Not What They Were Expecting (23 page)

‘It was a chat we had. It does explain why he might have taken some time.’

‘And this was before the arrest?’

You couldn’t get much past Joan. Rebecca thought for a minute before taking the plunge.

‘No. No it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘But he says he was going to go to the doctor.’

‘That’s a big thing to ask a pregnant daughter to do.’

‘But if it was a big misunderstanding, it might help this thing end. I really just don’t want to even have to think about it.’

‘Would it be a problem? If he was?’

‘It’s not the gay thing. It’s the cheating.’

Joan casually looked around the café, thinking.

‘Are you sure it’s just that?’

‘Of course!’ Rebecca said, sipping her drink, holding it in front of her face. Then she clinked it down suddenly. ‘I don’t want a gay dad.’

It felt such a relief to say that to somebody.

‘I know that’s terrible,’ Rebecca said.

Joan stretched across the table and patted Rebecca’s hand.

‘You should see some of our friends deal with gay children, even the liberal ones. They say it’s fine, but it takes some time. You can tell by the way they talk about it, it’s a while before being relaxed doesn’t sound forced. I guess it works the other way around too.’

‘I never thought it’d be a problem.’

‘What about if the same thing came up with this one?,’ asked Joan, nodding at Rebecca’s belly.

‘Only matters they’re happy,’ she said firmly. She was certain of that.

‘There you go. There’s hope. You can deal with your dad.’

Rebecca shrugged.

‘If he is,’ said Joan. ‘I mean, you don’t seem to be convinced he is, and you say there’s an innocent explanation.’

Rebecca looked down, and didn’t answer at first.

‘What do you think?’

Joan paused, studying the artfully mismatched photography on the walls. Rebecca tensed, her head down.

‘I don’t know your family that well, apart from what I see about your dad in the papers, and the occasional party we would have all been at years back. When you were seeing Ed the idea that we might meet up was terrifying for you both.’

She smiled warmly at Rebecca before she continued.

‘But this is one of my theories about people. Sometimes when you meet someone, they seem to be searching you, looking for something you’re not showing. Almost like they want to catch you out. And it doesn’t even have to be in a vindictive way. But I think it comes from something inside them. An assumption that because they’re putting on a front, that everyone’s hiding something. Your father…’

‘So you think he is?’

It was Joan’s turn to shrug. ‘There was always something. I could never have said what it was.’

‘But he just loves winding people up. His way of being friendly to strangers is to tease them.’

‘Maybe that’s it,’ conceded Joan politely. ‘I’m writing a book. At the minute everyone in my head is secretly gay, or having an affair, or an alcoholic. If I were doing science fiction I’d probably say he was an alien.’

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch when I heard,’ she continued, ‘I should have been, but…’

‘I hadn’t spoken to you in ages, it was probably my turn.’

‘I thought you’d moved on, and good for you that you have. But I should have dropped you a line.’

‘It’s my fault,’ said Rebecca. ‘James thought it was a bit strange that I wanted to keep in touch with my ex’s family. He’s not usually the jealous type, but this for some reason… Maybe it’s because I don’t really get on with his mum.’

‘So this is an illicit meeting?’ asked Joan with a wink. ‘Already I feel twenty years younger. Is he doing OK with this?’

Rebecca explained again how her husband was being supportive, but had worries of his own on the job front. Joan joined the string of people expressing surprise at how long it was taking him to find something new. Rebecca started rubbing her tummy and didn’t say anything. It was her new answer to everything when the difficult questions started. But Joan, she knew, would not let a bit of silence throw her off a subject.

‘So look. What are you going to do? You won’t talk to your father about his problems. You won’t talk to your husband about how you’re worried he can support your family. So who are you going to talk to? Apart from your bit on the side, obviously.’

Rebecca shrugged slightly as she popped a Gaviscon from its foil packaging.

‘I’ll say this – and take this as a lucky sign of the interfering you avoided when you decided not to stay together with my perfect son – but you need to talk to your husband. Too much pussyfooting around and not enough talking can break a marriage.’

‘It’s a difficult time for h—’

‘It’s a difficult time for you both. And you get two votes right now. And you owe it to him not to be the one who’s holding something back.’

They smiled at each other, both aware that Joan was sounding like a bossy mother.

‘I’ll stop nagging. And I’d better go, before we get papped by your newspaper stalker.’

They hugged goodbye, Rebecca promised to keep her up to date with Bompalomp news, and Joan left. With her went Rebecca’s clarity. The talk had left her more confused about what she had to do. She was going to try and talk to James, though. She hoped that might help.

Chapter 29

James didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he hadn’t wanted to go home from work that night, knowing what lay ahead. But the evening had worked out worse than he expected.

The tears were nothing new. The going over again and again how terribly their parents were behaving was standard – as was the picking away at the edges of the question of whether Howard was a cottager or not. It wouldn’t be said openly, of course. They always discussed whether he had done it or not without actually saying what it was that he might have done. The new offences supposedly recorded on his business trips to suppliers up north made dancing around the subject trickier, but she’d come up with some new moves to tiptoe around that.

Jesus, he found that annoying.

That night he hadn’t even been able to change the subject to Bomp. She hadn’t wanted to look forward to what their family would be like. And lately, with her increased unpredictability, the never-ending list of things they needed to spend money on, and going over and over decisions for a birth plan they’d figured out weeks ago, that wasn’t much fun either. He was beginning to worry what it would be like when the baby was actually here. Also, how his day had gone would rarely get a mention. Not that he wanted to talk about it.

He worried what this new-found lack of tolerance meant about his marriage. James thought back to his old job – the earlier days when he was working his way up, always hanging out with the slightly older guys he was on a team with. They’d always treated their wives as another tricky client to manage, phoning them at six to say they wouldn’t be home for a while because they had to do an appraisal of the junior manager, and giving him a wink as they packed up for the pub. James had always wondered why they couldn’t just tell the truth, that they’d had a shitty day and needed a quick pint to depressurise. He’d been sure then that was what he would do.

Now he was turning into one of them. Or maybe he could finally see their point.

But if he was becoming one of those guys for whom a family is just another ball to juggle, alongside clients who always expect their work to be done as a priority, and bosses who think you could always be working harder, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. It had started off OK. They were both furious about the idea of the journalist coming to their home, and it was James who wanted to call him up and give him a bollocking. But as Rebecca had pointed out, it would have been James that would have looked like a raving lunatic if the guy did manage to get anything in the paper. He was the enemy, and he united them. They plotted ways to engineer his downfall involving celebrity honeytraps and fake stories that would make his name dirt in papers the world over. But when they started talking about what he said…

James had been trying to say that what was important to them was each other. That it was the life they were building together that mattered the most, and that they had no control over what other people chose to do.

But saying ‘fuck ’em!’ about Rebecca’s parents wasn’t the most eloquent way of getting that across.

He’d apologised as soon as the look on her face registered in his head, but it was too late by then. It was the statement that signalled the gloves were off, that no blow was too low, and there’d be no penalties for hair-pulling or eye-gouging. Within minutes she’d accused him of not caring about her family. She’d asked, in that infuriating lawyer-ish way, why he hadn’t got a new job yet. It felt like an accusation that he didn’t care enough about their future, and a trap intended for him to incriminate himself. He’d accused her of always having to be the victim, and of refusing to face reality and get on with life.

But it hadn’t really cleared the air. She’d asked him what that was supposed to mean, and instead of answering, he’d decided he’d had enough. And when he’d slammed the door and headed up to the half-finished baby’s room he didn’t feel any better. Maybe if he’d stormed out of the house entirely it would have been better. But it was pissing it down raining, and he hadn’t wanted to go out in that. And he hadn’t wanted to go to their bedroom because, well, it was like being a stroppy teenager. So he was stuck in what was little more than a box room with nothing for company but a half-finished IKEA chest of drawers that needed taking apart almost completely because he’d used the piece that was supposed to be the top as the base, meaning the unlacquered MDF would be showing.

As he spun his Allen key in reverse he muttered to himself grumpily. The worst part of it was that he was finding it so much easier to get annoyed at Rebecca than he did to worry about her. It was certainly a change from the start of the pregnancy, when he’d felt an unusual burst of protectiveness that was all a bit macho and not really his thing. He grunted to himself – his hormones must be all over the place at the minute.

His mobile rang and he grabbed it from his pocket. It was his dad. He let it go to voicemail. Now was not the time to be talking snooping journalists when he had a good sulk going on. For a second when it rang, he’d hoped it might be Rebecca downstairs trying to break the ice from the row.

But before he’d thought that, he’d wondered hopefully if it might be someone else.

His day at work hadn’t been the most productive after he’d heard from his wife about the journalist. But then he’d learnt in the past couple of weeks that being productive wasn’t actually something many people there really worried about. Looking for a distraction he’d spent most of the early afternoon swapping movie trivia and sarcastic insults with Gemma. Then they’d met in the kitchen for another coffee. Everything about her seemed dedicated to doing the wrong thing. As James had arrived in his room Gemma’s boss had walked past the door too. She’d paused, given Gemma a quizzical look, and said, ‘Still here?’

Now while most decent skivers would have made an effort to come up with an excuse once they’d been rumbled, Gemma just went with a slightly bored sounding ‘yep’, and put the kettle on again.

‘Are you trying to get yourself fired?’ he’d asked her with an amused smile as her boss paused, then stomped away.

‘Tricky to do that to the owner’s daughter,’ she’d replied.

‘No way!’

‘No. Sucker. I just know the line where the shit I can give them is below the level of shit it would involve to get rid of me.’

James had thought he was looking entertained but unsurprised by her approach. Her response had suggested he hadn’t got it quite right.

‘Look at your face. You look horror-struck. I can see your mind whirring. “How could anyone risk a dream job at this shithole?”’

‘I’m just surprised you haven’t been headhunted to become Vice-President of Smartarse Remarks somewhere bigger.’

‘Shut it, or I’ll grass you up to your dole officer. Wasting the opportunity of your valuable placement Googling George Romero’s films. Which you really should know anyway.’

They’d sat and drank coffee for a couple of minutes before Gemma had piped up again.

‘I’ve done a bit of Googling of my own, you know.’

‘Really?’ He’d panicked as he thought what she might have learnt about his father-in-law, but remembered that so far, thank Christ, his name hadn’t been mentioned in any reports.

‘Charity fun-runner extraordinaire for Tosspot & Tosspot chartered accountants and ever-so-keen senior manager who gives eager young graduates the inside story on what life’s really like in the glamorous world of audit and insolvency.’

A couple of years ago James had been roped in to the milk-round recruitment hoopla and been interviewed for the internal magazine. He remembered it had been a pretty cheesy piece. And now apparently available online.

‘No offence, mate, but you sound like a Christian.’

‘Can I interest you in a pamphlet that can tell you the Good News about that?’ he asked earnestly.

Gemma gave him the finger.

‘So what are you doing on the dole and in this dump anyway? Just because the job centre told you you had to, and you wanted to be a good boy? Would’ve thought the old boys’ club would have got you something better.’

James didn’t know what it was that had made him tell Gemma he was here on a Back to Work scheme in the first place, but he suspected it was because he’d wanted to look a bit less of a goody-two-shoes in her eyes, more a fellow inmate. But she infuriatingly insisted on his being a square, when probably the worst thing she’d done in her life was give her supervisor a bit of backchat. That was probably why he told her something he’d not told a soul in over ten years. Including, he flushed thinking about it, his wife.

‘Job hunting can be a bit tricky when you’re in my situation,’ he said, ‘you don’t really want people looking too closely into your background.’

‘What, you fibbed about your uni results? Covering up that 2.ii in doing tricky sums?’

‘It was something that happened at university actually. But it’s not something I like to talk about.’