The Girl Next Door (12 page)

And then, a few months after that, when they were talking about moving in together, and she knew it was getting really serious – the most serious she had ever been, certainly, she’d had a ‘scare’. She’d missed a period, which she never did, and been sufficiently preoccupied by it to buy a test at Boots in her lunch hour. When it had been negative, and when Mother Nature had rewarded her curiosity, a day later, with heavy bleeding and agonizing cramps, he’d been almost sad, certainly contemplative, spooning her in his bed, gently rubbing her sore tummy. ‘One day,’ he had said, softly. ‘One day it will happen to us. When we choose. When we’re ready.’ She’d expected relief. Possibly difficult questions about how it could have happened in the first place when they were supposed to be being careful. She hadn’t expected that. ‘When we’re ready.’ Like they were already ‘we’. And like their being ready was a matter of when, and not if. She’d never had a man say things like that before. Like she was staying. Forever. ‘When we’re ready.’

Eve was ready now. She was sure of it.

Dr Jones had assured her that she was healthy and well and should have no problems conceiving, so far as she could see. The 10lbs Dr Cohen had made sound like morbid obesity didn’t seem to her to be a problem. She did the smear, putting Eve’s legs in unfamiliar, uncomfortable stirrups, just to be safe, but sent her away with a wink, an instruction to ‘get practising’, and a bottle of folic acid.

Sure, now, of what she wanted, Eve was left with an afternoon to contemplate how to make Ed want it, too. He was home tonight. Which was getting to be a rarer and rarer occurrence. Sometimes he just worked late. He’d ring, and tell her to go ahead and eat without him – that he’d had a lunch anyway, or that he’d be happy with a sandwich later. Sometimes he was with clients. Or colleagues. He’d asked her along a few times, but she’d come up with excuses. She didn’t feel right yet. She didn’t want to go until she was confident she could get it right. She didn’t want to let him down – though she never said that was why. So she stayed at home alone a lot. Watching unsatisfactory American television. She couldn’t figure out either guide feature on the remote control, nor make head nor tail of the
TV Guide
magazine, so she flicked endlessly. That way, she caught the last half of a lot of great movies. Never the beginning. She’d seen Debra Winger dying in
Terms of
Endearment
at least four times, but never Jack Nicholson getting drunk with Shirley MacLaine. She’d seen Julia Ormond married off to the third of three brothers in
Legends of the Fall
twice, but she’d never seen her with Brad Pitt. She kept flicking, though, in hopes.

But tonight, Ed had promised he’d be home. It would be the first night this week, and she’d spat her dummy rather – made him swear nothing would distract or delay him. She bought a bottle of champagne, and a tray of peeled shrimp, on the basis that oysters were a bit obvious (and, in her opinion, a bit disgusting). She considered waiting at the table in the apartment naked but for strategically placed shrimp or a lacy apron, but only for a moment. Ed was more likely to fall about laughing than fall into her arms. He was strictly a white cotton knickers, not a red lace guy. At least, she hoped he was, because otherwise he’d married the wrong girl… She’d been given a set of saucy underwear – with the suspender belt and everything – on her hen night. And she’d felt perfectly ridiculous in it, shoving it, balled up, in the back of the drawer before Ed came home. She shaved her legs in the shower, though.

When she heard Ed at the door, she went to him, and kissed him deeply, sending him an immediate and very obvious signal. ‘Hello.’

‘Mmm.’ Ed kissed back. He always did. ‘Hell‐oo‐oo.’ Men were quite mammalian like that – no headache or mood too bad for sex. He’d broken his leg once, when they’d been going out a few months, and she’d picked him up from casualty after they’d set the leg, full of concern, intending to nurse him tenderly through his pain and shock. They’d been doing it on his sofa within the hour.

He looked at her face. ‘Something’s happened. You’re all… you’re all glowy.’

She smiled. He had his hands on her hips, and he poked one finger in at each side of her stomach. ‘Come on. What have you been up to?’

‘I bought dinner. And champagne.’

‘Now I’m really worried. Did you crash the car?’

‘We don’t have a car, you idiot.’

She’d uncorked the bottle and filled him a glass. She clinked her own against his. ‘Here’s to us.’ Ed clinked back, and loosened his tie. Eve took a deep breath. She’d planned to open the discussion with a little finesse, and maybe a little small talk, but now she just blurted out what was uppermost in her mind. ‘I want us to have a baby.’

If Ed was shocked, he hid it well. ‘Now?’ He sounded almost amused.

‘Yes, now. Now is the perfect time.’ He looked sceptical.

‘We just got here, Evie. We’ve barely settled in.’

‘We’re settled in fine. I am, at least. And you were settled in from minute one. If you hadn’t noticed, we’re all unpacked …’ She gestured at the picture‐perfect apartment all around them, thinking as she did so that brown suede might not have been such a great choice for the sofa… Ed’s eyes followed her hands, and rested back on her face. ‘And it’s not like we’d have a baby tomorrow. It takes nine months, you know, Ed. And it might not happen, start to happen, for months. I just want us to get started. Stop using anything. Shag like bunnies.’

He grinned lasciviously. ‘I like the sound of that part.’ Then a little more seriously, ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘You make it sound like we’d never talked about it before.’

She had a sudden flashback to the evening in the garden when he’d told her about New York. This was the same.

‘No, no – I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I know we’ve talked about it. I know it’s what we both want. I just wondered what made you want to do it now.’

‘I’m not working. Things are going really well for you… we’re here.’

‘And you’re a bit lonely. I know, Evie. I know. I’m just not sure that that makes it the right time. Don’t you need a support network?’

‘You can be my support network. I’m not saying I want a baby because I’m lonely. I’m not confusing an infant with a puppy, Ed. But yes, since you mention it. I am lonely. Why wouldn’t I be? It takes time, getting a new life off the ground. I’m not unhappy, I promise I’m not. Lonely isn’t unhappy. I love the apartment and the city and I love you. Having a baby is something I want for us, for you and me. A start on the family we always talked about having. And yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that having a baby now would help with making that new life. We’d meet other people with new babies. Childbirth classes – all that. Nursery, school eventually. Cath has an entirely new set of friends since she had her kids – they’re the people she spends all her time with…’

‘And that’s what you want?’

‘Of course. It’s not such a half‐baked idea, is it?’ You’d come home more, she thought. We’d matter more than just I do. She didn’t say that.

Ed took a big gulp of champagne, and put his glass down on the table.

Eve waited – she couldn’t tell from his face what he was thinking. ‘Isn’t it what
you
want?’

He rubbed his forehead. ‘I’m just settling in. Finding my feet. I knew we’d do it… eventually.’

She was pouting, and she knew it.

‘And you really want this?’

She put her arms around his neck, and planted kisses all over his cheeks, his mouth, his nose. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ Soap opera pause. She realized she couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked Ed for anything.

‘Well, okay then. Let’s go for it.’

She pulled back, searching his face. ‘Do you really mean it?’

‘You’re right – it’s going to take at least nine months. That ought to give me time to get used to the idea. Yeah. I really mean it.’

She kissed him, seriously now. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’ Ed shook his head, and drained his champagne flute. ‘We do get to start tonight, right?’

‘Oh, yes. We do…’

It felt like their first night together. That night, all those years ago, had been a night of firsts for Eve. The first time she’d slept with Ed. The first time she hadn’t been the first one to say I love you. The first time she’d had a first time with a guy completely sober, and with the lights on – deliberately, premeditated, consciously. She’d already known. She’d known almost straight away, almost that first night at the pub. This was him. She’d waited, a couple of months, in case the rightness of him was a mirage, but it wasn’t. He was real. And then the waiting had made it more wonderful than she could have dreamed.

There was something deliberate tonight, too. Something wonderful. She waited for him to come out of the bathroom, cross‐legged, at the end of the bed. He came out in blue and white striped pyjama bottoms, tied low on his hip so that she could see the start of that triangle of his shape that she loved so much, and she looked at his torso, brown from weekends in the park, and muscled from mornings at the gym, almost catching her breath. He was familiar, but tonight, he was different, too. Ed stopped in the doorway, looking at her.

‘You’re like a little kid. You look nervous.’

‘I am a bit.’

‘Why, you daft thing? Do we have to do it differently, or something? Do you mean to tell me there
is
a position we haven’t tried?’

‘No. It’s not that. You can’t actually
get
pregnant in the only positions we haven’t tried, you dirty bugger. Don’t laugh at me.’

‘I’m not laughing at you. I promise. You’re sweet.’

‘I was going for sexy.’

‘You’re sweet
and
sexy.’ She thought of all the sophisticated women he was surrounded by here. Hoped sweet was still working for him.

‘It’s just that it’s a big deal, this.’

‘I know. I know it is.’ He put a hand on her cheek, his fingers in her hair. ‘You do know it probably won’t happen the first time?’

‘Of course I do – I’m not an idiot, Ed. I know it could take months. But it
could
happen tonight.’

She’d counted. And wondered how big a part her hormones had played in her decision‐making, and in the surge of certainty she’d had at the doctor’s office. It was, bizarrely enough, exactly the right time, so far as she could work out. Tonight. So it could happen – tonight. She didn’t tell Ed that. He was making fun of her enough as it was. Besides, she suspected he had only agreed because he thought it would take a bit longer. Even if he’d never admit that out loud.

‘I’d better do it properly, then, hadn’t I? Get it right.’

Sex with her husband was always right. Eve read articles in magazines, at the hairdressers, where journalists wrote about keeping sex fresh within marriage, and about how couples got into ruts and sex got boring, and she never understood, not really. Ed knew exactly how to get her going, but he knew how to do that in a dozen different ways, and he used them all the time, and not in the same order, like she was a piece of software he was loading. He could, if he chose, make it happen in five minutes, and once in a while, that was fantastic (they called it painting by numbers, she didn’t really know why), or even just necessary (hotel check‐out in half an hour, late for work, friends about to arrive for Sunday lunch), but he could also make it take an hour, twice, even, and that was better, much better. Ed loved sex, and he’d made her love it, too. Before she met him, it was something she worried about, and sometimes dreaded. She’d had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t very good at it. Not with him. She was good at sex with him.

She knew he used sex as a way of getting his own way, and of winning an argument, or at least diffusing one, but frankly, if it was that good, who cared? He was clever. It was impossible to sulk or to stay cross while he was doing that to her, and she’d do anything for him in those moments. He’d proposed marriage to her as she lay in a post‐orgasmic puddle of gratitude (not that her refusal was ever a possibility, even without the knee‐trembler). The night he’d told her about America, he’d made love to her to seal the deal. This time it was her bringing the deal to the bed.

She remembered learning, in some science class sometime, that the actual physiological point of orgasm was that the muscles involved rhythmically drew the sperm inwards, and made conception more likely. Tonight, as she lay under Ed waiting for the waves to stop, she concentrated on them, her eyes clenched tight. When she opened them, Ed was watching her intently, smiling.

‘Still laughing at me?’

‘Just enjoying the new sex face.’ He scrunched his own face up in mimicry.

She slapped his shoulder lazily. ‘Ouch.’

‘Does it help?’

‘Don’t make me really hurt you.’

‘I’m already hurt. How do you think it feels, knowing that you’re just being used as a stud? Like a bull. It’s demeaning.’

‘Right.’

They both dozed contentedly, for a while, Eve’s head on Ed’s chest. He gently stroked her bare back. ‘So do I get supper now? I’m starving. You’ve got to keep my strength up, you know!’

‘You get supper. Do you want it in bed?’

‘Why not? I’m far too lazy to get dressed again.’

Eve slipped on her robe and went to the kitchen, collecting the shrimp, the cocktail sauce and the glasses, which she refilled with the rest of the champagne. Ed was asleep again when she got back, his head back against the pillows, although the baseball was on in the background, and he clutched the remote control in his hand. The bloody baseball. His hair was messed up, and his five o’clock shadow was creeping. Seeing him sleep after they made love always felt like a reward to her. He was such a rotten sleeper. God, how she loved him. Putting the tray down on the chest of drawers, she pushed his hair back and kissed him gently on the forehead. ‘I love you.’

Without opening his eyes, he pursed his lips into an air‐kiss. ‘And I love you, my Evie.’

For the first time in a long time, Eve felt like everything was going to be all right. Lying beside her, Ed hoped that this would take a few months. The practising was great. It wasn’t that he didn’t want a baby. Of course he did. Their baby. Two or three, he hoped. Eventually. He’d just rather wait a while longer. Work was mad. Good mad, but mad. They’d take every hour he would give them. The business was more or less the same – except the scale, which was vast, compared with the UK. But the people were different. That was the learning curve – getting the people right. It was hard bloody work. Having to worry about Eve on top of that – he was tired, all the time. Good tired, but tired. It was bound to take a few months… and then everything would be all right…