21 Miles. Jessica Hepburn

They suggest I try alternative treatments I’ve never heard of, such as Qigong, tapping and the Peruvian maca root. In one email someone writes to me about a powerful man of God from Uganda called Brother Ronnie Makabai, who prays for infertile couples and women who are past childbearing age and then they miraculously give birth (the email adds in parenthesis, ‘providing their husbands are still alive’). They share heart-lifting stories involving egg donation and adoption. And about women who have got pregnant in their mid-forties with their own eggs – one woman tells me she is forty-five and has three children under the age of five, all of whom were conceived naturally, and none of them twins. Several people even offer to be a surrogate for me. Above all everyone urges me not to give up hope – that some way, somehow, I can and must become a mother.

      The concern and encouragement from so many people who have never even met me but have taken the time and trouble to write is humbling. But at the same time, as more and more messages pour in, I feel myself becoming increasingly anxious. I’d thought I’d already done everything I could to become a mother. I’ve been to nearly a dozen clinics and had every test known to woman and doctor in a bid to work out what’s wrong. Besides multiple rounds of IVF, I’ve tried numerous complementary therapies including acupuncture and Chinese herbs. I’ve even been on an intense therapeutic process to release my ‘inner child’ in the hope that it would help me to conceive. Yet now I’m wondering if I’ve tried hard enough. Maybe I haven’t tried everything. The world still believes I can be a mother, even if I’m not sure I can myself. And nobody, not a single person, writes to me and says: ‘You’re forty-three, go and do something big and have a fulfilling life without children instead.’

      –––––

      One evening, in the aftermath of the article, I’m in the kitchen making myself a cup of tea. As I wait for the kettle to do its thing I think back over the last few bewildering weeks. I feel like I’m a rope in a tug of war: pulling me from one end is motherhood, the thing I’ve always wanted but had almost given up believing I could have, and on the other end an alternative future doing something big and finding meaning in motherlessness. I feel taut with fear at giving either one of them the advantage.

      I open the cupboard to get out a teabag and spot a large bar of Green & Black’s white chocolate that I bought the other day when I was feeling chocolatey, but had then foregone when I got home for a large packet of salt and vinegar Kettle Chips instead. I know the chocolate is unlikely to stand any chance of survival if I open it, but I did weigh myself yesterday and I’d lost two pounds last week so I decide to take the risk. I head into the sitting room with my cup of tea and the chocolate, sit down on the sofa and open my laptop. A new message pops into my inbox:

      Hello Jessica

      My wife read your article and wanted to know whether she could ask you where you got the red dress that you were wearing. She said it looked really amazing and wondered if she could be cheeky and ask. She doesn’t have an email account so she asked if I’d mail you.

      Hope all goes well for you.

      Richard

      See what I mean – all sorts of nice messages – and at least it’s not another avenue that I need to explore. I don’t need any more avenues; I need a road closure. I stare at the screen, vaguely wondering what sort of woman would not have an email account and ask her husband to write to a stranger about their dress. Still, I don’t want to be rude, so I take a sip of tea and a square of chocolate and hit reply. It’s only then that I notice that my correspondent calls himself Robinson Crusoe and his email address is prefixed ‘desertislanddick’. Thankfully, he didn’t mention my legs.

      Can Rolls, Can’t Hepburn

      As I step off the plane, I feel that rush of heat that denotes holidays and happiness. But this is different. I’m on my own. I have no idea where I’m going. I’ve got goggles.

      I take out my mobile phone and turn off airplane mode and Movistar tinkles ‘hello’. Apparently a couple of other people who are coming on the swimming tour are on the same flight as me. We’ve arranged to text when we arrive so we can travel together. There is no international airport on Formentera so we’ve had to fly to Ibiza, from where we’re getting a ferry.

      Texts exchanged, we convene by the airport taxi rank. There are three people in addition to me. A tall couple, Mark and Teresa, and a shorter stocky guy called Andy. They are all younger than me. But they’re polite: they don’t ask my age, nor whether I’m married and have children, which is such a relief because I hate that middle-age-conversation-stopper question. They do, however, ask me why I’ve come.

      ‘What do you want to do that for?’ Andy scoffs.

      ‘Don’t you? I thought that was why we were all here.’

      ‘Hell no,’ he says. ‘I’ve come to lie on the beach. Do as little swimming as possible.’

      ‘Oh,’ I reply, taking in this news as I turn to the couple.

      Teresa shakes her head: ‘Me neither, it’s much too hard, but Mark is planning to do a solo at some point. Maybe this summer if his shoulder’s up to it.’

      Mark explains he had an operation on it a few months ago and will be taking things easy this week too. I’m not sure whether these revelations are good news for me or not. After all, I came here on business. Channel business. These people seem to think it’s a holiday.

      –––––

      As we pull into the harbour on Formentera, I can see a man standing on the jetty. This, I deduce, must be John. He looks the way he speaks: English, jovial, outdoorsy.

      ‘Hello, chaps,’ he booms. ‘You made it! Good job!’

      He smiles broadly and claps each of us on the back. He seems to know the others well. They call him not by his first name but by his initials, JCR, the J standing for John and the CR for his surname, Coningham-Rolls. It feels a bit familiar referring to him as an acronym so I decide that I will carry on calling him John.

      John throws our things in the boot of his four-by-four and we set off. We’re staying in a house on the edge of the beach a little way up the coast. It sits at the end of an unmarked gravel track, one of three whitewashed stone properties that were built in the 1950s by three different English couples. The middle one belonged to John’s grandparents and is called Can Rolls, which translates from the Spanish into ‘House of the Rolls’. It makes me think of him coming from a family of the finest double-barrelled bakers.

      The house has hardly been touched since it was built; it has no electricity and the water is heated by solar power. The open terrace at the front drops down into the sand and overlooks the most breathtakingly beautiful bay. I later learn that the spot is in fact so idyllic that the Spanish government has decided to consecrate it as a natural heritage site and has stipulated that all three houses will need to be pulled down in thirty years’ time in order to reclaim the area for nature. The properties are so eco-friendly and sympathetic to the landscape, I can’t help feeling that the government might be better placed directing its bulldozers towards the high-rises of Magaluf.

      It’s already past seven in the evening when we arrive. Drinks and canapés on the terrace pre-supper are mooted. But my three travelling companions decide to take a dip in the sea first. They ask me if I’d like to come too but I politely decline, saying that I’m going to unpack. I don’t say what I’m really thinking, which is: ‘Why don’t we just get on with the drinks and canapés?’

      From the window of my room, which looks out over the bay, I observe them as they stroll down to the sea, dive in and swim out to a rock that is jutting out of the water a little way away from the shore. Once there, they climb onto it and sit chatting in the setting sun. I watch in a kind of awe, realising that these people are not of my species. They are clearly at home in the sea, their strokes strong and lithe. They are the sort of people who don’t question taking a dip before supper. They don’t think about the salt on their skin or the fact that they’ll mess up their