This Is Fine, page 1
About the Author
Poorna Bell is an award-winning journalist and author of twenty years and the former Executive Editor and Global Lifestyle Head for HuffPost. She won Stylist’s Rising Star award for 2019, Red magazine’s Big Book Award for 2019 and a Sunday Times Sports Books Award in 2022. She was named as one of Marie Claire’s top 30 women and is a Balance magazine top 100 Wellness personality.
Poorna has published three works of non-fiction: Chase the Rainbow, In Search of Silence and Stronger. Poorna’s first work of fiction, In Case of Emergency, was published in 2022 to high acclaim. This Is Fine is her second novel.
ALSO BY POORNA BELL
FICTION
In Case of Emergency
NON-FICTION
Chase the Rainbow
In Search of Silence
Stronger
Poorna Bell
* * *
THIS IS FINE
For my sister Priya, the lioness. I grew up encircled by your love and protection; now we stand side by side and face the world together.
1
It is deeply unfair that time is linear – that you can’t just borrow moments from other parts of your life when it’s casually sloshing about, doing nothing at all. Standing at a bus stop. The circle of doom buffering on your laptop. Waiting for your mother at the supermarket. I would gather all those moments like sticky bath pearls and cram them into the space before my boyfriend Wallace placed the doctor’s letter down on the kitchen dining table.
The letter is the thumbtack between the before and after parts of our relationship. In the before, I knew our life together. For the better part of ten years, I planned new meals or comfort food for the weekend depending on the weather and my mood, spent hours in the market checking how firm the fish was, picked up my spice order. He would work at his private GP practice half of Saturday, select a boxset for the evening, and we’d drink a glass of red wine while we ate dinner. Sunday mornings were spent with me, the Sunday Times, a pain au chocolat and a coffee before meeting his friends for football.
But the after is now, as he crosses his arms and pulls his lips inwards, like sandbags holding back whatever emotions are threatening to flood through. ‘You know how I feel about this, Padma,’ he says with the kind of clipped coldness he reserves for his patients. ‘I’ve made it quite clear how I feel about having children.’
In a long-term relationship, you sieve out much of what your partner says, for your own sanity and because life is short. At the beginning, there is endless patience to watch them compete at sport, pretend to like ska and listen to their work problems. As time goes on, you know that hobby number 52 is unlikely to last beyond the next tax quarter, and that the work grumbles are always an iteration of the same thing. Had Wallace made it quite clear about children? Had I accidentally filtered out his views on fatherhood alongside proclamations about the shrinking size of sandwiches in Pret and the state of the NHS?
He jabs a finger accusingly at the piece of paper that has thinly sliced our life in two. The letter that tells us what our chances are of having a baby.
*
A few years ago, while taking the 355 bus from Brixton to Tooting to get my weekly fix of masala dosa at the imaginatively titled Masala Dosa World, I’d sat with a dreamy smile on my face. I was thinking ahead to the dramatically large, golden and crispy crêpe-like roll, tiny stainless-steel pots of coconut chutney and yellow cubes of potato flecked with curry leaves. I let out a small laugh at the thought of Shivdas, the cranky, elderly waiter, who always heaved a long-suffering sigh when anyone asked for more curry.
‘She’s the cutest, isn’t she?’ I heard a woman’s voice saying, winching me back into reality. I looked over to see a thirty-something mother smiling at me, her pram wedged in the space in front. The contents of said pram were looking at me and gurgling, chubby cheeks barely contained in a furry hood. I looked at the mother, realisation flooding in. She thought my laughter was from delight at seeing her child.
Judging from previous encounters, this was the point where I was supposed to make a cooing noise, or say how cute she was and punctuate my sentences with an ‘Aww!’ But I couldn’t do it. Not because the baby wasn’t cute – she was Boden-catalogue beautiful, capable of shifting rompers by the dozen. But because it felt false. I didn’t get that molten feeling most women presumably do when encountering a baby in the wild. And I felt affronted because this exchange was not expected of the rangy, forty-something man next to me with his neat navy loafers and V-neck grey sweater. I wanted to correct her, tell her that I was actually excited to be going for dosa, but feared that sounded like the kind of thing a maniac would say.
In the absence of any reaction from me, the mother’s face fell, her brow wrinkling in mistrust as she curled herself protectively around the pram.
I could hear her thoughts clearly: What kind of woman can’t compliment another woman’s baby? Maybe over time, I thought, I’d get better at complimenting other people’s babies. Or maybe it would be different if I had my own. If you’re able to have kids, you’re supposed to want them, aren’t you?
*
A couple of months ago, Wallace, who played five-a-side football every Sunday at the pitch on Villa Road, was hit in the testicles at considerable velocity by the ball.
Although he was a doctor, it hadn’t occurred to him to get himself properly checked out – in the same way that many of his doctor friends still smoked and sank concerning amounts of expensive whisky. An older male friend on the team suggested he have a proper check-up, and given the area that had been impacted, advised him to get a fertility test. Wallace expected to be given green lights all the way because he’d never had anything significantly wrong with his health. Instead, the doctor said something about sperm motility and added: ‘If you want to start trying for children, now is the time.’
He lay in bed agonising over it for days. Could we have children? Had we left it too late? Although I murmured along to soothe him, I thought the discussions were mainly hypothetical. When he asked me to get a fertility test done, I agreed because he seemed so anxious about it. ‘I’ve set everything up for you,’ he said, ‘my friend Marta works in the women’s hospital in Marylebone and she’ll look after you.’ The test was seamless, I got a free Murray Mint afterwards, and forgot about it.
Until the results arrived a week ago. The letter told me my hormone levels were great, my ovarian reserves excellent for a thirty-nine-year-old woman. That I am not just able to have children, but apparently my fertility equipment is the Vitamix of baby-making. I had planned to tell Wallace about it, but the day the letter arrived he’d been working late.
The next evening he went out for client drinks, and the rest of my week was taken up with job hunting. After being let go three months previously, my dwindling bank balance had spurred me into action because I did not want to be financially reliant on Wallace, or worse, my younger sister Daisy. But if I didn’t find something soon, a conversation would have to be had. These things seemed far more important than a letter telling me about my fertility. Babies weren’t exactly cheap from what I’d heard, and I needed to sort out my ability to pay my bills before adding anything else into the mix.
Then it was the weekend. I didn’t want to ruin it with heavy fertility chat. But today, when he was looking for spare shoelaces ahead of his Sunday football session, he found the letter stuffed in the drawer with the takeaway menus. I was accused of ‘hiding it’ from him. He was not amused when I said if I had really wanted to hide it from him, I would have put it in the cupboard with all the cleaning supplies.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asks. I know it’s a serious conversation, but he’s wearing his football kit at the table, and it’s like being interrogated by a PE teacher.
‘I didn’t …’ I start to say as my gaze crosses that of Wallace’s elderly cat Winston, who has consistently showed signs of a well-nurtured hatred for me ever since we first met. He steadily licks his white fluffy fur while maintaining eye contact, as if to say: You’re lying. I’d say you’re better than this but we both know you’re not.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ I say defensively. ‘You were out, I put it away for us to discuss and then I sort of forgot about it.’
‘You forgot about it?’ says Wallace in disbelief, rubbing the close-cut shave of his head. ‘You know how much I’ve been worrying about this for the last few weeks and it’s not something you wanted to text me about?’
‘I just didn’t think it was that big a deal,’ I reply. ‘When did having kids become such a thing in our lives? It’s something we’ve never really discussed.’
‘Padma, I didn’t think it was something we needed to discuss. We’ve been together for ten years. I’ve never hidden the fact that I want a family. When we see our friends, I’ve said how much I want what they have. And these tests recently – what the doctor told me – it really clarified what I want.’
‘Which is?’
‘TO HAVE KIDS!’ he bellows. Wallace doesn’t have a temper, so for his cool, calm, reserved mask to drop, it must be something upsetting him deeply. He presses his hands over his face to steady his breathing and calm himself down. ‘Look,’ he says eventually, ‘I love you, I do. But I’m forty-one. You’re thirty-nine. If we want to have kids, we need to be having them now. And if you don’t want kids, I need to know that.’
‘But what if the answer is no?’ I say, perplexed. I felt our relationship was the engine of our lives. Now, from what he is telling me, it has merely been a temporary structure for somethi ng bigger. ‘What if I don’t want children?’
In what is very unfortunate timing, the scratch of a record player next door indicates only one thing. Usually we are both out of the house on a Sunday at this time, but not today. Loud Trinidadian choral music, courtesy of our elderly neighbour Ettie, floods through the wall, strong and uplifting. The sound of such unity washing through our kitchen feels too much to bear as realisation sets in that we are standing at the peaks of two different mountains. Neither of us willing to climb down.
Then Wallace says something I do not expect.
‘If you don’t want children,’ he says, ‘then I don’t know if we have a future.’ It shocks me, the electricity crackling through his words. I thought this was a discussion, a conversation around compromise, but somehow we’ve arrived at an ultimatum. And in no universe did I expect him not to choose me.
What signs did I miss? Or had Wallace expected me to guess how strongly he felt about children? One thing is evident. He means what he says.
As the music rises to a crescendo, my heart sinks so fast, I barely register the depth. He’s saying that if I don’t want children, we have to break up. The thought of my entire world being snatched away is too much to comprehend, the portion size of heartbreak too big to digest. ‘But it’s not the right time to start trying, Wallace,’ I say, doing my best not to cry. I’m not upset, I’m overwhelmed at how some vague conversation in the past about a friend’s cute kid has accelerated the potential end of our relationship. ‘I’m still looking for a job, and I need money.’
‘It’s never the right time,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘I put this off for so long because I didn’t want to pressure you …’ He pauses, and I know what sits in the trench of that silence: Wallace’s concern about my mental health because of what lay in the past. ‘I was setting up my own practice. Then it was always one thing after another. And for what? Who am I building this for, if not my own children? And I have money. You wouldn’t have to work if you didn’t want to.’
I thought we were building our life together, and that would be enough. But it’s clear that for him, it is not. It makes me wonder how differently we feel about the last ten years, if I’ve been unaware of such a treacherous undercurrent and happy that our relationship mostly works, while he’s been viewing it as a holding space for something bigger. It is unsettling, that he has spent years building a career and is so fiercely independent, and considers both things to be vitally important, yet expects me to give up both, to be financially reliant on him.
‘Can I think about it?’ I say desperately. I want him to reach across the table, to hold my hand. To give me the softness I need, a reassurance that it will be okay. No matter what has happened in the last ten years, including losing my job, especially with my health, I have always been able to reach out and feel his love for me. But now it feels closed off, sealed behind his eyes.
‘I don’t believe there’s anything to think about,’ he says. ‘You either know or you don’t. How can you not know after all this time?’
‘Please. Just give me some time.’ This can’t be happening.
Winston jumps on his lap, and the presence of his warm little cat heart is an instant anchor for Wallace, releasing something tight and unyielding. He holds Winston to his chest and closes his eyes. When he opens them, he says: ‘If I don’t do this now, I don’t think I ever will. I think we should take a break.’
*
When you are between jobs, a lot of your online life is spent going down random tunnels of information. One minute you’re looking up the job requirements for a lighthouse manager on the Orkney Islands; the next you’re learning about sinkholes. The first article I read began with: ‘The best way to survive a sinkhole is by not falling in one.’ It also tells you there are signs – water pooling on the ground, cracks forming in the walls. I imagine many people ignore them, make excuses. The water is an errant hose that wasn’t turned off; the cracks a sign of bad building work. Then – whoosh! – the ground opens up beneath your feet, and the damp earth closes over your mouth.
‘You’re saying your relationship is like a sinkhole?’ my friend Delilah says as she places a beautifully puffed croissant in front of me, as if I’m a toddler in need of placating. She wipes her hands on her apron and takes a seat opposite. Everything in her presence is calm, grounded and rooted to a core that stretches miles below the surface. Her sturdy forearms, bright pinny and no-nonsense manner make me feel safe, as if I can be myself around her. I don’t have to squeeze my true thoughts inside me like a Swiss roll.
After announcing we were on a break, Wallace left for football, while I remained at the kitchen table, unable to move. My phone lay near me, blank, empty, quiet. I kept waiting for a message from him to say it was a mistake. When it was clear it wasn’t forthcoming, I wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep, and perhaps I’d wake up to a different reality, but Ettie’s choir continued with relentless cheer.
We live in the two-bedroomed house Wallace inherited from his formidable grandmother Clementine, who had passed long before I came along, and she and Ettie had grown up together in Trinidad. Asking Ettie to ‘turn it down’ would be tantamount to declaring war and provoking Clementine’s ghost to haunt us forever. On to Delilah’s café then, where I normally spent my Sunday afternoons talking to her about life, food and everything else, in between her serving customers. Her pastries are faultless: glistening Danishes cradling stewed fruit, and fat little sugar-dusted doughnuts. Being Australian, she has incorporated the best of Aussie café culture without succumbing to hipsterism. Her mother is Aboriginal and her art lights up the walls with deep swirls of ochre, green and burnt orange.
‘I’m not saying it’s exactly like a sinkhole, it’s just that I didn’t see it coming,’ I reply. ‘And it’s not as simple as Wallace seems to think, us taking a break. I live there. In his house. And I don’t have a job. Where am I supposed to go while we figure this out? The relationship stuff is bad enough, but all the other things make it so much worse. I feel like my entire life has collapsed with that one bloody letter.’
Beyond the doorway of the café, summer has arrived, with newness and warmth on its breath. It is blue sky and contrails, pink and yellow blooms. It is hummus tubs and Prosecco picnics, dogs sniffing out waterholes. My life collapsing at the start of the most energetic season feels wrong, like something that has wormed its way into the world from a different dimension.
‘The good news,’ says Delilah, handing me salt and pepper shakers to refill, ‘is that baby mathematics being what it is – Wallace knows that it’s better for you guys to go on a break rather than breaking up completely and him finding a new partner to impregnate.’
‘Wow, thanks, Delilah.’
Her afro is halo-shaped against the sun and gives her the appearance of an angel making a proclamation. She smiles and squeezes my arm in apology, but she’s never one to sugar-coat things. ‘The bad news,’ she continues, ‘is that some people think breaks are just postponing the inevitable, which may be true if you know you don’t want children.’
Delilah is a rare friend in that she always meets me where I am at rather than projecting what she would do in that situation. She doesn’t like Wallace much but she knows he has always been there for me, especially when I experienced what we loosely call my ‘health’ issues – a particularly entrenched bout of depression at the start of our relationship.
Part of the reason our bond grew so quickly was her willingness to talk honestly about her life back in Australia and growing up as a foster child. There is a softness and compassion that comes from living skin to skin with a certain kind of darkness, and although it had been years since I had experienced anything approaching a bad spell, and Delilah now had a life she loved, we both lived with the spectre of it every day.
‘What if I’m making a mistake?’ I say, pouring salt into a shaker. ‘If having a kid is the way we stay together, is it really that bad? I mean, sometimes people have children for worse reasons.’
