None of the lights were on inside the cottage as she parked Dolly at the back and walked down the garden path, her eyes scanning for the usual ice patches. She let herself in, wondering if Jack had splurged on the tree and where he’d put it. The position of the Christmas tree constituted one of their three annual rows, the other two being Valentine’s Day cards are not romantic (her position), and the first day of the Ashes should be a bank holiday (his).
She silently bet herself he’d put it in the back corner of the sitting room, even though he knew she preferred it in the small bowed window that nudged into the street. It looked prettier and more festive from outside, and acted as a screen for nosy passers-by looking in on them, but Jack felt it was too close to the door there and made him feel like he was walking into a hedge.
Laura switched the lights on and hung up her coat in the porch before opening the sitting-room door, to see whether her hunch was right. She stared in dismay at the pristine sight before her. Nothing had been done apart from the hoovering. There was no tree, no tinsel, not a card nor plastic angel to be seen. Even the candle on the coffee table was a lily-of-the-valley scent from the summer. It could have been July.
Feeling disproportionately flattened by the revelation, she moved into the kitchen, kicking off her shoes by the table and staring, bewildered, into the fridge. Carrots, mushrooms, a pot of chicken liver pâté, hummus, some tenderstem broccoli and mint jelly. She racked her brain, wondering what meal Jack was planning to make out of those ingredients and whether she could make it first.
‘You’re home.’
Jack’s voice was quiet behind her.
Laura spun round with fright. ‘Wha—?’ she shrieked, holding on to the fridge door for support, one hand trying to steady her hammering heart. ‘Jack! What are you doing sneaking up on me like that? You almost gave me a heart attack. Jesus! I didn’t hear you come in.’
‘That’s because I wasn’t out. I was upstairs,’ he replied in a subdued voice, his eyes on her hair as if it was moving of its own accord. If he was as shocked as she was, he was doing a better job of hiding it.
He’d been upstairs in the dark? Laura swallowed nervously. ‘Like it?’ she asked, plastering a hopeful smile on her face and bobbing the bottom of her hair with her hands.
‘When were you going to tell me, Laur?’
‘Well, I thought it would be better to show you than tell you over the phone. I thought you might freak out and think I’d done a Marilyn or something. But it’s not bright blonde, is it?’ she asked rhetorically. ‘It’s just a few shades stronger than my natural colour.’
He gave a tired sigh and walked up to her at the fridge. Laura puckered up for a kiss, but Jack simply reached past her and pulled out a beer.
‘Jack?’ she asked, as he turned and walked out of the room again.
Laura stared at the spot where he’d been standing, trying to make sense of what had just happened. She followed him into the sitting room, where he had thrown himself on the sofa and was flicking through the sports channels at lightning speed.
‘Jack? What’s wrong?’ she asked, resting her cheek against the edge of the door.
His eyes flicked up to her. ‘I asked you a question. If you want to waste my time and yours gabbling on about your hair, then be my guest. I’d rather hang out here.’
‘But I thought that’s what you were talking about.’
‘Did you now?’ Sarcasm oozed from his words. Everyone was at it.
‘Yes. What are you talking about?’
‘You really can’t guess?’
Her heart lurched and Laura sank on to the arm of the sofa. She could now. His eyes – bitter and disappointed – told her exactly what he knew. He’d had the realization in the middle of the night after all.
‘Oh God, Jack. It’s not what you think. I can explain. I wasn’t trying to—’
‘What? Hide it from me? Get it taken care of before I could do anything about it? No, of course not!’
‘I mean it, Jack. I was going to tell you. I just needed time to think. It was a shock, that was all.’
‘That’s why you couldn’t get on that plane fast enough, wasn’t it?’ He wouldn’t look at her.
Laura swallowed. ‘It’s true I thought the change of scenery would do me good. I thought it would help me get some perspective.’
‘And did it? Did partying with a load of hedge-funders in Verbier help you decide whether to keep our baby?’
She looked down, his words hitting hard. ‘You know it’s not a straightforward decision for me.’
He was quiet for a long time. ‘You know what I think, Laura? I don’t think your concerns were about whether or not to have a baby. I think they were about whether or not to have my baby.’
‘Jack, no!’ Laura gasped, collapsing on to the sofa next to him. ‘That’s categorically not true.’
‘No?’ His eyes followed a bobsleigh hurtling down a luge.
She shook her head frantically. ‘It just wasn’t a decision that I could take lightly.’
‘But you could take it alone, that’s what you’re saying?’
‘I would have told you, Jack – I promise!’ Laura cried, stretching across the sofa so that she was now sitting on his lap and obscuring his view of the TV screen that he was so determined to focus on. ‘I just needed to discover what I thought first before I told you. I already knew what you would say,’ she said softly, stroking his cheek.
‘Did you?’ His eyes met hers.
She nodded. ‘I know you’d love a baby more than anything. I know how badly you want us to be a proper family. But having children isn’t something we’ve ever talked about and I just didn’t know that I could do it. I’d be so frightened all the time and what kind of mother would that make me? I’d be neurotic and smothering . . .’ She kissed his temple lightly. ‘And I knew that if I told you, you’d talk me into it with that ruthless, gentle persuasion of yours.’
Laura rested her cheek against the top of his head, her fingers stroking his shaggy hair. Sweet, darling Jack, so dependable and safe and familiar, like worn slippers; he was everything she wanted. He didn’t change with the wind; he didn’t push her to be someone she didn’t want to be; he didn’t make her jump out of helicopters or slam her against walls to kiss her; he didn’t hold her heart in his hand and leave her breathless and terrified that he might crush it with whimsical caprice.
She closed her eyes. If Verbier had shown her anything, it was how fragile her world was without Jack, how quickly she had succumbed to her own passions in his absence, sampling danger and desire with reckless abandon. She needed Jack’s quiet steer and gentle guidance.
‘But Verbier gave me the time I needed, Jack, and I think maybe we should have a baby.’ She waited for the light to reach his eyes, but it didn’t. He pulled away, silent and unresponsive. ‘Jack?’ she asked, watching the Adam’s apple in his throat bob up and down. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
He got up, moving her so roughly to the side that she practically fell back on to the sofa. He walked over to the window, where the Christmas tree wasn’t.
‘I can see that you’re trying, don’t think I can’t,’ he said quietly. ‘But I can always see it; that’s the problem.’
Laura looked at him in confusion. ‘What?’
‘You try so hard all the time to love me.’
‘I do love you, Jack.’
He shook his head. ‘No. You love what I represent, and that’s not enough any more. It hasn’t been for a long time.’ He looked into the deserted street. The cottage opposite was empty – owned by Londoners who only came on summer weekends – and shrouded in darkness. ‘I told myself that I could love you enough for the both of us, but every day I watch you trying to live my life with me and every day it breaks my heart.’
‘It’s our life, Jack.’
‘No. It’s mine. I belong here. I have a business, friends—’
‘So do I.’
‘You live on the surface, Laura. You could pick up your tools and leave tomorrow and the only people who would notice would be me and Fee.’ He looked at her sadly. ‘I see you trying to mould yourself into the person you think you should be for us. If I didn’t love you so much, I’d hate you for it. It’s so patronizing seeing you fold into smaller versions of yourself – but I’d have put up with anything so long as you stayed.’
‘But I’m not going anywhere, Jack. I want to be here, with you. I don’t understand where all this is coming from. I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you I thought I was pregnant, but I really did just need to get my head straight.’
‘And so did I, because you weren’t the only one with a decision to make.’ His tone was final. ‘If you’d only asked, I’d have told you I can’t bring a child into the world either. Not when I know in my heart that its mother doesn’t love its father.’
‘That’s not true,’ Laura protested. She wanted to stand but wasn’t sure her legs would support her. She’d told him she wanted his baby. Why were they having this discussion?
‘We’ve shuffled along up till now because you’ve tried and I’ve tried to be blind. But a baby changes everything. And we owe it to the baby, if not to ourselves, to face the truth – we’re not going to make it.’
Tears blinded her and she dropped her face into her hands, shaking her head and trying to block out his words, but like the tears, they kept coming.
‘As much as I love you – and I really do fucking love you, Laura . . .’ He choked, his voice ragged and torn. ‘. . . I can’t spend my life apologizing for not being more than the man I am. We both gave it our best shot, for all the right reasons, but we’ve run out of road. You can’t have this baby.’
Laura looked up at him desperately. ‘But I’m not!’
‘What?’
‘I’m not pregnant. I never was. I was just late.’ Hope bloomed again. ‘Don’t you see? Nothing has actually changed between us at all. We can just carry on as we were.’
He went grey before her eyes. ‘But Fee said you were—’
‘Fee said?’ Laura echoed, shocked. ‘Fee’s the one who told you?’
She’d thought he’d guessed. Fee had been spot on when she’d quipped that day, in town, that he knew her monthly cycle better than Laura did. If ever she wasn’t sure, she checked her dates with him.
‘She thought I should know. She’s done nothing wrong, Laur,’ he said quietly after a moment.
Laura looked at him sharply, instantly on the attack. ‘Why are you defending her?’
‘I’m not, I—’
‘Yes you are. You’re protecting her. My best friend has betrayed my confidence and you’re defending her.’
‘This is beside the point, Laura. It changes nothing. Whether Fee told me or not, whether you’re even pregnant or not, our ending is still the same.’
Laura’s brain began to race as she thought back to Fee’s subdued mood. ‘You said a minute ago that I patronize you and Fee,’ she murmured. ‘But what’s Fee got to do with any of this? We’re talking about having a baby. Why did you bring her into it?’
‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’
‘Yes you did. You see you and her as the same and I’m an outsider all of a sudden? I’m the one who brings us all together.’
‘No. You’ve always been the outsider, Laur. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. You’re lying to all of us by pretending that this is enough for you, and it’s only something as real and for ever as a baby that’s giving me the strength to say this.’
‘Oh my God,’ Laura whispered, not even hearing him now. ‘You’re in love with her.’
‘No. I’m in love with you.’ The rims of his eyes were reddening.
Laura stared at him. Fee’s muted behaviour this afternoon made more sense by the moment. She wasn’t cut up about Paul. She had felt guilty for what she’d said, for what they’d . . . Laura gasped. ‘Did something happen between the two of you while I was gone? Is that why there’s no Christmas tree – you couldn’t get out of bed this weekend? Is that it? Is that why she’s broken up with Paul?’ Her voice was shrill and rising.
Jack shook his head, but fractionally too late. The fatal pause Rob had told her about.
‘Laura . . .’
But she simply held up a single, shaking hand. ‘Don’t . . .’ she whispered. ‘Just don’t. You’ve told me everything I need to know.’