Unlike a Virgin (18 page)

I don’t think I’ll be able to do the ham pizza. This peculiar smell is too meaty. I hold my menu out and point to a pasta dish with a spicy tomato sauce.

‘Bloody hell, Grace. Pasta?’ says Wendy.

‘It’s nice that, Grace, I’ve had it before. It’s got a little kick.’

John flags down a waiter and orders for me and him. Wendy asks for her own veggie pizza with ham and salami.

‘Grace,’ he says when the waiter’s gone. ‘Take the rest of the week off. Don’t come back until Monday. Everything will be fine.’

I think of my job and the Estate Agent of the Year competition, and I feel myself letting them go. I feel myself letting everything go. Then I remember how I haven’t done my new five year plan yet. Maybe that’s why everything is unravelling.

A waitress strides towards the table next door holding two plates.

‘Who’s having the liver special?’ she asks.

That’s the smell, it’s liver – and it’s next to me! Oh it’s foul! And it’s inches from my nose. More hot saliva fills my mouth as she places the dish in front of the man to my right.

‘Ooh, look at that,’ says the man, and he picks up his knife and cuts into it.

I try to swallow but I can’t. Suddenly I’m pushing my chair away from the table. My hand is over my mouth and I’m running out of the door. I’m sick as soon as I’m outside.

‘Here have some water, you poor thing.’ It’s John. He’s holding a glass of water towards me. I take it and splash some on my shoes. then I drink the rest. It’s not very cold. I wish it
was. I wish it had ice in it. What I’d really like more than anything is a big personal iceberg, in cola or cherry flavour, which I could lick and lick. Oh, what’s happening to me?

I look forlornly at Posh Boy. I can’t speak. My boyfriend has dumped me. I’ve just been sick, and I hope it’s caused by an overdose of ice lollies because the alternative is just … oh God, it’s just too awful to contemplate.

Posh Boy opens his arms, then he walks forwards and wraps them around me. It’s a very brave gesture as it presses my sicky mouth up against his shirt. It’s a good hug, not limp or brief, but long and strong. I close my eyes and feel grateful for it.

‘She’s had a real shock, hasn’t she,’ he says when Wendy joins us outside.

‘Yeah,’ Wendy says quietly, stroking my hair. ‘She’s having a bit of a shocker.’

‘Oh! It’s you, innit! Your face is well better. I’ve got summit for you.’

It’s the young girl from the pharmacy. She reaches under the counter and pulls out my purple bag, the one that was stolen. God, that night feels like a hundred Christmases ago.

‘This is it, innit. You said it were purple.’

I take it from her and open it.

‘Yeah, theys took most of the stuff.’

They certainly did. All that’s left inside is a battered tin of Vaseline, some tissues and odd bits of paper with random notes on them. At least I got the bag back, though. I really like this bag.

‘It wasn’t my brother. Not that I’m telling you who it was, you understand.’

I put the bag to my nose. I’m sniffing everything at the moment. I feel as though someone’s given me a new nose and it works completely differently from my old one. Some smells
make me feel nauseous, like the liver. But some smells I love, like diesel and bleach. The bag doesn’t smell of anything. The girl looks at me strangely.

‘I hope your nice fella is taking care of you now. He looked like that bloke in … what’s those films called?’ She looks at me hopefully. ‘Oh, you must know. Like, er, like vampires or sum-mink. Anyway, him. Fit.
Twilight
films! That’s what they are. He looks like that bloke. Does everyone say that?’

I push the pregnancy test towards her across the counter and reach into my other bag for my purse. She glances at it.

‘Sh-i-i-i-t!
’
she says, just as the pharmacist walks out of his Tablet Tardis.

‘I hope you didn’t say what I thought I heard you say,’ he sings. But then he stops when he sees me.

‘Hello again.’ He smiles; he sees hundreds of people each week, why does he have to remember me? People often remember me, and I have a sneaky suspicion it’s because I’m short. I don’t want anyone to remember me today, though.

I nod at the pharmacist and turn back to the cashier girl.

‘Are you all right?’ says the pharmacist.

I nod.

‘She’s got the ump, today, hasn’t said a word.’

I keep my head down, take ten quid out of my purse to pay for the pregnancy test and hold it out for her. Oh, why do I have to be so weird? Why? I don’t know anyone else who this happens to. No one else has a ridiculous inability to speak when in shock. It seems crazy that I can’t be polite and talk to her, but I don’t have any control over it. My voice just isn’t there. It’s not connected to me any more. I can’t do words at the moment.

‘Do you … ?’ the pharmacist starts speaking, but stops when his eyes fall on what I’m buying.

‘Thanks for getting my bag back. You shouldn’t have,’ the girl says sarcastically as she hands me my change.

I turn away quickly. I want to be back at home. I rush to leave, but I feel a hand on my arm, and when I turn it’s the pharmacist.

‘You may not want to speak, and why should you? Tara over there could do with learning something about the fine art of silence. She means well, though. But this, with you, could be some form of mutism bought on by trauma, I don’t know?’

I look up at him. That’s what the doctor said when my voice went before. I remember him calling it selective mutism. The pharmacist smiles. ‘My daughter had it when she was tiny. You don’t need to speak to me, but if you need any help with the results of that test – or if you need anything for the anxiety you’re feeling – you know where I am.’ He sighs. ‘I’m in the middle of Sainsbury’s.’

I look about me. It must be strange working here, under the fluorescent lights, surrounded by groceries. I nod, then I go and locate the ice-cream section.

I wanted Danny and I to be a love story. Not an ‘I went out with this bloke for ten years and he got his mum to dump me’ story. I wanted us to be a love story like my mum and dad were. Except without the bit where one of us dies and the other one goes mad. I wanted a love story like theirs. Theirs was proper love. The real deal. I used to love hearing about how Mum and Dad met. My mum was fifteen – the same age as I was when I met Dan, which I thought was a sign. My dad was older, though. He was nineteen. They met in Edinburgh at a ballroom dancing competition. My mum was brought up in the Highlands of Scotland, although you wouldn’t know it now because she speaks with a plummy English accent. Her mum and dad were strict, humourless Catholics from what I’ve heard, though I never met them. They disowned my mother when she got pregnant out of wedlock by an atheist, and they’ve both died since.

Dad saw my mother for the first time dancing a Viennese
Waltz. He said he couldn’t take his eyes off her, that she quite literally glowed and made everyone else in the room look dull and glum by comparison. It was at the end of the dance, when mum was curtsying, that she noticed my dad. She told me she saw the most beautiful man she’d ever seen and his eyes were fixed on her and he was smiling. She said she knew that he was the man she was going to love forever. They got their wires crossed for a while at the beginning, though, because my dad just wanted my mother to be his dancing partner, while my mother wanted Dad to be her
naked
dancing partner, if you know what I mean. My dad got his wish first, as Mum came down to London and started dancing with him. She moved into his family home and proceeded to throw herself upon him at every opportunity. Dad resisted Mum’s advances at first because he thought she was too young, a child still, but on her seventeenth birthday they kissed for the first time. I loved that story, but I thought Danny and I had our own story. We met at school. He asked me to the prom. That’s what I wanted to tell our children. I sigh. I’m still clutching the bag from the pharmacy. I haven’t taken the test yet.

Danny has to come home. He can’t just leave. Maybe it’s a ten-year itch. He’s bound to get to America and go, What the? I’ve forgot me Gracie. This won’t do, and come home. Surely he can’t bolt like this. We’re Danny and Gracie. Gracie and Dan.

I’m sitting here in the lounge, alone on a Saturday night. I don’t want to be in our bed upstairs. It’s the extra-long bed we bought because Danny is so tall. They should have taken it. Mind you, it’s probably quite tricky to check in at the airport. I keep expecting him to walk in, sit down next to me and start playing computer games, smelling of chips and beer and boy
sweat. But, of course, the games have gone, and so has he. His hands, his smile, his big safe presence. It’s all gone to America.

Or maybe not. I can hear something downstairs. A key in the lock. He’s come back. Oh, thank you, God. I knew he couldn’t just leave me like that. I run to the top of the stairs, but it’s not him, it’s Wendy.

‘No need to look so pleased to see me!’

I gave her a set of keys to the flat, just in case I locked myself out or was away and she needed to get in for some reason.

‘Gracie, I’m moving in. For as long as it takes to get you chatting, OK? I’ve brought the
Mad Men
box set.’ She holds the cover towards me. ‘Is it me or does this Don Draper fellow remind you of Anton over the road? And I’ve got chocolate … and I don’t want any arguments.’ She laughs. ‘Not that I’ll be getting any.’

She walks up the stairs.

‘It’s been ten years since this happened before: me chatting to you and trying to get you to let me in. You’ve become uber-efficient estate agent woman since then. I’d forgotten about little Gracie who didn’t talk that time. I mean, when you do speak it’s generally a load of old bollocks, but I do miss it. We’ll get you speaking again, I promise.’

I sit back down on the sofa and pull the duvet around me. The paper bag I bought back from the pharmacy falls to the ground.

‘What have you dropped?’ asks Wendy, picking it up and looking inside. ‘Oh,’ she immediately stops flitting around, looks at me and sighs with a smile. ‘Yeah, I wondered with you being sick. Do you think you might be? Oh, Grace, we’d
better do the test and get it over with. It’s bound to be worse not knowing. Go on.’ She holds it out to me. ‘Go pee on a stick.’

Who could resist such a tempting offer? Not me. I’ve been putting it off for hours, but I do actually need the toilet. I walk into the bathroom, shut the door and unwrap the plastic test stick. It looks a bit like a kazoo. You wouldn’t want to confuse the two, I think, as I try to wee on it.

I sit it on the bathroom shelf next to the dead cactus and then I go back to Wendy in the living room.

‘I reckon we do the whole first series,’ she says, looking at the DVD box. If we get hungry I’ll buy us sausage and mash from the pub later.’

I can’t think of anything I’d like to do less than eat a sausage, except maybe be pregnant.

‘I don’t think you’re pregnant,’ Wendy starts conjecturing. ‘You took the morning-after pill, and it’s good, that. I’ve taken it. You’re probably just late because of Danny ‘I’m too weak to talk to my girlfriend myself, so I’ll get my mum to do it’ Saunders. I could kill him. Jesus. You’re bound to feel awful and miss a period. Come on, how many times since we’ve known each other have we been here doing preg tests and they’re always negative. You pay ten quid and then come on the next day. It’s a conspiracy, I reckon.’

She’s right. We’ve both done them before. I don’t know how many times we’ve been stuck in a loo, crouched over a kazoo, waiting to see if we had a two-pink-lines situation. But this time I know I’m pregnant. It’s a feeling. I know I’m carrying a baby. Well, it wouldn’t be a baby yet, more like a bean. A bean of a baby. A baby bean.

I walk, incredibly slowly, back into the bathroom. I don’t go straight to the test. I give the sink a spray and a wipe first, then I throw away Danny’s toothbrush. I clean the mirror and pick up the bin to empty it outside. Then I freeze for a moment, holding my bathroom bin. Perhaps I’m not pregnant. Wendy could be right. We’ve been here before. It might be just the same as before. There could well be only one pink line, like last time. I put the bin down, close my eyes and creep towards the shelf where the pregnancy test sits waiting.

When my legs bang against the bath I know I’m within sight of the kazoo. I stand still, breathing deeply, then I open my eyes. Two unmistakable pink lines look back at me.

I’m pregnant.

Shit.

Wendy has always been there for me. Always. Well, always, since the age of eleven. She went to Kensal Rise Community College with me, so I suppose we were destined to be best friends on account of the fact that my dad was a ballroom dancer and hers was an actor. When we were at school Wendy’s dad was in a long-running series of commercials for Homebase. In the ads he had to dress up in a Jacobean outfit, with ballooning shorts over tights and a massive ruffle around his neck, and each ad consisted of him eulogising, whooping and screaming, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ over something like a drill or a lawn mower or a barbeque. The one for the best ever bathroom sale is the most famous. It’s still featured on those ‘Best Ever Adverts’ shows you get on Channel 4 occasionally. It was very cheesy, with Wendy’s dad getting carried away by the concept of a toilet and then settling down on it to do a jobby. As you can imagine, Wendy was fodder for some pant-wettingly funny teasing. She was pursued through
secondary school by teenagers doing bad impressions of her father shouting, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’