I could imagine curling up on this couch with a drink. And Jamie.
It’s cosy but perfect. Bugger, this would be so much better if I hated it.
‘There is no wife, or ex.’ His gaze is direct. ‘His mother didn’t want me to even know he existed, let alone see him.’
‘Oh.’
‘It was a one-night stand.’ He glances at me as though he’s expecting judgement. ‘I’m not proud of it, but it was. I had no idea…’ He shrugs, looking uncomfortable. ‘The first I knew about Alfie was when a mate of mine bumped into Claire, the day I came over to fit that lock for you?’ I nod. ‘He mentioned she had a kid the spitting image of me. He thought it was hilarious; it was all nudge, nudge, wink, wink because he had no idea.’ His smile is wry.
But it isn’t that niggling at me, it’s something else he’s said. Something I can’t quite pin down, because I need time to concentrate. Think about it. I know I’m frowning, repeating his words in my head, then I realize he’s talking, and I need to listen. ‘At first, I laughed it off, then I kind of panicked a bit. It seemed unlikely, impossible, but you know when you get something in your head, and you can’t shake it off? When you have to check it out?’ I nod. I know exactly what he means.
‘So I decided I needed to accidentally bump into her myself. See with my own eyes. I felt a bit of an idiot, like I was being ridiculous. But I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t stop thinking that what if he was mine, what if I had a kid out there who I knew nothing about and who didn’t even know I existed? It seemed wrong.’
This isn’t the office Jamie at all, it’s not even the caring, quieter, more considerate Jamie I’ve come to know since we started to share a desk. This is a worn and emotional Jamie who is trying to hide how he feels. Who feels daft, but who feels he has to explain. Which stirs up the conflicts inside me. He’s going to all this trouble, dragging a story out into the open that’s private. Just for me.
But why not just come out with it? I mean, it’s not a reason to not date is it? And lots of people have kids outside marriage.
‘I’ve not been in the office because it’s been easier to work from here.’ He pauses. ‘I’ve needed some space to try and get my head round the idea. When I met you for a coffee, I meant to tell you, I really did. But I wasn’t even sure I quite believed it myself, and by the time I’d offloaded about pretending I didn’t recognize you,’ he gives me a guilty look, ‘it seemed too much to drop this on you as well, and the phone went and you had to get into work, there wasn’t enough time and…’ He shrugs. ‘Then after your barbecue when we, er, kissed, my mind was totally kind of blown because I never saw that coming. Baby, you, everything kind of hit me at once. I didn’t know whether I was coming or going. I couldn’t do that to you, I couldn’t start something when I’m in this mess.’
‘Isn’t that my decision as well, Jamie?’ I say softly. ‘Don’t I have a say?’
‘Well yes, but… I shouldn’t have done that – kissed you, led you on. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to see him, or anything. I wanted to wait, I wanted to be sure who I was, what I was offering you before I said anything, because…’ He takes a deep breath, looks me straight in the eye. ‘Because kissing you was like the first time all over again, but better.’
I frown. I stare at him, then at the photograph, trying not to think about what he’s just said. ‘So you didn’t know about him until then? You’ve only just found out?’
‘No. Hadn’t got a clue.’
‘The day you did my lock?’
‘Yup. That’s why I needed a couple of days off.’ He hadn’t been ignoring me, or my notes, he’d been at home. In shock. ‘It made me realize as well that I had to be straight with you before I came to the barbecue. I felt a shit, I couldn’t go out for the evening with you and deceive you.’
‘Like she did to you?’
He nods. ‘Sorry. Does that make it even worse? The fact I did it right after I found out she had hidden Alfie from me?’ I shake my head. ‘It didn’t really hit me that it was true until I saw him the next day.’ He shrugs. ‘She went white as a ghost when I popped out of the bushes in the park, so I knew…’ His voice tails off, and it is like he’s remembering. ‘She said I was never meant to find out, she’d moved away, she was just visiting a friend here for a few days. It was this massive coincidence that I saw her. If I’d gone looking two days later, she wouldn’t have been there. She’d be back at her new place. She brought him round here and once I’d held him, made him laugh…’ He stares into the distance. ‘He was real, Alice. A real baby, part of me.’
I look at the plastic toys again. ‘Wow.’ Getting my head round this takes some effort. He’s got a kid. He’s not supposed to know he’s got a kid. He’s got a kid with Claire.
Kissing me the second time was as good as the first. Better. But that isn’t what I should be thinking about right now.
Claire, Claire, Claire, that name is niggling at me.
‘Then she went back home with him, all the way to bloody Cornwall, as though none of it mattered. I didn’t matter.’ He looks me directly in the eye. ‘She doesn’t want me to see him, but I think I should. Every kid should know their dad, shouldn’t they? She was really cold about it, dead direct and the more I thought about it after they’d gone, the more wrong it felt. She blew me out when I tried to call her, told me to stop fucking with other people’s lives. But what has she done, what is she doing?’ The upset shows on his face and it makes me feel hurt for him. ‘I don’t know what I want, I’ve never even thought about having kids, I don’t know what kind of relationship I should have with him. But I want to get to know him, so I went and talked to a solicitor.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘Then I went down to Cornwall to try and talk her round. I booked a couple of days annual leave and worked remotely the other days.’
‘Hang on,’ I need to back step a minute here, ‘you said she doesn’t want you to see him? Not at all?’
‘Nope.’ He shakes his head but is looking at me directly. ‘I’m not supposed to be part of his life.’
‘What?’ I lean back, a bit flabbergasted.
‘She said she was actually quite pleased when she found out she was pregnant, she loves kids.’ He leans back, looking like he feels battered. He’s trying to make light of it, but I can tell it hurts.
It is then, as I stare at him, that it hits me. My throat is dry. What he said has finally registered. I look at the photo again, then at him. ‘How, er, old is Alfie?’ Time seems to have stopped. I’m holding my breath.
‘Nearly eighteen months.’
Claire. Eighteen months, nine months of being pregnant. Oh my God, just over two years ago. I get it. I feel a bit dizzy. I don’t want to, but I have to ask. He can tell me I’m being ridiculous; he can laugh it off. ‘Claire. You said his mother was called Claire, she’s not—’
He nods before I can say another word and sinks back into the couch. ‘Yep, that Claire. Claire from work. That’s partly why I didn’t come clean with you straight away.’
‘What?’ That’s why he was so edgy about Claire when we were chatting over coffee! Claire had been more than just a girl he’d kissed in the bar that night, when he should have been kissing me. She was the complication! Now I come to think of it, he’d said his time with her was supposed to be fun. Supposed to be! Bloody hell, why didn’t I notice it more then, why didn’t I push it, grill him? I was too busy thinking about him pretending he’d forgotten me.
‘Well you knew her, and it didn’t seem fair on her. At least until I was totally positive it was true, he was mine.’
I’m not quite sure why he’s so keen on being fair to her, she’s not exactly being fair to him, is she?
‘It looked like she didn’t want people to know, and if it got round the office, the gossip…’ His voice tails off. Then he starts to talk again. ‘She’d already handed her notice in and told me she was leaving, said how about a quick fling, the evening I…’ He gazes into my eyes. We stare at each other. Tha
t evening, that after-work drink when I was so sure he’d recognized me – before he’d wandered off and spent the rest of the evening with somebody else. Claire. A bit of fun, ha! ‘The evening I recognized you properly. It was mad, I’d been so close to kissing you. I wanted you so much, then I was scared shitless of fucking it all up. It had been so amazing at Reading, I’d thought about it, about you so much every bloody day after, and then there you were and I ducked out. I wasn’t ready to meet the one, I wasn’t ready to risk losing you if you were. I daren’t do it. I was drunk, Claire was all over me.’ She was ALL over him. ‘I was so fucking stupid. I took the easy way out in case you didn’t remember some quick snog, or it wasn’t as good as I’d remembered…and look where it got me. I fucked up big time, didn’t I?’
‘I was interested,’ I say softly. ‘I’d never forgotten that kiss. But,’ it’s my turn to feel in the wrong, ‘I did have a boyfriend, and still really wanted you to kiss me again.’ My face heats up, but I have to admit to how I felt. I have to be honest.
‘I used the fact you had a boyfriend as an excuse to avoid facing up to how I felt. I should have at least told you I remembered. And,’ he pauses, ‘I guess I was scared that if you were in love with another guy, then the last thing you probably wanted was being reminded about that night when some drunken twat lurched at you.’
‘It wasn’t like that. It was perfect.’
‘But I didn’t know that Alice.’ He touches my hand briefly. ‘I know none of it is an excuse for behaving like I did with Claire but… Shit, I was just so stupid, except.’ He looks up at the ceiling, blinks, then looks back at me. ‘Except I can’t regret Alfie.’ A hint of a smile plays on his lips. ‘He’s so cute, so funny. Look, I’m sorry. I feel like I’m offloading on you, it’s not fair.’
‘You’re not. Honest, it’s fine. Carry on, I’d like to know.’ I need to know. And I want to know that he fancied me as much as I fancied him. That there were reasons for him acting like he did. I want to watch him talk about his toddler son; he looks so caring, so gorgeous when he does. You can see the love in his expression, his eyes.
And you know, so what he’s got a baby? I can do babies. This doesn’t have to be the end of us before we’ve really begun. Now I know why he’s been keeping me at arm’s length, I can handle it. I can deal with it. I can persuade him it needn’t be an issue.
‘But we can’t …’ He hesitates. ‘Alice, I can’t see you, or anything right now.’
‘But you can, I mean, it doesn’t matter,’ I say softly. ‘I won’t say anything to anybody who knows her. I don’t mind about Alfie, honest.’
‘It’s not that.’ He looks down at his hands for a moment, then back up as though working out how to say the next bit. ‘I just feel like I’ve got to be squeaky clean or it might mess up my chances of seeing him. ’ Uh-oh. ‘The solicitor said I have rights whatever, but I want to come across the best I can. Do you get that? Clean living,’ he waves a hand to take in the room.
‘Very clean!’ I force myself to grin, and he finally grins back. It’s nice as the tension rolls away. It makes me feel good. ‘It won’t stay that way for long when he comes visiting!’
‘If we’d already been seeing each other it would be different, but I can’t be seen to be starting something up, or casually dating, or—’
‘I get it.’ I do. I can’t be selfish.
‘Just until we’ve sorted something.’
‘Really, I get it. Getting access to Alfie is the most important thing in the world. Putting your life on hold for a few months will be well worth it.’
‘I’d ask you if you’d put yours on hold as well, but it wouldn’t be fair.’
‘I—’
He holds a hand up to stop me talking. ‘I don’t know how long all this will take; it could be weeks, months, years. I haven’t got a clue. I just know I’ve got to fight for him.’
‘I waited years after that first kiss,’ I say. ‘And then nearly two years after I found you.’
‘But this is different,’ he says softly. ‘I’ve no idea what’s going to happen. I might end up moving to Cornwall if I can talk her round, I can’t ask you to do that. Not when I don’t know what direction my life might go in, Alice. I’m sure I could get a job down there, or even work remotely with this one and just come up to the office once a week or something. Or, who knows, she might come back here. I reckon from what she said she’s a bit lonely down there and she misses her friends from round here. But she wanted a clean break; she wanted to go where nobody knew her and there wouldn’t be any gossip.’
‘I wish you’d told me sooner.’
‘I felt such a dick over pretending I didn’t remember you, and I wanted to tell you about Alfie so much, but what if…’ He pauses, his eyes searching my face. ‘What if you’d told me that was it, no chance, you’d already got too much chaos in your life and you needed some quiet, your own space, not some baby. That would have totally been it.’
I think back to all those gestures of Claire’s that had made my stomach feel hollow, the way they’d put their heads together in a confidential huddle. The giggles. Yuk. I’d been jealous, I am jealous. So if I’m truly honest with myself, how would I have reacted if I’d known about Alfie earlier? Their baby?
‘I didn’t want to find you, then lose you again before we even had a chance…’
‘You didn’t trust me enough to tell me though.’ My default setting has always been to trust people, and then they’ve taken advantage of me. But, well, if I ever had thoughts of a relationship with Jamie that is well and truly out of the window if he doesn’t trust me at all. I’ve trusted Jamie with my stuff, with my problems, but it wasn’t two-way at all it seems.
‘I do trust you,’ he says softly. ‘That’s why I’m telling you now. I haven’t told another soul, but I had to tell you. The other day, I didn’t trust myself not to mess it up, say it all wrong. I didn’t trust myself to get it right, but then I knew why I felt so shitty. I knew I should have explained, I couldn’t not tell you. But,’ he pauses, ‘I know it’s not fair to expect you to want to share my life now I’m a guy with a baby. You wouldn’t want to.’
‘Don’t tell me what I would and wouldn’t want to do!’ I shout out, exasperated. ‘I’ll decide.’ Wow, I am getting assertive.
‘But you’ve always had to share, you’ve never had your own space, Alice. You have now, you’re getting it sorted. I can’t take that away from you.’
I lower my voice. ‘I’ve never been able to choose. It’s about choosing when to share, who to share with, isn’t it? You can’t take it away from me, I can decide if you can have it. I trusted you, Jamie.’ I realize as I’m speaking that I’ve never thought about it before, but I have trusted Jamie. I have been happy to share with him, because I’ve instinctively felt he wouldn’t take advantage. He wants what is right for me, as well as for himself. And I’m not going to be afraid to tell him when he’s got it wrong.
‘I know. I told you I knew I’d mess things up.’
‘We all mess up, make mistakes. That’s life. Nothing is perfect for ever.’
‘That kiss was.’
‘No, it wasn’t. It was a promise of something that could be good. It was the starting point, not the whole thing.’
He is studying me steadily, but when he speaks there is a shaky edge to his voice. ‘Actually, I don’t think I asked you here because I felt I had to own up, explain this to you, I think it’s because I do trust you. I wanted to tell you, I wanted to share this with somebody and you were the right person. It had to be you.’
‘Good,’ I say quietly, not quite sure what else to say.
‘I didn’t want to burden you with my problems though, you don’t deserve…’
‘Hey, stop. I want to know.’ I pause. I want to share the good and the bad. ‘So, she definitely knew she was leaving?’
‘Yep.’ He follows my lead. ‘She told me that in the bar. She didn’t tell me she was going to frigging Cornwall though! Not th
at it would have made any difference at the time, but it meant that if I had found out later that she was pregnant, I wouldn’t have been able to find her even if I’d wanted to. And…’ His smile is wry. ‘I guess after he was born, Covid helped her disappear. There was practically no chance of anybody from around here that knew her bumping into her.’ He sighs.
‘But he’s yours as well!’
‘I know. I think she’s scared it will complicate things though, change things for her. She told me she just wanted to be left alone with Alfie, to bring him up how she wants. She said her dad ruined her life and she doesn’t want to risk a repeat.’
‘But you’re not her dad!’
‘I know, but it’s easy to say stuff like that, when you don’t know what went on, isn’t it? I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt here. She thought she’d got it all planned out; I’d never know anything about it, and she was nearly right. It was pure chance I found out. It would never have occurred to me, even if I’d bumped into them myself, if he didn’t look the spit of me at the same age in all my baby photos. Hell.’ He put his head in his hands again, then peers up at me. ‘My mum is going to kill me when she finds out.’
‘She’ll be cross she’s only knitting bootees for Booby birds, and not babies!’
‘Fuming. Oh God, how did I get myself into this mess?’
‘You want the scientific answer.’
‘Nope. More wine?’
We sit in companionable silence, only sipping at the wine. Both immersed in our own thoughts.
‘Is everything okay with you?’ He finally breaks the silence. ‘Sorry, I never asked.’
‘Fine, fine. It’s pretty quiet in the office and I miss your notes.’ We swap a look. Even now he’s thinking about me, when he’s got major worries of his own. He’s a nice guy. He gives more than he takes, nothing like Dave at all. A long, lingering look that should turn into a kiss, but doesn’t. It turns into an awkward wriggle as I desperately try and think of something to say. ‘And Mabel misses you.’ I clear the lump in my throat.
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