Infertility and maternal longing

Infertility and maternal longing are not merely part of Rachel Watson’s backstory: they shape how she understands her marriage, her drinking, and her place among families. Her intense wish for a child meets an unexplained inability to conceive, an unsuccessful IVF attempt, and a world in which pregnancy and motherhood seem constantly on display. The novel also shows that longing does not make childcare straightforward, and that women’s experiences of motherhood and loss invite scrutiny as well as sympathy.

The hoped-for family

Rachel retrospectively wonders whether her hopes for a child began to alter her marriage as soon as she and Tom Watson moved into 23 Blenheim Road. She remembers the house as roomy and full of possibility: she and Tom planned the garden and the décor, while she already imagined the spare room as a nursery. In her account, the image of a family of three gradually made their life as a couple feel insufficient. She wonders whether Tom came to see her through the same disappointment she felt, but this is her later interpretation, not an established account of what he thought.

The inability to conceive remains medically unexplained. Rachel recalls that she and Tom underwent one round of IVF, the only treatment they could afford, and that it was both unpleasant and unsuccessful. She distinguishes this experience from miscarriage: there was no pregnancy to lose, but the absence of one became its own grief. The failure of treatment, she says, damaged her and then their relationship. The distinction matters to her because her mourning is for a child she never had, a loss other people could struggle to recognize.

Private grief and public expectations

Rachel’s pain is intensified by how often other people make childlessness a topic for discussion. Friends and acquaintances have children; questions about when she will have her turn become part of ordinary conversation, alongside advice about what she and Tom should try and how much she should drink. She feels that the failure is assigned to her, even though the cause is unknown. When Tom later fathers a child with Anna Watson, Rachel takes this as proof that the difficulty was hers alone. That conclusion reflects her self-blame; it does not establish a medical explanation for their earlier infertility.

The contrast between Rachel and Tom is central to their separation. She believes he wanted to be a father, but could also imagine a happy life without children. Rachel could not accept that alternative: she describes missing and mourning someone she had never known. As her isolation deepens, she drinks more, loses connections, and increasingly measures her worth through standards that prize women’s appearance and their role as mothers. She also insists that infertility does not excuse her drinking. Her account holds grief and personal responsibility together rather than treating one as a complete explanation for the other.

Caring for other people’s babies

Time spent around babies does not provide the simple consolation or awakening that others expect. Scott Hipwell encourages Rachel to spend time in the Hipwell home because he thinks it might make her want a child more. Rachel experiences the visits differently: after leaving, she hurries home to wash, and she longs for her former work at the gallery and for conversation among adults. When she visits Anna, Tom is the one who opens the door before leaving for work; Rachel is left with Anna and the baby. She feels like an extra presence whose role is to watch the child while Anna rests.

Later, a police interview leads Rachel to sit in Witney’s park beside an asphalt playground and watch caregivers with children. The setting brings back the ordinary outings she once pictured for herself: choosing a buggy, shopping for children’s clothes and toys, and sitting with her own baby. She can now remain near the playground, an experience she says would once have been unbearable. This is a change in what she can tolerate, not evidence that her desire has disappeared.

A desire that changes, but does not vanish

After her marriage ends, Rachel says she has become better able to face the subject. Reading about it has helped her consider that she must come to terms with not having a child; she also sees adoption as a possibility if she can get sober and put her life in order. She is not yet thirty-four and does not regard that possibility as closed. Her account does not present adoption as a guaranteed resolution, but as a future she can imagine where once she felt only failure.

That partial movement sits alongside a painful reversal. When Tom posts a photograph of himself with his newborn daughter, Evie, Rachel sees his happiness and feels that her own suffering has no importance to him. The image makes the childlessness she had known abstractly newly immediate: Tom is now a father, but not with her. Her distress is part of the context for the foolish act she later acknowledges, though the evidence here does not make infertility its sole cause.

Motherhood as care and judgment

The novel sets Rachel’s longing beside the practical and moral demands placed on mothers and caregivers. Anna’s attention is absorbed by the baby’s warmth, feeding, and safety; Rachel experiences herself as peripheral, while also noticing Anna’s nervousness when a train passes or the phone rings. Care work is both constant and easily taken for granted. Rachel’s own willingness to help with the baby does not settle her feelings about motherhood, just as her longing does not erase her discomfort around infant care.

The pressures extend beyond Rachel’s experience. After Megan Hipwell disappears, a newspaper report attributes to unnamed sources an allegation that Megan may have been involved in the unlawful killing of her child, and speculation that this could be a motive for her murder. The report is presented as vague, and Detective Inspector Gaskill makes no comment; it is not established as fact. Anna nevertheless responds with relief that Megan is gone. Later, remembering an early occasion when Megan was caring for Evie, Anna recalls that Tom and Megan were standing close together while the baby cried without either of them attending to her. These moments expose how quickly maternal worth becomes a subject of suspicion and blame, while the novel keeps longing, caregiving, and actual conduct distinct.