One Thing Led to Another (26 page)

‘And you too,’ I say.

‘Yeah well,’ shrugs Jim. ‘I’m not the one who’s pregnant, am I. And I’m sorry, I’m really sorry Tess, because I know that you wanted it so desperately, the whole in love thing and it just didn’t happen for you.’

I look at him, I try to speak but I can’t, something inside me breaks.

That’s all I need to know now.

It was Harry who wanted the babies. I was quite happy with the cockatoos and safari twice a year. Then I got food poisoning from a scallop and low and behold I was pregnant. Sperm of Adonis! We’ve got four children now but still, every time I eat scallops Harry always jokes “oh here we go, in one end, out the other. Should I be painting the nursery?”!’

Lillian, 50, Aldeburgh

In Whitstable I had been high on life and possibility but now it feels like those twenty-four hours really were spent at the end of the world in a lawless bubble with no connection to my real life, because since then, all of Jim’s behaviour suggests I read it wrong. And now there’s the flat – a sure sign that life has to move on and I feel like I’ve come full circle, I feel as dislocated and scared as I did during those mad few days after having found out I was pregnant.

It’s a breezy, cloudy Saturday, the weather as indecisive as I am and so I go into town, mooch around for a while before meeting Gina for the 4.30 p.m. showing of
Ocean’s Thirteen.
I’m just in Cath Kidston convincing myself that I simply
cannot live another day without an ironing board cover with little sailing boats printed all over it when Gina calls.

‘Hey you.’ She sounds really ‘up’. ‘Are you out and about?’

‘Yeah, just in Cath Kidston in Covent Garden, about to make what I fear may be a hormone-induced purchasing disaster.’

‘What is it?’

‘An ironing board cover with sailing boats all over it.’

‘Oh Jesus, thank God I rang. Listen, I know we’re meeting to go to the cinema later but since you’re in town already, I wondered if you’d come and meet somebody with me first.’

‘Who?’

‘Simon. This new guy I’m seeing. Honestly Tess –’ she sounds fizzy, like she might be about to explode ‘– ohmiGod, he is such a sweetheart, sooo different to my usual type –’ (yeah, yeah) ‘– you’ll love him, I promise.’

‘Alright.’ It’s not like I’m doing anything else. ‘When and where?’

‘I thought we could go for lunch, maybe in China Town? Shall we meet at the arch on Gerrard Street, at say, twelve thirty?’

‘Promise I’ll be able to get crispy duck?’

‘Bloody hell you really are obsessed with food, aren’t you?’

‘Yup.’

‘OK, I promise we’ll get you a crispy duck.’

‘That’s swung it for me. See you there.’

Gina’s hair is down and very big, she’s wearing full makeup, a fur gilet over a purple, pussy bow-tie blouse, denim hot pants with turquoise tights and knee-high boots.

‘I see you’ve gone for the demure, dress down look, then?’

‘Do you like it?’ she beams.

‘I
love
it. Very glamourpuss.’

‘Oh good. Simon says he loves it when I really go for it on the clothes front. He can’t bear women who wear boring clothes.’

(Good sign: not boring. Bad sign: could potentially mean we’ve got another pretentious and flaky wannabe actor/Mexican juggler/tattoo artist on our hands.)

Gina looks me up and down.

‘So, how’s the er…bulge?’

‘Bulging,’ I say, pulling back my cardigan.

‘Fuck me,’ she applies a thick coat of lipgloss. ‘It’s fucking humongous!’

Which makes me feel just fabulous.

It’s only when we start walking…in the opposite direction to China Town, that Gina confesses there’s been a change of plan.

‘Simon’s really sorry but he can’t get out of work, he’s suggested we meet him at his office instead.’

‘What, on a Saturday?’

‘Yeah he works
really
hard.’

I stop and stand in the street.

‘Right, so it’s now gone from Chinese banquet to no food at all in my friend’s boyfriend’s office?’

‘Er…yeah. Sorry.’ She winces.

‘You owe me you do.’

Gina has surprised me many times with her choice of boyfriend but this time I’m stunned. Not only does Simon work as a business manager in HSBC (a BANK, lest we forget: Despite the fact that Gina works in a bank herself, she doesn’t touch bankers of any description with a bargepole…) but he also works in a boring office with not so much as a notebook on his desk as a show of creativity. He wears a suit, every day, has a short back and sides haircut, freckles all over his cute, boyish nose, and cannot be more than five feet seven. He reminds me of Michael J. Fox.

The other thing that surprises me is that I know, within seconds, that this guy is the real thing. That this is the one for Gina.

‘Tess, this is Simon. Simon, this is my best mate, Tess. She’s the one who’s up the duff by her friend, you know the one I was telling you about?’

‘Hi Tess, how’s it going?’ Simon flashes me a sweet, what-are-we-going-to-do-with-her? smile and gives me a firm handshake, eye contact and everything.

‘Hi Simon, I’m good thanks, nice…’

Office, I meant to say, but at that point, Simon is unable to hear what I’m saying because Gina has suctioned herself onto his mouth and is snogging him like he’s about to go to war. Not that he’s complaining of course. In fact, there’s a good ten seconds of snogging during which I have no choice but to pretend I am engrossed in a leaflet about pensions.

‘So,’ says Simon, eventually, stroking Gina’s back. ‘I don’t know about anyone else but I’m starving. If nobody’s fussy then I’ve got some ham sarnies and a bag of Wotsits in my bag, we could just share those?’

And so that’s how I come to spend my Saturday lunchtime in the office of the Shaftesbury Avenue branch of HSBC going three ways on a ham sandwich with my loved-up friend and her equally loved-up boyfriend, feeling like I’m in a documentary about surrogate parenting. But you know, I didn’t mind. In fact I would go so far as to say it was fun. I liked Simon, he didn’t make me feel like a gooseberry. He was funny and genuine and laughed
with
me not
at
me when Gina wheeled out the one about Luisa Vincenzi (she cannot help herself that girl).

But most of all, I liked how he was with my friend and the way she didn’t stop laughing for a whole hour in his company.

I finally say goodbye to Gina at around two p.m. We were meant to be going to the cinema but I figured, what with the pleading look she gave me when Simon said he was getting off at three p.m. and did she want to go with
him
, that she’d gone off the idea. It’s fair enough. If I had
the choice between heavy petting at the back of the Soho Curzon with my new boyfriend and sitting next to me as I whinge about heartburn all the way through, I know what I’d rather do.

I cross the road, filled with a pleasant motherly satisfaction that Gina may, at last, have finally found a good one. There’s no time to hide or run away, they’re just there, as if in fast forward. Laurence, hand in hand with a girl. And I know, because of what Gina has told me of the cat-shaped eyes and the tiny piercing above her painted mouth that it’s Chloe.

Laurence looks petrified, like he just bumped into his mother whilst off his head on drugs.

‘Hi,’ he says.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘How are you?’

‘Good, you know, getting bigger, you?’

‘Yeah good, we’re good, everything’s um, good.’

Chloe gives me the once over, then she looks up at Laurence, genuine confusion on her face.

‘Hun, don’t be rude.’ She nudges him in the side. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce me?’

She’s well spoken, exotically pretty in a trendy London way with her spotted neckerchief and her kohl-rimmed eyes. Her eyes are quick, intelligent, not the sort to suffer fools. But they’re warm, too, there’s certainly no sign of the mad hysteric Laurence made her out to be.

‘Er, this is Tess,’ says Laurence, gesturing towards me but managing to look the other way. ‘Tess, this is Chloe.’

She gives me a friendly but knowing nod.

‘So when’s the baby due?’ She smiles. She’s just being curious, but Laurence is squirming, desperate to leave.

‘December. December the fourteenth.’

‘Ahh, you’re so lucky. I can’t wait to have a baby. Part of
me wants to chivvy along the wedding bit just so I can get up the duff!’

‘
Wedding?
’ I shoot Laurence a look. I think I see his eyes flicker then drop to the floor. ‘Yeah, we’re engaged. Getting married in September, although I’ll believe that when it happens!’

That figures. Back together with her the minute I drop my bombshell. Proposal to follow, all grand gestures but no feeling behind it, no conviction.

‘Congratulations.’ I force a smile. ‘So that must be quite a recent thing, then? A whirlwind wedding?’

‘Are you joking?!’ laughs Chloe. ‘Longest engagement in history this one! He proposed to me three years ago.’ I feel my skin go cold. ‘It took him another nine months to actually get me the ring but then he still wouldn’t actually commit to a date. I had to give him an ultimatum in the end. I chucked him out, sent him packing to stay in my old flat and told him if he didn’t have a firm date for the wedding, if he didn’t sort his head out in three months, we were over.’

She keeps talking but I can’t hear properly, there’s too much clatter in my brain as the pieces fit together like a Rubik’s cube, which then sits, heavy and solid, at the pit of my stomach. I keep glaring at Laurence, but he doesn’t look up, not once, what a total, spineless twat.

‘Wow, that’s hardcore, but it obviously did the trick.’ I smile, eventually. Then, I can’t resist it: ‘Laurence was obviously ready for the whole wedding and kids thing. The whole
choosing life
thing, though, weren’t you Laurence? He just had to have a bit of time to get his head together.’

Just keep walking, just keep walking and don’t look back. I feel like I’ve been winded, I feel kind of breathless. So not only did he not finish with Chloe but he was engaged to her? All that time?! What a fucking mug I’ve been! How naïve
can you get? The thought of us in that flat,
her
flat, me pregnant, exposed with that hideous bra on the floor and the Sebastian Snail thing, oh God! I can never look at that snail again.

I take a sharp left into Romilly Street, I’ve no plan, my legs are just walking. It’s bright, the afternoon’s clearing and Soho’s bright young things are lounging outside cafés, aviators on, shirts open, one hand smoking a cigarette, the other around the bony, brown shoulders of some other bright young thing, chattering, laughing. An urban aviary of exotic birds. I’ve seen this so many times. This place is scattered with the remnants of me, but right now, my heart pounding, it feels like it’s a scene in a different universe, like I am witnessing it from within a sound-proof glass box.

I can hear my own breathing, everything looks strange. Once, I was one of those bright young things, I felt right here, I fitted in. Now, I’m not so sure anymore. Does a single pregnant woman fit in anywhere?

A gaggle of hens wearing pink feathers in their hair and printed T-shirts topple out of Kettners champagne bar, venue of many a ‘sophisticated’ night for the former me, followed by hours of sweaty dancing in some basement club. There’s the oxblood banquettes of Pollo’s Italian restaurant, the one nearest the door surely indented with the shape of me; Bar Italia where I once fell down the stairs and gashed my leg. I walk down Frith Street, the shock’s subsiding now, leaving a sense of numbness, of resignation. I jump onto the curb as a motorbike carrying two rowdy guys zooms past me, startling I close my eyes and can almost taste the cheap French wine and chicken escalope for a fiver that I existed on as a trainee journalist, as I pass the dim windows of Café Emm on Frith Street.

And then there’s here, our all time favourite, the Coach and Horses, and somehow, even that looks different today.
Like going back to your childhood home to find another family living there.

What a summer this is turning out to be. It was only three months ago that I staggered out of this pub resolving that I would sort out my life, make decisions, move forward. Well, I certainly did that! Although I wasn’t expecting to have so little say in the proceedings. I didn’t expect life to have such plans for me.

Part of me wishes I could just rewind. Be in that place where my story was yet to be carved out, where there were still so many options, so many roads to choose from. So much hope. I just wasted two months of my life. Laurence took me for a total ride! I’m single –
still
single. Even Gina has managed to sort it out on that front. And the one thing I want, always wanted, really, the very thing that would make this all OK, is never going to happen. But well, that’s life I guess, you can’t have everything you want. And I’ve got a baby, a Jim baby, nobody can take that away from me And if this hadn’t happened, something else would have. Of that you can be sure.

When I get home Jim is sprawled on the sofa, remote control in hand. When he hears me drop the keys on the kitchen table he turns around.

‘Oh hello, what are you doing home?’ he says. ‘I thought you were staying out with Gina.’

‘Change of plan,’ I say, taking off my shoes in the hall and going back into the kitchen. I spot a little note next to the phone: ‘Tess, V rang, call her back.’

‘What time did Vicky ring?’ I say, picking it up.

‘Oh about fourish.’

‘Did she sound OK?’

‘Yeah, fine.’

I put it down, thinking I’ll call her in a bit.

My Place in the Sun
is on the TV. Jim turns the volume down with the remote control.

‘So er…what’s the deal with Gina? Is she ill?’ concern crosses his face. ‘Are
you
ill?’

‘No, I’m fine.’ I see Jim’s gorgeous face looking up at me and I desperately want to leap on top of him for a hug, like the old times, but I know that wouldn’t be appropriate anymore; that we don’t fall into bed with each other anymore, that we are friends, slightly frayed friends at that, and that we observe each other’s personal space. But I want to tell him everything all the same. About what Laurence did, about today. He’s going to be the father of my child, shouldn’t we be one hundred per cent honest with each other?

I sit down beside him and I just come out with it.

‘Jim, listen, you know when I went out for lunch with Laurence and then I went out for a pizza and you cooked that amazing offal (not even a flinch at the blatant oxymoron) well, I wasn’t totally honest with you.’