No, I could not call him. This was fucked up. It was destructive, it was aggressive, and it was damn weird. Walk away Emma. For your own sanity, walk away.
Chapter 3
I walked home feeling decidedly positive. It was April now and I’d already spotted irises, poppies and early sweet peas in the gardens en route to the train station. I skipped along under my turquoise umbrella as rain splattered down from turbulent skies. The raindrops were warm and tasted sweet.
As usual, I checked the faces in doorways for Tina. As usual, other faces peered back. I was fond of many of my clients but there was something particularly special about Tina; she was just so … likeable. Perhaps she had moved on to another part of the country. Perhaps she now lived in a borough where the council didn’t try to house rape victims in mixed lodges. I could but hope.
By the time I climbed onto the train, I was thinking about my dinner. It was almost certainly my turn to cook and it had been a while since we’d had fajitas. Mexican would go down well with Dave and I owed him a favour after pinching his cheese …
That’s when I saw her – Tina.
She looked up and I saw the fright in her eyes. She poised herself to stand but then looked around from side to side and saw that she had nowhere to run. The train raced toward the suburbs. She was enormous now; thank goodness the baby had survived.
“Are you okay?” I asked her.
She nodded.
“Are you housed?”
She stared at the floor. Her torn coat and grubby rucksack said it all.
“Jesus, Tina! You’re almost ready to give birth. Please let us be involved.”
“I don’t want to go back to that B&B. I didn’t like the man.”
“You don’t have to go back to the B&B,” I explained. I looked at her face, so pale and sunken. “Tina, why did you run?”
She shrugged, but I could see her shoulders trembling.
“We’ve all missed you,” I told her.
“Yeah, right.”
“Of course we have! Every drop-in session, my eyes were glued to the door.”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
I saw a smile break on her lips. She had a beautiful smile. “I wasn’t being a twat, Emma. That man really freaked me out. He was in his room, on his own, yelling and banging on the wall.”
“We’ll find you somewhere else.”
“But will it be any better?”
“Yes! You’re in your third trimester. They’d better make damn sure they find you something suitable. And if they don’t, I’ll chain myself to the council building until they do.”
She laughed. “You always tell me not to cause a scene.”
I smiled and we shared a few moments of laughter, remembering some of Tina’s less delicate conversations with the council.
The train ground to a halt. “Come on,” I said. “We’re getting off.”
“Why?”
“So that we can get the next train back into town.”
“Can you get me into the night shelter?” she asked, brightening.
“Yes, but first, I’m going to treat you to dinner.”
“I don’t want to put upon you …”
“Indulge me; I’ve been looking for an excuse to eat out.”
* * *
There was a spring in my step when I arrived home three hours, and a Wagamama’s ramen, later. I burst open the door ready to tell Nicky the good news. Of course, I couldn’t break confidentiality and name Tina, but there was no harm in telling her that a particularly vulnerable missing client had turned up.
However, I found that our flat was unexpectedly lit – dark, but with flickers of colour. I could see the backs of heads on the sofa and heard, “Oh, for God’s sake! He’s got an arm off!” on the television. Awesome, it was movie night! I smiled to myself and leapt onto a beanbag on the floor.
“Good day?” asked Nicky.
“It was, as it happens. Absolutely marvellous.”
I soon found myself chuckling along to Shaun of the Dead. It was one of my absolute favourites and being in a brilliant mood made it even better.
“Has Peter Serafinowicz ever played a likeable character in anything?” I asked.
“He’s not too bad in Coupling,” said a voice from the armchair.
“He’s not in Coupling,” was my automatic response.
Hang on – that voice was familiar … Suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I felt my vaginal muscles twitch. Dare I look around?
“Yes he is; that’s where he met his wife.” It was that damn, deep, assertive voice that I’d heard before – argumentative as ever.
“He is married to Sarah Alexander, but he’s not in Coupling,” I replied.
I had to confirm my suspicions. There was no sense wasting goose bumps on the wrong man. I dared myself to turn around. I slowly rotated my head, feeling that neck movement would be more discreet than torso revolution.
My heartbeat skidded to a halt. Sure enough, there was that square, self-assured face staring back at me. The last time he had stared at me had been moments before we … Eek! I found myself blushing. Thank goodness it was dark. Rapidly, I transferred my gaze back toward the general direction of the television.
What was I supposed to do now? I mean certainly, I could sit here and watch the end of the film, but what then? Would I have to speak to him? Well, I couldn’t not speak to him. I wished I’d called him when I’d had the chance – anything to have cleared the air. Letting two months churn by had only served to make facing him even harder. I should have known that I’d bump into him again sooner or later.
I wondered if he could tell I’d put on a little weight. My flowing cornflower blouse hid them well, but I knew that they were there – unwanted pounds, mocking me. Was he sitting there, looking at me and thinking, ‘How could I have done the squelchy with that hippo?’
It is difficult concentrating on a film when a virtual stranger whose bottom you fingered happens to be sitting right behind you. If they’d swapped the film for Dogville, I would not have noticed. The episode on the kitchen worktop replayed in my mind, as it had done so many times before.
Finally, the credits rolled and Queen played: ‘Ooh, you make me live …’ I heard Dave get up and shortly after, the bathroom door slammed shut.
“Right, who’s for a cup of tea?” asked Nicky, springing up off the sofa.
No! Don’t go! Don’t leave me here with the man who helped me break at least seven kitchen hygiene rules!
It was too late; she had gone. I prayed that Simon would get up and go to the toilet too, but then I remembered that we only had one bathroom. I could get up and go to my room, but that would be beyond rude, besides which, I’d have to walk past him to get there. I couldn’t risk any more eye contact – cringe.
“So …” he began, and then trailed off.
“So,” I echoed, turning slightly and looking past him.
There was a long pause.
‘Ooh, you make me live!’ blared the television.
“How have you been?” “How are you?” we asked, at once.
“Fine.” “Good.”
There was another long pause.
“So you’ve been well?” he asked.
“Yes. You? Have you been well?”
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
“We’ve both been well. Super.”
“Yes. That is super. I’ve very glad you’re well, naturally.”
‘Ooh, I’ve been wandering round,
But I still come back to you.’
I wondered if I should turn the TV off …
“So, everything with you is … well.”
“Yes.”
The bathroom door opened. Thank God. I heard Dave’s footsteps back in the room. Finally, relief from the terrible embarrassment of having to tell a former lover that I was well.
Dave chuckled. “I completel
y forgot that we tried to set you two up!” he said. “Man, wasn’t that a night?”
“Mmm,” we both squeaked.
Chapter 4
It was the hottest day of the year – a fact that had far from escaped my notice. The humidity clung to my face, forming pools of water on my brow. My eyes stung from the grass pollen lurking in the air. In fact, the heat was getting to me so much that I found I had to pause before continuing my walk up the stairs.
I felt light-headed. Still, I was looking forward to seeing Tina and doing our follow-up. Her baby was overdue, so this was almost certainly the last time I’d see her before she became a mother. From what I’d been able to glean on the phone, she was thriving. She loved her flat and had even managed to find an affordable second hand car – something that thrilled her to bits.
Just as I was about to knock on the door to her flat, a wave of heat spread across my head. I felt prickles all over my skin. I realised that I was having difficulty seeing properly …
The next thing I knew, everything seemed to be dark. I didn’t feel that I’d been asleep, but something wasn’t right. I appeared to be slumped on the floor of a corridor. The side of my ribs stung. I looked up and saw a pair of intense green eyes looking down at me. As I began to focus, I recognised Tina.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I think you must have fainted,” came the soft, soothing tones of Tina’s voice.
“I did?”
I tried to sit up. This wasn’t right. I was supposed to be supporting Tina, not the other way around. I noticed that her face had filled out a little; her skin seemed smoother and radiant; even her hair was shinier.
“You’re looking well,” I told her.
“I wish I could say the same to you,” she said, looking deeply concerned.
“Thanks,” I replied, trying to laugh but finding that it hurt.
“Let’s get you to the doctor.”
“It was just a faint,” I tried to reassure her.
She replied firmly, “Do you usually faint?”
* * *
I had to get a lift home from the doctors; I felt too flabbergasted to walk. How could I put one foot in front of the other having heard what I’d just heard? I was so gobsmacked that it was as much as I could do to remember to breathe. A blizzard of questions stormed through my mind.
How the hell was I pregnant? I was on the pill and had been for years. I never missed a single day – I knew this because I took it with my other medications.
How the hell could I have gotten to be twenty-three weeks pregnant without noticing? I mean sure, I knew I was putting on weight, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that a baby might be in there building itself a tent! My particular pill prescription meant that I only bled every three months. Why hadn’t I noticed that three had become five?
How the hell was I going to tell the father? ‘Father’? The word just sounded so wrong, so out of place. That man had screwed me on a kitchen cabinet – there was nothing paternal about that. I could barely even make small talk with him. How was I ever going to tell him that somehow that crazy, insane glitch in our otherwise flimsy and frosty association, had resulted in the creation of a twenty-three-week-old mini-us?
How the hell – how the hell – how the hell?
I stamped up and down on the spot. Then I thought of the baby. Would he or she be happy about the aggressive wobbling? My body was no longer my own. There was an uninvited guest at the party.
However, accepting that I was pregnant, accepting that I was nearly in my third trimester, and telling the father were all temporary problems and relatively small in the overall scheme of things. There was something else, something much bigger and much more crucial – something that could harm both me and my baby, perhaps permanently. I withdrew a packet of little white pills from my handbag and frowned.
* * *
I sat on the sofa surrounded by a spectrum of tissues – my tears really brought out their colours. I looked at them – at least four dozen. I hadn’t expected to get through four dozen tissues when I awoke this morning.
It was at times like this that I wished I had a more sympathetic father. ‘Get rid!’ he’d probably say. It was because of comments just like that, that I hadn’t spoken to him in four years. My mother had died when I was three, so I didn’t have a clue what she would say, except perhaps ‘Get away from your father, he’s not a good man.’
Tina had been a star. She may have been a client, but fate dictated that it was Tina, recovered-drug-addict soon-to-be mother, tower of strength, Tina, who was with me just after I heard the news. Unaware of my personal circumstances, she had congratulated me (I doubted anybody else would) and then lent me a book on pregnancy, which happened to be in the boot of her new car.
As I flicked through it now, I realised that I’d already passed many of the milestones. A test from the chemist was no use to me, I hadn’t had morning sickness, and I’d certainly missed the twelve-week scan.
It was all too weird to get my head around, and was too soon to know what I wanted to do. Yet I had to; at twenty-three weeks, I only had a few days left to make a decision about whether I wanted to …
I couldn’t even think the word. It was peculiar. All my life I’d been pro-choice. Yet now, with a baby living inside me, I could barely even bring myself to think the ‘A’ word. It just felt … somehow … wrong.
“What’s been going on in here? Has somebody slaughtered Rainbow Bright?” resounded Nicky’s high-pitched fruity tones.
I smiled, weakly.
“Oh Emma, you’ve been crying!” she said, hurrying around to the front of the settee.
I decided to spit it out before I lost my nerve: “I’m pregnant.”
Nicky fell about laughing.
I didn’t laugh.
She continued to laugh.
I didn’t.
Eventually, she stopped laughing and studied me carefully. “What?” she asked, softly.
“Twenty-three weeks.”
She laughed again, but this time in a nervous, jerky manner. “How?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been feeling a bit strange, I suppose, but nothing that made me even imagine I could be pregnant.”
“But you have to have sex to be pregnant.”
Accidentally, a sly smile slipped out, and then I nodded, earnestly.
“But I’ve been trying to get you laid for months!” she remarked, looking most indignant. “Hey, if you were seeing somebody, you only had to say.” Then she looked genuinely hurt and added, “Why didn’t you tell me about him?” Next, shock. “Is he married?”
I shook my head.
“Well then, who is he?”
“I should tell him before I tell anybody else.”
“So it’s somebody I know?” she inferred. I could hear the cogs whirring in her brain as she went back through the social calendar in her mind, month by month.
Sooner or later, she’d twig. She opened her mouth; I braced myself. “Wait! It’s dangerous for you to be pregnant isn’t it?”
I tapped the packet of pills in my pocket, and nodded.
“Holy crap, Emma.”
“I know,” I said softly.
She took a deep breath and stood up. She began pacing, which did nothing to calm my nerves. “Does the father know about … those?”
“No, not yet. He doesn’t know about any of it.”
“Are you two still together?”
“No.”
“Oh shit, Emma!”
I sighed, heavily. I didn’t like what she was saying, but she was only vocalising my own thoughts.
“How did you meet him?”
I took a deep breath. Telling her who the father was seemed harder than telling her that I was pregnant. I bit my lip, dropped my head and peered up at her guiltily. I could see the more unruly members of my eyebrows.
“Who?”
I let out a deep sigh.
“Who?”
“Simon,” I muttered.
“Sorry?”
“Simon,” I shouted.
She stared at me, the blank expression on her face mirrored in her bewildered brown eyes. She started laughing again. “No really, who was it?”
I said nothing.
“Oh my God! You’re serious?”
I nodded.
“But you two hated each other,” she exclaimed.
“I thought you said I wasn’t that harsh?” I asked, suddenly concerned. I had known the air wasn’t clear between us, but Nicky made it sound practically opaque.
“You argued with him all night! How the hell did you get from that to …” she paused and pointed at my belly, “… that!”
“I wish I could tell you.”
“What, you can’t remember?”
“Yeah, I can remember. I just don’t know how it happened.”
“Well you must know something. People don’t just spontaneously start making babies.”
“Actually … that’s pretty much exactly how it happened.”
* * *
I felt somewhat foolish for thinking that watching Shaun of the Dead with a former lover was awkward. Exchanging stilted small talk was nothing compared with what I had to do now.
Thankfully, the café had air conditioning. The summer was getting boastful. It bombarded us with wall-to-wall sunshine day after day, with warm breezes that lured pollen from plants everywhere. It wasn’t the ideal climate for a flustered woman in her second trimester.
The fact that I knew so little about Simon was disturbing. There was a baby growing in my tummy – half his, half mine – and the only things about him that I really knew were that he made an extremely annoying dinner guest and was particularly rough in bed (or in kitchen, as the case may be). Who was this stranger who had gatecrashed my womb?
Every time the café door opened, my insides spun. Or was it the baby kicking? How soon could you feel a baby kick? I was ridiculously unprepared. In fact, this whole situation was ridiculous. I kept expecting to wake up and find that it was all a dream, or discover that I was the victim of a hidden camera show. I mean sure, I’d heard of women who didn’t know they were pregnant until they were spitting out a baby, but I’d never imagined that I could be one of those. Surely a pregnancy would have exacerbated my health problems, but I hadn’t noticed any change at all.
The Ice Marathon Page 3
