Growing Up Twice (22 page)

The last thing I see before I close my eyes is American Teenage Boy B being tricked into having sex with a goat.

Twenty minutes of base-two smooching makes us a little befuddled and dazed when the lights go up at the end of the film. As we wander out of the double doors and take the escalators back down to street level we are quiet, our hair ruffled, our skin flushed and in my case a tiny smile of triumph on my lips. That’s one more thing I wanted to do before I was thirty checked off the list. Now I’ve just got ‘learning to drive’ and ‘being a jazz-club singer’ and I’ve got six weeks to go. It’s achievable. Oh, and that career thing. Well you can’t win them all.

As soon as we’re out in the cold air Michael pushes me up against a wall and kisses me deeply. I can feel how turned on he is. We pull apart and gaze at each other for a moment. Maybe like me he’s thinking that perhaps we should always factor a bed into our meetings from now on.

‘Time for ice-cream?’ he asks and I nod and follow him to the Häagen-Dazs shop, our fingers finding each other’s like old friends now. The queue isn’t too bad and we are seated and served before too long. He holds my hand across the table, which if I weren’t having such a good time would really piss me off as I only have one hand free to chase the last pecan nut around the dish with my spoon. But I like the feel of his fingers so I let it pass.

‘You know it’s my birthday tomorrow, Thursday,’ he says slowly. I had forgotten the exact day of his birthday, if I ever knew it in fact, but I did know that it was soon. Here it comes, he is going to ask me to the party again and I’m going to have to find a way to turn him down this time. No more stalling.

‘Yes, about that …’ I begin.

‘It’s just that …’ he interrupts.

‘I’ve been meaning to say …’ I continue.

‘I don’t think it’s a good idea that you come.’

‘I really don’t think that it’s a good idea for me to come.’ We finish together. We laugh. We cough and are silent.

‘I
want
you to come,’ he says, still clasping my hand. ‘It’s just my mum will be there and now that I’ve told her you’re Holly and every other single person there knows you aren’t … it would be a bit risky, you know. And you’d hate it anyway, there would be no disco unless some DJ has sampled it in a loop for some bloke to rap over.’

A mixture of relief and chagrin folds in my stomach, the same old story. I don’t want to go to his party, but I don’t want him to not want me to go. I suppose that if I am determined to pursue this ‘diversion’ away from Owen I’m going to have to accept it as just that. For all the hand holding and cinema-related necking we’ve only seen each other a few times; he doesn’t owe me anything special and vice versa.

‘No, it’s fine. I didn’t really want to come anyway, to be honest,’ I say, a little more bluntly than I had been planning.

‘The party’s on Friday and then I’ve got the whole weekend free. I thought we could meet up, do something?’

‘Get a hotel room maybe?’ I suggest mischievously. He blushes and I feel mean. Leaning across the table I take his face in my hands and kiss him softly. ‘Yeah, we’ll do something this weekend, something special for your birthday, OK?’ That hotel-room thing might not be such a bad idea, I’ll check my bank balance when I get in.

The waiter hovers, waiting for us to leave so that he can let some other unfortunate sweet-toothed queue member into the warmth, but I don’t feel ready to go yet. I order another coffee.

‘I went shopping with Rosie today,’ I tell Michael, who shows his level of interest by an imperceptible rising of his brows.

‘We bumped into her ex.’

‘Exes. Bummer.’ He nods, looking at me with a laid-back air in anticipation of a subject change.

‘Ex-
husband
,’ I stress, forgetting that he probably has a string of ex-girlfriends installed around Twickenham ready to ambush him at every turn, according to his mother at any rate.

‘
Husband?
Way heavy.’ He nods again, this time furrowing his brows with sincerity. He is making the effort, bless him.

‘Well, anyway, he found out that Rosie is pregnant––’

‘Rosie is pregnant! Bloody hell!’ His shock makes me realise that we have talked about absolutely nothing every single time we have met.

‘Yes, by him. Long story. Anyway, he found out about it and they’ve gone off to “discuss” it. And I’m a bit worried about her so I should be getting back after this coffee really. Just in case.’ I down the lukewarm cappuccino, wave my debit card at the waiter and wait for the bill.

‘Yeah, no worries,’ Michael says. ‘I’ve got to get back anyway. It’s a school night!’ He chuckles and I smile at him, glancing around for eavesdropping social workers or ChildLine volunteers at the same time.

‘But surely it’s good Rosie is talking to her ex, right? You know, him being the father of her baby and all. I mean, if they sort stuff out it’s good for her, isn’t it?’ he asks.

‘Well, with any other bloke maybe. But you don’t know what a total
Rupert
Chris is.’

Michael shakes his head at me and as we leave the restaurant he pushes a fiver in my hand.

‘For my ice-cream,’ he says. It’s a small gesture but it obviously means a lot to him to pay his way. I wonder if I should have given him my half of the cinema ticket money. That’s probably a month’s pocket money.

‘What do you mean a Rupert?’ he asks as we leave.

‘Long story,’ I say. ‘But basically he walked out on her after a few weeks of marriage with a serious case of cold feet and a new girlfriend to boot. Now he suddenly wants to be back in her life, but for how long? Men have a habit of walking out on you when you’re most vulnerable,’ I say, thinking about Owen. If there is one thing I’m certain of it’s that Chris can’t be any better than Owen and if I’ve managed to break away from him then Rosie has to break away from Chris too, for good. It’s almost as though we made a pact and if she breaks it I’m left out there all alone on a limb wondering about my own choices, maybe the only one who really fucked up big time, when I thought I had an ally. But it’s
not
like that, Rosie and Chris together would be genuinely bad news.

‘I won’t walk out on you when you’re vulnerable,’ Michael says sweetly, taking my hand. ‘But if Rosie and this Chris geezer still like each other enough to conceive a baby, well then maybe they still have feelings for each other. Maybe, you know, they might work things out, don’t you reckon?’

‘No,’ I say and we drop the subject.

We walk up through Chinatown and the smell makes me wish I’d gone for the real-dinner option over the sweet swift high of confectionery. We stroll through Soho and past the Coaches, the allure of a double brandy almost tempting me in. Hand in hand we stroll through the chilly night up Charing Cross Road to the beginning of Tottenham Court Road, until we reach the bus stop for the number 73. As usual it is heavily populated with tourists, drunks, couples and commuters thronging on the roadside, jostling each other for pole position, anxious to make it on to the long overdue bus should it finally lurch around the corner.

‘You don’t have to wait with me, you’ve got a lot further to go home than me, and it is a school night, right?’

He smiles and stands behind me, wrapping his arms around me and resting his chin on the top of my head. ‘I’ll wait,’ he says mildly.

As it turns out it’s not too long before the bus arrives, in fact three 73s arrive in convoy, so that I have time to kiss him once more before I run on to the last bus.

‘What about the weekend?’ he calls after me.

‘I’ll ring you when I’ve come up with something,’ I shout over my shoulder. I swing into a seat nearest the pavement side and wave to him as the bus pulls out.

I turn on my phone but there are no messages. I phone home but Selin picks up and there is no sign of Rosie.

I sit back in my seat and watch the city slip away under the gloss of street lamps and moonlight, the warmth of Michael’s kiss still tingling on my lips.

As I let myself into the flat I can see Selin in the living-room at the end of the hallway, sitting on our blue sofa, her long legs tucked up under her chin, surfing channels.

‘Any sign?’ I call down the corridor but before she can reply Rosie appears out of the kitchen, mug of coffee in hand.

‘I’m here! You can call off the search party!’ She lifts her mug at me. ‘Do you want one?’

‘No thanks, I’ll be up all night the amount of coffee I’ve had, and I thought you were cutting down too. Are you all right?’ I reach out to touch her arm but she flounces away.

‘It’s not for me, it’s for Selin. I don’t need you to tell me how to look after my baby, thank you.’ Selin silently takes the mug of coffee she was clearly not expecting and sends me a look of warning. Rosie flops back into the armchair, and breathes out through her mouth so that her fringe fans away from her forehead. She looks tired, shadows have bruised the underside of her fair skin and her usually perfect make-up has clearly been disrupted more than once by tears. I should probably leave it – if this was something to do with me I’d want them to leave it – but instead I ask, ‘So how was it with Chris?’

‘Fine,’ Rosie replies curtly. Selin shakes her head at me but I figure that months and months of mutual-misery therapy entitle me to probe a little more.

‘What do you mean fine? Did you sort something out about the baby? Money or something?’

‘You know what, you two really get on my tits sometimes. I
am
capable of making some choices for myself, you know. I don’t need you watching my every move. I mean,
you
,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘You don’t even feel you can go out without having a minder waiting up for me. Do you think I’m going to top myself or something?’ She flings the magazine she has been reading at the telly, toppling the latest casualty of our attempts to cultivate house plants to the floor.

I am used to her mood swings but it has been a long time since I’ve seen her temper flare up like this. Not since the last time she was with Chris, in fact.

‘We just worry, Rose, that’s all,’ Selin says quietly. ‘We were there, remember, when he hurt you? We can’t help worrying, we love you. But you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’ She gives me another look that tells me to keep my mouth shut or else.

‘Sorry, mate,’ I mumble insincerely. After all, it was my bed she climbed into three nights out of four in the aftermath of the affair. I didn’t go through all that sleep deprivation for her to swan off and play happy families with the evil perpetrator of her misery at the drop of a hat. Rosie sighs and flings her head back to look at the ceiling.

‘He thinks we should make a go of it,’ she says flatly.

Rage and disbelief begin to hurtle towards my mouth as Selin’s hand grips my wrist and her dark eyes hush me. I shut my mouth under protest.

‘He says that the baby is more important than our little differences and that it deserves a proper family. He says that he’s had time to think while we’ve been apart and that he’s realised he has missed me. He said he’d been plucking up courage to get in touch since the night we … well, you know.’

‘Little differences! So, that bird in the café was helping him pluck up courage, was she?’ I blurt out before Selin’s tightening and painful grip quiets me.

‘Look, I’m not a total moron, you know, I know what a wanker he is. Has been. But he’s got a point about the baby. I mean, Jen, how many times have you told me how much your dad abandoning you hurt you, how much you’ve missed having a father figure? Well, it was the same for me. Maybe I haven’t got the right to deny my baby the chance to have two parents. And anyway, he does seem … different, like he’s changed. You didn’t talk to him today. He made a lot of sense.’ Rosie hugs a cushion under her chin and stares blankly at the TV.

I sit in silent fury; after nearly twenty years without a father it has never occurred to me that no father might be a better option than a bad father. I can’t change my mind just like that, can I? Time and time again I’ve thought about how different my life would have been in a million small but important ways if my dad had only been around during my teenage years. If only I had had him to give me a lift to Hull on my first day of university instead of struggling scared and alone on the train with two rucksacks; if I had had him to change the plug on the lamp in my bedroom instead of having to ask my new flatmate’s dad to do it. But I still think having had him for a while and then feeling his loss so acutely is worse, it must be worse than if I had never known him at all. If I’d never known him I wouldn’t miss him, would I? And if Rosie gives her baby a dad who’s likely to duck out at any given time, things will be just as bad for that child too, won’t they?

‘But you don’t have to be with him to have him in your baby’s life, do you?’ Selin says. Good point, that is exactly what I was going to say.

‘Don’t I? You know as well as I do that my dad and Jen’s never made the effort once they were gone.’ I couldn’t argue with her there. I think I had six or seven embarrassed weekend trips to Brent Cross every other Saturday, but then I decided I couldn’t stand it any more and my dad didn’t feel the need to coax me. Soon after that the calls stopped and then the birthday cards. Once when I was about eighteen I got back in touch and tried to re-establish some kind of relationship. It ended in a stand-up fight in a Chinese restaurant. He blamed me for not bothering to get in touch with him, for letting us drift apart. ‘But you’re the dad,’ I had said. ‘You were the adult. You left me.’

The problem is that as far as I can see Chris and my dad have a lot in common. They are exactly the same kind of man. At some inevitable point Chris will be saying the same goodbye to Rosie again and this time to her baby too. Maybe it would be better for neither of them to ever have to face that pain.

‘So what are you going to do?’ I ask belligerently.

‘Well, he wants me to think about it. He’s asked me to go down to his cottage in Oxfordshire for the weekend. I’ll be
alone
,’ she says, silencing the protests before they begin. ‘He’ll still be in London. He just thought I might like the space and the fresh air, and I would. I’m going Saturday morning.’ She twists in the chair to look at us, resting her face on the arm.