‘Oh, ignore me,’ Sarah says as the waitress brings over our food. Sarah asks for Parmesan cheese, black pepper and another glass of wine. ‘I can get quite maudlin about the whole thing.’ She smiles at me. ‘You have such a lovely time ahead of you with the baby. It’ll be tiring, obviously, but – oh my god – the first smile! And then those gummy little smiles before they get their teeth. The teeny-tiny fingers curled around yours.’ She sighs. ‘The baby smell. Oh my god, I could bottle that.’ She smiles at me again. ‘Even the night-time feeds. Are you going to breast-feed?’ I nod. ‘Oh, even the night feeds with the baby curled up against you in bed, all snuggly and warm and you drifting off to sleep. It’s going to be amazing. And ignore anyone who tells you otherwise.’
She continues to talk about babies while we eat, pausing the conversation once to lean over and take a half-drunk glass of wine from the table next to us after the people leave.
‘Oh, the look on your face!’ she says. ‘It was a Chablis! I heard them order. The most expensive one on the menu. So wrong to leave it.’ She pours the wine into her own empty glass and puts the empty one back on the table waiting to be cleared. ‘No one’s going to be any the wiser. Didn’t you ever do that when you were younger? God, I got through college nabbing other people’s abandoned drinks. Mine-sweeping.’ She laughs, lost in her memories.
I shake my head. ‘I must have missed that bit.’
By the time we finish lunch, Sarah’s more than a little inebriated. She’s talking loudly and holds onto my arm as we exit the restaurant, teetering slightly in the high-heeled boots she’s wearing with her jeans.
‘Come back to mine for a coffee,’ she says as we make our way unsteadily along the pavement. ‘Unless you have something planned? What are you up to these days? Washing all the baby clothes? Oh they’re so cute, aren’t they? They’re so tiny… the little babygrows. Aww! I never kept mine. I thought I was done with kids but you never can tell what life has in store for you, can you? So will you come back for a coffee?’
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Just a quick one.’
So I end up in Sarah’s house again, less than twenty-four hours since I last was there. She flops onto the sofa, pulling off her boots, and I head to the kitchen to make some coffee in the hope that it might sober her up a little. In the sink is the detritus from book club, still unwashed. The wine glasses, cheese plates and knives not even soaking but just as we dumped them when we left last night. I find two mugs, and some instant coffee and the teabags, and make us each a drink. When I go back to the living room, Sarah’s got a scrapbook open on her knees.
‘Aw, look what I found. You made me all broody. Come and look.’ She pats the sofa next to her so I sit down and she pushes half the album onto my knees so we can look at it together. She turns the pages back to the start.
‘This is Archie the day he was born. Look! Look at that little bundle! … And here he is four hours old… Aww, this is when he first properly opened his eyes and I saw for the first time what colour they were.’ She sighs. ‘Oh, such precious days. I’m so jealous of you, you know.’
‘He’s very sweet.’
‘I bet you can’t wait to meet your own little bundle, can you?’
‘No. I can’t wait to see what he looks like. Whether he’ll look more like me or Jake – or neither of us.’
‘It’s such a magical time. You’re very lucky.’
‘I know.’
Sarah takes my hand and looks me in the eye. ‘Just enjoy it. That’s all. It goes by in a flash. Before you know it, he’ll be sprouting hair and getting spots and next thing you know, your baby will be gone.’
‘Okay,’ I say, and then I extricate myself, leaving Sarah to her memories. I walk back home slowly, thinking about her. I like her, but there’s something slightly desperate about her; something clingy, something grasping, and I can’t put my finger on exactly what it is.
I know where you honeymooned
I hardly need to say it was your choice, do I? You bring up the topic and him, he’s so obedient, so well trained, he just stares at you, drinking in your stupid face, imagining you actually being his wife and he goes along with whatever you suggest. If you’d said Iraq, he’d have said ‘how about Basra?’ That’s the ridiculous thing: his pathos I can almost understand, because he’s a fool for you – but yours? You have the whole world to choose from, and you pick Mexico. Who do you think you are? Jennifer fucking Aniston?
But of course it wasn’t ever going to be the tourist strip of Cancun, was it? With its all-inclusive hotels and its package tourists, knees-to-nose on their tin-can charters. Oh no. This is you we’re talking about. Princess fucking you. It has to be something self-righteous, something squeaky clean and lentil-eating; something different and ‘look at me, I’m so right on’. So you choose an ecoresort. A cabana on the sand in an ‘I’m-so-amazing’ eco-resort.
At least it’s not Disney, I give you that.
And so, the morning after the wedding, you fly out to your Mexican eco-beach cabana that looks like it should cost ten bucks a night but probably costs a hundred times that and you think it’s perfect with its white four-poster beds, its hardwood floors and its rough-painted turquoise walls that remind you of the Caribbean that’s right outside your hut. It’s so charming, you think. Not that he cares because all he intends to do the entire week is fuck you anyway. In that white four-poster bed. On the beach. In a hammock at two in the morning, when you think no one can see.
I’m right, aren’t I?
But you have a list. A list of things you want to do and see. The biosphere. The cenotes. Tulum. Coba. Chichen Itza. You can’t go to Yucatan and not see Chichen Itza, can you? So you book a private tour, and when you get there he realizes you don’t just want to look at it: you want to climb it. You want a honeymoon selfie of the two of you at the top of the pyramid. ‘Oh no,’ he says, ‘I don’t have a head for heights, and just look at the ambulance parked down there – surely it’s not safe, I don’t want anything to happen to you on our honeymoon,’ but there’s nothing like you on a mission for a selfie. You’ve already kissed his nose and are twenty steps up and he has no choice but to follow you, heart hammering as his feet are longer than the crumbling steps are wide, and all the while he’s thinking ‘this shouldn’t be allowed, there should be rules against this, it’s way too dangerous, I can’t believe I’m going to die here.’
Oh, hear me laugh.
He nearly gives up halfway when the sun’s beating down on him and the mosquitoes are circling like vultures, but he can’t give up because you’re already at the top. ‘Come on!’ you shout, and he remembers that stupid fish in that Disney movie. ‘Just keep climbing,’ he says out loud. ‘Just keep climbing. Don’t look down,’ and he sticks close to the chain that’s there to hold onto and he makes it to the top where he nearly passes out but you’re there, skipping about the top of the pyramid where the ledge is at least a bit wider than the steps, and he finally manages to look out at the view and he’s got to hand it to you, it really is amazing. It looks like the entire world is coated in dark green forest as far as the eye can see. But you don’t let him stop for long, he barely gets his breath because you need to get that selfie so you lean out over the edge and try to drag him with you so your heads are together cantilevered over the steep, steep drop where the ambulance below is the size of an ant – no, a baby ant – and you’re laughing, teasing him without a care in the world. ‘Come on, it’ll be worth it when it’s on Facebook,’ you say, and, somehow, you get the photo with half of you and all of him in it and once you’ve applied a filter or FaceTuned it or whatever crap you do to your picture, no one will know how terrified he really was.
And that night, when he’s safely back down and you’ve had a couple of drinks, he’s full of the sense of having survived; he’s so full of hot lifeblood that he thinks, when he fucks you, that you’re going to get pregnant. He convinces both of you that you’re going to get a honeymoon baby; you’re drunk as skunks on t
he idea.
It doesn’t happen, does it?
Oh yes, I know that, too.
Sixteen
Anna goes away on a course for work a couple of days after book club and I miss her more than I care to believe. I check her Instagram several times a day but all she posts is an arty shot of a notebook and pen with a pair of glasses on top ‘#workinghard #backintheclassroom’ and her WhatsApp status just says ‘Busy’ so it’s not till the following walking group that I get a chance to dissect the book club evening properly with her. Only, on the day, she calls me to say she won’t be coming and I feel as if my backbone’s snapped: all the life goes out of me and I slump against the wall.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I was really looking forward to it.’
‘You and me both. It’s not about the rattle, is it? You’re not…’ I want to say ‘scared’ but I also don’t want to sound like I’m belittling her worries.
She pauses for a fraction too long. ‘No. I’ve got a bit of a cold, you know how it is. Could do with resting up. I don’t want it to get worse.’
I don’t entirely believe her, but: ‘Oh I’m sorry to hear that,’ I say. ‘Let me know if you need anything.’
‘Thanks. I’m all right at the mo,’ she says. ‘I’ve got stuff. I’ll see you next week, anyway. Oh, is there any news about your birthday? Have you heard from Sarah?’
‘Oh. No. I had lunch with her the other day, but she didn’t say anything.’
‘You had lunch with her?’
‘Yes, she called me after book club and wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
‘Oh…’ says Anna. ‘Where did you go?’
‘That Italian on the corner? With the blue front?’
‘Oh yes. I know it. Very nice. Maybe she was trying to impress you. Do you get the feeling she doesn’t have many friends?’
I pinch the bridge of my nose: it could be me she’s talking about. ‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘For what it’s worth, she got drunk and talked non-stop about babies. Think I took one for the team, there.’
This seems to please Anna. ‘I wonder if she even remembers she volunteered to arrange something,’ she says. ‘She was quite tipsy at book club as well, wasn’t she?’
‘Yeah. What did you make of Caroline?’
‘Drunk on her own amazingness,’ she says. ‘Though she didn’t seem to like me, did she?’
I rewind in my head. ‘Really?’
‘She didn’t say hello to me. Pointedly ignored me. You must have seen that? It was the first time we’d ever met. I mean, it’s just good manners to say hello, isn’t it?’
I’m beginning to think Anna’s a bit paranoid, and I don’t have a lot of patience for that. I can’t stand drama queens.
‘Don’t read anything into it,’ I say lightly. ‘She can’t have anything against you if you’ve never met before.’
‘Hmph,’ Anna snorts. ‘Anyway – weird that she went to school with your husband.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Did he remember her?’
‘Yeah,’ I say slowly, still not entirely sure what he’d thought of her. ‘He remembered her name.’
‘Wow. I hardly know anyone I went to school with. Anyway, look I’m sorry about walking. Have a good time. Simon will be pleased to get you alone.’
I tut. ‘He’s harmless enough.’
‘So you keep saying.’ I can almost hear Anna raising her eyebrows down the phone line.
She was right, though: when I got to the park, Simon was there.
*
‘No Anna today?’ he asks with a smile that tells me it’s good news to him, and I shake my head. ‘Her loss, my gain,’ he says. ‘So, how was your week?’ and so I tell him a bit about book club, and how Caroline was at school with Jake, and he tells me a bit about his week, until the group starts to move off.
‘Shall we?’ Simon says, and we fall into step together.
‘So what other things do you get up to? Other than walking and reading?’ Simon asks as we walk along. I notice that he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before he speaks, and that the muscle at the side of his eye twitches. He keeps pushing his glasses up his nose with his index finger and it makes him look like he’s nervous, so I explain that I’m not just new to the area but new to the country, too, and still finding my feet. I know I can come across as super-confident even when I’m not. It’s part of the flight-attendant thing. Fake it till you make it and all that.
‘How about you?’ I ask.
‘I don’t get out a lot,’ Simon says. ‘I wasn’t joking when I said I live my life on social media. It’s basically my window to the outside world.’
‘What did you do before your dad… you know?’ I don’t really know how to say it because I don’t know if he was always housebound, or if something happened to make him so.
‘Back in the day, I used to be a forensic accountant, you know, going into big companies and going through the accounts with a toothcomb, looking for discrepancies, fraud and so on. I have an eye for detail. But a few years ago I retrained as an ethical hacker.’ He whistles the first notes of the X Files theme tune and widens his eyes at me.
Despite myself, I laugh. ‘Did you say “hacker”?’
‘An ethical hacker. No, it’s not illegal. Basically, I’m hired by companies to probe their networks and computer systems to find any weaknesses and hopefully prevent data theft and fraud.’
‘So you’re paid to hack into companies’ websites?’
‘Yes, in a nutshell.’
‘How on earth did you get into that?’
Simon pushes his glasses up his nose again. ‘Well, I was always good with computers. I speak their language. I was always fascinated by that sort of thing. So I looked into careers in IT and this,’ he shrugs, ‘well, it was right up my street. And business is booming in that sector. It’s really up and coming. So I trained and got my qualifications – and the rest is history, really.’
‘Are you telling me there are qualifications you can do in hacking?’
‘Ethical hacking, yes. I’m officially a CEH: a Certified Ethical Hacker. Qualified hackers have to agree to uphold the code of ethics and never “engage” with unlawful hackers.’
‘Wow. That’s incredible.’
Simon smiles. ‘So, basically, I spend my days at the computer, trying to penetrate my clients’ websites and networks, testing their security systems et cetera.’ The hairs on my arms stand on end when he says the word ‘penetrate’. It sounds sexual coming from his mouth and I wonder if he chose it deliberately. ‘I love it because you have to try and think how the “black hat” hackers might think,’ he continues. ‘You have to imagine what tricks they might use, and outsmart them.’ His eyes gleam as he talks. ‘I love trying to second-guess them. It’s like a game to me – and, as long as I have the right equipment, I can work from home. Once I have the brief, it doesn’t really matter where I’m based, so I can be there for Father. What about you? Do you work?’
‘I used to be cabin crew. But I’m thinking of retraining as an interior designer.’
‘Is that your passion?’ Simon asks.
‘Yes. Yes, I really love it. I get a kick out of pulling a look together; finding the right accessories and so on…’ I tail off, realizing how shallow I sound. We walk in silence for a minute.
‘So will your book club be reading the classics?’ Simon asks apropos of nothing. ‘Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, D. H. Lawrence et cetera?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think so. The focus seems to be more on what you can pick up in the “new releases” each month. Though I love the classics. Jane Austen in particular. She’s so English. Obviously, I’ve read a lot of the American classics, too: Little Women, Huckleberry Finn, To Kill A Mockingbird…’
‘Oh, okay,’ he says. ‘Of course you have. I should have guessed that.’ He looks as if he’s going to say something else then doesn’t.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I love classics. Don’t get me wrong. I lo
ve contemporary fiction, too, but the classics are classics for a reason – right?’
Simon takes a deep breath. ‘Yes. Yes, of course. Umm, it’s just that I’m going to an arthouse screening of The Great Gatsby, and I wondered if you fancied coming with me? It’s at a little cinema not so far away. I was going to go on my own, but if it’s your kind of thing, maybe you fancy coming with me … obviously not a date or anything because you’re…’ He waves his hand at my belly, presumably to indicate that he gets that I’m off bounds for being pregnant and married. ‘Nothing like that. I’m not one of those men who loves pregnant women.’ He whacks his forehead. ‘Oh god, that sounded terrible. Nothing like that. Just – if you fancied it?’
And I’ve no idea why but, somehow, I find myself saying, ‘Yes, that sounds brilliant, I’d love to, thanks,’ and all I can think, as Simon beams back at me like all his birthdays have come at once, is ‘what have I done?’
Anna will have a field day.
Seventeen
Jake walks into the house that evening looking at his phone. With him comes the smell of winter, the wind and his office, clinging to his clothes.
‘Who’s Sarah?’ he asks, leaning in to kiss me.
‘She’s the one you met in the doorway the other night? The one who runs the book club. Why?’
‘Oh yeah… I remember. Lipstick, right?’ He rubs his cheek where her lips had touched him and taps something into his phone. ‘She messaged me. Wants to meet up tonight,’ he says, and the old hurt stampedes through me like a herd of wild horses. How did she get his number? Why didn’t she ask me the other day? Has she been in touch with him behind my back? Is he hiding something? I know he’s good at deceit: we’ve been there.
I Know You Page 9
