But I also know that the events of my own story are shocking. The day my ex-wife told me she was ending our three-year marriage, she left our home and the hospital in London where we were having fertility treatment. She withdrew her consent to this treatment and it was terminated immediately. I was two weeks away from our transfer date. For those new to IVF, that means I was medicated for months, taking hormones in bathrooms across the city and once, memorably, in the front seat of my car outside a gig in Brixton (no one batted an eyelid ). I had fresh and faded bruises – marks – on my stomach from hip bone to hip bone. I’d had several internal exams from a series of mostly polite gynecologists, to the point where I no longer blushed to have a stranger’s head and shoulders between my raised knees. Catherine Riley (pictured) describes the harrowing experience of her ex-wife leaving her and ending her IVF treatment two weeks before the embryo transfer I was grateful for all this, as then free from our amazing NHS: a testament to how far we would go in recognizing the equal rights of LGBTQIA+ people in family life. And I looked forward, desperately, to the date all that hard work was leading up to: the introduction into my 39-year-old body of the magical collection of cells that had been created in a lab — a living embryo, tiny but so full of potential. My first — and only — fetus. The representation of my hopes and dreams. Looking back, of course the signs were there. He was missing scans and dates, making excuses that I accepted because they didn’t bother my delusion that we were in this together. We had argued and moved away. But I would put it down to my hormones: they were all over the place. Things would be different when the treatment ended and I was finally pregnant. Bringing a child to the end and then raising them would be the easy part. It’s fair to say I was very delusional. But you are when you really want something. You exclude doubts, worries, inconsistencies. The big big lies. You focus on the goal and try to make it happen. You think hard work pays off and you commit. And when it gets harder and harder, you redouble your efforts. You become lonely. Stop listening too. The very day we broke up, she withdrew her consent It’s never just one person’s fault. I wrote my novel because I wanted to explore that moment of collapse. I was interested in the lies people tell each other and themselves, about who they are and what they do. I wanted to show that a person’s “truth” is always subjective: there is never a definitive version of a moment, a relationship, a life. You never know who is telling the truth about what goes on in the private confines of a marriage. The novel is not only about divorce. It’s about love. The story hovers in a liminal space between mad love and desperate rage as J’s protagonist tries to process their feelings for their departed wife. Almost all of us will have been through a breakup, and no matter how much we may try to act nice, there is always a point where love turns to hate, if only for a little while. I experienced it when my ex-wife called me later that day to tell me what she had done. My memory of that call is hazy now, becoming mercifully opaque with the passage of time. Gay marriage was still very young and it was unclear who ‘owned’ Catherine’s fetus after her ex-wife’s consent to parent it was withdrawn I think, wrongly, that I thought he was joking. I probably laughed. I can remember panicking, miserable panicking. I know the phone call was short, and it was short, and that it ended with me crying, alone, in our house. I realized that no one could help me, no one knew what to do. I told friends and then my family and they were all shocked. Shocked. Everyone knew what it meant. Another ending, above my marriage. A body blow. It seems unbelievable now, but after he called that day, my ex-wife and I never spoke about it again. He simply refused any further discussion and so I was left to pick up the pieces on my own. For over a week, we didn’t see each other and communicated only through short, hurtful text messages and emails. During this time, I relied on the love and patience of friends who took turns staying with me and my family who checked in every day. My sister, a doctor, gave advice on how I could take better care of my body as the hormones I pumped into it were draining. I had to sleep well, eat well, drink a lot of water… ridiculous instructions under the circumstances, advice that was impossible to take. After those first few days, I saw my ex-wife only once: a brief, anguished meeting in the place that was once our home. Of course it was surreal: we described how the next weeks and months might go, where we would both stay, what we would both do. But not a word of what he had done. Like I said, incredible. But that was the end. I guess there was nothing else to say. Catherine’s novel is not only about divorce. It’s about love. The story hovers in a liminal space between crazy love and desperate rage as J’s protagonist tries to explore their feelings for their departed wife At the fertility clinic, however, they were unsure of the next steps. Gay marriage was still very new, and it was not clear who “owned” my fetus when my ex-wife’s consent to parent it had been withdrawn. A family friend spoke with a legal expert who expressed excitement about the possible precedent of my situation. No doubt, by now, six years later, other people’s traumas will have helped iron out these legislative wrinkles. In the end I had to speak to the HFEA, the UK fertility regulator, and after a pause I was given the green light to try again with the embryo still on ice at the clinic. It was decided that it was “mine” after all: my egg, donor sperm. I hadn’t planned on being a single parent, but there was never any doubt that I wouldn’t try to see the process through. It was an easy choice to decide to do it all over again. My fertility team told me to wait, to let my body recover from the first prep cycle before starting again. They were stressed that I didn’t do anything while I was ‘stressed’. I was in the middle of a divorce, trying to get pregnant on my own and had no idea what I was doing. Now, on the eve of 40, I couldn’t wait until I was stress free. It takes some time for your body to recover after IVF. So even though I was desperate to start, it was five months before I started my drug regime again. Then another seven weeks of building up hormones in my body, daily supplements, good nutrition and gentle exercise. I was surprised to realize that the process, doing it myself, felt the same — I was going it alone the first time. I thought about asking someone to come with me to the hospital for the transport. It’s a lot like getting a pap smear—instead of taking cells out of your body, they put them in—but I decided I didn’t feel like sharing that experience with a friend. They weren’t sure who my fetus “belonged to”. Instead, I made up an elaborate story in my head in case anyone asked me why I was there alone: how I always wanted to be a single parent, my dream of raising a child alone. Of course, no one asked. It was strangely subdued at the end. A sterile procedure, finished in minutes. I went to dinner with friends that night and tried to avoid questions about how I was doing, what I was doing. I didn’t tell many people about my plan. I wanted to keep my secret close. I dared to think ahead to announce the good news below. Until then I just had to go through a two week wait until a blood test at the hospital would confirm whether the transfer was successful or not. I knew before they told me it hadn’t worked. Like my marriage, it was never meant to be. So, yes, my divorce story is pretty grim. I’ve described it in broad strokes to others who stayed, or left, and felt rewarded by their open-mouthed, slack-jawed disbelief. I accepted the sympathy, I enjoyed the condemnation. But I know that, in reality, it is not that simple. We were just on different paths. I wanted a child and, apparently, he didn’t. We stopped talking, and entrenched ourselves, shut down. Me as well as her. And in this gradual erosion of communication, the divorce began. This is how it began and how it ended: two people unable to say what they wanted, too scared to face the truth. My ex-wife understood the legal ramifications of our marriage contract and wanted us out. In stark contrast, I believed that our marriage would somehow hold us together. We were both trapped. He found us a way out of the trap. It’s strange, isn’t it, that someone who was once at the center of your life, who you relied on for happiness, validation, stability, can suddenly become the person you want to be the furthest away from? I’m always surprised by the brutality of breakups that end abruptly: returning keys, exchanging items, deleting phone numbers. Last goodbyes and then… nothing more. Walking away from the pain is probably easier than staying, trying to rebuild. “Being a friend” is hard work and often ugly in the early stages as new rules are worked out and new boundaries are negotiated. While I have seen some brutal…
