The Art of Letting Go (The Uni Files) (31 page)

Ben leans in and whispers in my ear, “Stop panicking, Lilah.”

The blues crinkle as he watches me blanch slightly and sit in my seat.

“Thank you for joining us, Mr. Chambers and Miss McCannon,” says Johnson. “Lilah, we are so pleased that you seem to be awake today.”

Everyone laughs, and I give a little bow. Yeah, I am awake, all right.

Meredith, who is already in her seat, looks at me questioningly.

I give a small shake of my head and motion to the front of the class, where Johnson is balancing precariously on a chair. Meredith is not going to take a shake of the head and starts to write in her pad.

It reads:
What’s up? And don’t say "nothing!"

I roll my eyes at her.

I write on the line below:
Just having a panic. I have not taken my pill since Thursday.

I check to make sure Johnson isn't looking, before I pass the pad back to her.

She lets out an audible gasp and begins writing furiously, then tosses the pad back at me.

Oh, Lilah! How frightfully immature of you to do such a thing!

Sarcastic Cow.

My very subdued reply is:
‘
Shut up
.’
And I underline this for emphasis. Then I continue with a question:
Do you think I can take the rest of the packet now and it will be okay?

Now it is her time to shake her head. She pauses thoughtfully before writing her answer. Then she holds the pad so I can read it but keeps it so she can add to it.

Don’t be so silly.

Silly?

Did she just call me
silly
?

She continues scribbling. The next passage says:
You will have to call the docs and ask what to do.

I give a sarcastic thumbs-up.

Then she clearly has another thought and writes if for me:
What did Ben say?!?!

I have to think about this for a moment. What did Ben say? He seemed to act like it was okay, that the news was actually good. This does not make much sense to me though I try to articulate it anyway:
Like it was the best four tablets I could ever forget to take.

When she reads this she gives me a little smile and jots something quickly:
Thought he might.

She seems satisfied for the moment and turns her attention back to the lecture.

I am completely incapable of listening to anything. All I can think is that I could have a baby inside me. Okay, well, not a baby just yet, but a little thing that could become one.

Then I start to panic. I have never even held a baby before, well, apart from Ben’s sister's child, and I do not think thirty seconds even counts. But then I think of what Ben looked like holding that baby and I smile. That is a good memory. He looked unbelievably sexy standing there holding that little ball of baby squishiness. Yeah, I am grinning now.

Meredith looks at me like I am crazy, but I just ignore her and rock my chair onto its back two legs.

Ben starts his tapping campaign and I doodle and daydream away the rest of the lecture.

When the lecture ends I get up from my chair and, for the first time since the beginning of the school year, I turn and hold my hand out to Ben. He takes it and we grin at each other like crazy loved-up fools.

Nope. I still can’t make any sense of it all. So what? I have missed four pills and have had rather a lot of sex whilst missing them so I could be pregnant?

No. I just don’t believe it.

12th March

Um, a baby. That is not good news at all, is it?

Ben needs to go to the States, and I need to finish my degree. A baby would seriously hinder all of these plans, and it would bind us together in a more permanent arrangement than we originally agreed upon.

This is not what we planned when a few short days ago we restarted our temporary relationship.

I do not want a baby. I cannot even think of myself as a mother.

Could I be a mother?

Of course I can’t!

I can’t even feed myself, let alone another person, solely reliant on me. Heck, I can't even be sober for more than a month, let alone for nine months or however long it takes to cook a baby.

However, the idea is not as repulsive to me as I would have thought. It is definitely not repulsive to Ben. We found out this morning that I have to leave the rest of my tablets and then wait a few days. There should be a period but it may or may not be real, something to do with the fact that when you stop the pill you automatically bleed, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you are or are not pregnant. I then have to wait a few days after that to do a test and then if it is all clear I can start my next packet on the first day of my next true period. It all sounds very confusing. It also means I have sent Ben out to Boots to buy some condoms. That would be just our luck: to not be pregnant now, but to actually manage conceive whilst waiting to find out if we are or not.

I am a bit embarrassed. Scrap that. I am completely, bloody mortified! I have never forgotten to take my pill. I spent four extremely pill-worthy nights with Ben and I managed not to take it once. It is just as well he is going away in a few months otherwise we would end up with a minibus of kids.

We have agreed not to talk about it. I know he is thinking about it, though. He actually tried not to have sex with me last night! Absolutely no way I am standing for that.

He is not going to be here when this all happens in a week or so, therefore I’ve had to promise that I’ll be in constant contact telling him what is happening.

After the last time when I
didn’t pick up my phone to contact him, and the catastrophic events that followed, I have assured him that it will not be a problem. It feels weird that I know he is going away and that I am okay with it. I do trust him. I still don’t think I have the strength to do it on a long-term basis, but I know I can cope with him being away for a couple of weeks. Easy peasy.

13th March

“That’s a brilliant idea, Ben! Well done for coming up with it,” commends Professor Johnson in full kiss-arse mode.

“Actually, it was Lilah’s idea.”

“Oh really? Well, Lilah, we might make a decent student out of you yet,” he responds a bit uneasily, as though he's not sure if it's a joke or great news.

Yes, you sarcastic bastard, you might.

Or perhaps instead I will just have a baby and be done with it.

I am visualising my next year on campus pushing a pram around. I have to say I don’t think it is going to be a look that works for me. I am a ramshackle mess at the best of times what on earth would I be like with a baby thrown into the mix?

What would I do with it during the day whilst I am at lectures? I wonder if they would let me just pop it in the corner, or maybe they will have a handy drawer or something it could sit in whilst I studied.

Oh, God.

14th March

11.00 a.m.

I'm going to see Big Baz and arrange my "terms." Ben wants to drive Deathtrap Cooper into Putney. I'm not sure why this is, but now we have been officially together for all of six days he is assuming the main driving responsibility within the relationship. It’s a man thing. They must drive the car at all times. “Me man. Must drive moving vehicle, even if I don’t know where I am going.”

I tried to put up a fight. Just because I am in a relationship does not mean that I woke up with sex-induced amnesia and forgot how to drive. In the end I gave up, called the insurance company, and put him on the policy.

Ben is going to wait in the pub whilst I go to the shop. I’m worried about letting him in the shop in case I end up buying another crazy-priced guitar. He assured me this would not happen as he would play the Gibson until the day he died and then he would expect his son to play it. The blues flicked over me when he said this, but I just ignored the jab and laughed it off, saying I was offended that he was not going to be buried with it, as it was a gift from me.

Later.

I have the best boss in the world. It is official.

As I enter the shop, I spy Big Baz defying the laws of geometry with his rather wide arse squished behind the counter.

“Ah, Delilah! You are right on time.” He glances up at me, his expression instantly changing. “What’s wrong, lovey?” He asks.

No, I can’t! This poor man has already heard one pathetic sob story from me. I can’t make him sit through another one, can I?

Turns out I can.

“What am I going to do if I’m pregnant?” I tell him the woeful tale then sob at the end, dabbing my eyes with one of his tissues set conveniently out on the counter. For as immense as he is, he moves surprisingly fast and in a flash he is up at my side with a chunky arm around me.

“Well, you know, love, I watched you two the other evening out at dinner, and I believe you are far more solid than you think. If that was you two being friends then you have no worries now that you are together.”

“But what about him going to America?”

“Well, let him decide. Let him go, let him stay. Nothing is forever, is it? He could go and be back within the year. People have relationships, especially in the music business, where they simply can't be together all the time, even if they want to be. It's just the way the cookie crumbles,” he says in his deep and soothing voice.

I do not think I have ever heard him say so much.

“Ben is a good guy, and he loves you.”

I look at him. “How do you know?”

“Believe me, I just do.” He smiles and takes a deep breath. “Right then, love. Nine pound fifty an hour. Any hours you like and you can get as fat as you like back here," he says waving behind the counter. “There’s plenty of space.”

I give him a massive hug. “Thank you, Baz,” I say, welling up again.

“I have six daughters, you know.”

No, I didn’t. “Have you got room for one more?” I ask hopefully.

“Do you know what, Lilah? I think I do.”

He gives me a bear hug, and I leave the shop with a big smile on my face as I head out to find Ben, who has settled in at the pub.

“I need a drink!” I announce as I walk towards him.

“Do you think that is a good idea?” he asks, hesitation clear on his face. “My sister’s always sai—”

I hold up my hand to stop his words.

“Bugger off, Ben, and get me some wine. I am a woman on the edge. I need wine and I need chips.”

He steps up to the bar like his life depends on it.

There really is no better comfort food. I think doctors should start prescribing it. Okay, they are probably not going to prescribe it to pregnant women, but I know that I am most definitely NOT one of those. So I shall stick to the forms of comfort that I know—wine and chips.

Wonderful.

15th March

Ben decides to come along on my afternoon run. It has been one week since we got back together, and it has been bliss—well, apart from the whole maybe baby thing hanging over my subconscious like a cloud. I am trying not to think about the possibility of impending motherhood.

We have been inseparable, and I love it. This is all new for both of us and it feels really good. It’s like all that pressure from before has magically evaporated. Before he would always cook for me, but I would never be sure whether we would actually sit down and eat together. There was always an element of the unknown to everyday. Now we plate up and wander through together and sit balancing our plates and although it is the most mundanely domestic thing to do together there is a feeling of comforting compatibility to it.

Before, even though (let’s be honest) I saw him naked a lot, I would never have dreamt of walking into the shower room with him in there. That would have been crossing one line too far. Now, after waking up and procrastinating in the most enjoyable way ever, one of us peeps out of the door and gives the all clear before we dash giggling down the hallway and into the shower together.

I could kick myself for letting all that time pass at the end of last year. I know I was angry, but I should have just been strong enough to get over it.

I still can't fathom why he invited that stupid, plastic bitch up to his room, but I should have tried to have more faith in myself and to not let it destroy me.

I have explained this to him in great detail over the last few nights. He is already starting his campaign to keep us together come June, but I am resisting. If there is no baby, then there is no way I can manage to cope with us living in different countries, no matter what Big Baz says. I would rather finish on a high then end with us petering out, with only tenuous and random long-distance phone calls holding us together. I want to be able to walk away with my head held high, knowing that I gave it everything, but that we were mature enough to be able to let it go when we needed to.

A clean break would be best for everyone. I am determined that this is not going to ruin the time we have left.

I think about this as I pound around the circuit I follow in the park, letting my determination set my pace. When I make it back to the car after my jog, Ben is sitting in the front seat with his feet up on the dashboard reading a paper.

“Do you actually ever do any exercise?” I puff with my head bent down low.

“Yep,” he replies. “I have lots of sex with you.”

“Funny, Chambers! Come on, drive. I want to go home and have sex.”

16th March

Tristan and Meredith have witnessed the conversion to the flat, and they both love the changes. Meredith has not stopped gushing about it since, although she seems more excited about the parties we will be able to hold in there.

I still love it, but now I have this little voice in the back of my head saying "Will you be able to fit a cot in the corner of the bedroom?”