SEE THAT STRANGE asymmetrical mountain of white jelly quivering over there? That’s me. I’m in another ante-natal appointment and Katy is checking the baby’s heartbeat.
I’ve decided to work until the end of March, which is in just under two weeks. Just two weeks to go at work. It’s so strange to think how going to work used to be everything to me – well, apart from all the parties, shopping for shoes, having my highlights done and the fortnightly waxing – and now I can’t wait to stop going there. After Plum arrives, I’m going to work part time and use either a child minder or my mum, depending on whether I want the child minded or my lifestyle criticized. Katy says that mums need social interaction with other adults to keep them sane. I think she means that with their only human contact for four years being a person who only eats, sleeps and shits, a woman would go mad. Presumably that’s why two out of four marriages end in divorce.
Katy is very good at her job, isn’t she? She reaches around my very own Taj Mahal, threads the monitor straps behind me, velcros them together, locates the heartbeat, measures it, checks the digital display showing beats per minute, assures herself that it’s fine, writes it down, unstraps me, wheels the monitor machine away and helps me up, all while she’s asking me if I’m keeping well.
‘Not really. A friend of mine has been going through a tough time so I’m staying in her spare room at the moment. It’s OK though – I don’t think I would be able to sleep any better in my own bed.’
Katy is looking serious. ‘It’s not just about the sleep, though, Rachel love. Are you managing to put your feet up during the day?’
‘Well, I’m still working full time. And then I help Sarah out with her little boy most evenings. And mornings. And I’m helping her keep on top of her ironing pile. And the hoovering and dusting. And I cook a couple of times a week. But, you know, only spag bol or something. Nothing fancy.’
Katy takes hold of both my hands in hers and rubs them together. ‘It’s time for you to go home now, Rachel,’ she says, and you can see on her face how serious she is. ‘I’m not trying to be funny but you’ve got a massive, painful, physical trauma ahead of you, which is going to flatten you and leave you drained and exhausted, possibly depressed and tearful and feeling totally shitty. But you are not going to be able to recuperate properly because you are going to be the sole person in charge of a tiny, vulnerable and needy baby, which will terrify you.’
Why would I think she was trying to be funny?
‘You won’t get another chance to be selfish for a very long time,’ she’s saying, but I almost don’t hear her. Look at my bloodless face and wide staring eyes – I’m seriously traumatized here.
But her words do eventually filter through, only because I recognize them. It’s almost exactly what Hector said. My eyes are refocusing gradually and I am coming back into the room. I see Katy picking up my pink folder, now thick with eight months of notes, tests and graphs.
‘Now then, today is the nineteenth of March. I’ll need to see you every week from now until she’s born.’ He, I correct her silently. ‘I’m afraid that she’s still head up, and probably won’t turn round now, so you’re going to have to make a decision, poppet.’
Is this the choice to end all choices? Have a baby the size of a basketball pulled through a ‘canal’ (at this point its name changes from ‘vagina’ to ‘birth canal’, just so you are in no doubt at all what God made it for) the width of a mobile phone; or have three thicknesses of your abdomen – and that means skin, muscle, womb, the lot – sliced open and introduced to the world, leaving you in agony and paralysed. Hm.
‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about this. A lot. Almost every moment.’ Those pictures in Parenting magazine flash past my eyes like police evidence – exhibits A to M, a case for the defence. ‘I’m pretty sure I want to go for the caesarean.’
‘Sure?’
‘No. No, actually I’ll have a vaginal delivery.’
She frowns at me. She thinks I’m messing around. ‘Rachel?’
You know, at this point I’ve decided I’d rather not do either one. I’ve changed my mind. I don’t really want to have this baby after all; I’ll just leave him up there.
‘Caesarean.’
‘Good, all right then, come back and see me again next Monday and we’ll check to see if she’s turned. If she hasn’t, we’ll book you in for the caesarean. You might have your baby in two weeks, Rachel.’
Terrific. I don’t think I’ll be ready in two years, let alone two weeks.
So I go back to work knowing that whatever happens, caesarean or not, Friday of next week will definitely be my last day there. Until afterwards, that is. At the moment, the birth itself is so huge in my mind that I can’t see past it. It feels like I’ve just got to get through this one unpleasant thing, and then it’ll all be over, like having your tonsils out. I have to keep reminding myself that after the birth is when everything starts.
I’m at my desk, look, and I’m on the phone you’ll be pleased to note. Don’t look too closely or you’ll see an ‘O’ in the display window, telling you it’s an outgoing call, to social services. I ask the woman to send me a list of registered child minders.
‘While you’re at it, can you send me information about having a baby put up for adoption?’
‘What?’
‘Just kidding.’
There’s a sudden small pressure inside me as if Plum has anxiously pressed his little hand against me. ‘It’s all right,’ I say to him softly, rubbing the place he pressed, ‘you’re staying with your mummy.’
Skip forward to me arriving home – or rather, back at Sarah’s – at half past five. You can see that I’m looking anxious and the reason is that I’m dreading Sarah’s reaction to the news that I’m moving back home. She’s so miserable at the moment, with only me and Jake for company, so when I’m gone she’ll only have Jake. I’m not sure she will be able to handle not having me around.
I’m trying really hard not to feel pissed off about that. ‘Sarah, listen, there’s a very good chance I’m going to have to have a caesarean delivery—’
‘Really? Why?’
‘He’s upside down. Anyway—’
‘I had a Caesar with Jake.’
‘Yes, I know. I wanted to ask you—’
‘Bloody agony. People who have natural deliveries think that we caesars have it easy, but they don’t know the half of it. It feels like someone’s shoved a white-hot pitchfork into your belly and they’re twisting your insides round like spaghetti. You feel like, if you stand up straight, you’ll tear at the seams; if you cough, you’ll blow apart . . .’ (just look at my white face a moment while she’s talking!) ‘. . . and every move you make is like knives. Getting up at two o’clock in the morning is bad enough, without the searing pain across your entire abdomen when you try and get up or pick the baby up or hold the baby on your lap. And I bled for twelve weeks afterwards, you know.’
My throat’s working, trying to get up enough fluid to moisten it. ‘I know, Sarah. That’s partly why I wanted to ask you—’
‘What?’
‘Well, I’m thinking about having an epidural so I can stay awake, which means I get to have someone to come in with me to hold my hand. Obviously, it won’t be the father, so I wondered . . . Will you come into the operating theatre with me and watch while they slice me in half?’
And that is why I’ve asked her: she’s smiling for the first time in ages. ‘Really, Rachel? You want me in there with you?’
‘I’d love to!’ She gets up off the sofa and comes over to me for a hug. ‘Thank you so much for asking. This is going to be amazing.’
Move your gaze away from Sarah and me embracing a moment, and look at the other person in the room. He’s on the sofa, sprawling on his side where he tumbled when his mum got up suddenly. Sarah and I are now talking quite animatedly about the horror and bloodshed we’re both excited to be a part of, so we can’t see Jake’s dark, troubled eyes watching us closely, following Sarah’s every move, brows drawn together with hurt. Why do you think he’s so upset? I think it’s because all he’s seen for weeks and weeks is his mummy either crying or mute and all he wants is for his mummy to hug and kiss him and love him like she used to. And now she’s hugging someone else and not him and not daddy either. He wants to be the one who makes his mummy smile; he wants to be the one being hugged. He is sure that when his daddy comes home, everything will be all right again. His mummy will smile again and love him and Daddy can play Star Wars with him like he used to.
‘I love you, Jake,’ comes a growly voice. ‘I love you, Jake. I love you, Jake. I love you, Jake.’ Jake presses the bear again and again, holding it up to his face as tears fill his eyes. Unseen, he gets up and rushes silently from the room.
It’s easy to pack my few clothes away ready to go home. Sarah’s given me some of her old clothes, which should see me through the last few weeks before the birth. Her maternity clothes are all far too big for me, but a pair of her old stretchy trousers fits me perfectly. She’s a few inches taller than me too, so the waistband sits nicely under my boobs and they’re still a good length. She doesn’t look too happy, does she, that a pair of her everyday trousers would fit someone who is eight months pregnant.
At work, no one seems to expect very much from me, which is insulting but terribly convenient. I do have a few things to sort out while I can still think without being interrupted, not least of which is what to do about Nick.
I have spent some considerable time over the past eight months wondering what role Nick should play in Plum’s life. I don’t really want him to be a father figure, and I suspect that he won’t want that anyway. I fully expect him to deny that he’s in any way connected to the baby, or me. The simplest thing seems to be just not to tell him and keep the two of them apart for ever and that’s what I’ve been sticking with. But lately, as Plum becomes a bigger and bigger part of my life and makes his presence more and more felt, I’ve started thinking that not telling Nick is not right. Not for Plum. Frankly, I don’t really care what Nick thinks about the whole thing – whether he is horrified, or it ruins his marriage, or he laughs or denies any responsibility, it’s all the same to me. Unless he ever hurts Plum. I can’t allow that. In the end, though, I think it’s Plum who needs to decide what contact he wants with his father, not me, and not Nick.
Katy says every baby has a right to know its origins, and that means its mum and dad. ‘Secrets staying secret only do damage in the long run.’
Penny at work is adamant I should not tell him. ‘God no. Have nothing to do with him. Cut him out of your life. Never let him know he has a child. Involving a man will only lead to stress and unpleasantness. We women can manage perfectly well . . .’
‘Better,’ says Siân, coming up behind Penny and touching her arm.
‘. . . better, then, on our own.’ Penny turns towards Siân and smiles at her affectionately and they walk out of the room hand in hand. I think that perhaps their opinion is a bit biased.
I’ve asked Sarah what she thinks.
‘Yes, you bloody well should tell him,’ she spat. ‘He thinks he’s got away with it, the low-life, shit-eating waste of space that he is. Banging some overdressed bimbo behind his wife’s back. That’d teach him a lesson he’ll never forget, wouldn’t it? Slimy, piss-faced little worm wanker.’ She pauses for breath. I think she’d momentarily forgotten that I was the overdressed bimbo that was banged. ‘And, you can screw him for every penny he’s got, can’t you? You’ll need financial support, you won’t be able to work any more, so first you should tell him and destroy his life for ever, then make him pay. Make him pay.’ I expected her to throw her head back and laugh maniacally to the sound of cracking thunder, but birds continued to sing and cars drove past outside.
I think that perhaps her opinion isn’t as objective as it might have been.
I’ve been to see Susan in her shop to see what she thinks. I thought she was bound to be more objective than Siân, Penny and Sarah. In fact, she was so detached, she wouldn’t even tell me her opinion.
‘Rachel,’ she says, folding up a gigantic bra, ‘I could not possibly presume to advise you on that one.’
‘What?’
She looks at me. ‘This is one of the most momentous, important, life-long decisions you will ever have to make. What you decide to do now will affect you and Plum for ever and ever. And that is why I think you should make it completely on your own.’
I think that perhaps Susan is so convinced she herself made the wrong decision all those years ago, she doesn’t want to be involved in any more decisions. Ever.
So here I am now, floating about in the pool, mulling over what everyone has told me. I haven’t bothered to ask my parents – they’ll probably just say, ‘You must do what you feel is right, Rachel,’ which, if you’ve ever needed sound, objective advice from people you respect who are older and wiser, you’ll know is useless.
In fact, as I bob aimlessly around the pool like a mini iceberg – except that there’s much less of me under the waterline than above it – I know that there’s only one person who I know would give me really good, sensible advice, without trying to persuade me one way or the other, and that’s Hector. Of course. I haven’t seen him since he told me all about Miranda and that was about three weeks ago. Now that I’ve moved back home there’s no chance of seeing him at Sarah’s any more, and I don’t phone him and he doesn’t phone me. He did say I could call him whenever I wanted anything, so I could, but it’s uncomfortable. I still can’t get the idea out of my head of him rolling his eyes as he puts his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, shakes his head and whispers to his colleague ‘Sorry, it’s this crazy woman who won’t stop calling me and I don’t know how to put her off. She’s having a baby,’ before saying cheerfully, ‘Hi, Rach! How are you?’
I do all my thinking in the pool. I can breathe more easily and Plum’s weight is largely supported by the water, so I’m much more comfortable there. I lie on my back and drift about, trying to imagine what Nick’s reaction would be, if I tell him.
‘Oh, so that’s why you’ve got so fat,’ is one possibility, although I’m sure Paris must have told him the happy news by now.
‘So what?’ is a possible. I think I can probably deal with that one too.
‘Wahey, I knew I had it in me. What a stud,’ also seems fairly likely, although to be fair, I don’t really know the guy, so I might be doing him a disservice.
I kick a foot as I float a bit too close to the side, and I’m propelled backwards, diagonally across the middle of the pool, rotating as I go. I just assume that other swimmers will get hurriedly out of the way when they see me hove into view.
There is one thing that worries me about telling Nick and that’s his wife. She may be so plain and boring that her husband has to seek fun in another’s arms the whole time, but she is innocent in all this. How will it affect her? Does she even suspect that her husband is as faithful as an internet surfer? Well, that’s not my concern. Besides, she needs to dump him, big time. Once she finds out . . .
Yikes! I’ve hit something. There’s a sickening jolt and I’m sure I feel, just for a second, the softness of an eyeball coming into contact with my elbow.
‘Ugh, oh God, oh,’ I’m half shouting, arms flailing, trying desperately to tread water before realizing that this is proving difficult because I keep banging my feet on the ground. I stand up and look round to see what I’ve hit.
It’s Hector.
Incredibly, wonderfully, breathtakingly Hector!
In this part of the pool, the water is up to my armpits, which I’m glad about. On him, it only reaches up to his ribs, which I’m very glad about.
Can we pause a moment here, please, and have a good look at him in his trunks. He’s a big bloke, isn’t he? Compare this to Nick Maxwell, emerging from my shower seven months ago. Makes Nick look rather, I don’t know, puny, really, doesn’t he? My eyeline is just about at the level of his chest and I’m trying not to look at his nipples. Although I do love a hairless chest. And those broad shoulders. And well-formed arms.
Oh, sorry. Where was I?
Right. Hector hasn’t realized it’s me yet as he’s got both hands clapped to his left eye, and his right eye is streaming in sympathy. And I’m just standing there, gawping.
‘That’ll teach you for stalking me,’ I say eventually, when the five-second silence is starting to become awkward.
His head snaps round to the sound of my voice. ‘Rachel? Is that you?’ His lips produce a smile, in spite of his obvious agony.
‘Yeah, freak. I’ve got a gun and it’s pointed at your head.’
He smiles more broadly. ‘Yep, that’s Rachel. How are you?’
‘Swollen beyond all recognition. You?’
‘Temporarily blinded. You look good to me.’
‘Thanks. You, on the other hand, look terrible. Do you want me to take a look?’
‘Yes please.’ He bends down and prises his eye open. I move forward and try to look up into his face, and our bare arms touch accidentally. Christ, we’re both nearly naked. There’s a huge amount of exposed flesh here and I know that all of mine is tingling self-consciously. Or is it lust? He feels something too, because he’s moving away from me at the same time.
‘I can’t really see . . .’
‘Actually, I think it’s all right now . . .’
‘Good.’
‘Yes. Well, I think it’s time for me to get out. I’ve had enough anyway,’ he says, stepping backwards to go to the steps, but not quite striking out in the right direction.
‘OK. Bye.’
‘No. Not yet. Will you join me in a cup of coffee upstairs?’
‘I’d love to, but I doubt there’s room.’
He chuckles. ‘Meet me in the café?’
‘Lovely. But you might want to go a bit to your left if you ever want to get out of this pool.’
Ten minutes later, and here I am, hanging my head upside down, desperately trying to make my hair do something other than just lie there. I’m blow-drying it and as soon as I straighten up again, I stagger and nearly fall over with dizziness.
‘You know you shouldn’t really do that while you’re pregnant,’ says a total stranger walking past.
Hector beats me to the café. His hair is still a little damp and messy-looking, and he’s wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. If you look at his chest closely, like me, you can imagine what’s underneath that T-shirt. As I draw nearer I can see that his left eye has a large patch of red veins clearly visible in the white. I bite my lip as I sit down opposite him. ‘I’m very sorry about your eye. It looks really sore.’
‘No, it isn’t. It’s just sore.’
‘I’m glad about that. Makes me feel much better.’ There’s a cup of coffee on the table in front of me, steaming away. ‘Is this for me?’
‘Yeah. That guy over there in the window left it for you. Do you know him?’
‘No. Decent of him, though.’ I raise my cup towards the stranger in the window, who gives a surprised look, then smiles.
‘You’ve made his day,’ Hector says quietly.
‘Well, I try to do a good deed every day. Trouble is, Hector, he obviously doesn’t know that everything except water tastes like washing-up liquid at the moment . . .’
‘Say no more.’ He leaps to his feet. ‘I’ll go and see if they’ve got any washing-up liquid.’
‘I’m not an invalid, you know. Sit down, I’ll go.’
‘I know you’re not an invalid, but by the time you’ve hauled yourself out of that chair and shuffled over to the counter, I could have got six glasses of water. Just stay there.’
I watch him chatting easily with the lad on the drinks counter and I’m smiling automatically.
‘What are you looking so soppy about?’ he asks, returning to the table.
‘Nothing, just thinking what a good friend you are.’
He pauses as he places the glass in front of me and meets my eyes frankly. ‘Am I?’
‘I hope so. You are, aren’t you?’
‘I thought we were strangers.’
‘No, you can’t keep bringing that up, not after we’ve known each other for eight months.’
‘Seven months, ten days.’
‘Oh. Oh.’ I take a sip of water and try not to think about what that means. ‘I’m really glad I bumped into you today, Hector. I need your advice. Do you mind?’
‘Mind? Of course I don’t mind. What can I do for you?’
Here goes. ‘Well, you may have heard me mention someone called Nick once or twice?’ He nods. ‘He’s the . . . father.’
‘Right.’
‘Right. So. I’m in a dilemma. What I’m wondering is, and you have to bear in mind he’s immature and unreliable and, I’m ashamed to admit, married . . .’
‘Really? Oh dear.’
‘Yes, bastard. Anyway, so now you know as much about him as I do. And bearing all that in mind, what I wanted to ask you was . . . do you think I should tell him about the baby?’
Hector splutters around a mouthful of coffee and then starts to cough, trying hard to keep his lips together to avoid spraying it all over me. Eventually he manages to swallow the coffee and stop coughing. ‘He doesn’t know?’
Ah. Obviously Hector’s opinion is that I should tell him. ‘Well, I haven’t seen him to speak to, you know, properly, in private, for months, not since last year.’
‘Wha—’
‘In fact, the last time I saw him was at Christmas and at that point I just looked like I’d put weight on. Which I had, of course, but not for the reason he was thinking. Although I don’t know what reason he was thinking, if he was even thinking about it at all, which he probably wasn’t because when I happened upon him he was rather engrossed in . . . What? What are you grinning about?’
‘Stand up.’
‘Why?’
‘Please, Rachel, will you just stand up.’
‘OK.’ I stand and he walks around the table, his eyes fixed on mine, but he doesn’t stop, he just keeps coming until my belly touches him and we look down at it but then we both look up again and he reaches out his hands and puts them on my cheeks and his fingers stretch around the back of my neck and cup my jaw so softly, and then he bends his head down and I tilt my head back and he kisses me. Right there, in the middle of the Waterside Café.
I’m driving home. Look at me, I look like I’m about to burst. I’m bouncing around in my seat, rocking from side to side, singing that song again as loud as I can with the window open.
‘I get knocked up, but I get up again, you’re never gonna keep me down!’
Someone on the pavement shouts out, ‘Put a sock in it,’ but I don’t care.
Hector loves me! Has loved me for ages, months! Did you spot it? Because the signs were there, weren’t they, and I did read them right, after all, which is just so fantastic, because it means he loves me – he loves me! He was just keeping his feelings to himself because he thought I was trying to make a go of it with Nick. That prick. He almost ruined my life that time. But he didn’t! HE DIDN’T!
I really need to concentrate on driving. I glance yet again in my rear-view mirror and sure enough there are the twin beams of Hector’s beautiful headlights, and I smile at them and give him a wave. The lights flash lovingly at me. He loves me.
When we get to my flat, he meets me on the pavement and bends down to kiss me again, right there outside my block. ‘I can’t believe I can just kiss you when I want,’ he says, and kisses me again. I can’t feel the pavement any more.
I make us some cheesy pasta and we sit cross-legged on the sofa as we eat. We are so close, our heads are almost touching.
‘So tell me,’ I ask him.
He knows exactly what I mean and lays his fork down, studying my face. ‘Probably almost from the very first moment we spoke.’
‘The Blooding?’
‘No, no, I mean when we first spoke, on my old phone.’
‘Really? What, straight away, without even seeing me?’ That’s a first.
‘Absolutely. I didn’t have to see you to know that I . . . could really like you. Love you, even.’
‘No way! There is no way you loved me before we’d even met. You’re teasing me!’
‘No, no, I don’t mean that I fell in love with you then. I just knew, straight away, that I could love you.’
I’m frowning. ‘I don’t get it.’
He leans back a little and puts his knuckle on his chin. ‘Let me try and explain. Let’s see. The truth is, you inspired me. Inspire me.’
Holy crap, did you hear that? I have never, ever been told that before, by anyone. I inspire him! ‘Really?’ I’m whispering.
‘Yes. I mean it. It’s because . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘No, I mean . . .’ He frowns for a moment. ‘OK. Have you ever cracked a joke to someone you don’t know, like in the street or in a lift, and they totally don’t get it? It’s so uncomfortable. Let me give you an example. I was queuing up in the Early Learning Centre once, years ago, with a plastic birthday cake for Jake—’
‘You know he craves sponge that he can actually eat.’
‘I had no idea. Poor kid. Anyway, in front of me in the queue was a woman manoeuvring an enormous box that evidently contained a play first-aid station, complete with play bandages, play stethoscope, play syringes, that kind of thing.
‘We were standing in the queue together for about three or four minutes and it always seems rude to me to stand so near to someone for any length of time and not speak to them. So I looked at the box she was holding and said, “It’s a really good idea to have one of those in the house, isn’t it?”’
A fat giggle bursts out of me. ‘Fantastic! Did she laugh?’
‘No. She barely even smiled. She just did that look.’
‘What look?’
‘You know, one of those fake, half smiles that means, “I know you said something to me, but I don’t know you and I don’t understand what it was, so please don’t speak to me again.”’
‘Oh, yes, I know the one you mean. I do that one all the time. It’s like, “I’m too polite to ignore you outright.”’
He nods knowingly. ‘Yeah, that sounds about right, you witch. Anyway, it was excruciating because now she thinks I’m slightly mad, or one of those nuisance strangers that won’t stop telling you really boring facts about themselves when you can’t get away, like when you’re in an Early Learning Centre queue on a Saturday close to Christmas and there’s a school child operating the till who has to keep buzzing for assistance because he doesn’t know how to do credit cards.’
‘A long wait, then?’
‘Someone handed round tea and sandwiches.’ He’s grinning, but watch now as he shifts his expression, just a fraction, around the mouth and eyes so that they’re fixed on mine, like twin tractor beams. It gives me that plunging feeling in my chest again.
‘But you. You. You didn’t know me; you didn’t know anything about me, or what I was going to say, but you never gave me the look, even down the phone. I could tell. I was feeling buoyant the day we finally spoke; cheerful, a bit optimistic. That was the day Rupert finally signed on the dotted line for the Horizon system. So on the spur of the moment I started off a little joke about a kidnap and ransom for the phone, not really expecting anything to come of it, thinking that the other person would say something like, “Look, dude, I didn’t steal your phone and I’m not holding it to ransom, but now that you mention it, is there a reward?” But you didn’t. You just flung yourself one hundred per cent straight into the spirit of it.’ He shakes his head. ‘It was amazing.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. It inspired me. That’s what I mean. Right there, talking to me on the phone with, I might add, the sexiest voice I had heard in years, was someone else in the world who wanted to have fun. Someone who could see the point in a pointless joke. Someone who wasn’t too caught up in the daily grind of life to join in with something ridiculous.
‘Even before we met, I looked forward to those conversations. I planned them, put time aside for them, tried to make sure I was going to be available. I kept my phone in my hand when we were due to speak. I smiled for half an hour beforehand, and grinned for hours afterwards. And I didn’t want to have to cut it short because of work or something else intruding. I wanted fun to be my top priority, just for those precious moments. It – they became incredibly important to me.’
‘Wow.’
‘I know! I could not wait to meet you. I had butterflies in my stomach, sitting there on that fountain. You know I was there from just after five fifteen that day? We weren’t due to meet until six. But I couldn’t concentrate on my work so in the end I just gave it up as a bad job. By the time six o’clock came round, I was a wreck. I felt sick, I was sweating. Mind you, I drank about four cups of coffee in that café while I was waiting.’
‘I wondered why your eye kept twitching.’ I’m joking but look at my face – I can’t take my eyes off him.
‘And then I finally saw you, sitting there. You were so small and pale, so terrified. I felt drawn to you, as soon as I saw you, but of course I couldn’t approach you because I was there to meet . . . well, you. So I just had to try and ignore you, while I waited for you to turn up. When my phone rang in your bag . . .’ He trails off and reaches up to tuck my hair behind my ear. ‘I knew I had to do something to keep us connected. I couldn’t just take the phone from you and never see or hear you again.’
I whisper, ‘I’m so glad you did. I mean, didn’t.’
‘Oh Rachel, so am I. I can’t believe how close I came to letting you go. When I saw you and Nick at the Horizon party—’
‘I’ve explained about that, you softhead.’
‘I know you have. I know. It was just so . . .’
Give us a moment here, please. We need our privacy and there’s probably only so much kissing you can take. I hate seeing it when people do it in public.
‘You know,’ I say eventually, ‘Sarah told me years ago that you were a really controlling older brother who likes to think the whole world does his bidding.’
‘Did she? Well, that’s a bit upsetting. I thought she liked me.’
‘Hector according to Glenn?’
He nods. ‘I’m absolutely sure that’s what it is. I wonder why he thinks that.’
‘Did you lend him some money recently?’
‘Yes, I did. Five grand.’
‘Did you tell him to end his affair with Chrissie?’
‘Yep.’
‘Did you threaten him?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I did.’
‘Still wondering why he thinks you’re controlling?’
He smiles at me. ‘You really are a sorceress, aren’t you?’
‘Of course. How else do you think I persuaded you to leave your phone on the trolley?’
‘That was you? God, you’re good.’
‘So I’ve been told. Do you want any more cheesy pasta? There’s plenty left.’
‘Mmm, yes please. It’s delicious.’
‘Don’t you ever eat?’
‘Well, since Mum went, I don’t bother much. Not really worth it for one person.’
‘But isn’t Glenn staying with you?’
‘Mmm-hmm, but he doesn’t want to eat, he just sits around the place feeling sorry for himself. He’s a mess, the place is a mess, the whole thing is a mess.’
‘Sarah’s the same.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, don’t you think it’s a bit silly that they’re both sitting in different houses feeling miserable?’
He looks at me then brushes a stray hair away from my eyes. ‘What are you suggesting, witch?’
I shrug. ‘I don’t know. But we need to get them talking, I think.’
He lays down his fork and puts the plate on the coffee table. ‘You’re right. I am sick of seeing his limp face everywhere I look. He’s off work at the moment with stress, so it’s there at the window when I go out and it’s still there when I get back – facing me on the sofa, passing me on the stairs, coming out of the bathroom. It’s even starting to invade my dreams now.’
‘Let’s go and see Sarah,’ I say suddenly. ‘It’s awful that we’re feeling so happy, and they’re both so miserable.’
‘So fucking miserable.’
I laugh. Look at the expression on his face – he really has had enough of looking at Glenn’s face, hasn’t he? ‘All right, so fucking miserable. So what do you think? Shall we see if we can inject a little magic into their situation?’
‘OK, sorceress, we’ll go straight away. You can cast a spell.’ He’s staring at me again, as if in wonder. ‘My Rachel,’ he says; then I kiss him.
I drift off in Hector’s comfortable car. I’ve reclined the seat and tilted the head rest forward and the smooth motion and quiet engine have soon lulled me to sleep. I am wrenched awake suddenly by ghastly, grisly images of split skin and tearing wounds that look like red screaming mouths. I jerk and open my eyes, heart thudding. The car has stopped and Hector is leaning over me, his face inches from mine, stroking my cheek.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Hi. How long have I been asleep?’
He looks at the clock on the dashboard. ‘About two minutes.’
‘Oh. Two minutes?’
‘Yep. We’re here, come on.’
Standing on Sarah’s doorstep, I lean comfortably against him. The top of my head barely reaches his chin. He dips his head and puts his lips in my hair. As Sarah opens the door, we spring apart.
‘Oh, hi, you two.’ She is apparently completely unsurprised to see us together. She turns and walks back down the hallway, sniffing. Did you notice that her eyes are red and puffy? She’s obviously just been crying.
‘What’s the matter, Sarah?’ I ask her as we arrive in the living room.
She looks up at me. ‘Oh, my husband has been having an affair with one of my best friends. Did I not tell you?’
The living room is pretty untidy. There are toys, clothes, dirty cups and plates, magazines and newspapers scattered around, and in the midst of it all is Jake, curled up in a ball on the sofa. I glance at the clock. It’s nine o’clock – way past his bedtime.
‘Hey, Harry, wotcher watching?’ I call over. He doesn’t stir.
‘Harry?’ Hector says to me softly, a quizzical look on his face.
‘Tell you later.’
Sarah sits back down on the sofa and Jake shuffles right up next to her again, laying his head in her lap. Absently she puts her hand on his hair. Hector and I sit down on the armchairs.
‘Glenn’s been round,’ she says suddenly.
‘That’s good,’ Hector says. I’m watching Jake. He looks so pale and worried. A little boy of six should not be worrying about anything other than how to work out which shoe goes on which foot.
‘Not really,’ Sarah says. ‘He wants a divorce.’
‘What?!’ Hector almost shouts. I see Jake flinch with the loud noise, but his eyes remain fixed on the television screen and he rarely blinks. His hair looks unkempt and dirty and he has no shoes or socks on.
‘Yeah, bloody cheek. I should be the one divorcing him. He reckons we have irreconcilable differences, and I think he’s right. Like he wants to sleep around and I don’t want him to.’ She does a mirthless ‘Hah’.
‘I’ll talk to him, Sarah,’ Hector is saying. ‘I know that’s not what he wants. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction.’
‘Well, I’m not so sure it’s a bad idea,’ she says miserably. ‘What’s the point of carrying on with a relationship where there’s nothing left between us? You know, Hector, we don’t speak any more, we don’t laugh, it’s just like, “What’s for tea?”, “Did you pay that bill?”, “We need oven cleaner.”’ She shakes her head wearily. ‘I think it’s just naturally reached the end. That’s that.’ Tears start to slide down her cheeks and she sniffs loudly, smearing them away with her fist. On her lap, Jake raises his head and looks at her face. Seeing her crying, he sits up and picks up Bert the bear, then presses it into her hand. ‘I love you, Jake,’ says Glenn’s voice. Jake watches his mum but Bert has no effect on her, so he climbs down from the sofa and leaves the room. I glance at Hector, then I follow.
Upstairs in his room, Jake is kneeling by a large red plastic toy chest. The lid is thrown back and Jake is rummaging furiously around inside. He’s talking away so I move nearer to the door to listen.
‘. . . get the . . . sky-diving Action Man, that’s the best one, and, and, and the giant pirate ship. No, too hard to carry . . . Oscar the owl, he’s my favourite, except for Bert, and maybe the alphabet desk. Take Bob the Builder’s remote-control scrambler, that’s good, and my Thundersaurus Megazord . . . What about Maurice the Monkey? No it’s stupid, doesn’t even look like a monkey, not a proper tail . . . Spiderman ball . . . Just got to get these . . .’
He’s pulled a number of toys out of the chest and tossed them into a rough heap to one side. Now he’s loading them into his arms, scrabbling and struggling to carry them all. He’s obviously getting his favourite toys together to go somewhere, but where? His little pale face is crumpled with concentration as he stands up, arms full of toys.
I back into the bathroom as he heads towards the landing, and hide behind the door. I hear him pass, still muttering.
‘All my best things, gonna let her play with all of them, gonna make her happy again. Dropped the Spiderman ball, bouncing down the stairs. Get it later. She can play with all these, whenever she wants, and all my other stuff. But these are my best ones.’ And he heads off down the stairs.
I was thinking that he was planning on running away and was packing what he saw as the most important things to have with him when he’s alone and fending for himself in a world where child killers seem to lurk on every corner: a Spiderman ball and Oscar the Owl. But as I tiptoe down the stairs behind him, it becomes suddenly very clear what’s going on.
He lurches into the living room, head tipped back to allow room for the things in his arms, bumping into doors, sofa arms, Hector’s outstretched feet; then crouches slowly and allows all the toys to tumble out of his arms on to the floor. Hector and Sarah are watching him curiously. Hector glances at me: I’m standing in the doorway, arms wrapped round myself, tears flowing, eyes fixed on Jake, who has selected an Action Man from the pile.
‘Mummy, do you want to play with my sky-diving Action Man? It’s my best one. You throw him up in the air and his parachute opens and he floats down again. Look.’ He holds the toy out towards his mum, who looks at it for a moment, then takes it and wafts it in the air a couple of times.
‘That’s great, Jakey, thanks,’ she says, smiling wetly, and puts it on her lap. Jake watches her, then goes back to the pile of things. ‘I-I’ve got Thundersaurus Megazord. Look, it morphs into three different dinosaurs.’ Nimbly he demonstrates exactly what the toy does, then folds it all back up and holds it out to his mum too. It joins the Action Man on her lap.
Over the next few minutes, we all watch with astonishment and sadness as Jake returns to the pile of toys, selects one and holds it out to Sarah with a brief description of what it can do. She stretches his stretch Homer (‘You can pull his arms and legs out really far, and he always goes back to how he was’), drives his remote-control car (‘When it bangs into something, it flips over’) and pretends to battle on his treasured Gameboy (‘It’s got Pokemon Yellow game’) until eventually she leans down and opens her arms to him, smiling through tears.
‘Come up here, Jakey, come on, come and give me a cuddle.’
He puts down the Magna Doodle he’s holding and climbs on to her lap, wrapping his arms tightly round her neck, pressing his face to her cheek.
‘Oh, thank you so much, Jake. Thank you, my darling boy.’
Hector and I stand up and head towards the door.
‘Sarah, we’re going now,’ Hector says. ‘Don’t get up – we can see ourselves out. Let me know if you need anything.’ She nods at us over Jake’s shoulder. ‘Good. And I will talk to Glenn. I promise.’
‘Thanks, Hec. See you later, Rach,’ she whispers, rubbing Jake’s back. As we’re walking back down the hall, I hear Jake’s voice saying, ‘Did you like playing with my best things, Mummy?’
Sarah smiles over his shoulder and rubs his back. ‘Oh, Jakey, yes I did, and it was so kind of you to bring them all down for me. But you know, I’m a grown-up and grown-ups don’t really play with toys any more.’
Jake sniffs and leans back to look at his mum’s face. ‘But Daddy used to play Star Wars with me. I was Darth Vader and he was Obi Wan Kenobi. We always used to play that.’
‘I know, love. I wish we could go back to that too. But Daddy’s not here at the moment, it’s just the two of us. Just you and me, the terrible two. OK?’ And she pulls him forward for another tight hug.
But look over her shoulder, at Jake’s face. Have a really good look. Can you see his face slowly changing? His eyes open wider and his mouth turns up from desperate sadness to grim determination. And unheard, he whispers one word into his mummy’s hair: ‘Daddy.’