopes of a wedding.

‘I doubt that will happen,’ Meredith Brookes replied. ‘I doubt that very much indeed.’

Amy gave birth to an eight-pound baby girl with huge, fathomless eyes and a thatch of dark hair that stood straight up, giving her a look of mild shock.

‘Funny little thing. She looks surprised by the world,’ Linsey said as she held her daughter close. ‘Amy, I love you both so much.’

‘Me too,’ murmured a sleepy Amy.

If the pregnancy had been a time of happiness for Linsey, the birth was a time of such fierce and overwhelming joy that she could scarcely breathe for the wonder of it. She vowed that this child would be loved and cared for, that she would have the best education, the best start in life of any child who had ever lived. She plunged into motherhood with an intense, controlling passion. Her emotional extravagance was all the more tragic in that she had no natural facility with children and didn’t understand how to translate her love into language that a child could understand. By contrast, while Linsey devoured books on childcare, Amy’s love flowed with her milk and she sang little nonsense songs and played with her baby’s toes.

Linsey was godmother when Miranda Ophelia was christened in the cream brick Uniting church where her birth mother had gone to Sunday school. Amy’s single status was met with some disapproval by the congregation. She always was a bit flighty, they sniffed as they sipped their tea. She’s lucky to have found such a fine person to be godmother. Kathy had broadcast Linsey’s merit throughout the parish, innocently placing her where a father might more usually be found.

Linsey’s family were puzzled by the thought of a christening. Her brother, Robert, was happy to go along without question, but Felicity couldn’t resist. ‘You’re not even a Christian, Lins,’ she said. ‘What’s this all about?’