Jane Asher - The Longing - A bestselling psychological thriller you won’t be able to put down

‘Nonsense! They’re absolutely first class. Now come here and I’ll prove it to you.’

But after a few months of temperature taking, crosses on graphs and carefully timed sessions in the creaking double bed, Juliet appeared no nearer to producing the longed-for heir. Michael knew she minded more than she was letting on, and noticed an irritation creeping into her attitude towards him. For his part, the necessity of performing to order was becoming increasingly difficult and depressing: it became hard to remember a time when they’d had sex for the sheer pleasure of it rather than to meet the demands of a schedule.

‘You’re on,’ Juliet said to him one night as she brushed her hair at the dressing table. After six months of attempts at timed conception, this succinct, if uninspiring, phrase had become part of their regular routine.

‘Again? Are you sure?’

‘Why, don’t you want to?’

‘Yes, yes of course I do. Do you?’

‘Well, we don’t have any choice, do we? I’m not going to waste another whole month.’

Michael resisted snapping back at her, and only sighed quietly to himself as he pulled back the sheets and climbed into bed, trying to marshal his thoughts into suitably erotic directions, but feeling more like a sperm bank than a lover.

The evening of the day she went to see her GP was the first time she cried. He had been so matter-of-fact, so sensible, and so horribly in agreement that ‘Something should have happened by now.’ She had half expected him to laugh it off, to jolly her out of it and tell her to go home and not be so silly (a healthily pragmatic approach he had taken to many of her minor ailments since she and Michael had become his patients on their move to Battersea), but he had listened quietly and seriously as she told him of her fears, and she had seen in his eyes that there was to be no quick answer.

‘I’d like you both to go and see a Professor Hewlett,’ he said as she came out from behind the curtains after the examination and moved to sit in front of his desk. He made notes as he went on. ‘There’s no immediately obvious problem, but I don’t see much point in making you wait before taking this further. Standard advice after a first infertility enquiry is to go and try again for a year or so, as you may know, but having known you both for a few years now I’m sure you’ve been making love the right way up, so to speak, and certainly from what you tell me you’ve been trying often enough and at the right times for it to be surprising that nothing’s happened yet. Your cycle’s a bit longer than average, but it seems regular enough, and the chart seems to show quite clearly that you’re ovulating regularly. Go and see Bob Hewlett and we’ll take it from there. There are plenty of good chaps in this field now, but he’s seen a lot of my patients lately and won’t take you round the houses. I’ll get Jennifer to make an appointment and give you a ring.’

His mention of her periods took Juliet back to the time when they had disappeared, to memories of her anxious mother dragging her to the doctor at sixteen, painfully thin yet still refusing to eat normally.

‘You do know I was anorexic years ago?’

‘Yes, yes of course. You told me, and I have it here in the notes that Dr Chaplin sent on. That shouldn’t have any bearing on this at all. Your weight has been perfectly stable in the – um—’ he paused and looked down at the beige folder on his desk, flipping back several pages, ‘—ten years you’ve been coming to see me. Your menstruation was re-established a long time ago wasn’t it?’ Juliet nodded. ‘Don’t worry,’ he smiled up at her encouragingly, ‘there’s a long way to go yet before you need assume we have anything we can’t cope with.’

She was calm all the way home, telling herself over and over again that the doctor had found nothing wrong; that she was to go and see a specialist and that there was every reason to feel positive. But when she had to face Michael, the dark creature that had so far only made itself known by occasional forays into her conscious mind seemed to grow and rise up and fly at her from the front. It was the way he looked up at her anxiously as she walked into the sitting room that made her give way.

‘How did you get on? What did he say?’

‘Oh Michael – there’s something wrong with me. I knew it – I knew it. There’s something horribly wrong.’

She threw her coat on to the sofa and sat in the armchair, leaning forward on to her knees and rubbing at her temples in an effort not to cry. Lucy padded over to her and sat down beside the sofa and licked her hand, sensing unhappiness.

‘Why, what did he say? Juliet – tell me, please. What’s wrong with you? Can they do anything about it?’

‘He didn’t find anything really wrong. It’s just that—’

‘Well then, that’s OK isn’t it? And who’s to say it’s you? It could be my sperm, you know. What did he say?’

‘Oh do stop asking me that! I just know something’s wrong, that’s all. I told you there was. I’m never going to have children, Michael, I can feel it. Oh God, what am I going to do?’

She burst into heaving, sobbing tears, and the whole world seemed to be focused on her empty, useless womb.

It was hard for the policeman to understand what Anna was saying through her hysterical tears. When his radio had first alerted him two streets away he had assumed that yet another car had been broken into, or a purse snatched: the theft of a baby was quite outside his experience and the painful distress of the babbling, wild-eyed girl in front of him was deeply unsettling.

‘Come and sit down for a moment, love,’ he said as he tried to shepherd her gently away from the doors of the supermarket. Then you can tell me calmly exactly what happened and we’ll sort things out. Don’t worry, love – we’ll get your little one back, he can’t be far.’

But Anna couldn’t move. She was clinging desperately to the pram with one hand, and with the other she rubbed her cheek with repetitive movements that seemed to be trying to tear the skin from her thin, white face. The swollen eyes and blotchy, roughened complexion gave her the look of a wizened old lady and there was a bitterness set into the downward lines around her mouth that PC Anderson guessed had been etched there long before today’s drama. She had clearly had to face obstacles before, but now she looked as though she might be torn apart by the intense suffering suddenly thrust upon her from nowhere. The dense black make-up around her eyes was smudged and running, giving her the look of a frightened panda.

‘I’ve g-got to go and – and – and find him!’ she stuttered in a strong Glaswegian accent, easily discernible in spite of her gulping sobs. ‘My baby! My baby!’

As she let go of the pram and made a sudden, darting move towards the door, PC Anderson grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her back to face him. Her eyes were wide open and terrified and sweat was breaking out on her face and neck; he could see that she was in danger of collapsing if he didn’t manage to get her to sit down quickly. He kept his hand on her shoulder and with the other behind her back, ushered her firmly through the checkout.

A gaggle of assistants was hovering around the tills, their excited faces alternating between interest and sympathy, revelling in spite of themselves in the drama of the situation and in the excuse for a break in routine.

‘Stand back, ladies, please. Thank you. Now, love, where’s your manager? I need a quiet room to go and have a chat with this young lady. And I don’t want any of you to leave without telling me, all right? I may need to have a talk to you. One of you bring that pram with us, please.’ He turned as he became aware of a large, flustered woman advancing towards them, wiping back a flopping piece of startlingly red hair from her forehead.