‘Why did you think we brought your daddy?’ Turquoise asks. Drusilla slams into Emily’s side again. The air stills, just as it did before.
‘Sweetheart,’ Minerva says eventually, ‘do you mean your donor?’
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Donor Family
‘Once upon a time,’ Emily says, ‘there was a lady who wanted very much to be a mummy. But she couldn’t find anyone who wanted to be a daddy. And then a kind man who she’d never met gave her a seed that turned into a baby. And the mummy and the baby lived happily ever after.’
Is she…? Yes, Drusilla’s asleep at last. Her eyelids are clamped shut. The duvet softly breathes around her. Very cautiously, Emily stands up.
Every evening, they have the same battle. Even though Drusilla’s nearly ten years old, it’s a full time job to keep her on track.
‘Have you done your teeth, Drusilla?’
‘I’m trying to!’
‘How long does it take?’
‘I got stuck!’
In bed at last, she wants a story. And then another story. ‘And now the story about the seed that turned into a baby. Again.’ While Emily, who’s been on the go since her alarm went off at six, fizzes with tension and longs for just a few minutes’ down time.
Pulled in many directions at once, she’s missing Drusilla’s childhood. She used to think the day would come when the two of them could enjoy just being together, but there’s always something else to do, and she feels she’s running out of time. At the moment, Drusilla needs her mother more than Emily needs Drusilla. But Emily fears this won’t last much longer, and then she’ll spend the rest of her life yearning for a child who no longer wants her.
In the kitchen, the dishwasher has finished its cycle and burst open. Drusilla’s socks loll in the middle of the floor. A January night crouches outside the windows. Emily ignores all this and sits down at her laptop. She looks again at the message.
When she finally decided to try for a baby, Emily felt she was gambling with its happiness. She’d agonised for months about using a sperm donor, worrying it wouldn’t be fair on the child. But in the end she wanted a baby so much, she went ahead anyway.
And now the gamble’s caught up with her. Drusilla is desperately unhappy she doesn’t have a father. It doesn’t help that children at school haven’t got the inclusivity memo. Emily’s spoken to the teacher, but nothing’s changed. You must have a dad, the children insist. You must have seen him when you were small. Drusilla’s Christmas list started: A Dad! Please!
Frantically searching for a way to help her child, Emily chanced upon a website that offered to link children conceived by the same donor. Not really expecting anything, she entered their details, and was stunned when a match came up.
So great to find another family! said Minerva’s first message. You’re the third. I have Turquoise, who just turned nine last month. The other family’s Charlotte and her kids Finn and Flora. I think they’re already ten. Or maybe they’re about to be ten. They’re in London too. Where are you?
And tomorrow they’re going to meet.
***
The rendezvous is a park only half an hour from Emily and Drusilla’s flat. They hurry past listed facades, the slopping river, the futuristic asymmetry of uninhabited new builds. Bare branches spike above the park railings. It’s been the coldest week of the winter: icy air whenever they’ve ventured out. Now the weather’s at last on the turn, clouds jumbled just above the horizon.
Drusilla’s plait is still in shreds from yesterday. Somehow, it always takes twice as long to get out of the house as Emily hopes, and something always gets missed. Before Drusilla, she was organised. Now her life feels permanently out of control. She suspects this is love: opening yourself up to other people’s agendas.
‘Dru, calm down,’ Emily says to a tirade about what they’re all going to do when they meet. ‘Take it slowly. Let’s get to know them first.’
The only people anywhere near the park gate who are not hurrying in, out or past are a smartly dressed woman and two children, a boy and a girl, standing just by one of the pillars. Not them! Emily thinks, panicking. The woman has an air of togetherness which Emily can’t achieve as the lone mother of just one child, let alone two. And the kids look like royal children, in neat tweed coats complete with velvet pockets. Whereas Drusilla’s coat disappeared at school this week and she’s wearing a shabby fleece and a hat with cat ears left over from when she was much younger. Emily falters a few yards from the gate, thinking they’ll just wait here, unobtrusively, until the people they’re really meeting turn up. But already the woman is coming towards them, her hand held out.
‘You must be Emily. I’m Charlotte. And these are Finn and Flora.’
Flora smiles prettily and says: ‘Hello.’ Finn’s eyes resist contact. He examines the ground, bare fingers tight on a football. Do the children look like Drusilla? Emily wants them to, and doesn’t want them to. Flora looks like a small version of her mother. Finn looks totally different, and uncannily familiar. Emily tries not to gawp.
‘Finn,’ Charlotte says, sounding well-rehearsed, ‘please look at Emily and Drusilla, and say hello.’
‘Can you say hello?’ Emily asks Drusilla, who’s not normally shy around strangers.
‘Where’s my daddy?’ Drusilla says. ‘Did you bring him?’
Emily feels the air freeze, even as she’s wondering what on earth she can have said to give Drusilla this idea. Flora blushes and looks anxiously at her mother. Charlotte’s eyes flare a distress signal. Finn stares at Drusilla, enthralled.
What on earth do I say now? Emily thinks.
‘We don’t know Drusilla’s daddy, do we?’ Charlotte says to the twins. ‘Sorry,’ she says to Drusilla, in a tone with some sharp edges in it.
‘You said we’d meet my daddy!’ Drusilla yelps. Her face is losing definition, as if she’s about to cry.
‘Dru. I did not. We’re not meeting your daddy. We’re meeting Finn and Flora and Turquoise, who…’ Emily tails off, stuck for vocabulary. What words do the other family use?
‘…who all have the same daddy,’ Drusilla persists.
Emily feels both exasperated with her and ashamed of letting her child down. She knows perfectly well that the experts recommend referring to the donor as a donor: a benevolent neutral figure whose role in the child’s life began and ended with the act of donation. What the experts are less helpful with is what to say to the fatherless child who grapples every day with a sense of loss. At last, terrified she’d caused pain she could never undo, Emily thought that saying: You do have a daddy somewhere. It’s just that we don’t know him. You can meet him when you’re grown up would help Drusilla feel better. Instead, she’s just set her up for this moment of shame. She hugs her tightly, as if that might help.
The word still hangs accusingly in the air when Emily looks up. The twins’ eyes slide away from her. Charlotte’s tapping at her phone with an ungloved hand.
‘Any sign of Minerva?’ Emily asks desperately.
‘She’ll be here in a minute. She’s always late.’
‘Always? How many times have you met?’
‘Three.’ The phone beeps and Charlotte looks down at it again. ‘She’s just got off the bus.’ Finn and Flora stare frankly at Drusilla, who’s clamped herself to Emily as if she’s years younger, winding herself round Emily’s leg and clutching her arm. Emily tries to dislodge her without making this obvious to either Drusilla or the twins, but Drusilla holds on tight.
‘Here they are.’ Charlotte sounds relieved.
Striding round the corner comes a tall woman with waist length black hair, which flows dramatically across her purple coat and crimson shawl. Is this Minerva? She’s waving and calling to Charlotte. Everyone’s completely distracted from the spat over terminology.
‘Emily. Drusilla.’ Minerva’s voice is rich and framebreakingly deep. ‘So great to meet you. And this is Turquoise.’
Turquoise is a pale child, dressed in padded jacket, net skirt, wellingtons, a unicorn headband and fluffy earmuffs. Emily can feel Drusilla’s interest and indignation. She pushes her hand into Emily’s. Emily squeezes it tightly, hoping to reassure both of them.
Now, for a moment, the meeting accomplished, they’re all at a loss.
‘Let’s go and get a coffee,’ Charlotte says. ‘There’s a café in the park. It’s about five minutes’ walk.’
They set off down paths which can really only fit two abreast. Minerva and Charlotte gravitate together. Walking behind them, Emily hears Charlotte exclaiming: ‘…some people don’t start tutoring till Year Five.’ She glances back. Flora and Turquoise are also side by side, heads together. Emily feels a pang for Drusilla, already left out. Finn kicks his football into a flowerbed and Charlotte barks at him.
The café appears quickly, squat like a cake tin with a row of cycle racks beside it. A few brave adventurers sit muffled at wooden tables, their breath and their beverages steaming.
‘Here,’ Charlotte says. ‘They do a decent cappuccino, and there’s hot chocolate for the kids. Inside or outside?’
‘If we sit outside,’ Minerva says, ‘the kids can play.’ Emily perks up at the thought of someone other than herself occupying Drusilla.
First, though, they need to get drinks. Inside the café Emily hangs back to let the others get well ahead, and gives Drusilla a quick hug.
‘Mum,’ Drusilla says, ‘they’re all weird.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Turquoise looks like she thinks she’s five or something. And Flora’s a goody goody.’
‘And Finn?’ Finn, who presumably looks like the donor as a young boy?
‘He’s annoying.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Can I have icecream?’
‘Yes. If that’s what you want.’
‘And hot chocolate?’
‘One or the other. Not both.’
Drusilla tries to push this, but eventually settles for a hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows. Emily steers her towards the till furthest from where Charlotte’s apparently still negotiating with the twins.
For a moment Emily thinks they’ve lost Minerva, but there’s no mistaking that dramatic combination of crimson and purple, now ensconced at an outside table. Turquoise’s unicorn headband is slipping forward as she tucks into a double icecream cone. There’s a cup of hot chocolate on the table before her.
Emily feels cheated. That’s not what we agreed, she wants to say to Minerva, but of course nobody agreed anything. Happily, Drusilla’s distracted from menu options by a greater injustice.
‘Mum,’ she hisses. ‘Turquoise has a phone.’
‘I know.’
‘But Mum, she’s nine.’
‘Be quiet.’
‘But…’
‘We’ll talk about it later.’
Charlotte and the twins join them. They all arrange themselves and prop the trays against one of the table legs. Emily steals covert glances at the other three children: flashes of Drusilla in their hairlines, their noses, the angle of their chins. The resemblances are disconcerting. Drusilla squirms into her side suddenly.
‘Dru, be careful. You’re hurting me. What’s the matter?’
All Emily can hear is ‘…talking about me.’
‘Are they? Are you sure?’ But Emily’s sure Drusilla’s right. Finn’s eyes skedaddle away the instant Emily tries to meet them. Turquoise is staring at Drusilla: she’s forgotten her mouth is open.
‘What’s wrong, Drusilla?’ Charlotte asks. ‘Don’t you like hot chocolate?’
There’s silence for a moment while, unfortunately, everyone looks at Drusilla, who really doesn’t like this kind of scrutiny.
‘Why did you think we brought your daddy?’ Turquoise asks. Drusilla slams into Emily’s side again. The air stills, just as it did before.
‘Sweetheart,’ Minerva says eventually, ‘do you mean your donor?’
‘I mean my daddy.’
‘I thought you didn’t have a daddy.’
‘Everyone has a daddy.’
‘Not everyone. Turquoise doesn’t. Do you, pumpkin?’
Turquoise shakes her head helpfully. ‘My mummy used a sperm donor,’ she announces, and goes back to her phone and icecream.
Author Biography: Originally, I planned to become a fulltime writer, but that quickly ran into trouble as I had no life experience. So, needing a more reliable income, I secured a job working on the British space programme, secretly hoping to become an astronaut. A couple of years of writing computer code convinced me that terrestrial ships were a more achievable career choice than spaceships and I joined the Royal Navy, serving in aircraft carriers, Afghanistan, and Moscow. From there I became a career diplomat. Specialising in Former Soviet Union countries, I’ve been posted to Kazakhstan, China, Uzbekistan and Georgia, somehow finding the time to keep writing while bringing up my daughter, now 12.