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baby?’
    ‘Us? How?’
    ‘We could try to adopt,’ Linsey explained, ‘but they won’t accept applications from same-sex couples.’
    Amy giggled as she took another sip of wine. ‘So it looks like we’ll have to steal one. I think that’s against the law too.’
    Linsey had prepared for this moment. ‘There’s another way.’ Amy was shocked. ‘No, Amy. Not that. We can arrange for artificial insemination. It does work. That’s how Margaret and Kris conceived.’ She looked at the other woman, trying to gauge her reaction. ‘What do you say?’
    Amy was dumbfounded. Surprised to discover that she wasn’t averse to the idea; she just needed time for the thought to grow.
    ‘This is a bit sudden, isn’t it, Linny?’ She held up her glass. ‘Another drink please, darling: I need to think.’
    The women sat in silence, each following her own train of thought. It was several days before Linsey got her answer. All that time, Amy was preoccupied, spending much of her spare time on the verandah or in the music room, looking out onto the garden. Meanwhile, Linsey prowled and fretted, tidied and swept, dusted and polished, weeded and pruned, until she was quite exhausted. She knew better than to harass Amy, who, as always, moved at her own unhurried pace.
    Amy had always liked children. Babies smiled and cooed at her and her nephews and nieces jostled for her attention. She absently stroked her stomach. Imagined it stretched, rounded. Imagined her breasts dripping milk. She sat on the verandah and tasted the late summer, the teeming life of the sunlit garden: lush green lawns, full-blown roses, fragrant lavender and slow, fat, murmurous honey bees. Slightly intoxicated by sensory excess, she felt her body soften in welcome to her imaginary child. Cupping her breasts in her hands, she resolved to speak to Linsey that night.
    A moment later she stiffened in dismay, jolted from her reverie by a sudden thought. What if Linsey wanted to carry the child? She had as much right. Would she, Amy, feel the same way if she were not to be the birth mother? She wasn’t sure that she would. If they were to have a child, it had to be a child of her body, the body she knew was ripe and waiting.
    That night, over dinner, she asked the question. ‘Linny, if we have this child, who’d be the birth mother?’ A small knot of panic formed in Amy’s throat, and her words had to push their way out through constricted airways.
    On this matter, Linsey had never had any doubt. ‘You, of course, darling. We want our baby to be as beautiful and talented as we can make her.’ She looked at the other woman. ‘Is that what you want? I mean, if you decide you don’t . . .’
    Amy felt the tension drain from her body. ‘A baby would be wonderful,’ she replied. ‘Really, I want to carry the baby, Linny. The answer is yes . . .’
    Linsey left her place and knelt beside Amy’s chair, hugging her tearfully. ‘Just leave the details to me. Darling, darling Amy. I’m so happy.’ And she even giggled a little. ‘Listen, I have a plan.’
    Amy settled back to listen. Linsey was a very good planner.
    ‘We’ll advertise in Vox Discipuli ,’ Linsey told her. ‘Offer money. That should find the target market.’
    Target market. Odd language , Amy thought briefly.
    Linsey would always look back on the period of Amy’s pregnancy as the happiest of their lives together. After a passing nod to morning sickness, Amy bloomed. Her skin glowed, her dimple deepened and her hair shone. As her belly rounded, she lay on the sun-lounge, sleepy-eyed and full of promise, with a kind of tawny, feline grace that reminded Linsey of the great cats of Africa.
    ‘But without the claws.’ She laughed as she stroked the burgeoning belly. And Amy laughed with her. At the time, neither of them understood the ferocity at the heart of a mother’s love.
    Linsey fussed, of course. And Amy cooperated amiably with the exercise and diet regime that Linsey devised from