The Year of Taking Chances

by Lucy Diamond

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ she said dully. ‘It’s right here, then right again just after the church.’

  Flynn’s flat was part of a modern block on Cromwell Road – soulless and kind of boxy, Caitlin had always thought privately, but when he had asked her to move in with him, back in the first flush of romance, she’d been so happy and excited that its square rooms and lack of outdoor space didn’t bother her at all. After living in her mum’s cottage recently, with the charms of its generous garden and beamed ceilings, she was struck anew by how chilly and impersonal this place seemed.

  ‘Well, this is it,’ she said, pushing open the front door. Tension knotted inside her with every echoing step along the tiled hall floor. She had lived here for two and a half years, but it had never really felt like home, she realized. Even walking in now put her on edge. She was holding her breath, half-expecting Flynn to appear and say something caustic. Sometimes it was only when you had moved away that you noticed how unhappy you’d become.

  ‘Very smart,’ Harry said politely, his eyes sliding around, as Caitlin sorted through the pile of post on the hall unit.

  Flynn being Flynn, he had boxed up every last bit of her stuff and stacked it all neatly in one corner of the spare room, just waiting for her to remove it. There were spaces like missing teeth on the shelves where her books had been, and the mantelpiece looked boringly empty without her photos and ornaments. Caitlin also noticed a smart slate-grey woman’s coat hanging up in the hall that definitely wasn’t hers, and a new red toothbrush in the bathroom. He and Jess hadn’t wasted much time then.

  ‘Christ, who’s that?’ Harry asked, gesturing at the large canvas on the living-room wall. It was a black-and-white photo of Flynn’s sleeping face on the pillow; a gift from a former girlfriend apparently. Caitlin had always secretly loathed it.

  ‘That was my ex. Flynn.’ A handsome devil, with his beautiful long, dark lashes and high, sculpted cheekbones. But, seriously, what sort of narcissistic prick hung a ginormous canvas of themselves in their own frigging living room?

  She could tell Harry was thinking the same thing, but was too well-mannered to say so out loud. ‘What happened with you guys then?’ he asked, as they huffed and puffed down the communal stairs, clutching the boxes of her belongings.

  ‘Oh . . . just didn’t work out.’ She didn’t feel like giving Harry the lowdown. He unlocked the van and pushed in his box, then took hers from her and shoved it in alongside.

  ‘Want me to kill him for you?’

  She laughed. ‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said.

  Embarrassingly, it took a mere fifteen minutes to load up her stuff in the back of Harry’s van. You’d have thought a person would have more to show for themselves after thirty-two years on the planet – some decent pieces of furniture, evidence of being a proper grown-up. Nope. Not Caitlin.

  ‘Well, that was easy,’ Harry commented, as they crammed in the last two boxes. ‘Shall we head back?’

  ‘I’ll just have a last check around,’ Caitlin said. ‘Won’t be long.’

  Up in the flat again she walked slowly through the quiet rooms one final time, touching the walls with her fingertips. It was all so pristine, she thought, noting the obsessive way he’d lined up the mugs in the kitchen cupboard and alphabetized the spice jars in the rack. In the bathroom the towels were folded perfectly, as if it was a spa or a hotel room. She thought of her mum’s cosy cottage with its higgledy-piggledy order, the mismatched crockery, the gaudy fridge magnets from Cornwall and Tenby, the jumble of family photos everywhere. That was a proper home, not this. No wonder she’d never been able to relax here.

  She gazed into the bathroom mirror and saw echoes of herself there: too thin, too anxious, putting on make-up to cover her acne scars, plucking out her first white hairs before he noticed them. Trying to be something she wasn’t, for him. She found herself fantasizing about scrawling a lipsticked message on his mirror before she left. UP YOURS! maybe, or SCREW YOU!

  No, that was childish. She mustn’t. He’d go berserk.

  ‘Are you ready to go?’ called Harry, who’d reappeared in the hallway.

  ‘Just coming,’ she replied, without moving. Her mouth twisted as the urge grew stronger to make a last bit of mischief before leaving for good. Should she? Dare she? She probably shouldn’t.

  Last few checks: nothing hanging on the back of the bathroom door, all toiletries removed from the shower. Ah – the bathroom cabinet, she hadn’t thought to look in there. She opened the mirrored door and her eyes went straight to the packet of condoms inside. Ribbed for extra pleasure, according to the box. Oh. Back in the day, they hadn’t used condoms; she’d gone on the pill because he said he didn’t like the rubbery smell. Obviously he’d got over that particular problem pretty swiftly, though.

  She opened the box; not many left inside. Tosser, she thought, flinging the last few messily over the floor in a burst of hatred. Then she pushed his folded towels out of place and rearranged his toiletries, knowing he’d notice. She ran into the kitchen and muddled up the spices, putting the Cardamom Pod jar where the Turmeric should go, swapping Ginger for Cumin, Fenugreek Seeds for Chilli Flakes.

  Harry was in the living room, perched on the arm of the sofa. (‘You’re not meant to sit on the arm, you’ll spoil the shape,’ Flynn always fussed whenever Caitlin had forgotten and did the same thing.) ‘All done?’ he asked, and then, as Caitlin walked straight past him, taking the lid off her traffic-stopping red lipstick, ‘What are you do—? Caitlin! Bloody hell!’

  ‘What do you think? I reckon they suit him,’ Caitlin said, standing back and admiring the red heart-shaped glasses she’d drawn on the canvas picture of Flynn’s face. Adrenalin thumped through her. Flynn would go mental when he saw what she’d done. Absolutely mental.

  And serve him bloody well right, she thought, smirking at Harry, who was roaring with shocked laughter. ‘All done,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Chapter Six

  London seemed loud, grimy and foul-smelling when Saffron returned, a couple of days into the New Year. There were roadworks near her East London flat, ominous yellow police signs on the pavement describing two new stabbings and appealing for witnesses, burger wrappers bowling along the road in the wind, and a new streak of grey-white pigeon shit down her living-room window. She’d lived in London since she was twenty-one and, for the first time ever, she had to admit it was losing its appeal.

  On her last full day in Suffolk she’d put on wellies and her great fat duvet of a coat and had tramped for miles on her own, the sky wide and clear, with only the far-away thrumming of a tractor and sporadic bursts of birdsong disturbing the stillness. She’d seen spiders’ webs glittering with frost, a rabbit scuffling urgently into the hedgerow, a hawk hovering high above the bare brown fields, then suddenly plummeting towards unsuspecting prey. You forgot how magnificent nature could be when you were usually surrounded by concrete and traffic. Mind you, nature had played a pretty terrible trick on her recently, with that curve-ball on Christmas Eve. She’d sat on the edge of her parents’ bath gripping the white plastic stick, her hands trembling in disbelief as first one blue line appeared, then a second. Oh, she thought dully. Not food poisoning after all, then.

  Life hadn’t felt quite real, carrying the enormous secret by herself, without being able to share it. She couldn’t tell her parents – no way. They were gentle souls who pottered around in soft fleeces, nurturing seedlings, walking the dogs, making disapproving noises at the television. They lived a quiet life of comfortable routines. Telling them over the Christmas dinner that she was unexpectedly pregnant would have been like lobbing a hand-grenade into the roast-potato dish.

  Her sisters? She couldn’t tell them either. Eloise was going through IVF for what felt like the tenth time, poor woman. If Saffron let slip that she was accidentally up the duff and wasn’t sure if she even wanted the baby, Eloise would probably lamp her one. She’d never speak to her again. And Zoe . . . Well, Zoe and she had once been close
enough that they knew everything about each other, but her younger sister was in Western Australia now, after a crazy love-whirlwind with a gorgeous surfie-chick called Alexa had turned into something more serious, and geography had forced the sisters apart. Oh, they Skyped and emailed and did their best, but Skype and emails didn’t come close to a proper heart-to-heart with a glass of wine somewhere intimate. Not that she was drinking wine now, of course. (God, she was desperate for wine. Desperate like she’d never been desperate. Was it possible that one of your pregnancy cravings could be a chilled glass of Sauvignon blanc? Or a slim, tall glass of sharp, bubbling champagne? It had been the first dry New Year since she was fifteen. It had practically killed her to say ‘I don’t drink’ at Gemma’s party.)

  As for Max . . . No, she hadn’t told him the big news, either. How could she? He was only meant to be a bit of fun, after all – one of those no-strings flings where your heart remained intact, even if your knickers didn’t. Besides, he had baggage by the cartload: a shrewish ex-wife, Jenna, who always seemed to be bollocking him down the phone, plus two teenage children of his own. The last thing he’d want from Saffron was an awkward ‘I’ve got something to tell you’ conversation. She could already imagine the way his animated face would sag; how the light would vanish from his eyes in an instant. You’re what? Are you kidding?

  God, it was complicated. What was she going to do?

  Being away in Suffolk had been like putting on a sticking plaster, temporarily covering her worries from sight. Walks and fresh air, and even an excellent party in the house next door, with an actual conga around the living room after midnight. (She must send flowers to that lovely Gemma. It had been way better fun than sitting in and watching the London fireworks all on her own.)

  Now she was back in the real world, though: in the cramped and rather grotty East London flat she’d rented since her marriage went tits-up two years ago and she’d been left out of pocket. Her suitcase was yet to be unpacked, there was a mountain of laundry to tackle, and her somewhat pathetic needle-shedding Christmas tree needed to be dragged outside for the recycling lorry, before it turned completely bald. With the holiday over and work looming tomorrow, January was already looking grey and joyless.

  She was lying on the sofa, crunching through a bag of salt-and-vinegar Hula Hoops, when her phone started ringing. Max, she saw on the screen and let it go to voicemail, hating her own cowardice. In the next moment she remembered her own midnight vow at New Year – Talk to Max – and felt a stab of guilt. Resolutions were cobblers anyway. And she was going to talk to Max. She was! Just not now. Not this minute.

  She and Max had met at the glitzy launch of Faster, a new sportswear brand, in a Covent Garden hotel. He was Faster’s Account Manager, while she worked for the PR agency coordinating the evening. She liked him even before she’d laid eyes on him – his emails were charming and witty, and his deep voice on the phone always made him sound as if he was on the brink of laughter. Then she’d met him in person and her whole body reacted. Whoa. He had a rangy, athletic physique, salt-and-pepper hair, and a way of looking at you with those melty brown eyes as if you were the only other person in the world. They bonded over their willingness to try ridiculous-sounding cocktails, and before long she could hardly look at him without wanting to grab his shirt and kiss him. Emboldened by lust and all those cocktails, she pressed her business card into his hand at the end of the night. ‘Let’s do this again,’ she said daringly.

  ‘Let’s,’ he agreed.

  Two days later a package arrived at her desk and out fell a turquoise hoodie with the Faster logo stamped on it in pink lettering. ‘He’s sent you a fleece?’ asked her colleague Kate in withering tones. ‘Who said romance was dead?’

  Saffron read the note. ‘He’s booked us in for a snowboarding lesson,’ she said, her heart giving a little flip. ‘Said the hoodie might come in handy.’

  Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘Okay, I take it back,’ she said. ‘That’s kind of smooth. And a snowboarding lesson is a damn sight more interesting than a night down the pub, that’s for sure.’

  The snowboarding lesson was hilarious, as was their second date, kayaking along the Thames. For their third date, Saffron offered to cook Max dinner at her place, but they hadn’t eaten so much as a mouthful before they were pulling each other’s clothes off and tumbling onto the sofa together. (‘I like him,’ she told Kate the next morning. She had tingles just thinking about him, the way his skin felt against hers. ‘I actually really like this one.’) Then it was December and the whirl of tinsel-spangled Christmas parties swept them both up, and they’d only managed to see each other a couple more times amidst the mayhem. And now she was pregnant.

  Her hands crept around to her belly and rested there gently. Yesterday he’d texted her details of a great beach for kite-surfing that he’d found near Southend, if she fancied it. Maybe we could make a weekend of it? She was starting to think Max might be undergoing something of a midlife crisis, with all these adrenalin dates he kept suggesting, but hell, she was game for anything. Kite-surfing sounded a laugh, even if it was January and freezing cold. He’d probably look sexy in a wetsuit, too . . .

  But then she had remembered the two blue lines on the stick, and wondered if pregnant women were still meant to do things like kite-surfing, and the next minute she was engulfed in doubt. What was she going to do? Did she even want a baby? How would she manage in this poxy one-bedroom Walthamstow flat? It was a hopeless idea. Impossible.

  All the decisions that lay ahead made her feel queasy. Or was that the hormones? Whichever, there was no escaping the fact that she would have to start sorting her life out soon, pinning down a few certainties like markers on a map. This way. Then this way. And don’t look back.

  Being pregnant was like having the volume whacked up on all your senses, Saffron thought the next day as she went back to work. Noises around her – roadworks, traffic, other people’s voices – seemed amplified to irritating, headache-inducing levels. Smells assaulted her with a new, horrific violence: perfume and aftershave on the Tube, sickly vanilla scents pumped out from the doughnut shop, diesel fumes and cigarette smoke – disgusting, all of them. Flavours tasted weirdly different, too, all of a sudden. Coffee, for instance, her own personal rocket-fuel, now repulsed her with its bitterness, her mouth shrivelling and crimping in disgust whenever she tried to drink it. How had she ever been able to stomach the stuff?

  Once in the office (ravenous already – how would she survive the morning without constant snacking?), Saffron opened her emails to an avalanche of ‘Dry January’ and ‘Wonder Diet’ spam. Oh, the irony.

  ‘Saffron! There you are!’ came a plummy voice. ‘I was starting to think you were avoiding my calls.’

  Charlotte Hargreaves was the director of Phoenix PR; a large, commanding woman with big hair and stentorian tones, whose entire existence revolved around the agency and her role at its epicentre. She was also the sort of boss who had no qualms about taking all the credit for any success achieved by the agency, whether she’d had a hand in it or not. Saffron had often fantasized about marching out dramatically – ‘I quit!’ – and setting up her own rival agency, which would win awards and make Charlotte look a complete amateur. The sooner she plucked up the courage, the better.

  Yeah, but hello? What about the baby? Maternity leave? Think about it! snapped a voice in her head.

  Oh, yeah. The baby. She’d overlooked that tincy-wincy factor.

  ‘Happy New Year,’ she said, putting on her dazzling PR executive smile as Charlotte approached.

  ‘What? Oh. Yes. Anyway, I don’t know if you’ve seen the email yet, but the Yummy Mummy baby-food account is now yours. They want a full PR strategy plus visuals by mid-month, so I said that would be fine. I trust you’ll be able to manage it?’

  Saffron blinked, trying to process this deluge of information. ‘Um . . . yes?’ she said tentatively, then frowned. ‘I thought Kate was handling the Yummy Mummy thing?’ Kate would be a g
ood person to talk to about the baby, she realized just then, but when she glanced around she noticed that Kate’s desk was empty, and the photos of her flame-haired, gap-toothed kids had vanished.

  ‘We had to let her go,’ Charlotte said briskly. ‘Too much time off for school consultations and doctors, and whatnot.’

  What? Was this some kind of joke? Saffron’s insides clenched with the injustice. Admittedly Kate had been in and out of hospital with her accident-prone younger son, who seemed to be on a quest to break every bone in his body, but she’d always managed to get her work done on time – and consistently good it had been, too. ‘Oh,’ she said faintly after a moment, fury for her friend mingling with fear at the thought of Charlotte finding out she was pregnant. Just like Kate, she’d be pushed out of the agency in a heartbeat. We had to let her go. Too much time off for midwife consultations and childbirth, and whatnot.

  ‘So you’ve got the brief and the contact details. Joseph’s handling the artwork, so you two can liaise on progress. I’ll leave it in your capable hands.’

  As soon as Charlotte had marched back to her office, Saffron furtively fired off an email to her friend:

  From: Saffron@PhoenixPR

  To: KateMcKay@jetmail

  Subject: WTF?!

  Hi Kate

  Just heard the news – so gutted for you. What happened? Are you okay?

  S x

  Then her phone rang. ‘Phoenix PR?’

  ‘Hey, Saff, it’s Max. Happy New Year!’

  She swallowed. ‘Hi, Max, same to you.’ I’m carrying your baby, by the way, Max. Whoops! Contraception-fail! ‘Um . . . ’ She pulled herself together. Act normal. ‘Good Christmas?’

  ‘Great, thanks. The usual complicated children-passing, but we muddled through. How about you?’