Frayn - One Life

Further praise for One Life

A love letter to an unborn child that cuts to the core of what it means to be a man or a woman in the modern world

T ONY P ARSONS

An accomplished and startling debut novel

Daily Ireland

The authors own experience of IVF lends authenticity to this charged tale of a career couple whose increasingly desperate attempt to conceive threatens to destroy their relationship

Grazia

Instantly engaging, this is a poignant account of a modern couple their lives free and career-orientated and how things change with the question of commitment and children . The subsequent quest to conceive in the face of infertility is frankly and movingly written

Big Issue

For fans of Maggie OFarrell and Tony Parsons . this book is a must-read

Birmingham Post

First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2006
First published by Pocket Books, 2007
An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright Rebecca Frayn, 2006

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
and 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
Pocket Books & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc.

The seas the home on page 3 The Estate of Robert Lax

The right of Rebecca Frayn to be identified as author of
this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor
222 Grays Inn Road
London WC1X 8HB

www.simonandschuster.co.uk

Simon & Schuster Australia
Sydney

A CIP catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents
are either a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or
locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-0270-8
ISBN-10: 1-4165-0270-X
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85720-375-5

Typeset by Rowland Phototypesetting Ltd,
Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading Berks

For Finn, Jack and Emmy

T he picture was scratched, and the soundtrack intermittently distorting on the bass notes, but all technical shortcomings were overridden by the sheer horror of the image that flickered there. Before us a woman writhed and howled, while between her splayed legs spilled liquid more liquid than Id ever imagined the human body could possibly contain. Convulsing and bellowing, she appeared to have no face, her features engulfed by the howling yawn of mouth. Then something crumpled and purple was at last expelled from her, slippery with blood and mucus, its goblin face also contorted by a high-pitched wail, its repellent appearance quite as alarming as the excruciating torments that had produced it.

As the fluorescent lights fizzed and guttered into life again, Mrs Tanner stood with her hand at the switch, surveying the faces of the class, apparently amused at the dazed hush that had fallen across the room.

Any questions, 3R? she called cheerily, her voice coming from far away on the winds of whistling faintness. Her mumsy smile seemed sinister now, her very womanliness to embody treachery.

Around me my classmates thirty teenage girls contemplating their biological destiny. After all those years of shy allusions and giggling playground whispers, this then was what awaited us.

the seas
the home
from which
i rose
&
homeward
now
the river
goes

Robert Lax

W e might be children again as we sit here side by side, filled with anxious humility before this stranger, this infertility specialist, as he rests his pious gaze upon us. And now that were here, if we have to be here Im rather hoping he can write us out a prescription which could have it all sorted out without further ado. But its increasingly apparent from his melancholy patter, that our quest for a child will be an expensive and, quite possibly, a prolonged one. That the treatment will be invasive and the long-term health consequences unknown. That above all, there are no guarantees that we will have anything to show for all our trouble and expense at the end. Somehow the thing I had spent so much of my adult life fearing, has become the very thing I now sought in vain.

In adversity, we quite naturally try to construct a narrative. To trace the underlying cause and effect that brought us to this sad and sorry place. And often I puzzle over how it was that the problems of infertile couples outlined so frequently and touchingly in news and human-interest stories somehow became our problem.

My work as a photographer has always involved a total immersion in other peoples lives. Perhaps the time had come to give some consideration to my own.

I f this story began in that classroom, and reached crisis point in the doctors consulting room, what of the intervening twenty years? I see now that a perfectly pleasant, if uneventful, childhood was quickly overturned by a fierce adolescent hunger for life to begin. When I reached the age of eighteen, my parents gave me a Nikon camera. And after leaving college, I set off for India with the camera around my neck. Quite randomly and, as it was to turn out, fortuitously, I passed through Bhopal, where I spent some time documenting a family still struggling for survival after the Union Carbide disaster. The pictures I brought home had won a young photographers prize and, intoxicated by the notion of photo-journalism, I set forth on this new career without a backward glance. I wanted to be the next Cartier-Bresson. To take my place beside Salgado.

But, though it pains me to confess it, the passing years have brought little but disappointment. Despite this promising beginning, I have languished almost entirely at the margins and learned to my cost how very hard it is, in a world awash with images, to make your mark.

Yet I remain forever hopeful of a change of fortunes, ambition still burning undimmed. Absorbed in a commission, its as if everything else recedes. Ambient noise falls away. Peripheral vision closes down. On long assignments, I tumble exhausted into sleep, only to find I am struggling to frame my dreams. Sometimes, it is as if a tropical fever is running in my veins. Possessed, on fire, I am helpless in the face of its tyranny. And its tough on relationships. Tough in particular on Johnny.

Johnny. The second great love of my life. It had been mutual friends, Tamsin and Pete, who introduced us, and my first impression was of someone long-limbed and stylishly dishevelled in a manner that for some reason struck me as rather French. But it was the whimsy of his smile that caught the heart, seeming to reveal an irreverence of spirit that continued, even all these years on, to disarm. I quickly learned that he was a man as easygoing as I was earnest. Certainly his job in advertising indicated someone entirely untroubled by the kind of high-minded ambition that so bedevilled me.

Initially our differences in temperament had amused us. Then, when we began living together, they had become a source of conflict for a while. But over time, a mutual if sometimes grudging admiration had grown again between us. I always knew that it was the security of our relationship that freed me to pursue my career with such commitment, and was grateful for the safe port he offered once the fever receded.

Until one day, quite without warning, everything changed.