SYLVIA
‘Pregnant?’
‘Yes.’
‘You?’
She nodded.
‘Fuck, Sylvia.’
‘Yes, that must have been how it happened,’ Sylvia said, even though she didn’t think this was anything to make light of. Maggie, sitting next to her on the sofa in their tiny Clapham flat, was fiddling with the frayed end of her tunic like it was a string of worry beads, a gesture that provoked a flood of panic in Sylvia. Maggie rarely worried, her essential optimism was one of the things Sylvia admired most about her. She turned back to the television and the two of them watched – or, at least, stared at without seeing – as Columbo peered at some dirt on the carpet and then transferred his inscrutable gaze to a tall man with white hair and a dastardly air.
Maggie turned back to her. ‘Seriously though, how?’
Sylvia shook her head. ‘That’s what I’ve been asking myself.’
At least, that’s what she’d been asking herself when she dared think about it. She’d managed, fairly successfully, to keep the thing caged in some far corner of her mind throughout her trip to Switzerland, but on the plane home, and the long taxi ride back to Clapham, she’d been unable to keep it from wrestling its way forward. There’d been a young mother on the plane with a screaming toddler, of course. An apologetic smile on her face. Tears in her eyes when a businessman pointedly asked to move seats.
How? Well, she supposed it didn’t matter now. But she still wanted to know. She remembered going to a family planning clinic in her first year of university and the lecture the doctor gave her when she requested a prescription; her refusal to cower with humiliation when he asked if she was married, even though the pill had been perfectly legal for unmarried women since 1967. She didn’t care that the conservative media said it turned girls like her into promiscuous harlots. For her it was about freedom and control. It was a way to protect herself, to keep her life exactly as she wanted it, until she and Jim decided otherwise. A way to stop herself turning into Gilly, married at eighteen, with three children by the time she turned twenty-four.
How long had it been since Gilly’s wedding? Nearly six years, she supposed, the autumn of the year they finished school. Six whole years since they all lay sprawled on the grass outside the assembly hall the afternoon of their final A Level exams. Sylvia still recalled the sense of freedom that welled up in her chest back then. It returned to her every time she smelled cut grass and spring blossom in the air – or heard Let It Be on the radio, because it was the end of something for John, Paul, George and Ringo then too, back in 1970.
‘I reckon you’ll marry a lumberjack.’
‘What?’ Fiona had propped herself up on her elbow and squinted at Gilly.
‘I think you’re going to marry a lumberjack – or someone like that – and live in the woods.’
Fiona laughed. ‘That’s the future you have mapped out for me? Gee, thanks.’ She punched Gilly lightly on the arm and lay back on the grass, staring up at the sky. ‘It’s scary, isn’t it?’
‘What, the prospect of marrying a lumberjack? I should say so,’ Maggie said.
‘No, silly! The future, I mean. What’s going to happen next. We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us and no clue where we’ll end up. I think it’s scary.’
‘It’s exciting, more like,’ Sylvia said. ‘We can finally do anything we want.’
‘You really think so?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, you can try at least. Why not dream big?’
‘It’s all right for you,’ Gilly said. ‘You’re clever. You’re going to Oxford.’
‘You’re clever too,’ she said, though lately she’d wondered if that were true. If Gilly were clever, why was her only plan to marry Brian and settle down in a semi-detached right here in Hertford? Didn’t she want to get out? See what the rest of the world had to offer? Sylvia felt full to the brim with it: the urge to leave where she grew up and forge her own path.
‘Well, we all know where you’ll be, Gills,’ Fiona said.
‘His parents are meeting mine tonight. We’re all going out to dinner to celebrate.’ Gilly beamed. She hadn’t stopped fiddling with her ring all afternoon.
‘What are you going to wear?’
‘I went shopping with Mum the other day and got this lovely green dress. It’s sophisticated, you know. And it shows off my boobs.’ She jiggled her breasts and the others giggled, even Maggie, though Sylvia caught all she needed to know about Maggie’s opinion of Gilly’s engagement from a briefly arched eyebrow and a loaded glance in her direction. They’d always been able to communicate silently – a sort of telepathy honed over ten years of sitting next to each other at school.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ Sylvia picked at a daisy and twirled it in her fingers. ‘I mean, what’s the rush?’
A flash of annoyance passed across Gilly’s face. ‘Of course it is. We’ve been together two whole years, why would we wait any longer?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, because there might be other more exciting—’
Maggie elbowed her arm. Don’t, she mouthed. ‘Well, good for you, Gills. I love a wedding. All that cake and champagne.’
‘And the dishy waiters.’ Tracey was lying on the grass staring up at the sky. ‘My sister said they’re right goers, waiters at weddings. She worked at one once and said they had a bet going to see who could get off with a bridesmaid.’ She rolled on her side and looked at Gilly. ‘Can I be a bridesmaid?’
Fiona laughed. ‘Slapper!’
‘Just an opportunist,’ Tracey grinned. ‘Well, how about it, Gills?’
‘Er, well, I’ll have to see.’ Gilly’s voice was shrill. ‘I know Brian’s sisters have to be in the wedding party so I don’t know how many more bridesmaids I can have.’ She waved her hand. ‘Anyway, back to the topic in hand.’
‘What was that?’ Fiona said.
‘Our futures! Predicting where we’ll all end up! I think we should write it down.’ She fished around in her bag and pulled out a pen and a school textbook, tearing off the back to write on. ‘Won’t be needing that anymore,’ she trilled. ‘Right. So, Fiona: lumberjack.’
‘Is that it? Is that all you predict for me?’
‘Well, for the moment. How about Maggie – bank teller?’
‘That’s not a prediction, that’s a fact!’ Fiona laughed.
‘That really stinks, that’s what that is,’ Tracey said.
Sylvia saw the expression on Maggie’s face. She couldn’t think of a worse job for her best friend, who’d always hated maths at school, but she knew Maggie wouldn’t dare say no to her father’s plans for her. ‘That’s just a stopgap until you figure out what you want to do, right Mags?’
Maggie blew her fringe off her forehead. ‘Try telling that to Dad.’
‘Okay, temporary bank teller. Just until you get married and have kids. I reckon you’ll have three.’
‘You’re talking out of your backside, Gills,’ Tracey said.
‘Stop being such a spoilsport, it’s just for fun, okay? I’m going to keep this and then one day in twenty years or something we’ll meet up and laugh about what we said.’ Gilly gave them all a pointed stare and wrote down ‘three kids’ in big letters next to Maggie’s name. ‘Right, how about Sylvia?’
‘Prime minister!’ Janine said.
‘Astronaut!’
‘Stop taking the piss,’ Sylvia said. She’d always felt faintly embarrassed by her reputation at school. She couldn’t help it if she did well in exams. She couldn’t help being interested in things. But it had never been cool to be academic, so she’d apologised for herself, almost been pleased when she’d got a B instead of an A in a test, just so she could feel she fitted in with the other kids. But all that was behind her now, she realised. Today was the end of all that. She’d been released from the shackles of schoolyard social pressures and would be going to Oxford, where no one, she was sure, ever had to apologise for doing well.
‘I know what.’ Maggie put her arm around her and smiled. ‘She’s going to be a newspaper editor on Fleet Street.’
Sylvia snorted. ‘Like that’s possible,’ she said. But as the smell of summer mingled with the thrill of the new, she thought, yes, maybe I just will.
That all seemed so long ago now. How cross she would have been with her future self if she’d known what would happen! She couldn’t bear the thought she’d potentially squandered her opportunity for freedom so soon after escaping the limitations of childhood. She thought of the women she’d met in Switzerland, how much she admired their fight, and felt determination well up in her again. A baby simply wasn’t part of her plan. It would ruin everything.
‘What does Jim think?’ Maggie said.
Sylvia shook her head, staring at Peter Falk as he cuffed the murderer. ‘I haven’t told him.’
Maggie’s eyes narrowed. ‘And when will you?’
‘I don’t know. When I’ve sorted out in my head what I want to do.’
‘You’re not considering…?’
Sylvia looked at her. ‘Maybe. At least, I’m going to look into it.’
She thought of Jim, cooing over her sister’s kids whenever they visited; the delight in their faces when they saw him, since kids seemed to love Jim as much as he loved them. Yes, he’d agreed to wait until they were older, but she knew he’d never agree to a termination now it had happened. So if she decided she wanted to get rid of it, she couldn’t ever tell him she’d been pregnant. She met Maggie’s eyes and knew she didn’t need to spell it out.
‘I get it, Syl. God, I get it. But you can’t do that to him.’ Maggie took Sylvia’s hand and held it in her lap, and Sylvia felt the roughness of her friend’s skin, a badge of honour for the hours she’d spent in the art studios at Saint Martin’s, creating the pieces that had won her a hard-earned art degree and her new job at the National Theatre. ‘Can you?’
‘I don’t know, Mags.’ But she didn’t think she could do the alternative, either.
She made an appointment for the next morning and had her suspicions confirmed. Dr Greenham clearly expected a delighted response on delivering such happy news, but she sat mute, in shock despite having already known what he would say. Then he glanced at the single diamond on her finger and his face changed.
‘When are you due to marry?’ he asked.
‘Next summer,’ she said.
‘Do it quickly and you’re out of trouble.’ He said it kindly, conspiratorially, as though she should be grateful. But instead she felt as though the walls of the office were closing in.
‘What are my other options?’ She held her head high as she said it, watching his smile drop and his eyes narrow. He handed her a piece of paper, telling her to read it and think very carefully. It’s not an option, he said. It’s a medical procedure only carried out if two doctors agree to it. It’s not like having a tooth out. He glared at her over his spectacles and she bristled at being made to feel like a child in front of the headmaster.
When she left the surgery, she walked along the Thames at Blackfriars instead of going straight back to the office. She bought a takeaway Tetley from the corner cafe and leaned over the railings, staring at the grey, turgid water. The air was damp cold and she clutched the warm polystyrene cup with both hands. Something caught her eye and she turned her head to the right to see a squirrel running up the trunk of a tree. It stopped for a second, looked straight at her and then darted into the higher branches. Two children walking past with their mother saw it too. They stopped and pointed, the younger child delighted to spot the tiny creature. The woman smiled at Sylvia. ‘You’ll catch your death standing there,’ she said.
When Sylvia was about that child’s age – four, five? – her mother must have been twenty-nine or so. A mum for eight years already. No career, only two years as a secretary before she had married. She spent her days making house. Days dominated by washing cycles and groceries and rubbish collection dates and endless dusting. Sylvia always thought her mother was relatively happy. She certainly never complained – unless you made a mess of her tidy home, of course. But, growing up in the sixties, all Sylvia saw when she looked at her mother’s life was a trap she didn’t want to fall into herself.
These days, with Sylvia and her siblings grown and gone, her mum spent most of her time making clothes. Sewing dresses and shorts for the grandkids, crocheting hats and scarves for friends. They were beautiful, detailed, intricately patterned with carefully chosen colours. She was talented. Sylvia had once found a sketchbook filled with drawings, tucked under the guestroom bed. Women in elegant dresses, maxi skirts, tailored coats. Some pages had fabric swatches glued beside them, and she’d realised with a jolt that these were her mother’s own designs. She’d taken the book downstairs and waved it triumphantly at her.
‘These are brilliant, Mum – why haven’t you ever shown me?’
Her mother had snatched the book away. ‘Give me that! It’s nothing. Just a hobby. Not for anyone’s eyes.’
In that moment, Sylvia saw it. Just the tiniest hint of something she realised was regret. Regret over an aspiration she’d never had the opportunity, or confidence, to fulfil.
She spent the afternoon at Brent Cross interviewing shoppers for their opinions about the glossy new commercial centre. ‘Are American-style malls the next big thing? Is this the new way to shop?’ fashion editor Marnie had said when she’d packed Sylvia off to write a ‘lively’ piece for tomorrow’s paper. Frankly, Sylvia didn’t care an ounce, but she dutifully spent the morning talking to women picking out lingerie in John Lewis and mothers gossiping over coffee while their kids played on the giant wooden caterpillar designed to entertain the under sevens.
Yes, was the enthusiastic conclusion she wrote up afterwards.
Hold on to your purse strings! With everything under one roof, Brent Cross is a revolutionary new shopping experience that is likely to transform the way we buy – and how long we spend doing it. With restaurants and cafes, children’s entertainment and a vast range of shops, this American-style mall is designed to entice us in and keep us there for as long as it can, much to the likely dismay of husbands all over London.
She bored herself, but Marnie seemed pleased.
Jim was waiting for her after work with a bunch of drooping tulips wrapped in cellophane. She laughed. ‘What’s that for?’
‘I’ve missed you.’ He swept her into an embrace and she hugged him back, the flowers squashed between them.
They walked along the river to Embankment and entered the musty confines of Gordon’s Wine Bar. He went to order drinks and she sat down, smiled at a group of six around the table next to her, greeting cards opened and displayed on the wooden table top. She caught the writing on one: ‘Congratulations on your engagement’. The girl showed off her ring, curled into her fiancé, beamed up at him.
The first time she came to this bar was within weeks of moving to London. Jim had arranged an internship at a political magazine, and she was applying for every junior reporter job and graduate trainee scheme going, hoping to get one before her money ran out and she’d be forced to temp, a prospect that scared her more than staying jobless, not least because the words of her French literature tutor rang loud in her ears: Never tell anyone you can touch-type or you’ll be forever pigeonholed as a secretary. What little money they did have went towards rent on their respective flatshares two stops apart down the Northern Line: she with Maggie in Clapham, Jim with his uni friend David down the road in Balham, a set-up forged mainly to placate Jim’s mother, for whom living in sin was simply an unacceptable state of affairs for her only son. This pokey old bar had seemed to epitomise everything they loved about being in London, so they’d cobbled together enough money for one glass each and had come here to toast their new lives.
Back then – what, only a year and a half or so? – everything had seemed new, fresh, exciting, hopeful. Their futures were a clean slate, waiting to be imprinted with success and money and respect and experience.
She still felt like that last week, she realised now. Just last week.
‘So, this weekend.’ Jim put a wine bucket on the table, an uncorked bottle nestled in the ice. ‘We’ll drive to Haversham Manor first, then it’s a quick scoot up the M40 to Beckton Abbey. I wondered if we could go via Bellhampton too. I know we don’t have an appointment, but it’s on the way so we could have a quick peek in the grounds, just to see. I know you thought it would be too grand, but I wouldn’t mind a look. You only get married once, after all.’
Sylvia nodded. Should she tell him now? Just blurt it out?
‘And then we’re booked in for a cuppa at Mum and Dad’s after all that, around 5ish, okay?’
She could just say the words. But then it would be out there and she’d have no control over it anymore. Right now, nothing had to change. She and Jim were getting married next year. They’d have several years before they even tried to have a family and she’d continue to build up her career until a suitable point when she felt comfortable taking time out. Then perhaps she’d go freelance while the children were young, but she’d have enough contacts by then, and a good enough reputation, that she could do that without fear of losing what she’d built. That was the plan. That’s what was meant to happen.
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes, sorry.’ She felt like screaming. Everything was so easy for him, while she’d always felt like a general preparing a battle plan.
‘You are looking forward to it, aren’t you?’
She smiled at him. That open, happy, carefree face. She wanted to reach out and smooth his hair, watch his eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiled back. Would it have Jim’s blond hair, his height? Or perhaps her darker skin that tanned easily in the sun, her brown eyes? She flicked the thought away. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘Very much.’