Behaving Like Adults

by Anna Maxted

  I dabbed my eyes. I could have sat there and wept happy tears all evening, but Sam had asked me to browbeat guests onto the dance floor. Bernard had exacting taste in music and, after serious discussion with Rachel, had been persuaded to hire one of her favourite DJs. I’d feared Europop, but was treated instead to Frank Sinatra, Burt Bacharach, Andy Williams and other greats (I say vaguely, having zero knowledge of the other greats). Bernard’s patio was transformed into a dancefloor, and his fruit trees winked and twinkled with pink fairy lights as the sun set.

  ‘Can I book you for the next dance, Holly?’ boomed the groom, his red face oozing sweat and joy as he bent over me. ‘My wife is dancing with her father.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I cried. ‘Bernard, this is such a great wedding.’ I jumped up and felt giddy. I suspected my dress created a backwash. ‘I’ll just go and . . . Won’t be a sec.’

  I left Nick chatting to Claudia and bustled upstairs to the bathroom. And there I was, planted on the lavatory, like a large burgundy mushroom, and I saw a stain. Rust red, on my knickers. Quaking, I dabbed myself with toilet paper. A smear of blood. Oh God. Please, no. The pain in my stomach was mild though. How could that be a miscarriage? And the blood – it wasn’t gushing out in clods, it was just like a normal period. Calmly, trapped in a bad dream, I upturned my bag, found my phone and rang Claw on her mobile. The second she tapped on the door I became hysterical.

  ‘Okay, keep calm. I’ll drive you to hospital. I presume they have hospitals in Devon.’

  ‘No . . . no. Wait.’

  Claudia looked at me oddly. ‘Don’t some people get bleeding in early pregnancy?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I couldn’t speak. I had a horrible feeling. The sickening sense I’d got myself into a situation it would be hell to get out of.

  ‘Shall I call an ambulance? Holly, what’s wrong? There’s no time to muck about.’

  I hid my face in my hands. I knew why I’d done it, but what had I done? Claudia let me hide for a reasonable length of time, then pried my fingers from my eyes. ‘Hol?’

  I looked up. ‘You know when you do a pregnancy test. You must have done?’

  ‘In my misspent youth.’

  ‘And . . .’ I forced my voice to an audible level. ‘There’s a line in the round window if you’re pregnant, right?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I thought there was a line in both windows. Hol? What? What are you talking about?’

  I cleared my throat. Better get it over with. ‘This isn’t a miscarriage. This is the plain old time of the month.’

  Claudia said nothing. She looked grave.

  ‘I lost fifteen pounds in a short time when I had glandular fever. And sudden weight loss can cause you to skip periods. I read about it . . . a few days ago. But I’ve gained most of the weight back in the past six weeks. So . . . I suppose . . . I . . . I wanted . . . it would have made an end to it . . . been so nice if Nick and . . . shit, oh God, what will I . . .?’

  Claudia shook her head and sat down hard on the side of the bath. She looked as if she’d been struck dumb.

  ‘I believed it, at first, Claw. I really did. I really thought I was pregnant. And then . . . I wondered but . . . I didn’t want to go back . . . it seemed so possible . . . I postponed the doctor’s appointment . . . I thought . . .’

  I stared at Bernard’s cork matting and thought, if you want it badly enough you can make it happen.

  Not true.

  Claudia stood up. ‘Here’s a Tampax,’ she said. ‘We’re going back to the party and you are going to dance with Bernard. And tomorrow, Holly, you are going to start sorting out the mess in your head. Reality doesn’t suit any of us all of the time. Functional adults accept that. If you can’t, you will not have a happy life and I mean that. Christ knows what you’re going to tell Nick.’

  She marched out of the bathroom. I stared at the door. It suddenly banged open again, nearly causing me to fall in the toilet with fright. Claudia burst back in. Her face was brick red.

  ‘How dare you?’ she screamed. ‘How fucking dare you do this! How could you do this, to yourself, to Nick, to me, to Mum and Dad? It’s not just about you, you know! We’re all affected! I’ve had it with you and your weird behaviour! You’re letting him win, you know that? Do you want Stuart to win? Do you want to help him screw up your life? I am sick of this, you don’t fucking lie about things like babies, whatever you’ve been through, it’s not the way, it’s not healthy, it’s fucking insane! So fucking stop it, okay, you’re frightening me!’

  I gazed after her as she slipped out of the bathroom, then pulled up my knickers.

  Chapter 37

  CLAUDIA WAS MOSTLY right. Reality doesn’t suit all of us all of the time. And, yes, successful grown-ups do accept that. But if you ask me, their acceptance is a bit on the sporadic side. Why else, seven evenings out of seven, is a good quarter of the British adult population to be found chucking alcohol down its neck? We smoke, drink, take drugs – recreational or prescription, they all serve the same purpose. It’s about softening the sharp edges of life. My softener of choice that Sunday night was vodka, lots of it.

  Vodka enabled me to trip through the remainder of the wedding, dance with Bernard and fuss over Sam. If I began to feel ropey at around one and vomited discreetly in the lavatory without splashing my dress at one oh five, conking out in the guest bedroom at one oh eight, few people noticed or were bothered. The bride and groom had departed at midnight for the splendour of the Heathrow Hilton, and the nearest and dearest whom I hadn’t offended were too wrapped up in their own concerns to wonder about me.

  Monday was a different story. Bernard’s parents, cottage-sitting for their son, insisted on preparing a lavish breakfast for all remaining guests and – if this wasn’t cruel enough – watching us eat it. Out of the sheer goodness of my heart, I forced down a pale glutinous heap of scrambled egg, then spent the drive back to London gulping repeatedly to prevent its reappearance. Happily, Nick presumed I was suffering from morning sickness. Which, in a manner of speaking, I was.

  Prior to the bathroom scene, I’d agreed with Claudia that we’d award ourselves the morning off and reconvene at the office at 2 p.m. I’d been nervous about announcing the news of Nick’s employment but then, still in the mood to indulge me, she’d replied, ‘Fine by me. If it weren’t for nepotism I’d be on the dole.’

  I’d been all ready to reassure her that Nick had recently discovered the work ethic and was still displaying the fervour of the newly converted, but it hadn’t been necessary. Claudia had been curiously positive about welcoming Nick aboard. Maybe she could tell he’d grown up some. He’d hardly drunk at the wedding because, as he explained, ‘It’s my first day at work tomorrow. There’s no point having a hangover unless it’s the weekend and you can actually enjoy it.’

  Issy wasn’t due in until Tuesday, which I was glad of. Claudia had left with Camille late on Sunday night, without saying goodbye. I could understand it. For those few months I’d convinced myself I was pregnant, I’d realised the extent to which an unborn baby belongs to all the family. Claudia might have had her reservations about my reasons for wanting a child, but her excitement had betrayed itself. I knew it took all her self-control not to stage a dawn raid on Baby Gap. I got the feeling that if it weren’t for common courtesy, she’d have bent over my belly and yelled, ‘Hurry up!’

  Nick’s presence at work would prevent Claudia from physically attacking me, but I was sure she’d find a thousand subtle ways to communicate her displeasure. At least Issy wouldn’t be there to sense the mood and start ferreting. Monday afternoon, I showed Nick his desk, talked him round the office, all the while thinking ‘When will I tell him? When?’ At ten past two, Claudia marched in with one coffee and a single doughnut. I was glad when my mobile rang and I could busy myself fumbling in my bag, it made her iciness less apparent.

  ‘Holly?’ said a familiar silvery voice.

  ‘Hel-lo!’ I cried. ‘Wait a second. I’m in the office, bad recep
tion, I’ll take it outside.’ I jumped up and ran into the corridor. ‘Mrs Mortimer? Sorry. You know Nick started work at the agency today? Oh. No. Of course. Sorry. Well, he has. Are you . . . bearing up? You’re round the corner! Yes. Yes, no, that wouldn’t be a problem. Although I have only just got back to the office, so it might have to be quick,’ – listen to me, I thought, giving the Mortimers orders! – ‘but . . . yes. Yes, I know it well. Fine. I’ll see you in five minutes.’

  I stuck my head round the office door, said, ‘Something’s come up, I’ll be about twenty minutes.’ Nick nodded, without shifting his gaze from his screen. Claudia sipped her coffee and ignored me. She was wearing her hair in a high ponytail which reeked of disapproval.

  ‘Oh God,’ I said aloud to myself, clomping down the stairs. I ran across the road to Martha’s Got Buns, where Mr and Mrs Mortimer were sitting in orange and white plastic seats at an orange table, each nursing a coffee and an untouched slice of what Rachel called ‘Vicky sponge’. Boring, boring cake, it didn’t deserve a nickname. Lavinia and Michael looked prosperous and miserable. Michael, in his City man’s coat, long, thick, navy, and Lavinia, immaculately attired, superbly preserved. They seemed lost here, and it made them all the more pathetic. It pained me, to see such powerful people helpless.

  Ever courteous, they rose to their feet and kissed me. I ordered a tea from Martha – I couldn’t quite bring myself to order the Vicky sponge, even out of solidarity. Then I changed my mind. I didn’t have to eat it, for godsake.

  ‘Holly,’ said Michael in his captain of industry voice. ‘We are so sorry to trouble you again. I know Lavinia has already spoken to you. But we are really [he pronounced it rarely] at our wits’ end. He still is barely speaking to us, and even when he does deign to see us he is so terribly distant. We feel as if we’re losing him, our only son, and we can’t bear it.’

  It jolted me, to hear a man like Michael own up to not being able to bear something. Throughout our five-year acquaintance, I’d assumed he was made of steel.

  ‘Tell us,’ Lavinia enquired gently, ‘has he traced his’ – a delicate pause – ‘original mother?’

  I was about to obey and launch into the tale. Lavinia and Michael were unaccustomed to being refused information or assistance. I opened my mouth – both of them leant towards me, eagerly pressing their well-tailored jackets against the greasy edge of the orange plastic table – and I shut it.

  ‘I . . . it wouldn’t be fair of me to say,’ I said, eventually. ‘You really need to speak to him.’

  ‘But, Holly,’ rumbled Michael. ‘We can’t get a damned word out of him.’

  I gulped my tea. The Mortimers followed suit and sipped their coffees. Lavinia’s eyes were turning red and watery, a look which didn’t complement her tan. I noticed a tremor in Michael’s hands. This was hideous. To think that my parents were so intimidated by these people that on the two occasions my mother had dared to invite them to her humble abode, she’d spent four hours cleaning, and another four hours apologising for the ‘mess’. The Mortimers were richer than our family, more successful, more established. But, I now realised, the emotional evolution of the Appletons was far superior.

  I took a deep breath. And I told them.

  Not about Nick’s visit to his birth mother – that was not my story to tell – but about Nick’s feelings, Pamela Fidgett’s theories, the possibility that they had yet to come to terms with their (I squeezed the word out of my mouth like the last wretched inch of toothpaste from a tube) infertility. I suggested that Nick needed evidence of their contrition. That perhaps there was a friend they could speak to who could help them see the situation from a new perspective, someone whose opinion they respected. I squeezed my knees tight together, the cheek of me, Headcase, who ought to be seeking therapy herself, advising the Mortimers to seek it. Hilariously (and I use the word in its ironic, bitter sense), I quoted Issy. ‘The child is always a symptom of the parents.’

  I listened to myself dispensing wisdom to this elegant couple so much more mature and important than me and I wouldn’t have blamed Lavinia if she’d pressed her Vicky sponge into my face, but she didn’t. The two of them sat, nodding, their eyes fixed on my yapping mouth. Their attention was addictive and I had to force myself to stop talking. I glanced at the clock on Martha’s wall.

  ‘I hope all this isn’t too much of a, a shock,’ I added. ‘I know it can’t be pleasant to hear. But I’m almost certain that that’s what Nick needs from you, and if you want him . . . back, I’m sure you’d be more than happy to try anything.’

  This seemed to galvanise them into agreement. They leapt up, hugged me, thanked me, boomed, ‘Yes, oh, yes, absolutely,’ and waved as I scurried back across the road to work. I didn’t look back. Grant them some dignity.

  I entered an altogether cheerier office. Claudia and Nick – they’d always got on – were hee-heeing over an application form. Under ‘Do you have any talents?’, the guy had written ‘I can lay lino’. In response to ‘What’s your greatest asset?’ he’d scrawled ‘My MBA’. Claudia even gave me a ghost of a smile.

  Nick stood up. ‘Do you mind if I nip to the bank for five minutes, Hol? I’ll be right back.’

  I couldn’t believe he was being so correct as to ask my permission. This, the man who was so accustomed to doing as he pleased that on their first meeting he had no qualms about telling my parents of the thin walls in his rented studio flat, which unfortunately enabled us to hear his neighbours having sex. He’d told my mother that their efforts sounded like ‘a sea lion fixing a squeaky door’.

  ‘Of course you can go to the bank, Nick,’ I said, wondering if I and his many parents had, with our mistreatment, managed to break his spirit entirely. ‘You don’t have to ask.’

  ‘Camille spoke to Nige,’ said Claudia, the second he was out of sight. ‘He’s going to do it. Camille spoke to Stuart’s client, recorded the conversation – which is illegal but bite me – and she’s biking the tape to him this afternoon.’

  If ever a plan had ‘fiasco’ written all over it in pink fluorescent marker pen, here it was. And she hadn’t apologised for shouting at me. I covered my ears. ‘I told you, I don’t want to know,’ I said. ‘This is your idea, it’s nothing to do with me. And if Stuart catches Camille, she’d better have an excuse ready that’s nothing to do with me.’

  Claudia shrugged. ‘Fine, fine, whatever.’ Her mood froze as fast as it had melted. ‘FYI,’ she added. ‘Nick told me about being adopted, last night. Which makes what you’ve done to him about the phantom baby even more . . . inconsiderate.’

  She spun round her chair to face her computer, her black hair flying as if she were a witch on a broomstick.

  I gave her a covert V-sign. It didn’t feel like enough so I snarled, ‘I feel evil enough without your input. And FYI, Claudia, you are not an American, you are a British citizen living in London who happens to watch Seinfeld on Sky occasionally, so kindly refrain from using phrases like FYI and bite me.’

  Claudia gave me the V-sign back, over her head. Ten frosty minutes of silence followed, then Nick sauntered in, whistling. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘I need to get some air,’ muttered my sister. She snatched up her mobile – she could have saved herself trouble and had it surgically attached – and marched out. I wondered if she expected me to tell Nick about the fantasy baby then and there. I smiled at him. I could feel my face turning puce. Martha’s Got Buns was, in retrospect, an unsafe place to stage a secret assignment. Nick could have gone to the bank five minutes earlier and caught us red-handed, the Vicky sponge in our mouths. As it was, I knew he suspected I’d been up to no good.

  He beamed. ‘Guess what. She rang! While you were out!’

  My heart flopped in relief. Maybe his birth mother wasn’t a lost cause. ‘Oh fantastic. What did she say?’

  Nick mussed his hair. ‘Malcolm’s had a shift changed so he’s now free next Wednesday night. And so’s Russell. It’s nine days away, which is a while, but
sooner than I thought it was going to be. That’s alright, isn’t it? It doesn’t clash with work?’

  ‘It’s fine. There is a second date night, but we’ll get Issy along. Meeting your, mm, other family is far more important, obviously.’

  His face fell. ‘Oh. Bother. I was hoping that you’d come with me again. You being my future wife and the mother of my unborn child and all that.’ He grinned, dropped to his knees, held my hips and put his ear against my stomach. ‘Hello, darling,’ he whispered. ‘Daddy loves you.’ I tried not to flinch.

  ‘Well,’ I said, stroking his hair and wanting to groan aloud. ‘There’ll be other times.’

  I closed my eyes. Everything would fall apart when I told him the truth. We’d be the only couple ever to cancel our engagement twice. And what would I tell my family? I didn’t want to shame them more than I had but it seemed inevitable. I’d convinced myself of that baby. The phantom loss was a scalpel, scraping the flesh from my insides. There’d been a young woman nursing a newborn in Martha’s that morning, and I couldn’t look at her. I didn’t feel sorry for myself though. You shun reality, it’s like swinging a wrecking ball away from you. Soon enough, it’ll swing right back and pulp you.

  ‘Do you mind if we don’t see each other tonight?’ I blurted. ‘I’ve got stuff to do around the house.’

  ‘What stuff? Cleaning? Why, where’s Gloria? You mustn’t overdo it, Hol. Not in your state. Why don’t I come and help?’

  This was unreal. For the last few years, my gripe with Nick had been the gripe of a million women (and men, I guess), that our relationship was no longer the precious jewel of love, laughter and mutual respect that it had been at the beginning. But even at the beginning – love, laughter, precious jewels and mutal respect notwithstanding – Nick had never offered to clean.

  ‘Thanks, but really, don’t worry. I won’t lift anything heavy. It’s other stuff. Phone calls. You’ll be bored out of your head. I actually feel like being by myself.’