I could sleep with Andrew and pass the baby off as his.
It’s the obvious thing to do. If I am careful, he need never know. And think how happy he would be. After all, isn’t this what we both wanted? And wasn’t its absence the very cause of the rift between us?
But could I do it? Could I really do that to him?
Could I lie like that, and maintain that lie for all of our lives?
One day I would crack. One day, in a row, or when faced with his insufferable coldness, I would goad him. I would taunt him, and let it out.
But what else can I do? How can I have this child, and yet how can I not? And what likelihood is there of it ever becoming a healthy child anyway? What chance of this cluster of cells inside me taking form and shape, and holding on in there, and growing and thriving, and living long enough ever to open its eyes to the world and breathe? What if it should just die inside me, like last time?
I cannot do it. I cannot go through it all again.
I need to speak to Simon. He cannot just leave me to sort this out. But his mobile’s switched off, and when I call his direct line I get the answerphone.
This is the voicemail of Simon Reiber
, I hear him say.
Please leave your name and message and I’ll get back to you as soon as possible, or alternatively dial zero to speak to my secretary.
Again and again.
And again and again I leave him a message.
‘It’s Rachel,’ I say. ‘I need to talk to you. Please call me.’
And I can’t stop the pitch of my desperation creeping into the word
please.
I pace the house. I wait for him to call me, and he doesn’t. That sense of rejection, that stomach-fisting sense of
exclusion
that goes hand in hand with everything I have ever known about the Reibers and all of their kind, locks and pulls inside me.
I call again; I leave another message.
The day slides by; soon Jono will be home. Agitation –
panic –
prickles inside my head. I phone again and this time I speak to his secretary.
‘I need to speak to Simon Reiber,’ I say, keeping my voice as calm as I possibly can.
‘Who’s calling please?’
‘Rachel. Just tell him it’s Rachel, please.’
And she says, ‘I’m afraid Mr Reiber’s not available at the moment.’
‘Is he in his office?’ I demand, too harshly, too insistent.
‘I’m afraid Mr Reiber’s not available at the moment,’ she repeats robotically. ‘Would you like to leave a message?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Tell him I need to speak to him. It’s urgent,’ I stress. And, ‘Do you know when he will be free?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I am not able to say. I will tell him that you called.’
And then I know: she’s vetting his calls. He’s not available
to me.
What did he say to her, I wonder? Don’t put any calls through from a strange, desperate woman called Rachel?
He cannot
avoid
me.
Suddenly I picture Simon’s mother. I see her face as she threw me out of her house; the bright abhorrence in her eyes. It wasn’t just that she didn’t want to be reminded of Vanessa, but that she didn’t want to be reminded by
me
, a stranger. And I think of Simon’s reaction that time I suggested that I go with him, to visit his mother. I recall the look on his face now and I want to squirm. And I think how I listened as he talked about the old days with Vanessa and Fay and Dominic and the others . . . and how I lapped it all up; how I couldn’t get enough of it – all those stories and memories of the wild, fun times they had without me.
I am nothing to him. I was nothing to any of them.
I have the phone number of his flat. I have never used it because I have always called him on his mobile, but I have it nevertheless. I wrote it down once, when I was there. I found it written on a travel document, left lying on the counter along with the post. I saw it, I remembered it, I wrote it down. I have the phone number of his house in Kingham, too.
That
number is on all his correspondence. Anything sent out by him goes on heavy, letterheaded paper, and there it sits, the family phone number, right after the family address, at the top of each sheet in Times italic, centred, ten-point.
Would I ever call that number? Would I, if I had to?
Later, when Jono has done his homework and eaten his supper and is now ensconced in his room, doing God knows what, and Andrew is slumped in front of the TV watching miserable men moaning on about the miserable news, I go to bed.
I have a headache
, I say, though no one listens. No one takes any notice. I take my phone with me and I curl up with it, under the duvet. I ring Simon’s mobile once more, but it is still turned off. Did he think he could deter me so easily? I dial the number of his flat. It rings and rings. I lie in my bed and I listen to it ringing. I picture his flat; that huge open room, the shrill of the phone bleating through the darkness. I picture the stillness; the view from the window, the lights of the city below orange and blurred. And still the phone rings. I lie on my side with my phone snug against the pillow. I have it on redial. It rings and it rings.
I hear Jono going to bed. ‘Goodnight,’ I call as he walks past my door, but he doesn’t reply, and I am too weighed down to go after him. I hear Andrew go out to the kitchen, boil the kettle, make a cup of tea and take it back to the living room. I follow the change in sound and voices as he flicks through the TV channels. And then there is just me again. The phone rings and rings against my ear.
And finally Simon answers.
He knows that it is me, of course. I hear it in his voice: the guardedness, the lie of his careful
Hello.
‘I tried to call you,’ I say. At work.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’ve been busy.’
‘And on your mobile. You’ve had your mobile switched off.’
‘I’ve been in a meeting most of the day.’
‘I left a message with your secretary.’ I hear myself nagging and I think:
This is how he will remember me.
I close my eyes and the tears slide into my pillow. ‘I need to
talk
to you.’
‘You can talk to me now,’ he says, his voice as smooth and impartial as a stranger’s.
‘I
can’t
,’ I wail. ‘I can’t talk to you now; my
husband
is downstairs. I need to see you.’
‘Rachel—’
‘For God’s sake, Simon, I’m
pregnant
!’
‘Are you sure?’ he asks, his voice clipped, cutting to the point. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’
‘Yes,’
I hiss. ‘I did a test.’
‘The test might not be reliable.’
‘Oh, Simon, come
on.’
He says nothing. I picture him, standing in his flat, thinking of ways to fob me off.
‘I need to see you,’ I insist. ‘We need to talk about this.’
‘Rachel,’ he says at last. ‘This is not what I wanted.’
‘Oh, I know
that
—’ I stop. Andrew is coming out of the living room; I hear the flick of the light switch and the closing of the door as he goes into the downstairs loo. ‘I want to see you tomorrow,’ I whisper.
‘Rachel, I’m busy—’
‘You can’t just abandon me!’ I hear the loo flush, one door opening and another close. I hear the echo of my voice, too loud. ‘This is your problem, too!’
‘Maybe we could meet after work,’ Simon says reluctantly. But just so that I should know where I stand he adds, ‘I won’t have long, though. I’m going to a client dinner at eight.’
We arrange to meet at that same bar, by the Festival Hall. I wonder if there is some irony in his choice, or if it really is just convenient. Also, I wonder why it wouldn’t have been just as easy for me to go to his flat, but of course, really, I know why.
He is there before me, sitting at a table on which he has placed two small glasses of wine. He rises when he sees me, and he kisses me on the cheek, as if we are friends.
And then we sit, and the first thing he says is, ‘Do you know what you are going to do?’
‘No.’
He looks at me, as if waiting for me to say more. And when I don’t, his expression turns incredulous. ‘Rachel, you know what you
have
to do,’ he says.
He is wearing a dark-grey suit, with a slightly lighter grey line running through it, at approximately one-inch intervals. His shirt is blue, the same shade as his eyes, but it is cleverly woven so that where the light catches it, it seems darker, almost two-tone. His tie is blue too, with a solid diagonal grey stripe. He certainly knows how to dress.
‘Rachel,’ he repeats emphatically. ‘You do know what you have to do.’
I am strangely detached, from myself, from all of this. I think of Jono; he will have finished his homework by now. He will be ensconced in front of the TV.
Tell your dad I’ve just popped out
, I said,
if he’s home before me.
I was too fraught to think of any proper excuse.
‘See your doctor,’ Simon tells me now. ‘He’ll put you in touch with the right person.’ And when I do not respond he says, ‘For God’s sake, Rachel, I cannot do this. I cannot be . . . involved.’
‘But you are involved.’
I watch the colour creep into his face. I remember how he used to blush when he was a boy.
Leave my brother alone
, Vanessa would laugh, batting his flirtatious tormentors away.
He’s far too young.
He isn’t too young now.
He clears his throat. ‘Rachel,’ he says tightly, ‘I do not
blame
you. But this is not part of my plan.’
He had a plan? I look at him, curious. I thought it was all easy come, easy go. That, I thought, was part of the appeal of the Reibers. I thought it was only uptights like me who needed plans.
More people arrive to join those already at the table beside us; they greet each other in a noisy burst of screeches and laughter and calls for drinks. Simon glances sideways at them, irritated, and then shoots his wrist out of his cuff and checks his watch.
He leans towards me across the table. ‘I did not expect this to happen,’ he says.
And I say, ‘I know, Simon. But it has happened.’
I am not making this easy for him, but why should I? Who, after all, is going to make it easy for me? He is looking agitated now. He studies me with what appears to be annoyance. Certainly it isn’t affection. I stare back at him and there are tears prickling at the backs of my eyes.
‘What do you want from me, Rachel?’ he says, but it isn’t a question. He doesn’t really want to know what I want from him. Oh no. He doesn’t want an answer at all. It’s more of a dismissal, a command, a sort of
Stop wanting from me, Rachel.
So I say nothing and the tears begin their watery descent down my cheeks.
The flush on his face deepens. He’s afraid I’m going to make a scene. Or is he thinking, as I am, of that other occasion when we were here in this bar? Then, when I cried, he took my hand.
Forgive me,
he said so earnestly, so romantically, and took me back to his flat.
He bites his lip. His hand, on the table, twitches nervously. ‘You have to get rid of it,’ he blurts out in exasperation. ‘Of course you do. I cannot be any part of this, if you are stupid enough to choose otherwise.’ He stops. He frowns. He shifts in his seat, clearly discomforted by his outburst. ‘I’m sorry, Rachel, but that’s the way it is.’
I stare at him. A tear has turned the corner of my chin and is trickling down my throat. My nose is running too, but I do not stop it. I cannot move. I cannot speak. Vaguely I am aware that the people at the next table are taking an interest in us now; out of the corner of my eye I see heads turning to get a better look. I do not care, but Simon does. Simon is squirming.
‘Rachel,
please
,’ he hisses at me. ‘Stop crying.’
But I can’t stop crying.
Simon glances at his watch again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I have to go.’ And then he puts his hand to his inside jacket pocket and takes out his wallet. This he opens, and tucked inside is a cheque, already written. ‘Look,’ he says, sliding it across the table to me, ‘this might help.’
I stare at him, appalled.
‘Take it,’ he says. ‘Please. And . . . do what you have to do.’
Whatever I was expecting it wasn’t this: a
pay-off.
I feel as cheap and dispensable as a whore. And like a whore, I slowly reach out a hand.
As soon as my finger touches that cheque Simon relaxes. The deal is done.
‘Goodbye, Rachel,’ he says and stands to leave. ‘And -well . . . look after yourself.’
I watch as he weaves his way through the other tables and pushes his way out of the door. He walks fast, gone from me. He doesn’t look back.
I sit there a while. Now that there is no one to cry for, I wipe away my tears. I have no tissue and have to make do with my sleeve. I sniff loudly, and a woman on the next table looks around at me, and then looks away.
I know I shouldn’t, but I drink my wine down in three swift gulps. I drink Simon’s too, as he didn’t touch it. The alcohol melts my head and turns my limbs to water. I pick up that cheque and look at it. I think of ripping it up, but who would benefit then? Certainly not my baby, should she ever have the chance to exist. And so I put it in my purse. It will be no great loss to Simon.