Always and Forever. Cathy Kelly

he hadn’t said no. It was a start. Shock she was prepared for. Men didn’t like asking for help with directions when they were driving: you’d need to multiply that behaviour by ten to recreate how most men would feel about having to produce sperm in a cup in some anonymous room to make their partner pregnant.

      She tried again. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s a big step and it can be hard on couples. I’ve read all the articles about fertility treatments.’ Going through the mill of fertility treatment had broken up many couples. But it wouldn’t do that to them, Daisy vowed. All she had to do was convince him. ‘We can do it, Alex. Please.’

      There was doubt written all over Alex’s face. But he hadn’t said no.

      ‘All we have to do is go this one time and see what they say,’ she offered. ‘And if you hate the idea, well, we can talk some more…’ With this olive branch extended, he couldn’t say no. ‘OK, we’ll stop talking about it. You need to think.’

      Yes, stop haranguing him. Let him think about it. She changed the subject.

      ‘Hey, want to tell me what else you were doing in London besides staying in a horrible hotel and ferrying rich, stingy people around?’ she teased, thinking of the Tiffany bag. ‘I can see you’ve been shopping. Anything you want to tell me?’

      ‘Daisy…’ he began and stopped.

      ‘Sorry, I ruined the surprise, did I?’ She was contrite. ‘But it’s not my birthday for ages. I thought it was some fun present, although nothing from Tiffany’s could be strictly classed as purely fun. Serious fun!’

      He looked blank.

      ‘The Tiffany bag?’

      Comprehension dawned.

      ‘Was it for something else?’ It couldn’t be an engagement ring? No, of course not. ‘Our anniversary’s not just yet,’ she said quickly.

      Alex shook his head as he left the room. ‘No.’

      He returned with the bag in question and put it in front of her without any fanfare. What did she want an engagement ring for anyway? Daisy thought as she opened the bag and took out the Tiffany box. ‘You buying this is a sign,’ she said happily, taking the white ribbon off. ‘A sign that this is a good time to change our lives.’

      Inside the box was a silver necklace, not unlike the first present he’d bought her years ago, only this one was Tiffany silver and exquisitely pretty.

      It was indeed a sign, Daisy realised. A sign that their love could endure no matter what. Alex needed time to think about fertility treatment and then he’d come round to her way of thinking. Having a family was the most natural thing in the world. It was a no-brainer, as Alex would say.

      The first present he’d ever given her, a silvery necklace with a heart on it, was kept in her treasures box, along with the black satin trousers she’d been wearing the first time they’d met.

      The necklace had tarnished black with age because it was only a cheap thing, but she loved it and wished she could still wear it, although it turned her neck an alarming shade of green. The matching bra and knickers she’d been wearing the first time they made love were there too. Daisy never told Alex she still had them; he’d have thought it was a bit silly, keeping such mementoes many years later.

      The satin drainpipe trousers made her cringe now when she looked at them. In theory, satin trousers were sleek, narrow and made for people with hips like a greyhound’s. At the time, an unbelievable fourteen years ago, Daisy was definitely not a greyhound sort of girl.

      The others on the fashion design course wore edgy, frayed black things they’d customised themselves, and were instantly recognisable as design students on the sprawling campus. Daisy alone never wore her own stuff. This was partly because she’d realised, with much misery, that she wasn’t much good at clothes designing. She lived for Vogue, understood bias cuts as if she’d learned at Schiaparelli’s knee, and could draw like an angel. But she couldn’t design for peanuts.

      Besides, the sort of clothes she loved were garments made for tall, willowy brunettes with arrogant eyes and cheekbones like razor blades. Rounded girls with heavy legs and a bust straight out of the wench department in central casting looked better in all black, even black satin trousers topped with a long-line silk cardigan.

      Of course, she hadn’t thought she’d looked bad then. She’d thought the black satin disguised the fat bits and elongated her shape so she looked quite good, although hardly supermodel material. And Alex had thought so too, unlike some of the guys in college.

      It was amazing the way being a big girl made you invisible. It should have been the other way round – if you were big, there was more of you and people couldn’t avoid you. But they did. They averted their eyes like medieval peasants must have at the sight of lepers, yelling ‘unclean’.

      Alex Kenny, long, lean, dark-eyed and with biceps of steel from being uncrowned king of the rowing club, didn’t avert his eyes.

      ‘You don’t wear mad stuff like the other design nuts,’ he said in amusement that first time they’d met. ‘You look normal.’ And he’d reached out and lazily twirled a tassel of her rose-pink vintage silk scarf, making Daisy turn exactly the same shade of pink.

      They’d been sitting in the Shaman’s Armchair, the labyrinthine off-campus pub favoured by the rowing boys. Jules and Fay, classmates of Daisy’s, were keen on some of the Lazer rowing team and an impromptu outing to the pub had been organised for one Saturday after a race. Well, it was supposed to be impromptu but Daisy had seen first-hand how long Jules and Fay had taken to get ready. The just-thrown-together look took an awful lot of time to achieve.

      Daisy hadn’t done much, make-up wise, but had gone to her usual enormous effort to look thin. Looking thin was her mission in life although she knew that she could never really manage it.

      As Jules and Fay flirted happily in the pub, Daisy sat in a corner nursing her half-pint. She was stony-broke again. Her grant was almost gone and the pizza restaurant near the flat she shared with the girls didn’t need her for late night shifts. She watched the flirting ritual, thinking how nice it would be to be like Jules and Fay, confident and good with men. She was good with men if she was asking them if they wanted their pizza with extra mozzarella, but otherwise, forget it. And then Alex arrived, took in the seating arrangements, and very definitely sat down beside her. Alex Kenny, a man so fine that even Jules and Fay had never thought of setting their cap at him.

      ‘Did you make this?’ Alex asked, gesturing at her poncho, also black but with tiny jet beads dotting the hem.

      Daisy laughed. ‘I’m as good at knitting as I am at rowing,’ she said. ‘But I sewed the beads on.’

      ‘Did you?’ He seemed astonished by this and pulled a chunk of poncho closer for further examination.

      Daisy felt her heart flutter wildly at this intimacy.

      ‘But there’s millions of them,’ Alex added. ‘You’d be sewing for ever.’

      ‘Sewing is a part of the whole designing clothes thing,’ she informed him gravely.

      Alex’s eyes – coffee brown or melting chocolate, Daisy couldn’t be sure – twinkled. ‘Are you making fun of me, Madame Designer? Do you think I’m a big hick from the rowing team who’s on a sports scholarship and has an IQ in double digits?’

      ‘Double digits?’ she asked in mock astonishment. And then ruined it by saying, ‘Sorry, only joking…’ in case she’d upset him.

      But Alex only grinned more broadly and wanted to know how long it would take to sew on that many beads.

      ‘I do it when I’m watching telly,’ Daisy explained.

      ‘How can you watch and sew? No,’ he added, ‘don’t tell me. It’s like how do you get to Carnegie Hall – practise.’

      ‘Like rowing,’ Daisy added,