*
‘Congratulations,’ Natalie had said sweetly. ‘You must be delighted.’
‘You’re what?’ Ruby screeched again although it was obvious she had heard me first time. Her face was so close to mine that I could see the caked powder on her top lip.
‘Pregnant,’ I’d said. That was two weeks ago.
From the corner of my eye I could see Natalie working out in her head exactly when I’d be leaving so that she could take on some of my clients. ‘I promise you it won’t affect my work. I intend to be here right up to when the baby is born, or just a few weeks before,’ I’d added, knowing Ruby would take it literally otherwise and expect me to work while I was having contractions.
She’d spun round in her chair a few times to calm herself down. ‘And I thought you were putting on weight! Why do you want another sprog?’ she couldn’t help asking, holding the edge of the leather seat tightly. ‘Isn’t the one you have enough trouble? Why in God’s name do women have children? Career or children? It’s such an obvious choice!’
I nodded. ‘I understand it’s not the best timing, but it’s still some months ahead.’
She pressed her lips together, red lipstick smudging her teeth. ‘Well, I can’t sack you.’
‘Sack me?’ My eyes opened wide.
‘Very strict legislation about that,’ she’d said, fingers tapping the desk. ‘Besides, Gem Communications needs you. Natalie’s only half up to speed.’
‘I am fully up to speed and ready for more responsibility,’ Natalie had argued.
But Ruby wasn’t interested. ‘Spit out sprog two and back you come.’
Now I flick nervously through a magazine. ‘Are you going to have the baby today, Mum?’ George had asked me this morning.
‘No,’ I’d told him again. ‘The baby is only twenty weeks old. A pregnancy lasts nine months.’
‘Nine months? That’s like a whole lifetime. Eliot says babies come out of your bottom. Do they, Mum?’
‘Finn?’ I had turned to him with a broad smile. ‘You’re the doctor, you explain.’
Please God, please may this child be happy and healthy. If you answer this prayer, I will start going to church, I promise. I know I only pray for what I want, like running my own art gallery, which is bad, really bad, so I promise I’ll change. I’ll start to say prayers for those who aren’t as well off, like the bearded man George and I see on the street who shouts ‘JESUS IS LOVE’, and then there’s that man who moves about on a black trolley because he doesn’t have any legs. The homeless woman who’s always pushing a suitcase aimlessly in the Piccadilly Waterstone’s. I’ll even say a prayer for Ms Miles. Just please grant me this one wish: let me be a good mother.
‘Mrs Greenwood,’ calls out the nurse wearing a white and red uniform. Her hair is dark and tied back into a ponytail. I could kill Finn. He promised he wouldn’t be late.
She holds the door open for me and I walk into the room with its stark white walls and pink curtains.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she says. ‘You’ve got a full bladder?’
‘Oh, yes.’
I lie down on the hard couch that is covered in a sheet of blue paper that looks like wide loo roll. The couch is next to all the scanning equipment and machinery. ‘How are you feeling today?’ she asks.
‘Not bad, thanks. Excited.’
‘No one with you?’ She sits down next to me.
‘Not unless they’re invisible,’ I trill. She looks at me strangely. ‘My husband’s running late. He’s a doctor,’ I explain as I roll up my grey T-shirt top and unbutton my trousers.
‘Try to relax, drop the shoulders.’ She starts to rub a cold gel on to my abdomen before picking up a microphone-like object and moving it back and forth over my stomach. ‘Do you work?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you remembering to sit with your feet elevated at the desk? It’s a good idea to turn a waste-paper bin upside-down.’
‘Keeping my feet up. Very important.’
‘Do you have other children?’
‘A boy.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Seven.’
‘A lovely age, old enough to look after himself now.’
‘Yes, absolutely, he’s very good.’ What a great fictional life I lead.
She’s looking carefully at the screen. ‘The picture is quite clear,’ she says. The baby is too big now to see it as a whole on the screen. ‘This is the baby’s elbow, there’s the foot … the toenails are beginning to grow now … and there’s the shoulder.’
‘Look at the spine, it’s so perfect,’ I say, my face turned sideways to the screen. ‘Look, it’s yawning!’
She smiles. ‘There’s the heart, it shows up as grey.’
As I look at the screen I feel overwhelmed with guilt for sometimes wishing this child weren’t there. For only thinking about how it is going to affect my life. Now that I see something so real, I realise how lucky I am. Where are you, Finn? I gather up more of the sheet and grip it tightly in my hand. Suddenly I wish my mother were with me. I should have taken her up on her offer to come and stay for a few days. ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologise when the nurse hands me a tissue.
‘Don’t worry. It’s natural to cry, Mrs Greenwood.’
‘I’m going to have the best baby, aren’t I?’
‘You are. Now, did you want to know what the sex is?’
I grip the sheet again.
All I have to do is say ‘yes’. All she has to do is tell me.
*
The door swings open. It’s Finn.
‘Sorry I’m late. I’m the father,’ he says breathlessly to the nurse.
‘I’m bursting for the loo, Finn,’ I say, pushing past him.
‘How did it go? Is everything all right?’
‘I’ll leave your wife to tell you.’
*
I stand in front of the sink and wash my hands with liquid soap. I dry my eyes and reapply my powder. Right, I’m ready. I hold out my hand and it is trembling like jelly.
He is in the waiting room, pacing up and down. When he sees me he stops abruptly by the water cooler. ‘Come on.’ He pulls at my hand and leads me outside into the car park. ‘How did it go? Did you find out the sex?’
‘Finn, I wish you’d been with me.’
‘I’m so sorry I’m late, J, but Alessia needed …’
I put up my hand. ‘You were late because of Alessia?’
‘There was an emergency. I couldn’t leave her on her own. I wanted to be here, I got here as quick as I could.’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s fine.’
‘Is it? Nothing seems fine between us.’
We both stand looking at each other.
‘Don’t punish me for being late. Please tell me,’ he asks more softly now.
‘It’s a girl!’
‘A girl?’ His eyes widen. ‘We’re having a girl?’ We both start to jump up and down.
‘Thank you, GOD!’ I shout out to the sky, wherever He might be.
More people walk through the double doors. ‘We’re having a girl!’ Finn says to them.
I laugh. ‘Let’s go home, ring our friends and family …’
‘And I want to call her Emily!’ he shouts to their retreating backs.
‘OH, FINN! We agreed to call her Gertrude.’
‘On my death bed!’
The automatic doors open and a couple walk through. One of them turns around and looks at us, smiling. Happiness is contagious.
‘We’re really doing it?’ he says. ‘We’re having another child.’ It is as if Finn finally feels complete, the gap in his own family filled. We stand still and he holds my face in his hands and kisses me.
*
‘Regarder la télé,’ George scribbles in his French homework book. ‘Boire quelque chose.’
‘Don’t hold the pen so hard,’ I tell him again.
He throws it down in a tantrum. ‘I’m stupid! I can’t do it!’
But he’s looking at the printed scan now. ‘What do you think of your little sister?’ Finn asks.
George squints hard as he turns the paper upside-down. ‘She looks like a crocodile,’ he says.
*
The telephone rings and I pick up. I am longing to talk to Mum. It’s Clarky. ‘Ahh, so sweet of you to call.’ You see, Clarky never forgets.
‘What?’
‘You remembered I was having my twenty-week scan.’
‘How did it go?’
‘I’m having a girl.’ Oh. He didn’t remember.
‘That’s wonderful news. I’m really happy for you.’
There’s something different in his voice. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Sorry, J, I have to be honest, I’d forgotten about the scan.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
Finn is listening now. ‘I was wondering … can I have Aggie’s telephone number?’
‘Sure,’ I say, an octave too high. ‘You really like her, then?’
‘I think she’s great.’
‘Right, I’ll look it up. Hang on.’ I hold the phone under my chin as I start to leaf through my address book. ‘Here we go.’
Finn asks me what that was all about when I put the phone down. ‘Clarky likes Eliot’s mother. They met at George’s party.’ I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water.
‘He wants to sex her?’ George asks, flinging open the fridge. He’s so quick that I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen. He rips open a carton of milk and the entire contents sloshes onto the wooden floor. A packet of grated Parmesan falls out of the fridge too. It stinks. ‘Oh, GEORGE!’ Finn shouts.
‘Wasn’t my fault.’ He takes out another pint of milk.
‘Well, whose fault was it? The bogey man’s?’
‘Clean it up,’ Finn demands, wringing out a J-cloth, ‘before you start on the other.’
George takes it and half-heartedly cleans the floor at a whirlwind pace. He throws the cloth in the sink, pours himself another glass so full that some of it spills onto the table. He drinks it all in one go, leaving himself with a milky-white moustache. ‘Ugh, brain freeze!’ And then he runs off again.
‘Why don’t we invite them both over for supper?’ Finn suggests. ‘Josie, sit down. I’ll do it.’
I position myself on the stool.
Finn bends down and starts to clear up the milky cheese mess on the floor. ‘It’d be fun to have a party. We haven’t had one for ages and I’d like to meet Aggie.’
I don’t know why the dinner party we had with a few of Finn’s medic friends, a couple of months ago flashes through my mind as I watch him clear up the mess.
George had come downstairs in his pyjamas. ‘Surgeons aren’t as clever as doctors, are they?’ he’d said conversationally.
‘I don’t know where you heard that,’ Finn laughed.
‘You told me.’
‘Oh, really?’ one of the surgeons asked. He turned expectantly to Finn.
‘I didn’t say that exactly.’
‘Yes, you did,’ George corrected him. ‘You said all they did was put the bits in and get all the glory.’
Finn had almost disappeared under the table with embarrassment.
‘Yes, you should meet her,’ I say to him now. ‘It’s thanks to her that George found this swimming teacher too.’
The lessons are going well. Frédéric says that George is beginning to grasp the breathing technique.
‘Let’s organise it then. Why don’t we invite Tiana and Christo? Or Ed and Zoe? Actually they’re away right now. You know what, I think Christo’s seeing someone but he won’t tell me, he’s being highly secretive about the whole thing.’ He hands me the phone. ‘Ring Clarky, or I will.’
‘Great, would love to,’ Clarky says when I ask him. ‘Saves me from ringing her up too, thanks.’
I ring Aggie next. ‘I’ll bring over a pudding. Do you like treacle tart? Thank you, Josie, quick work! I underestimated you.’ I don’t tell her it was Finn’s idea. ‘I like Justin. I mean, really like him. Do you think he likes me? What shall I wear?’ She starts to think out loud. ‘I don’t want to be too casual, but at the same time I don’t want to look like I’ve made this massive effort either. Better not wear my tiara, hey? Oh, listen to me. I’m nervous already just thinking about it.’
‘He does like you, Aggie, a lot,’ I encourage her.
‘She’s a talker,’ Finn says when I finally put the phone down. ‘Can you see Clarky with her?’
‘Possibly, who knows?’
‘Does Daddog love Aggie?’ George asks, running into the kitchen again.
‘Do you want your dad to take you out for a run,’ I ask him, ‘burn off that energy?’ Before I was this pregnant we used to run before school too, around the park.
‘Will they get married?’ George continues.
‘No,’ I say too quickly, followed by a more thoughtful, ‘They’ve only just met, poppet.’
‘It was love at first sight for us,’ Finn comments.
‘Was it?’
‘Yes. You fell for me straightaway,’ he says with that cocky arrogance.
‘OK,’ I admit, remembering how Finn made me feel dizzy with love. ‘But did you fall for me the moment you saw me?’
‘Yes,’ he states simply.
‘Did you?’ I must have frowned in disbelief.
‘I liked being near you, hearing that laugh, seeing you in that tight little apron. I liked your honesty, the way you didn’t say things to impress, you were just yourself. Come on, J. Why do you think I used to hang around Momo’s drinking endless tasteless cups of coffee and eating cheap pizzas? I wasn’t doing it for him.’
‘I made good coffee!’
He shrugs. ‘You were always the girl for me, J. I was the luckiest man alive to find you again after five years.’
He kisses me. Finn has just said the sweetest, loveliest thing to me so why do I feel unsteady, as if something is about to rock our ship, when now of all times we need the water to be calm?
Why am I thinking about Clarky?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alex and I were in the restaurant but I felt too excited to eat. He ordered some kind of vegetable tartlet for a starter. ‘Are you sure you don’t want anything, pumpkin?’ I watched him picking something from his tooth. I knew I had to say something. Guilt was leaving an oily taste in my mouth. ‘Wretched spinach,’ he laughed.
‘I don’t think it’s working.’
‘I know, it really is stuck.’ He was ramming his nail down the side of his tooth.
‘No, Alex, I mean us. It’s not working.’
‘What?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Right. What do you mean?’
‘It’s me, not you,’ I tried to assure him lamely. He excused himself, suddenly saying he had to nip to the loo.
*
After the meal Alex offered to drive me home even when I had said I could catch a taxi. He insisted. We were driving in silence when my mobile started to ring.
‘It’s me. I want to see you tonight.’
‘I can’t talk now. Call me tomorrow.’ I hung up, fingers trembling.
Alex turned briefly to me, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. ‘That was Finn, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’s the reason, isn’t he? Not the spinach picking?’ He laughed weakly.
‘Yes.’ There was no point in lying.
‘Josie, I really like you. Are you sure we can’t make a go of things?’
I shook my head. Never in my mind had I been clearer about anything.
*
The following morning Finn called again, this time at the office. We arranged to meet in the evening. I started to rearrange my desk, a pointless task but I was so jittery I had to do something. ‘Stop humming,’ one of my colleagues shouted across to me. ‘You’ve been doing it all bloody morning.’
; Right, calm down. It’s only a date. We might have nothing in common anymore. It could be a disaster.
‘David wake up! I have all your flight details for tomorrow. Gatwick, south terminal, two-thirty check-in time.’ My voice had lost that nagging edge. I was too happy to be cross with him.
‘You’re a star, Josie.’
‘David, as much as I love being your nagging wife, I need to talk to you about what I want to do next. I need to use my degree. I’ve learnt so much from you but …’
He stopped me. ‘Josie, you can do anything you want. I’d give you a golden reference. I’ve been lucky to have you with me for this long.’
I was glowing with pride. ‘Thank you. By the way, just because you complimented me doesn’t mean I can work late tonight!’
‘Hot date?’
‘Yes, sizzling!’
*
We met in a small Thai restaurant. We were both looking at the large white menus, pretending to be absorbed in what to choose for a starter. Finn had put on his glasses to read. ‘I’m thinking of having laser treatment,’ he said, ‘because I hate wearing contacts.’
‘They suit you, the glasses.’
‘Thanks.’
‘The prawns sound nice,’ I said blandly, the words on the page blurring into one another. Our menus were shielding us from finding out anything we didn’t want to know about each other. Like Finn had a child or I was engaged or had some hideous disease. The menus were swept away then, along with the wine list, leaving our table bare. It was just Finn and me with nothing between us anymore.
Where did we start? ‘Five questions,’ he suggested, ‘to cover the five years we haven’t seen each other?’ He poured us both another glass of white wine.
‘OK. Me first.’ Why did you stop calling? ‘Did you finish your degree?’
‘Yes. Thanks to you,’ he quickly added. ‘Really, I mean it. I went to London after three years at Cambridge. I trained at St Mary’s and surrounding hospitals. I went to Chicago for eight weeks, too, and worked in the trauma ward.’
You, Me and Him Page 19
