Marylebone Platform Six: Arrival

Is it too late at forty one? It was the first question that Jane wanted to ask, impatiently thumbing a magazine in the waiting room. She had read the literature, seen the changes in risk profiles past certain ages, heard the opinions of friends, family, strangers in forums on the internet, and the consensus was that it wasn’t too late. It wasn’t, perhaps, ideal but it wasn’t too late. She wanted to hear it out loud from a professional. She wanted somebody with a medical certificate on their wall, preferably wearing a white coat, to spell it out to her.

The waiting room was the same as she remembered it from the only time she’d persuaded Paul to come. Curved, vertically slatted, wood panelled walls framed the space, a light wood that softened the room and retained the light. They’d talked about it when they’d sat here together, a distraction from the real reason they were there. He thought it looked like somebody’s idea of the future from the 1970s, she thought it was Scandinavian and designed to evoke a sense of calm. Now she wasn’t so sure, sat there alone. It wasn’t helping the knottiness in her stomach or her quick glances around the room each time a door opened or the receptionist shuffled a set of papers or the printer on her desk hummed to life or the telephone rang. She didn’t think Paul had been right either. If this was an imagined future then it was not one she would ever have imagined for herself.

There were six other people in the waiting area with her, all couples, all sat quietly, two of them holding hands, the other sat side by side, her with her head leant across his shoulder. Everyone had acknowledged each other every time somebody new arrived, usually a silent nod or smile, a tacit sign that whilst nobody knew the details of everyone’s story they did understand the gist of it, understood that they had all reached an inflection point where they were all looking for the same happy ending. Jane had found that smallest moment of connection oddly moving and had immediately bent over to rummage in her bag, pretending to look for something important, so that she could compose herself, hold back the tears that were threatening to run down her face.

Jane watched two of the couples, in turn, be called to another room ahead of her. In their absence she imagined the myriad of chance events that could have played out that led them here, the arbitrary sequences where biological collisions were missed or cellular reactions spluttered and faded or genetics were just wired, unknowingly, against the hopeful protagonists from the start. She tried to read their faces as they came back into the waiting area but everyone carried the same pensive, considered look that they had as they entered. Maybe they didn’t know anymore than they did before. Maybe everyone realised, out of respect, that this wasn’t the place to show more than cautious optimism. Not everyone would leave with the news they wanted. Jane had read enough of the statistics to understand that.

Her name was called and she was directed down a corridor towards the back of the waiting area, and then into a room, marked simply with the name of her fertility consultant and the assorted set of letters after his name. MBBS BSc MD DFFP MRCOG. She didn’t understand any of it beyond the BSc but was reassured in its impenetrability, in its length, in its blank capitalisation. She hesitated and then tentatively knocked. If Paul had been her she knew he’d have hung back, waited for her to make things happen. The thought galvanised her and she didn’t wait for a response, just pushed the door open and stepped through.

Doctor Jacobs – Andrew, please, call me Andrew – was the owner of the various initials on the door and Jane listened as he talked through the potential IVF pathways open to her, detailed the risk profile information that she had already exhaustively googled, and gave her an honest appraisal of her chances. It’s a physical and emotional commitment, Mrs Roberts, and there’s no guarantees but you’re healthy, all your indicators are as good as they can be, so it’s certainly not a situation where I’d be looking to dissuade you.

“I prefer Jane,” said Jane suddenly. “I’m just finalising some paper work but I don’t think of myself as Mrs Roberts anymore.”

Andrew tilted his head slightly to the side. “Your ex-husband. Of course. I am so sorry about his death, Jane.”

“Thank you,” she said. “We were actually divorced but there was some admin to finalise and then he died. It was all very unexpected.”

“He explained it to me,” said Andrew. “I really am so sorry, I was so caught up in explaining the processes and the details that I usually cover. I really should have started with that.”

“He explained it?”

Andrew opened a file on his desk and picked through the sheets of paper inside it, eventually finding what he was looking for, pulling it out and placing it in front of her. “He wanted you to have this. He wanted me to give you this.”

Jane stared at it for a few moments, caught between curiosity and a sense of deep apprehension. She’d sat on the train on her way in mentally preparing for what she thought was every possible permutation, every way in which this conversation might go, every choice she might be offered, but none of that preparation had included a letter from Paul. She’d consciously walked rapidly down the platform at Marylebone, fixated on nothing but the exit barriers and the passage way to the street, deliberating screening out all of the small reminders, all of the tiny emotional cues that the place prompted in her. She’d deliberately avoided the station since the disposal of his ashes and had wanted that to close it all off, to end their story in the same place it began.

Curiosity won. Jane read Paul’s letter.

Dear Jane,

I am not foolish enough to seek your forgiveness. I know you too well and, more importantly, have come to realise that what I did doesn’t deserve that you forgive me. I regret it all deeply and that is something that I have to carry.

Perhaps somewhere you can appreciate the irony in the formality of this letter, now that we’ve parted and will lead separate lives. Do you remember that we started with Pride & Prejudice and I misquoted Mr Darcy, a vain hope that I would not lose your good opinion lest it be lost forever. Clearly I have lost it forever and I have only myself to blame for that. Know that I am sorry. I know that will probably not mean much, after everything, but know that’s it true all the same.

When you left me in 31 Below, that last time I saw you, you said that I owed you. I’ve thought a lot about that since and I think you’re right, I know you’re right. I’m due for my surgery in a couple of weeks and, after that, I will disappear. I don’t want to bounce around London anymore, bumping into the places that were ours, regretting what I let get away from me. I don’t know exactly what I will do but I’m going to move away, going to start again somewhere else, see if I can find a small village cricket team that will have me. But that’s all about me and not about you. And you were right, I do owe you.

The surgery will stop me ejaculating. I tried to think of a more poetic way to say it but drew a blank. No puns intended. Perhaps you realise how difficult this is for me and remember that we used to laugh at things like this? Used to laugh at so much. I’m sorry if it’s too late for that. How would Mr Darcy have put it? I guess Austen painted him as a study in quiet, simmering virility so I suppose it’s not a line she would ever need to have grappled with. What I’m trying to say is that after the surgery the one last thing that I might be able to do for you will be denied me.

I’ve donated my sperm to this clinic and arranged for it to be frozen. I finally made good on those conversations we had, those things I owed you. All the paperwork is taken care of. If you want to use them as a donor then they are yours – and only yours, this is something I should have helped us do together and it’s something I only want to help you do alone. If you choose to. I would completely understand if I am the last donor on earth that you would want to entertain.

This is no recompense for the damage I’ve done, Jane, but I hope it is, at least, something. I loved you. I didn’t honour that and, for that, I’m sorry but I did love you.

Yours, Paul.

Jane read Paul’s letter and stared at the paper, in silence, for several minutes. Andrew sat watching her, fingers pressed to lips, mindful to give her space. She looked up at him.

“This is not how I imagined this would all work, you know? I was so sure about everything, so certain in what I wanted, what I went after, what I got. Life was a series of things to achieve, things in my control that I could… I don’t know, that I could bend to my will. And I had a lot of will. And this… this is something that I can’t.”

“I wish that it were different,” replied Andrew.

She asked her question. “Is it too late at forty one, doctor? Sorry, Andrew. Is it too late?”

“There’s no guarantees but it’s not too late,” he said. 

“Am I crazy to do it alone?” It was the other question she had played over in her mind; the one for herself but which she asked quietly now, almost as if he wasn’t there.

“You can’t bend fertility to your will,” he said. “But if we succeed then I have no doubt, no doubt at all, that you can bend parenthood to it. It’s not crazy at all. It maybe takes a special kind of stubborn but it’s not crazy.”

Jane held his gaze. “Stubborn I can do. When can we start?”

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Part six and the conclusion of the Marylebone stories. I am aware that the ending, technically, remains ambiguous so I may write a coda/epilogue for it at a later point. I know what I think happens to Jane but you are free to imprint your own version…

This continues my 26,000 words for Great Ormond Street in July ’23. Any and all donations to fundraiser very welcome on this link.