Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  ‘Poor you,’ said Nige. ‘I’m sure Holly’s heart bleeds.’

  Rachel frowned. So did I. I wished he hadn’t said it. ‘Moving house is a sod,’ I said quickly. ‘I always look through the local paper’s property section, and I’ll think, ooh, three quarters of a million for a three-bedroom house in Hampstead, mm, okay, horrendous, but it’s a nice area, and then, Jesus Christ, you realise it’s a flat!’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Rachel, although the last time her family worried about money was probably when Henry VIII repossessed the monasteries. ‘The greed of people is astonishing. The entire process is frankly distasteful. And stamp duty. They might as well tax you for walking down the road.’

  ‘They do,’ said Issy, who had elbowed into our circle. She eyed me sternly and said in a voice that for her was soft, ‘I could have helped, you know.’ Nige stared.

  Pause.

  ‘So I hear Frank is thinking of buying an E-type. How marvellous. They’re super cars.’

  Slowly, Issy turned her gaze on Rach. Like a cat seeing a dog for the first time. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘FOOOOOOOD!’ bellowed Claudia from across the room. ‘Rachel come and do the wine.’ You never saw a woman of Rachel’s girth move so fast.

  Nige coughed. ‘I did,’ he said, brushing an imaginary speck of dust from the front of his white shirt. ‘Just now. Didn’t Frank say? I bumped into him in the petrol station the other day. We discussed cars.’

  ‘I see,’ said Issy. ‘No, he didn’t say.’

  I scrutinised her from under my eyelashes. She didn’t look happy. I frowned at Nige. Nige drove a green Fiat Panda and I couldn’t imagine he had the least interest in discussing it, or indeed any car. But then, he had no reason to lie for Rachel. He didn’t even like Rachel. Yet, there was no denying that Rach was behaving oddly. She was definitely on edge in front of Issy. Nige smiled, not a care. ‘Shall we eat?’ he said, linking arms with Issy and myself.

  I nodded. Give it up, Holly. Why should I play detective? Particularly when real-live uniformed detectives didn’t seem able to catch criminals with all the evidence in the world, what made me think I could play Miss Marple?

  I allowed Nige to pile my plate with fish pie, potato skins, and – in thoughtful deference to Issy – salad. My appetite was back. I seemed to be untouched by morning sickness. Pregnancy must suit me. I ate a potato skin smugly – this little thing inside me (the foetus, not the potato skin) made me feel special. I was a link in evolution’s chain, instead of a dead end. Of course, I reminded myself, it was early days. But I felt smug all the same. I knew this baby would survive. It was meant to be. It was my rescue remedy. I wouldn’t allow myself to think anything else.

  My elbow knocked Camille’s as I scooped up a heap of vegetable lasagne to smother the salad. She smiled, shy. ‘Hi. How are you?’

  I nodded, equally tongue-tied. ‘Fine. This is great. Thank you for helping.’

  ‘Pleasure. Claw was worried. She thought you might freak.’

  ‘I came close. But, how can I not appreciate this?’ I wondered if I should congratulate her officially for getting it on with my sister. ‘Good news about you and Claw,’ I blurted. I just stopped short of adding, ‘Well done!’

  ‘Oh, oh, thank you.’ A faint touch of colour tinted Camille’s pale cheeks. ‘I adore her. I hope you’re feeling less traumatised about Stuart,’ she added.

  I nodded, dumbly. This conversation was like a gun going off accidentally. Panic was causing us to riccochet wildly, smashing convention after convention. Camille gulped her drink. ‘I’m sorry. Anything I say will sound trite. He’s disgusting. He deserves life. I loathe him and I loathe working for him. But,’ she lowered her voice. As she spoke quietly anyhow, I had to strain to hear. ‘It won’t be for much longer. He’s got it coming, Holly. I know it’s still not ideal. But he’ll be punished in some sense. It looks like probate will be granted soon. And then, he’ll contact various authorities to release the funds and – depending on what he does with the deeds of the Paris apartment – then we’ll know. Obviously, I can’t report him to the Law Society yet, as he could still make out it’s just an administrative slip. We need to see money that isn’t his being placed into his account, and presumably, it won’t be an account that’s easy to trace. I need to speak to someone who can advise me what to do then, and how to do it. Someone who is an expert in law but a hundred per cent trustworthy. You don’t want to know how hard that is.’ She added quickly, ‘But it will be fine, I’m working on it.’

  ‘Working on what?’ enquired Nick, who had wandered over. He was immaculate in cream chinos, a blue and white striped shirt and brown moccasins and (in my humble opinion) looked like a plonker. He’d always despised men who dressed like this – from Fulham central casting, because they didn’t have an original bone in their porky bodies – and I wasn’t sure what point he was trying to make. That he made my heart go ting! even in his Hugh Grant get-up was alarming.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Camille.

  ‘It’s alright. He knows.’ I smiled at Nick. ‘Camille’s working on trapping Stuart.’

  Nick scowled. His whole body tensed.

  I touched his arm. ‘Don’t let’s talk about that now. This is lovely. I can’t believe you got the recipe for the cornflake and chocolate goo squares.’ I paused, then thought I’d chance it. ‘That has to be just about the most romantic thing you’ve ever done for me.’

  Camille faded tactfully into the distance.

  Nick grabbed me by the hand and led me to a twinkly pink and green corner. ‘Holly,’ he said, taking my groaning plate and shoving it on to a thin shelf, where it tilted precariously. ‘I hate not being with you. I feel half-dead without you.’

  My heart hammered. This was perfect.

  He added, ‘I’ve grown up a lot in the past few months, I swear it. I know what I was like, an irresponsible baby. I don’t blame you for ending our engagement, I really don’t. Although’ – the words spewed out violently – ‘Pamela Fidgett says that Lavinia and Michael are largely to blame. She says that they probably never came to terms with their own infertility, they wanted to pretend to everyone, me included, that I was their real child, so it’s their fault that I, I’ve not been as sensible and responsible and as adult as I might have been, you see, because I was lied to and manipulated and kept in a certain place and not given the opportunity to come to terms with life as it really is, and no wonder I don’t trust people, because if you can’t trust your own parents, who can you trust?’

  He paused for breath. Oh, I wanted to say. So, what, you didn’t trust me?

  Was this the root of his brattish behaviour? Keep it all lighthearted, everything a joke, because if you betray real emotion, show how strongly you could feel, how much you might care, you risk abandonment. But then, I couldn’t help thinking, there was a good chance that theory was bullshit, the coward’s excuse. If he’d shown how much he cared then we might still be together. It was the So-What act that had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hell, I didn’t know. You could blame your parents for your dysfunction until you were ninety-three, under the guise that if it was their fault, poor little you were obliged to do nothing about it. Surely Nick had to own some responsibility for how he’d been with me? I looked at his angry face. It was the face of a hurt child.

  I took a breath. God, how I loved him. And if you love someone, you want the best for them. Which can mean confronting them with the unwanted truth. It was obvious to me that Nick needed a buffer to the wisdom of Pamela Fidgett. Because while Pamela Fidgett was undoubtedly correct in many of her assumptions about Lavinia and Michael, she was also telling Nick exactly what he wished to hear, everything she said got him off the hook for every misdemeanour he’d committed over the past three decades, from squelching his hand into his first-ever birthday cake, to smashing up my home printer (£400) with a bamboo stick following a mechanical disagreement.

  Then again, the consequence of telling someone you love the unwa
nted truth can be disastrous. They resent you as the bearer of unwelcome news and hate you as a result. I would have been a fool to tell Nick my gut feelings. I needed to encourage this fantasy line of thought, it was in my best interest. Anyway, what did the thinking matter, it was the actual conclusion that counted, and Nick’s conclusion was that he felt half-dead without me.

  I smiled into his eyes and pulled him closer, until we stood there, chest to chest. ‘Nick,’ I whispered, in the tradition of many a blushing screen goddess to her devilishly dashing hero. ‘I’m going to have your baby.’

  Chapter 33

  OTHER THAN FRANK, Hoovering the house for three hours in silence, I had no experience of how a man typically reacts on hearing that he’s about to become a father. So when Nick laughed and said, ‘No, you’re not!’ I was unsure if this was normal.

  ‘No, really, I am,’ I replied, the moony-eyed expression dying on my face.

  ‘What, you’re pregnant?’

  ‘Yes!’

  Nick glanced from side to side, as if searching for an escape route. ‘Are you sure,’ he added, ‘that you’re not fantasising?’

  If humans really did swell with indignation, I’d have ballooned to twice my size. ‘Of course I’m not fantasising. I took a test! There was a blue line in the round window!’

  Nick blinked. ‘Round window or square window?’

  I was beginning to lose my temper. ‘I don’t know, whichever damn window it is says you’re pregnant!’

  Nick squeezed his forehead with two fingers. ‘Right, okay. Right. Right. And when . . . and when was it we . . .?’

  My eyes widened in disbelief. ‘When I came round to you that time after you found out you were adopted!’ I said, my voice a high squeak.

  He frowned, as if trying to remember. I wanted to hit him about the head. I think he sensed this, because he stretched the corners of his mouth apologetically and murmured, ‘I was in a bit of a state.’ He smiled. ‘You made me feel a lot better.’

  If this was meant to salve the ego, it didn’t. What did he think I was, a hooker?

  He swallowed. ‘And so you’ve not had any periods since?’

  Jesus. Bring back the 1950s male. ‘Nick,’ I said, in the most patronising tone I could muster. ‘Considering that I am a reasonably intelligent person who got an A in Biology, do you honestly think I’d be claiming to be pregnant if I was still . . .’ – on purpose, I summoned a word that frightens men – ‘. . . menstruating?’

  ‘Okay.’ He sighed. ‘One more question. And don’t take this the wrong way. After your terrible—’

  I held up a hand to stop him. ‘If,’ I said icily, ‘you were going to enquire about Stuart, don’t. He wore . . . protection, and’ – I wondered how to sound dignified and condescending at the same time – ‘my cycle continued as normal. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  I snatched my plate from almost certain doom and stomped off. Now, if you’ll excuse me is PG movie speak for ‘Fuck you’, and Nick had watched enough cinematic pap to know that. As for my cycle continuing as normal, I was bluffing but I was pretty sure it had. If I made myself think back (which took some forcing), I could almost picture the scene, a scramble of relief and disgust, the drab physicality of bleeding from your unmentionable – forgive me, after what I’d suffered for it, that part of my anatomy was not a flower or a reproductive organ or anything beautiful, it was unmentionable, preferably non-existent – at the same time, a gratifying sense of a blood-letting, putting out the rubbish, getting rid of any last trace of Stuart. Had I imagined it or was it true?

  It was true, I decided, shovelling cold vegetable lasagne down my throat. The memory crept back inch by inch, like a dog afraid of being hit. But when Manjit sauntered over for a chat, I could barely concentrate on what he was saying. How dare Nick not be delighted? I ignored him for the rest of the evening, and made a show of being too full to try a cornflake and chocolate goo square (even though I all but drooled at the sight of them). And it had all been going so well.

  I was staggered.

  I’d wanted comfort. I tucked my hair behind my ears and slipped from the room. Upstairs, in Claudia’s study, I dialled a number I knew off by heart.

  ‘Two-nine-six-three, hello?’

  ‘Smee, Holly. I wondered . . . how would you and Dad like another grandchild?’

  There was a silence. Then a gasp. And a roar of ‘Stanleeeeee!’

  All in all, I painted a cosy little picture. Yes, Nick and I were expecting. We weren’t together together, but it was early days and we were both thrilled. Yes, he was looking after me. Yes, I was feeling tired. Yes, I was taking folic acid. No, I hadn’t seen the doctor yet, but I would. We were only telling close family. Nick hadn’t told Lavinia and Michael yet, but soon. Yes, we were very happy.

  I crept downstairs a while later, snug in the warm glow of parental pride. See, they knew how to make me feel special. Strengthened by their love and joy, I told myself that Claudia was right. My survival, mental and physical, was up to me. If I wanted, the twin curses of Stuart and Nick could be rendered powerless. All I had to do was be strong, and keep fighting. So I stopped trying to meet Nick’s eye. And later that evening, as Claudia waved me off at the door, I yelled, ‘See you at work tomorrow, nine o’ clock sharp.’

  Her shout of ‘Yayyyy!’ ensured a stiff victory smile on my face all the way home – even if it felt like it was tacked on with nails.

  As it’s presumed important to look the part, I set my alarm for seven and spent an hour trying to fashion myself into the common impression of a businesswoman. This was harder than it sounds. As we tended to dress for pleasure in my office, I had only one suit in my wardrobe, circa 1995. It was a grey weave, the skirt was neither here nor there – not tapered or flared but a dreary in-between – and the jacket ended abruptly at the waist. I did own a black pair of high-heeled shoes but even though they were from a funky store, they had a Marks & Spencerish air about them. I’d slip them on and they’d fast forward me to forty.

  I gazed into the wardrobe, waiting for it to perform a miracle, and – a once in a lifetime occurrence – it did. A bright pink cashmere jumper winked at me from where it was squashed between two pairs of jeans. I tugged it out. Soft and feminine (and I mean that only in the sense that a hetero man wouldn’t be pleased to get it for Christmas) and smelling musty. I hadn’t worn it for months, I felt too girly and weak in it. Crap! It wasn’t the jumper that was girly and weak, it was me. Well, no longer. I pulled it on, squirted perfume to disguise the mustiness – I’m afraid Nick’s hygiene habits had rubbed off – and teamed it with flared black corduroy jeans and a shiny pair of pointy pink patent boots (a birthday present from Claudia, secured, as I recall, from a sex shop in LA and guaranteed to scare the life out of people).

  Issy and Claw applauded as I tottered in. I rolled my eyes and sank crippled into a chair. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘you really must stop clapping me the whole time. I’m beginning to feel like the Queen.’

  I brandished a greasy paper bag in their faces. ‘Monday morning celebration.’

  ‘Snap,’ said my sisters in chorus, producing identical and equally greasy paper bags from various hiding places.

  I smiled. ‘In the spirit of greed, I think I can manage three doughnuts.’

  ‘Capitalism at its most ruthless,’ said Claudia happily. Issy’s agreement wasn’t quite so heartfelt, but she ripped open a stack of vacuum-sealed paper plates and handed them round. ‘Oooh!’ cried Claudia, ‘Int she posh!’

  ‘We need coffee,’ exclaimed Issy. ‘I’ll go.’

  Claw and I raised our eyebrows at each other in silent approval. ‘New leaf,’ mouthed Claudia. I beamed. Work! This was part of what made life meaningful – striving! What had I been thinking? Who could do without it?

  The second Issy was out the door, Claudia said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  I told her about Nick’s reaction. ‘I’m fine, though,’ I insisted. ‘I’m more than capable of managing without him.
And – da naaa! – I told Mum and Dad last night. They’re thrilled.’

  ‘Oh my gaad, of course they are! Christ, they must be over the moon. What did they say? That must have been why Mum rang me this morning – I was on my way out so I didn’t pick up. I’ll ring her back right now. It’s so exciting, I can’t believe it! And don’t worry about Nick. We’ll all help you. One kid is a doddle. You can pick it up and carry it around in your pocket!’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I can be doing without two.’

  We laughed, and I refused to feel guilty. Yes, it was mature of Nick to offer to beg a favour from Michael on my behalf, at a time when he was still furious and hurt and wanting to reject his adoptive parents. But this was, I decided, the exception that proved the rule. Nick was a kid. I tried to disapprove of him. What about the time he stumbled in drunk after a boys’ night out and made himself a sandwich by tearing the wrapping off a pound of brie and sticking it between two slices of bread. He hadn’t even cut off the rind. I did my best to frown but smirked instead. The thought of it made me laugh. Was this childish, or was it merely high spirits? And what about the time he stood in front of the mirror and said ‘Candyman’ five times? I’d screamed at him not to (you never know). That was irresponsible, wasn’t it? Yes, but it was also fun. What about the time he’d cleaned half the hob because, as he’d explained, ‘That other bit isn’t my dirt.’ I remembered something Claw had said when we’d got engaged.

  ‘You’re lucky, Hol. You’re marrying a man who’s going to make you laugh for the rest of your life.’

  She’d always liked Nick. I sighed, and thanked her for the previous night. It had turned my head around. Made me realise that it was up to me to make myself laugh for the rest of my life. It seemed a bit of a tall order. Still. I could do it. ‘Great to see Nige looking so happy,’ I said, to ward off another ‘what’s wrong?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Claw.

  ‘I thought he’d drop us the second he got a sniff of success but he hasn’t. He’s a good bloke. He really cares about the agency.’