Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel (30 page)

I was never allowed to lock a door after that. I started to live like a prisoner, where they held me hostage with open doors.

When I finally got to university, it took me a while to believe I was allowed to lock the door on my room and the bathrooms in halls.

I grind out the cigarette in the heavy glass ashtray.

Will she let me see him? In the flesh, will Nova let me see him?

I reach for my cigarettes again.

Every time I close my eyes, I can see the easy loop of his smile, the sparkle of intelligence in his eyes, the joy he must bring to everyone around him.

I’d love to see him in the flesh. Maybe she will. That’s the sort of person Nova is. Fair. I know that now, of course. Now. I know that she would never …

Maybe if not me, then Mal. And if he sees him, then maybe he’ll tell me about him. I’ll get to know him through Mal.

I stop before lighting the next cigarette, resheathe it in the pack. I stand up, empty the ashtray into the wheelie bin, and then carefully hide it behind the evergreen bush and the fishing garden gnome that Nova’s sister had given us as a moving-in present. Mal had laughed and laughed at the gnome, but I didn’t get it. “There’s no joke,” he had said, “it’s just the most hideous thing and she knows I’ll never throw it out because it’s a present.” Now it helps to hide my secret.
One
of my secrets.

I sometimes wonder if other people are like me. If other people have so many secrets that they’re not entirely sure all the time who they really are.

“
I, er, I don’t think I can go through with this
,”
I said to him.

“Go through with what?” He stopped lacing up his walking boots and looked at me cautiously. He could tell from the tone of my voice that I wasn’t talking about this hike up the hills in the Lake District.

“The baby. I don’t think I can go through with it. I didn’t realize how hard it’d be to see someone else doing for you what I can’t. I don’t think I can go through with it.”

“She’s not doing it for me, she’s doing it for us.”

“I don’t think there can be an us anymore, Mal,” I said. “Not with this baby. I think you should go and be with her. And your baby.”

He straightened up, his shoelaces still untied. He was frowning. “It’s our baby. She’s having it for us. And I want to be with you.”

I shook my head, surprised at how calm I was, considering what I was doing. “You don’t. You love her. You want a family life with her. Not me.”

He stared at me, poleaxed, as though someone had struck him squarely between the eyes with something large, hard and solid, rendering him immobile. “I love you. You. I want a baby with you.”

“That’s just it, you can’t have one with me. You can with her.”

“Stop this nonsense, Stephanie. OK? Just stop it.” He bent down to finish with his shoelaces, but I could see his hands trembling. It was working, I was getting through to him.

“What if I do something to the baby?” I asked.

“You’re not going to do anything to the baby.”

“But what if I do? It’s not mine. Women harm their own babies every day—how do you know I won’t harm one I’ve got no genetic connection to? It’ll be your baby with another woman. What if … What if I go a little … What if I hurt it?”

“That’s not going to happen,” he said sternly. He’d finished tying up the laces on his left walking boot, but was still fiddling with it so he wouldn’t have to deal with me face-to-face.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know what I’m capable of. You’ve never known what I’m capable of.”

He straightened up again, this time his eyes like laser beams aimed at me. “What’s this really about?” he asked.

“Really?”

He nodded. “I know it’s not because you’re scared you’ll hurt the baby. You would never do that. What’s this really about?”

“I don’t want to bring up another woman’s baby. Correction, I don’t want to bring up
her
baby.” There, I said it.

“It’d be our baby. She’s having it for us. She is only pregnant because of us. It’d be our little boy or girl.
Your
little boy or girl.”

“But I can’t even pretend it’s mine. Everyone would know. And they’d think you’d fucked someone else and I was so spineless I let you get away with it. Or I’d have to lie and say it was something genetic in our family. But everyone would be looking at me, knowing it’s not really my baby.”

“Why do you care what other people think?” he asked in frustration.

“I don’t know. I just do. I don’t know why, but what other people think matters. All the looks in the street, especially if the three of us are together. And I can imagine what my family’s going to be like. I don’t want to go through all that.”

“That’s a stupid reason to not want the baby.”

“I knew you’d think I was stupid, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid and I didn’t say you were stupid. It’s a stupid reason not to want our child. I can’t see the problem.”

“Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s your child. You can have children. I can’t.” I felt the tears well up and I started blinking to get rid of them.

“Steph, I don’t understand this. We talked about this before. Even before we asked her—”

“And you talked me round. Said it would be all right. But I don’t think it is going to be, Mal. I didn’t think I’d feel like this. On the one hand, I can’t help but feel attached to him or her, but
mostly, I feel empty. That you could walk away at any time with her. I’d always be living on the edge, wondering at what point she might want her baby back.”

“BUT IT’S OUR BABY!” he shouted, his words ringing out across the hills, “
baby, baby, baby
” echoing back to us seconds later.

“NO, IT’S NOT!” I shouted back, waiting for “
not, not, not
” to echo before I lowered my voice to speak again. “It’s yours. It’s hers. It’s not ours.”

He stared down at the earth in front of me, his eyes seeking something. Just like I had seen him doing in our dark kitchen the night I realized what had been going on under my nose.

“Legally, I have no real standing. Despite that contract we all signed, if she changes her mind, she could get rid of me like that!” I clicked my fingers. “I have no real connection to the baby. And emotionally … Emotionally, I can’t get over the fact it’ll never be mine. Always yours, never completely and wholly mine.”

“Have you been taking your pills?” he asked. A low blow. Unexpected, too. Mal never did that, never used that against me.

“Whether I take them or not, that’s not going to change the fact that I won’t ever be able to love this child like it’s my own.”

“I can’t believe that.”

“It’s the truth, Mal,” I said. “It’s what I feel. So, that’s why I think it’d be better for everyone if you went to her and your baby. I know a baby’s what you truly want. I don’t want you to miss out on your chance now, so go be with her.”

“I always said that it didn’t matter about children.”

“It’s OK, I know you didn’t mean it.”

“I did mean it. Just like you’ve meant it all these weeks when you’ve been going round to Nova’s to visit the baby. Telling it
you love it. You’ve bought all those books. And I know you’ve been buying clothes, and hiding them. I know how excited you’ve been about this. That’s why I don’t believe you. That’s why I think you’re just having momentary doubts and that you’ll change your mind back.” He nodded, as though convincing himself as he spoke. “We’re both feeling the pressure of it now, and I’m sure all parents feel like this before their baby is born. Worry and anxiety about how they’ll feel. If they’ll be able to cope. We’ve got the additional pressure of having to tell our families about the situation in a few weeks. It’s all of that. Once that’s all over with, you’ll look back and feel really silly about feeling like this. We both will. Because I have my doubts and I’ll feel even more stupid for believing you and shouting at you.”

I fixed him with a look. The one I used to give solicitors and partners in the law firm who, for a few misguided seconds, thought my role as office manager meant I was somehow a lesser human being and therefore didn’t require them to be polite. “You misunderstand me,” I said evenly. “I am not having that baby in my life, let alone in my house. If you want to carry on with it, that’s fine. That is your choice. And it’ll mean I won’t have you either.”

“You’re making me choose between my baby and you?”

“No, Mal, the choice has been made. I don’t want the baby and I don’t want you.”

“You don’t want me anymore?” he asked, horrified. He became a little boy inside, scared and alone. Terrified about what he had just heard. Scared of the monster who was standing in front of him, ending his marriage.

“Not as long as there’s a baby out there that’s yours, no,” I stated.

He tried to pull himself together. Scrabbling around for shelter and comfort. “I love you,” I said, deciding to offer him a refuge. “More than life itself. I don’t want you to miss out on this. I’ve decided to accept that I’m not meant to have children, but you clearly are meant to have children. You are having one. And that’s something I can never be a part of. Not completely. And you’ll always be torn between us. So if I end things with you now, then you won’t be torn. You won’t have to make this choice in a few years.”
Oh, God, I’m going to start crying
, I realized. This was harder than I thought. I’d rehearsed this speech a million times in my head in the last week but this was the first time it had made me cry.

It wasn’t hearing “I love you” that had bonded me to Mal when we first met. It wasn’t fabulous sex, and holidays and talking late into the night; it wasn’t lying next to him and listening to him breathe as he slept, knowing he’d still be there in the morning. It was when he told me about his mother. About her illness. It was the intimacy that allowed me to give myself to him. As completely as I could. As wholly as I had ever done with another human being.

“I promised I’d never leave you,” he said.

“It’s OK, I won’t break without you. I’ll be fine.”

Mal closed his eyes. He seemed to have stopped, like a battery-powered toy soldier, marching along merrily and then halting because the batteries were flat. There was no more energy driving it, all it could do was stand still. Silent. Flat.

“I’ll tell Nova we don’t want the baby anymore,” he said after ten minutes had passed in silence. With him standing as still and silent as one of the mountains we were about to climb.

“But—”

“When we get home, I’ll tell her,” he said, talking over me.
“I’ll say that we changed our minds, that we can’t take on this responsibility right now. I’ll tell her.”

“You don’t have to do this, Mal. I’m telling you that you’re free to go to her. To have your baby. To have her.”

“I said I’d never leave you. Nova will understand.”

She wouldn’t. Of course she wouldn’t. How could anyone understand that? Not even Nova, the most understanding woman I’d ever met, would understand this.

“But what will she do?” I asked. “You know her better than anyone on earth. What do you think she’ll do?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Do you think she might have an abortion?”

I saw the knife twist in his guts at the thought of it. That was why it had taken me a week since I found the text to say this. I needed time to assimilate the thought myself. To accept that possibility and that responsibility. “Mal, don’t do this. Not for me. Go to her, have your baby.”

“She might,” he said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “Or she might keep him.”

“If she does keep it, then …” I paused, suddenly afraid of voicing this condition. “Then we’re back to that thing of you having to choose. Which is why I don’t want you to do this, Mal.”

“What are you saying?” he asked, tiredly.

“If … If she does keep it … then …” I paused again. “If we’re going to stay together, then you can’t see her. And if she decides to keep the baby, then you can’t have contact with either of them.” I paused, watched him, trying to see him without my eyes. Trying to read his energy, his aura, anything. And I couldn’t. I was suddenly blind to him in all respects but using my eyes, like I had done before I met Nova.

“She’s a part of my family,” he stated.

“This is why I don’t want you to stay with me. Because that’s a terrible choice to have to make. If she keeps the baby and it’s out there, you’ll know he or she is out there but you won’t be able to make contact. I’m not sure you’ll be able to do that, Mal. I’m not sure I want you to be able to do it because that’s not who you are. I don’t want you to change, not because of me.”

“You can stop laying it on so thick, Steph,” he said, quietly. “We both know I’m going to agree to that condition. I’ve made my choice. I choose you. OK? I choose you.” He reached into the open back door of the car, pulled out his rucksack and hoisted it on. He locked the car, then started striding down the path that led toward the hiking trail.

I said to him before that he didn’t know what I was capable of. Maybe I was wrong, maybe he did know. Maybe he’d always known that when I started this conversation, I knew exactly what to say and when to say it to make sure that this would be the outcome.

Maybe my husband did know that when it came to keeping him, to eliminating all rivals, I would use every weapon at my disposal—I was capable of anything.

F
our things that I love:

The beach.

The sky ablaze with red, gold and orange as the sun dips out of sight.

Putting on music and pretending to be an interpretive dancer.

The smell of freshly made coffee.

Unfortunately for me, in the past four months, the smell of coffee, cigarettes, bleach and petrol made me feel sick.

I loved coffee, and having to limit it in my life was upsetting. And not ideal in my work. I would look longingly, jealously, at the customers sipping it, imagining the rich, smoky taste, tempered sometimes by milk, other times by sugar, slipping down their throats. Working its way through their bodies. On the tube, the way I salivated at the people clutching their white paper cups of coffee was bordering on obscene—I was surprised I hadn’t been reported for lascivious staring.