‘Ha ha.’ I closed my eyes and tipped my head back, raising my face towards the sun. Summer had landed, and every day since arriving back from Wales had been hot. Being eight months pregnant in the heat was no carnival, though. I’d taken to wearing an oversized cotton smock thing that gave maximum ventilation. I’d found it among Grandma’s old 1960s clothes and immediately liberated it. Joe said I looked like my head was poking out the top of a multicoloured tepee. I cared not. It was cool and draughty and, coupled with an ice cream from the village shop, was the closest I could get to comfort in my current state.
‘Crab with indigestion,’ said Joe, his voice low.
I chuckled. Giving animal attributes to runners on the common was a game Joe had devised during his walks with Brutus. Joe had grown rather close to Harriet and Arthur, and because he was generally unwilling to go back to work and had already redesigned my garden, gone through all my personal things, read all my poems and was getting bored with putting my bookshelves in alphabetical order, then colour wheel order, then genre/alphabetical order with a nod to colour wheel coordination, he’d offered to take Brutus for a walk one day. One day had become every day and, now I was back, I joined them. Joe had to walk at a snail’s pace and stop every few yards for me to have a rest but we occupied the time by playing the Runner Animal game. I turned my attention to the next runner, a man with his fists in tight little balls clenched near his armpits. He leant forward with his chin tucked under as if his forehead were pulling the rest of him along.
‘Evil dive-bombing bat.’
‘Good one!’ Joe wrestled with Brutus for the stick.
My thoughts wandered to Andrew and how I used to watch him run round the lake in the mornings. The memory of Andrew brought a heat to my cheeks. The morning after the party, and the undignified forest fumbling, Bradley Manor had been a scene of quiet, hung-over activity. Heads sagged over the arduous task of packing up a film unit. The contents of the lighting truck lay strewn on the lawn while guys in dark glasses and caps pulled low made grim work of the inventory and repack. An ant-like trail of well-dressed men and women trekked in and out of the extended wardrobe trailer hauling bloodied costumes in plastic coverings. Art department guys stacked the boxes of prosthetic guts, limbs, half-cats and buckets of blood that had so captivated me at the beginning but were now mundane, in the back of the art truck. Everything had blood on it. Claire and Caroline had wheeled their boxy make-up cases to a waiting vehicle and, after exchanging email addresses with me, they’d jumped in and driven away. In the kind of silence that comes from two people who no longer need to keep up appearances for the sake of a working relationship, Martha and I had exited the barn house and stood between our waiting four-by-fours, into which Tilly and Archie were already buckled. I’d faced her, deliberating over whether I should say the obligatory but outright falsehood ‘Nice working with you. Hope to do it again someday’, or the more truthful ‘I hate you. I hope I never have the misfortune of running into you at an all-you-can-eat buffet’. I’d opened my mouth to utter a version of the former, because deep down I’m a non-confrontational scaredy-cat, but without another glance Martha had bent down, picked up her rucksack and climbed into her car. I’d been much too ashamed of my behaviour the previous night that a final snub from Martha had barely even tickled my pride. I’d climbed into the four-by-four next to Archie and seen Andrew crossing the crowded courtyard. I knew he’d seen me by the way he’d lowered his glasses off his head, averted his gaze and was taking great interest in a technical bit of equipment in the hands of a camera assistant. Our four-by-four had swung slowly out of the courtyard and Andrew had diverted the camera assistant’s attention to the rear of the camera van, enabling him to keep his back to our passing vehicle.
I looked again at the ‘dive-bombing bat’ guy and pondered over what animal Andrew would have been. A rat or weasel or something gross and slimy. Like an axolotl.
‘An axo-what?’ Joe said. ‘I’d say more like a cockatoo with a club foot and a drink problem.’
I laughed and watched the runner in question. The left side of his body seemed to be a reluctant participant in the ordeal, and dragged a little behind the right side, giving the hobbling impression of a—
‘Hey!’ I said, peering closer at the runner. ‘That’s Douglas!’
‘Who? The cockatoo?’ Joe squinted at the figure.
‘DOUGLAS!’ I called out. ‘DOUGLAS! OVER HERE!’ I waved my arms. Douglas stopped and looked in our direction. Recognition spread across his face and he laboured over to us in his strange injured-bird lumber.
‘Emma,’ Douglas puffed as he reached us. ‘You’re back.’ He made to give me a hug.
Brutus growled.
‘I’d rather not, Douglas, you’re all sweaty.’
‘Oh yes. Quite,’ Douglas said, sidestepping away from the grumbling Doberman. I introduced Douglas to Joe. They shook hands and immediately commented on the weather.
‘What are you doing here? You live miles away,’ I said, cutting through the dullness of polite small talk between two people who have just met.
‘Oh, I run here with my girlfriend.’
Joe and I looked up and down the common. Not another soul was in sight.
‘She prefers to run alone.’ Douglas pushed his glasses up his sweaty nose. Joe and I stifled laughter.
‘Have, ah . . . have you seen Sophie at all?’ Douglas asked.
‘No,’ I said, my smile and good mood immediately dropping. ‘Should I have?’ Joe watched me intently. Douglas shuffled from foot to foot.
‘Oh, ah . . . well, you see, she was asking, ah, when you’d be back in town.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Does she want something else of mine? My house? My baby, maybe?’ I was aware that I was potentially coming off as a bit of a psycho.
‘Oh, ah, no, I don’t think she wants any of those things.’ Douglas’s gaze flitted from me to Joe to Brutus, who looked up with crushing contempt. ‘I think maybe she just, ah, wants to, ah . . . She’s been asking about the . . .’ Douglas indicated my stomach, protruding into the space between us. ‘And she needed to talk about, er . . . Well, I’m not sure, entirely.’
The three of us stood quietly.
‘I’m sorry, Douglas,’ I said. ‘I’m a bit all over the place at the moment.’ I rubbed my stomach.
‘Oh, quite understandable. I shouldn’t have said anything.’ He checked his watch. ‘Golly, I must get on. If I don’t keep running Jemima might catch me up on her second lap.’ He looked at me with his intense bespectacled eyes for a few moments. ‘You’re looking truly beautiful, Emma.’
‘Thanks. It’s really good to see you,’ I said.
Douglas arced round the vicinity of Brutus, gave me a strange, minimal-body-contact, shoulder-patting kind of hug, said goodbye to Joe and headed off down the path, the right side of his body hefting his disinclined left.
‘You must meet Jemima soon,’ he called out, looking behind him warily.
After another few throws of the stick for Brutus, Joe and I started our meandering stroll back to the cottage. Joe remained silent, allowing me to mull over what Douglas had said about Sophie, but as we got closer to the golf course near the cottage, he spoke.
‘You know, Sophie probably doesn’t want to take your baby.’
‘Humph.’
‘Maybe she just wants to try and make up.’ Joe hooked his arm through mine. We watched Brutus allow a fluffy scrap of a dog to sniff his bottom.
‘Well, what if I don’t want to make up?’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, if Sophie and Ned stay together’ – Joe paused to allow me a grimace – ‘then she’ll be part of your life forever. And your baby’s life.’
‘So what are you saying?’ I grumbled.
‘I’m saying . . .’ Joe replied gently. ‘Maybe it’s time to move on?’
I stopped walking. ‘You’re one to talk!’
Joe took a step back.
>
‘Your slut of an ex-fiancée is still in your flat while you live in my attic. You barely work, you have absurd ideas about making a children’s book and you spend your days walking the neighbour’s dog! You’ve made me a vegetable garden I don’t even want and you watch two Richard Curtis films a day. If that’s not the perfect example of someone not moving on, then I don’t know what is!’
Instead of registering shock or outrage, Joe’s face filled with pity. Guilt plunged into my sides and I stormed off knowing I’d said some cruel and unnecessary things. Joe didn’t catch me up, and after a few yards of angry storming my back ached and if I didn’t sit down I was in very real danger of peeing myself. Another bench seat popped into view (oh thank the sweet lord for the plentiful bench seats on Wimbledon Common). I plopped onto it and kicked the dusty ground with my flip-flopped foot. Sometime later, Joe’s shadow fell across me. Brutus arrived at my feet and nuzzled my knees, leaving a shiny stripe of drool on my dress/tepee. I scuffed my feet a little longer, gathering my thoughts. The whole Andrew thing had been an undignified disaster. Douglas was busy with his new girlfriend and Helen was busy with a huge event at work. My relationship with my sister had disintegrated. She’d stopped trying to get hold of me since the day I made her cry just before I lost Archie. The hospital had recently sent me a form with a birth plan outline. I was to tick boxes about emergency caesareans, epidurals, latex allergies and so forth, and was also to indicate the names of any birth partners, which only highlighted how very few options I had. A while ago Alex and I had discussed the option of her coming home to be my birth partner, but that didn’t look likely now. Helen was so queasy she pretty much had a general just to get her bikini line waxed. Sinead said she was never going into another maternity suite again. Sophie? No. Ned? Hell, no. Mum? No frigging way. Which really only left me with . . . well, nobody. My heart had fractured and I had no idea how or when it would ever feel whole again. I had a continual untethered sensation. And I felt very, very alone. Joe, the kind and overtly comfortable man who’d arrived uninvited into my life had been my only constant. I glanced at him standing above me, an impassive look on his face. Brutus crouched beside him with a look of doggy boredom.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean any of it.’
Joe sat down and pulled me to him. He smelt of soap and dog slobber.
‘Everything’s just a bit crap,’ I sighed. ‘I didn’t mean to take it out on you.’
‘What exactly is so crap?’ Joe asked.
I snorted a well-where-do-I-begin type snort.
‘That whole thing with Andrew, for a start.’ I shuddered. ‘I mean, ew, how gross must I have looked?’
‘Not that gross.’ Joe’s voice reverberated in the ear that was pressed to his chest.
‘Lying to Mum is completely stressing me out. I can’t make Ned sell the ice cream vans now; it sounds like he’s doing really well. Uncle Mike is going to find out at some point that his son was not in a Disney-style movie about friendly cats from the afterlife and I just don’t think I can take his disappointment when he finds out Archie is starring in a slasher zombie guts-and-bra film. And what if they find out I nearly lost Archie at the lake? They’d never trust me again. I’m about to have a baby and I don’t know if I even trust myself!’ I sucked in a big breath. ‘And even though all of that is really major stuff, the thing I’m most sad about . . .’ I sniffed back a tear ‘. . . is my sister. I miss her so much I feel nauseous.’
Joe remained quiet, stroking the top of my head.
‘I’m afraid of doing this alone.’
‘The baby?’
‘Everything. The life ahead of me. All of it.’
‘You think you’re alone?’ Joe said, leaning back to look me in the eye. I nodded.
Joe smiled. ‘What am I, a figment of your imagination?’
‘No.’ I looked up at him and began to cry. ‘I’d have imagined you with better hair.’
Joe pulled me into a hug and waited for my sobs to subside.
‘Everything’s going to be all right, you’ll see,’ he said, giving the top of my head a kiss.
I sat up and wiped my cheeks. ‘That’s it?’ I said. ‘That’s your advice?’
Joe leant forward and scratched Brutus under his muzzle. ‘Yep.’ He smiled.
‘Well, you’re no Martha Beck, are you?’
‘I have no idea who you’re talking about.’ He attached the lead to Brutus’s collar and stood, offering me his hand. ‘Let’s go home.’
I stood. Joe linked his arm with mine and we crossed the lane towards the cottage in companionable silence. I headed for the front door and Joe headed for Harriet and Arthur’s to drop Brutus off.
‘Joe?’ I said across the low wall.
‘Hmm?’
‘I love the vegetable garden.’
Joe grinned. ‘I know.’
Later that night, after an early Thai takeaway, Joe came down from his bedroom in a nice shirt and jeans and stood in front of me as I sat on the sofa.
‘How do I look?’ he said, spreading his arms.
‘Like a nice man about to go out for a nice night with his nice friends, have a couple of nice pints and bring home some slaggy little teen who I’ll meet in the kitchen at 4 a.m.’ Joe made a face. ‘It’s not that kind of night.’ He checked his reflection in the French doors, untucking and retucking his shirt. ‘And she wasn’t a teen.’
‘Nineteen,’ I said, flicking through the channels.
‘It was her birthday the week after.’
‘She was nineteen when she was rummaging about in my freezer looking for sex ice.’
Joe retucked his shirt again.
‘What did happen with Yuliana?’ I said her name in a horrible Russian accent.
‘I told you,’ he said, pulling out his shirt again. ‘We went for coffee. And then nothing. We weren’t suited.’
I smirked but decided to leave him alone. He seemed harassed enough with the challenge of shirt-in/shirt-out. He moved to the hall mirror to fuss with a perturbing curl and I moved to the freezer and found a perturbing container.
‘What’s this?’
‘What’s what?’ Joe came into the kitchen pushing the curl to one side. It fell back into place immediately.
‘This!’ I said, pulling out with a mad flourish the unlabelled ice cream container I’d seen on skype a few weeks ago.
‘Oh.’
‘I thought I told you to throw it out.’
‘I couldn’t!’ Joe appeared to be fighting a battle of moralities. ‘It’s too delicious! Plus, look at this.’ He pulled a notecard from behind a fridge magnet the shape of the David’s most interesting part. ‘Each flavour from Ned and Sophie’s Organic Ice Creamery is aligned with a charity. Five per cent of the proceeds of this flavour go to Bedfordshire Wildlife Rescue.’ He gave me his best wounded puppy look.
‘Look at the photo of the otter orphan . . . awww.’ I grabbed the card.
‘God damn him,’ I said, unable to tear my eyes from the baby otter’s fuzzy schnozzle.
Charity ice cream? Selfridges? Orphaned otters? Ned was hitting all the right notes. He was Michael Crawford. Me and my notes? We were Prince Philip being struck with a soggy mop. There was a knock at the door and Joe trotted out of the room.
‘Who’s that?’
‘My friends,’ Joe said from halfway down the hall.
‘You could have told me, I’m in my pyjamas!’ I said, checking my front for gari puff.
The door opened and boisterous, deep-voiced salutations reverberated down the hall while I replaced the ice cream in the freezer and checked my PJ bottoms for butt-area holes.
‘Where’s the little lady?’ a booming voice said, then a grinning bearded man arrived in the kitchen. ‘This must be her.’ He bounded over to me. ‘Hi, I’m Dan. Been looking forward to meeting you!’ He grabbed my shoulder with a meaty palm, planted a bushy kiss on both cheeks then thrust a cool, plastic-coated squishy lump in my hand. ‘Joe says you’re q
uite the cook. Get your dinner manglers round those and let me know what you think.’
‘Right, hi, thanks,’ I said, reeling from the lively greeting.
‘What is it?’
‘Sausages!’ Dan said, grinning through his scruffy black beard. His brown eyes glowed with an inborn joy. Huge biceps strained at his checked flannel shirt like overstuffed pillows and a vast chest housed his giant voice.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘Unusual gift, but thank you.’
Joe arrived in the kitchen with a tall man with messy blond hair and the same kind of joyful grin. ‘Dan’s a butcher,’ he said.
‘Best sausages you’ll ever taste,’ the blond man said. ‘Hi, I’m Tim.’ He crossed the room and planted two less hairy kisses on my cheeks. ‘Nice to meet you, finally; we’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘You too,’ I said, remembering that Tim was a lawyer whose main counsel to Joe, upon hearing about Katy, was to get out there and shag a lot of women but to ‘get a johnny round ya before you pound ’er’.
‘Joe says you’re the most chilled-out pregnant chick he’s ever come across.’ Tim placed a hand on Joe’s shoulder.
‘Does he?’ I said, looking over at a grinning Joe.
‘Remember Stephanie, that one Christmas?’ Dan did a mock shudder. ‘Whoa, what a psycho.’
‘Who’s Stephanie?’ I said.
‘My brother’s wife,’ Joe said. ‘Pregnant with twins and hormonally terrifying.’
‘Ran after Alistair with a carving knife,’ Tim said. ‘Got any beers?’
‘She was carving at the time.’ Joe opened the fridge. ‘Not trying to kill him.’
‘She was making omelettes. You don’t carve whipped eggs, mate.’
Joe got out three beers, poured me a juice and we moved to the living area. For the next half an hour I laughed at Dan and Tim competing over who could tell the most embarrassing story about teenage Joe. Then, while Joe showed Dan round the herb garden, Tim divulged his plan. According to Tim, Joe had fallen for Katy far too hard and far too young. He’d never ‘tested his tackle’, so it was his duty to get Joe back out there and see what he’d missed since high school. I came to realise that, although a little rough around the edges (especially for a tax lawyer), Tim wasn’t as bad as he first came across. His intentions were noble. He was helping his friend the best way he knew how. Getting him blind drunk and shoving him towards lots of easy women. Not an NHS-approved form of therapy, but one many still adhere to.
How Not to Fall in Love, Actually Page 26
