The Longing: A bestselling psychological thriller you won’t be able to put down. Jane Asher

now, it works very quickly; think of something nice; your husband? Come on now, don’t be frightened.’ Juliet could see out of the corner of her eye the top of a large syringe being slowly pushed downwards. ‘You’re going to soak up quite a lot of this stuff if I’m not mistaken,’ he added, as he looked down at her legs, which were still wriggling in nervous anticipation. A moment later they were still.

      The atmosphere in the small room was changed to one of quiet but casual intensity now that Juliet’s conscious mind was successfully switched off.

      ‘Her oxygen level’s down. We’ve knocked out her breathing, let’s lighten her up a bit. That’s better. Right, she’s all yours, Anthony.’

      With the help of the nurse, Dr Northfield lifted up Juliet’s legs, slotted her feet into the hanging leather loops and pushed back her gown. He pulled a low stool on castors towards him, positioned it between Juliet’s legs and sat down. He pushed the scanner (the jellied penis of her conversations with Harriet) into her vagina, and watched the screen in front of him while he began the search for ripe follicles. When he found a giveaway dark shape he carefully entered it with a fine tube attached to a pump and switched it on so that it sucked the contents into a test tube, which was passed to the waiting embryologist to examine under the microscope for possible eggs. As Anthony bent back down again to continue the search, the part of his mind not engaged in replaying sections of the previous night’s football on Sky Sports was concentrated on listening for the call that would give him the news he waited for. After a short pause it came:

      ‘Egg!’ The call from Dr Chang was clear and definite, as if he were bidding at an auction in a rather noisy hall.

      ‘Good,’ said Anthony, still peering at his screen.

      And then again: ‘Egg!’

Chapter Six

      He had done it.

      Michael gazed proudly at the evidence of his manhood in the phial in his hand, tucked and zipped himself neatly away and rang for the nurse. While he waited for her to come and collect his potential future offspring, presumably swimming vigorously but vainly in search of a suitable home, he sat back again on the chair, exhausted. As he cleared his head of the fantasies that had eventually produced his orgasm, he found himself staring at the magazines through which he had been riffling in search of excitement. He leant forward to shuffle them into order on the table, turning the topmost one over without thinking, to hide its cover, then smiling to himself as he realised what he was doing. What was he hiding from whom? This room existed for nothing other than its prescribed purpose, and nothing could disguise exactly what he had been up to behind its closed doors. It reminded him of times in his youth when he had hung about the door of the chemist’s, burning with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment at the idea of going in and asking for a packet of condoms, and then amazed at the matter-of-fact reaction of the white-coated man behind the counter when he had finally plucked up the courage to do it. How easy it is for them now, he thought, these young boys. Boxes of them on display in garages; machines in the men’s loos. ‘They don’t know they’re born,’ he muttered to himself out loud. They should try going in and asking for them, like a man. Namby-pambies.’ He smiled again, and sighed.

      He could hear the unsettling but strangely familiar sounds of the clinic corridor outside; crisp uniforms swishing past on sensible feet, the occasional trolley or wheelchair with chatty occupant being ferried to one of the myriad rooms that could be reached from this part of the building. How strange to think that every one of the voices he could hear was coming from a body that had begun life with this desperate search of a sperm for an egg. Would his son be quite the same as they? Would an arranged marriage of semen and ova in a test tube really create a human being as full and perfect as one begun with a spasm of desire into the warmth and softness of its mother’s body?

      He looked up at the window, where the open curtain revealed a freshly washed sky. From his chair he could see only the tops of the trees outside, and if he ignored the noise of brakes, revving engines and slamming doors he could make the street disappear, and imagine himself at home in bed, lying back after making sterile but comforting love to Juliet. An oddly sentimental postmasturbatory tristesse came upon him, and he almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of it all: should he stay a while and mutter sweet nothings to his glassy partner before slipping silently away into the promise of the day’.

      The door opened after a brisk knock and a dark-haired young man popped his head cheerfully round the door. ‘Hello, Mr Evans, I’m Anthony Northfield, one of the gynaes here. I’ve been collecting the eggs from your wife, and you’ll be pleased to hear that we managed to get five, and three of them are in excellent condition. Success achieved at last, I gather?’

      He smiled waggishly as he nodded at the phial in Michael’s hand, as if trying to invoke a bar-room masculine complicity, a knowingness that implied he, too, had laboured desperately for hours over girlie magazines and that as part of the same fraternity they both understood the difficulties and embarrassments involved.

      ‘Yes, indeed,’ muttered Michael, not sure whether to be proud or ashamed in front of this jolly young medic. How fresh and uncrushed he looks, he thought, how unworried and simple and clean. I bet he doesn’t jerk off in quirky side rooms, all on his own. He’ll make his baby by the direct route, no worries, bang bang, a few quick thrusts and sperm’ll be swimming, eggs’ll be cracking, breasts swelling and a firm young belly filling with his easy, boisterous, natural child.

      Michael was to look back on this first meeting with Anthony Northfield with something akin to fascination. From the new perspective given him by those few short horrifying months that followed, he would find it hard to believe that he hadn’t sensed anything. An instinct should have warned him, some male antenna should have picked up impending danger. But it didn’t.

      He handed over the phial and stood up, aware of his own creased trousers and unkempt hair. Funny, he thought, how uncombed hair is attractively tousled when you are twenty-five but depressingly messy when there’s less of it and you’re over forty.

      Juliet could see her Wellington boots were not going to fit any more. Her feet had grown so quickly over the last few minutes that there was no longer any hope of being able to pull them on and she picked one up and threw it at Michael. ‘Come on,’ she heard him say firmly in her ear, ‘all over now.’

      When she opened her eyes, muttering and squirming as her conscious mind dragged itself unwillingly back to the reality of leather couch and bright lights from the strange, time-altered dream, she realised it wasn’t Michael but the anaesthetist who was speaking, and she sat up suddenly in embarrassment.

      ‘Careful now,’ the wildly grey-haired head bent towards her and a scrubbed pink hairy hand was placed over her forearm, ‘take it easy. You are a jumpy one, aren’t you?’

      Anthony’s young, keen face appeared round the door. ‘Five!’ he announced triumphantly. ‘Five! And three of them excellent. I’m really pleased – that’s more than I expected.’

      ‘Oh that’s wonderful!’ Juliet felt enormously proud and relieved. She was wide awake now, and could hardly keep from leaping up in her excitement, but paused for a second as she pushed herself up on one hand to close her eyes and examine the line of little Mabel Lucie Attwell babies that had assembled in an instant in her mind’s eye; three of them plump, bonny and smiling, the other two more thin and serious.

      The nurse, who had been hovering next to her elbow, took her arm and gently helped to ease her off the couch. ‘Come and sit down in the recovery room and I’ll fetch you that cup of tea,’ she said, and guided Juliet out of the brightly lit room and back through the small corridor into the comfort of a small side room furnished with a couple of armchairs and a table piled with magazines. She settled her patient into one of the chairs, covered her with a rather old-looking blue blanket, and gave an encouraging smile before bustling out of the room.

      Juliet wished she’d asked for coffee instead of tea, but didn’t