She was a little prick tease, that Alice, anyway. Come on, no one was really that innocent unless they were stupid. Gerry replayed the afternoon on fast forward in his mind and knew he hadn’t been imagining it, those big eyes and Lady Di smiles and infectious giggles. Come on. She’d just got cold feet and then gone all hoity-toity and made him feel like a complete dickhead. Some women were like that; they wanted to know that you wanted them so they could feel better about themselves and then make you feel like a total bell end. Maybe she was a lesbian? Yes, maybe that’s why Tony had left?
By the time Gerry crossed the hall to his bedroom he felt much better about what he was about to do, much more in control of the situation. Sandra was in bed, sitting propped up by pillows, her stomach rounding out the sheets and her eyes closed.
‘Hi, love,’ he said. ‘You feeling any better?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been sick.’
‘D’you want anything? Cup of tea?’
‘Ooh, yeah, that’d be lovely.’ Gerry turned to go but she called him back. ‘Was it good? Did the girls enjoy themselves?’
‘It was fab. Mavis and Dot loved it. She’s flat out, I put her straight to bed.’
‘Did you make her do a wee?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘I’ll get you that tea.’
Gerry had another cigarette standing by the back door as he waited for the kettle to boil. The breakfast things were still in the sink and he reminded himself to come down and wash them before Sandra got up in the morning. Not that she’d care, but because he wanted to be nice to her. Sandra had told him that Alice and Clarice had a cleaner and the memory made him hate her even more.
He left his bomber jacket hanging over a chair in the kitchen and his trainers kicked off by the back door, and then carried the tea tray to the bedroom. He half lay on the edge of their bed and poured out the tea, which Sandra sipped at gratefully.
‘Try having a biscuit,’ he said, holding out the plate, ‘you probably need some sugar.’
Sandra took one but each bite looked as if it was causing her pain. ‘It must be a bug. D’you think it’ll harm the baby?’
‘No. But I’ll ring the doctors in the morning if you aren’t any better.’
‘I’ve been thinking today. We really need to decorate this room.’
Gerry looked around at the swirling brown carpet and sad floral wallpaper. ‘Guess we do.’
‘Don’t you remember we said we’d do it when we moved in, but that was four years ago now.’
‘Time flies.’
‘But seriously, Gerry, it’s awful. D’you think we could do it before the baby comes?’
‘I don’t see why not.’
They smiled at each other and Gerry knew he was losing the moment. In a few more rounds of the clock what he was about to say would sound ridiculous. ‘Listen, San, I’ve got something to tell you. I nearly didn’t, but I don’t want to keep it from you.’ She sat forward at this and she looked white and tired so that guilt trickled down his spine for a minute. ‘Something really odd happened after the circus.’
‘Odd?’
‘I think Alice made a pass at me.’
‘You what?’ Anxiety rippled through Sandra’s voice but Gerry kept hold of her eyes. He saw sweat break out above her top lip.
‘I had to pull the car over. I didn’t know what to do.’
Sandra put her cup on to the bedside table and he saw her hands were shaking. ‘What are you talking about? Tell me exactly what happened.’
Gerry had rehearsed this bit in the kitchen and he pulled the lines from his brain as his body drowned. ‘We had a great time at the circus; the girls loved it, like I said, but Alice was quite giggly. I’ve never seen her like that before and it felt like she was flirting with me, but I thought I must be wrong because she’s your friend and everything. Anyway, we got in the car to come home and the girls fell asleep and it was really dark on the roads so I was concentrating on driving, but she turned on the radio and found this station that was playing slow songs and then she started talking about Tony and how he’d left and how lonely she felt. And I was saying nice things back, which I probably shouldn’t have, but I felt sorry for her. Then I felt her hand on my leg and I was so shocked I didn’t do anything at first, but then she squeezed my leg and started moving it upwards, towards my dick, so I pulled the car over and as soon as we were stopped she sort of lunged at me and I had to push her back and explain that I wasn’t interested.’
Sandra had won the staring competition. Gerry felt her eyes fixed on to him like a hawk: one slip and he was dead. Her voice was spookily calm. ‘What happened then?’
‘She apologised and said she must have read the signs wrong. If it hadn’t been for Dot in the back I’d have told her to get out and walk but I couldn’t turf a little girl out on a country lane. So I asked her how she could do that to you.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘Just more claptrap about being lonely. Then she started crying so I drove her home and when we got to hers she got out the car, got Dot and went inside. She didn’t even say bye.’
Gerry’s whole body was pulsating with heat. He forced himself to look at Sandra and the situation was so ridiculous he almost laughed. The words he’d said sounded absurd: they laughed at him from where he’d spewed them on to their bed.
‘Are you telling me the truth?’
‘What the fuck? Why would I lie about that?’ The anger he felt at himself was easy to translate to Sandra.
‘Because you’ve always been a dog, Gerry, and Alice is a very beautiful woman.’
He spluttered at this in what he thought was quite a convincing way. ‘Come on, San. I’d have to be mad to make a pass at her. She’s your best friend. Anyway, I love you; you’re pregnant with our baby. Give me some credit.’
The air settled slightly over this and Gerry let himself look at his wife’s stomach; she would want to believe him, he had that on his side.
‘Alice would never do something like that.’
He came and sat next to her, putting his arms round her shoulders, ready to deliver his best line, the one thought up with the help of the second cigarette. ‘You haven’t known her that long when you think about it, San. And she’s probably going a bit mad, what with Tony walking out like that.’
Sandra nodded and he saw tears on her cheeks. ‘But still, she’s meant to be my friend. I really liked her.’
Gerry pulled his wife into his chest. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe there’s more to Tony leaving than we know.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, it is pretty bizarre, to walk out on your wife and kid like that and not to even let them know where you are. Maybe there’s something about Alice that’s, I don’t know, strange or something.’ Which, when you thought about, was probably true, Gerry reasoned.
Then Sandra had to be sick again and Gerry was able to hold her hair and stroke her back, before putting her back to bed. He went downstairs and did the washing up and put Mavis’s toys back in the box under the window. He drew the curtains and plumped a few cushions. Then he got himself a tinny from the fridge and sat on the sofa to watch Match of the Day. A tiny part of him felt like a massive shit, but most of him felt as though he’d won a small war.
When Mavis came into their bedroom at six the next morning, soaked in her own wee, Gerry was able to get her cleaned and dressed and the sheets in the wash without waking Sandra. She’d only been sick once more in the night and she’d slept deeply so Gerry hoped she was on the mend. The day seemed fresh to him, as though they’d dealt with something and now they could focus on the things that mattered. As Gerry poured cereal out for Mavis he felt he’d learnt an important lesson, as if someone had stripped him to the bone and showed him what mattered. He was sure he wouldn’t let Sandra down again.
She came downstairs a bit before nine, as Gerry and Mavis were reassembling a jigsaw for the fifth time on the sitting room floor, his daughter�
�s delight actually increasing with each repetition. He felt a surge of joy at the sight of his wife in her nightie and dressing gown, a bit of colour returned to her cheeks.
‘Hey, beautiful,’ he said, ‘you look better.’
Sandra lingered in the doorway. ‘Could you keep her occupied for a minute longer? I’m going to make a phone call.’
The bottom dropped out of Gerry. ‘Who to?’
‘You know who to.’ Her voice was scratchy, like a cat’s claws on the furniture.
Gerry stood up at this and Mavis shouted, ‘Daddy. Come back.’
‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’ he tried.
‘I’m not going to leave it if that’s what you’re suggesting.’
‘Come on, love. I don’t want you upsetting yourself, not with the baby and everything.’
‘I’m not going to upset myself. I’m going to upset her.’
‘I don’t see what you’ll achieve.’
‘You sound like you don’t want me to speak to her.’
Their eyes locked and Gerry knew he’d been stupid to underestimate his wife, that all he loved about her was bound up in this response. He let Mavis pull him back towards the floor and watched Sandra shut the door. Gerry heard Sandra’s voice rise and fall as he fitted together an innocent picture of a little girl pulling a duck on a string next to a river. The simplicity of an action that required no more than the ability to locate the right piece which would then reward you by slotting into place seemed revolutionary.
Sandra burst back into the room. She walked over to where he was sitting on the floor and touched the congealed blood that had formed over the cut on the back of his head. ‘You fucking shit.’
He stood up. ‘What?’
Mavis started to cry.
‘I knew you were lying last night.’ Sandra’s eyes were red and bulging.
‘San, sit down. What are you talking about? What did she say?’
She jabbed her finger at him. ‘I bloody knew it. I knew it.’
Mavis tugged on his jeans so Gerry picked her up. ‘For God’s sake, you’re scaring your daughter.’
‘She said you made the pass at her, you shit.’
‘She’s lying.’
Sandra looked at him; they knew each other too well for this. ‘I hate you.’
‘Sandra, please.’
‘Please nothing. I should have fucking known. Everyone told me not to marry you.’
‘But I love you. I’ve always loved you.’ His words sounded pathetic, even to himself.
The tears were cascading out of her eyes now. ‘You do not love me. Don’t say that. Don’t you dare.’
‘San, please, sit down. Come on, think of the baby.’
‘Think of the baby!’ Sandra spat the words into his face.
Mavis howled.
‘Hasn’t it entered your mind that she might be lying?’ he shouted back, trying to match her anger. But in the open air the words didn’t sound as he’d meant them to, they fell into a black hole and were lost to themselves. Sandra calmed at this and looked into him; Gerry felt as if she was rooting through his bone marrow, dissecting his soul.
Finally she turned round and he heard her going upstairs. He kissed the top of Mavis’s head and tried to think of something useful, but his brain felt blinded. She came back a few minutes later, dressed. ‘You’re pathetic,’ she said as she started to put on her coat.
Gerry followed her into the hall. ‘San, please. Come back in. You haven’t eaten anything and you’ve been sick. Let me at least make you a cup of tea.’
Sandra picked up the car keys from the hall table and shut the door without looking back. Moments later he heard her driving away.
There was nothing to be done after that apart from get on with the day. Gerry felt tired and stale, ridiculous in his little box as the day unfurled relentlessly around them. And Mavis needed things like lunch and wees and playing with and so things beyond his control pulled him forward. At half past two there was a knock at the door and he foolishly answered it thinking it might be Sandra even though she had her keys. Two policemen were standing on his doorstep and for a moment he thought they’d come to arrest him for being a terrible husband.
‘Mr Loveridge?’ asked one.
Mavis hung off his leg. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m afraid your wife’s had an accident.’
Fear crashed into the house, exploding the walls with its hugeness. ‘Oh my God, is she OK?’
‘She’s alive. They’ve taken her to Cartertown General. She was very lucky, she was going double the speed limit.’
‘Oh shit.’ Gerry felt his knees buckle but knew that they couldn’t.
‘Do you know where she was going?’
He shook his head, knowing and not caring what he looked like. ‘Was anyone else hurt?’
‘No, she went into a tree.’
‘What about the baby? She’s pregnant.’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Loveridge, we don’t have that information. But we can drive you to the hospital.’
He grabbed his and Mavis’s coat but the policeman put his hand out. ‘Isn’t there a neighbour or someone you could leave her with? She might not want to see her mother in, well, in a state.’
‘Really?’ Gerry’s mind spun on to paths where Sandra was disfigured or maimed – or maybe they were lying and she was already dead? He ran to the house opposite even though he couldn’t remember the name of the woman who lived there. He knew that she had a daughter Mavis’s age and that she and Sandra often had coffee. He stumbled over his words, knowing that he wasn’t making any sense, but the woman seemed nice and reliable and told him not to worry, Mavis could stay as long as he needed and to give Sandra her love. He nearly laughed.
The drive to the hospital was much too slow. Time wound itself around their car, dragging them backwards, creasing the road. A heavy rain was falling, slicking the tarmac and making driving dangerous. Except this was now and that was then, when a bright winter sun had shone out of a pale blue sky.
The policemen dropped him at the front entrance and he had to search his mind to remember his and then his wife’s name at the reception desk so that the young girl looked at him as though he was mad and hovered her finger over the security button. Eventually she gave him directions which he felt unable to follow, tripping over himself as he ran down corridors, trying to focus his eyes so that his mind could process the words on the signs above his head. He wondered at one point if he was dreaming, or if maybe he was dead and this was hell, an endless succession of hospital corridors with your wife in an unknown state at the end of one of them.
Finally he found the right ward but he wished it was wrong. As he opened the doors he could feel the sickness heavy in the air, hear it in the silence which clung all over the space. Gerry whispered Sandra’s name to the nurse behind the desk and she told him to wait in the room next to her desk, she’d fetch the doctor. The room was as blank and terrifying as anywhere in which you are about to receive bad news. Gerry stood by the window, looking down into the car park where people came and went and laughed and smoked, as if nothing was wrong. Eventually a tired-looking young man in a long white coat came in, shutting the door behind him.
‘Please sit down, Mr Loveridge,’ he said, indicating one of the chairs. He sank into another one, as if he hadn’t sat for days.
But Gerry stayed standing; his body was alive with nerves and he didn’t think he’d be able to sit. ‘Is she OK?’
‘She’s sedated at the moment, just coming round. She’ll be OK, but she’s had a nasty accident.’
‘I don’t understand. What happened?’
‘According to witnesses she was driving too fast and she lost control on a corner and went straight into a tree. Even though she was wearing a seat belt the force of the crash threw her into the steering wheel and the windscreen.’
‘Where was she?’
The doctor looked at his notes. ‘Kelsey.’
‘Kelsey?’
�
�Had you had an argument?’
Gerry nodded. ‘But also, she’s been sick for the past twenty-four hours and she left without eating or drinking anything. And she’s pregnant, of course.’
‘Mr Loveridge, please sit down.’
Gerry did as he was told this time; the air was being sucked out of the room, lights flashing before his eyes.
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Loveridge, but the baby didn’t survive.’
Gerry felt his eyes twitch.
‘We had to operate as soon as she arrived. She was bleeding internally. The baby was already dead. He’d been killed by the force of the crash.’
‘He?’
The doctor blushed at this. ‘Sorry, yes, it was a boy.’
‘Oh God.’
‘She would have died if we hadn’t operated.’
Gerry stood up, the need to finish this conversation as pressing as anything had yet been in his life. ‘Yes. Thank you. Can I see her now?’
‘Mr Loveridge, there’s more, I’m afraid. Your wife’s injuries were extensive and severe. Because of the pregnancy her bleeding was hard to contain and the baby had damaged some of her internal organs. I’m very sorry but we had to remove part of her womb.’
Gerry felt he was missing something; a memory flickered in his brain. ‘Her womb?’
‘What I’m trying to say is that she won’t be able to get pregnant again.’
‘But …’ The implications of what he’d done rushed through Gerry. ‘But she has to. I mean … she’ll want to. She’ll need to.’
‘I know it’s a lot to take in, Mr Loveridge, but she has no chance of conceiving again. I’m very sorry. We do have counsellors available in the hospital to help you come to terms with this.’
Gerry steadied himself by leaning against the wall. ‘Does she know?’
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