64

Stella was walking along Addison Gardens on her way home from Perry’s when her phone buzzed in her coat pocket. Jack. She didn’t answer – her policy these days. But every time she felt she was making headway, putting Jack behind her, he would spring up again, like knotweed. A New Year’s Day call, a relayed message via Eve or last night’s random sighting on a train platform – he always got under her skin. She put her phone back in her pocket, but a second later it began buzzing again.

Stella hesitated, suddenly worried it might be something to do with Eve.

‘Jack?’ she said, unable to keep the anxiety out of her voice.

‘Stella, don’t hang up, please. I need to see you. Something’s happened.’

‘What’s happened? Are the children OK?’

‘Oh, God, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. This has nothing to do with the family.’

‘Is this just a ruse to meet up, Jack? Because I really don’t appreciate it if it is.’

There was silence on the other end of the line. ‘It’s not a ruse, Stella, I promise. I just really don’t know what to do.’

The note of desperation sounded so genuine that Stella found herself agreeing to his request. ‘OK, a coffee, then.’ She suggested the café/sandwich bar near the fire station, where she and Annette sometimes met when they were tired of the upmarket trendiness of so many Shepherd’s Bush establishments.

She steeled herself as she sat waiting for Jack in the small café – almost empty at mid-morning except for a pair of older ladies enjoying a whispered gossip at the table in the corner. He was not going to get to her this time. She would listen and help if she could – whatever the emergency was – then she would just walk away. But as soon as she saw him striding along the pavement and pushing open the door, his tweed coat flapping despite the dank February day, she felt her heartbeat quicken uncomfortably.

Jack looked like a ghost this morning, as if he hadn’t slept in a month. He frowned as he took a seat opposite her at the small table, still huddled in his coat, his hands deep in his pockets. She listened, mouth open, as he blurted out a jumbled account of the previous evening.

‘Not your baby?’ she said, almost in a whisper, when he finally stopped.

He nodded.

‘Are you sure?’

‘As sure as Lisa is, which is pretty sure.’ He gave a tired shake of his head. ‘As I’ve said a thousand times, but no one ever believes me, we always used a—’

‘OK, OK.’ Stella held up her hand to interrupt him. She didn’t want images of Jack having sex with Lisa stuck in her head. ‘So what are you going to do? Does this Greg guy know?’ As she spoke, she was aware of a small glow developing around her heart, where previously there had been nothing but ache. Not Jack’s baby, she kept repeating to herself, hardly able to believe what she was hearing.

Jack’s eyes rested on her. ‘No, he doesn’t. She intended to tell him months ago, then he didn’t show.’

‘But surely she’s going to?’

He nodded. ‘She left him a message, asking to meet up … very reluctantly.’

‘Which he might be equally reluctant to answer.’

‘Which, indeed, he might not answer at all. In which case, I’m fucked … screwed … Sorry, I can’t think of a polite way of saying just how fucked I am.’

She couldn’t help smiling and she saw a ghost of a smile flit across his face too. ‘What does Lisa expect you to do?’

‘Well, in the absence of Greg riding up on his white charger and carrying her off to his fairytale castle on the hill, I can hardly leave her. Not two months before the baby’s born.’

‘No, you can’t do that,’ Stella agreed. ‘Poor Lisa, she seems to have got herself into a right old mess.’

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m amazed you can be so understanding.’

‘I’m sure you’re furious with her – and quite rightly so. But it must be really scary being in her position.’

Jack didn’t speak for a moment, he just gazed off into the middle distance. ‘Honestly, Stella? I feel more baffled than angry. I’m absolutely shredded by what she’s done. You don’t realize how deep it’s gone. I’ve painted the spare room primrose for the baby, bought a pram the size of Windsor Castle – and twice as expensive. I’ve seen the baby’s little outline on the monitor and believed it to be my own flesh and blood. I actually went to a couple of antenatal classes …’ He paused, grabbing his cup of coffee and swigging the remains in one gulp, then banging it back in the saucer. ‘The effort I made to want this child – I even partially succeeded – and all the while it’s not even mine.’

They sat in silence. The place was filling up with people ordering sandwiches and tea, cans of fizzy drinks and sweet pastries, the sweating, middle-aged Portuguese owner greeting his regulars with genial banter as he quickly scooped fillings from the square white plastic containers in the food display cabinet.

‘Greg’s got to be told,’ Stella said.

‘I know. But even if it is his, and even if he believes it is – a pretty big leap of faith on both counts – he’s still not likely to dump his partner and come running to Lisa’s side in time for the birth, is he? So that leaves me playing dad for the foreseeable.’ Jack covered his face with his hands for a moment, then let them drop and gave her a resigned look. ‘I can’t do it, Stella. I can’t stay with Lisa and bring up another man’s child. If I loved her it might be different …’

The implication hung in the air between them, and she remembered the passionate declaration he’d made to her in the cottage kitchen. She knew she ought not to be thinking like this, not with all this chaos and so many things to sort out, but the soft glow around her heart refused to go away.

‘Until Greg knows, you can’t tell what he’ll do.’

Jack nodded. ‘Lisa’s being all noble and dramatic at the moment, saying she doesn’t need me or Greg and that she’ll manage just fine on her own. Saying I needn’t have anything more to do with them. Which is ridiculous. She has no idea how much help a mother with a new baby needs. Look at Evie.’

Silence.

‘God … I don’t know what to say, Jack.’

He closed his eyes and sat very still. When he opened them again, she saw a flicker of his old resilience. ‘We can work it out, can’t we?’

Stella didn’t know quite what he meant. Is he talking about us? she wondered. Or about Lisa and the baby? Or about me helping him sort things out with Lisa?

‘There must be some practical solution you can both agree on, if Greg doesn’t come through,’ she said, her pragmatism an attempt to fend off what she was trying not to feel: hope.

Jack’s face was unreadable. ‘Maybe. I just don’t know where to start.’ Then he smiled at her. It was a hesitant smile, taking nothing for granted, but so tender it softened the anger in his blue eyes. For a moment she met his gaze and they stared at each other in silence. Stella found she was holding her breath.

As she made her way home, her head spinning, her heart thumping, Stella knew one moment of clarity had emerged from the confusing hour she’d just spent with Jack: she would definitely not be having sex with Peregrine Galbraith. She’d been fooling herself that she could have a relationship with the man – with any man, except Jack, even if that didn’t work out and she ended up alone. Perry had been no more than a very charming port in a storm.