‘I’ll come.’
‘Are you sure? My whole family will know I’m pregnant by then.’
‘It’s not 1950,’ he pointed out. ‘Your relatives probably aren’t going to horsewhip me for knocking you up.’
‘No, they’ll just all look at us sideways and wonder when it’s going to go pear-shaped.’
‘Who cares?’
I looked at him curiously. ‘Do you honestly not worry about what people think?’
Mark pushed his sunglasses thoughtfully up his nose. ‘Well, I can’t help what people think, so what’s the point of stressing about it?’
‘Wow,’ I said in only half-pretend awe. ‘You are so cool.’
On the way home we went to the supermarket, where Mark spent five minutes in earnest conversation with a small boy who played rugby for Edendale Primary and planned to be an All Black when he grew up.
Mark unloaded me and the groceries at the front door and went to park the car, and I was just carrying in the last two bags when Alan and Saskia came strolling hand in hand down the driveway.
‘Hi,’ I said nervously. Mark’s reasoning on the futility of worrying about what people thought was excellent, but still I was damned if I could help it.
‘Hi,’ said Saskia. ‘We need coffee. We’re completely shattered.’ She was wearing a pale green linen sundress and silver sandals, with her cropped blonde hair artfully tousled, and she was the least shattered-looking person I had ever seen. She looked like Tinker Bell, dainty and flawless.
‘What shattered you?’ I asked.
‘Door handles,’ said Alan bitterly. ‘You just wouldn’t think it could be that hard, would you? You’d think you’d wander into the nearest shop and pick something that looked about right, and that would be that.’
‘But no?’
‘Don’t even ask.’
‘It’s important to get the details right,’ said Saskia.
‘It’s not,’ Alan said. ‘Once the bloody things are on the doors you’ll never notice them again.’
‘I will. Be quiet. Hey, Tip.’
‘Hey,’ said Mark, appearing around the corner of the building. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Queenstown?’
‘Next weekend,’ Saskia said.
‘How did you get out of it?’ Alan demanded.
‘Wasn’t invited,’ Mark said, sounding distinctly smug.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he used to sleep with the bride, you cretin,’ said Saskia. ‘About five years ago, Helen; don’t worry.’
‘So what?’ asked Alan. ‘Half of Auckland used to sleep with the bride. A fair few probably still do.’
‘Pay no attention to him,’ Saskia told me. ‘He’s just sulking about having to go to Queenstown when he could be at home choosing doorknobs. Tip, my new office shelving arrived on Thursday.’
‘That’s nice,’ said Mark.
‘I’d love to have it up by Christmas,’ she said hopefully.
‘Reckon you can hold out till Monday?’
‘You’re wonderful,’ she said. ‘I’ll be at work, but Alan will help you. Right. Coffee.’ And she led the way purposefully inside.
A quick hunt through the cupboards revealed a complete absence of plunger coffee. ‘Instant?’ I offered.
Saskia shuddered eloquently.
‘Just add sugar,’ Mark said. ‘It’s still got caffeine in it; it’ll do the same job.’
‘It won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and get some proper stuff from the cafe round the corner. Come and keep me company, Helen.’
Obediently, I followed her downstairs. I admired Saskia immensely; in fact, I suspected that my Cosmopolitan article about power tools and chocolate cakes and stripteases had been penned with her in mind. And her rugby knowledge was encyclopaedic. Back in September I’d gone with her to watch the boys play, and when the whistle blew she had made impressive comments like, ‘Hah! Serves him right. Tiny’s bind’s been crap all season.’ I usually couldn’t even tell which side had been penalised until the ref’s arm went up, let alone being able to critique the way the tighthead prop was holding on to his opponent in the scrum.
‘It feels like ages since we saw you,’ she said. ‘Have you been doing anything exciting?’
So Mark hadn’t told them about the baby. And he hadn’t told his parents either, which suggested that perhaps he cared more about what people thought than he claimed to. I realised suddenly that she was waiting for an answer to her question, and said, ‘No. Non-cycling cows, mostly.’
We let ourselves out into the bright sunlight and started up the driveway. ‘What’s a non-cycling cow when it’s at home?’ she asked.
‘One that doesn’t come back on heat after calving in time for mating,’ I said. ‘Usually it’s because they’re too thin.’
‘What do you do with them?’
‘Treat them with hormones to get them started.’
‘What, cow IVF?’
I smiled, never having thought about it quite like that. ‘Well, yeah, sort of. It’s not the most exciting time of year; it’s pretty repetitive work.’ It was also pretty depressing work on those occasional farms where we treated a third of the herd every year because the people in charge felt that actually giving the cows enough to eat would be a criminal extravagance.
‘Well, there you go,’ said Saskia. ‘Who knew? Oh, did Tip tell you we’re going out on the boat over New Year’s? It would be great if you guys could come.’
‘He did,’ I said. ‘It’s so kind of you, but I’m a lousy sailor.’
‘Have you tried Sea Legs? Tiny white pills – you get them at the chemist’s. They’re magic.’
‘Um –’ I said, and stopped.
‘We’re going to Great Barrier Island. Have you been there?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s really beautiful,’ she said. ‘A sort of unspoilt paradise. The water’s incredibly clear, and the fishing’s amazing. Not that fishing’s really my cup of Ribena, but Alan loves it. Please come.’
‘It sounds wonderful,’ I said unhappily to my feet. ‘But I – I’m pregnant, so I can’t take anything, and I’ve got the most appalling morning sickness . . .’
Saskia said nothing at all, and with some effort I lifted my eyes from my toes to look at her. I was expecting her to look shocked, and quite possibly taken aback, but I was unprepared for stricken.
‘It’s all my fault,’ I said, tumbling mouth first into the void of horrified silence that had just opened in the conversation. ‘I messed up the pill. I’m honestly not expecting Mark to settle down and play happy families when we’ve only been going out for about half an hour . . .’ She was still looking at me as if I had just announced that whale was my favourite meat, and I trailed off again, wishing fervently that for once – just for once – I had kept my big, stupid mouth shut.
‘Congratulations,’ said Saskia hoarsely. ‘No, I mean condolences, or something . . . oh, shit, Helen, I’m sorry. Are you okay?’
‘Not – not very.’
‘No, I guess not.’ She opened her bag and rummaged through it for a lip gloss she didn’t want, in a vain attempt to lessen the awkwardness of the moment.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said wretchedly. ‘Mark should have told you, not me.’
‘No,’ she said, dropping the lip gloss back into her purse. ‘No, that’s – look, I’m so sorry. It’s just that our third round of IVF didn’t work, and I’m still –’ She choked and stopped.
‘Oh, Sask,’ I whispered, appalled.
She lifted her head and blinked hard. ‘We can’t stand here bawling in the middle of Mount Eden,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and bawl somewhere else.’
When we returned three-quarters of an hour later, minus the coffee and with suspiciously pink-rimmed eyes, Alan and Mark were drinking beer on the balcony with their feet on the railing and their chairs tipped back on two legs against the wall. Neither of them remarked on either the lack of coffee or the time we’d been gone, but I saw Alan watch
ing his wife, and his expression made my throat close up.
Alan and Saskia only stayed another ten minutes, and as the front door closed behind them Mark moved his sore shoulder experimentally and said, ‘Told her, huh?’
‘Did you not think that it might have been worth letting me know they’ve been trying to have a baby for the last four years?’ I meant to speak with icy calm, but the calm slipped partway through and I finished on an indignant squeak.
His left eyebrow shot up, and for a moment he looked scarily like his brother. ‘To be honest, it didn’t occur to me that you’d feel you had to tell one of my friends you were pregnant, when you barely even know the woman.’
One of my friends. None of our friends were mutual ones. ‘I wouldn’t have, if you’d bothered to tell her yourself! She asked me about Great Barrier, and said she knew a great cure for seasickness, and please would we come. What was I supposed to say?’
‘Look, it’s done now,’ he said. ‘Just forget about it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell them?’ I snapped. ‘Seeing as you’re so unconcerned about people’s opinions?’
‘Because they found out on Wednesday that their latest round of IVF had failed,’ said Mark acidly. ‘It really didn’t seem like a good time to say, “Oh, by the way, guys, my girlfriend’s pregnant.”’
‘In a way it’s not as bad as last time,’ Saskia had said, expertly fixing her eyeliner in a pocket mirror with the tip of her little finger. ‘We didn’t even get any fertilised eggs to implant, so at least we missed that horrible fortnight of waiting and hoping before your next period.’ And snapping the mirror shut she had smiled a bright, brittle smile that was rather more pitiful than tears would have been.
Now I looked down at my hands. ‘You’re right. It was a really bad time, and I feel completely shit about it.’
He sighed. ‘I should have told you.’
‘Mark,’ I said heavily.
‘What?’
‘Do you want to just call this whole thing off?’ It was almost a relief to say it; the wild swings from cautious optimism to flat despair were so exhausting.
‘What?’
‘Well, it’s not great, is it? I can’t do anything except cry and throw up, and you’ve got the World Cup and everything – you don’t need this as well.’ After all, it didn’t actually hurt that much. No doubt it would soon, but right now I wanted only to lie down somewhere dark and quiet and not to have to think about anything. I turned towards the steps.
‘Where are you going?’ he asked.
‘Upstairs, to get my stuff.’
‘Jesus, McNeil! Would you just hang on a minute?’
I stopped and turned slowly back to face him.
‘Please don’t do this,’ he said.
‘If – if we’re going to break up maybe we should just get it over with. It’ll be harder when the b-baby’s born . . .’
He came across the room and put his arms around me. ‘Helen. Stop it.’
It felt very, very nice to be held, and resting my head against his shoulder I closed my eyes. He must care a little bit, at least, or he would have let me go.
‘Can we just . . . see how things go for a while?’ said Mark quietly.
Seeing how things go comes about as naturally to me as pole dancing. I prefer the rush-in-guns-blazing-and-sort-this-thing-out-once-and-for-all approach. But I said, ‘Okay,’ into his shirt, and even managed not to ask how long he thought ‘for a bit’ would be.
22
CHRISTMAS THAT YEAR WAS ON A FRIDAY, AND WORK ON the Wednesday was manic. Keri was on holiday already, somewhere up a mountain in the Southern Alps. Nick was at, of all things, a veterinary business management seminar in Hamilton, and Zoe went home at lunchtime with a headache. The rest of us spent the day running around in small circles, and at three, just as it looked like things were easing off, a woman brought in a comatose cat with a blocked bladder. It was the best day I’d had for weeks; I was far too busy to think about myself.
At twenty past five I vaccinated the last of a litter of seven puppies and poked the last worm pill down the last small throat. I shut down the computer in the consult room and went slowly out the front to find Thomas writing up tomorrow’s day sheet.
‘You’ve got to go to Peter Drummond’s,’ he said. ‘He’s got a horse that’s just gone through a fence and shredded its leg.’
I forgot all about the benefits of being too busy to think and stared at him in horror. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘You can go home.’
I went not home but to Dad and Em’s.
‘Hi, sweetie,’ Em said, meeting me at the door with a full washing basket on her hip and a slightly flustered expression.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘A bit better,’ I said. I still couldn’t imagine ever wanting a green vegetable or a cup of coffee to pass my lips again, but I hadn’t been sick all day. ‘What are you guys up to?’
‘We’re baking. Let’s go and see what’s happened while I was out at the washing line.’
‘Mum!’ Caitlin shouted down the hall. ‘Bel’s eating all the icing!’
We reached the kitchen in time to see Bel cram a huge spoonful of chocolate icing into her mouth. She eyed us over the spoon, apprehensive but unrepentant.
‘That’s disgusting,’ I said.
‘Now I haven’t got enough left for my muffins,’ said Caitlin. She had wrested the bowl away from her sister but, alas, only a meagre scraping of icing remained. ‘And Bel’s teeth will all go rotten.’
‘It will serve her right,’ Em said. ‘She’s a very naughty little girl. Helen, would you be up to making some more?’
As I put my bag down on the big butcher’s block in the middle of the kitchen it beeped at me. Rummaging through it for the phone I found the plastic turtle again, and pulled it out. ‘Guys, is this yours?’
‘Turty!’ Bel cried rapturously. ‘My baby turtle! I’ve missed her so much!’ And clutching the turtle to her chest she peppered it with chocolatey kisses.
‘You don’t even like that turtle,’ said Caitlin. ‘You put it in Helen’s bag ages ago.’
‘I do,’ Bel said. ‘I love her.’ Upon which she opened a drawer, dropped the turtle in and shut the drawer again with a slam.
‘That’s a funny way to treat a turtle you love,’ I remarked.
‘She needs a sleep,’ said Bel firmly. ‘Helen, can I play with your phone?’
‘Only after you wash your hands.’ I found the phone in the depths of my handbag, opened it in the hope the message was from Mark, and learnt instead that Keri was wishing everybody a merry Christmas before she lost cell phone coverage for the next few days.
‘Did Laura ring you?’ Em asked.
‘Yes, last night.’ Aunty Laura had called to order bean salad as my contribution to Christmas lunch. Honestly, bean salad? You’re not supposed to have to eat stuff like that at Christmas time.
‘I thought we’d do cold ham and salads,’ she had said. ‘Nobody wants all that heavy stodge.’ Which saddened me deeply, because I’ve always felt that the roast potatoes and gravy and bread sauce are major highlights of the whole Christmas experience.
‘What are you taking?’ I asked.
‘Tabouleh,’ said Em.
‘What’s that?’ Caitlin asked.
‘Couscous and parsley and tomatoes and things.’
‘Gross.’
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Where’s the icing sugar?’
‘It’s labelled Rice,’ Em said. ‘We broke the proper container. It’s nice that Mark is coming for Christmas, isn’t it?’
‘I hope so,’ I said, picking up the rice container in one hand and a tin of cocoa in the other.
‘Hope he’s coming, or hope it will be nice?’
‘Both.’
‘Has he said he might not make it?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I’m sure he will.’
‘Sweetie,’ said Em gently, ‘he wouldn’t be coming if
he didn’t care about you.’
I nodded. ‘Right, how much icing do we need, Caitlin?’
‘Enough for eight more muffins,’ she said.
Em rinsed the dishcloth under the tap and began to scrub chocolate icing off her youngest daughter. ‘Annabel, just how exactly did you manage to get icing on your eyelids?’
‘You’re hurting me!’ protested Bel from the depths of the cloth.
‘Well, it has to come off. Helen, love, try not to worry so much.’
‘I am trying,’ I said tightly, tipping icing sugar into a bowl.
‘Mark seems like such a nice boy,’ she said.
‘Boy? He’s only twelve years younger than you are.’
Em put down the dishcloth and looked critically at Bel’s face. ‘Well, there you go. Perhaps I’ll make a pass at him.’
‘I thought you liked older men,’ I said.
‘I could make an exception for that one. Does he give a decent foot rub?’
‘No idea,’ I said. Mark had never shown the slightest inclination to rub my feet. Should he have? Was it something all good boyfriends did? ‘Why?’
‘Christine Marshall’s husband massages her feet when she’s in the bath.’
‘Neil Marshall?’ Neil was loud and beery and, I would have thought, the complete antithesis of the Sensitive New Age Guy.
‘So she says,’ said Em.
‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Your father might come into the bathroom while I was in the bath,’ she said pensively. ‘But only if I’d died in there several days ago and he’d started to notice a nasty smell.’
‘Cake?’ Mark offered through the open kitchen window.
It was eight pm on Christmas Eve and I was sitting on the top step of my tiny porch, idly watching the leaves of the poplars along the roadside dance and quiver in the evening light. ‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘But could you grab me a cracker while you’re up?’
‘I thought you were feeling better.’
I propped my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands. ‘Only sort of. You know, I’ve been fantasising for about the last fifteen years about how great it would be not to feel hungry, and now I’m not, and it sucks.’
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