OMG Baby! (25 page)

As the door closes, Mole seems to snap out of some kind of trance. She looks at her notes. ‘I do see a market for the product, but . . .’ she muses.

‘The thing is, we package the crackers in printed shelf trays, so I think it could stand up alongside the other gifts,’ I say.

‘OK, I’ll take five hundred,’ she says, glancing towards the door. ‘Email me how you think they’ll be split, but I’ll need two hundred “New Baby”, a hundred pink, a hundred blue, sale or return to start with.’ She shakes her head, making notes. ‘You can leave. Send Mike in here,’ she says.

We look both ways up and down the corridor for Michael. He steps into view from behind a pillar like a gunslinger.

‘Well?’ he says.

‘Five hundred,’ I say. ‘Not enough, and fucking sale or return. Shit. Can’t you go and shag her over the desk or something?’

‘I’m not a piece of meat, Vivienne, for women to peck at like carrion,’ he says.

‘I know, I know, but wow, your sexuality certainly was potent in there . . . I thought I’d need a fire extinguisher at one point. I was sure you’d blown her mind. I thought she’d go for at least a thousand. Damn, we were so close!’ I peek sideways at him to see if blatant flattery is working.

‘Go back in,’ he tells Christie, ‘and say these exact words: “Drill and hockey mask.” But tell her to add another zero.’

‘Drills and masks? No, Michael! Don’t sacrifice yourself—’ I begin half-heartedly, but Christie is already through the door.

L
ater
, Christie, Damon and I wait for Michael in the Crown, our old after-work drinking spot. Christie is sucking up an orange Bacardi Breezer through a straw. I have a lime and soda – it’s the only soft drink to have when you’re pregnant that’s not sickly sweet. I always have lime and soda. I’m even sicker of lime and soda than I was before.

‘Where is he?’ I sigh. I’m getting worried. Michael has been ages. ‘What did she say again, Christie?’

‘I went in, right, and I went, “Michael says, ‘Drill and hockey mask, and add another zero.’” Then she goes, “Send him in,” and I came out.’

‘Send him in for what, though?’ I ask, having visions of Michael turning on a spit somewhere with an apple in his mouth. If he’s in any kind of uncompromising position, it’s totally my fault.

I look up at the clock. It’s half one. He’s been gone an hour. By two I’m despondently listening to Damon telling Christie about the knock-off designer gear they sell down the market when the pub door is thrown open and Michael swaggers in. I jump up and wave him over. He gets to the table and does a short robotic dance ending in a spin. He grins, showing his little sharp teeth.

‘Am I the man, or am I the man?’ he asks.

‘What? What happened?’

He sits down, bouncing his knees together.

‘Five k in the bag,’ he says deadpan, and holds up a hand to high-five us all. He smooths back his hair. ‘Fuck me, I need a case of Breezers.’

‘What did you do?’ I ask.

‘You wouldn’t believe what I did if I told you.’ He smiles and picks something off his tongue. ‘I don’t want to give you nightmares.’

‘Oh Jesus, don’t tell me,’ I gulp. ‘Thank you, Michael. Well done.’

‘No, thank you, Viv – I’m back with her!’

‘What, you and Mole?’ asks Christie, looking hurt. ‘You said she was evil.’

I’ve thought for a while that Christie might have feelings for Michael. She has been acting weird around him. Crikey, Michael! Is no chick immune?

‘The course of true love never did run smooth, baby doll. Now, who’s going to get me a drink?’

I wait at the bar and look back at our table. I hear Michael exclaiming, ‘Five k!’ They’re laughing. I feel a burst of excitement. Thank Christ we have an order! Not any order but a massive one with a major retailer, a retailer with stores nationwide. This will make us. This will give us leverage with other companies too: they’ll all want transition crackers! The whole world will clamour for them.

I take out my purse to pay for the drinks and my silent phone lurks there at the bottom of my bag like a dead rat. No messages. No missed calls. What’s the point of good news if there’s no one to share it with?

I pick up the phone and check if it’s working because sometimes it loses signal and then I don’t get my messages immediately. The signal has never been stronger, a great mocking full grey rainbow of signal. I find Max’s number and tap out a text message.

M
y thumb hovers
over ‘send’ and then I press it before I can think about it anymore.

I go back to our table and hand Michael his drink.

‘She was the most beautiful woman in the world!’ Damon is saying.

‘Oh God, please not Lady Di again?’ I say, sitting down.

‘I’ve seen more meat on a butcher’s pencil,’ Michael argues.

And so a debate ensues about female beauty and who embodies it the most. I’m just about to make a very valid point about personality shining through smiles when I’m distracted by a text message buzzing in. It’s Max.

A
kiss
? A kiss means he’s forgiven me. Or is a kiss a way of saying, ‘End of message’? Is that a friendly peck or something else? Either way I’m instantly over the moon. I can’t get out of here quickly enough.

‘Where is gallery 8?’ I ask the table, and discover it’s a very cool art gallery and café in Hoxton, and to be there in half an hour, I should have left ten minutes ago.

But hold on, stop the train! I’m here celebrating with my team; I can’t just go running because he wants to see me. He left me. I’ll jolly well text the boy back saying if he wants to meet me, he’d better get to the Crown in ten minutes, but then as I think that, I imagine another row and another day of not seeing him and I’m up, pulling on my coat. Christie and Michael look up expectantly.

‘I have to be somewhere,’ I tell them. ‘You guys take the afternoon off, and have a drink on me,’ I say, remembering I only have five pounds in cash. I throw it down anyway. ‘Well done today!’ I run/walk across the pub carpet, fastening my coat as I go. ‘See you all tomorrow!’ I call over my shoulder. ‘Well done again! Dream Team! Yay!’ I double-pump my fist at the door and leg it as fast as my bump will allow for a taxi.

T
he taxi pulls
up at gallery 8, a tall brick warehouse, with large metal-framed windows. In the rush to get over here, I didn’t get cash to pay the driver. I look through the lit gallery windows with a hammering heart. What to do? If I ask the driver to turn round and take me to a cashpoint, it could take ages and I’m already twelve minutes late. Telling myself it will be the perfect ice-breaker, I decide to borrow cash from Max. I compose myself and walk up to the gallery, battle with the large glass doors – because it’s one of those with a pull handle on the outside even though they push open – and step inside onto the cool polished concrete floor. I see lamps, a coffee bar, a display of arty greeting cards, but I don’t see Max anywhere. There are a lot of young people in ironic retro knits and coloured skinny jeans leafing through classy books and magazines. I look up to an open balcony, leather sofas, art, more art, no Max.

Then I hear a wolf whistle from somewhere behind. I spin round.

‘Hello,’ he says, and he smiles.

I’m struck how tall he is and dark and actually very handsome. I’d forgotten about all of that while I was building my case against him. Before I can say anything, he hugs me. His arms circle my shoulders, and my face gets pressed into the scratchy wool of his jumper. I try to tell him about the taxi money.

‘Don’t say anything. Just let me hold you,’ he says, kissing the top of my hair.

So now I’m stuck. I move my eyes to the window, where the cab driver is now unfolding his newspaper. The meter is running. I glance down and see directly into the pocket of Max’s Crombie coat. His wallet is nesting there with a twenty sticking out of the side. If I just reach down, I could get that. I drop my head, which allows an extra few centimetres’ reach. Max squeezes me closer in response. I stretch my fingers and I have the note, but the wallet comes too.

‘I missed you so much, Viv,’ he begins. Then he jolts. ‘Wait, are you trying to
rob
me?’ He steps back, leaving me holding his wallet dangling from the twenty.

I pull out the note. ‘I just need this,’ I say, dropping his wallet back in his pocket, and I go and pay the taxi.

As ice-breakers go, it was a good one. Instead of being all guarded and serious, we were straight into how much money we owe each other.

‘I’ll add that twenty to the ten you took the other week,’ he says when I return.

‘I’ll knock that thirty off what you owe me for cattery charges.’

‘I didn’t put Dave in the cattery; you did.’

‘Because you left him with some druggie neighbour.’

He stops and flashes a smile. ‘You look the most beautiful you’ve ever looked right now,’ he says. ‘Let’s go back to hugging.’

I take a step up close to him and he bends to kiss my face. He waits with his lips close to mine. I bump my forehead on his chest, and then I look at him and remember how in love with him I am. Damn his sexy brown eyes. He kisses me again and I kiss him back, until I start to feel weak at the knees and have to sit down. He buys me a cup of tea; it comes in its own pot, which actually becomes a mug. This café is extreme coolness.

‘So why did you bring me to this godforsaken place?’ I ask.

‘I want to show you something.’

He leads me up the stairs to the gallery. There are battered leather sofas. There are bronze sculptures of human body parts scattered about like dissected limbs. The title of the exhibition is ‘Human’. There’s a ‘mind’ section with a blue glass brain that lights up in different places in response to recordings of music or voices, and then we go beyond a partition, to where a new title reads, ‘“Forty Weeks” by Max Kelly.’

There are about ten paintings of pregnant me. Me wearing a tutu, me asleep, me stretching my back and looking out of the flat window, naked me, half-turned me, massive-bellied me, pissed-off me, smiling me and first-thing-in-the-morning me. Underneath each painting is the number of weeks I’m pregnant. I look pretty dog rough in some of them, but they are beautiful paintings; even I can see that. He is a talent, just as gallery Guy said.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘I can’t believe it.’

‘It’s all I’ve been doing since I left, just crying, calling out your name, ripping at me own hair and painting pictures of you for this exhibition.’

I turn to look at him and he looks straight into my eyes with a knowing, loving look. ‘You like?’

‘I love. It’s amazing,’ I say, peering at the paintings. ‘Do my nipples really look that purple?’

‘Yeah, “Weird Tits” we call you.’ He smiles and I laugh. ‘I already sold two—’ he begins, but I lunge at him and throw my arms round him.

‘I love you so much,’ I say into his coat collar, ‘and I’ve been wrong and I’m really sorry and I want to stop this polite shit and be us again.’

‘I’m sorry as well. I want that. Come back with me?’ he says.

B
ack at his studio
, we just hang out. It’s exactly like before, as if we haven’t just spent over a month apart. I’m leaning on his chest on the sofa, and he’s making Dave appear to head-bang along with Bob Marley by waving cheese.

‘We were so stupid,’ I say. ‘We nearly broke up.’

‘I had no intention of breaking up with you, stupid,’ he says.

‘Let’s not go into it. I’ve learned my lesson – you are more stubborn than a barn door, but I can’t stand to be away from you.’

‘Thick as a barn door, that’s me.’

‘But I’m addicted to you, Kelly.’

‘Magnets, babe.’ He nods. He struggles with his jeans pocket, pushing me forwards. I move to sit up at the other end of the sofa. He brings out my engagement ring, handing it to me between his thumb and forefinger. I look at his face. He nods towards the ring. I take it.

‘I want to marry you. I’ve always wanted to since the day I first laid eyes on you, so will you please just put this back on your stubby finger and make me the happiest man alive?’

I take his hand and place it on my belly where Angel has begun to kick like mad suddenly.

‘See, she wants you to marry her daddy and make an honest baby of her,’ Max says.

‘Two against one.’

I push the ring down my finger; at first it gets stuck on a wave of skin, but I manage to get it on. ‘So,’ I say, holding the ruby up to the light.

‘So,’ he says.

‘Three Little Birds’ is playing on the iPod; I remember Rainey’s story about dancing me out. I think of a frightened sixteen-year-old having a baby alone. I think of her turning her back on me and taking off at twenty-three.

‘This was Rainey’s birth song,’ I tell him.

‘So she says, but then she’s a pathological liar.’

‘I want it to be my birth song. Put that down on the birth plan.’

‘What birth plan?’

‘The one we’re going to write.’

He reaches over to the upturned crate/occasional table and grabs a pencil and an old envelope and scribbles it down. ‘Vivienne, I’m sorry I left you,’ he says, and kisses my hand. ‘Especially because she left you.’

‘You think I have a thing about being left?’

He turns my hand over and kisses my palm. ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘Maybe, definitely.’

‘I just want a happy ending. I’ve always wanted a happy ending since I read the ladybird version of
Cinderella
. You know the one where she has the three dresses?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘A happy ending.’ I reach up to play with his hair.

‘If you want Rainey around, I don’t mind.’

‘You do.’

‘I mean, I can’t stand her. Ah, that’s too strong. No, it isn’t. And I don’t trust her. I don’t like to see you trying so hard with her when she lets you down, and I’d like to have sex without her walking in.’ He smiles.

‘Sex? What’s that?’

‘You know the thing with the thing, where I . . . and you . . .’ He makes shapes with his hands.

I stare off into space with narrowed eyes as if trying to remember.

‘Doesn’t ring a bell,’ I murmur.

‘I know she’s your mother and everything . . .’

‘But?’

‘No but.’

‘I wanted her to love me. Stupid huh?’

‘Do you think she does?’

‘I don’t know what she thinks or what she wants. I tried so hard with her because I was scared of losing her again, I suppose. It sounds pathetic really, but now I’m not scared. I don’t care. I choose you.’

‘You still are scared.’

‘Nope. I’m strong and I’m fine. I’m not even going to call her.’

‘
R
ainey Summers speaking
.’

‘Hey, it’s Viv.’

‘Hello, Vivienne.’

‘You OK?’

‘Is that what you rang to ask me?’

‘I . . . wanted to tell you I’m staying for a couple of days with Max.’

‘Oh,’ she says quietly. There’s a pause. I can hear a game show blaring in the background. ‘I made a casserole for us.’

‘Sorry. I should have rung earlier.’ God, I’m glad I missed the casserole – it would have been my third in a week. There’s only so much I can take.

‘So you’re back with him, are you?’

‘Yeah.’ I pick at my sleeve hem. Why do I feel guilty about it?

‘For good?’

‘I hope.’

‘Might I ask why? After everything he’s done, everything we talked about?’ Her voice is tight with anger.

‘Look, thanks for all the advice you gave. I’m not ignoring it. In some ways Max is an artistic rake, and he definitely can be irresponsible. I’m not sure about foozle, but whatever, I love him. I have to forgive him. I’m just not happy without him, you know?’

‘No, I don’t know.’ She sighs heavily. ‘He’ll never change, Vivienne, if that’s what you’re hoping for. He will chew you up and spit you out! He’ll let you down,’ she says, and I suddenly get a glimpse of this interstellar coldness about her; she doesn’t know how to love. She won’t forgive, and aren’t love and forgiveness almost the same thing? She can’t forgive, even herself; she’s hard inside like the pit of an olive.

‘Well, anyway . . .’ I begin.

‘Vivienne, I found another one,’ she blurts suddenly. There’s a sawing sound and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s crying.

‘What?’

‘In my breast. Well, more in my armpit.’

‘Have you had it checked?’

‘I rang your surgery – I’m going in the morning.’

‘What time?’

‘Eight.’

‘I’ll come.’

‘I don’t want to bother you.’

‘I want to come.’

‘Do you?’

I hesitate for a split second. ‘Of course,’ I say, and then there’s an awkward silence.

‘I’ll speak with you tomorrow. Goodbye, Vivienne.’

She ends the call. I sit staring for a moment with the phone in my lap. I can’t leave her to face this on her own again. I’ll have to go home. Max won’t like it, but I have to do what I have to do.

I look down at my belly. ‘You’ve gone quiet all of a sudden,’ I say, and lift my hand to admire the ring, back in its rightful place on my finger. And then I wet myself all over the sofa.