Deranged Marriage (49 page)

‘Why George? Why did you do it? I have tried to work it out time and time again but I couldn’t. Not at all.’

‘I was heartbroken, rejected, I guess. Maybe I was mad. I remember thinking that when I left New York after Julia rejected me that I would never be the same again. That the pain I had inside me would never leave. I felt more alone than I ever have; even more than when I first moved to New York without knowing anyone. I saw you, soon after, and you were so understanding and you said you’d always be there for me. I don’t know why, I still don’t understand myself but I suddenly thought that there was a reason that Julia turned me down and that reason was you. It seemed to make sense. That I wasn’t alone because I loved you. Holly I know I didn’t, I know that now, but I believed that I did. I was terrified, and I am sorry that you suffered because I scared you. The rest of it is a mad blur.

‘The court case was stupid, I know, but when my family turned against me and Cordelia found me I believed in her. She was the only person who was nice to me and in that state I needed someone. That’s where it really went bad. I became a madman, I was already a madman but I wasn’t horrible before. I basked in the adoration I received, and yes, I started sleeping with Cordelia. It was dirty, sordid, kinky, nothing like with anyone else. I feel awful to belittle it because in the end she did care about me, she said she loved me. And I paid the price for hurting her, but I’m pleased. I needed to be brought down and I needed to wake up to myself.’ No matter how I said it, the explanation felt inadequate.

‘And now?’

‘Now I go back to New York and you stay here with Joe and have your baby.’

‘Joe and I aren’t back together.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, we’re friends and we’re spending a lot of time together but he hasn’t forgiven me for sleeping with you. Also, until the paternity is sorted...’

‘What do you want to do about that?’

‘Well, Joe needs to know, I don’t know what you think but as soon as the baby is born we’re going to have the test, as soon as we can.’ She chewed her lip, like she used to when she was younger and upset.

‘It’s your decision.’

‘It is.’

‘Have you forgiven me?’

‘I haven’t even forgiven myself.’

‘My dad reminded me that we all make mistakes, but if we realise they were mistakes then we’re OK.’ We were twelve years old again, briefly.

‘I always liked your dad.’ She stared at her tea.

‘We have such a history, Hol.’

‘Which is why I couldn’t comprehend what you did to me. I couldn’t believe you would behave like that. I couldn’t equate my best friend with the person you had become, and well that’s why I had such a hard time with it. Well not just that, everything.’

‘Julia has forgiven me.’

‘You’re lucky then.’

‘It was always her, Holly, always.’

‘I thought it was.’

‘I had a huge lapse of reason.’

‘What can I do?’

‘I don’t know. Tell him you love him. Tell him it was only a mistake.’

‘I can do that, but that doesn’t mean he’ll take me back.’

‘If it’s his baby?’

‘Yeah. Maybe, one day. I still hope.’

‘Always hope Hol, that’s all we have.’ I looked at her and she looked at me and I knew that there was so much more to say but actually nothing more. I saw forgiveness in her eyes and that was enough. I still felt guilty, but I kissed her cheek and I left.

*

Now I was ready. We packed up the flat, not that I had much stuff and Julia and I went home.

‘I can’t believe you have left your apartment empty all this time.’

‘I guess the plants will have died.’

‘So, where should we live?’

‘What, when we’re married?’

‘Maybe we don’t have to wait, we could move in now.’

‘OK, so your place or mine?’

‘Or a totally new one?’

‘Hey I like that, new start.’ We held hands as we walked through the departure gate and I knew that I wouldn’t look back.

Chapter Forty-four

Forgiveness

I don’t know how long I sat there after he left but it felt like hours. It was ironic that his life had turned out so perfectly. How his life was the way he wanted it. He had his love. I wasn’t her, no sirree, but she was and she forgave him. I felt a stab of anger, as I thought about how messed up I’d been and now he was going back to his former life and getting married and everything good seemed to be happening to him but it wasn’t happening to me. Bastard. He was a total shit. But I did forgive him for a minute because I saw, in that café, my friend George. He was back for a short visit and I remembered how much he had meant to me in my life and I let him know that. But I was still furious, the shit. How dare his life work out so nicely when he was the one that ruined mine. When I thought of the tears, the loneliness, the fear, the press invasion, everything I’d gone through. I could hold myself responsible for losing Joe, and I did, but everything else?

He had turned my life upside down and now his life was the right way up but mine still had a way to go. But I let him see the forgiveness before he left and I wondered if he would ever think about that time, and feel guilty. I knew that the old George would, and that made me feel better. Actually it didn’t make me feel better. I was bitter now. Unbelievably, he had come home bitter and twisted and here was I now feeling the same. Maybe I’d go to New York and take him to court, then go to the press. See how he’d like that. I stared at the wooden table. I stared at my empty teacup. I stared at the empty coffee cup. That was where he’d sat, for the last time ever before he walked out of my life.

I picked up my mobile and called Joe.

‘Joe McClaren.’

‘Joe, it’s me.’

‘Is everything all right, the baby...’

Every time I called him he said that. It almost made me smile.

‘Everything’s fine. I just saw George.’

‘You what?’ He sounded pissed off.

‘Remember, I promised you I would never lie to you again. I saw him, he wanted to explain, to apologise. Julia and him are together again and they’re going back to New York to get married.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, he said he was a total shit, and he was sorry.’

‘And?’

‘Well it’s not going to change anything is it? It’s happened now and an apology doesn’t make everything go away. But he made me realise one thing.’

‘What?’

‘That it’s time for us to put the past behind us.’

‘If we can.’

‘We could try.’

‘We could.’

‘You could try to forgive me.’

‘I could try.’

‘Are you still on for birthing classes tonight—apparently they’re showing the unedited video version of labour.’ I laughed.

‘It might make you not want to go through with it.’

‘Yeah but I’m not entirely convinced I have a choice.’

‘No, right, actually you don’t, unless you keep your legs closed.’

‘Not my strongest skill.’

‘No, I remember you used to be quite a minx.’

‘I might still be.’

‘Really?’

‘So, I might not be my most desirable right now but I will be again.’

‘That’s the easy bit, it’s the stretchmarks and the floppy boobs that stay with you forever.’

‘So tonight then, meet at the hospital at seven.’

‘Yup, same time, same place.’

‘It’s a date?’

‘Well, it’s sort of a date.’ I hung up smiling, this was definitely progress.

Chapter Forty-five

Full
Term

My baby shower was a little unorthodox. Simply because it was thrown on the day I was due to give birth. I had no idea about baby showers, what they were, or why they were called showers. Lisa proved to be an expert, which was strange. They were a present-giving party for expectant mothers and anything that involved present-giving was OK by me. But for reasons unknown to everyone else, I had evaded having one. Here were my reasons: Ever since George had disappeared off the scene I had been trying to get life back to normal. Just as soon as my life became public, it became private again. Overnight I was in the midst of disruption, overnight I wasn’t. I knew how fickle the press were, but there was something from that time that stayed with me. After the press left my doorstep to my great relief, but the disappointment of my neighbours, the aftermath stayed. Once more I was a normal person, a pregnant, normal person. I once again had freedom of movement, I could come and go as I pleased. I was just another person in a city full of people.

Although I had a few offers, mainly from people wanting my side of the story after George had been shown up to be a total prat, I had refused them all. I didn’t want the story to continue and it had never been my story anyway. All I wanted was to go back to work
and
to
work
. I wanted to be anonymous, and in a few months I had achieved that. Now, I rarely got a second glance. I had been forgotten and that suited me. There would always be the marriage-pact story, it had been chronicled and therefore records of the mad phase in my life were always going to be there, but for my sake, for the baby, for Joe, I didn’t want them to be anything more than records. Dusty, old records in a cardboard box. Or was I a floppy disk in a plastic box? Because that was where I wanted to keep that part of my life—in a box.

There was still something I wanted to do: win back Joe. And I was only able to do that by giving him space. I’m not sure who it was who said that if you love someone set them free and wait because if they love you they will come back, but whoever said it, I was doing it. I had asked him for forgiveness once, but now it was up to him. George had taught me something. Actually his actions had taught me something. If you want to push someone away, far, far away you pursue them relentlessly. Perhaps I was being a little paranoid because I would never take Joe to court, nor would I go to the papers with our story, been there. It had been done.

I didn’t want a baby shower. It was because I was too busy trying to put my life back together, and actually I was finding it harder than I thought. Work was fine but I was tired. So tired. And big. Enormous. Huge. I got to the seventh month and thought there was no way I could get any bigger, but I did. Daily. The clothes that Lisa and Imogen had chosen for me were beginning to strain in protest and I’d taken to wearing huge men’s shirts that were the only thing that fitted. Nothing else was that big, just my stomach. I did wake up one morning in a panic and called Dr Langton to ask him if he was absolutely sure I was having just one baby. He found that amusing, to my annoyance.

I discovered exhaustion, real exhaustion. I had never known anything like it. After work I would go home and fall asleep pretty much straight away. When Joe came to see me I would fall asleep on his shoulder, which wasn’t a good seduction technique, so luckily I wasn’t trying to seduce him. Lisa insisted on taking me out to dinner one night, saying that because I was pregnant didn’t mean I had to be boring, and I found it so hard to reach the fork to my mouth that she gave up straight after the main course and bundled me home in a taxi. The driver had to wake me when he got to my flat.

Then there were the emotions. I felt I had been coping with so much before: the press, the heartbreak and the pregnancy. Now I had just the pregnancy, the heartbreak and the paternity issue, but it was still so hard. Birthing lessons, yoga, check-ups, shopping for the nursery, all the normal activities were taking their toll as they all made me realise one thing. I was having a real baby. Not a toy. It filled me with dread. I was going to be responsible for another person. I would have to feed it, to wind it, to comfort it when it cried, to clothe it, and although Joe was going to be a huge part of its life, I was going to be his or her mother. And before I could worry about that, I was also going to have to give birth to it. Have you ever seen a video of a woman giving birth? It’s not pretty. And the babes are so big in comparison to the small hole they come out of. I called Dr Langton and asked him for a Caesarean. Again he laughed. I was glad that my pregnancy psychosis was providing my doctor with enough entertainment. He told me that I was behaving normally for a woman in my condition but how could that be? If this is normal then people would only ever have one baby; and that was only because they didn’t know what it was really like. Unless, and this terrifies me as well, what happens if, when you do give birth, you see this tiny little cute baby and you get instant amnesia. I told Joe to remind me how I felt as soon as I gave birth. Although I probably wouldn’t ever get to have sex again anyway.

It was becoming a nightmare. It had been a nightmare from start to finish but then at least in the early days I could blame George. Not that I wasn’t glad that he had gone. But it was so confusing. This thing was happening to me and I ill understood it. It was causing all sorts of emotions all crashing together at the same time, refusing to make any sense. If Joe could have forgiven me then maybe I would have been better, or maybe I wouldn’t. I had his support and his ever-increasing presence as the birth drew near, he couldn’t have been more supportive. He bought me food, he cooked for me, he made me endless cups of herbal tea he even massaged my feet. We’d shopped together, we had a flat full of baby stuff. So that was another reason for not having a baby shower. I had most things I needed and stuff I hoped I’d never need. I also bought a car. A very sensible Golf. It was silver and had a really cool stereo. The only thing missing, baby-wise was a car seat, which my parents were going to buy me.

The problem was, that I still didn’t know and neither did he and the strain of that question was constantly in the air.

But then on the day I was due to give birth I thought I probably wouldn’t, because babies are never on time the first time round apparently (Lisa said). I finally agreed to a last-minute baby party.