I send Simon a text, a reminder.
I will see you at seven-thirty, Friday
, I say, and that is all I say. Oddly enough, all other words have left me.
And more oddly still, as though he senses some crisis, he texts me back, simply,
Okay.
I tell Andrew I am staying at Janice’s. This should not seem too odd, as I have done it before, several times. We might go out for dinner, Janice and I; see a film or a play.
And when Andrew starts to question me, to repeat my words back to me as if he hasn’t heard me right,
You’re going to stay with Janice . . .
, I am so fraught, so tense to the point of wrapped-up, inverted hysteria, that I snap for a second.
‘Yes,’ I screech at him. ‘I have been ill . . . I have been at home all week . . . Is it too much that I have a night off, a night away?’
And he looks at me as he always looks at me when I rail at him so. He looks at me as if he loathes me.
‘No,’ he says, his voice as dead as fallen wood. And that is all.
The irony is that part of me wishes I wasn’t staying with Simon for the whole night now. The idea has lost its appeal. It would suit me more, now, simply to curl up under my duvet and bury myself away. I cannot think ahead, but I cannot think what to do right now, either. If I am pregnant – and how I torment myself with the word
if
– the chances are that it will not hold, it will not last. It could all be over at any moment, before anyone need know. Before even I need know, for sure, if I can just keep my head blank. It is but a cluster of cells at this stage, after all. A cluster of cells that my body will, most likely, expel.
And wouldn’t that be the best outcome? It is the only viable outcome.
I do not want to, but I cannot stop myself thinking about my baby daughter and picturing her tiny limbs, doll-like, smooth as plastic. I picture her eyelids half-closed over blind eyes, the lashes perfectly formed. I picture her curled up inside me, her thumb in her mouth, so far grown from a mere cluster of cells, so far grown and yet so dead.
I could not bear that to happen again.
I arrive at Simon’s with my overnight bag at bang on seven-thirty. I am feeling tired, and queasy, and more than a little anxious. We have not made any plans as such and I don’t know what I am expecting, but when he opens the door to me he is still in his work clothes and he is on the phone.
With his free hand he gestures at me to be silent. I stand just inside the door, with my bag at my feet.
‘I know,’ he says into the phone. ‘Yes. I’m on my way there now. I will, yes. I’ll call you later. Bye, sweetheart.’
Sweetheart?
He clicks off the phone and sighs. And to me he says, ‘That was Isobel. She thinks I’m going to some law function. I told her I’d just come back to get changed. I didn’t expect her to call.’ And then he adds, ‘I hate lying to her.’
What does he expect me to say to this? Does he expect me to sympathize with him? To apologize, even? It is not much of a greeting, and not a good start.
‘I don’t exactly enjoy lying, either,’ I say.
‘Of course not,’ Simon says quickly. ‘I’m sorry. None of this is ideal.’ And now he kisses me on the cheek politely, far too politely, and says, ‘How are you?’
I do not reply. I walk further into the room, and automatically my eyes are drawn to the window, to the million lights brightening up the darkening city sky. I have not yet decided if I will tell him tonight that I might be pregnant.
Should
I tell him, when I am not even sure myself?
There will be a thousand ponderables, a thousand things to explain. Not least of all, how could I let this happen? And what will I do about it now? A ripple of foreboding works its way down my spine. I think of Jono at home, and of Andrew. I think of my life in a multitude of small, banal and familiar details: the roughness of the carpet under my bare feet in my bedroom, the jagged edge that I have to avoid on the shelf in the airing cupboard where I keep the sheets and towels, the pocket of cold air that collects in the corner of the windowsill in the living room, causing a constant draft. I think of these things and I am swamped with sorrow.
How did I ever think I could possibly belong here, in this transient bubble of a place, so far removed from the reality of my world? I wanted so much to be here. I wanted so much to have this one whole night.
I cross my arms across my chest and try to suppress a shiver.
‘You’re cold,’ Simon says, coming over to me and putting his hands on my hips, a restrained and hesitant embrace. He looks at me closely now, alert to my mood.
‘I’m hungry,’ I correct him, which is true; I am hungry, with that sudden, light-headed hunger that you only get when you’re pregnant. I look at him and our eyes lock and hold.
‘We’ll eat,’ he says. ‘We’ll go out. I’ll be ready in five minutes.’ But he keeps his hands on my hips and his eyes on mine. I wonder what he sees, because he is certainly searching for something. I wonder if he is thinking what I am thinking: that we need to have sex first. We need to just do it, however awkward this suddenly feels.
I try to smile, but I am a whisper away from tears.
‘Fine,’ I say. I half-close my eyes and lean towards him. I put my hands on his chest and he reacts as I want him to; he starts kissing me, touching me, unpeeling my clothes. He pushes me down to the sofa, moving fast; as if, like me, he wants to get it done. My head is swimming with hunger and hormones and a deep, intangible misery. I cling to him, but I cannot get a grip; I cannot feel where I am. I am detached, my arms, my legs, my body as distant as if the cords have been snapped. I so want to lose myself in him. I press my face against his chest, fill my head with the scent of the skin. The tears are brimming in my eyes now, and running sideways into my hair. I feel that I am starting to drown.
When it is over he rests his weight on his elbows and looks down at me. He studies me with his beautiful, opaque eyes and says, ‘I am not making you happy.’ He states it as a fact, and the acceptance of sadness in his voice brings the tears to my eyes again.
‘I am not making you happy,’ I reply, but that isn’t what I want to say at all. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘You have made me happy. You’ve made me so happy. I don’t know what I’ll do when this is over.’
He looks down at me, and I have no idea what he is thinking. What I want him to say is,
It will never be over
, but he doesn’t. He trails the fingers of one hand across my face, wiping away the tears, smoothing back my hair. He looks down at me with such concern.
But he doesn’t say it.
And so I tell him, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’
I say it for a reaction, and my God, how I wish I could take the words back. In a split second I know I have killed it. His hand stills on my hair. He is naked above me; naked and vulnerable as a boy. His eyes freeze on mine. Those eyes, so blue, so like his sister’s . . . How I wanted those eyes to look at me. How I would have done anything to have them looking at me.
Slowly he removes himself.
He rolls onto his back, and we are side by side on the sofa, each of us staring at the night sky.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks.
And irritation at the question has me saying, ‘No, I’m not sure. I said I
think’
‘But . . . why would you think?’
‘Oh, come
on
. . .’ I roll over and face him, thus hiding my nakedness.
‘I mean . . .
how
?’ he says, his voice both thin and sharp with incomprehension. He does not look at me now. He is staring into space, his mouth twisted in shock.
I know exactly what he means, but even so I say, ‘How do you think?’
‘But I mean . . . My
God ..
.’ He flips himself over so that he is facing me. ‘Rachel,’ he says. ‘I’ve got a
family
. . .’
‘So have I,’ I say, hot tears burning my eyes again. ‘Simon, I didn’t do this on my
own.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I know. But . . . I mean, surely you would have said if . . . I just assumed you’d taken care of things—’
‘Well, you shouldn’t just assume,’ I snap.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t. But surely . . .’
‘Look,’ I say. ‘I didn’t think I could get pregnant. I lost a baby a few years ago. I thought that was it.’ I cannot meet his eyes when I tell him this, though I feel him looking at me in a kind of . . .
horror.
Sometimes I had wondered if I would ever tell him about my baby, and if I did, what the circumstances would be. I imagined a deep and intimate closeness, his arms around me, protecting me from pain –
So that is why you were moved so much by my mother
, he would say, understanding at last.
Now, he almost laughs in disbelief. ‘You mean you left it to
chance
?’
The outrage in his voice makes me flinch.
‘I didn’t think I could get pregnant,’ I repeat.
‘You didn’t think . . . Oh Jesus.’ He sits up, and pushes his hand through his hair. ‘Oh Jesus!’
And so we go on.
How? Why?
On and on.
Eventually, when it is apparent that we will not after all be going out for dinner, I have to say, ‘Look, I’ve got to eat.’ And I am feeling so sick, and my blood sugar is so shakily low, that I have to pull on my clothes and go over to his fridge and eat whatever I can find; the needs of my body taking over, proving my point. I stand there, half-dressed, shoving down rye bread and ham, while Simon watches me, quizzing me, looking for holes in my claim, looking for an escape.
‘It could be your husband’s,’ he says.
‘It couldn’t,’ I say.
‘But it could be,’ he insists, leaving me in no doubt of how easily he has gone from his wife to me and from me back to her, able to switch and change without a thought.
‘It is not my husband’s,’ I say.
He stares at me. ‘How – how far gone are you?’
‘I don’t know. Not long.’
‘It could sort itself out then,’ he says, and what a fine choice of words that is. ‘If it’s early days.’
‘Yes,’ I say stiltedly. ‘It could sort itself out.’
He nods decisively, as though evaluating the odds. I see the lawyer in him, weighing things up. ‘And have you thought about what you will do if it doesn’t?’
How carefully he says these words, and yet I know full well what he would have me do. And, surely, it is the only thing to do. Just whip it out and carry on; each of us going our separate ways, he back to his perfect little arrangement with his family, me back to the emptiness within mine. How I longed for another baby. How I longed and longed, till the life seeped out of my marriage like the air from a balloon. The irony leaves me numb. I am unable to speak.
‘Rachel,’ Simon pleads gently, desperation lifting the pitch of his voice, ‘this could
ruin
me.’
We talk into the night. I regret my decision to stay. My overnight bag sits by the door, intrusive, out of place. But I cannot go home. I am stuck here, trapped within my lie.
Simon works his way though a bottle of wine. I could not drink even if I wanted to; the mere thought of it makes me feel sick. He puts on his bathrobe and calls down for sushi, but now it sits uneaten on the counter on its takeaway tray.
He starts talking about his family. He tells me Alistair was born two months premature; for the first three weeks of his life he was in the neonatal unit at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital.
Queen Charlotte’s? In Chiswick?
Yes
, he says.
We lived in Hammersmith then, before we moved out.
Before we moved out.
Somehow I never thought of it as a joint decision, that she should be closeted in the country with the children and the horses, while he should stay up here. But he talks about it now and I picture them, making that decision together. I see them, holding hands over a bottle of wine. And what they did, Isobel and Simon, is save themselves from the grief of a marriage slowly dwindling. Who cares what goes on midweek; they have the weekend. They have each other anew. How I envy them their foresight. How I envy them, and how I loathe them now, too.
And he tells me how he worries about Theo, who will be going away to school soon. The school is good for tennis, he says, and Theo is excellent at tennis – well, he would be; these children, these perfect children, they’ll be good at everything – but is it right to send him away? And do I even care? He tells me all this, walking about the flat with this nervous energy driving him, distracting him; he tells me, as if he actually thinks I might want to hear.
Do I care? Of course I don’t care. The more he talks about his family, the more I hate them. And not once does he ask me about mine. About poor Andrew and poor Jono, stuck at home in Surbiton, so badly dealt with by me. I would not talk about them if he did ask. I would not talk about them and I cannot think about them. Instead I sit there on the sofa as he tells me how adorable Charlotte is, with her penchant for riding, and her love of owls.
‘You see, I love my family,’ he says at last, as if it is necessary to stress this point. ‘Please understand, Rachel, please . . . I can’t do this.’