Thanks For Nothing, Nick Maxwell

by Debbie Carbin

  Here I am, in the bath, relaxing, eyeing the tip of the iceberg that is my belly. Don’t come in, just stay at the door. The days of me not minding being seen naked are long gone.

  Plum doesn’t have much room in there now, so he’s constantly trying to get comfortable, stretching his arms and legs out as far as they’ll go. I love to watch this activity under my skin, his limbs and head fading in and out of view like a seal glimpsed through dark water. It’s the most peculiar thing I’ve ever seen, like a slow-motion miniature earthquake. I can’t look at my belly button any more since it popped out into a hard, pink marble, but there are other changes going on that still surprise me.

  ‘Hey, Sarah, my nipples have gone brown,’ I announce, walking into the living room in my dressing gown ten minutes later, and come eye to eye with Hector. I freeze in the doorway. He is sitting in the chair by the fire, his eyes smiling at me and I can feel my face going red.

  ‘Good news, then?’ he asks, a smile just visible at the corners of his mouth.

  I nod. ‘I’ve finally done it, after months of trying.’

  ‘You must be very proud.’

  I laugh. ‘So, so proud.’

  ‘Hector was just telling me how you two know each other,’ Sarah’s saying in the background somewhere. ‘You kept that quiet, Rachel.’

  We’re still smiling at each other. I cross the room and sit down on the sofa next to Sarah, my eyes on his the whole time.

  ‘Rach? I said, you kept it quiet, that you’ve known Hector all this time.’

  ‘Oh, er, no, not really. I mean, I didn’t know for a long time that he was Glenn’s brother, and then, when we found out, well . . .’ I stop smiling as I remember suddenly how we came to find out the connection with Sarah and Glenn. It was back in August, when I blurted out that I’d seen Glenn with another woman.

  ‘It was around the time that Mum died,’ Hector says smoothly, coming to my rescue. ‘Which is also about the time that you found out you were pregnant.’ He turns back to me and his voice softens. ‘We didn’t really think about alerting all our friends to the fact that we knew each other, did we?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Oh,’ says Sarah. She’s not really listening anyway. Casualty is on and the television screen is filled with the image of a blood-smeared shard of glass sticking out of a leg. Hector and I continue our conversation around her, in hushed voices.

  ‘You look amazing,’ he says to me. I know he means, ‘You look like a bungalow!’

  ‘Hmm. Thanks.’

  ‘Are you all right? I mean . . .’ He inclines his head towards Sarah. ‘Comfortable?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes, it’s fine. Actually, it’s nearer work so—’

  ‘But further from the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, but it won’t be a panicky journey, when I do go.’

  ‘How will you get there? Is Nick taking you?’

  I stare at him. I don’t even remember telling him the name of the father. Or did I? ‘No, no, I haven’t even—’

  ‘Look, you two, I’m really shattered. Would you mind if I go up?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer and leaves the room.

  Hector and I are alone. We look at each other, smile and then quickly look away. The way that he’s looking at me makes me feel eighteen, thin and sexy again, not a huge, bloated lump of lard, with a baby swimming around inside.

  ‘How’s everything going at Horizon?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yes, good, so far. The people in the IT department that have seen the programme are pleased . . .’ He trails off. ‘I haven’t seen you there at all.’

  ‘I’ve been there! Come on, you can’t miss me.’

  ‘I do though,’ he says and I’m all flustered, wondering if I really know what he means.

  ‘You just need to look harder. There aren’t many places where a person this size can hide out. Luckily I’m in Telesales, so the office is open plan. I don’t know what I’d do if I worked in one of those tiny DP cubicles. I’d probably just have to stay there until the baby comes out.’

  He puffs air out through his nose in a tiny acknowledgement of me trying to be funny. ‘Listen, Rachel, you’re not neglecting yourself, are you?’

  I look down at my rather faded and shabby orange dressing gown, with a faint egg-yolk stain on the front, and my cheerful sexy smile droops suddenly. What on earth was I thinking of, feeling thin and attractive? ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘No, no, I don’t mean that. I’m just worried that you’re so focused on helping your friend that you’re not thinking about yourself. You should be resting, taking it easy, not worrying about someone else.’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘It’s the last chance you’ll get for a while to be selfish.’

  I really don’t know what to say to this. I’m sure he’s right, but I don’t feel stressed or tired, and Sarah’s spare bed is very comfortable. Plum elbows me hard in the ribs suddenly, as if to remind me that I need to say something, and I gasp, clutching my side.

  ‘You all right?’

  I nod quickly. ‘Yes, fine. It’s just this one, moving around. He’s got sharp little elbows.’ I hesitate for a moment, looking at Hector. He’s slid to the front of his seat, as if he was about to get up. ‘Would you . . . like to feel it?’

  His eyes widen. ‘Can I?’ I nod again and he moves from the chair over to the sofa next to me.

  ‘You’re going to have to get nearer,’ I say, and he shuffles right up next to me so there’s a line of contact between us all the way down one side, his left and my right, from our shoulders, down our arms to our thighs. I can feel the warmth of his leg pressing against mine. Look how close his face is to mine. And you can see, even from here, what effect it’s having on me. I’m jittery and keep looking at him, then quickly looking away. It’s very hard to meet someone’s eyes from this distance, even if they’re short, ugly trolls.

  I take his hand and lay it gently down on the part of my belly that’s quaking. After a few seconds I feel the pressure of Plum from the inside, and Hector gasps as he feels it from the outside.

  ‘Wow! It’s exactly how I imagined it would be.’

  This is a bit odd, that he has been imagining what my baby will feel like in my tummy. I stiffen and he removes his hand quickly.

  ‘No, no, God no, I don’t mean yours.’ He shuffles away from me on the sofa again. ‘Oh Christ, please don’t think . . . I’m really not a . . .’ He stops and rubs the back of his head. ‘Perhaps I had better explain.’ He leans forward and stares at the carpet.

  ‘I met Miranda at work. One of my department managers took her on in the advertising department. She walked into my office one day . . .’ He smiles a little and looks up at me, head bowed. ‘I’m not trying to impress you or sound arrogant or big-headed, but you have to imagine how inappropriate this was. I mean, do you think one of the people who work in advertising in Horizon would simply walk into Rupert de Witter’s office?’

  ‘God, no.’

  ‘Well, there’s an established protocol, isn’t there? Even the department managers don’t simply walk in. I mean, I’m not one of those remote managers that’s never seen by their staff. I go to all the meetings, I make sure I walk around each department at least once every week.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘But they still make appointments to see me, when they need to. It’s just a courtesy. So anyway, she walks in. I have seen her before, you know, when I was doing the rounds, but I can’t really remember her. She tells me she’s Miranda Waters and starts really flirting with me, right there in my office. I’ve got this mountain of work to get through but I’m sitting there talking to this woman about what we like doing in our spare time. She intrigued me.

  ‘When I left the office that evening, she’s there, all alone in the lobby. It turns out she’s waiting for me. I mean, this was getting on for nine o’clock in the evening, so she must have been there for a long time.’ He rubs his face with his hand. ‘I think she made me her little
project.

  ‘Anyway, after six months she decides we’re perfect for each other and moves in with us. I wasn’t sure about how this would affect Mum, you know, but Miranda wouldn’t listen to my objections. To be fair, I didn’t voice them very loudly. I was weak . . .

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a grand passion, or anything, but we were together for four years, all together.’ He’s staring at his hands. ‘Just over two years ago, she told me she was pregnant.’

  I kind of suspected this was coming.

  ‘I was . . .’ He looks up at me. ‘I was stunned. I’d been having second thoughts about the relationship, and then she tells me she’s having our baby. Of course, I couldn’t tell her then that I wasn’t convinced we should stay together, so I carried on as if everything was fine. The one good thing about our relationship at this point was the baby. I was delighted about it, thrilled, but I had reservations about Miranda. Sometimes she seemed a bit . . . unstable. She would fly into a rage about nothing and I would think about the stress of a crying baby and whether or not it would tip her over the edge. I tried to convince myself that it would be good for her – the responsibilities of motherhood to bring her down to earth, you know.’ He laughs bitterly and shakes his head. ‘I needn’t have worried. A month or two later we had a blazing row – one of many – and she tells me the baby isn’t mine. Then she shrieks that she’s going to kill it and storms out of the house.’

  He stands up and walks over to the fire.

  We have to pause a moment here. Fix your eyes on Hec’s face. He seems to be a bit tortured, doesn’t he? Just look at the pain behind those eyes, the agony he must have suffered, the anguish he went through. I love that look. You can tell just by looking at me, gazing at him hungrily. George Clooney could walk in behind me in a pair of boxer shorts and say, ‘Hey, Rach, great to see you again, wanna get married?’ and I probably wouldn’t even notice him.

  ‘I can’t begin to describe my feelings at that moment,’ Hector says. ‘I have never been as low, either before or since. I stood there in the hallway of my home after she had slammed the door and I actually felt like I didn’t want to go on with my life.’

  ‘Oh, Hec.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness I had Mum. She gave me a reason to keep going.’ He clears his throat and turns round to face me. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t the end of it. She came back that same evening, all apologetic and contrite, so we carried on.’

  ‘Even though . . .?’

  ‘Yes, even though she had thrown this huge boulder of doubt into the air. But I was so desperate for the baby to be mine, I just avoided it.’

  ‘So what . . .?’

  ‘Ah, you haven’t heard the best bit yet. I didn’t realize quite how unhinged Miranda was, you see. As the weeks went by, she didn’t . . . she didn’t get bigger. Just stayed the same. She was very thin.

  ‘So finally I asked her if she’d been to the doctor, and was the baby growing properly. I was genuinely worried about the baby, and about her. And she looks at me and says, really calmly and matter-of-fact, as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world, “Oh you didn’t believe all that rubbish about a baby, did you? I’m not pregnant, you idiot. I made it up.”’

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. So all that stuff about the baby not being mine, and then insisting that it was and that she’d only said it wasn’t to hurt me, and all the time there was no baby at all. I was staggered. I mean literally. I just sat in the kitchen for two hours to get this new information into my head. We broke up that day. She moved out and resigned from her job. I haven’t seen her since. I suspect that she’s still mystified over why I was so upset.’

  I stare at him. I remember Sarah telling me about ‘the Miranda business’ but she had said that Miranda had lost the baby.

  ‘Sarah told me that Miranda had a miscarriage.’

  ‘Well, the truth is, I was embarrassed to admit to having been so easily deceived. I told everyone that it was a miscarriage. It was easier than the truth.’

  ‘But why did she . . .?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I can’t imagine. There was nothing to be gained by making that up. The only thing I can think is that she sensed I was considering ending the relationship and came up with a pregnancy to keep us together. She was always going to get found out, though, so it really only delayed the inevitable. And she made no attempt to fake the symptoms, you know, to convince me it was real. But then, I think sometimes people believe the thing they really want to be the truth, even if the evidence points to it not being.’ He smiles and looks at me pointedly, and I wonder if he’s trying to say something else. ‘So, there you are. I was nearly a father once. Except that I wasn’t. I’ve never told anyone that, not even Glenn.’

  ‘Thanks for telling me.’

  ‘Who else would I tell? You’re the only complete stranger in my life.’

  The next day at work, I’ve decided to make my pregnancy official, especially after what Hector said about taking more care of myself. I mean, of course everyone already knows about it – there aren’t any blind people in Telesales – but I need to get maternity leave and things sorted. I’ve only got seven and a half weeks to go before it’s born.

  I manage to speak to Jean over by her desk. Hector told me that my employer is obliged to offer me a package, seeing as I’ve been working there for seven years, and he says it’s probably something like eighteen weeks on ninety per cent of full pay, followed by six months on statutory maternity pay.

  ‘How much is that then?’ I asked. He said it was about a hundred pounds a week, and that might cover seventy per cent of my rent. Great. He suggested that I think about going back to work part time after it’s born. Apparently, if I’m on a low income, which I will be, I can get tax credits from the government. And I’ll get about fifteen quid a week child benefit too. Let’s not forget that.

  ‘I need to speak to you about maternity leave, Jean,’ I say, and Graham jumps out of his chair and hurries off to the other end of the office.

  ‘Oooh, aren’t you getting big?’ Jean says and puts her hand on my belly. I flinch. This is so intrusive. Apparently, when you’re expecting, you become public property. When that woman in Complaints had to go on steroids and blew up like a barrage balloon, did people walk up to her and say, ‘Ooh, Linda, aren’t you getting big?’ and put their hands all over her to have a feel? No, they bloody well did not.

  ‘When are you due?’ Jean asks me.

  ‘My baby is due on the twentieth of April, Jean.’

  ‘And will you be breast-feeding?’ Now she’s asking me about my breasts!

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. But I do need to sort out my maternity leave.’

  ‘Got a leaving date yet?’ she asks abruptly, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Erm, well I suppose around the middle or end of March. Do you need a specific date now?’

  ‘As soon as possible please.’

  ‘Oh. Right. And what am I entitled to in terms of —?’

  ‘Yes, yes, all right, I’ll have to look it up. Leave it with me.’

  You know, she’s not a very nice person. I used to idolize her – she’s so great at making the sales – but actually she’s quite unpleasant. I suppose that to make lots of sales you have to be unpleasant, using guilt to persuade people to part with money and buy something they don’t really want. If you really love your husband/wife/fiancé, you’ll spend a bit more on your honeymoon/anniversary/trip to visit your daughter, won’t you?

  ‘You’re not forcing them to do anything they don’t really want to do,’ she always says, but I disagree. If they wanted a two-week holiday in Las Vegas, they wouldn’t phone up and ask for a week in the Algarve, would they?

  As I’m standing here, let’s just have a look at the sales figures. You can see that I’m way down at nineteenth now. Val has slipped from her third-place spot back to fourteenth. Good. She’s obviously got more things to think about again, than just making the sales. Marion is still
at number one and look! Paris is fifth! I’m quite chuffed to be at the bottom.

  I don’t think Jean has ever been married, or had kids. I guess that her ancient sales record will remain until some other socially inept, single-minded loner comes along and takes it from her. I thought it was going to be me. I’m glad that it isn’t.

  Val is absent from her desk when I get back to mine. In fact, there seem to be a lot of people missing from their desks. I crane my head up over the partition to look around the room and spot Val, over in the corner, huddled together with Simon, Mike and Martin, poring over something. At that moment, she spots me looking and signals to me to come over.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ she says, sniggering as I walk over.

  I look at what she’s holding. It’s a blue ring-binder, with lots of loose sheets inside it. ‘Yes, of course I have.’ It’s the daily bulletin folder for Telesales. The Product Design department and other parts of Sales put messages in there whenever they want us to push a particular resort, or if there’s a special offer we need to know about. We’re all supposed to read it every day, but I haven’t looked at it in over a week. I’ve been trying to give people the holiday they’ve phoned up for.

  ‘Have you looked at it today?’

  ‘No, of course I haven’t,’ I say, laughing. ‘Should I have?’

  ‘Here you go, there’s a chair, read it immediately, I want to see your face. And you might need a moment or two to recover afterwards.’ I look at Val and I notice for the first time that she’s wiping away a tear. ‘You’ll love it!’ she adds, giggling as she drags a chair over and motions for me to sit down.

  Simon, Mike and Martin chuckle as they head back to their respective desks. Val raises her eyebrows expectantly, so I turn to today’s date, and start to read.

  From: Nick Maxwell, Personnel Dept. 27 February To : All Departments

  Can I please advise everybody that the malicious spreading of untrue rumours about other people is libel, and anyone found to be doing these rumours will be spoken to about them. To this can I add that the above mentioned rumour about me being married is wholly untrue and without foundations, so whoever is doing it should be aware that I am not bothered by it, so you are wasting your time. I am not, I repeat not married, so everyone please ignore any further repeat of this rumour.