One Thing Led to Another (14 page)

I carry mine and Vicky’s soup bowls to the sink. ‘I mean, it’s all a bit twisted, isn’t it? This set up. Like something out of an American sitcom.’

Vicky doesn’t say anything for a while and then she says, with almost tangible disappointment in her voice.

‘So, does this mean both of you are going to carry on dating other people? Or, I mean, are you going to carry on having sex?’

‘God no. We shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place.’

‘Oh.’ Vicky sounds genuinely bewildered, I can’t say I blame her. Why do some choices you make in life seem utterly ludicrous only in retrospect?

And anyway.’ I sit back down at the table. ‘I have news…’

‘Oh God, don’t tell me it’s twins.’

‘Behave yourself! No, I’m seeing someone.’

‘Who?’ She says this as if me doing anything, anything at all with someone other than Jim is surely impossible.

‘You’re gonna hate me.’

‘Try me.’

‘Laurence.’

Vicky shuts her eyes in concentration.

‘So, tell me again, you’ve told him you’re pregnant?’

‘Yup,’ I say, thinking you loser, Jarvis. You absolute lame arse.

‘And he knows what that means?’

‘I assume so, unless he missed out on the birds and the bees talk.’

‘This isn’t the time for sarcasm. Is he willing to take on another man’s child? Even though you’ve seen each other like, twice?’

‘Er…yep.’

‘Teeess?’

‘Yes!’ I say, but I know this is already falling apart…

‘And you’ve told Jim you’re seeing him?’

‘Um, sort of.’

‘I can tell you’re lying because you’re biting your thumb nail and you’ve got that slightly surprised expression on your face.’

It’s all over.

‘Oh for God’s sake OK!’ I snap, eventually. ‘No, I haven’t told him. I’m sorry, I know I’m crap and I will, next time I see him, I will tell him. I promise.’

Just as Vicky can read every lying little contour of my face, so I knew exactly how she’d react when I told her I was seeing Laurence. She doesn’t tell me off or even say she doesn’t approve, she just gently reminds me that I ran up a £1200 Barclaycard bill due to hour-long wailing phone calls from Africa to London, and just touches on, ever so diplomatically, what the hell I think I’m doing starting a relationship when I’m pregnant. By someone else.

Then, literally five minutes after I have disclosed this information to her my mobile goes. I swear it’s like it is in the films: I look at her, she looks at me, we both know who it is.

‘I have to take this, it’s him.’

‘I know it’s him. It’s written all over your face!’

I walk over to the patio door for some privacy and try – and fail – to hide the very obvious smile in my voice. ‘Hey you.’

Laurence sounds like he’s outside. He sounds excited and kind of free and he has news, news that despite myself, and despite straining to hear over Vicky, who has followed me, banging on in a stage whisper in my ear, plus the roar of traffic in the background, makes my throat constrict with excitement and the grey fug in my head clear into a new, blue day. He and Chloe are not just likely to finish, they
are
finishing, any day now!

‘I just need to wait till she’s through her marketing exams – it would be pretty rough of me to dump her whilst she’s all stressed out –’

(Considerate? Check. Big heart? Check.)

‘And then I’m going to do it, Tess. I’m going to tell her it’s over
definitely.
It’s just gone bad, Tess, I’m telling you, she’s doing my head in. I didn’t know how fucking lucky I was to have you – you were a dream girlfriend, so low maintenance! I totally took you for granted.’

‘Well if you really think it isn’t working then maybe yes, perhaps it’s the best thing for both of you.’

(Rough translation: just chuck the miserable bitch and go out with me, you know it makes sense.)

‘I think it’s best, and not just for me and Chloe but you know,’ he pauses, gives a nervous laugh, ‘us, too.’

A lawnmower starts up next door. I can’t believe I’m hearing this.

‘I made the biggest mistake of my life, Tess, the day I finished with you.’

‘No. No, it was my mistake too!’

Vicky rolls her eyes and wanders off.

‘And I’ve missed you.’

I clutch the phone, and have to clasp a hand to my mouth to stop myself from actually crying out.

‘I’ve missed you too.’

‘So what do you say to dinner, eh? To celebrate? Next week?’

‘Yeah, wicked.’

It’s only as I’m hanging up, a smile from ear to ear, that I even bother to look up to find Vicky is jigging up and down, waving a piece of paper in my face.

‘NEXT TIME I MEET HIM, I’LL TELL LAURENCE I’M PREGNANT. I PROMISE.’ YOUR WORDS NOT MINE.

‘
And
,’ teases Vicky, poking a finger at me, ‘since when did you say “wicked”? That’s so Laurence!’

‘Did I say that?’ I say, not really listening.

‘You certainly did.’

‘Good Lord!’ I say teasingly, doing a little celebratory dance as I put my phone away. ‘It must be love, I’m turning into him!’

Vicky pulls up at Beckenham station and I open the passenger door.

‘So, promise me, you will tell Laurence?’

‘I promise.’

‘And you’ll think about Jim’s offer? Just temporarily?’

‘Yep, definitely I will.’

‘I hope it works out with Laurence, that he doesn’t freak.’

‘Yeah so do I. But I do know him remember? I’ve got a good feeling about this one.’

‘It should have been Jim, though. You know I’ll always believe that? Don’t you?’

‘Till the day you die, I imagine, sick happy-ending-addict that you are! But this will be my happy ending, OK?’ I give her a kiss on the cheek. ‘If it kills me.’ I get out of the car.

Perhaps it’s the thought of going back home to Gina or the confidence boost that Laurence’s call has given me, or just the sudden realization that living with Jim might be really, really nice, but as soon as I’m on the train, I know what to do. So I call him. But sod’s law he’s not in.

‘Jim Ashcroft lives here. Please leave a message.’

Beep.

‘How do you feel about Tess Jarvis living there too? Because she’d love to move in, if the offer still stands.’

Ten minutes later he calls. ‘Hello, flatmate,’ he says.

I smile as I hang up. The fields at either side of me are a vibrant, thick green. Everything seems to be falling into place.

‘Andy was a proper rotter, I kicked him out when Millie was four months old, cut all his suits into pieces, went to town. Three weeks later he turns up on my doorstep all apologies and flowers, and I, like an idiot, jump straight back in bed with him. Bam! I’m pregnant, two babies in a one year. It was exactly the same with number two, me screaming blue murder down his mobey at him, in between contractions. Did he show up? Did he hell as like.’

Hayley, 22, Merseyside

I know something’s different as soon as I walk through the door. It smells amazing for a start – fresh and floral – and all the lights are on, which means Gina’s actually in on a Saturday night. I walk into the lounge and am literally stopped in my tracks. It’s spotless. Not just tidy, but spotless. The cushions are all arranged, the newspapers and ashtrays have been tidied away, the rug has been hoovered. My God, the TV’s even been dusted! On the mantelpiece is a vase of hyacinths and all over the room, scented candles burn. I go into the kitchen, it’s exactly the same story there. Not one dirty mug, no overflowing bin, just shiny, spotless, surfaces
and the smell of lemon zest. In my bedroom I am greeted by more spotlessness and a beautiful bouquet of burnt orange tulips standing on my dressing table.

‘Hey.’

I look round, to find the strange, mousy voice belongs to Gina. She’s wearing pyjamas, her hair all slapped back.

‘Hi,’ I say back, but then her face just crumples.

‘I’m sorry,’ she squeaks, then she throws herself against me and bursts into tears. ‘I wanted to stop behaving like a twat, but once I started I just couldn’t stop. And I didn’t know how to say sorry and God, I’ve missed you so much!’

She’s wailing now. I stand there hugging her, totally dumbstruck.

‘So I thought if I made a gesture – coz I’m crap with words – if I cleaned up and made the house look nice…’

‘Gina, it looks beautiful.’

‘Do you think? Do you like it? I’m glad because this is to say sorry Tess.’ She’s in floods now, wiping away the tears with the heels of her hands. ‘For being a total cunt.’ (So poetic.) ‘I hope you can forgive me?’

‘Course I forgive you.’
I’m
crying now.

‘Good coz it’s shit when we’re not talking.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

We talk at the kitchen table like old times until well after midnight. It turns out Gina was threatened by the pregnancy. Being the sensitive flower she is under all that tough exterior, she assumed that now I was pregnant, she would lose me
and
Jim – two of her best friends – her partners in crime for ever. There’d be no more drunken nights in the Jacuzzi, no more nights down the pub, no more lost hours at Turnmills, no more Sundays sitting in cafés dissecting her love life. I sit and I listen and I admit yes, life will change, but that doesn’t have to mean I will. I was hurt too, I say, by the way she dealt with it when I needed her most. She was childish and
selfish. It’s not the easiest of conversations, but it’s definitely one of the most satisfying and by the end of the night, I think we’re both secretly flattered that the other one needed us more than we knew.

But of course, there’s something I have to tell her.

‘Gina,’ I say, when I eventually find an appropriate lull in the conversation. ‘Jim asked me to move in.’

She doesn’t look shocked or angry, just more surprised.

‘And?’

‘I said yes.’ I pause. ‘I think it’s what we need.’

‘Oh my God!’ she collapses now, head in her hands. ‘But it’ll be the end of an era, I can’t fucking bear it!’

‘I know, I’m sorry, I really had to think about it. But I’ll have to move when the baby’s born anyway and I just couldn’t see it working, me, nine months pregnant, lying like a beached whale on the sofa, you permanently having to smoke outside, get me things, massage my feet…’

‘Yeah.’ She pulls a face. ‘Maybe not.’

‘So when are you leaving me?’

‘I’m not sure yet, but probably soon.’

‘Shit this is
big
, Tess!’

‘I know! I know it is…’

But not quite as big as what I tell her next…

‘I knew it!’ she shouts, dancing about the kitchen. ‘I knew he still loved you. Laurence Cane, you sly bastard. So why didn’t you tell me you bumped into him?’

‘Er, because you weren’t talking to me,’ I point out. ‘And because I had more important things on my mind.’

‘Right. But what’s the situation now?’ she says, glossing over that minor detail, desperate for progress.

‘Well, apparently it would seem it’s just a case of him finishing with Chloe. Which he says he’s going to do as soon as she’s finished these marketing exams she’s doing.’

‘Good, I never did like her. Hard face, weird eyes.’

‘And the baby?’ she says. ‘Have you told him about the baby?’

‘No,’ I say, thinking oh dear, this is where her enthusiasm dwindles, but she’s not even fazed. She just says ‘Right, OK,’ then ponders this concept for a moment. Then she says, ‘It’s a lot to take on. I’m not denying that. But I’m quietly confident that he’s up to the job.’

I feel a momentary burst of optimism on hearing these words. Maybe I’m not totally mad and delusional! After all, Gina knows Laurence, the real Laurence. And not in a way that is warped with lust.

‘I was in labour for seventeen hours with Gayle and for fourteen of those, Ron was in the pub. But the day he held that little girl in his arms, was the day he stopped drinking for ever. She’s forty now and still has her daddy wrapped around her little finger. If I thought a baby was all it would take, I would have started sooner.’

Miriam, 62, Isle of Wight

It took Emete approximately five seconds to read my mind this morning. ‘You’re seeing him aren’t you?’ she said, eyes glinting, lifting up my chin. ‘The one with the eyelashes?’ Was it really that obvious?

There are however, a couple of minor details that need, shall we say, ironing out.

a) I still need to tell Laurence about the baby

b) I still need to tell my parents

The reason I haven’t done a) is because I haven’t done b) and the reason I haven’t done b) is because…Why is it? Because I know my mother will jump to conclusions about Jim and me and start going on about table plans? Because when she knows the full, scandalous situation she’ll kill me?
Obviously. But also because I don’t want to tell my dad. It’s not that he’s judgemental – that he’ll want to mow down whoever ‘did this to me’ and kick ten shades out of them – it’s just, I suspect, it will burst our little bubble. And that kind of breaks my heart.

We’ve been so long kindred spirits, dad and I. Our own little mutual appreciation society. Now I’ve gone and got myself pregnant in a situation that should never have even have been on the cards and I’m worried I will disappoint him. That he’ll feel like he’s lost something – Me, Us. How we were.

But that’s life, I guess. Nothing can stay the same for ever. And looking on the bright side, working things out with Gina and Laurence’s call has given me a much needed boost. I mean the man was practically singing with joy that he was soon to be free. Surely that’s a good sign that this is not just some whim. And I definitely feel more myself of late – that feeling that whatever happens, it will all be alright in the end. And so that’s why I’m standing on Morecambe station, the sea air gusting through my sinuses, waiting for my dad’s blue Mondeo to roll into view ready and waiting for the Big Pregnancy Announcement to begin.

Mum’s still in her Lunn Poly uniform peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink when I get home. From the kitchen window, the hills of the Lake District, across Morecambe Bay, look like grey hump-backed whales.

‘Can we have a chat when we’ve had tea? I’ve got something I need to talk to you about,’ I say, impressively calmly if I dare say so myself, after I’ve put my stuff upstairs in my old bedroom and checked for the millionth time today for any calls from Laurence. (There’s none.)

But whereas I was planning on a nice quiet evening in with my parents, the perfect setting in which to break the news gently, mum had other plans…

‘Pass us the gravy will you, Lizard?’

It’s delightful how my brother still uses my childhood name, coined twenty-two years ago, due to the fact that I had an allergic reaction to some nit shampoo and my entire forehead flaked off.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my brother (he’s blood, I have no choice) and I adore my two nieces, Antonia and Jade. It’s just, I wish his wife, Joy – or Joyless as I call her – would cheer up a bit and I wish they could have come tomorrow. Now that all four are here for the day in matching white linen – a sort of chav version of the Calvin Klein Eternity advert – there’s no way I’ll get the chance to talk to my parents alone.

‘Well, this is nice, isn’t it?’ sighs mum, finally sitting down. ‘A proper family meal, a homecoming dinner for Tess. Welcome home Tess!’

‘Welcome home Tess!’ I notice Joyless hasn’t shaved her armpits properly as she raises a toast. This pleases me greatly since mum is always going on about Joyless’s high standards of personal grooming (Joy’s had a lovely French manicure, Joy’s had a St Tropez, why can’t I be more ladylike like Joy? It really pisses me off.)

‘And I’m so glad you did come home because your father’s had a face like a wet weekend these past few weeks and now, five minutes of you and look at him – he’s a new man!’

Dad opens and closes his hand as if to say bla, bla, bla. I do the same. Mum doesn’t even notice.

‘So how’s the Big Bad Smoke?’ My brother’s one of these people who thinks that people who live in London are mugs and the worst thing is, he’s probably right. He only earns about the same as me working for dad but still manages to live in a four-bedroom mock-Tudor show home with a home cinema and ‘corner bath’.

‘Great thanks, full on as usual, but Gina’s good and Vicky’s passed her osteopathy course and work’s going well.’

‘Have you met any famous people recently!?’ Six-year-old Jade jumps onto her knees with excitement. Her mother promptly squashes her back down. ‘Just eat your dinner, please Jade.’

‘Er…Linda Lusardi – we did a thing on her style last week.

Jade gawps at me blankly. ‘And um, Terri Dwyer, you know, used to be in
Hollyoaks
?’

‘Yeah, in about 1990,’ Ed smirks. ‘Before you were born. Don’t listen to Aunty Tess. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

‘Oh I am sorry!’ After a slightly uncomfortable silence where mum is obviously trying to find something to say to diffuse the already deteriorating situation between me and my brother, she finds something. ‘Tess had some news, didn’t you love?’ My stomach hits my feet. ‘Why don’t you tell us now why we’re all sitting down?’

‘No it’s nothing, honestly mum, I’ll tell you later.’ I reach for the red cabbage.

‘Have you got a promotion?’ probes Dad. ‘Has that Judith finally clocked onto your genius?’

‘No, sadly not.’

‘Are you finally going to move?’ chips in mum, picking a bit of chicken out of her back molars, ‘I always said that road of yours is a death trap.’

‘No mum, I’m not moving. Well, actually…’ I can’t tell her that bit before the main bit.

I look at my brother who’s staring right at me.

‘Oh my God.’ He’s started to laugh now. ‘Have you met someone, Lizard?’ Dad slaps him sharply on the forearm.

‘You have haven’t you? Woo-hoo!’ The second he makes that noise I am once more a flaky-skinned eight-year-old harbouring dark thoughts of stabbing my brother.

‘Well I don’t know why you’re doing that,’ says Mum, to
Ed. ‘No I do
not
know why you’re doing that,’ agrees Joyless, flashing him daggers. ‘It’s something to be proud of, isn’t it Tessa,’ adds mum. ‘What’s he like lovey? Is he like Laurence?’

I concentrate on a spreading circle of gravy on the white tablecloth.

‘I always thought you were silly to mess that one up.’ You can always trust mum to be on my side. ‘You should never have gallivanted off round the world, it was typical of you…‘

Dad puts his cutlery down. ‘For God’s sake you lot, will you give the girl a break?’

‘She’s probably pregnant,’ says Ed.

OH. MY. GOD.

‘Well it does seem to be the season for it,’ mum chirps on. ‘Lisa Price is pregnant, with twins apparently, I saw her mum in Asda.’

Oh here we go.

‘I think she’d resigned herself to the fact she’d never have any grand-kiddies what with Lisa turning twenty-nine this year.’ God, my mum is so see-through. ‘But she’s seven months pregnant now, as is Fay Maughan’s daughter, and I’ll tell you who else is expecting.’ She stabs at me with her finger. ‘Shelley Newcombe, you remember Shelley Newcombe? Year below you at school, lovely figure, she’s got one on the way…’

‘So am I.’

A chill silence descends like falling snow.

‘So are you what, love?’

‘Pregnant,’ I say. ‘I’m pregnant too.’

‘What do you mean you got pregnant because you couldn’t bloody drive???!!’

Dad pats mum’s hand to calm her down. She shoos him off.

‘I’m sorry, Tony but I just don’t understand.’

It’s been twenty minutes since I confessed my big fat secret (fat being the operative word. Mum confessed she thought I’d got a little porky around the midriff ‘but you did always yo-yo’ she added, which was a nice touch). For the first five, everyone was shocked but elated, ‘Eee, a baby by Christmas!’ dad chuckled, suddenly coming alive, his big belly shaking. ‘And perhaps a wedding before?’ said mum, clapping her hands together. Antonia and Jade squealed with delight when they learned they were going to have a cousin. Ed just slapped me on the back. ‘Nice one sis! Thought you were eating for two.’

Then of course, I had to piss on their parade – explain the whole me and Jim situation. I may as well have been speaking in Mandarin for all mum understood. (Or wanted to understand. A point well made by my dad.) I have tried before – and failed – to explain to mum this whole concept of being friends, not boyfriend/girlfriend with Jim. But she was born in the 1950s. In her head, you’re friends with girls and you go out with boys. It definitely doesn’t work the other way round.

‘I’m not saying I got pregnant
because
I couldn’t drive,’ I try to explain for the hundredth time. ‘It just didn’t help, that’s all. I ended up drinking too much, I missed my last tube.’

‘Oh, marvellous, so my daughter has a drink and she can’t keep her knickers on!’

‘Mum it’s not like that.’

‘That’s well out of order mum.’ My brother makes a token effort to stand up for me but I know he’s just
loving
this.

‘Go upstairs with Joy and the kids please.’ Ed reluctantly obeys mum’s orders. If I didn’t know my brother better – hadn’t heard him shag half of Morecambe through our flimsy walls – I would assume he’s gay, he’s such a gossip.

Dad wanders off to his greenhouse too, having tried and failed to defuse the situation, leaving just me and mum sitting at the mahogany table amongst the half-eaten dinner. Mum watches from the patio doors, seething with rage.

‘Yes, you just do that Tony!’ she yells after him. ‘Leave me to deal with the crisis why don’t you! Oh, I
wish
he’d get out of this mood.’

She collects the plates and puts them into a pile.

‘I’ll do that,’ I offer.

‘No you won’t, you’ll talk to me. Oh my God look at your stomach.’ She clocks the growing bulge as I stand up. I doubt a stranger would be able to tell as yet, but my mother watches my midriff like a hawk even when I’m not pregnant. ‘My little girl!’

‘Oh mother, behave.’

Mum holds her eyes shut with her fingers. I knew she’d freak, but this is way worse.

We sit at the table for what seems hours, mum interrogating me about the whole sorry story. I tell how I’m going to move in with Jim, so I will have some support, but I certainly don’t tell her that I’m kind of seeing Laurence. That would just tip her over the edge. But if I felt positive and hopeful about it all before, I certainly don’t now. Worst Case Scenario is the only scenario my mother knows.

And according to her, this is what I have to look forward to:

1. Jim and I having to deal with ‘funny looks and constant questions’, the heathens that we are, for living together but not being ‘an item’ (what she means by this is that
she’ll
have to deal with ‘funny looks and constant questions’ from the girls at Lunn Poly after she tells them that her daughter’s pregnant but it’s not all it’s cracked up to be).

2. Never finding a boyfriend. What man will want me with a child and stretch marks?

3. We will be destitute and skint (probably not being able to turn on the central heating in the winter and having to live in a ‘damp flat’. Mum thinks everyone in London lives in a ‘damp flat’).

4. I will have to deal with the stigma of being a ‘single mum’ and probably end up on drugs and working in Iceland (she didn’t say that, but that’s the insinuation. Because of this outrageous scandal my journalism training and perfectly good job will be annulled, naturally).

5. It’s very hard caring for a baby, especially alone. (Which of course she knows everything about always having had a stable, normal marriage and loving husband on hand all her life. Argh!)

By the end, I am tearing up the label from the mint sauce just to stop myself from slashing my wrists.

Entering dad’s greenhouse is like entering another world. White plastic labels with unpronounceable, Latin names. Old trowels and pliers and different composts for different jobs. All over the place are tumbling piles of terracotta pots and bulging grow-bags with unripe tomato plants like giant gooseberries.

I hoist myself up on the bench.

‘Hi dad, thought I’d find you in here.’

‘Come to escape have we?’

‘You could say that.’

‘I know the feeling,’ mumbles dad, clipping his tomato plants. He’s wearing the gardening gloves I bought for his birthday about ten years ago. They’ve got holes all over them but he never bothers to buy anymore.

What happens in this greenhouse will always baffle me – how do you learn something as complicated as how to make things grow? And yet if simple had a smell, it would smell like this: of sweet-peas and green-fly and soil and the summer. It smells of my childhood. This is where me and dad used to have our little chats. I’d come in here on balmy summer evenings when mum was zonked out in front of the TV, sit up on the side – just like I am now – and stay until it went dark. Sometimes, if dad was in one of his quiet moods or shattered after work,
we’d stick the radio on and I’d flick through a magazine. But often we’d really talk: About my uncle Cliff, my dad’s big brother who died of cancer in 1996 and how he and my dad conquered Scafell Pike when they were, like, six (it gets younger every year, I swear). About mum and how barmy she is. ‘If this greenhouse had ears we’d be dead meat,’ Dad used to joke. And occasionally the big stuff. Like this, like now.

Dad takes his cracked old watering can – as old as me at least – and waters his tomato plants, as if in another world. Mum can’t half be dramatic but she’s right, dad’s definitely not himself. For starters, it’s really not like him to not want to have a discussion about that major life event I just revealed in there. But then, June is the anniversary of Uncle Cliff’s death, I wonder if it might be that. Then, I wonder, if it might be me…