Until You're Mine

by Samantha Hayes

  James rolls over and tries to sling an arm over my bump. I gently push him away. It’s just not comfortable like that. Or, I admit to myself, it’s not comfortable knowing we can’t finish what we start, and definitely not comfortable that he’s leaving so soon. I snuggle into the crook of his shoulder. He smells of sleep and deodorant and it pretty much kills me cold inside that we’re going to be apart for so long.

  ‘It was a nice surprise to find you here when I woke,’ he mumbles.

  He’s referring to me crawling into bed beside him at four this morning. I’d been awake since three. My mind was racing with everything that lies ahead.

  ‘Do we have to go anywhere today? It’s so cold and miserable out.’ I just want to stay here for ever with James nestled at my side. I feel bigger than ever, bundled up against the sub-zero temperatures in my thick winter pyjamas and towelling robe. James always makes fun of me. One minute I’m complaining I’m too hot, the next I’m moaning that it’s freezing.

  He lowers his voice even though there’s no way Zoe can hear. ‘I think we should all go out together. It’ll give me one final chance to make certain about her before I leave. I’m doing it to put your mind at rest.’

  ‘And what do we do if we’re not convinced?’ James doesn’t answer but I can almost hear him telling me that I’ll have to give up my job. ‘Look, I’ll be honest. Do you know why I really came in here so early?’

  James emits a deep, resonant laugh. ‘To share your insomnia?’

  ‘I heard noises coming from the top floor.’ My turn to whisper.

  ‘That’ll be because we have our nanny living up there, Claud.’

  ‘She was banging about all over the place. I should know. The spare room’s directly below her.’

  ‘Perhaps she went to the loo. Or was hungry. Or perhaps, actually, she still feels a little unsettled having moved in with a new family and she couldn’t sleep either.’

  ‘No. It wasn’t any of those things.’

  ‘Rather certain, aren’t you?’ James rolls over and props himself up on his elbow.

  ‘I didn’t hear the toilet flushing. You know how loud the old pipes are. If she was hungry, she’d have come downstairs, and she didn’t. I know every sound in this house. And she’s certainly not fretting about living here. Far from it. She asked to stay here at the weekends, didn’t she?’ I’m already regretting agreeing to that. A couple of days alone with my children each weekend was what I’d envisaged.

  ‘You’re right, of course.’ He tries to grab me. ‘She’s undoubtedly a psychotic insomniac murderer who’s going to do away with all of us in the middle of the night.’

  ‘James, don’t.’ I roll away from him and slide my legs out of bed. I heave the rest of my body up before he can grab me again. Suddenly I’m not in the mood for cuddling.

  I pull back the curtains and groan. The weather is not good for a day out. Straight shafts of rain pelt from a low, greeny-grey sky that seems to merge with the rooftops like a smudged painting. I glance up and down our street. Despite the weather, people are still going about their usual Saturday-morning business. Mr Ford, the old man who lives opposite, wanders down his front path with Ned, his terrier, on a long leash. He once told me he was born in that house; that everything in his whole life had happened there – deaths, marriages, divorces, fights, love stories, laughter and tears, he said with a sad glance at his feet. ‘This house was once so full of people, Claudia my dear.’ He’d made a point of introducing himself as soon as I moved in with James. ‘It was always so busy and vibrant and stuffed with noise and chatter – the scrape of a violin being practised or a piano being hammered to within an inch of its life.’ He’d laughed a toothless laugh, and I’d noticed a fat tear in each eye. He’d sniffed them back. ‘Now it’s just me and Ned.’

  I imagine him rattling around the six-bedroom Victorian home with its brown-painted banisters, creaky doors and Fifties-style kitchen in which he prepares microwave meals for one.

  ‘All empty,’ he’d finished, banging his heart, and I knew exactly what he meant.

  James is beside me, peering down the street. ‘Curtain twitcher,’ he says fondly. His arms are around me, hugging around my chest like a tight empire line. I can’t breathe so I ease him off.

  ‘Poor chap, he’s all alone,’ I say as the stooped body of Mr Ford wrapped in a brightly coloured sou’wester progresses slowly down the street in a yellow blur.

  ‘He’s all right. Off to get his paper, give Ned a bit of a walk. It’s all about routine at his age.’

  ‘I guess,’ I say, turning and kissing James. His mouth feels warm and deep and I feel so utterly lucky and grateful to be a part of this family.

  *

  Two hours later and I’m face to face with a hammerhead shark. I can’t help but be impressed and also a little scared of the two beady-eyed creatures that swim up close to the glass, making Oscar and Noah catch their breath at the absurdity of their faces and the proximity of danger. The sharks are ugly yet beautiful and have absolutely no idea that they are in the centre of Birmingham. They seem happy enough despite being far from home.

  ‘Can they see us?’ Oscar asks. He pushes two fingers inside a tiny box of raisins.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’ Zoe is crouching beside the twins, alternating her look between them and the sharks. She pulls back slightly as one of them approaches the glass at speed then veers off at the last second.

  ‘Yeah, and they think we’re in a zoo,’ Noah replies quite intuitively. I slip my arm through James’s as our son giggles at the thought of us all being in captivity.

  ‘But what if they break out?’ Oscar asks.

  ‘Then we run!’ Zoe says with a silly face.

  ‘But why?’ Noah says, crushing his empty box of raisins. ‘They can’t chase us. They don’t have legs. I’d actually help them.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you, darling,’ James says. ‘Shall I take a photograph of you with the sharks?’

  ‘Yeah!’ both boys chant together. They huddle up against the glass.

  ‘Go on, Zoe, you get in too,’ James says. ‘One for the family album.’

  ‘Family Flickr now, isn’t it?’ I say. James has been scanning lots of old photos and putting them online so that the rest of the family can see the boys growing up.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t want me in it,’ Zoe says bashfully. Her cheeks go pink and she steps away.

  ‘Of course we want you in it,’ James reiterates. ‘Go on, get between the boys.’

  ‘No, really,’ she says. ‘I won’t.’

  She’s pretty red-faced now, I notice, and breaking out in a sweat. ‘Don’t force her, James.’

  ‘I need the Ladies,’ she says, and scuttles off.

  ‘It was only a bloody photo, for Christ’s sake.’ James is feeling a bit embarrassed at having upset her. He snaps a couple more shots of Oscar and Noah.

  ‘Don’t be too harsh,’ I say. For some reason I want to defend Zoe, although her behaviour was rather odd.

  ‘You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you?’ James glances at me and then toggles through the photos with Oscar and Noah straining to see the camera’s screen. They jump about at his side.

  ‘Look, that’s us!’ Noah says excitedly.

  ‘But no sharks,’ Oscar notes. It’s true. There’s one blurry lump in the blue fuzzy background but nothing that could be identified as a hammerhead.

  ‘Take another one, Daddy,’ Noah demands, but Zoe returns and James silences him.

  ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Shall we go and find the squid?’

  ‘Is that cally-mary?’ Oscar asks, as if it might be a friend from school.

  I’m still thinking what he means when Zoe realises. ‘You mean calamari?’ she says with a laugh. She seems fine now.

  ‘You have them with mayonnaise,’ Noah says, licking his lips.

  ‘The boys discovered them on holiday last year,’ I explain to Zoe. ‘They thought they were onion rings at first,’ I whi
sper, holding on to my bump as we make our way through the displays and tanks. The array of colours and water through the glass makes me dizzy so I take James’s arm.

  ‘Are you OK?’ he says, quietly concerned. I nod in reply.

  ‘Oh wow, look!’ Zoe grabs each of the boys by their hands and drags them off at top speed down the darkened walkway. I hear their gasps of shock as she points into a large glass tank. We amble up and arrive just as the largest crab I have ever seen pokes out a long skinny leg in our direction.

  Oscar cries and covers his face.

  ‘You’re a baby,’ Noah says. ‘It’s just a stupid old crab.’ Despite his bravado, I notice his dimpled hand grip tighter around Zoe’s fingers. Her nails are short and practical and she wears a single ring.

  ‘Am not,’ Oscar replies. He clings to James’s leg.

  ‘Look at his eyes,’ Noah says in awe. ‘Are they made of big caviar?’

  We all laugh, but Oscar whimpers. ‘It’s like a horrid spider,’ he says. He turns his back on the tank, which is teeming with other fish and crustaceans.

  As we carry on and walk through the tunnel with fish swimming overhead like birds, with coral as bright as jewels and unidentifiable creatures flapping and sculling all around us, Oscar begins to cry.

  ‘What’s up, sweetie?’ I ask, doing my best to get down to his level. James will have to help me stand up again.

  Oscar buries his face in James’s overcoat, twisting the tweed wool between his fingers, covering the dark fabric in snot. ‘There are shadows everywhere in here,’ he says through hiccupy sobs. He peeks out and glances around the tunnel. It’s true. Crazy colours and swathes of darkness wash around us as if we really are in the unknown depths of the ocean. It’s beautiful, but frightening to a sensitive four-and-a-half-year-old.

  ‘They can’t hurt you,’ I say, and Zoe is right beside me offering tissues and reassurance and whatever hugs little Oscar will take. ‘It’s just the weird lights making us look funny colours. And those are just reflections.’ He jumps as another family walks past, their faces big as ghouls in the glass. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I’m scared, Mummy,’ he says, transferring his grip from James’s coat to my hand. ‘That shadow looks just like the bad person in my room last night.’

  I glance up at James at exactly the same time Oscar’s eyes widen to saucers. I’m not sure if it’s amazing that he called me ‘Mummy’ or utterly disturbing that he’s claiming someone was in his room last night.

  14

  THEY’RE PROBABLY GOING to sack me now they think I’ve been creeping around their kids’ bedroom scaring them witless. They no doubt think I’m a freak because I rather vehemently avoided having my photograph taken in their fit of family nostalgia. As we walked back to the car, I overheard Claudia talking about noises coming from my bedroom during the night. James told her, in a terse whisper, that she was being silly, paranoid, hormonal.

  Of course she is, I feel I should say as we drive home in silence.

  Between us, James and I scoop Oscar and Noah from the cocoon of their car seats, but by the time we’ve lugged them inside and prised the dead weight of their bodies from within the thick padding of their coats and scarves, they’ve woken up. They’re grumpy, and Oscar has wet himself.

  ‘I’ll sort him out,’ I say as Claudia’s face crumples at the thought of dealing with her son’s accident. She looks exhausted. I bet she’s thinking that it’s my fault he’s been sitting in his own pee, that his car seat cover will need washing and his brother is meanly laughing at him for being a baby. She believes it was me lurking in his room last night like a shadowy underwater creature, scaring him to the point of wetting himself in his sleep, giving him nightmares. ‘It’s no problem,’ I say when she asks if I’m sure. It goes some way to stamping out the flicker of guilt.

  ‘I’ll make some macaroni cheese then,’ Claudia says with relief. She waddles off into the kitchen while James hangs up coats and dumps shoes on the rack in the porch. He catches my glance as I lead the boys, both now whining, upstairs. I notice a twitch on the soft grey skin beneath one eye.

  Half an hour later and the twins and I go back downstairs in much better spirits. The bath has warmed and woken them while clean pyjamas, their favourite cartoon slippers and the smell of cheesy macaroni sends them scampering to the table. ‘Just in time,’ Claudia says, spooning dollops of creamy pasta onto five plates. The table is already set – apple juice in a jug, an open bottle of white wine, glasses, knives and forks spread out with gingham paper napkins in between.

  ‘None for me,’ I say just before she serves the last plate. She stops, looks at me. ‘I’m . . . I’m going out tonight. If that’s OK.’ I bow my head. It’s last-minute. It’s crazy and dangerous, I know, but I can’t help myself. I feel my cheeks redden.

  ‘No supper before you go?’ she asks sweetly. ‘There’s plenty.’ She waves the serving spoon and a clump of macaroni plops back into the dish.

  ‘I’ll get something while I’m out.’ That’s a lie. I don’t feel at all like eating, in or out.

  ‘No problem,’ she says. I can’t help noticing the slight note of relief in her voice. Now they can eat without me, a family of four, just as they used to do before I came along. ‘Pass these to the boys, James,’ Claudia continues, and her husband silently puts food in front of the children. Together they watch me leave the room.

  When I have fetched my coat and bag from upstairs, I call out the cheeriest good-bye I can manage. The front door is closed before I hear their reply.

  *

  The pub is crowded but I’m certain she’s not here yet. My nerves aren’t firing or aching as if they’ve been stripped raw, and my pupils aren’t stretching to saucers at the sight of her. The hair on the back of my neck isn’t prickling with anticipation and I can’t detect the musky notes of her sad perfume.

  ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ I say to the lad behind the bar when I finally inch my way to the front. His hair is long and messy and he’s wearing a T-shirt with ‘God Save the Queen’ printed on it. He turns round to fetch a glass from the shelf. I don’t usually drink gin but tonight it feels as if I should. It somehow seems fitting. He puts my drink on a white paper mat and I give him the money.

  I turn, sipping the bitter fizziness, and look for an empty table. What we need is a quiet corner for two, a hidden alcove where no one will see us. I don’t want anyone spying. But all I can see is a pub full of bodies – mostly men, mostly roaring out hilarious stories to one another before they finally head home to their families. There are several clusters of women standing about wearing impossibly high heels and dresses that are more like tops. I squeeze between a group of businessmen and stand on tip-toe to see if I can spot a table. I can’t. It wasn’t the best meeting place to choose.

  My text was spur of the moment yet I’d spent all of last night thinking about it, pacing about, unable to sleep for worry. I want to see you. 8pm The Old Bull, cnr Church and Brent Rd. X

  I didn’t receive a reply until we’d come out of the aquarium, blinking in the low winter sun that had finally made an appearance after the morning’s rain. The world was suddenly mirrored, fresh, dangerous – seemingly reflecting everything I was trying to ignore. The feelings I had wouldn’t stay hidden for ever.

  She’d agreed to meet me. OK was the briefest of replies, and without the usual X at the end. That alone instantly sent me into a flat spin of worry about her.

  There is a small gap near the door so I go and stand in it, hoping to spot her if she comes in. I barely have room to breathe. People are all around me, jostling and shoving as they make their way outside for a smoke or to the loo.

  It’s her hair, as ever, that I spot first. It’s as if the pub’s caught fire and we’re all burning up.

  I shake my head. I’m being ridiculous.

  ‘Cecelia!’ I call out, way too loud. I put my hand above my head and wave frantically. Everyone stares at me. I lower it the second she sees me, and then
the blush comes.

  I watch her walk towards me, pushing through the crowd with ease. The world lurches into slow motion as she drags our entire history behind her.

  ‘Heather,’ she says. Her voice, low and sweet as if she drank syrup, catches me unaware even though it hasn’t been that long since I last heard it. She raises a nearly full glass at me, and I wonder how long she’s been here, how I could have missed her.

  There is a biting moment when neither of us knows whether or not to draw close and peck a kiss, but then some jerk seals our indecision by jostling me and making me slosh my drink over my hand. It dribbles down to my elbow. I glare at him, and in a second Cecelia is mopping me with a tissue. I laugh nervously. It’s so unlike her to do that.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ I tell her. The words tumble over each other. She must think I’m drunk.

  ‘You sounded . . . urgent,’ she says. ‘I thought something was wrong.’ How she gleaned that from a plain and simple text I don’t know, but then that’s the thing between us. I’m suddenly reminded of the twins and the way they seem to know what the other’s thinking. It’s happened several times already since I’ve been working for Claudia, as if their connection is way more than common growing space in a womb.

  Oh God, Claudia.

  My stomach rolls and knots as if I’m stricken with disease. I don’t want to think of her right now, yet here I am, squashing back the feeling of guilt that I’m about to shatter the Morgan-Brown household into a million pieces. It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when.

  ‘I’ve been on the lookout for a table, but there aren’t any.’ It doesn’t seem right, telling her standing up. That’s the thing with Cecelia – and don’t I know it: everything has to be perfect. Even with her own brand of just-picked-it-up-off-the-floor meets vintage-shop-finds, Cecelia’s image is carefully crafted right down to the mismatched shades of nail polish she wears on each finger, and the quivering strands of red hair that appear not to have been brushed for a week but have, in fact, taken half an hour or more to place into mussed clumps.