Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  I hopped from one foot to the next. ‘No,’ I said meanly, ‘because he knew I’d have laughed him out of town. Manjit lives on a main road. It was probably the flash of a speed camera.’

  Gloria looked crushed. ‘But that’s white light, this was yellow. And how do you explain the feather touch?’

  I clenched my teeth. ‘A breeze. His girlfriend likes the windows open, even in January. Well. I’ve got to have a bath.’ As I spoke I could hear my voice waver. I couldn’t bear to look at her hurt face.

  ‘You okay, Hol?’

  ‘Bath,’ I squeaked. I ran one, and cried into it. After a few minutes I became aware that I was actually speaking as I cried. It turned out to be ‘how could it happen how could it happen how could it . . .?’ I was too agitated to lean back against the cold porcelain, so I hunched in a ball, pressed the sponge into my face and howled, how could he disgusting how how owwww? Eventually, I stopped crying. I remained hunched over the sponge, though. It was a comfortable position. I stayed that way until I heard Gloria yell, ‘Moff now!’

  It was a ridiculous effort, leaving that bath, even though the water was tepid. I didn’t have the energy to pull out the plug. I dragged a towel off the door, wrapped myself in it and slumped to the floor. For the first time I had the urge to tell on Stuart. Shame and denial had kept me silent. But now I finally realised it was all his fucking fault and I wanted someone to share my outrage. Who would I call? Still not Claudia. She was too volatile. I didn’t think I could deal with any dramatics and jumping around. I wanted horror, but I also wanted to be rocked, to have my hair stroked and to be told, ‘there, there’.

  And I knew who I wanted to do it. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. I was thirsty from all that crying. I wondered how long you have to cry to dehydrate. I drank some apple juice, double locked the door and curled up on the sofa with the phone. Emily jumped on my lap, kneading. She has a little white patch of fur round her mouth, as if upon her birth God had decreed, ‘May your chin always be dipped in cream’. I kissed the silken bit of her head between her ears and whispered, ‘May your chin always be dipped in cream.’

  Then I rang Nick.

  My pulse did its usual, waiting for him to pick up. It was a leap of faith, ringing him like this, but I knew I was doing the right thing. It was not like the old Nick to give a babe the brush off. The old Nick would have cut his throat before confessing to a third party that an ex-girlfriend had ‘upset’ him. I wasn’t thrilled to admit it, but our separation had obviously done him good. He seemed to have grown up a little. Previously, he’d been as rocklike in a crisis as a heap of sand, but this would be the occasion he proved he had matured.

  ‘What?’

  Then again.

  ‘Nick. It’s me, Hol.’

  ‘Hol? Oh God, it’s you.’

  His tone had gone from bored to wretched in a split second. My heart shrivelled to the size of a pea. I’d overestimated his degree of progress. And his degree of upsetness.

  ‘Nick, if this is a bad time, I—’

  ‘It’s a very bad time. I saw my’ – he paused, spat out the word – ‘parents this morning, Holly. They had some news for me. I’m adopted.’

  He burst into noisy sobs.

  Nick’s head was squashed against my bosom – quite painful but I didn’t want to say anything – I just stroked his hair and rocked him. I didn’t say ‘there, there’ – when it came to the crunch, ‘there, there’ seemed a silly thing to say. We were in Bo’s spare bedroom (frills, swagging, chintz) and Nick was wearing a baseball shirt, faded jeans and sneakers. He looked about ten. Which I imagine is how he felt. It was agony to see him cry. His face was red and crumpled, and his every sob tore through my own chest. And I thought, with dread, this is what it is to love someone.

  ‘They didn’t say,’ he spluttered, ‘they didn’t tell me. I’m thirty next week and I, I, don’t know who I am. Who am I, Holly? I could be anyone, oh my God, my parents didn’t want me, they gave me away, my name, my name could be anything . . . Clyde . . . Aubrey . . . Cecil . . . Fritz . . . Horace . . . Tracy . . . they adopted me when I was six weeks old, Holly, they couldn’t have kids, that’s why I haven’t got brothers or sisters, but Jesus, what do I know, I could have ten . . . Christ, for all I know, I’m from Birmingham! My real parents, they could be anyone . . . criminals, drug addicts, my mother could have a club foot and syphilis, I hate them, how could they do this to me, not tell me all this time, my whole life, it’s been a lie, fake, I’m not a Mortimer, I’m a stranger, a stranger in my own family, because, because they’re not my family, I look back and everything is different now, I, I’m no one, I’m alone, alone in the world, I don’t know who I am, I’m not Nick, in one second I lost everything that belonged to me . . . my family . . . my whole self . . . I don’t know what time of day I was born, I don’t know who I look like, I don’t, I don’t, oh God, how could they? Shit, shit’ – he clenched his fists – ‘Get it together, Nick.’

  I had no idea what to say. I was appalled. Why hadn’t they told him? And why tell him now? Because he was turning thirty? Talk about lame. I’d always thought that Nick’s parents were unlike mine in being competent. The world didn’t scare them. You could trust Lavinia and Michael to take care of everything, to know what to do in any situation. They were proper grown-ups, well versed in grown-up issues such as tax, conveyancing, dealing with builders, obtaining refunds in shops, not a credit voucher. And now they were revealed as bumbling idiots just like the rest of us.

  ‘Nick,’ I said. ‘Your name is not Cecil. It’s Nick.’

  This prompted more blubbing. His eyes were running, his nose was running, his whole face was flooded. I was not being helpful. I tried again.

  ‘Nick. You’re still you. You are not who your parents are. Of course, of course it’s a massive shock and you are, you are in shock. If your, your, um, adoptive parents didn’t tell you the truth till now, it was only because they were afraid, because they love you so much – ah, Nick, everyone loves you, you’re the most special person – they didn’t tell you because they didn’t want to risk losing you, and, I’m sure, they were scared of hurting you. It must have been so difficult for them—’

  ‘Fuck them.’

  Anger. Was that good? My counselling skills were plainly a bit rusty. ‘Wipe your nose on your sleeve,’ I said à la Florence Nightingale. ‘I’m going to make you a cup of tea.’ I scurried downstairs, feeling my failure. Tea, tea, refuge of the ineffectual.

  I dug out a ceramic mug with a peach and black motif – two spiney trees silhouetted against a nuclear sunset. For a person who prided herself on the size of her brain, Bo had rotten taste in kitchenware. Poor Nick. His identity whipped from under him. I shook my head. I jogged upstairs. Nick was sitting on the purple patterned bedspread, dangling his feet, looking folorn. He gulped down the tea.

  ‘Mouth like cast iron,’ I said. ‘See. Some things never change.’

  He smiled, put down the mug. ‘Thanks, Hol,’ he whispered, ‘thanks.’

  The best kind of sex is unplanned, not primped and prepared for, the kind you melt into, where a sudden heat crackles between you from nowhere. Nick reached and stroked the inside of my leg [asking, not telling], filling me with unexpected deep liquid desire [good, healthy] and then we fell on each other [accepting, connected], tugging at each other’s clothes [yes, yes, permissible] a silly wild tangle of arms and legs [me on top, air] him pulling softly at my hair, hungry, mournful [kind, loving], and me, gripping his thin shoulders [different, familiar], pinching the flesh, there was no close enough [erase hard drive, rewrite]. We gasped and groaned each other’s names [this is what people do], I had goose pimples all over, from lust or . . . something. After, we lay there, sweating, panting, stunned. [I did it. I can do it.] Whew. I’ll bet that purple bedspread had never seen such action.

  After a long while, Nick rolled over and brushed my hair from my face. His eyelids were still puffed from crying. He lowered his mouth to mine and breathed, �
��Ah Holly. I feel like our souls fused.’

  Chapter 20

  MY HEAD WAS full of bees. The thoughts buzzed blackly, a thick tangled mess. Nick murmured endearments and I hardly heard them. Was that good sex? Yes. It was comforting. Gorgeous, to be with Nick again. No. I hadn’t lost myself. I’d acted the part. Too much thinking. A disconnection, observing the action from a wise distance, impartial, like a war reporter. Control. A squeeze of rage. I’d done it, for godsake. I’d willed myself to want it. I feared that if I’d started shunning sex because of what had happened, I’d never stop. I so desperately wanted everything to be alright. This should have covered what had happened.

  Or did it have to be with Stuart? No no no nononono. I’d fix it somehow but not like that. I felt disgusted with myself. I should have bounced. And look at me. A shred of what I was. Not, I hasten to add, that I’d lost any weight. I can’t stand these tales of sad fat women who suffer an extra-woeful patch and lose lots of lovely weight because of it, ooh, surprise! something super came out of it, look, suddenly now you’re all happy and thin! Even if the food choked me, I ate three meals a day, no more, no less; he wasn’t going to get me that way.

  But, in every other way, he’d got me. I’d put myself on trial every day. I ran everything through my head over and over. Something bad had happened, and Was it my fault? Back and forth, yes, no. Was I entitled to use that word beginning with R? I was caught up in definitions. I had a concept in my head. Didn’t you have to be beaten up? There hadn’t been violence, just superior strength. And yet, these days I had to force myself to go out. Shopping at Tesco was no longer a chore, it was a grand tour of the seven rings of hell. Now I knew what Nick had been moaning about. I had a terror of crowds. Every Date Night I had to physically force myself not to run from the bar.

  That was another thing. I’d loved my job and he’d killed it. Having people touch me. Even a hand on my shoulder. I’d feel my throat close up. The mere idea of sex. Anything even vaguely sexual, a poster in the street, and I felt sick. I wanted to shut out that bit of life altogether. Tricky when you run a dating agency. So not wanting to spend every weekday retching, my latest meal hovering malevolently at neck level, I’d cut off. I’d done it when Stuart did what he did. The more you cut off, retreat to a safe place at the back of your head and shut the door, the easier it becomes. Easier than getting upset.

  And even then. Once, I had an instance of physical feeling, like being penetrated. A Girl Meets Boy client, female, wearing the scent I’d worn that night. Agent Provocateur eau de parfum. A rather lovely joke, bought for me by Nick. After the thing with Stuart I’d read the label and it said, ‘A potent combination of saffron and coriander with a sensual heart of Moroccan rose oil, jasmine, magnolia, ylang ylang and gardenia in a seductive base of vetiver, amber and musk.’ I felt terrible after I read that. As if I’d provoked him.

  Nick’s arm lay across my chest, too near my neck. I pushed it away, roughly. I hated him for not knowing. I hated this for being a big deal, for crowding my head with complications. Why did sex have to feel so important, I needed it to be nothing. Then none of this would matter. But it wasn’t like that with Nick. It meant something. It meant that we, ugh, I could hardly bear to think the word, desired each other. Oh dear. The wrong side of twenty-nine and I was doomed to see sex through the eyes of a ten-year-old. Gross.

  ‘Will Bo mind if I have a shower?’ I said, through gritted teeth.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Nick. ‘You can use my towel. It’s alright,’ he added, to my look of distrust. ‘All household towels are washed at sixty degrees, every Wednesday “without fail, no exceptions”.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘It’s like Borstal. I don’t know how Manjit survives.’

  I giggled until I got in the shower, then I sank to the floor and cried and cried. It would probably be easier to tell you about the times I didn’t cry. At least, when you cry, it’s harder to think. It could have been so simple. Nick and I split up. Nick and I grow up. Nick and I get back together. But no, it had to be like this. A sodding great muddle. Jesus, I didn’t want him back. He irritated me. He was so blithely unaware, of anything. I caught myself. No, he wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t. He’d just had the shock of his pampered life. I stepped from the shower and dried off. The least I could do was to stay with him.

  He was asleep when I padded back into the room. Much how I preferred it. Safe. Undemanding. Seeing him there, sleeping, he looked so young, there was a slight fluffiness to him like a nearly grown Labrador puppy. I was reminded of a moment early on in our relationship. He’d asked me if water was fattening. No, I’d said. Oh, he replied, but I thought it bloated you. Angel, I said, that’s beer. I put on boxer shorts and a T-shirt, got under the covers next to him and fell asleep too.

  ‘I must say, this is a surprise,’ shrilled a voice close to my ear.

  I started awake with a jump, to see Bo bending over the bed, arms folded.

  ‘Bloody hell, Bo. You could have knocked.’

  I poked Nick with my foot to wake him. He continued to snuffle-snore.

  Bo frowned. ‘It’s my house. And it’s a house rule. No bed guests. Nick knows that.’

  I stared at her, trying to work out why she was so unpleasant. I’d disliked her on sight. A pale weedy blonde, in the least lovely sense, dreary, droopy, Gwyneth Paltrow at her worst. A bony nose, watery blue eyes. Insipid. And yet, such a fierce domineering personality. She’d stripped down Manjit like a wetted bed, tried her damnedest to shave off his rough edges, to fashion him into her dull, narrow vision of what made a decent man. Thank goodness, she hadn’t entirely succeeded.

  The first time we met, before we’d even spoken, she’d tried to establish a pecking order. She’d reached out and started to pick cat hairs off my pink cardigan. I was astounded. I’d had Emily two years by then and in all that time no one, not even Issy, had tried to groom me. Even if I’d left the house looking like a giant fur ball.

  ‘Nick hasn’t been well today,’ I replied. ‘He needed looking after.’

  Bo’s thin mouth struggled for a moment. ‘All I can say is that if you were a GP, you’d have been struck off!’

  I laughed rudely at such a wet fart of a put-down. Bo stalked out. Nick woke up, rubbing his eyes. ‘What?’

  I told him, and we giggled and squealed like children. ‘Young bat!’ roared Nick into the covers, his insult safely muffled by acres of thick purple bedspread. Our giggling stopped, and the corners of Nick’s mouth drooped.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  He stared into the middle distance. ‘Bo’s cousin’s just had a baby,’ he said. I nodded. What did this have to do with anything?

  ‘And her mate’s pregnant.’

  I waited.

  ‘They were all here at the weekend. Talking about babies. “It’s like having your favourite TV programme on all day and all night long.” “It’s like being madly in love, every day.” And the pregnant mate, glowing over her stomach, cradling it. And then there’s the cousin, sat there with this three-week-old kid, “Isn’t he beautiful, isn’t he perfect?” – and you know what babies look like, ugly, like skinned chickens – and she was entranced, obsessed, accepting all the compliments at face value, couldn’t see we were being kind, couldn’t see what it really looked like. I was in there with them for twenty minutes to give Manjit moral support, and she had this stupid glazed look. Didn’t take in what the others were saying, just staring in adoration at this red crumpled blob, kissing its scaly head.’

  I nodded. There had to be a point to this.

  ‘And I see it at the parties too. The mums. Some of them, they’ve created monsters, and do they see it? No. Their kids are nasty bastards and these women think they’re angels.’

  He stopped. I made a there-you-go face. Nick sighed. It was like all the air was crushed out of him, starting from his toes. ‘I never thought about it. But now. I think, my mother wasn’t like that. She had none of the joy that pregnant woman had. No cradling her stomach, proudly show
ing round this scan picture of a grainy blob, no taking special vitamins, playing Swan Lake to her lump. This woman was doing all that, Hol. Mine didn’t. She must have hated me being in there, hoped for a miscarriage. Carried on smoking, drinking, what did she care? Bo’s mate, she was talking about her morning sickness like it was a badge of honour. Said in this smug way, “I don’t mind, it’s for a good cause.” My mother. If I’d made her sick, it would have made her hate me even more—’

  ‘Nick, she didn’t hate you.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ This was snapped, furious. ‘You don’t throw away your own fucking child if you don’t hate it!’

  ‘Nick, you don’t know the circumstances, maybe she had no ch—’

  ‘Of course she had a choice! There are no circumstances, Holly, no circumstances in which I would accept that she was justified in throwing me away! Can you imagine your mum, throwing you away because, what, she was eighteen and she was going to have to cut down on fags for the next few years?’

  In all honesty, I couldn’t.

  ‘It’s crap! Any excuse, it’s fucking bullshit. This is a welfare state, she could have managed. She made a choice. I hope I fucking ripped her coming out.’

  I winced. ‘Nick, that’s horrible, you don’t mean that.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ He looked at me through narrowed eyes, then burst out, ‘Why shouldn’t I hurt her? She hurt me!’

  ‘Oh Nick, I can see that, but, you know, maybe she did the best thing for you she could in the circ—I mean, look at who y—’