A Friend of the Family

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Exactly, Tone. Exactly. What sort of life is that, then? Eh? You’ve done the graft, now get some pleasure out of it. Seriously, Tone – that’s what I’d do if I were you. Sell up and go and have a fucking long holiday somewhere. You’ve been through a lot these past few years. You deserve it…’ Gervase nodded decisively and then hit his hand on the horn when a courier on a big crackling bike tried to cut him up at a junction.

  Tony looked sideways at Gervase and tried to read his expression. He looked sincere enough, he reckoned; he looked genuine, like he had Tony’s best interests at heart. He looked like he cared. Properly. Like people don’t tend to care in this day and age.

  ‘Who are you?’ he found himself saying before he had a chance to stop himself.

  ‘Who – me?’ said Gervase. ‘I’m just a friend. A friend of the family – that’s all.’

  He turned to Tony and winked at him and Tony smiled at him briefly before turning to stare out of the window and wonder when the hell Skeletor had turned into the only person in the whole world who really understood him.

  A Very Important Appointment

  Sean heard the printer fall silent at the other side of the room and pulled the last few pages of text off the rack. He added them to the small pile on his desk and flicked through them, enjoying the feeling of substance. And then he went and sat on his balcony and read through the first 150 pages of his book, trying to see it from Millie’s perspective, wondering how she would react to his musings on the condition of unwanted fatherhood, hoping she wouldn’t read too much into the chapter when the protagonist goes home with an eighteen-year-old girl, wanting her to find it enlightening and entertaining, not threatening and upsetting.

  He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. Time to leave. He slipped the pages of his book into a plastic folder, dropped it into a Salisbury’s carrier bag, threw on his jacket and then headed for the train station and his eleven-fifteen appointment to meet his unborn child.

  Sean watched the nurse rubbing gel over Millie’s bare belly and looked at it in amazement. Millie’s usually ironing-board-flat stomach was all curved. She had a bump. Not a big bump, but a definite, discernible, Hello Daddy bump. When the hell had that happened?

  Sean gulped and smiled at Millie, who responded with a tight upturn of the furthest corners of her mouth. He looked round the room and made mental notes. For his book. Because this had to go in, obviously. He absorbed the atmosphere and the detail and the mood. He breathed in deep to record the smells and traced a fingertip across the gel on the side of Millie’s stomach to make a note of the texture.

  And then he stopped for just a moment, blanked out the endless chatter of the nurse and the noises from the corridor outside and looked into himself, trying to internally verbalize the way he was feeling, sitting here in an antenatal clinic with a woman who could hardly look him in the eye, about to see the barely formed person who’d ruined his relationship and not knowing what the hell happened next.

  He bandied words about in his head:

  Scared.

  Stupid.

  Unknowledgeable.

  Pathetic.

  Confused.

  Angry.

  Excited…

  That last one surprised him, but then he listened to the adrenaline in his ears, the thumping of his heart in his chest, and he knew it was true. He was excited. Impatient. Hurry up, he wanted to say to the nurse, switch it on, get it up there, I want to see this thing, this thing that’s brought out the very worst in me and turned me into a person I really don’t like very much.

  Let’s have a face-to-face.

  A one-to-one.

  Let me at ’im.

  The nurse switched on a machine that emitted a high-pitched buzz and then brought out a gun-type thing which she proceeded to rub over Millie’s glossy stomach while staring at a screen. And as she moved the camera across Millie’s stomach, shapes began to appear on the monitor. Monochrome, ghostly almost. Like something from a Fritz Lang film.

  The nurse started pointing at the screen, identifying shapes and body parts, and in among the inky blotches and swirls on the screen Sean could make out a kid. It really was. A proper kid. Arms, legs, fingers, toes, eyes, a mouth. Everything. Sean stared at the screen in wonder. This was so sci-fi, so unreal. It even had a face – a kind, gentle face with a hint of a smile. Its left arm was tucked up towards its face and it was… was it…?

  ‘See,’ said the nurse, pointing out the baby’s hand where it met its mouth, ‘it’s sucking its thumb…’

  His baby was sucking its thumb.

  Like a real baby.

  Like Ned used to when he was a kid.

  And suddenly a memory came to him from absolutely nowhere – Mum lying in a hospital bed, her blonde hair all messy, wearing a turquoise nylon bed-jacket. Dad standing next to her in a green sweater with a blue shirt underneath, Tony jumping up and down at the foot of the bed and Mum looking down at Sean fondly and saying, ‘Do you want to hold him?’ He’d been shy at first, hidden behind Dad, shaken his head, but Mum had encouraged him, told him it was fine, so he’d nodded and Mum had passed him this tiny little thing in a yellow blanket. So small, so light, even in Sean’s three-year-old arms. He’d pulled back the yellow blanket and peered into the unseeing eyes of his new brother. And then he’d kissed him on the cheek, amazed by the sensation of his lips against such fresh new skin. Mum had taken him back then and put him in his crib and Sean remembered standing over the crib for what felt like hours, just staring at this new person – this amazing new person. He’d known even then that he liked the new baby, that the new baby was going to be his friend.

  And then it suddenly hit him like a bolt out of the blue that this thing growing inside Millie – it was a little Ned. It was an amazing new person. It was someone who was going to be his friend.

  It was his child.

  Sean’s breath caught, then, and he squeezed Millie’s hand so hard that she winced.

  And then he started crying.

  Putting On the Ritz

  Ned adjusted his bow-tie in the mirror and realized that it was still completely fucked up. He hadn’t really thought to check in the hire shop whether they were giving him a ready-made bow-tie or one of these totally stupid do-it-yourself jobs. If he was in a film now, he mused, some slinky fox of a woman in an evening dress would walk in and tie it up for him. As it was, the only other person in the house was Gervase and Ned didn’t imagine that he’d be of much assistance. Dad was at work, where he was meeting Mum, and he and Gervase were going to share a cab with Ness, who was on her way over.

  He’d finally asked her last week. It had taken all his courage to phone her and he’d kept putting it off, but Dad wouldn’t stop nagging him – and then Gervase had got a sniff of what was afoot and put his oar in too.

  He’d phoned Tony first, just to check that he didn’t have a problem with him asking Ness, and he’d been really cool about it and then Ned had finally got up the nerve to phone Ness and it had been absolutely fine. Not that he’d asked her in a ‘Would you do me the great honour’ kind of a way. He’d just said, ‘Dad says you’ve got to come and I thought it would be nicer for you if you came with someone so would you like to come with me?’She’d been very gracious on the phone and didn’t seem to think that it was at all strange that Tony’s kid brother should be phoning her out of the blue to invite her to a party. All she was worried about was potentially upsetting Tony and causing an atmosphere at Bernie’s party, which Ned had thought was classically selfless of her and proved yet again what a completely great person she was. And she’d said she was really glad he’d invited her because she’d already bought her dress for the night and it had cost her a fortune.

  He pulled the bow-tie open again and started from scratch, ending up with a construction that was almost symmetrical and vaguely bow-like, which he settled for. Fuck it. He wasn’t a smooth bow-tie-and-tux kind of guy anyway. He was never going to look sharp no matter how well-tied his bow was, so he
may as well go for the slightly-shambolic-but-charming look.

  Little Richard was pounding out of Gervase’s bedroom and Ned banged his door with his fist.

  ‘Oi – Carl Perkins. The cab’s going to be here in five.’

  ‘No problemo,’ Gervase shouted through the door, ‘I’m on my way.’

  Ned leapt down the stairs and checked his reflection again in the hallway mirror, resisting the temptation to start fiddling with his bow-tie. He grabbed Mum and Dad’s present from where he’d hidden it in the dining room and quickly scribbled something in a card. And then he heard footsteps on the stairs behind him and turned to see Gervase, carrying an enormous gift wrapped in a silver paper, wearing a lurid blue, ruffle-fronted evening shirt, matching satin bow-tie, baby-blue drapes and electric-blue brothel creepers. Ned stopped and stared for just a second, not at all sure how he was supposed to react to such a vision. Tuck me,’ he said eventually, ‘you look… radical.’

  ‘Why, thank you very much, Ned. You don’t look so bad yourself. That tie, though – it’s all wonky.’ Gervase came towards him with his arms outstretched and Ned pushed him away. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve been trying for twenty minutes. This is as good as it’s going to get.’

  Gervase shrugged and preened his hair in the mirror behind Ned. And then the doorbell went.

  Ned suddenly felt a butterfly or two in his stomach and took a deep breath. He opened the door and took another one.

  ‘Ness!’ he said, breathlessly. ‘You look… Jesus – you look amazing.’

  And she did. She was wearing a black satin strapless dress with a big black-and-white flower on the bodice and a tight skirt to just below her knee. Her hair was up with glittery diamond things in it and blonde curls coming loose around her face. But it was the shoes that did it for Ned – black stilettos with diamond straps and pin-thin four-inch heels. The sort of shoes that made him want to get down on his hands and knees and kiss her ankles, they were that sexy. She was clutching a little black bag and a small gift with a card in a red envelope and she was pure, undiluted essence of fox.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, pulling her skirt up an inch or two so that she could make her way up the front step, ‘nothing to do with me, though. I’ve got no idea about clothes so I hired a personal shopper for the afternoon.’ She eyed Ned up and down with a small smile on her lips. ‘My, Ned,’ she said, ‘you look very handsome.’

  Ned blushed and ignored Gervase’s finger prodding him in the small of the back.

  ‘Just one thing, though,’ she said, putting down her little bag and her gift, ‘that bow-tie. It’s all wrong. Come here. Let me fix it for you.’

  Ned took a step towards her and stopped breathing while she untied his pathetic effort and started again. She smelt of expensive perfume and he wanted to sink his face in the smooth expanse of bare skin between her shoulders and her breasts. He wanted to run his hands up and down the yielding satin that covered her narrow hips, pull the diamond things out of her tousled hair and wrap one of those long smooth legs around his waist. He wanted to cancel the cab, forget the party and have the dirtiest night of his life.

  ‘There you go,’ she said, patting his bow-tie and pulling back to appraise it. ‘Much better.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ned, his voice sounding strangely like Lisa Simpson’s. ‘Thank you very much.’

  And then the doorbell rang and their minicab had arrived to take them to the Ritz and as Ned watched Ness swaying down the driveway towards the road in her black satin dress he decided that this could turn out to be the best night of his life.

  *

  ‘Hello,’ said Sean, putting on his best five-star accent, ‘I’m with the London party. There should be a room reserved for me in my father’s name?’

  He smiled nervously at Millie as the waistcoated receptionist looked up their booking on the computer. ‘Ah, yes. There are four rooms reserved.’

  ‘That’s right. Has anyone else checked in yet?’

  ‘No, sir – you’re the first.’

  They registered, turned down the offer of a bellboy for their tiny little overnight bags and headed up a red-carpeted staircase, past pretty trompe-l’æil walls and towards their room on the first floor. They didn’t speak as they walked, just padded silently down plush corridors. Sean watched Millie in front of him as they walked and smiled to himself. She had a little extra padding around her hips, now, her arms were slightly rounder and her hair, he suddenly noticed, had grown quite long. It had been chin-length when he first met her and now it was beyond her shoulders. She was starting to look very motherly. He noticed Millie shift her overnight bag from one hand to the other and remembered that he was supposed to do something about stuff like that.

  ‘Here,’ he said, peeling it away from her, ‘let me take that.’

  She turned, about to object, but then closed her mouth and smiled at him instead. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Sean noticed her cup her stomach with her hand as she turned and walked ahead of him. Cup her baby. Their baby. He felt around inside his jacket and pulled out the photograph again. It was starting to look quite dog-eared now. He’d done nothing but look at it since the nurse had given him a copy last week. He had it up against his computer screen while he wrote.

  It amazed him.

  Blew his mind.

  Totally.

  Sean could tell already it was going to be a good baby. He could tell by the placid smile on its face. He’d been a good baby, apparently, and so had Millie. Her mother had told him that last weekend when they’d gone up to Suffolk to break the news. Meeting Millie’s parents – now that had been an experience. The private road to their house had taken five minutes to drive up. There was a gravelled carriage driveway and an orchard, a formal garden full of abstract topiary trees and tropical flowers, a drawing room, a reception room, a sitting room, a games room. Mr and Mrs Buckleigh were entirely mad, in the nicest possible way, and were more impressed by the fact that Sean was a published author than Sean was by the size of their estate. Her brother and sister had been there, too, with their respective spouses, children and overexcited animals.

  They’d taken in the news as Sean and Millie had hoped they would; couldn’t give a stuff about children born out of wedlock or shotgun weddings, just so relieved that their Millie hadn’t missed the baby boat and wasn’t going to end up eccentric and alone like Mrs Buckleigh’s legendary alcoholic sister whose colourful life they’d all worried Millie was going to end up emulating.

  They’d oohed and aahed over the scan as well, pointing out barely discernible features and saying things like, ‘Looks like he’s going to have uncle Nathan’s nose, poor bugger’, and, ‘Look at those ankles – good and sturdy like Helena’s.’

  And the funny thing about the whole day had been how much a part of it Sean had felt. That was their kid they were talking about, their kid who was the centre of attention and it hadn’t even done anything yet. Everyone was so thrilled with him for providing them with a grandchild, niece, nephew or cousin and Sean had felt proud and involved.

  He’d never actively wanted to disassociate himself from Millie and their baby, but Gervase had made him realize that that was exactly where he was heading, that he’d been travelling a path that could potentially take him to a place where he didn’t know his own kid – to the place that Gervase had shown him. And he couldn’t stomach that.

  Things with Millie were still a bit fragile, though. They hadn’t resumed their relationship yet – they were taking things slowly. Sean was still deeply involved in his book, but now that they’d completed their ‘mutual-empathy exercise’ she was more understanding about the fact that he wasn’t going to be around for the next few weeks. She was over the worst of the pregnancy anyway, she said. Not so tired, not so sick, not so depressed. She was actually starting to enjoy it, feeling more energized, less needy and pathetic.

  At her parents’ the previous weekend they’d shared a bed but hadn’t gone any further than a night-time sn
uggle. They hadn’t discussed their wedding plans. Things were aloft. Things were unsettled. Millie was being very cautious, and Sean couldn’t blame her. He’d hurt her beyond belief, made her question her love for him, made her question her own judgement. She needed time to be sure she wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. And such a dramatic volte-face on the whole baby thing was probably quite hard for her to get her mind round. Not that Sean was any less nervous or unsure about the prospect of having a baby in his life – he didn’t know any babies; they were a strange and alien concept. But he was ready to give it a bash now. Definitely. Be involved. Fifty-fifty. Sleepless nights. Dirty nappies. Bring them on…

  He swiped his key card in the lock of their room and swung the door open.

  ‘Oh. My. God,’ said Millie, heading immediately for the window and looking at the view over Hyde Park. ‘This is fantastic!’ She spun away from the window and fell on to the firm mattress. ‘I can’t believe we’re really here! I feel like a big kid!’ She bounced off the bed and located the minibar. ‘Ah,’ she said pulling out a small bottle of champagne and eyeing it fondly, ‘time was I’d have drained the minibar within the first five minutes.’ She sighed and smiled and was about to put the little bottle back in the fridge when Sean took it from her hand.

  ‘You can have a little glass, can’t you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t really. I still feel so guilty about that night at Tony’s.’

  ‘Just a tiny little glass, then?’ he wheedled, pulling the foil off the neck. ‘I bet the baby would love a drop of champagne, wouldn’t you, my little buddy?’ he said, addressing Millie’s small bump.

  Millie smiled and acquiesced. ‘OK, then. Just a little one.’

  Sean cracked open the bottle and poured them each a glass. He passed one to Millie and then he raised his and proposed a toast.

  ‘What to?’ said Millie.

  Sean breathed in. What to?

  To us meeting. To you being you. To being one of the one per cent of people failed by a condom. To our baby. To being at the Ritz. To the summer. To life. To success. To love. To Gervase. To Charlie. To making mistakes and learning lessons. To my parents. To your parents. To the little bud of possibilities blossoming inside your beautiful body. To growing up. To being a man. To everything…