by Lisa Jewell
He made tea and sat his guests down in the garden, on dark-green wrought-iron furniture. The garden looked spectacular—tiny but mature, all brambly rose bowers and ivy-clad walls. The air was heavy with heat and fragrant with jasmine. The sound of a violin being played somewhere further down the street wafted into the garden.
Delilah fiddled with a plastic bottle and slipped it into the sausage’s mouth. ‘Dig,’ she said, looking around her, ‘this is incredible. Gloucester Crescent. Did you win the lottery or something?’
Dig laughed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I wish. No. This is a childhood dream of Nadine’s. A very expensive childhood dream. I have never been poorer in my entire life. I had more money was I was eighteen, earning £6,000 a year. But we sat down together and worked out that we could afford it, even with me giving up my job. Just. We both made quite a lot on our old flats and Deen’s doing so fucking well and—oops.’ He covered his mouth and glanced apologetically at the sausage.
Delilah laughed. ‘His language skills aren’t quite up to picking up swearwords just yet. He’s only four weeks old. Don’t worry.’
‘Anyway, Nadine’s career has really taken off, since the Ruckham’s calendar—she’s earning a mint. The mortgage repayments are crippling, we can’t afford to go out or buy clothes or go on holiday or anything but’—he looked around him—‘it’s worth it, you know. I could die here, do you know what I mean?’
They both murmured affirmatively and for a second or two it was silent. Delilah fed her baby. Alex appraised the back of the house. Dig stared at Alex and imagined him wearing a tux, leaping from a moving BMW Z3 and shooting at Chinese men with a ballpoint pen. The small patch of baby vomit on the sleeve of his T–shirt somewhat spoiled the image.
Delilah and Alex glanced at each other and exchanged a look.
‘Shall I tell him?’ said Delilah.
Alex nodded happily.
Delilah turned to face Dig, anticipation pulling at her face. ‘Dig,’ she said, ‘we’ve got something we’d like to ask you. Well—two things, actually.’
Dig felt his face muscles tense up. Delilah asking him favours was, in his experience, a very worrying thing.
‘Ye-es,’ he said, smiling stiffly, trying to sound excited.
‘The first thing is—and I know, you’re not religious or anything, but neither are we so it doesn’t matter—but I’d—we’d—be so honoured if you would be Oliver’s godfather.’ She beamed at him and Dig was surprised to notice a little flush of pleasure in his stomach area. He looked down at the suckling sausage and felt a burst of warmth. He looked at Alex and Delilah, who were both staring desperately at him as if they’d just proposed marriage, and he smiled. ‘Shit,’ he said, ‘yeah. Definitely. I mean—yeah!’ And everyone just sat there and beamed for a while.
‘That’s fantastic,’ said Delilah grabbing the back of Dig’s neck and kissing him on the cheek. Alex gave him a large hand to shake, and Dig couldn’t believe how happy he was to be asked to stand in a church and tell lies with a stupid suit on, all for the sake of a dimply sausage who couldn’t have cared less either way.
‘So,’ he said, happily, ‘what was the other favour?’ He was on a favour roll now—he could handle favours like this.
‘Well,’ said Delilah, her face becoming serious, ‘it’s—er—actually, hold on, just a sec. Alex—can I have the car keys?’
She plopped the sausage down into Dig’s arms, took the keys from Alex and disappeared back into the house.
Dig sat for a while, holding the sausage as if it were an unpinned hand-grenade.
‘Here,’ said Alex, smiling, ‘let me take him. You don’t look very comfortable there. It takes a bit of getting used to, this baby lark.’ He grinned warmly at Dig and gently scooped the pink thing from his arms.
Dig felt awkward for a second, now that Delilah was gone, not sure what he and Alex were going to have to talk about, but Alex saved him from himself.
‘Dig,’ he said, and Dig nearly jumped out of his skin because his voice was so deep—he sounded like he should be doing trailers for Hollywood movies. ‘Dig. I wanted to thank you.’
Dig threw him a not-sure look.
‘For what you did for Delilah last year.’ He was very posh.
‘What do you mean?’ said Dig, thinking about his complete lack of doing anything for Delilah last year, except for following her around and sprinkling her with dog pee and ogling her in her underwear.
Alex put the sausage back in its contraption and tucked a blanket round its legs. ‘For looking out for her. For having her to stay. For talking her out of not having this little chap. She told me what you said to her, about being a great mother, about her ability to love. You were very wise and you were right. I dread to think what would have happened if you hadn’t talked her round.’
They both turned to survey the pink thing and Dig felt himself blushing. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘God. You know. It was nothing. It was…’ And then, just in the nick of time, just before Alex would have reached the conclusion that he was an illiterate buffoon, the proper grown-up bit of Dig came to the rescue and he realized there was something important he wanted to say. ‘It was the least I could do,’ he said, breathing easy, ‘after all, Delilah did the same for me.’
‘Oh yes?’ said Alex, crossing his legs and looking at Dig with interest.
‘Yes. She set me on the path to true happiness.’
‘Really. How?’
Dig looked at Alex and tried to gauge how honest he could be. His eyes were brown and gentle. He looked like he could take a bit of romance. ‘She stopped me being blind. I’d been in love with someone for ten years and was too much of a coward to risk rejection so I just made do with being her friend. Delilah showed me that I could have more. That this girl loved me, too. I thought she was interfering at the time. But she was right. And now I’ve got the girl of my dreams.’
Alex smiled. ‘And you’re happy?’
Dig lit a fag, inhaled and nodded. ‘I have never been happier in my life. This is it’—he indicated their surroundings—‘this is my castle and Nadine’s my queen.’
And Alex and he exchanged a long, deep look, and Dig knew that Alex knew exactly how he felt and that they were both lucky, lucky men. Dig decided he liked Alex.
‘What are you boys talking about?’ said Delilah, striding back into the garden. Dig was about to make a joke of some description when he noticed what Delilah was holding in her arms.
‘No way,’ said Dig immediately, crossing his hands in front of his chest.
‘You don’t know what I’m going to ask you yet.’
‘I don’t need to. I don’t care. There’s just no way…’
In Delilah’s arms, shivering even in this balmy heat, was Digby. He wagged his tail when he saw Dig and tried to escape from Delilah’s arms.
‘See,’ whined Delilah, ‘see how much he loves you. He’s never forgotten you, you know. He’s had this empty look about him since I took him home last year.’
‘What do you want? Do you want me to look after him? OK. One night only, though. One night and that’s it.’
Delilah shook her head slowly from side to side and deposited the dog on Dig’s lap. ‘It’s a bit more than that,’ she said, nervously, ‘you see, you wouldn’t think it to look at him but he can be quite aggressive, and the thing is, is that—and there’s no way we could have known this in advance—but he hates babies. Hates them. And he hates Oliver. Snarls at him. It’s awful. And I couldn’t bear to give him away to a stranger. And I just keep remembering how well the two of you got on together. And…’
‘He hates babies?’ asked Dig.
‘Mmm,’ Delilah nodded, sadly.
‘All babies?’
‘Well. Yes. At first we thought it was just Oliver, but now we’ve noticed it’s all babies.’
A large, smug smile spread across Dig’s face, and he shook his head. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Can’t you just give it a go? You could have a trial ru
n?’
Dig shook his head and looked up when he saw someone walk into the garden. A stunning redhead in a blue crushed-silk dress wearing red 1950s plastic sunglasses and butterflies in her hair.
She stopped in her tracks when she saw the group in the garden and looked quizzically at Dig. And then she smiled widely when she recognized Delilah and stooped to hug her. Delilah introduced her to Alex and Oliver.
‘Nadine,’ said Dig, tucking his arm around her waist and drawing her hips towards his shoulders, ‘Delilah’s just asked us a favour. She needs a new home for little Digby and she thought maybe we’d like to have him.’
Nadine smiled at little Digby. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘well…we could, I suppose.’
‘There’s only one thing, though. He hates babies.’
‘Hates babies?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear indeed.’
Delilah looked at them questioningly and they smiled at each other and then at her, and Dig spun Nadine round so that she was sideways on. Nadine pulled at her dress so that it clung tightly to her body and there, silhouetted by the white-gold sun and barely perceptible, was a tiny, hard, perfect little bump.
Delilah screamed, leaped to her feet and cupped the bump with the palm of her hand, asking a million questions all at once about due dates and scans.
Alex smiled warmly and shook their hands.
Digby ran around barking in an attempt to draw attention to himself.
And Dig and Nadine just beamed at each other because although it was scary as hell, although it was entirely unplanned, although they felt far too young and far too immature to bring another life into the world, and although they had no idea how they were going to afford it, none of that mattered because that little bump was the best thing that had ever happened to them.
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