Having It All (26 page)

Britt fiddled with the radio in irritation. She was seething that David had insisted she stay in the car while he went to meet Liz and the kids. They had to face each other
sometime after all and Britt would rather it was in front of the children so Liz had to be graceful. But David had been adamant and it was the only way she’d been able to persuade him to let
her come along at all. She knew he’d wanted her to stay at home, but she didn’t trust him alone with Liz, and anyway she wanted to show him what a good mother she could be when she put
her mind to it.

And she was damned if she was going to stay in the car out of sight. Reaching for a magazine from the back seat, Britt got out of the car and leaned on the bonnet reading it. A passing cabbie
whistled and she waved back.

David saw them first. He came running along the platform and swept Jamie and Daisy into his arms, almost knocking the breath out of them. She saw to her surprise that he was
nervous. He couldn’t even look at her. But when he did Liz thought she saw a momentary flicker of what might have been admiration in his eyes before he looked back at the children.

Thank God he was alone. And watching him hold the children, his eyes alight with love, she saw for the first time what this mess must have cost him too. How he, like her, must have been
suffering for what he’d lost. And she smiled.

Walking along the platform, with the children between them, Liz had the curious illusion that the last few months hadn’t happened, that they were just an ordinary family going on an
outing. As they came out of the station David started to say goodbye, then, anxious to make the moment last a little longer, Liz said she’d walk to the car.

But as they walked out of the station, Liz sensed David’s nervousness increase. And turning the corner into Buckingham Palace Road she saw why. Britt was lounging on David’s car
reading
Elle
, wearing a suit so expensively understated and chic that Liz in her Russian coat and hat felt like the only person at the party who’d come in fancy dress.

Without saying a word Liz kissed the children and turned back to the station.

‘My God! Look at that queue!’ David almost laughed at the horror in Britt’s voice when she saw the crowd waiting to see Father Christmas. ‘It’ll
take hours to get to the end!’

Harrods’ Christmas grotto was famous all over the world and most of the world’s population had clearly jetted in to see it today. Two hours spent in a small space with a hundred
screaming children, each one on eggshells at the excitement of seeing Santa, was not Britt’s idea of fun.

‘Why don’t you go off and spend some more money then?’ David didn’t try to hide his irritation. ‘I’ll be fine with the kids.’

Britt chose to ignore the implication that she was extravagant. Why shouldn’t she be, for Christ’s sake, it was
her
money. And she worked hard enough for it, God knows.
Anyway she wasn’t going anywhere. Today she was going to show him that despite any lingering doubts he might have, beneath her tough exterior she was a sucker for children at heart.

‘Come to Britty!’ She reached out her arms towards Daisy, conscious what a touching picture they would make, blonde hair against blonde. Daisy clung to her father like a frightened
koala bear, as though Britt were some wicked social worker come to rip her away from her family for ever, and howled.

Britt dropped her arms, smiling nervously, and turned her attentions to Jamie. ‘So what are you going to ask Santa for, Jamie?’

Without a second’s thought, Jamie reeled off: ‘A MantaForce Spaceship with a rocket launcher and twenty space troopers. Red Vipers are best. But Black Barracudas are OK if he
hasn’t got any.’

‘Are you into Outer Space, by any chance?’ Britt smiled indulgently.

‘Nope’ – Jamie rolled his eyes heavenwards – ‘model trainsets.’

Britt was trying to work out if she’d just been put down by a five-year-old when she noticed something seeping out of Daisy’s nappy on to David’s jacket. ‘David,’
she screeched. ‘The baby’s shitting all over you!’

Three heads swivelled round at this breach of maternal etiquette. Every mother knows that babies do not shit. They poo.

‘Here, you take her.’ David handed Daisy over to look for a new nappy. ‘Where’s the changing bag?’

‘What changing bag?’

David looked at her appalled. ‘The bag with all the nappies in it. Don’t say you left it in the car?’

Horrified at the amount of gear Liz had sent, Britt had decided simply to bring the pushchair. She’d been sure Liz was being overprotective. In Britt’s arms Daisy changed gear from
distressed to hysterical. Swearing at Britt’s inefficiency, David took her back.

Britt looked down at the stains on her beige Betty Jackson suit.

‘You’ll just have to go and
buy
some nappies,’ snapped David.

Britt was astonished to find that Harrods actually sold nappies. It was the kind of purchase that, thankfully, was hidden discreetly at one end of the nursery department. But to her dismay they
only came in packs of forty.

Struggling back through the crowds with the enormous pack, Britt asked herself if her carefully laid plan might not be a mistake after all. Could anything be worth the hassle of small children?
Even David?

By the time she got back, David was almost at the front of the queue. He waved at her holding a smiling, freshly changed Daisy. He grinned at a mother-of-three standing next to him.

‘This kind lady took pity on me and lent us a nappy.’ The woman beamed at him and glared frostily at Britt, the incompetent. ‘She even took Daisy off and put it on for
me.’

Britt glowered, fighting through the last few feet of queue with her giant pack of Pampers, her suit still stained, and her fringe sticking to her forehead from the effort of the last fifteen
minutes.

‘Good God Britt!’ David teased, not noticing her expression. ‘You look like a harassed mum!’

And finally they were at the front. After an hour and a half in the queue Santa took Jamie on his knee and asked him what he wanted for Christmas. For a moment Jamie didn’t answer.

‘Well, Sonny, what’s it to be?’ repeated Santa, faintly irritated at this unscheduled hold-up in the production line, his whiskers sticking to his face and his breath faintly
redolent of vodka.

Row after row of harassed parents looked on, eager to get their offspring on to Santa’s knee and into the tearoom as quickly as possible while Britt mopped her brow and wondered if, Jesus
Christ, she might actually have damp patches under her arms.

Jamie looked at her and spoke clearly and distinctly.

‘I want that lady to let my Daddy come back to live with my mummy and me.’

Britt hailed a taxi, still fuming at what a fool she’d been made to look in front of all those people. It was all Liz’s fault. She’d obviously been coaching
him to come out with something like that, telling him what a terrible woman she was to steal their Daddy, hoping it would melt Daddy’s heart and make him come running home. But with luck it
was too late.

As she passed the late-night chemist in Knightsbridge she told the taxi to stop and wait while she ran and bought a Sea-Blue Pregnancy Test, ninety-eight per cent accurate (so it boasted on the
box), provided you were at least one day late. And according to her reckoning Britt was already three.

When David dropped Jamie and Daisy off he couldn’t believe the change in the cottage. From the moment Liz opened the front door and he saw the roaring fire, the home-made
decorations, the little pine dresser with its pretty china, and smelt cinnamon drifting from the kitchen, it felt like a real home. He could hardly recognize it from the cold, damp little house
they used to arrive at bad-tempered and exhausted late on a Friday night, to find they were out of coal, had forgotten the milk and the sheets were still in the washing machine.

He looked round at the friendly clutter, the piles of old newspapers stacked up to make firelighters, the patchwork quilt on the sofa, nothing particularly new or smart, but the whole house had
an air of enveloping comfort.

Ridiculous how panicked he’d been when Liz said she wanted to give up work and make a real home for them. And it had been his mother’s fault. Thanks to her ‘home’
didn’t mean security and comfort as it did to other people, but suffocation and sacrifice. And it had scared the shit out of him.

For a moment he pictured her. His mother. That perpetually dusting martyr in her apron, forever poised, dustpan in hand, to catch any crumbs you dared to drop on to the immaculately Hoovered
carpet, snatching your plate away to wash it up before you had even finished eating. But as he accepted a cup of tea he suddenly saw that it wasn’t the home that
Liz
had created that
reminded him of the bleak days of his childhood. It was Britt’s beautiful museum.

David put down his empty cup. He knew it was time he went, but he didn’t want to leave. ‘Would you mind if I just stayed to do bathtime?’

Unconsciously Liz glanced up at the clock. It was seven o’clock already. She’d expected him to leave hours ago, but he’d shown no signs of doing so. In fact she was almost
irritated at how easily he’d slotted into her life here, how quietly and unobtrusively he’d just sat down on the floor and played snap with Jamie as though he lived here all the
time.

But wasn’t that what she wanted him to do? Why else had she gone to so much trouble to make the place feel welcoming, even putting cinnamon in the oven, an old estate agent’s trick,
as though she were selling him her new lifestyle like you sell a house. Knowing that what people really buy isn’t bricks and mortar or six rooms plus bath, but the atmosphere of the place.
And she realized that part of her – the strong, sensible part – wanted to say ‘No, you cannot do bathtime. Because to do bathtime would pretend that the last three months
hadn’t happened, that they didn’t lie between us like a jagged wound, dressed now and healing but still painful to the touch.’

But the other part – the weak and lonely part – knew that a light would go out when he closed the front door not just for her but for Jamie and Daisy too. So, ‘Yes’, she
said, ‘you can do bathtime.’
But don’t expect me to do it with you because that would be to go too far.

And as he went upstairs with the children she heard the shouts and squeals of delight she hadn’t heard for months and she turned up the radio to blot out the carefully buried memories
those happy sounds brought back.

When David came down carrying Jamie and Daisy, squeaky clean in their pyjamas, into the warm, scented room he felt an overpowering urge to ask her forgiveness, to beg her to
take him back.

‘Liz, I need to talk to you. Not in front of the children . . .’

‘You seemed to be able to talk to Britt in front of the children, why not me?’

David felt her anger lashing out at him and he knew he deserved it. ‘I’m sorry, Liz. Britt shouldn’t have been there today.’

‘Too right!’ Liz felt the resentment she’d repressed begin to bubble up at the memory of Britt’s self-satisfied smile.

‘Listen. We could talk when they’ve gone to bed . . .’

‘No, David.’

‘Please, Liz.’

For a second she was tempted. But she didn’t believe he’d really changed. If he’d been really sorry he wouldn’t have let Britt within a mile of the children! If nothing
else that single act of callousness condemned him.

‘I’m sorry, David. But we don’t have anything to say.’ She leaned over and took Daisy from his arms and carried her up to bed.

David sat in his car outside the cottage in the total blackness of the countryside and watched the light come on in the upstairs bedroom. Why, for God’s sake had he let
Britt talk him into letting her come along today? He could have killed her when he’d seen her lounging on the car. But it had been his fault, in the end, not hers. He should have just
insisted.

For a moment he thought of going back in whether Liz wanted him to or not and
making
her hear him out. But Liz was too angry and resentful to listen. And it was all because of
Britt.

With a flash of insight, David saw the answer. He had to leave Britt. Then perhaps Liz would listen to him. And in that moment of decision he realized that that was what he wanted to do anyway.
Whether Liz wanted him back or not. Suddenly he felt more cheerful.

Britt sat in the immaculate black-and-white bathroom of her flat and stared at the tiny phial in its plastic holder. She’d just added the two drops of midstream urine to
the solution provided.

And in half an hour she would know with almost complete accuracy whether or not she was going to have David’s baby.

By the time David slipped his plastic ID card into Canary Wharf’s elaborate security system and parked his Mercedes estate, knee-deep in crisp packets and discarded
mini-juice boxes, nexttoBritt’s immaculate red Porsche, hehad convinced himself that she was bound to see his point of view.

For the last two hours, as he drove fast through the dark beauty of the winter night, he’d been able to think of nothing but how much he wanted to slot into that battered old chair by
Liz’s fireside and play snap until he dropped drowsily into bed beside her. Far from finding the picture of domesticity she’d created threatening, he’d been taken aback by the
strength of his reaction to it. He wanted to be part of it.

Surely Britt would see that far from being in a relationship they had both chosen willingly, theirs was really an affair that had gone wrong. After all, they had never intended anything
permanent. If Liz had walked into any other restaurant in London they wouldn’t be together today.

Britt and he had thought they were soulmates but really they had mistaken the bond of their shared background for something deeper. At first he’d thought Britt understood him as Liz never
could, that the yawning gulf of class, the years of tennis club parties and skiing holidays with Mummy and Daddy, the social confidence Liz had inherited along with the silver spoon, would always
separate them. But sitting by the fireside with her yesterday he realized he felt more at home with her than he ever had with Britt.