Everything but the Truth

by Gillian McAllister

  I opened my eyes in his bedroom. ‘What?’ I said, the memories of months ago fading.

  ‘We have to go.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘That breakfast meeting. The interview. With the music guy – about his festival.’

  It wasn’t Jack’s words that forced me to open my eyes, but his tone. It was urgent. Perhaps the most urgent I’d ever heard him. I checked the digital clock, glowing green across the dimly lit room. ‘At seven in the morning?’

  ‘His idea …’ He paused, his gaze still on me. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  He told me often; he wasn’t shy about it. It was refreshing, how demonstrative he was.

  I sat up against the pillows, conscious of my snarled hair, and looked at him. I was unable to wake up, really, in those early-pregnancy days. Everything was hazy until about noon. I opened my mouth to ask if I could stay, then closed it again. Were we there yet? I didn’t know. It wasn’t my house. His parents had bought it for him, his temporary Newcastle house. We didn’t yet live together. Maybe it was strange to suggest such a thing – lazy and entitled.

  Then I shook my head. We were having a baby. We’d live together soon, anyway. We had to be there, whether we liked it or not. ‘You go,’ I said. ‘I’ll look after Howard and make you a bacon sandwich.’ I smiled up at him.

  He paused; he wasn’t smiling back. He said nothing.

  My eyes gradually adjusted to the dim light, and I saw an unmistakable look of panic cross his features. I could see the whites of his eyes, all around his black irises, like a dog hearing noises at a front door in the middle of the night.

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said.

  ‘Please get up,’ he said. His tone was bizarre; wheedling, almost.

  I frowned at him.

  ‘I need a lift, you see,’ he said.

  And it was less his words and more his body language that made me swing my legs out of bed: he was standing over me, making hurrying gestures. Huffing. Bouncing slightly on his toes, like somebody very late for something.

  ‘Jack, you need to drive again. You can’t pass your test and then not drive – for no reason.’ I don’t know why I said it. It wasn’t the time.

  ‘I know how. But it’s been too long since I’ve done it, I’d need lessons,’ he muttered. ‘Come on,’ he urged.

  ‘Alright.’

  ‘Your stuff,’ he said. He was bundling up my clothes, my dirty socks strewn across his floor, stuffing them into my hands. My arms overflowed with them. My bra dropped to the floor and he sighed.

  ‘Just leave them,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ He found my bag and started cramming it full, taking the clothes back off me. His face was impassive. But his hands were shaking. With panic, it seemed to me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, my eyes on those hands.

  ‘I’m just late. I’m always late,’ he said.

  I backed off, then. It was true.

  I got dressed. All the while he stood, waiting, at the door to the bedroom. It was just a rushed Saturday morning, I told myself. ‘What’s up?’ I said to him. ‘You’re being weird.’

  ‘No, I’m not. I’m just late,’ he insisted.

  What could I say? Where I might have challenged him, I didn’t, because of Wally. To keep the peace, but also because I was responsible, I felt, for that pregnancy. I didn’t want to add to the things I’d done to make things hard for us.

  He put his shoes on and washed his hands in the sink, in that way that he always did. ‘They’re dirty,’ he said to me, with a smile, as he saw me looking. ‘Shoes are dirty.’

  ‘I might start doing it myself,’ I said.

  ‘It’s actually perfectly logical. Try it.’

  He stood against the counter, his back to the sink. He beckoned to me, palm up, his index finger slightly extended. I went to him. He was warm and his chest muscles were firm against my fingertips. He hugged me for a moment, burying his head playfully in my neck and breathing me in. I put my shoes on, and he turned the tap on for me.

  I didn’t even notice I was doing it. I rolled my sleeves to my elbows, squirted the soap on to my hands, and did a full, scrubbing-up wash. Between my fingers. The tops of my hands. My palms. Up my forearms, to my elbows, my hands held up vertically.

  ‘You do it just like in Grey’s Anatomy,’ Jack said.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, laughing self-consciously. ‘Once you’ve been taught how to wash your hands, you never go back.’ I grabbed a tea towel and dried them, trying to ignore the look Jack was giving me.

  And so, less than five minutes after being woken, I was in my cold car, make-up-less and wearing jeans that felt too stiff against my skin for a Saturday morning. They should have been pyjamas. It should have been a sofa, Jack’s bed. Not this.

  ‘Where am I going?’ I said.

  ‘I’ll tell you – keep going on this road,’ he said.

  I drove for less than half a mile before he asked me to turn left and pull into a car park. It was a well-known cafe, one we’d considered going to for brunch but had never got around to. We were in the car for three minutes. It was less than a ten-minute walk.

  He leant back against the passenger seat, visibly relaxed. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Are you late?’

  He smiled quickly at me, as he was getting out. ‘Always,’ he said.

  I looked at the clock. It was quarter past seven.

  ‘Thanks.’ He poked his head back through the open window of the car. ‘I’ll come over later?’ he said. He was holding his house key, close to his chest.

  ‘Okay,’ I said.

  He paused, momentarily, his elbows resting on the window frame. His eyebrows were raised. He was biting his bottom lip. His teeth were white and straight. He looked like he wanted to kiss me, but he was late and it was awkward for him to reach into the car. Instead, he extended his hand towards me, his fingertips just brushing my shoulder.

  I watched him go. At the door, he turned to me and blew me a kiss.

  I flushed with pleasure, but my mind was spinning as the car idled. There was something strange about his behaviour, I thought, but then dismissed my nosiness. He was probably just late. Scatty.

  Jack pushed open the door to the cafe and took a seat on his own. Nobody was waiting for him.

  He let himself into my flat later that evening. The building was always busy, so he often managed to get in without buzzing me. I didn’t mind. I left my front door on the latch for him.

  I looked up when he arrived. He didn’t seem sheepish, or contrite. His expression was open, his smile wide. He was holding a fruit pie from Waitrose.

  ‘I bring pudding,’ he declared triumphantly, balancing it on the palm of his hand like a waiter.

  I didn’t say anything. I was pulling washing out of the machine but had stopped when he arrived, a wet towel wound around my hand.

  He saw my expression and his smile faded.

  ‘Earlier,’ I began. The events had steeped all day in my mind and had become a stewed and bitter tea by then. ‘You woke me up.’ I started ticking the items off on my fingers. ‘You made me pack up my clothes. You made me drive you a totally walkable distance.’

  He was waiting for me to finish, the pie still in the air.

  ‘And you were – well, you were mean to me. Like you were angry,’ I said, hating how small my voice sounded. ‘And then there wasn’t even anybody there. I saw the cafe. It was empty.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, turning momentarily away from me and putting the pie on the counter. ‘I’m sorry.’ His gaze when he turned back was direct and unwavering.

  ‘And?’ I said.

  ‘I prefer unreserved apologies. Otherwise they’re meaningless.’

  ‘But why did you …?’

  ‘I just panicked. I’m sorry. I’m always late and I’m such a shambles. Sorry. I shouldn’t have used you for a lift. I’ll start driving again soon.’

  ‘It’s not about dr
iving. It’s about being treated – like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again.

  I shrugged, picking up the washing again. He’d apologized. We couldn’t turn back time.

  He came over to help, grabbing the pile and taking it over to the airer. ‘This’ll be Wally’s tiny clothes soon,’ he said. ‘A little row of tiny baby socks.’

  Baby socks. He’d said that to me once before. On the day we took the pregnancy test. That strange, shocking, bitter-sweet afternoon.

  We’d bought a digital test from the Spar. Jack said digital was best, said he could easily imagine a pink line where there was none; that we needed certainty.

  I knew, but was ignoring it. The hot nausea. The late period. The strange dizzy spells. The memories of that night we didn’t use a condom. I knew, but was postponing my knowledge.

  We took it back to mine and sat on the side of the bath together while it rested on the window sill, like a ticking bomb. We checked it after two minutes; both peeping over at it, as though looking slowly could change anything.

  Pregnant 1-2.

  That’s all it said.

  He spoke first: ‘Ah.’

  ‘Ah, indeed,’ I said. I had darted a glance at him then. In that moment where everything changed.

  Later, I might have said the reason I never considered an abortion was because of my medical training. That I knew what went on, had seen it happen. The suction device. The remains; the hospital cremates them.

  But no. It wasn’t that. And it certainly wasn’t because I felt sure I would be a good mother. I didn’t. Not after Mum, and not after the boy. I still lost sleep over that. Wondering whether I could be trusted. Whether I would ever be good enough.

  So, no. It wasn’t those things. It was Jack’s face. He was staring down at the test with an unmistakable expression of joy. He had his fist to his mouth, like an excited child, and when he looked at me his eyes were shining.

  ‘I know … it’s not ideal,’ he said. ‘I know we’re so new. But …’ He pointed down at the stick, still saying Pregnant 1-2. ‘That’s you and me.’

  ‘It is,’ I said, unable to stop smiling myself.

  ‘And we’re pretty ace,’ he continued.

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Also – baby socks. The biggest argument for babies, ever.’

  ‘Baby socks?’

  ‘Tiny baby socks,’ he said. ‘Is there anything cuter?’

  The memory of that afternoon fading, I went over to him and wordlessly hung up a sheet.

  ‘I can leave if you’d like,’ he said. ‘If you’re pissed off? I know it was unfair – waking you up was rubbish. I am sorry.’

  I thought about it for a second. But it was too hard. The lure of him, here, helping me with the washing, sharing a pie later on and laughing. His warm body next to mine that night in my bed. It was too hard to resist.

  Besides, he was always good at apologies.

  4

  One year ago

  The boy and I got on well immediately. He was sixteen when he initially came into my hospital clinic. It was my first clinic as a newly promoted registrar; the buck stopped with me, for the first time. My palms were sweating.

  He liked collecting Topps football cards; he had hundreds of them. They fell out of his pockets when he shifted on the chair. They cascaded down on to the floor and he hastily picked them up, carefully putting them back in an order only he knew. He was young for sixteen, still childlike in that way. Collecting things. Obsessing.

  ‘That’s Ralph Callachan,’ he muttered to himself, his dark fringe falling in his eyes.

  His mum looked at me. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘He lives in the bloody seventies.’ She pointed to one of the cards in the boy’s lap. It was of a blond player sporting a mullet. ‘Collects these old footballer cards.’

  ‘Very retro,’ I said, nodding to the cards. ‘Very hip.’

  The boy smiled. He had pale skin and dark hair, dark lashes. Red cheeks. He could sell that blush, if he could bottle it.

  He’d been having trouble running, he said. The school yard felt uneven; his knee ached during playtime. He’d had a slight limp when he came on to our ward, and I’d sadly diagnosed him in my head right away. Sixteen, just. No previous injuries. Near-constant knee pain. Bad enough to be presenting at a paediatric outpatients’ appointment. Osteosarcoma. Bone cancer. He took his jeans off and put a gown on. One knee was bigger than the other, by far, and that’s the moment I truly knew.

  I sent him for a scan and watched him go, the limp more pronounced as he transferred from the pinkish grey carpet of our clinic to the vinyl of the hospital corridor. That’s where the journey continued for him – from it’s nothing; it’s bound to go soon; give it three weeks, to it’s something.

  I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. Audrey’s husband, Amrit, and I had a Coke together in the afternoon. I told him about the boy. His eyes were sympathetic. And then I forgot about him. I had to; I always had too many patients, too much to do. But he reappeared, later, at seven o’clock in the evening. A cleaner was polishing the linoleum outside the CT room. The corridor smelt of wax and lemon.

  ‘Oh, hi,’ the boy’s mum said to me. She was putting a letter in her handbag. Her face was drawn. Her hair was messy at the scalp, as if she had been raking it back. She was wearing large hoop earrings, and her pale eyeshadow contrasted starkly with her black eyeliner.

  ‘I thought you’d be home by now,’ I said.

  ‘We got called in, after the scan …’ She frowned, confused at my lack of knowledge.

  And that’s when I saw the confirmation. It was written somewhere on her frown lines, on the red-raw skin she’d peeled off around the nail of her right index finger, on the letter in her hand. You didn’t get letters if you were discharged. And I knew that she knew.

  ‘Your colleague. The junior doctor. He managed to see us. After the scan,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t good news.’

  I nodded once.

  The boy wasn’t looking at us. He was shuffling his cards.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I reached for her. I wanted to tell her everything I knew: that bone cancer was one of the better ones, that this might be a minor past event which he would reference casually in twenty years’ time to a shocked girlfriend, that now wouldn’t always feel this chaotic and shocking and out of control. Instead, I scribbled my mobile number on a blank prescription I had with me and handed it to her. ‘Any question. Any time,’ I said.

  She didn’t look grateful. She wasn’t there yet. She wasn’t ready.

  The boy looked up at me. His blue eyes were shining. ‘The doctor – the man doctor,’ he said. ‘He’s got Alan Gowling at home.’

  ‘Alan Gowling?’ I said, looking curiously at him.

  The boy waved his stack of cards at me. ‘Newcastle centre forward. He’s going to bring it to my next appointment.’ He stopped and looked at me. ‘Is this serious?’ he said, less teenagerish, less sullen.

  I looked at his mum.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she said.

  5

  Present day

  We met in Newcastle. By the Monument. It was a chilly March. One month after my break-up with Ben, and only a few months after the worst winter of my life. I, a native Geordie, and Jack, a Scotsman on secondment. It was funny: how many times had I passed the Monument? It must have been thousands. I passed it to buy Smash Hits magazine and sweets when I was eleven and allowed into town for the first time. I passed it on nights out to The Boat nightclub. I stopped passing it when I moved to Manchester for university, but started again when I moved back. It was less like a landmark and more like a person.

  And then I met Jack right next to it – the best person I ever met, the father of my child. In hindsight, I would never have imagined anywhere different to meet the man I wanted to end up with. Ben and I had met at high school and our relationship mirrored its backdrop: we were provincial, small and self-conscious. But Jack and I were flamboyant, always kissing in Sainsbur
y’s and giggling. We were like the Monument: lit-up, standing proud and tall against the sky.

  Jack was over here researching the best things to do for City Lights Newcastle. ‘Sorry,’ he said to me, a hand moving nervously by his side.

  And in that moment my life took a new direction, though I didn’t realize it then. I was alone, without Ben, and worried about my future, and then my future was right there in front of me, suddenly certain.

  ‘This is the Monument, right?’ He waved his phone in front of me. An image of the Monument was showing on Google Images. He held it up. It looked different on his phone: resplendent, illuminated against the night sky. In reality it seemed shorter and shabbier, somehow.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said. I patted its sides, like it was a dog I knew well. ‘It is.’

  ‘I thought I’d check. It doesn’t look quite the same.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s the one.’

  Looking back, it was a very Jack thing to say. He liked to check, even when he was sure. He would check all sorts: symptoms on Google, that the hobs really were switched off, that the bathroom window was definitely locked. I often wondered about it.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said with a smile. ‘You’re not local?’ I had recognized his accent. I knew it was Scottish, not Geordie, but couldn’t place it beyond that. I don’t know what made me take the conversation from its natural end and on to a new track. It wasn’t his brown eyes, so deep they were almost black, the irises lost in the darkness. It wasn’t his broad shoulders or stubble, though I liked them. I think perhaps it was his self-awareness that drew me to him initially. Where Ben had blustered – would have pretended to know what the Monument was, even when he didn’t – Jack was self-conscious, self-effacing. Interesting.

  ‘No, well, yes,’ he said. ‘I’m here for three months. For City Lights.’

  And that’s where it began.

  From that moment, time became classified into Jack-time and non-Jack-time; the latter was to be wasted, passed, so that I could be with him again. My heart would thud in my chest as I drove over to his house after work. And those first few minutes would be the best. Not because he would greet me with a kiss, pressing the length of his body against mine, but because the hours would feel full, stretching ahead of me, like doses of medicine.