After the Party (23 page)

As far as Ralph was concerned Herne Hill consisted of a train station, a bus stop, a reasonable branch of Tesco, a playground and the rather uninspiring view from his studio balcony. Even on a fragrant summer's day he'd seen little in the area to move him from his original position that SE24 was the armpit of south London and that moving here had been a Great Mistake and All Jem's Fault.

But now as his feet traced their way randomly through the area he found something to charm him and interest him every single day. An oversized Buddha sitting in the back room of a Vietnamese restaurant, a seemingly disproportionate excess of nail bars, each one packed to the brim with black women of all ages, the clock tower in Brockwell Park that always showed the wrong time, the ornate tiles on the front of the old shops on Milkwood Road. And then today, on this tentative early summer morning, on a curve of the road partially masked by a blooming sugar-pink cherry tree, a small church. Not a church—a chapel. It was a simple building: a pitched roof, two plain glass windows on either side of an arched wooden door, a lintel above the door with the date 1887 engraved into it, a few posters and flyers arranged inside a glass-fronted box.

One of the small wooden doors was ajar and Ralph, even though he was only six minutes into his run, found himself entering the building. It was similar to the church that Rosey had taken him to, just outside Santa Monica, in its simplicity, in its calmness. But where that chapel had been warmed by the ocean breeze and the pounding Californian sun, this small building was chilled to its core by months of London winter.

Ralph pulled the plugs from his ears and switched off his iPod, and then he sat in the third pew from the front. He felt it again, as he had in California: a sense of gladness that he was here, a sense that he was welcome, that he'd been
expected
. He closed his eyes, as he had before, and he let the peace and stillness sit deep within him. But this time as his thoughts focused he knew that he was not here to ask for help. This time he was here to give thanks.

He brought his bunched fists to his mouth and he whispered words into them.

Thank you for Jem
.

Thank you for Scarlett
.

Thank you for my beautiful baby Blake
.

Thank you for my talent
.

Thank you for my home
.

Thank you for keeping us all safe and healthy
.

If someone had walked into the chapel now and asked him what he was doing, he would have been unable to explain. He was not praying. And although he was feeling thankful, he could not easily say that he was giving thanks because that would imply that he was giving thanks to somebody and he was not giving thanks to anybody because there was nobody there but him. Ralph did not believe in God. Ralph was not a man of faith. But Ralph would have to find some explanation for being here, for feeling the way he was feeling, for saying the things he was saying to the thin air of an empty church. What would he say?

He stopped for a moment to consider himself and decided that if someone were to ask him why he was here and what he was doing, he would say this: “I am letting myself consider the possibility of something else.”

Before he left he lit a candle for his family and then he pushed his earphones back into his ears and resumed his run. He imagined what Jem would have to say about his burgeoning spirituality and realized overpoweringly that he would never be able to tell her. She would freak out. He pounded the streets of south London feeling oddly as if he were nursing a terrible secret.

J
em brought her head up from the toilet bowl and took a deep breath. She had not been sick but she had thought very strongly that she might be. Her flesh was covered in goose bumps and her face was flushed. This was the third time she had run to the toilet since this morning and the third time she had failed to be sick and she simply did not have the time to be ill. She pulled her hair back from her face and appraised herself in the mirror above the sink. She looked clammy and gray. She shivered slightly, feeling the dread crawl of nausea across her skin.

It did occur to her as she made her way downstairs that she might be pregnant. Having been in a state of early pregnancy four times, she was quite familiar with the signs and symptoms, but it didn't add up. First, she and Ralph had had sex only twice since he got back from America; second, her periods had still not resumed since giving birth to Blake; and third, they had used a condom. Admittedly they had not utilized the condom until the last possible moment, but then Ralph and Jem had always used condoms like that and they had never, even when they were at it daily, gotten pregnant accidentally. Each time they had been pregnant it had been as a result of planning and meticulous timing and even then it had never taken less than three months, and in the case of Blake, a full nine months of concerted and scheduled effort. The chance of having conceived
by accident, with a condom, while breastfeeding and at the age of thirty-eight was so slim as to be not worth considering.

But still.

She could not ignore the fact that her breasts, which had just settled down from the overinflated early stages of breastfeeding into a more realistic shape and size, were suddenly tender and swollen again. And that she had a taste in her mouth that was reminiscent of ballpoint pen ink.

No, she decided, making her way into the kitchen, where Scarlett was patiently watching her baby brother, no, it was all too unlikely. And too, too awful possibly to contemplate.

“Did you be sick again, Mummy?” asked Scarlett

“No,” said Jem, “not sick. Just feeling a bit yucky.”

Scarlett looked at her sympathetically. “Maybe you'll be sick later?” she said encouragingly.

Jem smiled. “Maybe,” she said.

Jem strapped Blake to her chest and the three of them made their way over to Lulu's house for tea. It was a mild afternoon and the sky was milky white. The nausea had dissipated and Jem liked the feeling of the soft air against her skin and her little girl's fingers held inside her hand. They walked slowly enough to stop and look at flowers and berry-stained bird poos and a bag of cement left on the side of the road. By the time they reached Lulu's road at five o'clock Jem was feeling a deep sag of contentment in the pit of her stomach and was in just the mood for a couple of hours in her sister's kitchen surrounded by exuberant children and mess.

And it was in this state of mind that she walked round the corner and came face-to-face with Joel.

“Hello!” she cried, rather too effusively.

“Oh.” He smiled wanly at her. “Hello.”

She looked around for Jessica. “No Jessica?” she asked.

“No. Not today. She's with my son.”

“Oh, right.” Jem smiled brightly. She wanted to ask Joel what he was doing here. This was the second time that their paths had crossed here, outside Lulu's house, and the second time he had been here without his daughter.

“So,” he said, “this is your sister's place, right?”

“Er, yeah,” Jem muttered, unsure whether it was wise to be furnishing this man with yet more personal information about herself. “Off for tea!” she said.

“Right,” he said flatly. “Well, I'd better get back. Don't want to be late for Jess. Good to see you again.”

“Yes, you too!” Jem beamed at him, aware of the fact that she was being rather overfulsome with her responses.

Jem glanced down at his feet. She looked at his shoes. They were old loafers, slightly stretched out of shape, showing a slice of thin nylon sock. She would not want to see such shoes next to her bed in the morning and she could not imagine why she'd ever thought she would. He saw her look at his shoes, although it was just a heartbeat of a moment and then he looked at her with such a look of contempt that it nearly knocked the breath out of her lungs. He didn't say anything, but just turned and walked away, very slowly, with heavier footsteps than usual.

Jem gasped slightly. The meeting had been short, but as with the episode on the doorstep the other day, alarmingly intense. She took a moment to gather herself and then she knocked on Lulu's door.

Lulu greeted her wearing her wedding dress.

“What the hell are you doing?” Jem exclaimed, her thoughts distracted immediately from the oddness of her recent encounter.

“Well, funny you should ask.” She held the door open for them. “I was going through some old stuff, getting ready for an
eBay sale, saw this hanging there, wondered if I could still get into it, and yay! Look!” She twirled round, yards of antique silk dupion rustling as she did so. “Look! Fits like a glove. I haven't taken it off since. In fact,” she said, following them through to the kitchen, “I think I will keep it on until bedtime, see what Walter makes of it.” She winked. Jem smiled tightly. Although she and Ralph had broken their sexual drought, she could still think of at least half a dozen better ways of filling an evening.

Scarlett stared at Lulu in awe, as though she were a fairy princess.

“Mummy,” she said, “why don't you never wear your lovely dress like that?”

Jem smiled. “Because, my darling, I don't have a lovely dress like that.”

“Why not?”

“Because Daddy and I have never had a wedding.”

“Why?”

“Because”—she paused for a moment—“because we've been too busy trying to make our family.”

“Yes, but Auntie Lulu has a family
and
she's got a lovely dress.”

Jem looked from her daughter to her sister and then back again. “That,” she said, “is a very good point. You'll need to ask Daddy about this because Daddy thinks that weddings are a waste of money.”

Scarlett's jaw dropped. She was unable at first to comprehend that her perfect Daddy could possibly hold an opinion that she found so repellent. But then she rallied herself and smiled. “
I'll
pay for it,” she said. “Tell Daddy that I will pay for it. I've got about a hundred pence.”

Jem and Lulu smiled at each other. “I will,” said Jem. “I'll tell him tonight.”

“Tea?”

“Yes, please. Decaf if you've got it. But God, be careful with that dress. Don't spill any on it.”

“Oh, why, it's not as if I'm ever going to wear it again. Biscuits?”

“Definitely. I'm starving. You do look beautiful in that,” Jem said. “God, that was such an amazing weekend, wasn't it?” She sighed, thinking back to Lulu's fairy-tale wedding in Tuscany eleven years earlier, just after she and Ralph had gotten together, their first holiday as a couple, possibly the two most romantic days of Jem's life.

“And what's new with you?” She shook a packet of Morning Coffees onto a plate and slid it onto the counter in front of Jem.

Jem smiled tightly. There were no secrets at Lulu's house. “Well,” she began. “First of all I think I might be pregnant . . .”

“Whoopee!”

“No, not whoopee.”

“Yes, whoopee. If you think you might be pregnant then clearly you and Ralph have gotten back to business.”

“Well, yes, we have, but if I am pregnant then that means that
I am pregnant
. Which is not even slightly whoopee.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Er, because my existing baby is not even six months old? Because I am still feeding him on demand? Because I do not want three children? And because right now I really think that the most important thing is for me and Ralph to get back on an even keel, you know?”

“Yeah. All right. Fair enough. Though I, for one, would be delighted.”

“Well, yes, of course you would. It wouldn't be you getting stretched out of shape for nine months and then having to push
it out of an unfeasibly small hole and then having to feed it every two hours.”

“No, it would just be me giving it kisses and cuddles and thinking how lucky I am to have so many lovely nieces and nephews. And wow, so lovely for Blake to have a brother or sister so close in age. No sibling rivalry.”

“Lulu! I do not want to be pregnant, okay? I do not want to have another baby! If you want another one, then feel free, but leave me out of it!”

Lulu tutted and raised her brow. “So what'll you do then? If you are?”

Jem shrugged and picked up a biscuit. “Not have it, I suppose.”

Lulu winced. “Ooh, really, are you sure?”

“No, I'm not sure. But I am sure that there is no way I am ready for another pregnancy and another baby, so, well . . . Anyway, I probably am not even pregnant. It's highly unlikely.”

“But seriously, would you really consider not going through with it, after what you've been through with losing babies in the past? It just seems a bit . . .”

“Hard?”

“Well, yes.”

Jem shrugged. “You know,” she said, “maybe I have grown something hard in me. I don't know. I love the idea of having another Blake or another Scarlett but God, by the time me and Ralph make it to the Blake and Scarlett stage, I reckon we'll have imploded. Things are so fragile between us right now. I just don't think our relationship could take the stress. I really don't. And then, wow, that'd be nice, I'd be a single mother of
three
. Christ . . .”

Lulu appraised her. “Are things really that delicate?”

Jem considered the question. “Yes,” she said, “they are. It's like we're both practicing, you know, practicing being happy. And the idea is that if we keep practicing for long enough it'll just feel natural. It's like, I know now that I love him enough to want to stay with him forever and I know that I don't want to be with anyone else, but it's baby steps. Things had gotten pretty bad between us, you know, before he went away, bad enough for me to consider life without him. And now, well, I just really want to focus on life with him. Not life with another baby. People say that a new baby can bring two people back together but new babies seem to have had totally the opposite effect on me and Ralph. It would break us. Trust me on this.”