A Most Desirable Marriage (17 page)

Lawrence nodded. ‘He wants your input more than mine seemingly. A woman thing. But he feels awkward ringing you. I think he backed himself into a corner and now feels plain stupid.’

Jo felt a flood of relief that her son needed her.

‘Do you think it’s a good idea, them having a baby?’

‘Well, that’s the thing. She’s so young – barely twenty – and . . . sort of childlike. I can’t imagine how she’ll cope with a baby to look after.’

‘And what will they live on?’

They both stared at each other.

‘But it is our grandchild,’ Jo said softly.

‘I know.’

‘Oh, God. I don’t know what I think. I agree Amber just doesn’t seem capable of coping with her normal life, let alone motherhood. And if she genuinely doesn’t want it . . .’

‘You see Nicky thinks she does want it, but she doesn’t believe
he
does. And he doesn’t want to put pressure on her to keep it because he says it’s her body and she’s going to have to take most of the responsibility. So he hasn’t been totally honest about the fact that he really wants this baby.’

Jo groaned. ‘I don’t see that we can intervene, can we? It’ll have terrible consequences if we take one side or another and then it doesn’t work out.’

‘But he’s desperate for our input. We can’t just walk away.’

They fell silent again.

‘Maybe we should meet up with them. At least talk it through together?’ Lawrence said.

‘With Amber too? Would she do that? She’s never said a word to me, even on a good day. I get the impression she’s a bit intimidated by us.’

‘Really?’ He raised his eyebrows, a half smile on his face.

‘What do you mean? I’ll have you know I’ve bent over backwards to connect with that girl, but she never gives anything back,’ Jo retorted.

Lawrence chuckled. ‘I’m sure you have. But you’ve got form, Jo, with Nicky’s girlfriends. Admit it.’

‘Ha! Loulou, you mean? You couldn’t stand her either, but you were such a creep you pretended you totally
lurved
her. Anyway, I was perfectly polite to her.’

‘Call that polite?’ They were both laughing now. ‘Remember the time she came round with Nicky and we pretended we had to go out and went upstairs to “change”, thinking they’d leave soon, and they didn’t and we had to actually change and go out, despite it being knackeringly cold and having nowhere to go?’

‘All she talked about was who she knew and what she’d bought. She hadn’t a brain in her head.’

‘And that voice!’

Jo didn’t respond immediately. She’d been brought up short by the ease with which she and Lawrence had fallen back into their previous intimacy. It felt dangerous suddenly, like a slippery slope down which she couldn’t afford to slide.

‘So what are we going to do about Nicky and Amber?’ she said, anxious to get this meeting over with.

‘Shall I suggest we all get together, see what he says?’

Jo sighed. ‘I suppose. I hope the thing with Nicky won’t get in the way . . . I can’t have got many Brownie points with Amber over it all.’

‘It’s probably time you sorted it out anyway.’

She glared at him. ‘I have been trying you know.’

‘OK, OK, wasn’t criticizing. I know how tricky it can be, remember?’

‘Yeah . . . sorry. But it’s stupid, especially as Travis is long gone.’

His eyebrows shot up. ‘Gone? You’ve split up?’

She wished everyone wouldn’t make assumptions about her and Travis. Words bandied about like ‘love’, ‘relationship’, ‘split up’, implied she and the American had been an item, something solid. But the Away-Day nature of what they had together – in some ways part of the charm – was not easy to explain. And although she feigned nonchalance now, she still missed Travis terribly. Not having him there to hold her sometimes felt like a physical pain.

‘We both knew it wasn’t an ongoing thing.’

Lawrence looked as if he were waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, he asked, ‘And you’re OK with that?’

‘Yes.’ She wasn’t going to discuss it with him, he wouldn’t understand even if she did.

They sat in silence.

‘Can we meet at home . . . if Nicky agrees?’ he asked eventually.

‘Of course,’ she said, getting up. She found she couldn’t sit there opposite Lawrence for one more second. He looked surprised. But there was still so much unsaid between them, which made these meetings like picking her way through a minefield.

‘Ring me when you’ve got a plan. I’m trying to finish my book so I’m around mostly.’

She left him sitting there.

On the bus going home her thoughts returned to her son and his girlfriend.

6 December 2013

Jo heard her daughter groan.

‘Bloody predictable if you want my opinion. She’s nobbled him, hasn’t she. I mean, how do you get pregnant these days by accident? Weren’t they using contraceptives? And why has she waited all this time to get rid of it if she really, really doesn’t want it?’

‘You think she’s playing some game?’

‘God, I don’t know. Wouldn’t put it past her. “Oh, Nicky, I can’t
possibly
have the baby, I wouldn’t do it to you. It’d put sooo much strain on you and your precious career!”’ Cassie’s childish tone was a cruelly accurate imitation of her brother’s girlfriend.

‘Now, now, that’s a bit unfair,’ Jo admonished. ‘Maybe she’s just being realistic. She knows she can’t cope.’

Her daughter harrumphed.

‘After all, she didn’t need to get pregnant to keep Nicky, did she? He’s besotted,’ Jo added. ‘And if she did do it on purpose, then why is she saying she doesn’t want it? Doesn’t make sense.’

‘I’ve no idea. I just think she’s a bit mental.’

‘Nicky wants me and Dad to talk to her.’

‘Yeah . . . well, that’ll do a lot of good. Like she really respects you both.’

‘My point exactly. But Dad seems to think we need to make the effort anyway. For Nicky’s sake.’

‘So what is your position, Mum? Do you think they should keep it?’

Jo sighed. ‘I hate the thought of losing our grandchild . . . but equally I do wonder how those two will manage. Nicky earns so sporadically, and Amber . . .’

She heard Cassie laugh. ‘You wait. They’ll be asking to move in with you. And you won’t be able to say no.’

‘Don’t want to think about that possibility, thank you.’ Jo paused. ‘We can’t influence them. It’d be wrong. They’re both adults, they have to make their own decision on this one.’

‘Ha! Neat, Mum.’

Jo laughed. ‘I’m not trying to avoid responsibility, honest.’

‘No, of course not. Anyway, I agree.’

‘How’s Matt?’ Jo’s question was tentative. Cassie had said little in the last month about how it was going down on the farm. Whenever Jo asked, she always deflected the query, as if her husband was in the room with her.

Cassie didn’t reply for a minute.

‘Yeah . . . OK . . .’ her voice had sunk to a whisper. ‘I think – fingers crossed – that we’re getting a
fridge
.’

‘That’s brilliant news, darling.’

‘It’s a recycled one, of course. And I’ll barely be allowed to open it – did you know that door openings account for seven per cent of fridge energy? But I don’t care.’

‘It means he’s listening, no?’

‘I think. Too complicated to tell you now, Mum.’ She was still whispering.

‘OK,’ Jo found herself whispering back. ‘Call me when he’s out sometime, if you can.’

‘Will do. Love you. Bye.’

*

Amber looked even paler and thinner than usual, if that were possible. She perched tentatively on the sofa in the sitting room, Nicky pressed to her side, hands firmly entwined. Her cornflower-blue eyes were dewy with incipient tears. Jo thought her son looked tired and strained and imagined sleepless nights when the couple went round and round the same unanswerable questions.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ Jo said. ‘Will you give me a hand, Nicky?’

Her son cast an anxious glance at his girlfriend, as if, Jo thought, irritably, Amber might be abducted by aliens if he let go of her hand for a few minutes.

Once they were in the kitchen, Jo laying out the flapjacks she’d bought from the local café and warming the pot for the tea, she spoke to her son, her voice low.

‘It’s good to see you.’

Nicky’s big frame shifted from foot to foot, his eyes constantly flitting back to the sitting room as he fiddled with the pile of teaspoons on the worktop.

‘Yeah, and you.’

Jo stopped what she was doing. ‘I wish you’d called me.’

Her son gave a long sigh, still wouldn’t look at her. ‘I . . . sorry, Mum. It’s been a difficult time . . . and . . .’ he stopped.

‘It was horrible, not being in touch with you.’

Now he looked at her, his expression contrite. ‘Sorry. I can’t . . . all the stuff with Amber . . . I’m so sorry, Mum.’ There were tears in his eyes and Jo went at once and put her arms round him. He hugged her back, a fierce, tight embrace, but it was only a second before he let her go, as if he were doing something he shouldn’t. Jo wondered what went on between him and Amber behind closed doors. Was the girl deliberately separating Nicky from his family?

‘If you take the tray, I’ll bring the teapot,’ she told him.

When Amber refused the tea she held out to her, Jo replied, ‘Sorry . . . I didn’t think. Would you prefer herbal?’ Her tone was deliberately softened, although she was thoroughly annoyed with the girl’s blatant refusal to engage, to be normal – it was only a cup of tea, for God’s sake! Lawrence had arrived early, to discuss strategy, but neither of them could come up with a plan. Play it by ear, had been the final consensus.

Amber shook her head.

‘So,’ Lawrence said, his tone business-like. ‘You two are probably sick of the subject, but perhaps you’d like to fill us in on what your thoughts are . . .’

Amber glanced at Nicky. Nicky smiled encouragingly back.

‘Amber doesn’t feel it’s the right time to have a baby . . . what with her being so young, and my career not established, no money . . . lots of reasons.’

‘And you want the baby?’ Lawrence asked.

Nicky nodded. ‘But it’s not my body. I don’t have to go through pregnancy and childbirth, look after it, and so on.’

Jo turned to Amber. ‘You genuinely don’t want to keep it?’

The girl looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights at Jo’s question.

‘I . . . don’t see how we can,’ she stammered.

‘But if you could see a way . . . would you want to?’

She shrugged her delicate shoulders. ‘I don’t see how . . .’

‘I know it wouldn’t be easy, but people far worse off than us have children all the time,’ Nicky said, as much to her as to his parents. It was clearly not a new argument, because Amber just nodded tiredly.

Lawrence, who was famously impatient with indecision, seemed to be restraining himself when he asked, rather brusquely, Jo thought, ‘So let me get this straight. You don’t want the baby under any circumstances, Amber? Or you might want it . . . you just can’t see a way to make it work?’

Amber stared at him. She was picking at the sleeve of her white T-shirt, driving a hole through the thin fabric near the seam with her thumbnail. Jo wanted to tell her to stop, to point out what she was doing, but she said nothing. And as she studied the girl, tears that had been glistening around her eyes gathered momentum, and Jo watched as big droplets coursed silently down her pale cheek.

‘I . . . don’t know.’

Lawrence just nodded very slowly. Up and down, up and down went his head, his implied frustration obvious.

‘Dad, she’s scared, OK? She knows all the arguments. We’ve been over it hundreds of times.’

There was silence as everyone looked somewhere else. The lamp light fell on the sofa and Jo noticed that the navy linen on the front edge of the arms was beginning to fray, the dull brown of the original cover peeking through. We must have had that sofa for over twenty years, she thought. Nicky was still only a child.

‘It’s just that a decision has to be made one way or the other, quite soon.’ Jo’s tone was gentle. ‘If you’re already ten weeks—’

‘We know that,’ Nicky said.

‘Have you thought about talking it through with a pregnancy counsellor?’ Jo suggested.

Amber shook her head. ‘I don’t see how anyone can help. We know all the pros and cons.’

Lawrence got up. ‘Shall I make more tea? Or something stronger?’

Jo frowned at him, tugged the back of his sweater. ‘I think we ought to concentrate.’

Her husband twisted his mouth and sat down again.

‘What do
you
think, Mum?’ Nicky asked, his eyes boring into her as if he thought her opinion might be the defining one, the solution to all their problems. Jo was touched by his faith in her wisdom, but she had no idea what she should say.

‘I think . . . that it must be very frightening to be suddenly pregnant at your age. I think it’s a huge responsibility for you both. I think you haven’t known each other for very long. And obviously the financial side is going to be difficult.’ She paused. ‘However. A baby is a baby. Your child, ours too. What should you do? I don’t know, and I wouldn’t want to influence your decision even if I did. Which isn’t very helpful, obviously.’

Nicky sighed, deflated. They both looked so helpless, so exhausted by it all. Jo wanted to hug them, to somehow make it all right.

‘I think you should seriously think about booking the abortion . . . if you really don’t want the baby. Or it’ll be too late.’ Lawrence’s voice was toneless, neutral.

Jo gave a small gasp. Amber’s cornflower eyes widened until they threatened to take over her entire face. Nicky looked stunned.

‘Dad!’

Lawrence’s eyebrows went up. ‘I know, horrible word, “abortion”, but if that’s what we’re talking about, you really don’t have much time.’

Nicky got up, pulling his girlfriend to her feet.

‘Thanks, Dad. Thanks a fucking bunch.’

They almost ran towards the front door, grabbing their coats, neither looking back. Within seconds they were gone.

Lawrence looked at Jo and grinned at her expression.

‘Shock tactics.’

She continued to stare at him.

‘I just wasn’t sure either of them – particularly Amber – had completely faced the fact that if you don’t want a pregnancy, then the only way out is abortion. The baby isn’t just going to magically disappear.’

Jo nodded. ‘Seemed a bit brutal.’

‘I think it worked, though. Did you see their faces when I said it? Nicky was obviously upset – as he would be – but so was Amber. She looked absolutely horrified. I mean she seems quite naïve, but surely she’s heard the word before?’

‘You’re one sneaky bastard,’ she said, almost in awe.

‘Well, we’ll see if it helps to change her mind.’ He took a deep breath. ‘God, that was knackering. Fancy a drink?’

Jo laughed. ‘I’d bloody kill for one. I think there’s a bottle of Donna’s vodka in the freezer.’

Jo poured a slug of Grey Goose into two Duralex tumblers, adding grapefruit juice in the absence of tonic water, and ice. She handed one to her husband, who chinked her glass as he toasted, ‘Perhaps to our grandchild?’

They each took an appreciative sip.

‘Mmm . . . needed that,’ Jo said. They sat down at the kitchen table. ‘But you do realize that this is going to be a whole other drama, if you’re right and they keep the baby.’

‘Hasn’t she got family who’ll help out?’

‘No idea. I hardly know anything about her. Cassie is convinced they’ll want to move in here.’

Jo spoke without thinking, realizing too late the implications for Lawrence regarding the house. She saw him frown and steeled herself for what would inevitably follow.

But he didn’t respond, just went silent and brooding.

‘How are things with you?’ she asked.

He looked up. ‘Fine. Everything’s fine.’

‘Good,’ she said, but she’d known him too long and didn’t believe a word. Something was up.

‘Jo . . .’

She held her hand up. ‘Don’t say it.’

‘What? Don’t say what?’

‘The house?’ she said. ‘Weren’t you going to start on again about selling the house?’

He took a long breath. ‘Umm . . . no, actually.’

She waited while he stared at his glass, swirling it around as the ice jangled in the remains of the vodka – the only sound in the kitchen. He drank that quickly, she thought.

Finally he raised his eyes to hers. ‘Arky wants me to move in.’

‘OK . . . that’s good.’

‘Not really.’

‘Because?’ Jo had spent so many months not mentioning the man’s name, trying her best to blank him from her mind, but now she found she was intrigued as to what was going on between them.

Lawrence sighed. ‘I’m just not sure.’

‘Well, tell him then.’

‘Yeah, I have.’

‘And?’

‘And he doesn’t understand why not.’ Again he fell silent. ‘He’s a bit upset about it to be honest.’

She was having trouble imagining them having this domestic, and the incomprehensibility of their relationship hit Jo anew.

‘What’s the reason you don’t want to?’

He gave a tired shrug. ‘I just can’t see myself . . . living with him . . . sharing it all . . . like a couple.’ He threw his hands in the air. ‘I just can’t see it, Jo.’

No, well, she couldn’t either, so she understood where he was coming from. But she said, ‘Perhaps you need more time?’

‘No, I don’t. This isn’t something I can see myself getting used to. I never envisaged moving in with Arky.’

‘Really? So you’d be happy to go on living in different places for ever?’

‘For ever?’ Lawrence echoed, as if the concept had never occurred to him.

‘Well, yes. I mean, people do and it seems to work. Remember Dom and Sarah. They always had separate places and they were devoted to each other.’

He frowned at her. ‘They died.’

She couldn’t help smiling, even though their friends’ deaths – Dominic from heart disease, Sarah from an embolism after surgery – had been far from amusing at the time.

‘Yes, but not as a result of living apart.’

‘He says it’s a deal-breaker,’ Lawrence’s voice was heavy with gloom. ‘He says if I don’t move in, then it must mean I’m not committed to him.’

‘Sounds a bit childish.’

She watched her husband’s face brighten. ‘You think?’

‘Well, yes. I mean, if you were both twenty, then perhaps he’d have a point. But at your age . . . do you need to prove anything to him?’

‘Arky doesn’t see it like that. He’s accusing me of having cold feet . . . about being with a man.’

‘Right.’

This is too weird, Jo thought. Me giving relationship counselling to my own husband about his boyfriend.

‘Top up?’

He nodded enthusiastically.

When the glasses were refilled, she took some crisps out of the cupboard and poured them into a bowl. Lawrence fell on them, munching absentmindedly, his thoughts clearly with the Russian history professor’s tantrums.