Not What They Were Expecting (22 page)

He couldn’t believe how rude and surly she was to Robert. It was a revelation to him. And she got away with it! If anyone had tried something like that in his old job, some sort of confidential ‘voluntary redundancy package’ would be on their desk by the end of the week. She happily lied about work she’d not done, and seemed entirely unfazed that no one believed her. Everybody seemed a bit afraid of her. And now she was giving James a hard time over his specialist subject of horror movies. He wasn’t going to settle for that. He tapped in his response.

All right smartarse. But I’m pretty sure I got the order of release right for Halloween 1, 2, and 3.

He lingered slightly before sending the message. A small twang of guilt. It was OK, he was pretty sure. There’s nothing suggestive about it. He’d done what he could to help. He’d offered to go home, but Rebecca was already at work. There was nothing he could do here, except get on with his brain-deadening data entry, and try not to think about the better jobs he wasn’t even getting a sniff at. He sent the message, and tried to get back into work, his mind now distracted by movie trivia and good put-downs he could use if he needed them the next time a quiz question came up. Another message pinged in.

Halloween 3 wasn’t even a Carpenter movie so irrelevant. Wrong again. You’d better shape up by lunchtime.

Oh she was annoying. Perhaps he could go to Robert himself and try and get her fired.

Back in their home in Dollis Hill, Rebecca had phoned in saying she was going to be late, blaming Suzanne for messing up her appointment time. She felt bad about lying to work, and taking advantage of Bompalomp to skive, but she wasn’t ready for work yet.

She was going to go and see someone she really probably shouldn’t.

Chapter 28

Before Rebecca and James had got together, she’d had a short happy relationship with Ed, a boy she’d known since childhood. Unfortunately, the short happy relationship with Ed had only been a brief summer in the noughties, and had been preceded and followed by a generally unhappy time when they were together for reasons neither of them could ever satisfactorily explain.

Rebecca often thought they’d got together out of geographical convenience, and stayed together out of inertia and fear of loneliness. Ironically, it was probably the loneliest time in Rebecca’s life. Saying they stayed together was probably a stretch in itself. They would never irrevocably break up, but there would be plenty of times they’d row, and not speak for weeks or even months, and times when they would sit down and agree maturely it wasn’t working and perhaps they needed a break. This would last until one or the other would get in touch again to suggest a friendly drink, and the whole thing would start again.

It was a difficult relationship to explain to people. She’d start to tell someone, and the ‘aw, childhood sweethearts’ replies would start, but they’d been little more than aware of each other’s existence during their childhood. In the same big secondary school, but in entirely different classes and circles. Occasionally they’d be at political or charity fund raisers and gatherings, or neighbourhood barbecues together. The kind of event when they were teenagers that they would rather pretend they weren’t at. There was an unspoken pact for all the older children at these events that they would not be spoken of in school, and that while they were at them they would do each other the decency of pretending the others didn’t exist rather than speak to them.

They’d been in their twenties before they got together for anything more than a snog, and that hadn’t even happened until they were both well into the rhythm of flitting between home and university. He wasn’t even that good-looking, just a little taller than she was, skin still recovering from the horrors of adolescence, and nothing really to separate him from the mass of teenage almost-men of that time, except perhaps he was a little bit cleverer. Some relationships start with a spark, here it was more a gradual build-up of friction after a prolonged period of rubbing together.

Then one summer, before Rebecca started law school, and Ed had been waiting to start a PhD in medieval history, the relationship got more serious. Maybe it had been because a lot of the people they both knew were getting started in proper jobs and careers, while they had basically more of the same student life to come. Maybe it was because it had been such a gloriously hot summer, and the sunshine and long days sitting in the park, just the two of them talking, brought them closer than they had ever been. But probably it was because, at an age that made her blush with embarrassment now, Rebecca was finally at a point where she felt comfortable with sex and her own sexuality. For that summer – when her parents and Matty had been away on some kind of six-month consultancy contract her dad had got, she remembered – she’d discovered she did have at least something of a sense of adventure.

It had been a summer of instruction books, her with Jamie Oliver cookbooks trying to make grown-up meals for dinner parties with her friends, him with a
Lover’s Guide
he’d snuck out of the library and was researching as diligently and studiously as he would a monk-scribed parchment. Rebecca remembered the time now with a combination of fondness and embarrassment at how immature they probably seemed as they tried to act so grown up.

The longer lasting legacy of that summer, though, had nothing to do with Ed directly. He was, she knew, still single, but spent most of his time on university projects in parts of the Middle East where the ancient conflicts that still seemed to be filling the news had originally started. They didn’t talk now, and only occasionally even remembered to send a Christmas card. The relationship that had lasted had been between Rebecca and Ed’s mum, Joan.

Joan had taken maternal interest in Rebecca, all alone in a big house by herself for those few summer months, which partly explained how they got close. But more than that she treated Rebecca like an adult, rather than someone who she could remember being a kid not so long before. And not, thank God, like someone who was trying to steal her son away from her.

She was a secondary school English teacher. She’d encouraged Rebecca to look beyond the easy placement at the local firm to finish her training. She’d wanted Rebecca to go off and do legal aid work in deprived areas, work for NGOs, and for a time Rebecca almost thought she would go and do that. She did have a social conscience, she’d thought to herself, and she did want to make a difference. But the prospect of being mugged in some rough part of London by a junkie, or the lack of decent toilet facilities in an overseas village, were enough to have her reconsidering her potential as a doer of good.

Ed and Rebecca would have dinner with his family maybe once a week or so during the times they were properly together. While fiercely proud of her son, and confident that he would go on to do great things, Joan wasn’t blind to his faults: the way he distanced himself from people, and could be sullen. At dinner-table discussions she would almost shriek in frustration at his lack of imagination, and call on Rebecca to back her up when she thought Ed was going out of his way to wind her up.

When Rebecca and Ed had finally, irrevocably, broken up (apart from one, no more than one, early slip-back), Rebecca had been more upset than she expected. He’d gone off for a year to study in Jerusalem and had been quite clear that she shouldn’t wait for him, and he wouldn’t be saving himself for her. She’d been six months into her legal training, and living in a flat with a girl she was no longer getting on with, when it happened. Joan had said the regular invite to Sunday lunch was still open and – weirdly, she now realised – Rebecca had taken her up on it. Rebecca and Joan had continued to keep up with each other since.

At first it was Joan listening to Rebecca try and cope with the fact her son hadn’t wanted to even try a long-distance relationship, and analyse what it was about her that was behind that decision. Looking back, Rebecca assumed she was probably missing Ed too, and having someone to talk about him with was a comfort.

For years after that particular need was gone they’d stayed in touch, meeting for lunch or coffee, emailing regularly. Rebecca kept on bringing her problems to Joan in a way she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, with her own mum. Taking advice from Penny was impossible. It may well be the same advice that Joan would give, but Penny wouldn’t get the chance to deliver it: her tone would drive Rebecca mad, the idea that she might know better impossible to accept.

Joan could tell her she was being too passive, or stubborn, and Rebecca would consider it. She’d normally decide she wasn’t, but she was open to the suggestion. Criticism like that from Penny would cause a family row that would mean she would only visit home in order to pick up Matty and take him out to Mickey D’s or Nando’s for at least the next month.

Her relationship with Joan had distanced, though, over the last couple of years, and it was because of James. Not usually the jealous type, he’d been very wary of the woman he called Rebecca’s ‘dream mother-in-law’. He’d been insistent it ‘wasn’t normal’ and would always ask why Rebecca felt the need to keep up with her, whenever the name of Joan arose. If Rebecca had gone ahead and met up with her, a string of questions about what they discussed – and how Ed was doing – would follow, alongside a sustained period of borderline huffing. In the end, James’s campaign had kind of worked. Rebecca started putting off catch-ups, and made do with emails rather than phone calls. Joan would write lengthy and funny reports on life in her Christmas cards. But they hadn’t seen each other in probably two years now and Rebecca realised, a little shamefully, that she hadn’t even told Joan she was pregnant yet.

Now, sitting in a Ruislip coffee shop that looked to be too nice to be part of a chain, but
was
part of a chain, Rebecca hoped there’d be someone she could be honest with, and get some honest answers from. Joan had strode into the café and didn’t see Rebecca at first. She stood, as ever looking taller than she actually was, with her black hair streaked with grey, tied back in probably the same way she’d tied it back since she was Rebecca’s age. Wearing jeans and a fitted tweed jacket over a polo neck, she didn’t look that much like a retired teacher, but more like an image from a 1960s photo of a philosopher or intellectual. Rebecca remembered that one of the things that had always struck her most about Joan was how cool she was.

‘Rebecca, look at you!’ Joan said as she hugged her, and Bomp. ‘And how come I’m hearing about this just now? I would have brought a present!’

‘Thought it was best to tell you in person.’

‘Being superstitious like your mother, were you?’ Joan asked with a raised eyebrow.

‘Maybe something like that. But how are you? You look great!’

‘You probably expected I’d become old and wizened since we last caught up, hmm? I’m doing very well thank you. Retirement suits me. I’ve never been so busy. Taking a leaf out of that son of mine’s book and doing my PhD. Plus some tutoring on the side. And I’m writing a novel!’

Perhaps James has been right all along, Rebecca thought, she probably is my dream mother-in-law.

They ordered teas and cakes, and Rebecca updated Joan on due dates, and how the pregnancy was going for her so they could compare symptoms – Joan had a terrible time with her ankles, she remembered fondly. The older woman asked personal but pertinent questions about how planned the event was, and whether this was to be the first of a big family – something Joan had been hoping for, but which just hadn’t worked out for them after Ed was born. Catching up and sharing stories, Rebecca for a few minutes forgot why she had wanted to see Joan. For a short while she was a cheerfully pregnant woman catching up with a dear old friend. Then she found herself going quiet, toying with the crumbs of her piece of carrot cake.

‘Penny and Howard must be thrilled to be grandparents I bet,’ said Joan.

Rebecca looked at her, and could see from her face that she knew.

‘I’ve got a free rail pass, I get the Tube everywhere.’

‘So you’ve seen the mural?’

‘And we still read the local paper, what’s left of it that isn’t supermarket ads.’

‘It’s the most humiliating thing that’s happened to me in my life.’

‘Even more when Ed brought you home from the picnic in the park and you’d spilled white wine down the crotch of your jeans? That skirt I lent you? The look on your face, I think you would rather have gone home looking like you’d wet yourself.’

Rebecca smiled at the memory.

‘Have you talked about it?’ Joan asked.

‘He’s constantly talking about this campaign of his. He’s trying to get on the radio, writing to MPs, even the local bishop I think. And then Maggie’s endlessly reaching out to the arts community, and Mum’s mainly worried about not being photographed twice in the same outfit.’

‘Yes, but have you talked to him about it? What happened?’

‘Well. No. I mean you can’t really bring that sort of thing up…’

‘He’s your father.’

‘Exactly!’

‘Your family…’

‘
They
want to talk about it all the time. Dad keeps wanting to sit down and “connect”. I’m running out of excuses – even as a pregnant woman.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever understand children. Even when they’re grown up. If he was the one who didn’t want to talk to you that would be the wrong thing too.’

‘We had a journalist call at the house today, asking questions.’

‘From the
Focus
? They should know better than doorstepping pregnant women, and with your father-in-law—’

‘It wasn’t the
Focus
it was the
Evening Standard
. Or at least that’s what he said. Trying to get a family angle. Trying to…’

Rebecca stopped, the reality of the morning catching up with her.

‘I’m supposed to appear at the trial. Explain that Dad has a bladder condition that means he can’t, y’know, go that easily.’

‘It has been so long since I saw you,’ said Joan draining the last of the tea in the pot into her cup, ‘you retrained as a urologist?’