Dear Thing (3 page)

‘Plenty of things can still go wrong,’ she told him, but he bent her back and kissed her, passionately, like a hero in a black-and-white film.

Romily felt a burning in her eyes. She didn’t have to watch them, together in the sunshine streaming through the French windows. She’d seen it a million times. But she did watch them.

‘How are you feeling?’ he murmured.

‘Wonderful.’

‘You look amazing,’ Romily said. ‘You’ve got a sort of bloom to you. I was thinking it earlier.’

They both looked at her at the same time, as if they’d forgotten she was there. Well, why wouldn’t they? ‘Congratulations,’ she added.

Ben set Claire back on her feet and turned to Romily. ‘I’m going to be a daddy!’

She beamed back at him. ‘Congratulations, Daddy.’

‘We’ve still got a long way to go,’ said Claire. ‘Nine months. And the official test tomorrow. Which might say otherwise.’

‘It won’t. This time we know it’s a good, healthy embryo. A baby.’ Ben held out his arms, wide enough to embrace the whole kitchen, the whole world. If Romily had thought Claire’s happiness was beautiful, his was nearly blinding. ‘Forget the beer. I’m going to find some champagne. You can have some, can’t you, Claire? A little bit?’

‘Better not.’

‘Romily and I will drink it, then.’

‘I need to drive home.’

‘Stay the night!’

‘I’ve got to take— er, Posie’s little friend home.’

‘Amelia,’ supplied Claire.

‘That’s it.’

‘Then I’ll drink the sweet taste of my wife’s lips,’ declared Ben, and he took Claire in his arms again.

This time, Romily didn’t watch them kissing. ‘I’ll just tell the girls to wash their hands and get ready for pizza,’ she said. She didn’t think Ben and Claire heard her, and when she went into the other room, the girls had their heads together inside the castle and didn’t look up, either. She made a detour to the bathroom, where she discovered that her dark cropped
hair was stuck up all on one side, and probably had been since she’d been caught in the rain.

She tidied it as best she could, taking her time, and then washed her hands and tried a bit of Claire’s hand moisturizer and, for good measure, counted how many blue tiles there were around the sink (thirty-eight) before she went back to her daughter.

Quietly, she sneaked on sock-clad feet, her hands outstretched to surprise Posie with some birthday tickles.

‘So why do you go to Crossmead if you live all the way out here?’ Amelia was asking.

‘Oh, I told my mum that I wanted to go to school there.’ Posie’s voice was offhand. ‘But I definitely live here.’

Romily stopped.

‘Who was the lady who picked us up from school, then?’ Amelia asked.

‘That’s Romily.’

‘Isn’t she your mum? My mum thought she was your mum.’

‘No, my parents are Claire and Ben. They’re the best parents in the world.’

Romily coughed loudly, and Posie pulled her head out of the doll’s house.

‘Pizza’s ready,’ Romily told them. ‘Go and wash your hands, please.’

‘Okay!’ Posie trotted to the bathroom. Amelia followed, looking even more bemused than she’d been since Romily had first met her.

Romily stood near the doll’s house for what felt like quite a long time before she joined the party in the kitchen.

Afterwards, after the oven chips and the singing, after Posie closed her eyes and made a wish that Romily thought she
could probably guess, after she’d unwrapped the anticlimax of a jigsaw puzzle and an illustrated edition of
Alice Through the Looking Glass
, after they’d dropped off Amelia, sticky and still bemused, at her house, Romily glanced back at her daughter in the rear-view mirror of her car and asked, ‘Posie? Why did you tell your friend that I wasn’t your real mother?’

‘Oh,’ said Posie, ‘we were just playing.’ She closed her eyes and settled back in her seat, as if she were going to sleep.

Romily drove on, through the artificial light and the traffic. She switched on the radio to keep her company.

CLAIRE AWOKE AT
twenty-five minutes past six, reached over to turn off the alarm before it sounded, and then tucked her arm back into the warmth beneath the duvet. She lay in the hollow of Ben’s embrace, his knees fitting into the bend of hers. His breath stirred the hair on the top of her head.

She could tell when he woke up a few moments later, because his hand crept to her belly. His fingers spread out over her nightgown, seeping warmth down to where their baby slept. ‘Morning,’ he whispered. ‘Both of you.’

Claire smiled and settled back against his chest. Her body felt so alive. ‘What’ve you got today?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got lunch with the Kahns and then I’m taking them for a walk-through of the site. Then, as it’s Valentine’s Day, I might take my wife out to dinner, if she’s willing.’

‘I’m willing. I have to go into school this morning to do some marking.’

‘During half-term? You should be lazing around in bed. Only time in your life you’ve got a good excuse.’

‘Then I’ve got a shower this afternoon for Lacey.’

He tightened his arms around her. ‘It’ll be yours next.’

‘My mother doesn’t approve of them. She says they’re an American habit.’

‘Your mother will never know.’ He nuzzled her neck. ‘I love you. I think you’re amazing.’

‘I love you too.’ She turned around in his arms and ran both her hands up his chest. Even after years of marriage she marvelled at his size, the strength of him. How he could make her feel safe and cherished. He pulled her closer.

‘Seems like we should do something so it doesn’t feel like this baby was conceived in a test tube,’ he murmured. He kissed her, and then drew back. ‘Claire?’

‘I don’t want to hurt the baby.’

‘Dr Wilson said it was all right, as long as we were careful.’

‘I don’t think I would be able to relax.’

He didn’t frown or turn away, he didn’t do anything but keep on holding her, but Claire said, quickly, ‘I know it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to have a normal sex life, to make love whenever we want to. I miss it, too. But just a little bit longer, Ben.’

‘Yes. It’s better to be safe.’ He kissed her forehead, then got up from the bed and pulled on his dressing-gown. ‘Let’s ask the doctor again when we see her next time.’

‘I’m sure it will be fine, very soon.’

‘Ah well, you know what they say about anticipation heightening the appetite. Stay there, I’ll get you a hot water with lemon.’

‘Thanks,’ said Claire. He left the bedroom and Claire settled back onto the pillows.

‘Do you have children?’

Claire shifted slightly on Lacey’s sofa to face the woman who was talking to her. She didn’t know most of the women
in the room. Two of them were from school – Lacey had just started teaching geography last year, ironically to cover another teacher’s maternity leave – but the others were Lacey’s friends or family. All of the guests had been seated around the room according to birth sign; it was supposed to help break the ice and help them get to know each other.

‘No,’ she answered, doing her best to put on a gracious smile, as she always did when asked this question by someone who didn’t know. Today, it was a lot easier.

‘No wonder your skin is so gorgeous! All that sleep.’ The woman leaned forward. She had straightened hair and blue circles under her eyes. ‘Tell me – do you get to go to restaurants?’

‘Sometimes.’

The woman let out a long stream of a sigh. ‘Oh, I dream of restaurants. Ones that have proper cutlery. And menus that aren’t designed for children to colour in.’

‘I get excited about a bowl of chips at the soft play centre,’ added the woman on the other side of Claire.

‘Tell me about it,’ said the first one. ‘Do you know how Paul and I celebrated our wedding anniversary? Tub of Häagen-Dazs at the cinema during a Disney film.’

‘I forgot about ours,’ called another woman from across the room. ‘Harry and Abby both had chickenpox. I remembered two days later and it hardly seemed worth it.’

‘Does your husband give you flowers?’ the first woman asked Claire.

‘Er … sometimes.’ There had been a bouquet on the table when she came downstairs this morning.

‘I got flowers for Valentine’s Day last year!’ said the second woman. ‘Ellie ate them. We had to go to A&E. I didn’t get flowers this year.’

‘Were they poisonous?’

‘We were mostly worried about the cellophane wrapper. She didn’t do a poo for three days. I was terrified.’

‘Once, Alfie didn’t do a poo for
two weeks
. I shovelled enough puréed prunes into him to choke a horse.’

‘You have all this to come,’ said the first woman to Lacey. Lacey sat in a flowered armchair in the sunny, cramped front room of her flat, her hands folded over her protruding stomach. She smiled as if the idea of shovelling puréed prunes into a baby’s mouth was just about the best thing in the entire world.

Claire thought that probably wasn’t too far from wrong.

‘Wine?’ Lacey’s mother, who was a sweet lady with very red hair, was circulating the room with a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Claire shook her head and held up her glass, already full of mineral water. ‘That’s a beautiful cake you’ve made,’ Lacey’s mother said. ‘And so delicious. Aren’t you having any?’

‘Thank you. And no, I don’t really eat cake.’

‘Are you gluten-free?’ asked the first woman. ‘No wonder you’re so slim. I just look at a piece of bread and I gain half a stone.’

‘I just try to eat healthily,’ said Claire. ‘But I love making cakes.’

‘What’s the baby going to be called?’ someone asked Lacey.

‘We’re calling him Billy.’

There was a collective sigh of appreciation.

‘I like the simple names,’ said the first woman. ‘There are too many trendy names around. There’s a girl at Alfie’s nursery called Fairybelle.’

The women launched into a discussion of their children’s names: what they were almost called, what they were glad they weren’t called, what they would have been called if they
had been born the opposite sex. The woman whose daughter had eaten the cellophane off her flowers got up to use the loo and Georgette, the other St Dominick’s teacher, slipped into the place next to Claire.

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all baby talk.’

‘It’s okay. I’m used to it. Besides, it’s Lacey’s day. She looks wonderful, doesn’t she?’

They both looked at Lacey. She was generally the sort of person who didn’t call much attention to herself: a hiker, a camper, a good teacher.

She looked wonderful.

‘Still,’ said Georgette, ‘I think that people could be a little bit more sensitive. Not everyone wants to talk about babies all the time.’

Georgette had two children. Claire remembered when the youngest had been born; it was about the time Claire herself had gone through her third and final IVF treatment that had been allowed on the NHS, before they’d gone private. Claire had been given an invitation to the christening, but there was a little handwritten note in it:
I’ll understand if you don’t want to be around babies
.

She hadn’t gone to the christening, not to avoid the babies but to avoid the understanding.

The women in this room were complaining about their lives, but underneath they were happy. Claire could almost smell it, with the nose of an outsider. They exuded warm yeasty contentment. It was the same way, she noticed, whenever women with young children got together. The conversation revolved around little sacrifices or disasters, about mishaps and made-up worries, but its function wasn’t to communicate information: it was to establish relationship. To mark out common ground.

We are mothers. We do battle with nappies and Calpol. Look upon our offspring, ye mighty, and despair.

The truth was, she would give up anything to be like the women in this room. She was tired of feeling the sharp stab of pain every time she passed a playground. That raw ache of yearning at Christmas. She was tired of feeling like a failure, once a month, like clockwork.

But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk about it. Or to be pitied.

And now she didn’t have to be.

‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it’s fine. I’m really happy.’

Georgette widened her eyes. ‘Oh my God, has something happened? Are you …?’

‘I think Lacey’s going to open her gifts,’ Claire said, and Georgette transferred her attention to the main business of the afternoon.

Claire thought back to the warm moments in bed with Ben this morning before he’d woken up, imagining a little one cuddled up with them. She could picture Ben’s expression as he watched her feeding their child from her body. Warm and sweet. That would make up for any blip in their sex life. Or the several blips over the years as they’d adjusted from thinking of sex as something fun, to thinking of it as something that was supposed to make babies but didn’t.

They’d talked about names a long time ago, when they thought it would be easy to have children. Back when they’d been actively trying not to have children – she’d gone on the pill before they’d started having sex, and at first she’d made him wear a condom as well. Ben called it ‘double bagging’. They’d lain in bed together in his single bed at university, or still later, in their first real double bed as a married couple,
and planned their family. A boy first, named Oliver. A girl called Sophie. Or perhaps a girl called Olivia and a boy named Sid. The names had seemed so new and yet traditional, then; now, with the passing of years, they were too popular.

They hadn’t talked about names for a while now. It seemed such an innocent thing to do, but it was too much like tempting fate. They’d have to talk about it again soon. She liked her father’s name, Mark, if it were a boy. Or Lucille, if it were a girl, after Ben’s grandmother. Old-fashioned names, with a connection to family.

Or maybe they could go for something totally left field, like Fairybelle. Thumbelina. Bathsheba. Excalibur, for a boy. Excalibur Hercules Lawrence.

Claire smiled. Maybe it was even safe to joke about it.

‘Oh, lovely!’ cried Lacey, opening a box of Babygros. Her mother cooed and passed around a plate of biscuits. Claire felt a twinge in her abdomen, down near her bladder. Too much mineral water.