I nod slowly. ‘That sounds…’ I want to say ‘plausible’ but stop myself just in time. ‘Responsible,’ I say instead.
‘Yes, it does, doesn’t it?’
‘So do you?’
‘Do I what?’
‘Do you want to have a relationship with her? With Hannah?’ I add, carefully. I remember Paul telling me in no uncertain terms only yesterday how happy he was with his life just the way it is, and how he definitely wasn’t ready for a relationship. With anyone. I’m guessing this isn’t the kind he had in mind.
He looks so sad for a moment that I have to suppress the urge to put my arms around him. Two days ago that’s exactly what I would have done, but now I just can’t. So much for my actions having no effect on our friendship.
‘Yes,’ he tells me earnestly. ‘Yes, I want that very much.’
I’m not surprised. Paul isn’t the kind of man to shy away from his responsibilities. It’s what makes him so special. Nothing like Lipsy’s dad, who wouldn’t know a responsibility if it jumped up and smacked him in the face.
‘So what happens next?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve got her phone number, she put it in the letter. I guess I’ll call her and arrange to go and see them.’ There is a look of hope and excitement around his eyes that makes me a little worried.
‘Just don’t go building your hopes up, OK.’
‘What do you mean?’ he asks. Such an innocent!
‘Well,’ I say slowly, ‘it’s been nine years since you’ve seen this woman. You don’t know anything about her circumstances right now. You haven’t heard from her for years and you’ve never even laid eyes on this Hannah. Just be careful, that’s all.’
‘Of what, exactly?’ He isn’t looking too happy now. Why do I have to be the one to burst his bubble? How naive can a person be?
‘There is a chance,’ I say, carefully, ‘just a chance, that this child might not actually be, well, yours.’
Paul glares at me, horrified. ‘You think Sharon might be making it up?’
‘No, I’m just saying that there’s a chance, that’s all. And that you should keep an open mind.’ I don’t add, ‘And ask for a paternity test’. I stop myself just in time.
‘But what reason would she have for lying?’
‘I don’t know, Paul.’ His naivety is starting to annoy me now. For someone who doesn’t want any kind of commitment, he certainly seems attached to the idea of having a daughter already.
Maybe some of my bitterness has seeped out without me noticing. Paul eyes me carefully and then shakes his head.
‘This is about yesterday, isn’t it? You’re still pissed off with me and you’re being a killjoy. I thought better of you, Stella. I really did. I thought you’d be happy for me.’
I protest my innocence but it’s too late. Paul is getting up to leave and I know I’ve gone too far. How did it come to this? How did our rock-solid friendship get so shaky?
‘I’m just trying to be a friend, that’s all,’ I call out to his departing back. ‘I’m trying to be realistic.’
He leaves without answering and I sit for a long time looking at my streaky walls. Realistic was the word I used to justify my warnings. But I know better than anyone there is a fine line between realism and pessimism. A very fine line indeed.
Chapter 10
I’m on the phone to Bonnie, trying to hide the fact that it’s a personal call from the rest of the office while simultaneously keeping an eye out for Paul, who is unusually absent for a Monday morning. Bonnie has been quizzing me about Joshua – she feels responsible, she said, after setting me up with him. I tell her that Joshua is almost certainly a lost cause as a boyfriend, but is actually turning out to be a really good neighbour and friend. As well as a filing cabinet, he’s also bought me my own body weight in cleaning materials and enough air freshener to fumigate a pig farm. He almost certainly has obsessive compulsive disorder, but is this necessarily a bad thing in a mate when you have a house that needs serious organising and renovating?
I decide not to tell her about throwing myself at Paul, or the feelings I’m not-so-secretly harbouring for him. Bonnie doesn’t really understand the complicated machinations which usually make up a love life, especially mine. She keeps hers simple: nice, unchallenging bloke with a constant cash flow providing meals out and cosy nights in; rows restricted to which film to see or whose set of friends to invite over that weekend. That’s not to say I’m criticising her lifestyle – envying it more like. But I know it wouldn’t work for me, any more than mine would work for her. Perhaps that’s why we get on so well: opposites attract and no competition.
She says goodbye with a promise to come over and wield a paintbrush very soon (that I’d like to see), and I replace the phone just as Loretta comes back from lunch smiling – smiling! – and carrying a box that would, in the hands of a normal person, be filled with cakes.
‘What have you got there, Loretta?’ calls Joe from his desk in the far corner.
‘Cakes,’ Loretta announces, setting them down on her immaculate desk, ‘and carrot cake for anyone who’s on a diet.’
I wait for her to look pointedly in my direction but she doesn’t.
Shaking my head in amazement, I turn my attention back to my growing mound of typing. Working Loretta out is beyond my capabilities, and not top of my list right now. My number one priority is getting my house into a habitable enough state for Lipsy to move back into. For some reason – naivety, blind hope – I had thought she would get fed up with being at my mother’s, in her old bedroom filled with soft toys and kids’ games, and slip back home one day, sulking and moaning but still irrevocably there. I imagined the first I’d know of it would be hearing her awful music pounding down the stairs, or going to the fridge to find it emptied of all food.
Of course, this would be a lot easier if I actually had a fridge.
After a few hours of typing – or possibly only minutes but time is dragging today – I notice that Paul is back in his cubbyhole. Picking up the cream cake I saved for him I manoeuvre my way around the filing cabinet arrangement and creep up behind him.
‘Surprise,’ I say softly, laying a hand on his shoulder – his muscular, very square, very toned shoulder – and trying not to be offended when he flinches and jumps to his feet.
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘it’s you.’
‘Well, yes. It is me. And there’s no need to look so pleased about it.’
‘Sorry. You just made me jump.’
I perch on the corner of his desk as he sits back down and rests his fingers on the keyboard.
‘Who else would it have been, anyway?’ I ask. ‘Who else would come in and grope their boss in the middle of the day?’
Thankfully I’m rewarded with a rueful smile. It seems a delicate truce has been restored. I vow not to blow it again.
‘You wouldn’t want to know,’ he says, and I catch him as his eyes sweep the room in the direction of Loretta. Then I notice the biggest, creamiest cake of all on his desk.
‘No!’ I’m actually quite shocked. ‘Not Loretta? Has she got the hots for you, Smart?’ I laugh, going for amused but it comes out slightly hysterical.
What do I care if old bulldog face has taken a shine to the object of my affection? Until recently I’d have thought it hysterically funny – before I had my epiphany and realised the nature of my true feelings. At least, I
think
I would.
I decide I won’t resent Loretta her little infatuation. If wanting to make Paul happy brings on cream cakes and smiles, who am I to complain? And Paul does seem in desperate need of cheering up today. I just hope it’s not entirely my fault.
‘Paul,’ I say, deciding on the direct approach, ‘are you still mad at me for what I said about Hannah?’
He jumps again, accidentally hitting a combination of keys that makes his screen go black. ‘Shit!’ he grumbles through gritted teeth, and I find myself apologising, although I’m not sure what for.
‘Maybe I should leave you to it?’ I try not to sound too dejected as I slide off his desk and smooth down my skirt.
‘Stella, wait.’ Paul catches my hand. His palm is warm and I long to hold it against my cheek. ‘I know you only said what you said because you care. And I understand why you would be suspicious, you’re only looking out for me. But,’ he says, his eyes so innocent and sincere, ‘I have no doubts at all that Sharon is telling the truth and Hannah is mine. And I really don’t want to discuss it with you again. OK?’
I nod mutely. But it isn’t OK at all.
***
I slip away from work early; with Loretta still in her strange good mood and Paul sulking in his hidey-hole I thought I’d make the most of it. Back at the house, I start work straight away on my bathroom. I actually have one now – our odd-job man installed it this morning. Now all I need to do is put up new tiles, fit a shower and a shower curtain, paint, put up shelves and a cabinet and a mirror, and it’ll be finished.
So, no problem then.
Except for one small, teeny-weeny hitch. I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing.
There are women who are good at DIY and there are women who aren’t. Of those who aren’t, there are two distinct types: women like Bonnie who can afford to “get a man in” to do whatever job they need, and the type who can’t afford it and are therefore reduced to visiting the library and pouring over centuries-old books on tiling or wallpapering, and then turning Do-It-Yourself into Destroy-It-Yourself. And, you guessed it, I belong to the second type.
I do a quick mental recce of all the men I know in case there are any useful skills I can call upon.
Joshua isn’t the hands-on type so he’s out, although I imagine he’ll be happy to help me clear up afterwards. Paul – best not to ask for any more favours from him right now. Bonnie’s Marcus will be great when I can finally afford a new computer and need it setting up. But not, I think, tiling. Alistair – urghh, don’t even go there!
Which just leaves my feckless brother, who I’ve avoided seeing despite what Paul said about him wanting to make up with me. He certainly owes me a few favours, but if he has any skills I’m not sure what they are, and to be honest I’d rather ruin the bathroom myself than be beholden to him.
This is a tricky spot I find myself in, with no easy answers, no way to charm my way out of it, and a strong aversion to getting down and dirty with the dark side of decorating.
But fate does indeed work in mysterious ways.
I’m putting on my shoes ready for that trip to the library when there is a knock on the door. I open it to find, standing in front of me, large as life and ten times as handsome, John Dean.
Lipsy’s father.
The man who ruined my life.
Who also happens to be a professional tiler.
***
John Dean swept me off my size sixes when I was just coming to the end of my first year at university. I thought I had the whole world at my feet. I thought I was “it”, as they used to say back then. The university was really only a glorified polytechnic, and I was only studying Business and Marketing so I wasn’t as exposed to the full-on student thing as if I’d been reading Philosophy or something at a proper university. But even though it was no more than twenty miles from Milton Keynes I made the decision to leave home and rent a room in a suitably run-down, three-storey townhouse, with arty posters on the walls, tasselled scarves over lampshades, and piles of unwashed dishes in the sink. Glorious!
Most evenings, my friends and I would stroll down to the student nights at the studenty bars and hang out with the “real” students. But after a while I saw through them completely and decided they were a bunch of self-important wankers. So when John Dean walked into my life one night, with his posse of slick out-on-the-pull guys and his killer smile, I was a gonner. He seemed so real, so down to earth, so normal.
Yeah, right.
My morals had gone out the window with my virginity two years before, so it was no big deal when we fell into bed on our first date: his bed, in his rented one-storey house with a tin roof in Beanhill. The rest is ancient history.
Or at least, I thought it was history. But here he is now on my doorstep, my still-in-need-of-fixing doorstep, with a face like a fallen angel and that look I know so well.
I hate myself for admitting this, I really do, but when I open the door and see him standing there I fly back through time and I’m nineteen again, and he’s twenty-two and totally, unforgivingly gorgeous.
‘Stella,’ he drawls – no, really, I mean it. He does drawl. He’s one of those guys for whom the word languid was invented.
‘Fucking hell,’ I reply in a not very ladylike or cool way.
‘How are you?’ he says.
‘Fuck off,’ I tell him and slam the door in his face.
This may seem impolite but you don’t know what he did to me and Lipsy. You
think
you know: the old story of boy meets girl, boy gets girl pregnant, boy ditches girl and leaves her to bring up the baby alone.
Essentially this is all true, but there was so much more to it than that. John Dean didn’t just break my heart when he deserted, abandoned, dumped me. He left my entire being broken, incapable of trusting another man or forming another relationship for years and years. John Dean used up every cliché in the book. He slept with not just one of my friends but three – and I only had three. He dumped me and came back so many times I felt like I had a revolving door in my room. Lying to me, taking money from me, using my name to get credit then leaving me to pay it all off – you name it, he did it.
Finally he went for good, three weeks before Lipsy was born, and Lipsy and I didn’t see him until she was ten. Ten! Then he turns up at my parents’ house with a story of regret and a toy more suitable for a five-year-old boy. Come to think of it, I don’t suppose he even knew the sex of his child, even though I’d written letter after letter for the first couple of years to the forwarding address he left with his landlord.
But I’m not bitter.
I’ve come to terms with it now. I accept that it was partly my fault. I was too young and naive, and far too much in love with him. That kind of love, I’ve decided, is dangerous. The kind that leaves you breathless and helpless, and definitely brainless in my case. He won’t have that effect on me now; there’s not even the slightest possibility that I’d fall for it again. Absolutely not one.