The Chance of a Lifetime

by kendra Smith

  ‘Darl, footie’s not soccer.’

  ‘Football isn’t soccer?

  ‘No, it’s footie – AFL – ‘Aussie rules’ for short,’ said one of the mums, laughing, smearing sun cream on her two-year-old.

  Right. My whole comfort zone has vanished, mused Katie, as she rummaged in her bag for sun cream. Quite soon I may fall flat on my face and into the doctor’s surgery asking for Prozac as well as a pelvic floor examination.

  ‘Hey, sweetie, we’re having a barbecue next week,’ said one of the mums, as if reading her mind. ‘I’m Naomi.’ She flashed Katie a very white smile. ‘Come along, you and your hubby and kids! We can teach you all the Aussie you need!’

  ‘Mummy?’

  All the women turned to look at Andy. Oh God no. Please don’t tell everyone here you have two willies.

  ‘Yes dear?’

  ‘Starfish down by the water, come see.’ Katie breathed out a sigh of relief and took his hand. She let him lead her to the little creature, a tiny starfish delicate in its symmetry. Wow. One minute a Tuesday morning was a Sainsbury’s shop, next minute it’s starfish by the sea. She smiled as she looked around her new world, admiring the view.

  *

  Crouching outside next to the principal’s office a week later, Katie watched as her youngest son squatted in the bushes; she rummaged in her bag for a tissue.

  She heard someone come rushing up behind her; she glanced round. Oh no, it’s Glamour Mum. Katie sighed inwardly.

  ‘Need anything?’ Naomi stood there and smiled down at Katie.

  ‘Full-time nanny and a Lotto win would be nice, but I’ll make do with baby wipes.’ Katie grinned. ‘He couldn’t wait!’

  Naomi burst out laughing. ‘I’m sure I’ve got some wipes! Don’t know how you cope with all your kids, honey, and pregnant, I really don’t,’ she said handing over the wipes and staring at Katie. ‘Andrew, you know, always did want more kids, but…’ She looked away and then started fiddling with the clasp on her bag.

  Katie looked up at her: skin-tight jeans, diamonds glittering from her left hand. She sighed. I must look like an alien to her. A flustered, pregnant alien. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she yanked up her maternity knickers, hoping nobody had noticed. Her lower back was damp and her T-shirt dress was clinging to her in the November heat. Various women had gathered round, were talking to her, being kind, offering tissues. Would British women be this nice to each other?

  *

  Katie headed to Naomi’s house, having left Tom a text message with directions. I feel hot, flustered, worried that my hands still have poo on them despite multiple washings. I feel like an overdressed turkey about to appear for a Christmas dinner, thought Katie. ‘It is thirty degrees in the shade in this blessed country most of the time,’ she muttered to herself as she wiped the sweat off her brow. Perhaps she was making it worse because she was still wearing her trusty M&S cardigan. She wriggled out of her pink lambswool cardi and stuffed it in her bag.

  Naomi was at the top of the stairs to meet them. She looked every inch the part: she had changed into low-waisted linen trousers, perfectly ironed, which revealed a glimpse of tanned and taut midriff complete with belly ring and a knitted black halter-neck top stretched across a bust that seemed to defy gravity. Prada sunglasses on top of her head and bright red toenails finished off the look. And I feel like Makka Pakka. She smiled at Naomi. ‘Hi there.’

  ‘Hi, Katie. Hello, guys.’ She knelt down to give Andy’s hair a ruffle and James a high five. ‘Found us OK?’ No regrowth, thought Katie as she scanned Naomi’s roots.

  Billy, her son, rushed past her. ‘Mum, can we all go for a swim?’

  The house was stunning, set right into the cliff, taking in the views of Middle Harbour – one of the best spots in Seaview. It was a pale azure blue with three levels to it – complete with three balconies offering the kind of views estate agents would sell their mothers for. Andy ran from one balcony to the other shouting: ‘Sailing boats! Sailing boats!’

  Katie sat on the balcony and stared at the view: the boats, bobbing in the harbour, the landscaped garden beneath the house including a shimmering lap pool – deep blue, deeply stylish and deeply expensive. Andrew, Naomi’s husband, was one of Sydney’s top gynaecologists. Huge gum trees swayed in the afternoon breeze; sunlight dappled the balcony. She stared at a tray of delicate prawn canapés. She wanted to pick them up and shove the whole lot in her mouth. Andy was bouncing around on her lap. To him there was no connection between Mummy’s bump and a baby attached to a placenta in there.

  James’s teacher was there, was saying something to her. ‘Ohh, yes, eighteen hours…’

  Katie looked up. ‘Sorry?’ she said, holding her hand over her face to shield it from the sun. Katie smelt barbecue sausages; images of grabbing some and squishing them inside some white bread and watching the tomato relish ooze from the sides filled her mind.

  ‘My obstetrician was a lovely wog, older bloke, father of four.’

  Katie almost swallowed the lemon floating in her drink.

  ‘You can’t call someone a…’ she lowered her voice, conspiratorially ‘…wog.’

  ‘Why not? Means Italian, or Spanish, sweetie, you know Mediterranean…’ She squinted in the sunlight at Katie.

  ‘Guess what?’ It was James, rifling through his Pokémon cards. ‘If you have a demon, they have all the powers, the attack damage. They’re the baddies and the yellow fighter has negative times four powers, and the blue guy – well he gets to have the powers after the battle!’

  Have I given them too many E numbers?

  ‘Wow. Do you have Beedrill?’ Katie recognised the voice.

  ‘Yeah, I got him last week; look, he’s got thirty damage,’ answered James as she looked to the right. It was that guy from the coffee shop.

  ‘That’s way cool,’ he said, letting out a whistle.

  James rushed off to tell Ed about his hand.

  ‘You speak Pokémon, then, as well as make coffee?’ Katie laughed.

  ‘When you teach kids to surf it’s amazing what you pick up. Want one of these? I made them.’ He handed Katie a plate of canapés. Large tail-on prawns drenched in marinade, tiny little pastries and some filo-type morsels she didn’t recognise.

  ‘Try the lemongrass and chilli prawns.’ His eyes were wide and staring at the prawns on the plate. ‘They are to die for, or the little pies are tomato and basil; oh and the curry puffs are vegetarian,’ he added, beaming at her, holding out the platter. She was torn between shoving the whole lot in her mouth and demurely nibbling a curry puff.

  ‘Katie! There you are.’ Ann was coming towards her, carrying a tray of vol-au-vents. She winked and smiled at Katie.

  ‘Katie, have you met Blake, Naomi’s brother?’ She leant over and gave him a peck on the cheek, her wooden beads clanking on the tray.

  Katie almost choked, then started coughing. ‘Have actually. We met at the coffee shop.’ He couldn’t be more different from Naomi if he tried; probably thought Prada was a make of car. ‘So, you’re Naomi’s brother?’

  He nodded. ‘Let me help you up – again!’ He smiled at Katie and helped her off the chair as she headed for the kitchen to get some water. Suddenly Tom appeared, smoothing down his hair and then his shirt.

  ‘You OK?’ Katie pecked him on the cheek and noticed how hot he was.

  ‘Hi, darling, need a beer, back in a mo,’ he said, heading to the kitchen. Katie followed him inside the house, then got stuck with another guest, talking about where to buy baby clothes. Eventually, she wandered around the house, glad of the cool dark corridors, the shiny parquet flooring, which she could silently glide over in her bare feet.

  She eventually saw Tom in the kitchen, in the basement of the house. She caught her breath. It was an enormous chef’s kitchen with black granite surfaces, shiny stainless steel appliances glittering in every corner. A huge vase of creamy white lilies stood majestically on the table. She craned her head to the left and peered. Coming i
n from the sunlight it took a while for her eyes to get used to the dark interior.

  She stopped in her tracks and blinked. Have I just seen what I think I’ve seen?

  11

  A huge chocolate cake covered in sparklers was coming towards her. Tom had remembered the sparklers, at least. The boys screamed with delight. She had let them stay up – it was already seven o’clock. It’s my birthday, she thought, and really, sitting in a rented house, alone on your birthday waiting for your husband to come home ranks as about as enjoyable as having your bikini line waxed by an inexperienced therapist. She remembered her birthday last year, recalled the party her mum had thrown for her in Putney, in her garden with a marquee and fairy lights roped around the apple trees. Tom had left a voicemail earlier that day:

  Happy birthday, babe, I will be home early tonight with a surprise.

  A one-way ticket to London?

  ‘Katie?’ Tom and the boys were staring at her. They’d lit the candle and her darling children were singing.

  ‘Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, you look like a monkey and you smell like one too!’ Maybe her children were not so darling.

  There were snorts and giggles. The phone was ringing, the start of the birthday phone call marathon from all her family and friends, made worse by the time difference. Gramps phoned first. He asked the boys to sing another verse of the monkey happy birthday song, which they delightedly did.

  ‘How are you, Katie? How you feeling? Must be a bit hot for you?’

  She skimmed over her homesickness, told Gramps she was fine, that the baby’s latest scan was fine; she asked if he’d managed to organise a housekeeper yet.

  ‘Well, actually that’s proving a bit difficult. Not to worry, I’m sorting it out myself. You wouldn’t believe how many washing powders there are!’ He laughed down the phone, but Katie could tell he was putting on a brave face.

  ‘Actually, my dear, this old chap at the Golf Club has mentioned this agency to me.’

  ‘Marvellous, Gramps, do they find the girls for you?’

  ‘Well, no it’s another agency, Katie.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Called Silverdating; really rather super. Had a look already and there are some charming ladies.’ He coughed. ‘Haven’t clicked “like” under any names yet, though.’ He chuckled.

  Katie was speechless. Decided she must talk to Tom about it, as she handed him the phone and patted him on the arm.

  Debra FaceTimed them next on the iPad and when her voice filled the room, Katie wanted to reach through the screen and touch her, hold her tight. She seemed so happy. God, she missed her, missed the fact that only she held the key to some of their shared memories. She remembered how her mum used to shout up, ‘You two… I hope you’re in bed!’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ they’d chorus back. But all the while they were actually leaning out of their bedroom window and, giggling in their Holly Hobbie nightgowns, thinking about the chocolate biscuits they’d smuggled up after tea, staring at the hideous turquoise flowers on the wallpaper. That was about as exciting as life got in a village outside St Albans, where their dad had worked in a carpet factory for twenty years and their mum had a part-time job in a dress ‘agency’. An ‘agency’ that hired outfits for special events for ladies who couldn’t afford to buy them. Sometimes Mum got to take them home, to keep them if they were past their best or torn. She’d twirl around in front of the mirror then sigh at Katie, who’d be watching her from the bed. ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go.’ She would smile ruefully.

  They’d had a straightforward life: family holidays in Cornwall and a few to France. But her dad hadn’t liked the heat, so more often than not they’d stay at little B&Bs or family hotels in Dorset, Norfolk and Suffolk and forgo ‘the Continent’, even though her mum loved it. It wasn’t an upbringing to shout about and she remembered how excited she’d been when her offer of a place came at Cardiff University to study Sociology; how grown-up it sounded; how she had longed to leave home. And yet, when she’d got there she’d felt very alone, acutely homesick in fact – hadn’t quite appreciated how much value she put on the familiar.

  ‘Katie?’ Debra was looking at her quizzically. She was sitting cross-legged wearing jeans and a big duck-egg blue knitted jumper, her eyes shining. Her neat blonde hair was now held back with a blue bandanna. She grinned at Katie. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Fine!’ Who was she kidding?

  Debs told her about Simon, a guy she’d met at work. He’d been married before but, you know, there are always two sides to—

  Katie laughed. ‘Every story!’ they chorused.

  Mum had sounded chirpy too on the phone. ‘Have a super time, darling, look after yourself, have put some money in your account and sent you a little something. Hope they fit. Enjoy yourself – I’ll send you a postcard from Sardinia.’ (She was off on yet another cruise with her best friend Diana – had taken her retirement to a new level, laughed about ‘Ski’ holidays – Spending the Kids Inheritance – isn’t that funny, darling?). What Katie hadn’t seen were the tears at the other end, the wet tissues lying by the phone. I’m just glad she’s enjoying life, thought Katie, who drained her glass of apple juice and tried to keep each conversation brief.

  Eventually, she sat down on the sofa and pulled out her birthday present from her mum: a pair of L. K. Bennett suede slingbacks in the palest grass-green shade, packed very carefully in tissue paper. Mum knows what I like, she thought, knows my exact size. Of course she does. Shopping is her main pastime now, and she deserves it. Katie admired the shoes and remembered back to when her mum and dad were together, before he suddenly… about how he’d wanted to carry on working, even into his old age.

  Every time she had come home for the holidays from university her dad seemed to have aged a hundred years, shrivelled a little. What she and her mum didn’t know was that the reason he had wanted to carry on working was that he had been paying a hefty sum into an insurance policy every month, and it hadn’t matured yet. He wanted to make sure they were comfortable in their retirement. In the end, the irony was that the boredom of not working after he was made redundant – coupled with worsening angina – killed him.

  But it left Katie’s mum with an enormous payout which, eventually, she realised shouldn’t just sit in the bank. She finally took some holidays with another widow in the village. Then eventually, she moved to London. She was sixty-six by then, but she bought a ground-floor flat in Putney overlooking the Thames. She could walk to cafés, shops, the Tube and her life started all over again.

  Katie turned the shoes round in her hand and forced herself to smile. I will wear them tonight, she decided. And Gramps’s orange-beaded necklace. She pulled a face… but he’d chosen it with such care and given it to her when they’d left, she wanted to honour that. Reminds me of you, old girl, bright and shiny! She could hear Tom upstairs, his soothing voice, reading the boys a story: the giggles, the murmurs of getting the boys ready for bed as she lay on the sofa, closed her eyes and wondered how she would get through the evening. Really, she just wanted to stay in with Tom.

  *

  Katie was lying in bath, breathing in the tangy fragrance of lemongrass bubble bath, when Tom barged in with the phone: ‘For you,’ he said and hastily handed it to her.

  ‘Hey babe, happy birthday!’ said a slow drawl that immediately gave her goosebumps. She watched as her nipples became erect in the bath.

  ‘Adam! How are you? Lucy OK?’

  ‘Well.’ She could hear him clearing his throat. ‘Got some news. We’re going to be parents. Wanted you both to know.’ He suddenly sounded formal. As he told her, for some reason, it felt like a tiny arrow was going through her heart. A little one, one I will be able to live with, she thought, but it will niggle me, move a little at times, nudge me and maybe twist a bit, rather like a splinter you can’t get out but then you press on it accidentally and you scream. They were pregnant. Lucy and Adam are pregnant.

  She closed her eyes and tried to understand w
hat she felt. She knew what had happened with Adam was wrong; she knew it was because her own marriage was rather frayed round the edges. But she also knew how much Adam really loved Lucy, wanted to make her happy. She knew this because of the handwritten letter he’d sent her a few weeks after their trip. She had kept it in her drawer by the bed.

  Dear Katie

  What happened on the beach was wonderful, exciting – and wrong. I love my wife and she means everything to me – she’s been badly hurt before and I don’t want to let her down. The long journey home gave me time to think about it all and I’m deeply, deeply sorry for what happened in that moment. Ever since your party I had thought about you, and wanted to see you again – it was entirely my fault and I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. It was a mixture of feeling huge pressure from Lucy about leaving London, the holiday vibe, the sun, the sea… We both know that we were playing with fire – nothing could come of it – and I’m glad we stopped when we did.

  Tom is a great guy – but he’s very stressed at the moment, told me a lot when we sat out on the deck that night about money; about how worried he is for his family, that you had been amazing to support him, to go on the journey. Not many wives would do it! You are both good friends and I want to keep it that way. I wish you both luck. Please don’t hate me.

  Take care,

  Adam

  Katie opened her eyes and remembered where she was and stared at the phone in her hand. ‘That’s brilliant. Well done!’ She made it sound like they had just had a planning application approved.

  ‘Thanks.’ He sounded so proud. ‘I’ll get Lucy, hang on.’ He was talking fast, sounded distracted.

  ‘Adam? Thanks for your letter,’ said Katie softly, clutching the phone.

  ‘Katie? It’s me!’ the girly voice was brimming with happiness on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m having a baby!’

  ‘Great! Great!’ Katie closed her eyes and hoped Lucy hadn’t heard her last remark.

  ‘Isn’t it? And also, we’ve seen this amazing Grade II listed farmhouse in Berkshire online – we’re going to see it this weekend! It has dreamy things like roses over the front door, and a vegetable garden and a proper bell you ring, remember?’ Her voice quickened. ‘Thinking about it keeps me going. I’m desperate to really start living our lives. Adam says he might get a studio flat in London, has to be at the fruit markets so early. I’m not sure… anyway…’ Her voice trailed off. A cough. ‘Anyway how are you? How is it over the Other Side of the World?’