The House We Called Home

by Jenny Oliver

  In this heady parallel universe she had been given her twenties. A time that she had spent in her little cottage with Bobby, playing at being grown-ups. Planting wisteria to grow up round the door, baking cupcakes in a frilly-edged apron, drinking coffee in huge Central Perk mugs that they’d bought after visiting the Friends set on an LA road trip after honeymooning at Disneyland, and watching as Bobby built a chiminea pizza oven in the back garden while she Instagrammed it. All things she was more than happy doing, things she had never not wanted. But things that, now she wasn’t doing them, seemed like a totally different world. Things that, if it meant having Bobby back, she would be happy to carry on doing forever. But things that, at moments just before she fell asleep in her London bed, she felt guilty for being pleased she wasn’t doing.

  The haircut had been a present from the KittyCats. A mark of her new life. They had frogmarched her into Toni & Guy and stayed to sip complimentary Prosecco and take selfies with her before and after the chop.

  It was strange the idea of her dad being on Instagram. Watching them all. Viewing their lives from afar. Amy hadn’t really put much of her London life up out of fear of looking to Bobby’s friends at home like she might be having too much fun – only the odd snap of her smashed avocado #brunch – but it was enough to show that she was starting to move on. The photos the KittyCats had taken – posing with Amy’s giant severed plait – had felt too symbolic to post on her timeline. Not least because one of the reasons she had kept her hair long was because Bobby liked it that way.

  The haircut had ended up being symbolic for a completely different reason. It was before the night of her first actual Tinder date. Helped along by the frenzied cajoling of the KittyCats and an Oreo martini, that date had been with Gus.

  Amy had been so repulsed by him, like she had been forced to scrape the bottom of the barrel having loved and lost the very best and he so clearly felt likewise – which she had difficulty reckoning with since she was so obviously a cut above looks-wise – that they had drowned their sorrows in a conveyer belt of a florid purple cocktail called Unicorn Tears and pints of Camden Pale Ale respectively. In the morning she had left Gus’s studio apartment, scampering away while he pretended to sleep, her untameable bed-hair a white blonde puffball, and sat mortified on the tube looking like a scarecrow, silently cringing and swearing off unicorns forever.

  Two months later she was knocking on his door.

  Now, as she sat at the long bare-wood table with Stella across from her inspecting her hair, taking a sip of wine and saying, ‘It’ll grow back,’ Amy realised that she didn’t want it to grow back. From the moment the skinny black jean-clad stylist had held up the mirror so she could see the back, ruffling the choppy layers with insouciant disinterest at her thoughts on his masterpiece, she had wanted her hair back to exactly how it had been before. But her internal recoil at the mention of it growing back now made her realise for the first time that back wasn’t where she wanted to go. She wasn’t the girl in the cottage any more and this cut might come with its own host of problems but it was nothing compared to keeping waist-length waves under control, especially when your husband liked it when you wore it loose.

  She heard Gus swear at the video game. She rested her hand on her stomach. The problem was that where she was right now wasn’t where she wanted to be either.

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said, unable to hold it in any longer.

  Gus flinched. The video game made the noise of someone violently dying.

  Her mother’s hand stilled on the Country Life. ‘Oh my goodness!’

  Stella snorted into her red wine, making it splash up onto her face.

  Amy sat very still, watching the expressions around her.

  Stella wiped her face with her hand. ‘And Gus is the—’ she asked, nodding in the direction of the sofa where Gus was half standing up, one hand in his pocket, not quite sure whether he should stay where he was or join the group.

  Amy nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Gus stood up straight. ‘Yes.’

  A flash of pleasure crossed Stella’s face like finally it all fitted into place.

  ‘He doesn’t want me to have it,’ Amy said.

  Gus jumped to his own defence. ‘I didn’t say that!’

  ‘Yes you did,’ Amy snapped.

  Gus chewed on his bottom lip for a second. Hands in his pockets he started to cross the room to where they were sitting at the table. ‘OK, yes I did. But I don’t want to look like the bad guy here.’ His hand went to his chest. He stopped by the armchair, leaning against it, not quite brave enough to join them. ‘We don’t know each other. It’s the most obvious suggestion.’ He looked at Stella and Moira to see if they agreed. Neither of them said anything.

  ‘Yeah well, you don’t have to have anything to do with it,’ Amy said, not looking at him then sitting forward, chin resting on her hands, eyes downcast.

  ‘Oh Jesus, it’s my kid. I’m not gonna not have anything to do with it.’ Gus scratched his forehead, then glancing at the others sitting at the table, added, ‘I feel like we should have this conversation more privately.’

  Stella picked up her wine and started to stand up.‘Absolutely. Yes. You do that.’

  ‘I don’t want to have it privately,’ Amy said. ‘I get confused when I talk to you. I want my mum here.’

  Gus stood awkwardly, hands still in his pockets. Stella ducked in front him like she was trying to avoid being in a photograph. ‘Sonny.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Bed. Now.’

  Sonny seemed relieved to be given the opportunity to slope away and they both disappeared up the stairs.

  Amy sat beside her mother at the table. She wanted her to tell Gus to stop being mean to her daughter. In the absence of her father, she wanted her to help sort it all out.

  Moira cleared her throat, glanced down at the magazine for a second, then looking back to Amy said, ‘Darling, this has to be a decision you make between the two of you.’

  Amy frowned. That wasn’t what she was meant to say. Amy glared at her. ‘But we can’t.’

  Moira closed the magazine and stood up. Beside her the breeze ruffled the curtain, she leant across and closed the window then, turning back to her daughter, said, ‘Amy darling, I will help you however I can, but this is your life and this needs to be between you and Gus here.’ Moira gestured towards where Gus was standing like a teenager, scuffing the wooden floor with his foot. ‘And the only way that is going to happen is if you talk to each other, which, let’s be honest, I haven’t seen you do much since you got here.’ Moira picked up her wine in one hand and tucking her magazine under her arm she gave Amy a kiss on the top of her head. ‘I’m going to go and take the dog for a quick walk then go to bed.’ She paused as if trying to work out how best to say the next bit. In the end she said, ‘Thank you for telling us your news.’

  Then she walked away, touching Gus briefly on the arm as she went past. The dog, who’d been asleep on the sofa, jumped down and padded behind her as she slipped on some shoes and quietly opened the front door.

  Silence filled the room, stretching like bubblegum till it was almost impossible to speak.

  Amy was about to push back her chair and storm off upstairs when Gus moved to stand at the end of the table.

  ‘Why did you tell me, Amy?’ He narrowed his eyes as he stared at her. ‘Why not just never have let me know?’

  Amy swallowed. She wanted to open the window again, the air was too warm. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, shaking her head. Why had she told him? At the time the need had been overwhelming. Positive Clear Blue: tube to Gus’s door. She had berated herself for it a number of times since. But it had been, she knew, a knee-jerk reaction to have someone else share the burden. She wasn’t stupid, she knew full well that she’d spent her whole life with someone else in charge while she cruised through in the passenger seat. It was a sorry realisation that the few weeks she had been in charge she had ended up pregnant.

  Gus took her answer at face value
and nodded a couple of times, before turning away towards the stairs.

  Bobby would have wrapped her in a huge hug, smelling of the Acqua di Giò Homme she’d bought him for his birthday.

  The cloud of a sulk was on the cusp of engulfing her. One that would see her sit silently staring at the table until Gus left. But then, a little like Clark Kent changing to Superman, her mind vortexed towards the baby inside her. It was all she could see. She shifted in her seat. She realised that in telling Stella and her mum she had made it real. It was still a problem and a worry and a God-awful mess but it was real – it was a baby with hair and teeth and nails, or possibly not but with the potential to have hair and teeth and nails at some point soon. Right now it was probably something very unglamorous like a bean or a mange tout. The fact she’d thought of a mange tout made her smile. She looked away so Gus wouldn’t see.

  She heard him walk across the rug and pick up his phone from the table, she turned to watch him slip it into his back pocket and head towards the stairs.

  ‘I told you because I didn’t want to deal with it on my own,’ she said, frankness a seeming by-product of the sudden radiating power of this mange tout foetus. ‘I’ve never been very good at doing things on my own.’

  Gus turned, he pushed his hair back from his face with his hand. ‘I would never make you get rid of it,’ he said. ‘God, I don’t even know how I’d make you do something.’ He crossed back to the centre of the room. ‘I’ll do whatever you want. You may not like me but I am a good person, Amy.’

  ‘I never said I didn’t like you,’ she said, immediately defensive.

  He scoffed, ‘Please. We’re clearly not in each other’s fan club.’

  Amy ran her tongue across her top lip, she had to concede to that. ‘No.’

  He went and sat on the arm of the armchair, held his hair back from his forehead again – it made his face look really thin and his nose really pointy and his eyes really wide. She tried her hardest not to focus on what he looked like, on which one of these less aesthetic elements the baby might inherit. But it made her wish, not for the first time, that this was Bobby’s baby. She imagined the glowing, golden child that they had wished for but had never been able to conceive. The mop of blond hair it would have had. The olive skin. The smile. The two adoring parents.

  She fished around for something to say. ‘Have you ever been a member of a fan club?’ she asked, then inwardly cringed at the ridiculousness of the question.

  Gus raised his brows in surprise and laughed. He let go of his hair and it flopped back almost over his eyes. ‘Actually, yes. Well more of an appreciation society.’

  ‘Oh yeah. What for?’

  ‘Strepsils.’

  Amy made a face. ‘What, for the cough sweet? There’s no such thing.’

  ‘There wasn’t until me and my friend Wayne Wilcox set it up in third form.’

  She laughed despite herself. ‘Why would you set up a Strepsil fan club?’

  ‘Because they’re amazing,’ he said as if it were obvious. ‘They’re like the high priest of the lozenge.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Everything about them. The roundness, the stickiness, that thing they get where they cut your tongue if you suck them too long.’

  Amy shook her head. ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I always preferred a Tune,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll try not to be offended.’

  They sat in silence again. The waves rumbling in the background. The howl of a fox. The timid little yap of Frank Sinatra. Then the door opening and her mother coming back, trying really hard to be stealthy but getting caught up in the plastic poncho that Amy hadn’t put away earlier and swearing under her breath. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ she said, with a quick, embarrassed wave of her hand. Then she grabbed her wine and magazine and ushered the dog quickly up the stairs.

  More silence followed.

  Gus asked, ‘Have you ever been in a fan club?’

  ‘My Little Pony,’ Amy replied.

  He nodded. ‘Figures.’

  She didn’t even bother to act insulted. It did figure. She ran her nail down one of the wood grooves in the table. ‘What’s your surname?’

  ‘Andrews.’

  Amy nodded.

  A car drove past lighting up the kitchen.

  Gus got up from the armchair and came and sat in the seat opposite Amy, where Stella had been. There was still a ring of red wine on the table. ‘What was that woman’s name in the end?’ he asked. ‘You know, from the Londis.’

  Amy frowned. ‘Do you actually care?’

  Gus shrugged a shoulder. ‘I’m intrigued.’

  ‘Ethel.’

  ‘Classic.’ Gus laughed.

  Amy felt a smatter of pleasure from having made him laugh. ‘She wasn’t actually called Ethel,’ she said.‘She was called Claire.’

  Gus looked confused, like he couldn’t quite believe she had it in her to make a joke.

  Amy raised her brows in challenge of the fact.

  Gus looked away, lips downturned, still clearly surprised.

  ‘Why did you play Barbie with Rosie?’ Amy asked.

  He dabbed his finger in the red wine ring on the table, seeing how far the droplet would stretch. ‘Because seven-year-olds are easy company. I don’t really know anyone here and it’s a fairly awkward situation to come into, so…’ He glanced up at her. ‘What can I say, I’m a big fan of Rosie’s.’

  Amy too was a big fan of Rosie’s. She found her easier to hang out with than the adults talking about proper things she really should know more about. ‘You have brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Five,’ said Gus.

  Amy was shocked. ‘Wow!’

  Gus said, ‘Yeah. Busy parents,’ with a raise of one brow.

  ‘You want a big family?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  It was weird, having to ask polite questions to someone whose baby she was carrying. Someone she had spent a few days with total in her life.

  ‘Do you want a glass of water?’ Gus asked, standing up to go over to the kitchen.

  If it had been Amy getting the water she knew she wouldn’t have offered one to him. ‘Yeah, OK.’

  He came back with two of the Emma Bridgewater spotty mugs. ‘I couldn’t find the glasses.’

  ‘They’re next to the mugs.’ She shook her head in disbelief.

  ‘Oh.’ Gus shrugged like he wasn’t really that bothered whether it was a glass or a mug anyway.

  Amy sipped her lukewarm water. He hadn’t run the tap before pouring.

  ‘Amy?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘What, like for a job?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She reclipped her hair. ‘I’m a graphic designer.’

  ‘Really?’ Gus looked taken aback.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work in IT.’

  That sounded extremely boring to Amy so she didn’t ask any more. Instead she said, ‘What did you think I’d be?’

  Gus shrugged. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

  Amy checked her reflection in the window, taking the clip out again because it wasn’t right. ‘Yes, you had,’ she said, kirby grip between her teeth.

  Gus looked a bit awkward. ‘I suppose I er—’

  ‘What?’ She put the clip in, checked her reflection again then sat back and stared at him.

  His neck flushed red. ‘I suppose I er— I suppose I couldn’t really imagine you in a job.’ He cleared his throat, then he said, ‘I misjudged you.’

  ‘Well, there you go,’ she said, aloofly matter-of-fact. But the victory was bittersweet considering she had spent the last however many years not working.

  When Amy hadn’t been able to get pregnant, Bobby had suggested that it might help if she took some time out. Especially as all she did was moan about her advertising agency job being too stressful. He was earning good money through sponsorship, enough to
support them both. It had felt, at the time, like a dream come true.

  Bobby had a way of making her dreams come true – the surprise birthday flight to Tenerife when he’d packed her bags and everything, the footprints on the beach that, from the cliff looking down, spelt out Will You Marry Me? – he made her feel like a princess. Gus, incidentally, also made her feel like a princess, in a completely different way. She had never felt quite so embarrassed of herself before.

  She thought of her job at the Icelandic fishing company back in Leicester Square. Of how, once she’d got over how dull the product was, she’d quite enjoyed the work. Or rather, she’d enjoyed the compliments she had got for the work. They were currently in talks about whether they might alter her contract from temporary to full-time. She realised then that she hoped that they would. She enjoyed the sense of belonging and achievement more than she’d allowed herself to acknowledge. Perhaps because part of her felt a little traitorous, like she was saying that being ‘Bobby’s girl’ wasn’t enough.

  Gus pushed his chair back. ‘Well,’ he said, putting his hands back in his pockets, edging from one foot to the other awkwardly. ‘That was a good talk.’

  Amy half-laughed, unsure that was how she would describe it. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘OK, well, I’m going to bed.’

  She nodded. ‘OK.’

  He walked away, across the living room and up the stairs two at a time. Then, when she thought he’d gone, he poked his head over the bannister. ‘I’m glad, you know, that you told everyone. It’s been really weird them not knowing why I’m here.’