They talked about dates again, explored the options and discussed procedures. Dr Andrews asked Gillian to leave a urine sample and said she would arrange an appointment for her to see a second doctor. Then as the interview came to an end Gillian felt suddenly desperate, more trapped than ever.
‘I can still think about it?’
‘Of course. You’re committed to nothing yet, nothing at all. Let’s make sure you are pregnant first. Then it’s very important that you do think about it, that you feel absolutely sure about what you want to do.’
Gillian nodded, submitting to this good advice from this other woman who had her two children – or was it three – and who did have a stable relationship. What did she really think of Gillian, with her carelessness and her failed relationship?
Out in the street, dark now and cold, Gillian turned up her collar and began to walk slowly home. She must talk to someone. She couldn’t do all this thinking and deciding on her own. Not Steve, never him.
It was her women friends she needed, except that for months Steve had taken up her free time, or she had kept it free for him, and she hadn’t recovered her old habits of friendship. Finding her unreliable, other people had drifted away. She could ring Carol tonight, why not? Or Ros, or Steph. She had heard Carol was heavily involved with a new man. Telling people, though, would make no difference. The truth remained, immovable.
A cold sleety rain had begun to fall, so that by the time she was indoors her hair and trousers were soaked and her hands frozen. She towelled her hair, changed out of office clothes and went to make herself coffee. As she filled the kettle, she said aloud, ‘Gin – that’s what I need. Gin and a hot bath.’ There was no-one to share the joke, if that’s what it was, so she began to cry instead. ‘Stupid woman,’ she muttered, ‘get a bloody drink.’
So she did. While the coffee was brewing, she poured herself a large gin and went to check her answerphone for messages.
‘Hi, Gill, it’s Lynn – call me quick if you get in before six.’
Work. What was that about?
‘Guess what?’ Lynn’s clear young voice was full of excitement. ‘You know the environmental conference we did in the EICC last year? Remember those guys from the States that were from some sort of think tank in San Francisco? The fair one was neat – he fancied you.’
Gill laughed. ‘Aye, right. What about them?’
‘Well, they emailed Richie today, and they want us to do this thing in the States for them. Kind of international think-in. Lots of guys getting together and thinking great thoughts about the future, global warming, mankind’s survival, stuff like that. We’re going to do the international bit. And get this: they asked for us, for you and me. So how do you fancy San Francisco next Spring?’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘More than a year away I know, but we’d need maybe two visits over there first, and some other trips too. They want us to liaise with Sweden and Australia as well. Apparently that’s where guys who do all the, like, craziest thinking hang out.’
Gillian laughed. ‘Wow. Australia.’
‘Fantastic, eh? It’s a big contract, Richie’s chuffed as hell. We’re the golden girls, Gill. We impressed them.’
‘We did, didn’t we? Next Spring.’
‘April.’
‘That’s amazing.’
‘Are you Ok? You sound a bit subdued. Oh God, you were at the doc today, weren’t you?’
Lynn was probably imagining terminal illness.
‘I’m fine. Minor female problem. I’m thrilled, really. A bit stunned, that’s all.’
‘Worth a drink though. Celebration after work tomorrow?’
‘Sure. Must go, I put something in the oven. Cheers, Lynn.’
Gillian reached for a chair, overtaken by such a wave of fatigue she was unable to stand. This was what it was then, what it meant: a woman’s right to choose. She had to choose, choose now, between work, her future, life, and motherhood, someone else’s life.
Successful career women had babies all the time and went on working. They even went on organising conferences in San Francisco, flying abroad and keeping up with people like Lynn, who was twenty seven and never seemed to sleep. But not me, she thought, not me. What kind of mother had a high powered career and put it first, her children second? Besides, she thought with the honesty of lonely thinking, I haven’t the bloody energy.
Then there was Susan who took a man from his two small sons and later left her own fourteen year old daughter. What kind of mother was that?
Frances was a single mother and she had managed. But she had no choice, and her children were anyway not babies when she moved back to Aberdeen and began teaching again. She had her parents for support till the boys were older and she moved to the Highlands. Her parents would have followed her there if she had let them, but Frances had coped on her own.
I’d have no-one here but some paid child-minder, Gillian thought. It would just be a long slog of doing everything by myself. She put her face in her hands, unable to bear this heroic and painful image of herself, full of pity for the imagined life she knew she could not face, and would dislike more than anything.
This could be your last chance, a demon voice reminded her, as she blew her nose and got up to go and make supper. Your last chance to have a child. Yeah, and wreck my life, and probably any chance of getting married. Selfish cow, the voice mocked, selfish stupid cow.
She made herself scrambled egg, invalid food, as though she needed special care, then ate two chocolate biscuits and made more coffee. She felt fat now, ugly and tear-stained. She hated herself in every possible way.
The smell of the coffee made her feel sick so she poured it away and lay down exhausted on the sofa, unable even to think. She would not call anyone. The charge of excitement Lynn’s news had given her was dissipated in confusion and misery. Her hands crept over her belly. A collection of cells, that was all. Like a bit of jelly. No, it had to be this way. Her job, the flat, her future all depended on being free and childless. It was the moral choice, surely it was. If she could only think straight she would be able to prove that.
Something was sticking out from underneath the sofa, a piece of card. She felt with one hand, and pulled it out. It was the photograph she had kept aside, the studio portrait of herself with Susan and Frances. Frances at sixteen, Susan at twelve, herself at eight: the three Douglas girls. She sat up and put on the lamp beside the sofa, to look at it again. The three Douglas girls. Then she got up and went to call Frances. She would go to Dingwall, sleep in Jack’s room and walk in the fresh air with her sister. That would clear her head.
Chez Louis was quiet, as it usually was on a Thursday night. Alec had anticipated when they opened that Thursdays would be busy with people coming in after late night shopping, but although they had a flurry in the Bistro section between five and seven, the main restaurant was never booked up. People went home tired after late night shopping, feeling they had spent enough money already. It was the Bistro which was keeping them going. Lunch-times and after work were the busy times, but the profit margins on the food they sold then – soup, sandwiches, baked potatoes – were low. The main restaurant did well at weekends, but not well enough.
He went to tell Graham, the chef, that he might as well go home. ‘I’ll cope with anybody coming in now. Not that there will be since it’s nearly ten. We’ll close up when Table 6 is cleared, eh?’
Graham was Alex’s partner. In the first few months they had often sat down late at night with glasses of red wine and planned their future, working out menus and marketing, but these days they simply worked side by side, avoiding each other and avoiding debate.
In the empty restaurant, when the evening clear-up had been done, Alec went to lock up and switch on the burglar alarm. The cleaners would be in in the morning when the warm smells of garlic and spices, tomato and fresh coffee, had staled, and the window sills and pot plants were dusty in morning sunshine.
In the dark street it was ra
ining again as he turned up his collar and made for the car. Behind the driving seat, he thought about going to Lizzie’s place. Lizzie was the woman he was seeing, had in fact begun seeing before Susan left, though nothing had come of it then: it had been only a few drinks and friendly chats. Her easy nature attracted him.
He was tired and indigestion sent shooting pains through his gut. Better to go home, have a brandy, lie down.
The house was in a Victorian terrace in Gosforth with large square rooms, a patch of grass in front, and a small yard behind. From the outside it looked the same, but it had altered in some indefinable way since he had been living in it on his own. Everything was always exactly as he had left it, and it smelled of neglect.
This time, when he walked into the hall, there was a smell of burning. Not fire, nothing dangerous. It was the charcoal smell of burnt toast. He stood for a moment in darkness then headed for the kitchen and switched on the light. Under the glare of the fluorescent tube he saw a plate smeared with toast crumbs and a china mug with a ring of brown tea on the bottom.
‘Kate?’ he called, turning. ‘Kate!’
He ran upstairs, switching on lights and throwing open all the doors. The house blazed, but it was empty. Here the smell of burnt toast had been replaced by something subtler and sweeter, a scent once as familiar as his own body. He went into Kate’s room. The bedcovers were pulled straight, the debris of the life she had left behind untouched. Not Kate then, not Kate. He went into his own bedroom, his and Susan’s. The bed was unmade, but he had left it like that. A shoe lay in the middle of the floor as if kicked aside but it was one of his own shoes.
The doors of the long fitted wardrobe were open. A few things had been pushed along the rail to the end. The rest was empty.
Alec sat on the bed, heart pounding, gazing at the empty spaces. He breathed hard, trying to keep calm. How had he left it this morning? He tried to remember the morning, but it would not come clear, it merged with all the other mornings of this week. Last night, then. He looked at the whisky bottle on the bedside cabinet, the empty glass. He remembered those, of course he did, they came to bed with him every night. He didn’t get hangovers; that was why he had been able to drink heavily for so many years. Frances had been angry about it, as if it was a fault he should have corrected. Susan had been envious and resentful. But for years he had thought himself lucky, someone who could handle drink. There was nothing to make him feel remorse.
He hardly ever started drinking through the day, and never at work, but these last few years and especially lately, there was a vagueness about his mornings. He was not an alcoholic, nothing like it. He was coping all right, he got up and washed and shaved, maybe even had breakfast. It was just that he couldn’t remember doing it.
The scent was still there. It was as if the wardrobe doors, left open, had released it. He got up and pulled the sliding doors across, their rumble and thud alarmingly loud. Steadying himself, he crossed to the dressing table. The top drawer on the left was open and he stood gazing down at the jewellers’ boxes lying there higgledy-piggledy, as if they had been tumbled about in a rough search. Some were empty; others were missing.
Aloud, he said, ‘You’re all right, aren’t you?’ She was not in the Tyne after all, or down a mineshaft, or deep in a dark wood, buried under leaves and pine needles. ‘Not you, Susie. You’re not so far away.’
She did not answer. The house ached with emptiness, the not being here of Susan. He reached for the telephone then changed his mind and went downstairs to get a whisky since the bottle in the bedroom was empty. The griping pains in his stomach had begun again, worse this time.
He felt the burn of the whisky in his throat and stomach. He gulped it down and poured another. Around him, silence thickened like a reproach.
3
They had tried the Ouija board, but after a while Roxanne said it was spooky so they stopped. The glass had been flying about like crazy, spelling out names they had never even heard of. Kate had definitely heard of Zebedee: she thought he was a character in a children’s programme years ago, but Eilidh thought it was a name for the devil. They decided to try levitation instead.
‘If it doesn’t work we’ll just put on the video, right?’
‘Right.’
Through the five of them ran a delicious frisson of fear.
Roxanne was small and light so they decided to try with her.
‘You won’t drop me or nothing?’ she begged. She lay on the coffee table, with one of a nest of tables at her feet, the second table and a pile of cushions at her head. The others surrounded her, two at her shoulders, two at her hips.
‘Now,’ Kate said, ‘just put the tips of your fingers under her.’
Kate had done this before so she was the expert.
‘Did it work?’ Michelle kept asking her. ‘Did the girl really, like, move?’
‘She went up nearly a foot, I’m not kidding.’
‘Wow.’
They each put both hands lightly under Roxanne, who giggled. ‘You’re tickling me.’
‘Ssh.’
They became solemn, waiting.
‘Do we like, push her or anything?’ Amy whispered.
‘No – ssh. Think about air, about lifting, think how light Roxanne’s getting. Concentrate.’
Kate had become their leader. They were docile for all their hard shells, the smoking at school, the cheek they gave teachers, the vodka breezers at weekends. Kate could hardly believe how easy it had been to take the lead. She would rather have impressed a different crowd but that but got nowhere.
Inside the house, the room, all was still. Sounds from the early evening street – a child calling, a dog barking, a car moving off – faded and grew as faint as sounds echoing in another village, another world. The sun had gone down over the horizon of rooftops, the light almost gone at seven o’clock, and it seemed to grow darker in Roxanne’s living-room. On the sideboard two coke cans trembled; inside the cocktail cabinet, bottles shivered, clinking faintly against each other. The electric fire hissed as if dust was being burned off.
Supported by forty fingers Roxanne became weightless and rose unsteadily by an inch, two inches, above the coffee table. She tilted slightly, rose again. Michelle shrieked, Amy yelled, she was down and they had all broken apart, hysterical. Roxanne scrabbled to her feet.
‘It worked!’
‘Oh my God, that was so scary!’
Kate sat back and smiled. ‘I told you,’ she said.
By the time they had talked it over twenty times, they were convinced Roxanne had risen a foot at least.
‘I’m not doing it again,’ she declared. ‘What if I just kept going, and couldn’t get down? Can you see me, eh, floating up at the ceiling – ’
‘Imagine your mother,’ Amy said. ‘She comes home, right, and she can’t see you, so she shouts ‘Roxanne!’ and your voice is, like, right above her?’
‘Don’t tell my Mam! She might tell my Granny, and my Granny goes to church. She’d go spare!’
‘What’s it got to do with the church?’ Kate asked, mysti„fied.
‘It’s against the teaching of the Bible, isn’t that right?’ Eilidh explained.
‘It’s spooky, anyhow,’ Roxanne decided. ‘I’m not doing it again.’
‘Put the video on then.’
‘Yeah, put the video on.’
It was a teenage horror film.
‘I wish we’d got something else.’
‘What time’s your Mum home, Roxanne?’
‘About midnight.’
Hours away. They watched quiz programmes on television instead, and cheered themselves up toasting marshmallows and drinking Coke, cosy together on the long sofa.
Later they revived, and with the television off went over again the success of Roxanne’s mysterious rise into the air. They agreed it was weird, but –
‘It doesn’t mean nothing, really, does it?’ Michelle consoled.
‘My Mam’s boyfriend comes back onshore t
omorrow,’ Roxanne said. ‘I’m not telling him. He’d make a real fool of me.’
‘Do you like him?’
‘He’s OK. He’s younger than my Mam.’
‘My Mum’s going out with this guy I really hate,’ Michelle sighed. ‘I said to her, if he moves in, I’m moving out.’
‘You wouldn’t really.’
‘I fucking would.’
Eilidh moved off the sofa and sat toasting her feet by the fire.
‘What’s the best and the worst things that have ever happened to you?’ she asked.
Kate waited to hear what everyone else would say. After a moment, Amy began.
‘The best was when we got Jasper.’ She turned to Kate. ‘That’s our dog. He’s a Labrador and he was this tiny black puppy with wobbly legs, really cute. You should’ve seen him.’ She laughed. ‘He wee-ed all over our kitchen floor, my Mam was mad, but he was so cute.’ She paused, thinking. ‘He’s kinda fat now, he’s quite old.’
As they told their stories Kate realised their best things were all childhood memories, Christmas and birthdays, theme park holidays, pets, surprises. They had happened in easier times. Now of them all, only Eilidh’s parents still lived together.
‘You haven’t said your best thing,’ they reminded Kate.
‘Can’t think.’ She shrugged. ‘There were loads of things when I was little. Holidays and that. We were always going on holiday.’
What could she tell them that did not seem, in the light of all their remembered joys, either pathetic or trivial? Her mother turning round and smiling when she had been afraid she was still in a black mood and saying, ‘Kate, let’s go to the sea.’ They had gone to Amble, a long way in her mother’s rickety car. They had seen Freddie the dolphin leaping and diving, following a boat in. Her mother had bought them fish and chips before they drove home and they had been happy all day. This would seem dull to them. How could they understand the lightness in your heart when your mother, for such a long time unhappy and strange, behaves like anyone else’s mother?
‘Nobody’s said their worst thing, have they?’ she countered.
Tell Me Where You Are Page 11
