A Friend of the Family

by Lisa Jewell

  It wasn’t until the child was born, weaned and walking that the father could even begin to share equal billing with the mother. At some point in a child’s development a father could start to have an influence and at that point Sean might be ready to compromise his lifestyle. But right now this was Millie’s pregnancy. Her body was being squatted by a stranger whom Sean had never asked to meet and who was seriously hampering their relationship. Millie had chosen to pursue this path – it was her decision – and, while Sean was happy to administer foot massages, back rubs and spaghetti Bolognese by the buckedoad, he wasn’t prepared to let Millie’s condition take precedence over his own existence.

  And this book – writing this book – it felt so good. It was good to be back at home, to be sitting at his table, looking out of his window and writing about his feelings. He felt like a man again – and even better than that, he felt like a writer again.

  He stood up, stretched up on to his tiptoes and cartwheeled his arms. He turned up the volume on the Café del Mar compilation he’d been listening to and went and stood on his balcony for a while. The sky was an intense turquoise and there literally wasn’t a cloud in sight. It was crisp and fresh but the tentative spring sunrays warmed the skin on his forehead and cheekbones. Summer was definitely on its way – Sean could feel it and smell it.

  He gazed around his city and for a few seconds he enjoyed the usual sense of anticipation at the onset of his favourite time of year. He envisaged deckchairs in Green Park, coffee at pavement cafés, cabs with open windows, cold lager in beer gardens and Softball in his mum and dad’s garden. But he soon felt himself deflate when the fatal flaw in these fantasies occurred to him: they all involved him and Millie – as a couple. They were all about being young and in love in London in the summer. But there wasn’t going to be a carefree summer of love for him and Millie. There was going to be a summer of maternity-wear and hospital visits, no sex and no drinking. His first summer with the woman of his dreams was going to be spent waiting pensively for his life to change overnight. It was going to be about Millie and her pregnancy.

  Fuck.

  He wanted to sit out on Millie’s candlelit patio drinking beer at midnight while they stared at the stars, he wanted to share a spliff with her on his balcony, wearing short-sleeved tops, listening to really loud music and looking down on their amazing, thrilling city while it oozed with potential for good times and nights out, places to drink, people to meet, drugs to take, experiences to have. He wanted it all, the whole magical summer-in-the-city thing, and he wanted it with Millie.

  The baby was due in December. By next summer the baby would be six, seven months old and they’d be parents. They’d be tied down. Their freedom would be gone, wrenched from them, not to be returned until they were middle-aged.

  Jesus.

  It was so unfair.

  Sean kicked the wall of the balcony in frustration.

  Fucking life.

  Fucking babies.

  Fucking condoms.

  Fucking Millie.

  Fucking hell.

  Sean looked down at something at his feet, something glinting in the sunshine. It looked like a piece of gold leaf at first. And then he noticed that it was foil torn from the neck of a bottle of champagne. From the bottle of Louis Röederer he’d opened the night he’d proposed to Millie, to be precise. He fingered it sadly, smoothing out its wrinkles, and thought back to that night, only two weeks ago. Millie had been a different person then, an eccentric, warm-hearted bundle of energy, an incredible, unpredictable, free-spirited woman. She’d made him laugh, made him excited, made him feel nervous like she was a beautiful, brightly coloured kite on which he had only the most tenuous of holds. Sean had been in awe of her, terrified that she might just float away from him if he loosened his grip.

  She’d been everything then, absolutely everything.

  And now – well, now she was just pregnant.

  Sean rolled the little sliver of gold foil into a ball between his thumb and index finger, balanced it on the wall of the balcony and flicked it sadly off the wall and into the distance.

  And then he went indoors and wrote a whole chapter about how it felt to miss out on summer because your girlfriend was pregnant.

  Millie’s Enchanted Kingdom

  It was a bright afternoon as Tony exited his cab in Gloucester Terrace, and the sun bounced off the stuccoed houses that lined the road. Tony had driven through these roads of giant, imposing white houses so many times in his life but it had never occurred to him before that real people actually lived in them.

  Millie’s house was one of the smartest on the terrace – it was freshly painted and had shiny knobs and knockers and swagged curtains hung in the windows. Tony suddenly felt very suburban in the face of such overt sophistication. He looked down at his shoes and wished that they were hand-made Italian calfskin jobs rather than slightly scuffed £69.99 loafers from Jones the Bootmaker.

  Millie answered the door wearing a loose cotton embroidered top with a slit at the neck that reminded Tony of one his mum used to wear in the seventies. Her hair was down and shaggy, like the first time he saw her, and she was wearing skinny thong sandals revealing small, dark feet with chipped nail polish and the beginnings of a bunion. ‘Tony,’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  There was a note of unease in her voice and Tony flinched slightly. He’d blown it. He was too much. Too stalky. Too intense. He shouldn’t have come.

  ‘I, er, got you some stuff.’ He held aloft the Holland & Barrett carrier bag and adopted the body language of a man about to be on his way.

  ‘Stuff?’ said Millie, taking the bag from him and peering into it. ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Things for morning sickness.’ He pulled out a packet of biscuits. ‘Ginger snaps. Ginger’s supposed to be really good for it, apparently. And lemon –’ he pulled out a fan of lemon-flavoured lollipops – ‘or you can use the essential oil; just put it on a tissue and sniff it. Or there’s this homeopathic stuff in here somewhere –’ he ferreted through the bag, searching for the tiny bottle – ‘but you need to be very careful with that, apparently – it contains fifteen per cent alcohol.’ He grinned at her and was gratified to see a small smile crack her deadpan face. ‘I mean, I don’t know how much good all this stuff will actually do, but I thought it would be worth a bash. You know.’ He put his hands into his pockets and threw her another cheesy grin.

  She looked at him and then back at the bag of goodies.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘you look exhausted. So I’ll get going. Leave you to get some rest…’

  ‘No,’ said Millie, tucking her unruly hair behind her ear, ‘don’t go. I mean, you’ve been to all this trouble. The least I can do is offer you a cup of coffee. Or maybe …’ she pulled a packet out of the bag, ‘a nice cup of organic lemon-and-ginger tea.’ She smiled. ‘If you’ve got time, that is.’

  Tony looked at his watch and then looked at her. She looked more relaxed now. He’d redeemed himself. ‘Er, yeah,’ he said, ‘sure. I don’t need to get back just yet.’

  ‘Cool,’ Millie smiled and held the door open for him. Tony’s heart lifted as he crossed the threshold – he felt like he’d been granted admission to some enchanted kingdom.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Millie as she let him into her flat, ‘it’s a bit of a mess. I only ever bother to tidy up when I’m expecting visitors.’

  Tony looked around the not even vaguely messy flat in awe. The ceilings were high and the windows were floor to ceiling, with painted shutters. The walls didn’t look like normal walls – they looked like they came from inside some ancient Italian palace. The room was a treasure trove of beautiful objects; coloured crystal chandeliers, antique French furniture, stained-wood floors, an embroidered silk shawl, Victorian tasselled lamps, a dramatic chaise longue in raspberry velvet, Afghan fur rugs, abstract paintings, framed sepia photographs, a brown suede pouffe. Millie had mixed together objects, art and furnishings from every continent and every pe
riod in history in every conceivable hue of pink, brown, gold, cream and ebony. But it all worked beautifully, because every item in her flat had been chosen with something that Tony suddenly and overwhelmingly realized he didn’t possess – taste.

  ‘Here are my boys,’ she was saying, pointing at four slumbering cats draped artfully over her threadbare velvet sofa in complementary coats of cream, grey and champagne. Even her cats were tasteful.

  ‘This is Dorian – because he’s grey. This is Eric – because he’s cream. Cream – Eric Clapton – get it? This is Barry – because he’s white. And this is Brando because he’s a big fat handsome bastard. He’s my favourite. Or I’m his. I’m not sure which. Anyway. Tea? Coffee?’

  ‘Coffee, please,’ said Tony. ‘White. One sugar.’ He strolled around the living room while she made coffee and felt like he was in a dream, or squashed between the pages of Elle Decoration. ‘ This place is beautiful,’ he called to Millie, picking up an exquisite and entirely useless piece of twisted turquoise glass and holding it up to the light.

  ‘Not too feminine for you?’

  ‘No – not at all. I mean, most of it is stuff I probably wouldn’t have chosen for myself. But the way you’ve put it all together – it really works.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, putting a pair of mugs on the coffee table and folding herself into an overstuffed armchair. ‘So. Tony. How did you know where I live?’

  Tony stared slightly. ‘Oh,’ he said lightly, ‘the college gave me your address.’

  ‘The college?’ she looked alarmed.

  ‘Yes,’ stuttered Tony, nervously, ‘I was going to drop this stuff off for you there, but I phoned and they said you were off sick. The woman I spoke to said she didn’t have a phone number for you, just an address.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she muttered, ‘I can’t believe they just hand out addresses willy-nilly over the phone to just anyone…’

  Tony sucked in his breath in an attempt to make himself very, very small indeed. ‘Sorry,’ he whispered.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Millie put her hand to her chest and looked at Tony, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. You’re not just anyone, of course. But you could have been. You know?’

  Tony nodded thoughtfully. ‘Look, Millie,’ he said, ‘I really hope you don’t think I’m plaguing you or anything. It’s just, I’m really worried about you. You’re pregnant and my brother’s letting you down and I feel somehow… responsible. Do you see what I mean? And if you’d rather I just butted out…?’

  ‘No,’ said Millie. ‘No. Not at all. I really don’t want you to butt out. I need you. I mean, I know that sounds strange, but you’re my only link to Sean right now. My only insight into him. And I can’t tell you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I’m so confused about everything and it’s very reassuring to know that somebody’s thinking about me.’

  Tony smiled. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘that makes me very happy.’

  It fell silent. Tony sipped his coffee. Millie sipped her ginger-and-lemon tea.

  ‘Does Sean know?’ said Tony eventually. ‘Does he know that we talk?’

  Millie shook her head, a small, barely perceptible movement. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t.’

  Tony nodded tersely and wondered what that meant.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘how’s everything going?’

  ‘Awful,’ she said, ‘my life’s a farce. I haven’t seen the father of my child since Tuesday morning.’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘He’s camped out in Catford permanently now – says he works better there.’ She raised her eyebrows at him in a manner that suggested she thought there was more than a splatter of bullshit about this claim.

  ‘You mean, you haven’t seen him at all?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘And will you see him tonight?’

  She shrugged. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Fuck. What’s going on?’

  She shrugged again. ‘I’m pregnant. He’s creating. The two are mutually incompatible, apparently.’

  For the first time in his life Tony wished he had no responsibilities, wished he could just switch off his mobile phone, open a bottle of wine and spend the afternoon here with Millie talking about how shit his brother was. How could he go back to his office now and pretend to be interested in copyright law, when he could be sitting here, enveloped in the cocoon of Millie’s warmth? He wanted to curl up with her, like one of her cats. He wanted to stroke her hair, caress her feet, snuggle with her. God, how pathetic – but he did. He wanted life to be one long Sunday afternoon with Millie and him on her sofa. He wanted to be absorbed into her world, totally, to the exclusion of everything else in his life – his job, his family, his friends. Just him, Millie and the baby… How could Sean not want to be here? It made no sense to Tony, whatsoever.

  Tony shook his head in disbelief. ‘Christ. He should be here. He should be with you. I mean, you’re carrying his baby, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘I know that and you know that, but Sean, it seems, has no concept of parental responsibility. I can’t even be bothered to think about it any more, you know? I’m just so tired and I’d really rather conserve what little energy I have for this little blob in here.’ She caressed her belly affectionately.

  ‘How is the little blob?’ said Tony, brightening at the concept of new life.

  ‘Well, apart from the fact that it’s making me puke my guts up every hour and making me cry twice a day, it’s an absolute delight.’ She smiled wryly and patted her belly again.

  They ran out of conversation again, then, and Tony found himself wondering if maybe he’d imagined the other night when they talked so easily on the phone in the early hours. And then he remembered his other reason for popping round. ‘Ooh,’ he said, grabbing his briefcase and pulling it towards him. ‘I nearly forgot. I brought you some pictures. Of my place. Thought you might like to have a look at them before deciding whether you wanted the job or not.’

  ‘Rooms! Excellent,’ said Millie, putting down her tea and clapping her hands together enthusiastically. ‘Let’s have a look, then.’ He passed her the pictures and for the next hour they talked interiors. Millie sipped her ginger-and-lemon tea and talked Tony through her ideas: curved lines, blues, taupes, red highlights, nautical with a hint of New England beach house, great marine salvage yard in Rotherhithe, seagrass carpeting instead of his ‘foul’ laminate-woodstrip flooring.

  Some of it sounded great, some of it sounded interesting and some of it sounded downright dodgy. But Tony didn’t care – he was mesmerized watching Millie’s heavily ringed hands as they deftly sketched shapes and lines, as they swooped down on to her enormous mug of tea and gripped it, as she ran them through her thick hair. Tony found it vaguely thrilling to be discussing the size of his bed with her, the colour of his bedclothes. In fact, he found the whole experience of sitting in Millie’s living room on a Thursday afternoon so thrilling that he completely forgot that he was the managing director of his own company and was supposed to have been in a meeting at three o’clock, and got a genuine shock when his mobile phone rang at quarter to and Anne-Marie was on the other end wondering which meeting room he wanted her to set up in.

  ‘Shit,’ he said, as he put his phone away, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Well,’ Millie said, retracting her ballpoint pen, ‘what do you think? Do I get the job?’

  ‘What,’ said Tony in surprise, ‘you’ll do it?’

  ‘Yes. Why not. But I won’t be able to start for a while – probably not until the summer holidays.’

  ‘Summer holidays – when do they start?’

  ‘June.’

  He nodded. ‘June’s fine. June’s great. Definitely.’

  ‘Excellent! Put it here!’ she offered him her hand to shake and he took it eagerly. It was warm and dry and firm and he didn’t want to let go of it. Ever.

  ‘It’s a deal.’

  Millie smiled and opened the front door for him.

  She reached up t
o kiss him on the cheek. Her lips connected with his skin, like they always did, but this time she hooked an arm around his neck and drew him to her. Tony found himself with his nose in her hair and suddenly lost control of his arms. He tentatively found a place for his left hand in the centre of her back and gave her a quick squeeze.

  ‘And thank you so much for all the ginger and lemon. I already feel a bit better, actually. That really was incredibly sweet and lovely of you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘You really are such a wonderful man, Tony. Are you sure you and your brother are related?’

  ‘No – I think there’s every chance that the babies got switched in the hospital.’

  Millie smiled, and then frowned. ‘God, Tony. I could really do without all this. You know?’

  ‘I know,’ said Tony, pausing slightly, unsure whether to say what he was about to say or not. ‘Millie,’ he began tentatively, ‘whatever happens, right, you know you can walk away. There are people who will hold you up, support you – you wouldn’t be left alone. Do you see what I’m saying?’

  Millie crinkled her nose up and squinted at him. Taking the piss. Tony didn’t mind. ‘I don’t think it’s going to get to that stage, Tony, but I do hear what you’re saying. Thank you.’ She squeezed his arm again. ‘I’ll call you,’ she said, ‘arrange to come over and see your place. Maybe next week?’

  ‘Next week would be great.’

  A cab was approaching so Tony leapt down the front steps and on to the street to hail it. He turned round to see if Millie was still at the door, but it was just closing behind her.