The Day We Met (24 page)

“Good,” he said simply. “You should tell him.”

I don't know when we fell asleep, or who fell asleep first, but it was probably me. All I remember was that one moment we were talking about the true meaning of
The Shining
, and the next I woke up with my back pressed against his, and we were the opposite of spooning, curled away from each other…and yet I felt somehow fully embraced.

I do wish I hadn't fallen asleep in my clothes, although I suppose it is marginally better than falling asleep without them.

Now I wonder about having a shower, but it feels wrong, being naked with him next door, and so instead I brush my teeth, take off my makeup and wash my hair, leaning over the bath so that the rivulets of warm soapy water defy gravity to run up my elbows, soaking my shirt. I wrap a towel around my head and look in the mirror. I look stupid, so I take it off again and attempt to towel-dry my hair as much as I can, until it is hanging in damp ringlets. I look slightly less ridiculous. I walk back into the bedroom, and he is still asleep, still curled up on his side. He looks so…ridiculously beautiful that I have to remind myself that
beautiful boys with lots of friends don't fall for pregnant girls with stupid hair and very sick mothers. Oh, but how wonderful it would be to think that they might.

I sit on the edge of the bed and touch his arm. He really is flat out—clearly a very deep sleeper. Shaking him gently, I watch as his eyes finally flutter open and focus on me. He smiles. It's such a sweet, happy, sleepy smile that I want to kiss him. But I don't.

“It's morning,” I say. “Just gone eight.”

“I stayed the night!” He sits up and stretches. “I'd better go home and get changed—I've got work.”

We sit looking at each other for another moment.

“I don't want you to leave Manchester without saying goodbye to me,” he says.

“Okay, I won't,” I promise. “I don't want to leave without saying goodbye to you, either.”

I watch him get out of bed, pick up his things, run his fingers through his hair until it's slightly less crazy, and then I stand up as he walks to the door.

“I'm going to hug you,” he warns me. I nod my assent, and we embrace, my arms around his neck, his arms around my waist. We stand chest to chest, and I rest my head in the curve of his neck. He squeezes me ever so gently.

“Take care, both of you,” he says, as he lets himself out of the door.

And I realize that, apart from Mum, he is the first person to talk to my baby like it's a person in its own right. And that makes me happy.

“Rosie!” Mum squeals when she sees me, running over to me with her arms outstretched. “Rosie McMosie! We are going to have a blast!”

She kisses me on the cheek and rocks me from side to side as we hug.

“The first thing we need to do is to give the oldies the slip, and then we'll hit the town, yeah? Know any good bars round here?” Mum looks expectantly at me.

“Um…” Esther, who looks sleepy and confused after the long drive, screws her fists into her eyes and blinks, scrambling down from Gran's arms as I come into focus. “Caitlin!” She shouts my name with about the same level of enthusiasm as Mum had called out this Rosie's. “Yay!”

I pick her up and kiss her.

“This is my kid sister,” Mum tells me. “She's not too annoying most of the time.”

“Mummy's playing pretend,” Esther tells me sagely.

“Hello, darling.” Gran kisses me on the cheek, and Mum rolls her eyes at me, waggling her eyebrows like we have some sort of shared joke about mums, which makes me laugh—my mum, joking with me about mums. “Claire,” Gran says. “We are in Manchester. We've come to see Caitlin, to help her talk to Paul Sumner?”

“Oh, him.” Mum grins like…well, like me, I suppose, this morning. “I think he fancies me.” She winks at me. “Is he here? Oh my God, what am I going to wear?”

“Claire,” Gran says again, taking Mum's hand and looking her in the eye. “This is Caitlin, your daughter. She's twenty years old, remember? And having a baby, just like you did at her age.”

“I'm not getting pregnant at twenty,” Mum says, appalled. “Who would be stupid enough to get knocked up at twenty?”

“You, dear,” Gran says. “And Caitlin is about to make you a granny.”

Mum looks at me. “Oh,” she says. “You aren't Rosie at all, are you?”

“No, Mum,” I say, holding out my arms to her.

“Oh, hello, darling.” She kisses me on the cheek and holds me again, differently this time, like a mother should. “I've missed you. Now, let's hatch a plan to make your father see sense.”

Dear Paul,

I'm sorry that I am not there, that I just went the way I did, without leaving you a note or telling you where I was going, or why. It must seem like I had a very big secret, running away like that. But it's not about you, or anything you've done wrong.

I suppose you guessed that I came back to my mum's. You call every evening, and she says I am not here, because I've begged her to. But she thinks I am wrong. She thinks I should talk to you. I think you will stop calling soon. I think you are probably most annoyed that I just went without telling you why, not that I have gone. You might not think that is the way
you feel, but if you concentrate really hard on why you want to talk to me, I bet that's it, isn't it?

Is that wrong? We talked a lot about being in love, didn't we? About being together, but…something happened, something that means we have to be serious about all the things we said. We have to really mean them. And how can we really mean anything when we haven't finished growing up yet? I still don't eat broccoli, and you have to listen to a radio at night to be able to sleep. I thought about it, and decided it was just better to take the worry away, to separate us now, when it will be clean and certain.

I keep saying to Mum: this is the nineties, and a woman doesn't have to be defined by the man she is with, or the choices she makes. A woman can do things her way. There aren't any pigeonholes anymore: we can do anything. Mum looks at me, and I know she used to believe that, but she doesn't anymore.

I'm trying to tell you that…It seems so strange, so funny. To write it—to say it out loud. To know that it is true. But it really is, and I am smiling when I write this.

Paul, I'm pregnant. I know that logic says I shouldn't have the baby—that I should “take care” of it, and go back to college, and start again, and pretend that this hasn't happened. But I can't do that. I love this child already, from the instant I knew it was there, more than anything I've ever loved. The way I feel about this baby, the love I'm feeling, is how I know that I don't really love you. I mean, I do love you, but not enough to make us being together right.

And I know that if you read this, you will come and find me, and you will try to make us work, because you want to be that kind of person, and that is the thing about you I will always love. But it wouldn't make it right, Paul. So I am sorry. I'm not going to send you this letter.

I'm sorry,

Claire

Not for the first time since we set off from my hotel, leaving Gran and Esther planning a trip to the cinema, I have serious second thoughts. It's hard to know why we are doing this. I mean, I know the practical reasons, and I even know the emotional reasons, I suppose. Yet still, even knowing all of that, it's hard to feel that it makes sense to go and turn my life, and Paul's and his family's life, upside down. And for what? We know nothing of each other, we're strangers. Zach says I owe Paul a chance to get to know me, and Mum has an idea that having Paul in my life will replace what I am losing in losing her. And I can see why she would think that, but the truth is that nothing can ever replace my mother. Not anything. Especially not a man who, until recently, I thought had rejected me, and for whom I have not even been a nebulous idea.

And yet Mum and I are going to Paul's house to tell him the truth, whether he likes it or not.

This wasn't how I planned it, but when I saw Mum, and saw that somehow, in the very short time since I last saw her, she has faded a little more, I knew I didn't want to take her onto campus, where it would be crowded and confusing. I have to protect her as much as I can from the world outside her head.

Watching her float between this world and hers, I realize it's as though she's become free of gravity, and slowly, slowly, she is floating away. The tether that connects her to this reality is gossamer thin, and spinning ever finer. Soon she will be gone, but I don't think the world she is going to will be any less real for her, and that comforts me somehow.

So as Mum, Gran, and Esther checked into their room, I called Zach and asked him if there was a way of finding out where Paul lives. He called me back within half an hour, and it turns out that he knew someone who knew someone who was studying under Paul. As fate would have it, my father has a barbeque at his home every summer for his students, so this girl knew exactly where he lives. Strange how easy it is to find the home of my father, and now the man who has been worlds away from me for my whole life is just minutes away. And all the way over there, I keep having second thoughts…third and fourth ones too.

Turning up at his home, where his wife and children will be, doesn't seem fair, and I worry about him, and his family. Gran said it didn't have to be dramatic, though. She said there doesn't have to be a scene. All we have to do is ask for a quiet word, and when he sees Mum, he will agree to a meeting somewhere else, maybe at the hotel, to talk things through.

That's all this is: an introduction of sorts. So I put away all my doubts and take a breath, glancing at Mum, wondering
where in time she is at the moment. She was with me when we got in the car, but we both stopped talking as we neared Paul's house. There's a new dreamy quality to her now, a little like when she first met Greg and I'd find her standing perfectly still, gazing out of a window daydreaming about him.

We pull up outside Paul's house. It's a nice detached Victorian house, maybe three stories, with a gravel drive and a garden. There are small conical trees in pots standing either side of the door, and the grass is very green and very neatly trimmed, just like the privet hedge. The light from the front room shines out into the world, and as we go to the front door, up three stone steps, I can just about see into the basement kitchen where Paul's young children are eating their dinner.

“We don't have to do this.” I stop Mum, who smooths down her hair. She is holding her memory book, in which the letter that she showed me for the first time this morning is neatly stuck. The letter, written in her own hand, so familiar—always disorganized, looping madly, leaning forward and then backwards again, as if she's never really decided who she is. There is something more careful than usual about the way this letter is written, though—as if it had been rehearsed—and when I read it, I realized that must have been true. The letter that she folded inside the memory book is probably a much-honed version, and I understand finally what she was trying to tell him and me. Mum always knew that Paul wasn't the love of her life, and she knew that to try to make their relationship something it wasn't, purely because of me, would be a mistake. Twenty-one years ago, when Mum discovered she was pregnant by her first proper boyfriend, she decided that she wanted me more than she wanted him: she chose me. And not everything she decided since then has been perfect, but neither has she once wavered from that first decision. Even in deciding not to tell him about me, even
then, Mum chose me; and now I am choosing
my
baby, and our future together.

Mum holds the book to her chest, cradling it across her heart like a shield. If everything were okay, if she were well, even then this would be an almost impossible thing to do. But as it is, with her life, her mind in such chaos, it seems an incredible notion that she should turn up here and do this. But even now she is choosing me, putting me first.

The door opens, but it isn't Paul who appears: it's his wife. She is small and neat, her blond hair tied back from her face, and she's dressed in a jacket with a scarf wrapped round her neck, looking as though she is about to go out.

At the sight of us, she stops abruptly, and raises her eyebrows questioningly. “Hello,” she says pleasantly. “Can I help you?”

“We're here to see Paul.” Mum grins at her. “Who are you?”

“Um, Mum,” I say, stepping between the two women.

“I'm Alice.” Alice is still smiling, but it's faltered a little, tinged with just a hint of concern. “I'm Paul's wife. Are you a student?”

“Yes,” Mum says. “You're Paul's mum, you mean? He's not married. He better not be.” Mum laughs. “Married, Paul!”

“Mum.” I turn back to Alice. “I'm sorry. This is my mum. Her name is Claire Armstrong. She knew your husband—they were at university together.”

“Oh.” Alice does not look reassured, only more alarmed, and I realize she thinks Mum is on some midlife-crisis road trip to track down her lost first love.

“Is he in?” Mum asks. “What sort of party is this, anyway?”

“Mum,” I say. “She's not well. She…really needs to talk to Paul.”

Alice still stands between us and the door to her home, and I see the conflict on her neat, pretty face. Blue eyes, small nose, pretty mouth, lovely hair, thick and blond and smooth. Short and tastefully dressed with understated chic. She is the opposite of my mother. And she isn't at all certain about us.

“My children are eating their dinner,” she says. “Perhaps you could leave a number and I'll ask Paul to call you….” Tutting and tossing her hair over her shoulder, Mum struts past Alice and into the hall. I follow her at speed. “Hello, Paul?” Mum calls out. “Hello, babe? Where are you?”

“Excuse me!” Alice raises her voice. “You don't just walk into my home. I want you to leave
now
, please.”

“I'm sorry,” I say again, holding out my hands to placate her. “We'll go. Mum…” I put my hand on her arm, but she doesn't move.

“Go?” She looks perplexed. “Don't be silly. We just got here. Where's the booze? Have you got a DJ? Not much of a party, is it?” she all but shouts. “Turn the music up!”

“Oh Christ.” Paul blanches white as he appears from the basement and sees Mum, and then the look on Alice's face. “What's going on?”

“You tell me,” Alice says to him. “They just turned up. This woman here knows you, apparently.”

“I do know him.” Mum smiles flirtatiously. “From top to bottom, hey, Paul?”

“Mum,” I hiss at her, the excruciating awfulness of the situation making it almost impossible to see a good way of leaving. I only know that we must, before we cause more damage. “Mum, Claire, come on. We've come to the wrong place.”

“No, we haven't, and we're not leaving. We came to see Paul,” Mum says, breaking free of me, whirling round to fling
her arms around Paul, and kissing him quite firmly on the lips. He resists her, watching his wife's eyes widen with horror as each millisecond ticks by.

“Alice, I'm so sorry,” Paul says, prying himself out of Mum's arms. “This woman is sick.”

“This woman?” I ask him. “She isn't just some random stranger, and you know it.” I turn to Mum, saying her name. “Claire! I am your daughter, Caitlin, remember? And we came to see Paul today, to talk to him about the…” I glance at Alice. “About the past. When you were at university together, remember?”

“Oh.” Claire blinks. “Oh. But…”

“I knew this was a bad idea,” I say. I turn to Alice, whose expression is balanced finely between fury and upset. “I'm so sorry. We didn't mean to barge in like this. You must think we are awful. Please, let me explain. This is Claire Armstrong, and she's my mum. She has early-onset Alzheimer's, and it's quite advanced, so sometimes she gets in a muddle. Things happen in her head, and stuff just comes and goes. We never quite know which. But we certainly never meant to burst into your home and cause a scene, did we, Mum?”

Mum looks at her book, still in her arms, and I see some sort of remembrance pass over her face. “Oh shit,” she says quietly. “Sorry, Paul. Sorry…er…Mrs. Sumner.”

Alice stands stock-still for a moment as she takes in the chaotic scene unraveling in her hallway. “I don't want the children to be alarmed,” she says.

“Of course not,” Mum says. “Of course you don't. I'm so sorry. I'm only here for Caitlin, for
my
child.” She turns to Paul, who is staring at her as though she has just materialized out of thin air.

“It's fine,” Alice says eventually. She looks at me, and her
smile, though faltering, isn't fake. “It's fine, come in. Come and have a cup of tea with us. I'm sure Paul would love to talk over the old days with you. You obviously have something important to say.” Alice smiles at Mum.

“But you were going somewhere…” I say.

“Nowhere important, just the gym, it will still be there tomorrow. Come on, Paul. Claire must be feeling very disorientated, in unfamiliar surroundings. And she's come all the way to talk to you, so you will come and sit in the kitchen and talk to her, okay? You can take that stressy look off your face. I do know you had girlfriends before me. I had boyfriends before you, believe it or not. I'm not going to divorce you over past loves.”

I watch Alice take Mum's coat and lead her into the kitchen. Paul and I exchange wary, uncertain glances. I shrug apologetically and follow them down the stairs.

“My gran had Alzheimer's,” Alice tells us, pouring us cups of tea as we sit around a large table with her two daughters, who are staring at us like we just dropped in from outer space, which I guess we sort of did. “I remember thinking at the time it's almost like being a time traveler. What's to say that isn't exactly what it is—and it's just that the rest of us can't know it?”

“I always did want to time travel,” Mum says, smiling at the girls. “I'd like to make friends with Anne Boleyn, or hang out with Cleopatra. I'm Claire, what are your names?” The girls respond to her smile, just like her pupils always did; and as they relax, so does Alice.

“I'm Vanessa, she's Sophie.” The older one, who is dark like me, nods at her younger, fair-haired sister.

“I'm very pleased to meet you both, and thank you for not minding too much that we just turned up in the middle of your dinner.”

“It's okay,” Sophie says. “Dad made it, and it wasn't very nice.”

“Why are you here?” Vanessa asks her. “Are you friends with Daddy?”

“I was once,” Mum says, glancing at Paul, who is standing, his arms crossed protectively over his chest, leaning against the counter, unwilling to sit down with us. Mum ignores him, looking at Alice instead. “But for now I just want to see my daughter settled and sorted out, before…well, before I zap off to see Cleopatra.”