Separate Lives (32 page)

“I'm sure I would. Now, how do you feel about a second bottle?”

Recalling this, I felt an involuntary wave of guilt. Poor fetus—it was probably pickled. And I was now an “elderly gravida,” with all the additional complexities that implied. I could already see the disapproving expression on my imaginary Poppins-ish maternity nurse's face. And then, of course, there was the fact that Alex was obviously the fetus's father.

That afternoon I did something I very rarely do in the daytime: went back to bed. I tried reading and sleeping to distract myself but mostly I just lay there, ignoring the “ding” of texts arriving on my phone. There were cracks on
the bedroom ceiling that not only had I never noticed before but which, after an hour or two, I had got to know infinitely better than the back of my hand. Which, to be honest, I had never been entirely convinced I would be able to identify in a Back-of-the-Hands line-up.

It was dusk when I finally heaved myself out of bed, showered, dressed and checked my phone. Four texts:

Lisa:
Hey. Fancy lunch tomorrow? X

David:
Just to confirm I'll be picking up Hal and then we'll get the Heathrow Express straight from Paddington on Good Friday?

Richard:
Still OK for tonight? X

Richard again:
Heeeeellllooooo. Anybody there?! X

Straightforward stuff: Two
yes
es and one white lie of a
Sorry! Phone was recharging . . . See you 7ish? X

By the time Richard arrived, I thought I was doing an incredibly good impression of somebody carrying minimal emotional baggage, much less a baby. But I hadn't credited Richard with quite so much “feminine” intuition.

“You OK? You look . . . well you look beautiful, as ever, but tired. How was your day?”

“It was . . . a day. But Jesus, Richard, you're good. I thought I'd be able to wing it for a few hours at least, but apparently not. I think we need to talk.”

“Yup, that's the dread phrase no man wants to hear. So dump me—but please wait until you've had a glass or two of this because it's magnificent.”

And, today of all days, Richard proffered a bottle of Bordeaux with a distinctive label that read . . .

“Château Margaux? Blimey Richard, it's only a Monday-night lasagna. I didn't even know they had a lottery draw on Sunday nights.”

“Well, as far as I know they don't but I had a great piece of news about work today and it's worth celebrating, though clearly not if you're planning on dumping me.”

“I'm not. But . . .” By now we were downstairs and Richard was rifling through a drawer in search of a corkscrew.

“But what?”

“I can't drink it. Well, I can. I can easily drink it, but I shouldn't.”

Richard stopped.

“You're pregnant?”

I bit my lip and looked him in the eye. “I am that thing. I had no idea, obviously, until today. And I'm a bit all over the place, for all the obvious reasons—and some less obvious ones too. And I'm so sorry, Richard. I am so fucking sorry.”

“OK, enough with the sorries. How far along are you?”

“Um, I think about ten or eleven weeks, maybe.”

“And the father? Does he know?”

“He doesn't know. Look, it was—”

“Stop. Just let me pour this glass. You could have a sip?”

“Maybe I could have a sip, yes.”

Richard poured a large glass for himself and an inch for me. Then he said: “Sit down.”

“It's fine. I'm not feeling—”

“No, no that's not what I meant. I didn't mean ‘sit down because you're pregnant,' just sit down because maybe that's the best way to have a proper conversation.”

“OK. So . . .”

“Look, before you start trying to explain, you don't need to. You and I met on December the thirty-first and whatever was going on in your life at that point is of no consequence. For what it's worth, I was sort of seeing someone then too. It was nearly over but not quite. In fact it only properly
finished at the end of January because I wanted to be with you. I didn't feel the need to spell that out and there is no need for you to, either: we're grown-ups, shit happens. As far as I'm concerned, I'm only worried about being dumped. But it would be a hard woman who dumped a man who turns up on a Monday night with a bottle of . . . this . . . to accompany the lasagna. Admittedly this wasn't a conversation I'd prepared for, but now we're having it . . . look, Pippa, if you still want me in your life, I still want to be in it. But if you don't, I won't be. If you need to be with the father . . .”

“I don't need to be with the father. We're very finished. Not that we'd ever really begun.”

I paused, leaned forward and took Richard's hand. “You know, I don't make a habit of sleeping with other women's husbands, partners, whatever. That's not who I am. But in this case I did. And it's now very over. And though I am probably incredibly selfish because I suddenly really want this baby, it is also very much
my
baby, I think. And I'm even more selfish than that because I want you in my life too, Richard. All the more so now because you are without any shadow the most decent and mature man I have ever met.”

“‘Decent and mature'—it doesn't exactly make your heart sing, does it?”

“Stop it. You know what I mean. You are those things and more besides and if I lost you now I would feel . . . actually I don't even want to articulate it. Look, I know I can bring up this baby by myself if I have to, but if you thought you were even remotely up for it, I'd much rather do it with you, if you could bear to? There may be sleepless nights and nappies, though obviously you're excused all that.”

“But maybe I don't want to be excused all that?” And Richard got up and walked round the table and squatted
beside me and said, “Look, I think I'm a pretty good dad, even to other men's children.”

“I didn't think they made them like you anymore.”

“Broke the mold, baby, broke the mold . . .”

I giggled. And then, after kissing me very gently on the forehead, Richard pushed forward the glass of Margaux.

“Given the amount we've put away over the last few weeks I suspect another sip will be fine. But absolutely no more after that. And if you think this is my caring-sharing ‘feminine' side asserting itself, you're wrong. It's my greedy selfish masculine side. I'm very happy to finish the bottle by myself.”

“I never thought that the evening would go this way, Richard. I expected slammed doors and the wrong sort of tears.” I wiped my eyes.

“And do you know why that is?”

“No, why?”

“Because, despite evidence to the contrary, I think your glass has always been half empty.”

I was dreading Guy and Lisa's wedding, for a number of reasons. Not least because I was five-and-a-half-months pregnant and feeling every minute of my forty-three years. There's a very good reason why you're meant to pop 'em out in your twenties, isn't there, Mum? I'd thought I was a bit past it with Hal, but that had been nothing compared to this. I felt like a Victorian consumptive—only nowhere near as thin, obviously.

Most of my afternoons were spent on the sofa, guiltily dozing, or watching
Loose Women
and repeats of old property programs in which couples apparently selected for their inability to express an opinion were cajoled by bouncy
presenters into buying off-plan holiday villas in those bits of Spain that everybody else had ignored. It was all very pre-recession, the idea that owning any old compromise of a house, anywhere, was better than not owning one at all.

Thus my days rolled into one another: eating, sleeping, watching bad telly and wandering very slowly to the shops to buy pints of my recently discovered pregnancy food-fetish, mango sorbet. And so much for my assertion that I could've handled this on my own just fine; without Richard, who had proved himself to be the Mount Rushmore of emotional rocks, I could very easily have turned into one of those sad people who live alone in rooms piled high with newspapers and are eventually consumed by their own cats. Not that I had a cat, though it was only a matter of time.

So Richard kept me just the right side of feral. And he was brilliant with Hal, just as Hal was brilliant with him. I'd told Hal about the baby during the Easter holidays, around the time my stomach stopped looking merely bloated and developed the firm telltale curvature that indicates that whatever lies within probably isn't wind.

I'd been pretty nervous about telling Hal. Having only recently acquired his first half-sibling there was plenty of potential for a properly nose-out-of-joint reaction. But I'd underestimated my son—something I'd have to start learning not to do—because he was nothing short of great. I picked my moment, which was over Hal's favorite Sloppy Giuseppe pizza.

“So, look, ah, Hal, here's a thing. I seem to be having a baby.”

“Cool. I thought you were looking a bit . . . er . . . big?”

“Thanks. But is it really cool? Or does it make you want to go upstairs, plug in your guitar, start playing minor chords and end up with a song called ‘My Mum Sucks'?”

Hal laughed. “No. I mean, yes—I might go upstairs and plug in the guitar, but you never know, the song might be called ‘My Brother Rocks.' When are you having him?”

“Wooooaaah, hang on! He might be a Her.”

“I'm pretty sure he's not a Her. I knew Kiki was a Her but I think this is a He.”

“OK, well if you want to place a bet I will happily relieve you of some of your birthday money. In the meantime, he or she is due in the early autumn.”

“Cool. Maybe he could arrive before I go back to school?”

“Maybe he—or she—could, but it doesn't tend to work like that. They just come when they come.”

“Whatever. And Richard is the dad?”

Just a tiny pause while I braced myself for a white lie that, I figured, could never hurt anybody. “Yeah, Richard's the dad.”

“Cool. I like Richard.”

“Well, I'm cool that everything appears to be cool. But if you have any questions?”

“Yeah, can I go paintballing tomorrow with Dom?”

“That's not quite what I meant but, yes, why not?”

“OK. And now I'm going upstairs to write a song called ‘The Boy with No Name.' He hasn't got a name yet, has he?”

“No, neither She nor He has a name yet. You want to think of some?”

“I already did. I'll think of some more and make a list.”

“That would be cool. That would be very cool, Hal. And Hal?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you more than you will ever know.”

“Yeah. Love you too. Thanks for the pizza. You can go and lie down now.”

So Hal was suddenly onside, Richard was my rock, David had been exceptionally pleasant about everything (“That's great news, old girl. Take it easy, you deserve it”). Meanwhile, Lisa and Guy were particularly delighted. So all was fine, but for a couple of niggling things. The first of which was going to a wedding at which, obviously, I would see Alex. And more to the point, Alex would see me and my bump and my boyfriend. A couple of weeks before the wedding, I'd had lunch with Lisa, at St. Germain. The many contrasts to our lunch there the previous summer were not lost on either of us.

Somewhere between my second and third course (I was eating like a Suffolk Punch while Lisa, apparently half a dress-size off her wedding day target, was not), I casually raised the subject that dared not speak its name.

“So, I guess Alex knows about . . .” I patted my stomach.

“Yeah, I haven't seen him for ages, but Guy has. So . . . that's cool isn't it?”

“That's cool,” I said breezily, “we're all in a different place now.”

“I figured. And he's got a lot going on anyway. So, any names yet?”

“Well, Hal's convinced it's a boy and he's very sweetly come up with a list. But what do you think of Esme? And Fraser?”

And so we whiled away most of the rest of the meal in convivial, girly chat about baby names and wedding trivia, and that was good.

On the morning of the wedding, alongside the kicks, I had butterflies in my stomach.

“Eat something that doesn't contain mango?” suggested Richard.

“No, I'm fine.” And I was fine until I got an irrational craving for an Egg McMuffin en route to Kenwood and ate it in the car while attempting not to get yolk-drips on my dress. Hal made charming gagging noises from the backseat.

“That's so gross, Mum.”

“Tell me about it. I am gross. The sooner this baby is out of here the better, frankly.”

“Not too soon,” said Richard.

“When he's ready, I guess. But I'm ready when he is.”

“Or she?” said Hal.

The wedding was a delight. I was used to Lisa's beauty—I'd been studying its evolution for years—but nothing had prepared me for the extreme and distracting beauty of Lisa as a bride. Nobody could take their eyes off her, least of all her husband. I had never seen Guy look quite as at-ease with himself as he did that day. It was the blueprint for weddings: perfect weather, perfect ceremony, perfect everything, really. And then, bolstered by Richard and Hal, I was even ready for Alex and Susie. Except it turned out there was no Susie, just Alex, resplendent in his best man rig with his (very beautiful, and very much a Fox) daughter, Lula. Where was Susie?

After the reception, before we sat down for lunch—and long before I spoke to Alex, who had given me a polite nod of acknowledgment when we'd arrived at the church—I was talking to Guy and Alex's brother, Will. I'd only met Will a couple of times and we'd never really talked before, but he exuded warmth and a grown-up in-charge-ness, so when we fell into an easy conversation over the canapés while Richard was backslapping with Guy, I chanced my arm.