Growing Up Twice

by Rowan Coleman

  ‘Well, you know. It didn’t work out,’ he mumbled and he shifted a little in his seat and grinned sheepishly.

  Seeing first hand that her life had been laid to waste for the sake of another empty affair, Rosie bristled.

  ‘Well, we’d better be going,’ she said, standing and beginning to gather up her bags.

  Chris seemed keen to find a way to make her stay.

  ‘Oh God, I can see you’ve been going shopping crazy again! How much money have you spent this time? The usual suspects, is it?’ he patronised, but as he picked up one of the bags to examine it the grin froze on his face. ‘Pregnant Women? Paris? Who’s pregnant?’

  Rosie sank back down into her chair.

  ‘I am!’ I said gamely, but Chris never took his eyes off her.

  ‘I am,’ Rosie said quietly.

  ‘You’re pregnant? How far? Whose?’ A fleeting expression of shock quickly transformed itself into a still, proprietorial air combined with a hint of jealousy which ignited Rosie’s temper.

  ‘Yes, me. About fourteen weeks. Who’s the father? Well, let me think, I last had sex in the bogs at a work do. Oh, I think it must be you.’ Her green eyes sparkled with rage and the beginnings of tears. The knuckles on her hand bleached white as she clenched the edge of the table. Chris stood up, turned his chair back the right way and sat down.

  ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’ he said quietly and without the arrogance I would have expected.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ Rosie spat. ‘Some of us don’t fall in and out of love quite as easily as others. There hasn’t been anyone else since you.’

  To his credit he didn’t argue but only sat staring at his hands. After a few moments he asked, ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ His voice was gentle and calm.

  ‘Let me see … maybe I didn’t think the man who ran out on his wife after only a few months of marriage would make the best father in the world?’

  He rubbed his hand across his forehead and pinched his brows. ‘Rosie, I’ve wanted to talk to you about that, to explain. I’ve been meaning to, and now this has happened … We have to talk now. No time to stall any more.’

  During this exchange I obviously had more to say than the average fundamentalist on Hyde Park Corner but I managed to keep my mouth shut. Just.

  ‘Look, we need to discuss this properly. Alone.’ He looked pointedly at me.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said staunchly. Rosie looked out of the window for a moment, took a couple of deep breaths to steady her temper and tears, and then turned back to look at me.

  ‘Jen, he’s right. Look, I’ll be OK.’

  I eyed her meaningfully but obviously not meaningfully enough for her to read ‘Don’t do this, he’ll hurt you’ in my eyes. Or if she read it she ignored it.

  ‘Jen, I’ve been putting off the inevitable. We have to make some kind of arrangement. If only for the baby’s sake.’

  And yours, I thought. I suppose that in reality we had been kidding ourselves that Chris would never find out. Rosie wanted to wait to tell anyone at work until after she had the scan, but as soon as she did the bushfire would ignite and it would only be a matter of time before Chris heard about the baby and began to wonder.

  Chris stood suddenly and went back to his table. After a short and heated whispered conversation with long-leg woman he returned and she slammed out of the café. There’s always a silver lining.

  ‘Come on.’ He held out a hand to Rosie.

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said, looking at her.

  ‘Yes. We have to do this,’ she said and as I watched them leave my heart sank.

  I finished my coffee and then her juice and phoned Selin at work.

  She listened in silence as I told her what had happened.

  ‘Bollocks,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, exactly,’ I replied.

  ‘What shall we do?’ She was just closing up at work and I could hear her pull the shutters down as she spoke. I pictured her with the phone tucked under her chin, the curly cord stretched to its limit as she moved around the office.

  ‘Wait for her to come home, I suppose. I was supposed to meet Mi … a friend from work tonight to see a film but I guess I could cancel.’ I thought of Michael already on the train from Twickenham and my heart sank a little further.

  ‘No, don’t do that. You shouldn’t drop everything for one of Rosie’s escapades. Look, I’ll go over to yours after work. I’ve got the spare key. If she comes back before you I’ll be there and if she doesn’t we can worry about her together when you get home. OK?’

  I smiled. ‘OK, mate. Cheers.’

  ‘No probs, sweetheart, I’ll see you later.’

  And so here I am now, having waited a grand total of twenty minutes for Michael’s distinctive head to appear in the crowd, waiting to find a way to shake off the feeling of gloom.

  Finally he appears by my side and grabs my shoulders as he kisses me firmly on the mouth. His lips are cold and dry.

  ‘I can’t tell you why I’m late, you’ll chuck me for sure.’ His confident laughter makes me smile straight away and the background annoyance of the last twenty minutes vanishes in a flash.

  ‘Go on, you can tell me. I’ve had enough emotional conflict for one day. I can’t face the hassle of binning you yet. Maybe after the film.’

  He flops his arm across my shoulders and his breath tickles the back of my neck as his lips brush my ear.

  ‘Detention,’ he whispers.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  The film Michael has picked would not have been my first choice. I had expected some kind of sci-fi extravaganza with billion-dollar special effects and maybe Keanu Reeves thrown in for good measure. Instead I’m watching a movie about two American teenage boys trying to have sex with as many American teenage girls as they can, teenage girls with improbably pert breasts that they don’t seem to have any career quandaries over exposing at the drop of a pair of string panties. There seems to be a running joke involving sperm and at some point it looks as though teenage American Boy B is going to be tricked into having sex with a goat.

  This was never really going to be my scene, but the subtle torture of knowing that Johnny Depp is showing one screen over, playing a fey Italian love-lorn poet, makes it all the more difficult to enjoy.

  Michael’s hand is resting on my thigh, his forefinger absently running along the seam of my jeans, back and forth, back and forth. He rests his chin in his other hand and at every punchline throws his head back with a deep husky laugh that makes me smile despite myself. Throughout my entire and, it’s probably fair to say, extensive dating career I have never yet managed to spend a date necking in the back of a cinema. I suppose at the back of my mind I thought that this was going to be the day, but instead we have a centre aisle seat and Michael’s hand on my thigh is the nearest thing to making out that I’m likely to get. To console myself I watch his profile out of the corner of my eye, the contours and shadows of his face flickering and altering with reflected Hollywood light.

  The last few weeks with and without him have certainly been unusual, preoccupying I suppose. It seems that the higher his sun has risen in the sphere of my existence, the colder and darker the year has become and the further and more distant thoughts of Owen seem to be. This has become exactly the diversion, the distraction, that I was looking for – but now what?

  A miscellaneous teenage American boy skids through a slimy patch of vomit that for some reason is strategically placed outside a teenage American girl-occupied shower cubicle and careers headlong into the steam. More breast-exposing antics ensue. Michael’s mouth curls into an appreciative teenage English boy’s leer and then, feeling my eyes on him, he turns to face me looking a little sheepish.

  ‘What do you think of the film?’ he whispers, taking his hand from my thigh and sliding it around my shoulders.

  ‘Yeah, funny. You?’ I whisper back, awarding him points for deliberately taking his eyes off the near-naked girl. His fingers slide inside the neck of
my shirt and rest at the back of my neck.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he says, leaning closer and looking at my mouth. ‘I’m a bit bored with it now, it’s basically just one joke anyway.’ He closes the last few millimetres between our lips and to my horror and delight his free hand clamps itself over my left breast. Before I relax fully into my first-ever full-on cinema snog experience I check for people sitting behind us (the seats are empty) and wonder fleetingly if this sudden interest comes from feeling frisky because of the total of naked girls to date in the film. Deciding not to debate it, I sink a little further into my seat and stifle a giggle as Michael’s hand slides up the inside of my shirt and his fingers find their way inside my bra with an almost imperceptible tear of lace.

  The last thing I see before I close my eyes is American Teenage Boy B being tricked into having sex with a goat.

  Twenty minutes of base-two smooching makes us a little befuddled and dazed when the lights go up at the end of the film. As we wander out of the double doors and take the escalators back down to street level we are quiet, our hair ruffled, our skin flushed and in my case a tiny smile of triumph on my lips. That’s one more thing I wanted to do before I was thirty checked off the list. Now I’ve just got ‘learning to drive’ and ‘being a jazz-club singer’ and I’ve got six weeks to go. It’s achievable. Oh, and that career thing. Well you can’t win them all.

  As soon as we’re out in the cold air Michael pushes me up against a wall and kisses me deeply. I can feel how turned on he is. We pull apart and gaze at each other for a moment. Maybe like me he’s thinking that perhaps we should always factor a bed into our meetings from now on.

  ‘Time for ice-cream?’ he asks and I nod and follow him to the Häagen-Dazs shop, our fingers finding each other’s like old friends now. The queue isn’t too bad and we are seated and served before too long. He holds my hand across the table, which if I weren’t having such a good time would really piss me off as I only have one hand free to chase the last pecan nut around the dish with my spoon. But I like the feel of his fingers so I let it pass.

  ‘You know it’s my birthday tomorrow, Thursday,’ he says slowly. I had forgotten the exact day of his birthday, if I ever knew it in fact, but I did know that it was soon. Here it comes, he is going to ask me to the party again and I’m going to have to find a way to turn him down this time. No more stalling.

  ‘Yes, about that …’ I begin.

  ‘It’s just that …’ he interrupts.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say …’ I continue.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea that you come.’

  ‘I really don’t think that it’s a good idea for me to come.’ We finish together. We laugh. We cough and are silent.

  ‘I want you to come,’ he says, still clasping my hand. ‘It’s just my mum will be there and now that I’ve told her you’re Holly and every other single person there knows you aren’t … it would be a bit risky, you know. And you’d hate it anyway, there would be no disco unless some DJ has sampled it in a loop for some bloke to rap over.’

  A mixture of relief and chagrin folds in my stomach, the same old story. I don’t want to go to his party, but I don’t want him to not want me to go. I suppose that if I am determined to pursue this ‘diversion’ away from Owen I’m going to have to accept it as just that. For all the hand holding and cinema-related necking we’ve only seen each other a few times; he doesn’t owe me anything special and vice versa.

  ‘No, it’s fine. I didn’t really want to come anyway, to be honest,’ I say, a little more bluntly than I had been planning.

  ‘The party’s on Friday and then I’ve got the whole weekend free. I thought we could meet up, do something?’

  ‘Get a hotel room maybe?’ I suggest mischievously. He blushes and I feel mean. Leaning across the table I take his face in my hands and kiss him softly. ‘Yeah, we’ll do something this weekend, something special for your birthday, OK?’ That hotel-room thing might not be such a bad idea, I’ll check my bank balance when I get in.

  The waiter hovers, waiting for us to leave so that he can let some other unfortunate sweet-toothed queue member into the warmth, but I don’t feel ready to go yet. I order another coffee.

  ‘I went shopping with Rosie today,’ I tell Michael, who shows his level of interest by an imperceptible rising of his brows.

  ‘We bumped into her ex.’

  ‘Exes. Bummer.’ He nods, looking at me with a laid-back air in anticipation of a subject change.

  ‘Ex-husband,’ I stress, forgetting that he probably has a string of ex-girlfriends installed around Twickenham ready to ambush him at every turn, according to his mother at any rate.

  ‘Husband? Way heavy.’ He nods again, this time furrowing his brows with sincerity. He is making the effort, bless him.

  ‘Well, anyway, he found out that Rosie is pregnant––’

  ‘Rosie is pregnant! Bloody hell!’ His shock makes me realise that we have talked about absolutely nothing every single time we have met.

  ‘Yes, by him. Long story. Anyway, he found out about it and they’ve gone off to “discuss” it. And I’m a bit worried about her so I should be getting back after this coffee really. Just in case.’ I down the lukewarm cappuccino, wave my debit card at the waiter and wait for the bill.

  ‘Yeah, no worries,’ Michael says. ‘I’ve got to get back anyway. It’s a school night!’ He chuckles and I smile at him, glancing around for eavesdropping social workers or ChildLine volunteers at the same time.

  ‘But surely it’s good Rosie is talking to her ex, right? You know, him being the father of her baby and all. I mean, if they sort stuff out it’s good for her, isn’t it?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, with any other bloke maybe. But you don’t know what a total Rupert Chris is.’

  Michael shakes his head at me and as we leave the restaurant he pushes a fiver in my hand.

  ‘For my ice-cream,’ he says. It’s a small gesture but it obviously means a lot to him to pay his way. I wonder if I should have given him my half of the cinema ticket money. That’s probably a month’s pocket money.

  ‘What do you mean a Rupert?’ he asks as we leave.

  ‘Long story,’ I say. ‘But basically he walked out on her after a few weeks of marriage with a serious case of cold feet and a new girlfriend to boot. Now he suddenly wants to be back in her life, but for how long? Men have a habit of walking out on you when you’re most vulnerable,’ I say, thinking about Owen. If there is one thing I’m certain of it’s that Chris can’t be any better than Owen and if I’ve managed to break away from him then Rosie has to break away from Chris too, for good. It’s almost as though we made a pact and if she breaks it I’m left out there all alone on a limb wondering about my own choices, maybe the only one who really fucked up big time, when I thought I had an ally. But it’s not like that, Rosie and Chris together would be genuinely bad news.

  ‘I won’t walk out on you when you’re vulnerable,’ Michael says sweetly, taking my hand. ‘But if Rosie and this Chris geezer still like each other enough to conceive a baby, well then maybe they still have feelings for each other. Maybe, you know, they might work things out, don’t you reckon?’

  ‘No,’ I say and we drop the subject.

  We walk up through Chinatown and the smell makes me wish I’d gone for the real-dinner option over the sweet swift high of confectionery. We stroll through Soho and past the Coaches, the allure of a double brandy almost tempting me in. Hand in hand we stroll through the chilly night up Charing Cross Road to the beginning of Tottenham Court Road, until we reach the bus stop for the number 73. As usual it is heavily populated with tourists, drunks, couples and commuters thronging on the roadside, jostling each other for pole position, anxious to make it on to the long overdue bus should it finally lurch around the corner.

  ‘You don’t have to wait with me, you’ve got a lot further to go home than me, and it is a school night, right?’

  He smiles and stands behind me, wrapp
ing his arms around me and resting his chin on the top of my head. ‘I’ll wait,’ he says mildly.

  As it turns out it’s not too long before the bus arrives, in fact three 73s arrive in convoy, so that I have time to kiss him once more before I run on to the last bus.

  ‘What about the weekend?’ he calls after me.

  ‘I’ll ring you when I’ve come up with something,’ I shout over my shoulder. I swing into a seat nearest the pavement side and wave to him as the bus pulls out.

  I turn on my phone but there are no messages. I phone home but Selin picks up and there is no sign of Rosie.

  I sit back in my seat and watch the city slip away under the gloss of street lamps and moonlight, the warmth of Michael’s kiss still tingling on my lips.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  As I let myself into the flat I can see Selin in the living-room at the end of the hallway, sitting on our blue sofa, her long legs tucked up under her chin, surfing channels.

  ‘Any sign?’ I call down the corridor but before she can reply Rosie appears out of the kitchen, mug of coffee in hand.

  ‘I’m here! You can call off the search party!’ She lifts her mug at me. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll be up all night the amount of coffee I’ve had, and I thought you were cutting down too. Are you all right?’ I reach out to touch her arm but she flounces away.

  ‘It’s not for me, it’s for Selin. I don’t need you to tell me how to look after my baby, thank you.’ Selin silently takes the mug of coffee she was clearly not expecting and sends me a look of warning. Rosie flops back into the armchair, and breathes out through her mouth so that her fringe fans away from her forehead. She looks tired, shadows have bruised the underside of her fair skin and her usually perfect make-up has clearly been disrupted more than once by tears. I should probably leave it – if this was something to do with me I’d want them to leave it – but instead I ask, ‘So how was it with Chris?’

  ‘Fine,’ Rosie replies curtly. Selin shakes her head at me but I figure that months and months of mutual-misery therapy entitle me to probe a little more.