How Was It For You? Read online

  About the Book

  Five years of gruelling IVF still haven’t brought Pamela and Dave the baby they long for. Their marriage is now so rocky, they need hiking boots just to negotiate dinner.

  So they probably shouldn’t be moving out of London for office-bound softie Dave to follow his dream of running an organic strawberry farm. Especially as out there in the countryside is devastatingly handsome farmer, Lachlan Murray.

  While Dave takes up weeding and becomes obsessed with manure, Pamela wonders if she should escape to Lachlan’s 4x4. Her London friends think she’s gone insane, but they don’t know just how far Pamela is prepared to go for a baby.

  A fabulous read. A sexy read. A Carmen Reid.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  About the Author

  Also by Carmen Reid

  Copyright

  How Was It For You?

  Carmen Reid

  For my 100 per cent organic,

  totally additive-free parents

  With much love

  Acknowledgements

  Many, many thanks to:

  Über-agent, Darley Anderson and his team, who always see the bigger picture and take care of it.

  My editor, Diana Beaumont – so inspired, encouraging and calming.

  The brilliant people at Transworld, because writing may be a solo job, but a book is truly a team effort (and I have the best team!).

  My friends and family – all woefully neglected this very busy past year.

  The vital support system: Caroline, Debbie and most especially, Thomas Quinn, who hopefully knows that I couldn’t do this without endless cups of tea, boxes of peppermint chewing gum, the occasional ‘creative’ tantrum . . . and him.

  Chapter One

  ‘I’M 34 YEARS old and I’m shooting up in a nursery. This is ridiculous,’ Pamela told herself with almost a smile, as she prised open the plastic case with pretty fingernails, slid her skirt up and jabbed the pre-loaded syringe into her bare leg.

  It used to be difficult, used to make her feel squeamish, faint even. But now, no problem at all, she was quite the expert, stabbing the needle in up to the hilt, feeling the cool flush under her skin.

  She was so absorbed with the injection, she hadn’t noticed the trip-tripping high heels of her current client in the hall. Sadie Kingston-Jones, owner of a string of bijou boutiques and married to a nearly-millionaire, came into the half-finished room and watched her interior designer with fascination.

  ‘I’ll have whatever you’re having,’ Sadie shot out so loudly that Pamela just about fainted with surprise. Bad enough being caught injecting by the woman currently paying for your services, let alone having her think you’re some kind of junkie.

  ‘Sadie! You gave me a fright,’ Pamela looked up, still rubbing her leg.‘It won’t do you any good, it’s purely medicinal.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sadie said striding towards her on spiked red heels.‘Because if it has any sort of sedative effect at all, I want some right now.’

  Then, despite the red cheongsam, pulled screamingly tight over the monstrous bump of a twin pregnancy in its seventh month, Sadie wriggled down to sit beside her on the floor and gave a sigh so loud, so deep, it was almost a moan.

  ‘This is complete fucking hell. I am never, ever getting the decorators in again . . . in my entire life. That includes you, darling. And I mean it.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Pamela replied carefully.

  ‘I have four men digging up my bathroom, you and yours fussing about up here, a cleaner, a nanny and a PA downstairs, all constantly needing my attention. I’m going to go mad! And I can’t even have a cigarette. Bloody babies.’ She put a hand on each side of the bump rising like a red space hopper from her lap.‘Just one more, that was all I agreed to. But oh no, I have to land myself with twins, don’t I?’

  They surveyed the emerging room: smooth pale pink and green walls, curved wooden shelves which wrapped round the space in an ever-ascending staircase, the newly made window seat, still unpainted. It was going to be adorable.

  Pamela’s mobile began to ring. Sadie watched her check the number and brace herself with a deep breath before answering.

  ‘Sheila, hello.’ She put a smile into her voice which wasn’t on her face. A pretty face, pale with dark eyes, and darker hair, much more delicate than her figure, all Italianate boobs, curves and hips threatening to spill from her fussily fashionable jersey dress.

  ‘Right . . . But don’t you . . .? Well . . . what I . . .’ Pamela was obviously not going to be allowed to tell the person on the other end of the line very much. Far too much of a nice girl, Pamela, Sadie could tell. A sort of head-girlie, people pleaser; she clocked the wedding and engagement ring and guessed at a steady, happy marriage made earlyish, to a similarly nice guy, maybe in the parish church, watched by two sets of proud parents; a Home Counties girl, she was sure. Children? Not yet, but they were definitely on the agenda. This woman spent all day designing nurseries, for goodness sake. But then again, what did she know? She’d only met Pamela a handful of times and people were constantly surprising.

  Pamela ended the conversation and put her phone down.

  ‘Who was that?’ Sadie asked.

  ‘My boss.’ Pamela said this very evenly, but not quite nicely.

  ‘Sheila Farrington! She’s a bitch from hell, isn’t she?’ Sadie brought her fingers to her lips and breathed in, then out between them, a virtual cigarette.

  ‘Well . . . I wouldn’t . . .’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t,’ Sadie smiled at her.‘You are her loyal and hard-working right-hand woman and I’m sure your reward awaits you . . . in heaven.’

  Pamela laughed shyly at this and dared to say: ‘I’ve been working for her for three years now. I’m used to her. But the plan is still to go freelance one day . . . move out of town . . . a bigger house in the countryside. All that.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Sadie knew.‘All that. Going freelance – moving out of town – we’re all dreaming about that, aren’t we? Waiting for the next promotion . . . for our house to be worth just that little bit more. But hardly anyone does it, you know. We all just grind on. You’ve got to live in the present, make what you’ve got right here lovely,’ she lectured, doing the breathing through her fingers thing again.‘That’s why I brought you in, to make my home in the here and now . . . lovely . . . Eventually, once you’ve finished pulling it to bits and making my life hell!’ Glossy smile at this.

  ‘Anyway, wha
t do you want to live in the countryside for?’ she added.‘Nothing ever happens out there. No good shops or parties, you can’t even buy nice food.’

  Pamela laughed.‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s true,’ Sadie insisted.‘When we were in Cornwall last summer, the village shops only sold frozen pizzas, plastic ham and tins of beans. There’s no focaccia or Starbucks or Parma ham or even a fresh vegetable out there in the countryside, you know.’

  ‘Of course there’s no Starbucks, isn’t that the point?’ Pamela was a little outraged at this dissing of her dream of rural bliss.

  ‘Believe me, you only realize how spoilt we are when you go out there. There’s no nipping round the corner to buy lipstick, or even tampons. No, from now on, we’re only holidaying in other major international cities. If you want greenery and open space, go to a park.’

  Pamela, laughter sparking in her eyes, bit her tongue. Sadie was highly pregnant, highly stressed and she didn’t really want to argue with her anyway.

  ‘So, what are you injecting yourself with?’ Sadie picked up the syringe case, wanting a fresh topic.‘Are you diabetic?’

  ‘Well, er . . .’ Pamela Carr. Once a 15-a-day smoker, who’d been a bit square about drugs, who’d only occasionally had a joint at the weekend, who’d once slipped an E and hated every moment of it, who’d only rubbed coke onto her gums on an exceptional night out. Pamela’s new drug of choice was expensive, loaded with side effects, available on prescription only and designed not to make her happy or high or mellow or morose. This drug, which she injected into herself several times a day at certain times of the year, was designed to make her pregnant. She’d been doing this for five years now and it was still awkward to explain.

  Especially now that she was carving out a new niche for herself at West London Interiors in nursery design. She knew exactly how bizarre it was, that couples at all the best addresses should be calling on her – oestrogen and progesterone junkie, weekly attendee of the St Francis Hospital IVF support group – to design new rooms for their children.

  But maybe her longing, her passionate need for a baby, was what made her so good at her job. No detail was too much trouble. She was super-careful, super-caring, super-cautious about the precious rooms for these precious babies. Only non-toxic, milk-based wall paints, linseed treated wood for the floors, Swedish oiled planks for the shelving, organic German cottons for the curtains, for the ties around the beds and the cots. Reclaimed maple and cherry for the cupboards, chests of drawers, window-seat toy boxes. Everything was double-checked, cross-referenced and she could quote all the latest research linking MDF fumes to asthma, varnish vapours and new carpeting to cot death.

  It was, of course, spectacularly expensive, but parents trusted her. And she did a great job, made the rooms jaunty, childish, with all sorts of tiny little user-friendly ideas dreamed up during the countless hours of research spent with her four-year old niece and two-year old nephew. Acres of shelving, little canvas toy hammocks above toddler beds for all the cuddly toys who couldn’t be squeezed into bed, child-high wooden pegs dotted round the rooms for dressing gowns, satchels, art aprons, pyjamas. Changing tables which folded out then disappeared back into walls, night light holders, aromatherapy oil diffusers, canopy curtains which could be opened out into a tent, then undone and tucked away again. Beds built waist high with cosy dens underneath. Smooth beach pebbles tied to the end of the light pulls and specially chosen plants on the windowsill to suck toxins from the air.

  Nothing over-designed: no beds shaped like cars or trains, everything pared down and simple, versatile. She thought it best to let children invent, imagine for themselves.

  ‘I’m doing IVF,’ she told Sadie, who cringed inwardly at her insensitive bump, at all the complaints she’d made about it, all the moans about varicose veins, piles, expense and inconvenience. Shit.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sadie said.‘That must be very hard.’

  ‘Oh, not really–’ and this wasn’t all lie – ‘I’m used to it now. We’ve been doing it for five years. Trying different things. Amazing what you get used to.’

  And it was.

  She was currently preparing herself for another go. Hopes in neutral, neither up nor down. Trying to prepare herself physically for the hormonal rollercoaster, for the medical interference, somehow reining her thoughts in, not allowing herself to speculate on the outcome. That, she had learned, was the only way to go on.

  Because nothing had been so crushingly disappointing as their first IVF attempt and the fact that it didn’t work.

  She and Dave had been ‘trying’ for two years then. All their married life, from when it was still sweet and funny to have sex by the calendar and then a few more times a week, just for luck.

  The love and the hope in the silly routines they had back then.

  ‘Honey, I’m home.’

  ‘Honey, I’m ovulating.’ Cue wife emerging from bedroom in silk négligé.

  ‘Is there a thermometer in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’

  ‘I’ve been eating oysters . . . Tonight is your lucky night.’

  But eventually, endless trying and endless disappointment made it a grind . . . so to speak.

  ‘Oh no . . . we don’t have to have sex tonight, do we?’ Dave woken from the sofa, the remote removed from his hand, the empty crisp bowl taken from the top of his stomach.

  She’d suspected for a long time that something was wrong and hadn’t even bothered with the NHS waiting list. It was straight to St Claire’s, the private hospital, double-checked on the internet, with the highest success rating and fees to match.

  Of course, since then, they’d changed hospitals twice – as you do when you’re on the IVF fairground, because someone somewhere else has always got a better ride, with different games, big dippers of hope and despair, no promises, no guarantee and certainly no money back. It was as big a part of her life now as her work and her marriage. Her family and her old friends knew about it. Her new friends, well, they were all made at the St Francis support group, so they shared.

  But the first time.

  It had seemed such an obvious, fixable problem. Dave’s sperm count was low and her hormone levels were shaky.

  ‘Think of it as pre-pre-menopausal,’ the consultant had explained, but all she’d taken in was the word ‘menopausal’ and the first inklings of fear had prickled her.

  ‘But I’m only 29!’

  ‘Very early stages,’ the doctor had assured her.

  And he made it sound so blindingly simple: her eggs would be harvested, Dave’s sperm washed, spun and selected, the embryos would be popped back into her hormonally primed body and voilà – pregnancy.

  Three embryos were implanted and Pamela had gone home happy-hearted, pencilled round the due date, planned her maternity leave and debated with herself when she would be ready to go back to it all, post-baby.

  She felt different, she told Dave over breakfast every morning, expecting the sickness to set in any moment now. God! What if they actually got twins?! Triplets!! That was the magical IVF prize. You waited and waited for a baby and then, just like buses, two – sometimes even three – came along at once.

  She was granted two weeks of this happiness and then she took the test and it was negative. Pamela was so surprised, she immediately wanted a second one.

  The second test was negative too and several days later they went for a debriefing with the doctor.

  ‘Why hasn’t it worked?’ She was bewildered; had done everything, every tiny little thing requested of her to the letter. To no avail.

  ‘I’m afraid, most of the time, it doesn’t work out,’ the nurse had told her gently once their time listening to the doctor’s spiel was over. Out in the corridor, underneath the wall of success-story baby photographs, Pamela had cracked open and cried miserably, noisily, so the nurse had ushered her and Dave into a little room which, judging by the stack of magazines and videos, was the sperm collection facility.


  Over the years, they had lurched on from try to try, from one hospital to another. Getting to know a whole lot of other tryers on the way. People who’d done St Claire’s and St Francis and were moving to the Lister. People who’d done the Lister and St Claire’s, Hammersmith and were now at St Francis.

  All kinds of combinations. All chasing something new . . . the latest this . . . swapping hopes and fears, all kinds of tips and research nuggets with each other whenever they had the chance.

  ‘My sister suggested the Foresight programme, you know, where you give up alcohol, smoking, tea, coffee, sugar and E numbers for six months and you have to get your hair tested to see which heavy metals you’re polluted with and which minerals you need to take.’

  Pamela had listened to it wearily at the last support group. She’d heard it all before. She’d tried it as well and so far, it hadn’t worked. But just to make sure, just to cover all her bases, she always ate well, attempted to avoid the forbidden foods. Before every ‘try’ she totally cut out every bloody fun thing she had ever enjoyed, from wine to wine gums, and hoped that it would help.

  But when the tests came back negative, or when she was just feeling down about it all, she took it out in food. Cinema-sized bags of Revels, party packs of Mars Bars, the entire Thornton’s Continental Selection. Blamed her weight gain on the drugs, but really knew in her heart it was the unhappiness.

  ‘No, I can’t do tonight, big day at the hospital tomorrow,’ Pamela reminded her friend Alex on the mobile.

  ‘Tomorrow? Sorry, I forgot. Sorry . . . stupid of me,’ Alex apologized.‘Are you going to be OK? I don’t know how you cope, I really don’t. All that rummaging around . . .’

  ‘Don’t remind me!’ Pamela tried to block out the flash of stirrups, pipettes and tubing, the usual cast of thousands looking on from over their surgical masks.‘I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t do this,’ she added. That was the plain, unvarnished truth. The IVF game, it was now for her above all a way of coping. A way of keeping very busy, very focused until she was finally ready to deal with her infertility.