The Ice Marathon (4 page)

“Good day?” asked Nicky.

“It was, as it happens. Absolutely marvellous.”

I soon found myself chuckling along to
Shaun of the Dead
.
It was one of my absolute favourites and being in a brilliant mood made it even
better.

“Has Peter Serafinowicz ever played a likeable character in
anything?” I asked.

“He’s not too bad in
Coupling
,” said a voice from the
armchair.

“He’s not in
Coupling
,” was my automatic response.

Hang on – that voice was familiar … Suddenly, the hairs
on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt my vaginal muscles twitch. Dare I
look around?

“Yes he is; that’s where he met his wife.” It
was
that damn, deep, assertive voice that I’d heard before – argumentative as ever.

“He
is
married to Sarah Alexander, but he’s not in
Coupling
,”
I replied.

I had to confirm my suspicions. There was no sense wasting
goose bumps on the wrong man. I dared myself to turn around. I slowly rotated
my head, feeling that neck movement would be more discreet than torso
revolution.

My heartbeat skidded to a halt. Sure enough, there was that
square, self-assured face staring back at me. The last time he had stared at me
had been moments before we …
Eek!
I found myself blushing. Thank
goodness it was dark. Rapidly, I transferred my gaze back toward the general
direction of the television.

What was I supposed to do now? I mean certainly, I could sit
here and watch the end of the film, but what then? Would I have to
speak
to him? Well, I couldn’t
not
speak to him. I wished I’d called him when
I’d had the chance – anything to have cleared the air. Letting two months churn
by had only served to make facing him even harder. I should have known that I’d
bump into him again sooner or later.

I wondered if he could tell I’d put on a little weight. My
flowing cornflower blouse hid them well, but I knew that they were there –
unwanted pounds, mocking me. Was he sitting there, looking at me and thinking,
‘How could I have done the squelchy with that hippo?’

It is difficult concentrating on a film when a virtual
stranger whose bottom you fingered happens to be sitting right behind you. If
they’d swapped the film for
Dogville
, I would not have noticed. The
episode on the kitchen worktop replayed in my mind, as it had done so many
times before.

Finally, the credits rolled and Queen played: ‘Ooh, you make
me live …’ I heard Dave get up and shortly after, the bathroom door
slammed shut.

“Right, who’s for a cup of tea?” asked Nicky, springing up
off the sofa.

No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me here with the man who helped
me break at least seven kitchen hygiene rules!

It was too late; she had gone. I prayed that Simon would get
up and go to the toilet too, but then I remembered that we only had one
bathroom. I could get up and go to my room, but that would be beyond rude,
besides which, I’d have to walk past him to get there. I couldn’t risk any more
eye contact –
cringe
.

“So …” he began, and then trailed off.

“So,” I echoed, turning slightly and looking past him.

There was a long pause.

‘Ooh, you make me live!’
blared the television.

“How have you been?” “How are you?” we asked, at once.

“Fine.” “Good.”

There was another long pause.

“So you’ve been well?” he asked.

“Yes. You? Have you been well?”

“Yes.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

“We’ve both been well. Super.”

“Yes. That is super. I’ve very glad you’re well, naturally.”

‘Ooh, I’ve been wandering round,

But I still come back to you.’

I wondered if I should turn the TV off …

“So, everything with you is … well.”

“Yes.”

The bathroom door opened.
Thank God.
I heard Dave’s
footsteps back in the room. Finally, relief from the terrible embarrassment of
having to tell a former lover that I was well.

Dave chuckled. “I completely forgot that we tried to set you
two up!” he said. “Man, wasn’t that a night?”

“Mmm,” we both squeaked.

Chapter 4

It was the hottest day of the year – a fact that had far
from escaped my notice. The humidity clung to my face, forming pools of water
on my brow. My eyes stung from the grass pollen lurking in the air. In fact,
the heat was getting to me so much that I found I had to pause before
continuing my walk up the stairs.

I felt light-headed. Still, I was looking forward to seeing
Tina and doing our follow-up. Her baby was overdue, so this was almost
certainly the last time I’d see her before she became a mother. From what I’d
been able to glean on the phone, she was thriving. She loved her flat and had
even managed to find an affordable second hand car – something that thrilled her
to bits.

Just as I was about to knock on the door to her flat, a wave
of heat spread across my head. I felt prickles all over my skin. I realised
that I was having difficulty seeing properly …

The next thing I knew, everything seemed to be dark. I
didn’t feel that I’d been asleep, but something wasn’t right. I appeared to be
slumped on the floor of a corridor. The side of my ribs stung. I looked up and
saw a pair of intense green eyes looking down at me. As I began to focus, I
recognised Tina.

 “What happened?” I asked.

“I think you must have fainted,” came the soft, soothing
tones of Tina’s voice.

“I did?”

I tried to sit up. This wasn’t right. I was supposed to be
supporting Tina, not the other way around. I noticed that her face had filled
out a little; her skin seemed smoother and radiant; even her hair was shinier.

“You’re looking well,” I told her.

“I wish I could say the same to you,” she said, looking
deeply concerned.

“Thanks,” I replied, trying to laugh but finding that it
hurt.

“Let’s get you to the doctor.”

“It was just a faint,” I tried to reassure her.

She replied firmly, “Do you usually faint?”

* * *

I had to get a lift home from the doctors; I felt too
flabbergasted to walk. How could I put one foot in front of the other having
heard what I’d just heard? I was so gobsmacked that it was as much as I could
do to remember to breathe. A blizzard of questions stormed through my mind.

How the hell was I pregnant? I was on the pill and had been
for years. I never missed a single day – I knew this because I took it with my
other medications.

How the hell could I have gotten to be
twenty-three weeks
pregnant without noticing? I mean sure, I knew I was putting on weight, but it
hadn’t even occurred to me that a baby might be in there building itself a
tent! My particular pill prescription meant that I only bled every three
months. Why hadn’t I noticed that three had become
five
?

How the hell was I going to tell the father? ‘Father’? The
word just sounded so wrong, so out of place. That man had screwed me on a
kitchen cabinet – there was nothing paternal about that. I could barely even
make small talk with him. How was I ever going to tell him that
somehow
that crazy, insane glitch in our otherwise flimsy and frosty association, had
resulted in the creation of a twenty-three-week-old mini-us?

How the hell – how the hell –
how the hell
?

I stamped up and down on the spot. Then I thought of the
baby. Would he or she be happy about the aggressive wobbling? My body was no
longer my own. There was an uninvited guest at the party.

However, accepting that I was pregnant, accepting that I was
nearly in my third trimester, and telling the father were all temporary problems
and relatively small in the overall scheme of things. There was something else,
something much bigger and much more crucial – something that could harm both me
and my baby, perhaps permanently. I withdrew a packet of little white pills
from my handbag and frowned.

* * *

I sat on the sofa surrounded by a spectrum of tissues – my
tears really brought out their colours. I looked at them – at least four
dozen.  I hadn’t expected to get through four dozen tissues when I awoke this
morning.

It was at times like this that I wished I had a more
sympathetic father. ‘Get rid!’ he’d probably say. It was because of comments
just like that, that I hadn’t spoken to him in four years. My mother had died
when I was three, so I didn’t have a clue what she would say, except perhaps
‘Get away from your father, he’s not a good man.’

Tina had been a star. She may have been a client, but fate
dictated that it was Tina, recovered-drug-addict soon-to-be mother, tower of
strength, Tina, who was with me just after I heard the news. Unaware of my
personal circumstances, she had congratulated me (I doubted anybody else would)
and then lent me a book on pregnancy, which happened to be in the boot of her
new car.

As I flicked through it now, I realised that I’d already
passed many of the milestones. A test from the chemist was no use to me, I
hadn’t had morning sickness, and I’d certainly missed the twelve-week scan.

It was all too weird to get my head around, and was too soon
to know what I wanted to do. Yet I had to; at twenty-three weeks, I only had a
few days left to make a decision about whether I wanted to …

I couldn’t even think the word. It was peculiar. All my life
I’d been pro-choice. Yet now, with a baby living inside me, I could barely even
bring myself to think the ‘A’ word. It just felt …
somehow … wrong.

“What’s been going on in here? Has somebody slaughtered
Rainbow Bright?” resounded Nicky’s high-pitched fruity tones.

I smiled, weakly.

“Oh Emma, you’ve been crying!” she said, hurrying around to
the front of the settee.

I decided to spit it out before I lost my nerve: “I’m
pregnant.”

Nicky fell about laughing.

I didn’t laugh.

She continued to laugh.

I didn’t.

Eventually, she stopped laughing and studied me carefully.
“What?” she asked, softly.

“Twenty-three weeks.”

She laughed again, but this time in a nervous, jerky manner.
“How?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been feeling a bit strange, I suppose,
but nothing that made me even imagine I could be pregnant.”

“But you have to have sex to be pregnant.”

Accidentally, a sly smile slipped out, and then I nodded,
earnestly.

“But I’ve been trying to get you laid for months!” she
remarked, looking most indignant. “Hey, if you were seeing somebody, you only
had to say.” Then she looked genuinely hurt and added, “Why didn’t you tell me
about him?” Next, shock. “Is he married?”

I shook my head.

“Well then, who is he?”

“I should tell him before I tell anybody else.”

“So it’s somebody I know?” she inferred. I could hear the
cogs whirring in her brain as she went back through the social calendar in her
mind, month by month.

Sooner or later, she’d twig. She opened her mouth; I braced
myself. “Wait! It’s dangerous for you to be pregnant isn’t it?”

I tapped the packet of pills in my pocket, and nodded.

“Holy crap, Emma.”

“I know,” I said softly.

She took a deep breath and stood up. She began pacing, which
did nothing to calm my nerves. “Does the father know about … those?”

“No, not yet. He doesn’t know about any of it.”

“Are you two still together?”

“No.”

“Oh shit, Emma!”

I sighed, heavily. I didn’t like what she was saying, but
she was only vocalising my own thoughts.

“How did you meet him?”

I took a deep breath. Telling her who the father was seemed
harder than telling her that I was pregnant. I bit my lip, dropped my head and
peered up at her guiltily. I could see the more unruly members of my eyebrows.

“Who?”

I let out a deep sigh.

“
Who?
”

“Simon,” I muttered.

“Sorry?”

“Simon,” I shouted.

She stared at me, the blank expression on her face mirrored
in her bewildered brown eyes. She started laughing again. “No really, who was
it?”

I said nothing.

“Oh my God! You’re serious?”

I nodded.

“But you two
hated
each other,” she exclaimed.

“I thought you said I wasn’t that harsh?” I asked, suddenly
concerned. I had known the air wasn’t clear between us, but Nicky made it sound
practically opaque.

“You argued with him all night! How the hell did you get
from that
to …” she paused and pointed at my belly, “… 
that
!”

“I wish I could tell you.”

“What, you can’t remember?”

“Yeah, I can remember. I just don’t know how it happened.”

“Well you must know something. People don’t just
spontaneously start making babies.”

“Actually … that’s pretty much
exactly
how it
happened.”

* * *

I felt somewhat foolish for thinking that watching
Shaun
of the Dead
with a former lover was awkward. Exchanging stilted small talk
was nothing compared with what I had to do now.

Thankfully, the café had air conditioning. The summer was
getting boastful. It bombarded us with wall-to-wall sunshine day after day,
with warm breezes that lured pollen from plants everywhere. It wasn’t the ideal
climate for a flustered woman in her second trimester.

The fact that I knew so little about Simon was disturbing.
There was a baby growing in my tummy – half his, half mine – and the only
things about him that I really knew were that he made an extremely annoying
dinner guest and was particularly rough in bed (or in kitchen, as the case may
be). Who was this stranger who had gatecrashed my womb?