Any Way You Want Me (31 page)

I sat there on the edge of the bath and watched as, slowly but surely, a blue line appeared in the large window, pale and hardly there at first, so that I blinked and thought it was a trick of the light. I held my breath and watched as it darkened and thickened until there was absolutely no doubt left in my mind whatsoever.

Sixteen

I was five weeks pregnant. Things were happening inside me that were completely out of my control. Cells were splitting and multiplying, my uterus was thickening, extra blood was coursing around me as my body revved up to set the whole process in motion, all over again.

A third baby.

A mother of three.

With every heartbeat, the secret hidden inside me was growing bigger and stronger. Bigger and stronger.

I sat on the edge of the bath for a long time, trying not to cry. This was so, so wrong. It was so badly, painfully wrong for so many different reasons, I couldn’t even begin to think about them. Alex, Mark, me . . . The eternal triangle had become an eternal
quadrilateral
now that there was an extra character in the picture. The lines between us all had blurred and tangled without a chance of repair now. I had fucked everything up beyond all recognition, as somebody had once said.

I stared at the white tester stick again. Could there be a mistake? Could there be something wrong with the test? I twisted the stick this way and that, hoping it was an optical illusion, but no. All I could see were the twin blue lines, accusing me in their symmetry. Pregnant, pregnant, pregnant.

It was horribly ironic. I’d loved the discovery of both of my previous pregnancies, had rushed straight to consult the books by Miriam Stoppard and Sheila Kitzinger, and all the other childbirth gurus, as soon as I’d found out the wonderful news each time. I had devoured great volumes of information, charted my (our) development week by week, month by month, monitored everything I ate or drank or did with the solemnity of a religion. I revised for it harder than I had done for my A levels, thought of nothing else.

Oh, and I’d simply sailed through the nine months confidently and easily both times, with none of the morning sickness or backache or diabetes that my friends complained of. It had made me feel important – quick, pregnant woman, get her a chair, let her sit down, can we get you anything, pet? – oh, I’d just loved all that. Loved the strangers coming up to me predicting the sex of my hidden babe, wanting to pat my proudly blooming belly.

The difference was, they had been wanted pregnancies. Yearned-for, hoped-for, planned pregnancies.

This one was a cuckoo in the wrong nest. The changeling in the womb. The child I wasn’t ready to bear, the child whose father’s identity I couldn’t even name with any certainty. Oh, God. It sounded so awful when I thought of it like that. It made me feel like someone from
Trisha. Who’s the daddy?
the strapline would read across the screen.
Sadie’s pregnant
–
but who’s the daddy?

Alex was going to
kill
me when I told him I was up the stick again. Or, if he managed not to kill me, he’d leave me. He was going to be totally and utterly pissed off when he heard the news. I could picture the look of horror that would spread across his face, could almost hear him blurting out, ‘Oh,
no
,’ when I told him. He had said, plain and simple,
Two is enough for me, thanks
, hadn’t he? I mean, how unequivocal could you get? He might even try to talk me into having an abortion, flushing the thing out of me before it had a chance to develop its vital organs.

I shut my eyes and crossed my arms around myself protectively at the thought. No. Whatever the complications, I knew that I didn’t want that. But how the hell was I going to break the news to him?

As for Mark . . . he would know, he would just
know
if I told him I was pregnant. He wasn’t stupid, he could work out dates. And let’s face it, Mark was longing to have a child, wasn’t he? It was his great sorrow that Julia didn’t seem interested in starting a family. If I told Mark he was going to be a father, that we were going to have a baby, he would . . .

I put my head in my hands. He would be over the moon. The most wonderful gift I could have given him. He would probably leave Julia for it, and . . .

Hold on. Stop.

Stop, stop, stop, stop, STOP.

I didn’t want to get into thinking about that stuff. That was another thought for another day. I didn’t have to tell anybody anything just yet; I would work out what to do later. In the meantime, I would sit on my secret and wait for it to hatch. Right now, though, I needed lunch. Eating for two again, eh? No wonder I had been so hungry all the time lately.

I went downstairs and made three rounds of thickly buttered toast. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and sobbed as if my heart was broken.

Come Saturday, the thought of meeting up with Danny at his mum’s birthday party seemed just about the worst night out it was possible to have, short of a date with Jim Davidson.

Incredibly, it was Alex who talked me into going. This was largely because I’d told him a teeny-weeny lie and said that it was my best school friend that I was meeting, rather than my first boyfriend. Which was kind of true, but also kind of deceptive. ‘Come on, Sade, if it’s been arranged for ages, it would be a bit crap of you to pull out now,’ he said.

‘But I’m so tired,’ I moaned. ‘Look at me. I look like something next door’s cat might have sicked up after a big night on the Whiskas.’

‘Put some make-up on, then,’ he ordered me heartlessly. ‘And wash your hair. Go on, you haven’t been out on the lash for ages. You know I’m right. I’m right about everything, remember? Did I mention that I was right about everything?’

I looked away, ignoring his rambling. I was hardly going to be on the lash in my condition, as Miriam Stoppard might have said. Pickling a foetus, whether it was wanted or unwanted, was not my style.

I turned back to Alex, my eyes narrowing accusingly as I thought of something. ‘Hang on a second. Why are you so keen for me to go out anyway? What have you got planned?’

He did have the grace to look slightly shifty at the question. ‘Not a lot. Watch a bit of telly, you know,’ he blustered.

‘Anything else? Anything that you’re not telling me, perhaps?’

He faltered under the fierceness of my gaze. I had my hands on my hips, head on one side, the lot. ‘Well, all right, I’ve asked a couple of the lads round for a bit of poker.’

‘Oh, ri-i-i-ight,’ I said, working at least four syllables into the word. I folded my arms across my chest. ‘And were you planning to tell me about this before I went out, or was I just going to wake up tomorrow morning to be told you’d betted our house away?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Don’t be daft. You’ll be waking up to wads of money at the end of the bed, that’s what.’

‘Mmm, well, I’ll look forward to that, then,’ I said sarcastically, ‘when I see it.’

He pulled a face. ‘Go on, chop-chop,’ he said. ‘What are you waiting for? Get in the shower and I’ll get the kids their milk. Go!’

My mind had been such a blur of unanswered questions, ever since Friday and the pregnancy test of doom, that I hadn’t had the time or energy to formulate a watertight gameplan for Mrs Cooper’s party. Whether it was all psychological or not, I felt as if I had already plunged into no-brainer pregnancy mode where thinking about anything more taxing than
Hollyoaks
was instantly out of the window. The idea of having to concoct a whole wedge of lies about my job, lifestyle and home, and then carry them off plausibly to the entire Cooper clan all evening, seemed an acute impossibility.

The alternative, though, wasn’t particularly appealing either: coming clean, telling Danny the truth, confessing that every email I’d sent him had been a pack of lies. But why? he would ask. I don’t get it. Why didn’t you tell me what you were really doing?

And what the hell would I say to that? Oh, well, you see, Danny, I wanted to impress you. I was so bored with the real world that I escaped to a cosy little fantasy life. I invented this alter ego to dazzle you, make you wish you hadn’t dumped me. I was punishing you.

It had been years and years since I had clapped eyes on him, but I could imagine exactly his response.
Punishing
me?
Kidding yourself, you mean. You loser!

My eyes stung with half-formed tears at the thought. I put my make-up on in front of the bedroom mirror, feeling panicky. Oh God, what was I going to say? And, more pressingly, what was I going to wear?

The door creaked and Molly came in, just as I’d flung open the wardrobe doors. She was wearing her pyjamas and clutching Fizz. ‘Mummy, we singing “Pump Up” downstairs,’ she confided, walking over and cuddling my bare legs.

‘“Pump Up?”What’s that, darling?’ I asked distractedly. Gap black trousers or French Connection black trousers or Next black trousers? I was thinking.

Molly started pogoing around the room like a badly coordinated, gambolling chimp. ‘“Pump up! You feel it! Pump up!”’ she started yelling.

The words sounded vaguely familiar, but her yells were so tuneless, I couldn’t put my finger on precisely what she was meant to be singing. ‘Is it one of Daddy’s songs?’ I asked, skimming through the clothes for another look. Ahh. Perhaps these black trousers from Warehouse. They were a bit more forgiving on the waist. Even though the cells in my womb were still only microscopically tiny, my belly seemed to have slumped outwards already, admitted defeat before the growth thing had even started.

‘Yeah, Daddy sing it downstairs,’ Molly said. ‘Daddy sing, “Pump up! You feel it! Pump up!”’

‘Ahh, right,’ I said, nodding.

Alex was on a mission to musically educate our children whenever possible, which meant scornfully tossing aside their Nursery Collection CDs and their ‘Wheels on the Bus’ tape for car journeys, and playing them his favourite albums instead. He had proudly informed me that Molly was into ska before she was even crawling, with The Beat being her particular favourites, he reckoned. He was also convinced she was well into The Specials and The Pogues for dancing purposes, plus Massive Attack and Portishead for chilled-out pre-bedtime moods.

The music from downstairs suddenly got louder – no doubt he was trying to educate Nathan now – and a snatch of the bass line made everything click. ‘Pump It Up’ by Elvis Costello. Of course.

‘Mummy, you wear THIS.’

Pogoing temporarily on hold, Molly had come to inspect the contents of my wardrobe. Of course, being Molly, she had ignored the swathe of blackness that was my usual going-out wear and had pulled out a plum-coloured, halterneck, knee-length, office-Christmas-party-type dress instead.

‘What, this?’ I hadn’t worn it for years. Not since the Christmas party just before I’d conceived Molly, in fact. It belonged to a different age and, with it, a different, carefree me.

‘This. I like this one.’ She clutched it adamantly, swung it on the hanger.

I touched the satiny material myself, pulled it out for a closer look. ‘I don’t know, Molls. I’m not sure it’ll fit any more.’

The look on her face was so beseeching and keen that I relented. Oh, whatever. I’d put it on just to show her, then I’d get back to choosing which pair of black trousers was the right one to wear for a sixty-year-old’s birthday party.

I pulled the dress over my arms and shoulders; the material was silky-smooth and slipped down over me in one flowing movement. Good God, it still fitted. A little tight on the chest maybe, but fine on the hips. I’d forgotten the way that the skirt flipped out if I twirled around, how weightless the material was, and how it shone almost two-tone under the light.

‘Mummy, you PRETTY. That your party dress.’

I hugged my fashion critic daughter. Who needed Trinny and Susannah when you had the complimentary Molly advising you on your outfits? ‘Thanks, sweetpea.’ I had danced all night in this dress, arsed around with Jo and Bernadette from the marketing department, necking free drinks and trying to resist boss-eyed Matt from the post room’s drunken advances. God, it was like a lifetime ago.

Satisfied that she’d made the right choice for me, Molly trotted back downstairs. ‘Daddy! I want you dance again!’ I could hear her instructing.

I eyed my reflection critically. Was it going to be too much for Mrs Cooper’s party? Would I turn up to see everyone else in jeans and trainers?

I twirled around, watching the flippy skirt fan out around my knees. Yet if I didn’t wear it tonight, when would I ever put it on again? The dress was loose on my tummy now, but give it a couple of months and it could be gathering dust on its hanger again when I . . . if I . . .

Sod it. Where were my strappy sandals? This might be my last chance to be the belle of the ball for a while. So belle of the ball I would be, for one final night only.

I had arranged to meet Danny in a pub just off Streatham High Road. As I pushed the doors open, I realized with a jolt that the last time I had been in there was when I was eighteen years old. Jesus! Everything still looked exactly the same, right down to the dour-faced landlady slouching meatily over her beer pumps.

I scanned the pub slowly as I walked up to the bar. The thin straps of my shoes were already cutting into my feet, and I felt ridiculously over-dressed as I swanned in there with my slinky party dress and beaded wrap, plus a dinky little handbag to round the outfit off. An old man who was sitting alone, nursing a pint of Guinness at so leisurely a pace that the froth had yellowed and was crusting around his glass, stared openly at me as if I were a different species.

And then I saw him at the bar: Danny, with his smile just as wide and friendly as it had been all those years ago, and suddenly everything turned to slow motion as I walked the last few steps up to him. Daniel Patrick Cooper. The man himself.

‘Hello, Sadie,’ he said. He sounded as London as ever. ‘You look magic.’

‘Hiya, Dan,’ I said, feeling shy and delighted all in the same moment. ‘It’s great to see you.’ I couldn’t stop smiling. Me and Danny Cooper, in the Nag’s Head again! It was like a bizarre dream where different parts of my life were mixed up with each other. Any minute now, my old primary school teacher would come in juggling grapefruit on a unicycle, followed by Nathan, walking on his hands.