Miss You (26 page)

‘Come on!’ I grabbed Lucy’s hand and pulled her towards the kiosk. ‘The view from the top will be great.’

Lucy’s screams, a primal mix of fear and excitement, were a bit of a turn-on because her responses were usually so measured. As the ride went faster and faster, fear diminished and
pleasure increased to a peak where all we could do was laugh with sheer exhilaration. When the ride began to slow, our hysteria calmed, and I realized that I hadn’t thought about Charlotte
for at least five minutes.

We were lured into the amusement arcade by the air-hockey table, where Lucy won several times amid the clatter and jingle of fruit machines. Tennis was the only sport we really played together,
and I had the advantage of height and speed so even though she had much better technique, she only won if I let her. Her approach to air hockey was more about angles than my stabs at power, so she
beat me fair and square. As the last puck shot into my goal and the glee spread across her face, I found myself overwhelmed with affection for her.

In The Lanes, every other shop was an antique jeweller’s. The windows sparkled with diamond rings. Even though Lucy said nothing, nor lingered longingly as I noticed several other women in
couples doing, I suddenly wanted to make it up to her for the previous evening by going down on one knee and proposing. It sounds ludicrous to say it, but it was only a sense of honour that stopped
me. I knew it wasn’t fair to ask Lucy to marry me until I had finished with Charlotte once and for all.

I bought Charlotte a Paul Smith silk scarf from Liberty for her birthday, which she thanked me for, but did not put on.

‘I’ve got a present for you too,’ she said.

I unfolded the tissue inside the Agent Provocateur box to find shell-pink silk camiknickers, and a pair of fine-denier ivory stockings. ‘This is for you, right?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s for you. I just wear it. Do you want me to put the stockings on, or would you like to tie me to the bed with them?’

Sometimes it crossed my mind that Charlotte should, or possibly did, have a sideline as a high-class call girl. Where did she learn this stuff?

If the sex was more mind-blowing than ever, it was because I knew it was the last time. Afterwards, I got up, showered and dressed, knowing I would feel too vulnerable trying to tell her while I
was still naked.

‘Here we go,’ she said, as I stood by the door, rocking slightly from foot to foot.

‘I know I’ve said it before, but this really has to be the last time,’ I said.

‘You haven’t gone and told the wife, have you?’

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’

‘Not that I’m aware,’ I said, trying to be cool but sounding like a prat.

‘That would be awkward . . .’

‘Why?’ I bristled. If Lucy was pregnant, it was nothing to do with Charlotte. It might even be rather nice, I thought, except Lucy was far too sensible to make a mistake.

‘Because I am,’ said Charlotte. ‘Pregnant.’

Then, after a long pause, ‘Can’t you look a bit happier than that?’

‘How?’

‘Darling, it’s pre-GCSE stuff, isn’t it?’

‘I mean . . .’ Surely she was using something?

‘Polycystic ovaries. I never thought I’d conceive.’

‘But you should’ve . . .’

‘You never asked.’

How had that happened? I was a doctor, for God’s sake. Why had I abandoned all the rules? Because each time felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I could so easily mess up.

‘How long?’ My voice echoed in my head, as if someone else was asking the questions that had to be asked.

‘I won’t bore you with my menstrual cycle, or lack of it, but in the absence of the normal indicators, I appear to be at least three months, possibly getting on for four.’

Her stomach was still flat. Was this some strange kind of joke? I must have looked bewildered.

‘And yes, it is,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘Yours.’

‘And you’re going to . . . ?’ At that point, I was still thinking of it as something to do with her and no one else.

‘I’ve given it a lot of thought. Obviously, it’s unexpected, but I’m thirty and with my ovaries it might not happen naturally again. The time I’ll lose from my
career now is probably less than if I make surgeon then have to go through IVF.’

‘So what do you want me to do?’ I asked.

‘Aren’t you going to offer to make an honest woman out of me?’

Was she teasing?

‘You want to marry me?’

‘Is it so surprising? We have the best sex ever. You’re intelligent and cultured. I think you’ll probably make rather a good father.’

Everything she was saying was so strange to me, I felt as if I was hallucinating, as if she was some sort of surrealist installation, lying there in pale silk underwear, her lips and nipples
dark from sex, and inside her tummy, a little human being who half-belonged to me. As I stared at her body, I felt I could now see the new roundness of her belly where the tiny foetus was curled up
inside.

In one of Lucy’s obstetrics books, there was a chart of a baby’s development, with all the stages described in terms of items of food. At four months, the baby was well beyond a
kidney bean, probably not quite a grapefruit yet.

When I didn’t say anything, Charlotte said, in a wistful tone I’d never heard before, ‘It might be fun . . . don’t you think?’

For a moment, she looked so vulnerable I wanted to hold her and reassure her that everything would be all right. And yet I still wasn’t sure whether this was some sort of elaborate game,
and the only question I could think of asking to find out was, ‘Will you marry me, then?’

Occasionally, when we were having drinks in some theatre foyer, I’d allowed myself to fantasize that people might mistake us for a proper couple, but I’d never thought about how we
might arrive at that status, and if I had, it wouldn’t have been like this.

‘Oh, Angus, you’re so sweet!’

She knelt up on the bed, took my hand and said, solemnly, ‘I will,’ before rewarding me with the most tender, sensual kiss I had ever received.

How do you tell your girlfriend of six years that you’ve unexpectedly got engaged to a woman you’ve unwittingly got pregnant? A woman who happens to be the former
girlfriend of your older brother, who you’ve never mentioned?

On my walk home from Charlotte Street, I took deep breaths, trying to compose a speech in my head, but the pyramid of lies I had constructed, which hadn’t felt like such a big deal
incrementally, now seemed unscalably huge. It began to dawn on me, for the first time, that in revealing lies that I had thought were mine and mine alone, I would be demolishing Lucy’s life
too. I didn’t know if I could do that. But I had to. There was a baby. There was Charlotte . . .

Lucy was out at the cinema with some girlfriends when I got back, and they went on to Nando’s afterwards. It was too late to start explaining when she came in, because I was already in
bed, pretending to be fast asleep.

I should have told her the following day, but she’d had to inform a pregnant mother that her baby’s heart was no longer beating, and, after she told me that, I couldn’t bring
myself to say anything.

I promised myself that I would do it at the weekend, but on Thursday, my father rang to say that he and my mother had some news they wanted to give me in person.

‘You’re not ill?’

‘No, not that.’

But it sounded more serious than, say, a decision to retire or move.

‘I’ve got to go and see my folks,’ I told Lucy.

‘Can I come?’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

She’d never been to my parents’ house. Now didn’t seem like the best time for a visit.

‘Why?’

When I couldn’t summon an immediate excuse, it occurred to me that it might actually present a way of encouraging Lucy to question our relationship before I broke my news.

My father was waiting for us at the station. ‘I’ll come straight out with it,’ he announced, as he started the car. ‘Your mother and I have decided to
separate.’

‘Your father’s been having an affair with his dental nurse,’ was the version of events my mother offered almost as soon as we were through the front door.

‘Perhaps you’d rather I . . . ?’ Lucy began, embarrassed because this kind of personal revelation clearly was not what she’d been expecting.

‘No, you might as well hear what’s in store for you when you lose your looks and your libido,’ my mother snapped.

It was such an uncharacteristically forthright statement, I wondered if she’d been drinking, or watching daytime television.

‘Your mother and I haven’t been happy for some time—’

‘How could we be after—?’ asked my mother.

‘—and now this chance has come along, I feel I have to try—’

‘She’s thirty-seven,’ said my mother.

Unable to think of a suitable comment, I made the mistake of looking at my father.

‘Oh, I see,’ my mother rounded on me. ‘You knew all along, did you?’

‘Absolutely not!’ I protested.

‘He honestly didn’t,’ Lucy chimed in.

My mother stared at me. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say or what she wanted me to do. Should I remonstrate with my father, or try to stop him? Was that what Ross would have done? I
was aware now that Lucy had spotted the pictures of my brother on the mantelpiece. Ross in a mortarboard holding his degree certificate was right next to mine, in exactly the same pose.

The silence seemed interminable.

‘So, what’s going to happen?’ I asked eventually.

‘I’m not leaving this house,’ said my mother, immediately. ‘I’ve put my whole life into it.’

‘I’ll be moving out,’ said my father.

‘Don’t make it sound like a sacrifice!’ she shouted at him.

‘I’ve put a lot into it too,’ he said, rather pathetically.

‘And now you’ve destroyed it all!’ said my mother, then rushed from the room.

I’d heard her crying so often, but this sound was different, like a wounded animal.

‘Mum will be OK financially?’ I asked, feeling that someone ought to represent her interests.

‘Yes, yes!’ he said impatiently. ‘Look, I think it’s probably better if I leave you to it. I’ll be in touch about the arrangements.’

‘OK,’ I said. And then, because I couldn’t think of anything else, I held out my hand, which he seemed surprised and grateful to grasp.

‘She couldn’t let go,’ he said, his voice uncharacteristically croaky with emotion. ‘She wouldn’t allow me even to want to.’

I’d seen them as a unit, bound together by grief, but we’d all been as alone as each other.

‘I hope you’ll be happy,’ was all I could think of to say.

I could see in his eyes that he thought I was being sarcastic, but it was somehow too late to explain.

‘It doesn’t seem fair, does it?’ Lucy said, after the automatic security gates had closed behind his Lexus. ‘You couldn’t really see your mother
with a thirty-seven-year-old man, could you?’

She walked over to the mantelpiece to get a closer look at the photos: Ross with gaps where his baby teeth had been; Ross in his prep-school cap, blazer and shorts; Ross
receiving the rugby cup; Ross with his eight, all of them holding the boat above their heads; Ross wearing mirror ski goggles with a snowy mountain behind him.

I took a deep breath.

‘That’s my brother,’ I said. ‘He was killed in a skiing accident the Christmas before I started uni. I didn’t want people to cast me as a grieving person and not
know what to say to me, you know?’

‘Oh, Gus, I’m so sorry!’

Lucy’s eyes were full of tears, which wasn’t part of the scene I had written in my head.

‘It must have been terrible for you . . .’

‘Well, yes. But now you’re doing that thing, you know?’

‘Sorry.’

She wasn’t the one who was supposed to be sorry. She was supposed to be upset that I’d misled her.

‘What happened?’ she asked gently.

A question nobody had voiced since my parents, and then the search party, and then the police all those years ago. A question I tried to avoid thinking about.

‘He was skiing off-piste and hit a tree. The brain damage was so severe they decided to switch off the life support.‘

‘Were you there?’

‘When they switched it off? No. My parents were.’

Lucy didn’t say anything, but I knew that wasn’t what she’d been asking.

‘I don’t suppose you can forgive me for not mentioning it?’ As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew I’d mistimed it. I should have waited to let the implications sink
in.

‘But there’s nothing to forgive!’ Lucy exclaimed. ‘I’m just so sorry I wasn’t there for you!’

She turned and tried to hug me, but I couldn’t put my arms around her. Her attempts to make it easy for me were making it much more difficult.

‘He was very handsome,’ she said, picking up the photo of him leaving with a backpack for his gap year.

‘Yes. He was handsome and cool and good at everything. Everyone adored him.’

‘And is this his girlfriend?’

With Freudian failure of eyesight or foresight, I hadn’t spotted the picture of Charlotte and Ross dressed as Morticia and Uncle Fester.

‘Yes.’

‘She’s very beautiful.’

‘Yes.’

Lucy was very quiet for the rest of the day, although she put on a bright face when my mother came down and prepared supper for us. A chicken-and-leek pie. If my mother had been her normal self,
she would have made up the guest room for Lucy, but she was so distracted she didn’t think of it, so we went to bed in my old room. At first, it felt sweetly poignant to rediscover our way of
lying together with me curled round her back, just like the first time in Lucy’s single bed in Broadstairs, although neither of us was now in any mood for sex. After many minutes’
silence I realized that she was as unable to sleep as I was.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked in the darkness.

‘I’ve had better days.’

‘Sorry. Crass of me.’

‘No. It’s fine. I’m sorry to involve you in all of this.’

‘Don’t be sorry. I wish you
had
involved me. It feels so strange that you didn’t tell me about Ross. There’s this whole important part of your life I didn’t
know anything about, and I thought I knew you so well.’