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She was the first close friend who I felt like I’d really chosen. We weren’t in each other’s lives because of any obligation to the past or convenience of the present. We had no shared history and we had no reason to spend all our time to gether. But we did. Our friendship intensified as all our friends had children – she, like me, was unconvinced about having kids. And she, like me, found herself in a relationship in her early thirties where they weren’t specifically working towards starting a family.
By the time I was thirty-four, Sarah was my only good friend who hadn’t had a baby. Every time there was another pregnancy announcement from a friend, I’d just text the words ‘And another one!’ and she’d know what I meant.
She became the person I spent most of my free time with other than Andy, because she was the only friend who had any free time. She could meet me for a drink without planning it a month in advance. Our friendship made me feel liberated as well as safe. I looked at her life choices with no sympathy or concern for her. If I could admire her decision to remain child-free, I felt encouraged to admire my own. She made me feel normal. As long as I had our friendship, I wasn’t alone and I had reason to believe I was on the right track.
We arranged to meet for dinner in Soho after work on a Friday. The waiter took our drinks order and I asked for our usual – two Dirty Vodka Martinis.
‘Er, not for me,’ she said. ‘A sparkling water, thank you.’ I was ready to make a joke about her uncharacteristic abstinence, which she sensed, so as soon as the waiter left she said: ‘I’m pregnant.’
I didn’t know what to say. I can’t imagine the expression on my face was particularly enthusiastic, but I couldn’t help it – I was shocked and felt an unwarranted but intense sense of betrayal. In a delayed reaction, I stood up and went to her side of the table to hug her, unable to find words of congratulations. I asked what had made her change her mind and she spoke in vagaries about it ‘just being the right time’ and wouldn’t elaborate any further and give me an answer. And I needed an answer. I needed an answer more than anything that night. I needed to know whether she’d had a realization that I hadn’t and, if so, I wanted to know how to get it.
When I woke up the next day, I realized the feeling I was experiencing was not anger or jealousy or bitterness – it was grief. I had no one left. They’d all gone. Of course, they hadn’t really gone, they were still my friends and I still loved them. But huge parts of them had disappeared and there was nothing they could do to change that. Unless I joined them in their spaces, on their schedules, with their families, I would barely see them.
And I started dreaming of another life, one completely removed from all of it. No more children’s birthday parties, no more christenings, no more barbecues in the suburbs. A life I hadn’t ever seriously contemplated before. I started dreaming of what it would be like to start all over again. Because as long as I was here in the only London I knew – middle-class London, corporate London, mid-thirties London, married London – I was in their world. And I knew there was a whole other world out there.
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