One Thing Led to Another (15 page)

‘Dad?’

‘Mmm.’

He doesn’t look up.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Me?’ He still doesn’t look up. ‘Yeah, I’m alright, don’t worry about me.’

‘Is everything OK with you and mum?’

‘Course,’ he says. ‘Everything’s always alright with me and your mum.’

‘Good.’ I look at dad, but his mind is still elsewhere. ‘So…dad?’

‘Yes love.’

‘Are you mad with me?’

‘Mad with you?’ He looks at me, properly now, beneath grey bushy brows. ‘Why on earth would I be mad with you?’

‘For getting pregnant, I mean, it’s hardly ideal, is it? It’s not how Ed has done things, all proper and grown up. I’ve basically screwed up.’

Dad takes off his gardening gloves and leans against the
old railway sleeper opposite. He looks older, diminished somehow. Less robust.

‘Oh Tess,’ he smiles, he’s with me now. ‘You didn’t screw up. Nobody ever screwed up by deciding to keep a baby.’

‘Mum seems to think so.’

‘She doesn’t, you wait. She’s just worried that’s all. Give her time.’

‘It’s going to be hard though isn’t it? Tell me the truth. I mean, I know me and you always try to look on the bright side but well, I suppose I was so used to things never happening to me…’

‘That you took your eye off the ball?’

‘Basically, yes.’

‘And it feels really scary at the moment I imagine?’

‘Yep.’ I fight back tears.

‘And there’s definitely no hope of getting it together with…?’

‘No, dad.’ I cut him short.

‘Because love comes in all different packaging you know. Just because it ain’t Cathy and Heathcliffe at the beginning doesn’t mean it can’t be. Love’s as individual as a thumbprint, as personal as your iris. I mean, your mum and I, that love grew, it’s
still
growing…’

‘Dad.’

‘Right, yes. Sorry.’ He looks at the floor.

‘It’s just, I felt quite positive about it all until I came home and now…’ I hate crying in front of my dad, but I can’t keep it in.

‘Oh come here you silly girl.’ He steps forward and wraps his arms around me. ‘You can’t see it now but this is going to be the making of you. Do you want to know why?’

‘Why? Tell me why?’

‘Because you never regret a child. No matter how much hell and strife they give you – and believe you me, you and
your brother have given us our fair share of that – you never regret a child, because it’s what it’s all about, your family, your kids. It’s the point of it all, it’s why we carry on.’

‘Hello and welcome to Vodafone can I take your account number please? And for the purposes of identifying you fully today, Miss Jarvis, can I take your four digit pin number?’

I’m sure this is the same girl I spoke to ten minutes ago, the last time I checked there’s nothing wrong with my phone. (Like it’s not receiving texts or incoming calls. Specifically from people called Laurence Cane.) I throw my phone to the other end of the bed –
Just stop being a mentalist stalker you freak!
But it goes slightly higher than planned, almost taking Ewan’s eye out on the
Moulin Rouge
poster.

I know, logically, that Laurence has more important things to do than call me. Christ, he’s probably finishing it with Chloe now, his girlfriend of some years, whilst I’m lying here, convinced there’s a national conspiracy to stop his calls getting through – how self-absorbed can you get? But I just wish he would call, like now. Then I could get on with other things, like smoothing things out with mum.

Talking to my parents has only made me more determined to make things work with Laurence. Apart from anything else, if it’s going to be as hard as mum says then I’ll need to have a boyfriend just to help out. But it’s about more than that. I look around our house – our flimsy 70s semi with its dodgy mahogany furniture, and feel just how rock solid its heart is. I’d been lucky enough to have that as a child, but that was down to mum and dad. Of course Jim and I could fabricate a union of sorts, pretend to have the happy ending that everyone’s hankering after, but I want the real thing, I’m not ashamed to admit it. I want the romance, the ripping one another’s clothes off, the Cathy and Heathcliffe thing (sorry dad), the Danielle and Jamie thing, The One.

I want pictures of our Pearl Wedding anniversary on the sideboard too, our kids round to dinner when they’re married themselves. I want to have that look my mum has in her eyes, even when she’s angry with dad, that thing that makes you stick around for thirty odd years.

Even now, everywhere in this house, this room, there’s reminders of Laurence and our two-year relationship: the little hole in my peach curtains where we attempted to smoke a post-coital fag out of my window and nearly set fire to the house; an old Creamfields pass hung up on my wardrobe door handle (Sunday dinner with my parents when I’ve got lock-jaw and my boyfriend’s still gurning is not something I’d like to repeat in a hurry); the little patch of silvery Morecambe Bay, just visible from my window, where we skinny dipped on New Year’s Eve…

And my rucksack. My filthy green and red rucksack that’s been to Africa, and hell and back emotionally and knows more about me and how heartbroken I really was about Laurence than anyone in the world. I go over to it idly and open the front pocket. Inside, I find a little paper bag and inside that, there’s a postcard. It’s from Victoria Falls and to my surprise, it’s not to Laurence, it’s to Jim. I sit down on my sunken single bed to read it.

Dear Jim,

Am currently lying in a hammock (get me!) watching a fireball of a sunset sink into the Zambezi river.

Very poetic. Must have been feeling sentimental and in my writer mode.

It’s incredible here. The Falls themselves are awesome (well I guess they should be being one of the Wonders of the World) I passed on the bungee jump – you know
me, not one for life-threatening activities – but I did manage white-water rafting today and I thought of you all the way through.

Ooh, bit intimate

Especially through the “devil’s toilet” rapid. Get caught in that and you’re a gonner, for sure. You’d love it here Jim, the people, the wildlife, the crazy bus journeys (you’re the only man I know who would actually, genuinely enjoy sharing your seat with a goat and five chickens for twelve hours on a pot-holed road). How’s Gine and Vicks ? How’s my bedroom? Have you christened the bed yet? I bet those N1 lovelies are queuing up. Anyway, just wanted to say hi. And that I miss you. Don’t be a stranger. Lots of love Tess x

I hold the postcard in my hand and read it again and again, the memories flooding back to me like atoms of a whole. I’d hovered over the ‘miss you bit’ for ages, I remember, but I put it in the end because I decided it was the truth. During that time, I started to think about Jim in a way I never had. Was what I felt more than friendship? If I missed him, perhaps it was. And I sent postcards. Not just this one, which didn’t get sent, for some reason, but lots – maybe ten – did he even get them? And if he did, why has he never mentioned them? Perhaps I was too forward. Jim and I were mates after all, we’d never even snogged at that point, so for me to say ‘I miss you’ was probably a bit OTT.

There’s a knock at my bedroom door, I put the postcard back, hastily.

‘Lovey?’ Mum creaks open the door. ‘Can I come in?’

‘Yeah OK.’

Mum sits on my bed in her dressing gown. Her short,
highlighted hair is looking more grey than blonde. She smells of Nivea moisturizer.

‘I’m sorry if I was negative, if I upset you,’ she says, tidying a bit of hair behind my ear. ‘But I did have two babies you know, it’s probably hard for you to remember that, and I know how tough it is. I really, really do.’

I look at my mum, her hazel eyes a mixture of nerves and love.

‘But to be honest, mum,’ I say, ‘with all due respect, you don’t know what it is like to have it really hard, to be a real single mum, because you always had dad.’

‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘But I do understand.’

‘Really?’ I frown. ‘Mmm, not sure about that. And anyway, I don’t know why you’re worrying at all because Jim’s going to be as involved as any dad, we’re going to bring up the baby together. We won’t be together or live together, eventually, but we’ll both be its parents.’

‘I know, I know,’ she says. ‘And we really like Jim, I’m sure he’ll make a fantastic father.’

It’s 10.30 p.m. when mum eventually leaves, unconvinced I can tell, and I climb into bed shattered by the day’s events and a bit stressed that things seem to have got heavy. I’m just dropping off to sleep when my phone goes. I literally leap out of bed and slam it on the side of my face.

‘Hello?’

‘Sorry, is it late? I was just losing the will to live marking these essays on
Middlemarch.
’

Oh. Jim.

‘Honestly, to give you an idea one lad has written “he” when referring to the author all the way through and another has written “do we give a shit?” in the margin. This is what I’m up against.’

I smile as I sink back into the pillow, listening to Jim’s familiar voice, with its subtle northern vowels.

‘How did it go with the future in-laws?’ he says. ‘Did your dad vow to come and “sort me out”?’

‘No,’ I laugh. ‘He was very decent about it actually. It was mum who nearly had a seizure, but she’ll be alright about it, I think, eventually.’

‘I told my mum too, yesterday.’

‘Oh yeah, and how did it go?’

‘She cried, bless her. She said she worried I’d never have children, but that she thought I’d make a great dad, far better than my own.’

‘And she’s right Jim, she’s absolutely right.’

‘No questions about whether we were an item or not, I don’t think she even registers that, I don’t think she even cares!’

‘I wish my mum was so relaxed.’

‘Oh come on, it doesn’t sound as if it went too badly and you can’t blame her being a bit shocked, her always having had the traditional marriage thing – you’re lucky your parents are normal! What does she think about you moving in anyway?’

‘Oh she’s glad about that bit. She thinks I need professional help just to cope in day-to-day life, let alone when pregnant, so she’s pleased I’ll have you, in whatever capacity.’

‘Good, because I thought we might as well do it on Saturday.’

‘What, this Saturday?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘why, have you changed your mind?’

‘No. It’s just…oh it doesn’t matter.’ I can hear the TV blaring downstairs – the comforting sound of audience laughter – of home and I think how much I just wanted things to be normal.

‘What?’

‘Well it’s just not what I expected, that’s all. I mean, I’m really, really grateful,
obviously
Jim. But this whole thing just
isn’t what I thought my life would be. It’s going to take some adjusting.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he sighs, ‘I know you’re finding it tough.’

I kneel against my window sill and we chat for ages, me looking at the starry black sky above the sea and wondering how life got so serious. I tell Jim about my dad, how I’m a bit worried he’s not himself, he tells me about his pupils, how he’s worried they’re all thick. He laughs at my impressions of Joyless and how my mother is worried we’ll be ostracized from society. Then I hang up, I pull my old polka-dot duvet around my ears and I close my eyes, much happier, actually, for having spoken to Jim. Twenty minutes later I wake with a start. Laurence still hasn’t called.

‘Never a day goes by that I don’t think of her. Is she married? Has she got kids of her own? Does she wonder about me? Giving up my baby is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. For years I couldn’t bear to even look at the one picture I had of her in her tiny lemon hat. Now I have accepted that I could never have coped, I did the right thing. But should she ever come looking for me, I’ll be right here, with open arms.

Julie, 58, Doncaster

‘Christ Jarvis, we’re going to need an annexe at this rate, never mind your own room.’

Jim blows a bead of sweat off the end of his nose as he struggles down the steps with another bulging suitcase.

‘This is just her make-up; wait till you see the one for her shoes,’ says Gina, matter-of-factly, helping Jim to push the case into the back of the white Ford estate (kindly on loan from Warren).

Jim leans deep into the boot of the car arranging the boxes, sweat soaking his T-shirt, five inches of bare back and at least one inch of builder’s bum on show.

Gina watches him struggle for a moment, biting her nails,
then takes a cigarette from inside her bikini top and lights it.

‘Marshall, I hope you’re not slacking,’ Jim shouts from inside the car. ‘There’s two massive boxes behind where Tess is sitting and her arm chair to get in yet.’

Gina skips barefoot onto our black-painted front steps wearing a bottom-skimming sundress, and a red, balconette bikini top that makes her D cups look positively gravity-defying.

‘Alright James.’ (Gina has taken to calling Jim this of late.) ‘Keep yer wig on, I was just having a fag break. Ow fuck!’ She literally hot foots it up the steps. ‘These steps are so hot they’re burning my feet!’

Perhaps summer solstice was not the wisest day to move from one side of London to the other. There’s not a cloud in the sky, not a whisper of a breeze. The only sound is the odd tinkle of an ice-cream van in the dry oppressive heat.

Sitting on the front steps, I watch as poor Jim humps a linen-basket full of books on his shoulder and lowers it into the back of the car.

‘I feel so guilty sat here on my arse whilst you two do all the hard work,’ I moan.

‘Tough.’ Gina reaches behind me to get another box. ‘There’s no way you’re carrying anything. Jim and I will load the car. Go and check there’s nothing of yours left in the house if you must help, and we’ll call you when we’re finished.’

Just as your hair always looks better the day before you get it cut, so I feel closer to Gina the day before I’m due to move out. Since we sorted everything out just over a week ago, it’s been brilliant: we’ve had Jacuzzis under the stars with the velux window wide open (if you ignore the faint screams from victims of knife-wielding gangsters in the estate next door you could almost be on a spa break in Bali), then cooked fajitas and eaten outside. I even coaxed her out of
Islington the other day – to see
Notes on a Scandal
followed by coffee and cake at Maison Bertaux. (Gina said she hadn’t had an alcohol-free Friday night since she was fourteen. I felt truly honoured.) Gina has decided to ask Michelle to move into Vicky’s old room so I don’t feel guilty about leaving her in the lurch. Whereas a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t wait to get out of here, now I’m gutted to be leaving. I stand in the middle of my bedroom – it looks pitiful without much in it: smears of make-up and tea stains all over the carpet, a patch of damp behind where my bed once was. The only thing that’s left is a lonely looking cork board onto which is pinned a Polaroid of me and Gina, blood-shot-eyed and drunk, and a piece of pink paper with my midwife appointments written on it. Says it all really, I’ve come full circle in this house. But although it’s kind of helped with the denial that Gina has ignored the fact I’m pregnant up until a week ago, I can hardly see me waddling around the place at thirty-five weeks pregnant, grunting on my birthing ball while her and Michelle get stoned.

I can hear Jim and Gina laughing outside and Jim say something like, ‘Are we in any danger?’ It must be nearly time, time for me to leave now, but before I close the front door behind me I have one thing left to do: I need to say goodbye.

The water of the jacuzzi is still, not unsettled by the usual menagerie of delinquents that frequent our house; it feels all wrong in the daytime, like a nightclub when it’s empty.

‘If you’re thinking of having a water birth in here, you can think again,’ says Gina, coming up behind me and resting her chin on my shoulder.

‘You can be my birth partner if you like, fish out my placenta with a net?’

‘No fucking thanks.’

‘Luckily for you, that’s Jim’s job. He just doesn’t know it
yet. Although I’m starting to think I want to be drugged from the first contraction.’

‘That’s the most sensible thing you’ve said in three months,’ says Gina. ‘I mean why the hell would you want to go through pain when there’s perfectly good narcotics on offer?’

‘Is Jim OK out there?’ I suddenly remember he’s probably died of heat exhaustion by now.

‘Yeah, nearly finished, he sent me to get you.’

‘So, you’re talking to him now then?’ I say tentatively, turning around to face her.

‘Course I am, stupid.’

‘And me?’

Gina looks sheepish. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘We’ve had some great times in this room, haven’t we?’

A rare, involuntary beam spreads across Gina’s face. ‘You fucking bet we have,’ she says.

‘I’ve had some of the best times in my life here in fact.’

‘Jarvis! I’m touched.’

‘And just because I’m having a baby doesn’t mean we can’t have more, OK?’ I squeeze her waist. ‘I’ll miss you Gina.’

‘Oh stop it, you’ll make me blub,’ she says.

‘And I love you mate.’

‘I love you too.’

‘Don’t be a stranger you two.’ Gina sticks her head through the driver’s window and rests her cleavage on the frame. Jim tries not to look.

‘And don’t get some weirdo in to fill my room like you did last time I went away,’ I say, winking at Jim.

‘Look after her won’t you?’ says Gina to Jim. ‘And don’t let her get fat and really, really boring.’

‘It’s a bit late for that,’ yawns Jim, stretching. I punch him in the side.

‘And don’t take any shit – ‘ Gina whispers the next bit in
Jim’s ear ‘– Because left to her own devices, she lives like a pig.’

‘Have a great time in New York! Bag a fit, rich American for me!’ I yell out of the window, as Jim pulls away, honking the horn. Then I put my feet on the dashboard, and my face to the sun, leaving what feels like an old version of me imprinted in the bricks and mortar of Linton Street, having no idea at all what the new version will be.

About an hour later, having spent half of that boiling alive in a traffic jam on the Walworth Road, we finally arrive at Jim’s house in leafy Dulwich.

It feels strange as we go inside, ever so slightly awkward like I’ve never been here before and I’m not his best friend but a guest, a French exchange student come to lodge for a couple of weeks. We go upstairs, Jim in front carrying a huge box and grunting as he squeezes past the banister. Then, rather than go into Jim’s room on the right as we usually would, we walk along the long corridor to the spare room, a room I’ve only been in perhaps four times since I’ve known Jim.

‘Welcome, housemate and mother of my child.’ Jim plonks the box down outside and opens the door.

Gone is the broken futon, Jim’s old drum kit and the bin bags full of crap. In their place is a veritable, er, boudoir, complete with a selection of Jim’s old football trophies, a disco glitterball, a poster of Eminem and a bowl of pot-pourri with bits of dried orange peel in it.

‘Wow. I like what you’ve done with the finishing touches,’ I say, trying not to laugh.

‘Do you think ? Oh good.’ Jim’s panting like a dog. There’s a worrying lack of irony in his voice. ‘I found the glitterball in the attic, I got the poster from the end of term sale at school and the pot-pourri – do you like the pot-pourri? – A
nice feminine touch, I thought. My mum always has pot-pourri.’

Every reason why I definitely should not.

‘Right, yeah, it’s cool Jim, very eclectic. Although, I didn’t know you liked Eminem.’

‘I don’t, I just thought he’d keep you company. Be someone to talk to when I’m doing your head in,’ he says, perfectly seriously.

‘Right, because a rapper who sings about murdering his child is just the perfect confidant for me!’ I say, stifling a giggle.

‘Well it was him or Britney Spears!’ he says, slightly outraged by my lack of gratitude.

‘I think I’d rather have Eminem. At least he still sees his kids.’

‘Exactly,’ says Jim. ‘So we are on the same wavelength after all. You and Slim Shady will have lots to discuss.’

Jim finally kicks the last of my boxes from the hallway inside my room then flops dramatically onto my bed.

‘Thanks for helping me move, you’re a star,’ I say, lying beside him, looking at the disco ball catch the evening light like a giant, glinting diamond.

‘Well it was Gina too, I can’t take all the credit,’ he says, pulling up his T-shirt and wiping his face.

‘You got on well today, you two, no?’

‘Yeah I think she knows she pissed me off.’ Jim yawns. ‘But I can handle that girl, I reckon we sorted it out.’

I’m glad, I hate it when any of us aren’t getting on. Whereas Jim and Vicky always get on and have a very similar temperament, as do I, Jim and Gina have a love-hate relationship and when they fall out, they really fall out.

‘Do you think she’ll be OK on her own?’ I ask, suddenly thinking of Gina, in that draughty old house. Not quite knowing what to do with herself until Michelle moves in.

‘Course she will,’ says Jim. ‘It’ll be character building, you watch, to cope without you.’

I smile at Jim’s perceptiveness – it’s one of his best qualities and takes me by surprise sometimes.

We don’t say anything for a while; outside the birds have broken into their evening chorus.

‘Jim,’ I say eventually.

‘Yeees.’ He’s got his eyes closed now.

‘I think the pot-pourri may have to go.’

One eye opens.

‘You’ve got a cheek. I spent ages choosing that.’

‘And the glitterball too.’

‘What?’ He sits up on his elbows. ‘I’ll have it then!’

‘Erm…and the trophies too.’

‘Get lost! They’re my pride and joy!’

‘But I love the Eminem poster!’ I sit up, eyes full of enthusiasm.

‘Well thank God you do have some taste.’

‘I must now be the coolest mo fo mother-to-be in the whole freakin’ universe, innit.’

‘Mmm,’ muses Jim, narrowing his eyes, his lips twitch, a giggle escapes. ‘That was the shittest, dodgiest Bronx meets Peckham hybrid I’ve ever heard.’ He clambers off the bed. ‘But I’m liking it!’ I chase after him giggling, beating him with my fists. ‘And I’m gagging for a shower so I’ll leave you to unpack!’ He skids into the bathroom. ‘Shall we reconvene in half an hour?’

‘Yeah, if you’re still alive!’

I collapse onto the bed alarmed that even this much excitement can leave me breathless these days and listening to what sounds like five hundred gallons of water being chucked from a high rise.

I get up and go to the window, take stock of my brand new vista. Rows and rows of Quality Street chimneys, cranes
like dinosaurs, Canary Wharf winking in the distance. Somewhere nearby a police siren wails. But it’s beautiful too, in an urban kind of way, with the band of peachy light on the horizon, like a lid’s been lifted on the world. And this is a momentous day – the day I move in with a man! So how come I’m here, with Jim’s football trophies on the shelves and a poster of Eminem on the wall? Whatever happened to fighting over who has which side of the bed? To christening the bed for that matter? To buying our first sofa? It’s so weird, it’s almost funny.

My mind drifts to Laurence. Is he out there? Packing his life into boxes too? It’s been ten days now since he called when I was at Vicky’s and five days since our last contact (not that I’m counting or anything). Last Tuesday, my first day back at work after I’d got back from my parents, there was a card in my pigeon hole (thankfully, in an envelope). It was of a girl, standing on Brighton Pier, her blue skirt billowing, Marilyn Monroe-esque, revealing just a hint of frilly French knickers, smiling into the camera.

It read:
‘I have a confession…I did look at your knickers when we were at the London Eye!!…Sorry didn’t call all weekend, Chloe’s grandma’s 80
^th
in Brighton. Boring as all hell but couldn’t get out of it. Did nothing but think about you (looking hot in just those knickers)…Wish you were here L xxx

The devil! I read it again and again. So he hadn’t gone cold, he was just fulfilling his last engagements. His last, obligatory engagements of being someone else’s boyfriend.

I look over at my bag and think about phoning him but decide against it because last time I tried, I just got his voicemail.

‘Hi this is Laurence (he says ‘Laurence’ with a faint French accent, it drives me crazy) leave a message and I’ll call you straight back.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t, it felt all wrong. He was the one who called me to say he and Chloe were about to finish, he should be the one to call me when he’s done the deed. It’s not my place.

Maybe it’s more complicated than he thought with Chloe though, he’s obviously emotionally indebted to her in some way. Maybe he’s even changed his mind. Sometimes I wonder, if I’m just totally deluding myself anyway. What man – especially a man like Laurence who could probably get anyone he wanted – would willingly take on someone else’s baby and not just that but a pregnant woman! Because let’s face it, I’m only going to get fatter, heavier, more tired, less interested in sex. And then the baby arrives. After that, so everyone loves to tell me, it’ll be Goodnight Vienna to your sex life. We won’t even have had time to say hello to
ours.

I make a start on the unpacking but get distracted on the first box which contains all my old photo albums. Within minutes I’m drowning in a pictorial version of
This is Your Life
: all four of us in Paris back in February, cagoules pulled tight in the pouring rain; Gina on Jim’s knee at Vicky’s twenty-sixth birthday party (that year the theme was London Tube stations and they came as Charing Cross, ‘sharing’ a cross between them all evening. A lazy effort by anyone’s standards); Vicky having a whitey in our second year house; Gina straddling a bollard in the middle of the street. There’s one of loads of us – including Jim and Laurence – picnicking on Hampstead Heath on a boiling hot day. And this. Oh I forgot about this! My favourite one of all time. Me and Jim in the Jacuzzi in Linton Street, him wearing a Bart Simpson wig and me in a Marge one, both of us laughing so much we look like we’re crying.