The Family Trap (17 page)

‘He’s asleep,’ I tell her. I don’t say if she can see him or not.

There’s a short, uncomfortable silence, and then she says, ‘It’s so good to see you, Stella. I’m sure I heard that you weren’t living here anymore, but I must have got that wrong …’

‘No. You got it right. I’m babysitting.’

‘Ah.’

I narrow my eyes. Seems like I didn’t imagine her surprise after all. ‘So, if you didn’t expect to find me here, why did you come round to have a word with me?’

‘Actually,’ she says with a disarming laugh, ‘I was hoping to talk to Lipsy.’

‘About?’

The word comes out harsher than I’d planned, and she jumps a little, then laughs again.

‘Oh, just stuff. But it can wait.’

I don’t think so. There can’t be many topics she has in common with Lipsy, and try as I might I can only think of one.

Paul Smart.

‘If it’s about Paul, I’d rather you talk to me,’ I tell her stiffly. ‘Lipsy has a lot on her plate right now and I don’t want her to be dragged into this.’

She looks off for a moment, as if finding it hard to think of the right words. I’m not fooled. She knows exactly what she wants to say, and I’m not looking forward to hearing it.

‘Yes,’ she says, sweetly, ‘you’re probably right. It is you I should be talking to.’ She takes a little sip of water, wrinkling up her pert nose as if it’s polluted.

I don’t respond. Let her sweat. Sporty girl like her, she should be used to it.

‘Paul’s asked me and Hannah to visit,’ she says eventually. ‘Hannah is really missing him, and I thought it might be good for her to spend Easter there. But it’s a long way for her to go on her own.’

I work it out in my head. ‘Hasn’t he been seeing her on his weekends?’

Sharon shakes her head. ‘He’s been too busy getting settled in. But he’s really keen to have her visit. And me too, of course …’

She tails off, but I can fill in the blanks. I think back to half-term and the way Sharon foisted herself on Paul and Hannah, and I wonder if she’s doing it again now.

Or maybe it’s Paul who’s instigating it.

The thought makes me feel completely sick.

I take a deep breath, then bend over quickly, worried she’ll see my stomach. Sharon must not find out about the baby. When Paul finally hears about it, it has to come from me.

‘Well, I hope you have a nice time, Sharon, but I really can’t imagine what business it is of mine. Or Lipsy’s, for that matter.’

‘No,’ she says vaguely, ‘it’s just that …’

And as she tails off again, looking out of the window with her perfect hair catching the light, I suddenly realise what’s going on here.

God, I am such an idiot sometimes.

‘You’ve come to make sure the coast is clear. You’ve come to find out if it’s really over between Paul and me so you can have a stab at him. I’m right, aren’t I? That’s what this is all about.’

She flinches, but soon recovers. Waving her hands as if to waft away her own crassness, she says, ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, Stella. But it would help me to know why you broke up with him. It might make it easier for him to move on, too. If he knew.’

Is that what he wants, I wonder? To move on? Not to reconcile or sort things out. I figured he’d still be waiting for me to respond to his letter – it’s taken me this long to get past the stuff he wrote in it, for one thing – but it’s only been a month.

I think about my own letter, half-finished in my bag. It’s what you’d call a work in progress – so far I’ve managed five words, and two of them are Dear Paul. The other three? I miss you. I guess it’s as good a way as any to begin.

But if he’s moving on, maybe I’m wasting my time. And if he’s moving on in the direction of Sharon, I’m definitely wasting my time.

‘Did he specifically ask you to go and visit him with Hannah?’ I have to know. I think back to how easily I accepted Sharon going along with them last time. Maybe I was wrong to be so trusting. Could it be that she’s always wanted him? It was Paul who ended it, after all, but she still chose to go on and have his baby. Without him.

Something the women in Paul’s life seem to do a lot.

And then getting back in touch with him after all those years. Always round his flat, popping in with a form to sign for Hannah’s school or an invitation to a parents’ evening or to drop off some photos. Always wearing something skin-tight or super-short, hair and make-up just so, that brittle smile of hers fixed to her face like a mask.

Sharon smiles disarmingly and pats my hand. ‘You mustn’t get worked up about it, Stella. After all, you’ve had your shot at him. If he needs a bit of comforting … Well, let’s just say that even if he didn’t ask me outright, he sounded relieved when I offered to come up with Hannah. We’re staying for the whole of Easter. I didn’t have to twist his arm.’

I snatch my hand away and jump up. Kettle. Fill it. Give me something to do, time to think.

How can she sit there and look so smug?

‘Don’t you think it’s a bit soon?’ I ask without turning around. ‘It’s only been a month or so.’

‘Are you saying you think you two might get back together?’ Her voice has hardened. I stare down at my hands for a moment. Nails bitten down to stumps, fingers white with tension. Then I turn and look at her, my hands on my hips, my expression tight.

‘He never talks about you, you know,’ she sneers. ‘I’ve asked him about what happened, but he just says it’s over. He says it was your decision and that’s that. In fact, I hope you won’t think I’m speaking out of turn here, but …’

For a moment I wonder why she’s stopped talking. She’s staring at something; her mouth is opening and closing but no words are coming out.

Which is a relief, frankly.

Until I realise what she’s staring at.

Ah.

‘Stella?’ She’s staring at my stomach. My beautiful bonny round bump, displayed to its full advantage and peeping out between the top of my knickers and the bottom of my vest top. I pull the dressing gown back over it and tie the belt more tightly. It is, of course, too late.

‘Are you …? Are you …?’

I’m tempted to make a joke of it. ‘I’ve been comforting myself with pies,’ I could say. Or, ‘It’s just really bad wind.’ But I don’t think she’d believe me. Annoyingly, I can feel my eyes tearing up again – what is it with these bloody hormones? I turn back to the kettle, and the noise as it comes to the boil drowns out whatever she says next.

‘Stella?’

I jump – she’s standing right behind me. She takes my hand and leads me back to the kitchen table. I don’t pull away this time.

‘Does he know?’ she asks. Her voice is barely a whisper. I shake my head. She nods, and an expression passes over her face that’s hard to read.

She makes the tea in silence, and I watch her skinny back and try not to think about how perfect she is for Paul. They both love the outdoors: running, skiing, mountain biking. They have Hannah, of course, which is a bond I’ve never seriously considered before. What if they do get back together? I’ll only have myself to blame, but when the baby comes, what then? Then I’ll be in Sharon’s place, and she’ll be with Paul. In my place.

It’s all just too confusing.

What if I tell Paul about the baby now, today, and ask him if we can give it another go? What if I just ring him right now and ask him? For the sake of the baby. And what if he says yes? I need Paul to be with me because he
wants
to be, not because he has to be, or even because he should be. Which has always been the problem. If I tell him now, how will I ever know for sure?

And if I don’t tell him? Well, that’s not an option anymore, is it? Sharon will tell him as soon as she leaves this house. Or maybe she’ll wait until she gets to Derby and break it to him gently. After all, she knows how hard it was for him to find out about Hannah after eight years of secrecy. She won’t want to risk him going through that again. If Sharon’s set her sights on Paul, there’ll be no more secrets. She’s far too wily for that.

We sip our tea in silence. I have no idea what to say to her now, and she seems lost in thought. I’m starting to wonder if either of us will ever speak again when I hear Phoenix stirring upstairs. I send a message up to the ceiling:
Thank you
.

‘I’d better go and see to him,’ I tell her. My voice is croaky. I clear my throat.

‘Right.’ She nods. Without the false smile fixed to her face, Sharon is actually very pretty. It stabs at my heart to think about it, but I’m fairly sure she and Paul will be happy together. And maybe having her around will help him get over me. I shouldn’t begrudge him that, should I?

Sharon puts one foot outside the front door, then stops and turns around.

‘Stella, before I go, there’s something I want to say.’

‘What?’ I’m so tired now I just want to get rid of her and go and lie down in the nursery with Phoenix. There’s this overarching sense of anticlimax.

‘I don’t blame you.’

‘Right. What?’

‘I don’t blame you, for not telling him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing. I understand, is all. And I just wanted … it doesn’t matter.’ She turns away with an infuriating little shake of her head and heads for her car.

‘Wait,’ I call. ‘Sharon, wait. What do you understand?’

With nothing on my feet and most of my body on show I am not going to run after her. Nor am I going to stand on my doorstep shrieking. I call her name once more, and she stops and turns to look at me. Her eyes are full of a sympathy I don’t want to see.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Really, really sorry.’

Then she jumps in her car and drives away.

Chapter 17

Phoenix is the reason I finally close the door. Phoenix is the reason I manage to pull on proper clothes and clear my head and get on with the rest of my day. Phoenix, and the baby inside me, who is suddenly active, bouncing and bubbling away in there as if it can sense that something just turned its world upside down.

By the time Lipsy arrives home I’m calm and together.

‘Jesus, Mum, what the hell happened to you? You look terrible.’

Or so I thought.

I tell her about Sharon’s visit. Holding Phoenix on my lap, making a game out of bouncing him from one knee to the other, helps to keep me calm.

‘That’s just horrible.’ My daughter’s expression is almost as shaken as my own. I get to my feet and give her a hug.

‘It’s OK, sweetie. It doesn’t matter. If they are getting back together, I guess it just means I did the right thing after all. I mean, maybe I had a sixth sense or something.’

Or maybe Paul’s downright refusal to start a family with me was because of
Sharon. Who knows what happened between them while they were stuck in a caravan together night after night. Come to think of it, all my problems started around about the same time …

‘No, Mum,’ Lipsy says. She looks like she’s about to cry. ‘It is not OK. It’s not OK at all.’

I’m comforted, if a little surprised, by her distress. While we get Phoenix ready for his bath I feel closer to her than I have for a long time. ‘I love you,’ I tell her when she comes into the bathroom carrying fresh towels.

‘I love you too,’ she says. Her face is drawn; the skin under her eyes is purple. She’s working too hard. Well, aren’t we all? But I’m not going to spoil the equilibrium by telling her.

We kneel on the bathroom floor side by side, throwing water over Phoenix, who giggles delightedly. Seeing him in his funny little bath chair makes me realise how much he’s grown.

‘He’s so long,’ I say to Lipsy. ‘Look – his head barely reached the top of that a couple of weeks ago. He won’t fit in it soon.’

She smiles. ‘I’ll put it to one side for you, shall I? For the baby.’

I give her a sideways hug. ‘You’ll always be my baby, you know that, don’t you?’

‘I know. It’s all right, Mum. I know.’

I hope she does know. Sometimes it’s easy to get a little lost, to forget what’s really important and to lose sight of the people who care about you. Something I know all about. But as I sit back on my heels and watch her wash her baby’s hair, shielding his eyes with an upturned hand, I realise that Lipsy is nothing like me. She’s capable and strong. She knows what she wants and she always gets it. And she’s not a baby anymore, either. She’s a woman, a mother, and a damned good one too.

*

As soon as Robert walks in the door, Lipsy issues him with a list of instructions and drags me to the pub. I try to protest
– I’ve got an early start tomorrow – but Lipsy’s having none of it. We order non-alcoholic spritzers and I settle into a booth opposite the bar, shuffling my bottom along the seat until I’m facing straight out. Lipsy slides in beside me and slaps two packets of crisps on the table.

‘Dinner,’ she says, laughing. She picks up her glass and holds it out to be chinked. ‘Cheers! Here’s to having a wonderful man who’s quite happy to put the baby to bed while his girlfriend lives it up at the pub.’

I stare at her, my own glass frozen mid-air.

‘Oops,’ she says, wrinkling up her nose. ‘Guess that was a bit insensitive.’

I give her a wan smile. My non-alcoholic spritzer is a pale imitation of the real thing.

‘I’m glad you still think Robert is a wonderful man, though. Sometimes lately, with you two rowing a lot, I’ve been worried that things aren’t right between you. You know, with the age difference and all ...’

Lipsy laughs and shakes her head. ‘Oh, Mum. You are so old-fashioned. All couples argue, it’s healthy. And Rob is perfect for me. He keeps me grounded. Really, you have nothing to worry about. We really are blissfully happy.’

Oh, well. At least someone is. Maybe that was the problem with Paul and me: we didn’t argue enough.

Lipsy puts down her drink and sighs. ‘But, happy as we are, I guess we can’t go on like this forever, can we?’

‘Like what?’

‘With us living in the house and you in a bedsit. I mean, I can see it’s not fair, you know. I’m not a monster.’

‘Who said you were a monster?’

‘Grandma. Well, not a monster exactly. But she said I shouldn’t be letting you live in “that place” in “your condition”. I’m sorry, Mum. I guess I’ve been really selfish.’