by Lucy Diamond
Okay, so that was a rubbish analogy, India thought: Robin was not the big bad wolf, and she was most certainly not a hapless little pig, thank you very much. But all the same, she’d experienced an odd mix of emotions upon seeing his name there on her laptop screen – a nervous sort of excitement, coupled with the instinct that she was playing with fire, that she should delete everything he’d written to her and hope that he’d go away.
‘Well done. And let’s now move into our cool-down. Lie flat on your backs, arms by your sides,’ said Jan comfortingly from across the room.
There was a shuffling as everyone obeyed, during which time India glanced over at Laura and mouthed ‘Drink?’, along with a pint-swilling gesture for good measure. Laura nodded, her long blonde hair rustling against the mat, before the teacher walked around in their direction and they both lay still. Good, India thought to herself, trying to concentrate on her breathing. First of all it was excellent progress Laura venturing out at all – this was her first Pilates session since Matt had left, so total thumbs up on that account. Also, more shallowly, India was glad of the chance to go to the pub and pour her heart out. She’d been tying herself in knots all weekend, wondering what on earth she should do about Robin (if anything), and was desperate by now to talk to someone non-judgey about it.
Good to see you, India. Let’s do it again soon, he’d put in his message. What are you up to next Friday?
Hmm, next Friday, let’s see. Well, Robin, I’ll probably be cooking fish fingers or Pasta Surprise for my family’s tea again, and then watching Gogglebox and having a glass of wine with my plumber husband. Because I’m so boringly suburban and domestic these days. How about you?
If he was anything like the Robin of old, his spare time was probably spent in far cooler ways – going to see some edgy band in a club, or out to a mate’s house-party, where there would be loads of drugs. She sincerely doubted that he filled his evenings by slumping on a sofa in front of the telly, having nagged three children into pyjamas and bed. Did he even have a partner? she wondered, stifling a yawn as she stretched along with the instructor’s commands. Probably not, if he was asking her out on a Friday night.
‘And we’re done. Thank you very much. Good work, everyone. See you next week!’
India and Laura both sat up and rolled their shoulders, before catching each other’s eyes. ‘Wine,’ they said as one.
‘So Matt moved out of town last week,’ Laura announced without preamble, once they were seated at their usual table, a bottle of house plonk in a cooler between them.
‘Oh, Laura,’ said India, feeling bad for not knowing this. There she’d been, all set to unleash her Robin dilemma, and her friend was going through so much worse. ‘Ouch. I’m sorry. It all seems to have happened so suddenly. How are you feeling about him now?’
‘Sad,’ Laura sighed. ‘Excruciatingly, monumentally sad.’ There were dark hollows below her eyes and a crack in her voice as she spoke, but then her jaw clenched just a fraction, a glint of iron showing through. ‘Although I think I might just have come out the other side of the “Numb” stage now at least – that was horrible, like I’d had a lobotomy, in a permanent daze. I reckon I’m dealing with “Angry” at the moment, which seems to mean gallons of wine – cheers, by the way – followed by drunk phone calls to him in the middle of the night. Plus a shocking amount of comfort-eating. Which reminds me.’ She reached into a bag. ‘Here,’ she said, passing over a square tin. ‘Flapjacks for you and the kids. I’ve been baking like I’m . . . I dunno, the long-lost twin of Monica Geller. My freezer is begging me to stop. So is my stomach, come to that.’
‘Whatever it takes, darling,’ said India, squeezing her hand. ‘Whatever gets you through. And thanks. We all love flapjacks. I’m more than happy to be of assistance on that front.’
‘That’s lucky,’ Laura said with a small smile. ‘But yeah, I’m still sad. Lonely. Missing him.’ She rolled her eyes and grimaced, before squaring her shoulders and attempting to look more resolute. Laura had always been a glass-half-full sort of person. ‘Still. I’m trying not to keep wallowing all the time. I’m doing my best to face forward again.’
‘Attagirl,’ said India with a little fist pump.
‘Fearfully, mind you, and between my fingers – like I’m not sure I want to actually look at my miserable spinstery future too closely, but all the same . . .’ She fiddled with a beer mat. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking.’
‘About?’ India prompted after a moment.
Laura blushed. ‘You’re going to think I’m mad – don’t laugh at me, will you? But I’ve been considering having a baby anyway. On my own.’
India didn’t follow. ‘Er . . . According to my Biology GCSE, it takes more than one person to—’
‘Yes, I’ve heard that. Slight hitch.’ Laura pulled a face. ‘But you know how much I’ve always wanted to be a mum. And . . . Well, I met this woman through work last week. Catherine. She got sick of waiting for a bloke, she told me, and so she went for a sperm donor instead. Just thought: bugger it, and did it! Honestly, India, you should have seen her, she was so happy about being pregnant. She was radiant. Which got my brain whirring.’ She gave a nervous smile. ‘And now I’m wondering about doing the same thing, basically. Weighing up the idea. Is that bonkers?’ Seeming flustered by her own honesty, she rushed on before India could reply. ‘You’re the first person I’ve mentioned it to. Go on, tell me you think it’s a crazy idea, I know you want to.’
India sipped her wine to give herself time to come up with the right answer, her head spinning. Please, Laura’s face was saying, eyes round and beseeching. Please don’t trash my hopes. ‘I don’t think you’re mad,’ she replied slowly. ‘I mean, it’s a big, massive decision to have to make on your own, but I do understand that longing. That biological need to become a mother. When it’s there, it’s not something you can ignore. It’s all-consuming.’ She remembered, with a guilty flush, how agonizingly superstitious she’d been when pregnant with George. How desperate she’d been to carry him to term, how convinced she’d been that if there was something wrong with this baby, it would be divine retribution, her own damn fault. Then he’d been born and he was perfect, and she’d promised the universe she’d never do a bad thing again.
‘Yes,’ Laura said, pleating the fabric of her top between her fingers.
‘There’s a lot to weigh up,’ India went on. ‘But you’d be a lovely mum, Laura. You really would. And you’ve got us – your friends – around you who would help out, and your own mum, too.’ The more India thought about it, the less outlandish an idea it seemed, actually. Dan was a great dad, sure, but she had plenty of friends whose partners had barely played any part in the parenting of their children, short of their actual conception. ‘So how would it work? Do you know anyone who would donate the sperm, or would you go through an agency, or . . . ?’
Laura shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I haven’t got as far as looking into that sort of thing yet, but . . . you know. It’s there. An option floating around in my head. I guess I should pluck up the courage to go and talk to someone at a fertility clinic, find out a bit more.’ She shrugged. ‘I know it’s not ideal – I always wanted to have a baby with Matt. But I’m thirty-eight, and time’s running out. I’m not sure I can afford to wait until I meet somebody else. Her chin jutted. ‘And I think I could do it. Go it alone. I think I would love a baby enough for two people.’
‘In which case, why not?’ India said cheeringly. ‘I think it’s dead exciting. Good for you! And at least you won’t spend the rest of your life wondering and regretting, and thinking “what if?”—’ She broke off. There had been one too many ‘what-if’s flying around her own life recently, and that certainly hadn’t been a good thing.
Laura must have caught the strange look in her eye because she asked, ‘How about you anyway? Are you okay? Jo said when she spoke to you last, you were upset about that poor girl dying after the crash. It’s awful, isn’t i
t? Really tragic.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ India hesitated, wondering just how much to say. Then she took a deep breath. She had to tell someone what had been going on in her head. ‘Laura,’ she began, ‘have I ever mentioned Robin to you?’
Robin, Robin, Robin. She could have talked all night about Robin; about the good stuff anyway: the passion, the love-letters, the laughter. How being with him made her feel as dazzling as a string of fairy lights. How the million joyful moments they’d spent together still sparkled so brightly in her memory.
‘God, he sounds wonderful,’ Laura sighed, leaning back against the sofa. ‘The stuff of teenage dreams.’
‘He was,’ India agreed, not wanting this part of the story to come to an end. ‘But . . .’ She twiddled a tendril of hair around her forefinger and felt herself clam up.
‘Oh no, I was dreading the “but”,’ said Laura. ‘But what? Did he turn out to be a wanker?’
‘No,’ India replied. ‘It was me.’ And then, no sooner had the words left her mouth than she remembered, belatedly, exactly who she was talking to. Idiot, India. As if she could tell the rest of the story to Laura, when she’d just been privy to her friend’s secret fragile hopes two minutes earlier. Time for a swift fudge. ‘Well, let’s just say it ended pretty badly,’ she said, swerving around the details. ‘And we parted ways fairly brutally. We haven’t seen each other for over twenty years, and yet I’ve always carried this tiny little torch for him, always wondered what might have been if . . . if things had been different.’ Moving swiftly on. She glugged more of her drink. ‘Anyway. I bumped into him last week.’
‘You didn’t!’ Laura’s voice was a squeak. She actually clapped her hands, as if this was a good thing and India wasn’t already married to somebody else. ‘Oh my God. Where?’
Again, India hesitated. That was perhaps another tale she didn’t need to tell. ‘Out near Rochdale – long story,’ she said, waving her hand. ‘But, yeah. There he was. The one who got away. And . . .’
‘And was he still gorgeous? Had he changed? What happened?’
‘We went for a drink,’ India replied. ‘I mean, we’ve both aged, we’re not teenagers any more. He’s still . . . attractive.’ She felt herself blush. ‘And there was still this sort of electricity there, too. This unresolved tension.’ That was one way of putting it, anyway. She paused, remembering sitting beside Robin in the pub, how in some ways it seemed only a matter of days since they’d last been in touch, yet equally there was this huge gulf of time stretching between them. Not to mention the floodplains of guilt and recrimination. ‘He wants to see me again,’ she went on. ‘But obviously I’m with Dan now – things are different. I can’t just go out with Robin, as if we’re picking up where we left off.’
Laura was looking less excited. ‘No,’ she agreed after a moment. ‘You probably shouldn’t. But then again . . .’
‘But then again, I kind of need some closure,’ India finished. Did she ever.
‘You totally need closure,’ Laura corroborated, ever the enabler. ‘Even if it’s just to reassure you that you made the right choices. And it’s not like you’re going to be unfaithful to Dan, is it? You can just have a drink with this guy.’
India nodded. ‘Exactly,’ she said, knocking back her wine. ‘One single drink isn’t going to hurt.’
‘Of course it isn’t! Not at all.’
There you go: permission. Approval, even. Wasn’t that what she’d been hoping for? Even though, deep down, she had the feeling that it might be the start of something very wrong? Oh, shut up, subconscious. Who asked you anyway? ‘Talking of which . . .’ She waggled the bottle. ‘Top-up?’
‘You bet.’
What India hadn’t told Laura – and probably never would now, either – was how disastrously things had unravelled for her and Robin, how unhappily the relationship had hit the buffers. Mere weeks away from their A-levels, they had been spending every day together, deep in revision-cramming. Hours would drift by, spent lolling against one another in a companionable silence, broken only by the muttering of French verb conjugations, historical dates and quotes from Paradise Lost or Hamlet. And practice, endless practice, on her violin: scales and pieces and sight-reading, in preparation for her music exam.
Then one morning, she’d woken up and only just had time to sprint to the loo before she was retching and throwing up. A stomach bug, her mum said, telling her to go back to bed. It would be one of those twenty-four-hour things. Except it wasn’t. Not a twenty-four-hour thing, or, as it turned out, a stomach bug. She was pregnant.
Her parents were scandalized. Her mum actually burst into tears with horror, while her dad had to be talked out of going straight round to the Fieldings’ house and punching Robin’s lights out. India, for her part, was similarly consumed by horror. Fear, too. She didn’t want a baby. She was only just eighteen, with her whole life ahead of her, and all sorts of plans for music college, festivals, gigs, an exciting career. With that dreaded pregnancy test, it was as if doors were already slamming closed on her, all her dreams being snatched away – for this, a baby she didn’t even want. It pained her now to remember it, but in her despair she’d thrown herself down the stairs at home, trying to bring on a miscarriage, in a desperate attempt to rid herself of the interloper. It hadn’t worked. In fact, she’d twisted her ankle so badly that her mum had dragged her to the doctor’s and told him, mealy-mouthed, ‘And when you’ve finished strapping that up, you can give us some advice about an abortion. Only this one’s gone and got herself in the family way, can you believe. The shame of it!’
India had not been allowed to phone Robin, or go out to see him. He’d come round to hers instead, confused by her silence, only to be confronted by India’s still-raging dad. ‘You’ve caused this family enough trouble already; go on, get out of it,’ he’d thundered. ‘Before you feel the end of my boot up your backside.’
India had eventually made contact by smuggling out a letter via a friend, in which she confessed the whole sorry story. She’d been grounded and wasn’t allowed to see him until they’d ‘sorted this thing out’, to use her mum’s euphemism. He’d written back telling her not to worry, that he would look after her and the baby, that they could run away together, away from their parents, forever.
Caught in a dilemma over what to do, India had pondered and agonized. She loved Robin with all her heart, and she loved that he wanted to stand by her, that he was unafraid. But then again, if she went along with his suggestion, she knew there would be consequences, a chain of events like dominoes toppling, and she couldn’t ignore her instinct deep down that running away was a bad idea. It was all very well being caught up by romantic notions of elopement, but India was a practical person and foresaw all manner of tricky questions raising their heads. Where would they go? How would they live? And what about their exams, due to start in a fortnight; her hopes for a college place?
There was not a happy ending to this story, oh no. She had let Robin down, she knew full well, and it had haunted her ever since. Because in a weak, vulnerable moment she’d replied ‘yes’ to him – yes, she would run away; yes, she’d forsake her exams; yes, she’d slip out of the house on Tuesday night and meet him at the bus station with a suitcase. Except . . . in the cold light of reality, she had changed her mind and hadn’t done any of those things. She’d stayed in bed that night, barely sleeping for wondering if he was there, waiting for her at the station in the darkness, checking his watch, moving from foot to foot to keep warm. And then she’d sat her A-levels (distractedly, admittedly, playing her violin so badly, so woodenly, that she knew there and then she’d failed) and sniffled her way through the appointment at the Marie Stopes clinic, feeling utterly alone. Sorry, little baby. I’m really, really sorry. I’m a bad person. It was a mistake.
Meanwhile, Robin had completely vanished – not turning up for a single one of his exams and not giving word to anyone for six long weeks. Six weeks when India felt racked with terrible, decimating guilt e
very hour of the day. Was he even alive? He must despise her and her cowardice, if he was. She kept imagining the moment that night in the bus station when he must finally have realized she wasn’t going to show, picturing his face hardening in bitterness, the mental two fingers he must have sent her. She’d never even got to say sorry for letting him down.
Eventually a postcard had arrived for his parents, saying Robin was in London. So he had done it then: he’d got away, he’d struck out on his own, head held high. No exams to show for himself, presumably very little money; she dreaded to think how he was surviving in the capital, all alone. And that had been the last she’d heard of him. No wonder there had been an edge to his voice when they next saw one another, twenty-one years later, practically to the day.
You totally need closure, Laura had said with such fervency. Even if it’s just to reassure you that you made the right choices.
Yeah, quite. But what if . . . Well, what if she hadn’t?
India’s thoughts see-sawed one way, then the other, as she went home that evening. She should stay away. She should see him. She should stay away. She should see him. She should forget him. She should absolve herself. Oh, how was a person supposed to make a call on such a tough decision, without completely tearing their hair out over it?
He’s just an old friend, she reminded herself, stepping down from the bus, but the words sounded hollow even to her own mind as she hurried along the darkening street towards her house. If he was merely an old friend, why did her subconscious keep unhelpfully throwing up memories of what it had felt like to kiss him, how madly and passionately she had loved him? Wouldn’t it be the safest option to simply let bygones be bygones and keep him safely stowed away in the Ex-files?
Then again, though, she had never had the chance to properly explain or apologize until now. To say her piece, to tell him: I was young and scared, and I’m sorry I let you down, but I didn’t know what else to do. Will you forgive me?
