Inconceivable Read Online Free PDF Page A

lessons about menstruation when they are eleven. I mean, we were never told anything about it when I was at school. I’ll bet they still gloss over it, and as you get older you don’t like to ask. I mean obviously I know the basics, but the details you have to pick up off the tampon ads on the telly and it’s most confusing. They use all this code language and imagery like ‘protection’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘all-over freshness’ and there’s wings involved and the blood’s blue and frankly you just don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on at all.

Dear Penny,
    F elt better today, physically, anyway. Mentally I’m still feeling low. The brutal truth is that it is now sixty-one periods since Sam and I started trying for a baby. That’s five years and one month. What’s more, when I come to think about it, prior to that we weren’t exactly being careful. In fact we had at least a year of relying on withdrawal. I wanted to get preg even then and I remember thinking that if one night he didn’t get it out in time I wouldn’t mind a bit. I know now that he might as well have left it in until Christmas, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.
    Because, basically, I have to face facts. I am Sad. I’m Barren. My womb is a prune.
    There, I’ve said it. I don’t care, it’s how I feel. What’s the point of this book if I can’t be honest? Excuse me, Penny, got to get a tissue.
    I’ve been crying, Penny, sorry. I tried reminding myself about the homeless and the starving people in Africa, but it didn’t work. Anyway, I’m back now. Don’t worry, I’m not about to collapse or have a breakdown or anything, it’s just that sometimes I get a bit overwhelmed, that’s all.
    And, yes, I
    that a lot of women wait a lot longer than five years and a month (actually six years and one month in my case, if you count the careless year) and then all of a sudden they start spraying sprogs about the place like a fish spawning. I’ve heard all the stories. Couples who gave up hope only to have eight kids in a week!
    ‘I know someone who waited decades!’ people say.
    ‘My cousin had actually been
    dead for three years when she had her first. Dead of old age ! She was a shrivelled, sundried-tomato-like, cadaverous old corpse and what’s more her husband had no testicles, having lost them in the Crimean War. Yet once they’d had one they couldn’t stop. Ended up with enough for a football and a netball team plus a crowd of supporters!!’
    I’ve heard them all.
    Mum says that she’s sure it’s all in the mind
    . Everybody says that. She says I concentrate too much on my career . Everybody says that too. Besides which, career? Ha! Ha ha HA! One thing I do not have is a career. I am not a theatrical agent, I am a theatrical agent’s assistant. Negotiating residual repeat fees for cable broadcasts of ancient episodes of Emmerdale Farm ( when it was still called Emmerdale Farm) is not what I call a career.
    Melinda says I’ve got to relax
    . Everybody says that as well! In fact, that is the thing that everybody says most. They say, ‘Relax, the thing to do is put it out of your mind and then it will happen.’ It is simply not possible to bloody well relax with your body clock ticking away in your ear at five million decibels, and your eggs getting more dry and ancient by the day.
    Melinda and George brought Cuthbert round today, which was nice. No, really it was, I’m not so bloody sad that I can’t enjoy my friends and their babies. Sam still refers to Cuthbert as Scrotum, which is ridiculous because he’s beautiful. I held him for a while and just wanted to eat him. It’s pathetic, I hate myself, but all the time I was saying how lovely he was, all I could think was, ‘Wish I had one.’

Dear Sam,
    S crotum may have improved slightly, difficult to say. I mean he no longer makes me want to hide behind the sofa like he was a monster from Doctor Who , but then that may just be because I’m getting used to