Hooked Up: Book 3 (22 page)

This woman was a real nut-job. If this were a movie, I thought, I’d be laughing by this point. “Why don’t you go to a sperm bank, Laura?”

“Ugh, that’s disgusting. Some smelly old sperm from someone I don’t know?”

“Don’t you have a handsome gay friend who could help you out?”

“I’m not a fag-hag. I don’t go round with poofs, and besides, do you think I want my baby to have homo genes in his DNA?”

“Well, what about a one-night stand with some gorgeous guy?” I suggested.

“I want brains as well as beauty. I want it
all
for my baby.”

I proposed an idea that I was sure she’d shut down. I went ahead and said it anyway, “There are lots of clever, handsome men. You can afford it: advertise. You could even do it on eBay. I’m sure Alexandre would pay for any costs involved. Or I can help out.”

“You think I’d degrade myself like that, Pearl? Purr . . . lease.”

“There must be a better way, Laura—a way that doesn’t involve Alexandre doing something against his will.”

“Pearl, I think you’ve forgotten something key here. I hold the cards. I have the power. I want Alexandre’s sperm in that little test tube—and nobody else’s—and if I don’t get it I might just be inclined to make a very big scene!”

“Don’t do that, Laura! You’ll break his heart if you . . . you know . . . say anything.”

“What about
me?
What about my bloody broken heart! I look at myself in the mirror and I see a fuck-off, babelicious blonde looking bloody good for her age. Then I see you with your big forty-year-old arse and wonder . . . what the fuck does he see in her?”

Big ass?
I had to tread carefully here. I couldn’t let this woman get to me. I forced myself to remain calm and sucked in another deep breath.
Breathe in, breathe out.
“We’re both into dogs, Laura . . . things like that. We have a connection. A bond.”

“Look, Pearl, I think I’m being bloody magnanimous as it is. I’m letting you keep Alexandre. All I’m asking for is his bloody semen!”

I was speechless. I couldn’t think of how to reply.

She carried on in her posh drawl, “You talk to him. Tell him that if he doesn’t agree—in writing by the way—to come to the clinic with me, then I’ll be perfectly happy to spill the beans about ‘you know who,’ and what that ‘you know who’ did.”

“Where is the ‘you know what,’ Laura?”

“The ‘you know what’ is in a safety deposit box in a fuck-off vault in one of London’s most protected banks, so don’t even think about fucking with me.”

I tried to sound composed. “I’m sure you wouldn’t do anything rash, Laura.”

“I always hated that silly cow anyway. To be honest, she’s got it coming to her. What kind of a person would do what she did? Not the topping off part but abandoning her children.”

I hated to say it, but Laura did have a point. I had never met Alexandre’s mother but she didn’t sound like the most stable of people. Nor the most loyal.

But I said, “We mustn’t judge her. And whatever
we
might think, Alexandre loves her.”

“Anyway, you need to have a chat with him and let him know where I stand. I’m thirty-three years old and I want that baby A.S.A.P. I’ve already started the hormone therapy and I want that French fuck’s sperm in that test tube within the next few weeks.”

“Laura, if you think he’s a ‘French fuck’ why do you want his baby in the first place?”

“Because he happens to be the most intelligent person I know. He’s a genius, Pearl. Do you appreciate how clever he is? His mind is like a quantum theory computer. He is also stunningly handsome with a perfect, well-proportioned body. With his brains and his beauty and my brains and my beauty we’ll produce a wonder child.”

She sounded like the baddie in one of those mad, science fiction movies. “And then what?” I asked.

“I get his sperm, wait until I have the actual baby . . . just in case. Might even have some extra frozen for the future, just for good measure. I’ll also want a nice trust set up for the child–several million’s worth . . .
several
million, and then he can have everything in that vault and we’ll never speak of the subject again.”

“What about the child? You’ll want it to have a father, surely? Is Alexandre expected to play daddy?”

“I hadn’t thought that part through, yet. I have to ponder what’s ‘best for baby.’ Now
you’re
pregnant, it really puts a spanner in the works.”

“What about James?” I asked, half imagining him lying dead somewhere, poisoned by her.

“I was getting geared up to divorce him but he could come in handy. Good point, Pearl. I need to mull all that side of things over. I really had imagined myself back with Alex until you and your fat arse got in the way. I’m sure he’ll get bored with you, eventually. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

I wanted to scream and shout at her but I also didn’t want to rock us both out of the very wobbly boat we were in—we could capsize and end up drowning, the pair of us.

“What if the IVF doesn’t work, Laura? There’s only a fifteen percent success rate, you know.”

Silence.

Then she replied chirpily, “I feel very confident. Oh yes, and Alex will need to do his bit, too. A multivitamin. He’ll need to stop drinking, no soy products, eat organic, no food from plastic containers. The positive thing about you being pregnant, Pearl, is that it’s proof that his semen is working just fine. I mean, it must be extra powerful to have got you, a forty-year-old, pregnant. I’ll give him a list about the do’s and don’ts when we speak later. Well, bye then. Nice chatting. Tell Alex to call me A.S.A.P.”

“I will,” I answered, my blood boiling. I hung up.
What a basket case.
She really must have fallen hard on her head in that accident.

AS SOON AS I got home, I searched for Alexandre. He was in his study talking on the phone. Deadly serious. He shot me a “do-not-interrupt” glance. Normally, I would have slipped away and come back later, but I hovered. He was wearing a hand-tailored, charcoal gray suit and looked extremely dapper. Actually, the most handsome man I had ever seen in my life.

“No, I didn’t say that. What I said was we need to invest another twenty million. You know how these things are? If you want quality, you have to pay for it, and what we need is . . . what we need . . . look, what we mustn’t skimp on is talent. If that’s what his fee is, then that’s simply what we have to pay. Green-light that, Dave, yes, we have to. She said, what? That’s bullshit. There’s room out there for games that don’t involve shooting people. You see, Dave, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what I liked about it. It has an epic heart-tugging story, glorious environments, kind of a sweet light magic and dark magic and a simply stunning soundtrack.”

I observed my fiancé as his face revealed a gamut of emotions between smiles, frowns and furious brow creasing, animated by this conversation that was obviously about the next big video game. I had gathered that their budgets were bigger than blockbuster movies.

Alexandre loosened his tie. “That’s right. What consumers want are handhelds that run Android so they can have a nice portable emulator. Okay, Dave. Speak to them and get back to me in the next few hours. Thanks.”

“Sorry to bother you, baby.” I lingered at the doorway.

“You never bother me, chérie; I’m always glad to see you. Come here and sit on my lap—just give me a couple more minutes, I need to write something down before I forget.”

But I couldn’t hold it in. His wheeling and dealing may have been important but nothing as life-changing as being, or not being, a father. I blurted out, “Laura called me. We need to do something. She’s on the warpath, still.”
The sperm warpath.

He closed his eyes as if that would wipe her from his mind. “I keep hoping she’ll give up and go away.”

“Not a chance. But things are looking up a little,” I said hopefully as I settled on his knee.

He put his arms around my waist and breathed in the scent of my hair. “What do you mean?”

“She’s given up on wanting you yourself, although she still wants part of you.”

He shook his head. “She’s such a nutter. What did she say?”

“She wants you to go to the IVF clinic with her.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Well at least she’s stopped harping on about marriage with you and living happily ever after.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“I told her I was pregnant.”

He furrowed his temple. “Was that wise? She’s so off the rails she’s capable of anything. I really want her to keep away from you, Pearl . . . she could get consumed by jealousy.”

“Strangely enough, I think it’s had the opposite effect, it seems to have cooled her down. She’s delighted your semen is so potent. She says she’s not a home wrecker.”

“She’s a wrecker, period.”

I nuzzled into his embrace and squeeze my arms around his broad chest. “Maybe you should—”

“No, Pearl.”

“I’ve got
you
, that’s all that counts.”

“I am not giving into her. She is
not
having my child.”

“She says if she doesn’t get what she wants: your semen in a test tube, plus several million, she’ll make a scene.”

“She can have the money—I’ll pay her off, but she’s not getting her way.”

“She’s determined. Nobody else’s sperm will do. She wants yours and yours alone. She thinks you’re a genius, wants a wonder child.”

“I can’t believe how insane she’s being. This is not the Laura I once knew.”

“I know, it sounds like some twisted black comedy or something, it’s so far-fetched, so larger than life, I keep pinching myself to make sure I’m not floating about in one of my nightmares again.”

He took off his jacket and threw it on his desk. “She’s totally out to lunch, she’s morphed into a fucking lunatic.”

“She wants you to call her tonight. Oh yes, and she reminded me about the evidence being in the bank vault.”

He loosened his tie some more as if the Laura news was making him feel strangled. “You didn’t discuss that over the phone, did you? She could have been recording it.”

I ran my fingers through his dark hair. It felt soft and comforting in the midst of the tangle of mess we were in. “We sort of spoke in code. Your mother was just referred to as ‘she’ and the evidence, ‘you know what.’ Something tells me Laura’s enjoying the drama of it all. The way she was speaking made me feel that if it came to the crunch, she wouldn’t actually go through with her threat. I think she might just be playing power games.”

“Too much of a risk to take, though. I’m too nervous about this to call her bluff.”

“Still no word from James?”

“No, still hasn’t returned my calls.”

I grimaced. “You don’t think she’d be capable of murder, do you?”

“No. But then again, this new persona of Laura’s is a total shock to me. I don’t know who she is anymore.”

“You really think she suffered brain damage in the fall?”

“Either that, or some mind-altering medication she’s on. Maybe she’s taking something for the pain, who knows? But she’s not being rational, anyway.”

“What if you humored her? Pretended you agreed? But give her someone else’s sperm. Get the teeth and hip parts back and she’ll be pregnant with an anonymous donor, thinking it’s you. You’ll still have to pay her the ‘settlement,’ but at least it won’t be your child she’s carrying.”

“I’d have to sign legal documents, though, wouldn’t I? And we’d have to be in cahoots with the doctors. Doctors are hard to bribe or they could lose their license to practice.”

“Not necessarily. If you can get the exact same container they give you, or bring in your fake sample in a sanitized container and swap it over, who’s to know?”

“Laura’s too savvy. She’ll have probably thought of that, would probably want me to masturbate into the container in front of her.”

“Maybe, but you could try.”

“How long does sperm live?”

“A few hours, I think. You could pay someone who looks like you to come to the clinic with you. Get it fresh.”

He rubbed his eyes. “Listen to us. This conversation is crazy! This whole situation is fucking surreal.”

“We have to come up with some plan, though.”

“What about our last idea? The fake passport idea . . . paying an actress to go to the bank?”

“That’s riskier. It’s breaking the law. Whereas with this idea we’d get a slap on the wrist, not slung in jail.”

“True.”

“Could we trust her to keep to her side of the bargain, though?”

“The way she’s been behaving? I doubt it.”

A question had been on my lips for a long time. “Just out of curiosity, what
was
it about Laura that you loved? Apart from her physical beauty? Before, the accident, I mean.”

“Funny you should ask that. I’ve been mulling that one over myself recently. You know, I think I was . . . I don’t know.”

“What?”

“I was very young. She was my first serious girlfriend. I’d always been with older women: friends of my sister’s.”

“Prostitutes?” I asked.

“Sex workers, yes. They were high class hookers, if you like. Not the sort that lurked in an alley somewhere. Not at all. These girls were more like consorts—dined out with politicians and extremely wealthy, older men. They were vetted, tested regularly. Always impeccably dressed, often very educated, too. They knew all sorts, about good food, fine wines, current affairs and could really hold an intelligent conversation—it was part of their job. That was the kind of work Sophie did. Anyway, I had relationships primarily with them simply because they were friends of my sister’s. I never paid for sex, obviously.”