The One That Got Away (17 page)

‘Oh!’ My mother drops her fork and covers her mouth.

‘I know,’ Chris laughs. ‘I bawled like a
baby
.’

A little voice pipes up. ‘Are you talking about me, Daddy?’

Chris laughs again. ‘Yes I am – trunky.’ Then we hear a wail from the other room that announces Harry is no longer asleep.

‘I’ll go,’ says Maria, standing up as Lily runs back into
the room. ‘I didn’t wake him up! I just touched his foot!’ she insists innocently.

Dan grins at me and squeezes my hand under the table. It’s a squeeze that says, ‘This is going to be us!’ He looks happy,
really happy.

I grip his hand too and focus hard on his smile.

After lunch, Mum finally manages to pounce on me, like a wily old lioness who has been biding her time, once we’re all hanging
up damp tea towels and sloping off fatly to collapse in the sitting room. I realise I am the last of the pack to leave the
kitchen as she grabs me firmly, hoicks me back in, and shuts the door.

‘So?’ she says, one hand on hip.

‘What?’ I shift uncomfortably, reminded of the period when she used to routinely nearly catch me having a crafty fag behind
Dad’s shed. I’d have just enough time to fling the cigarette over the fence into next door’s garden, and fan the air desperately
with the baggy sleeves of my enormous 80s jumper, while never being quite sure if she could still smell the smoke hanging
in the air.

‘Molly, come on.’

Who am I trying to kid? She can
always
smell the smoke in the air. The woman has the nose of a police sniffer dog. ‘What’s going on?’

My blood goes cold. ‘What do you mean?’

‘On Tuesday you were grumbling about feeling baby pressure and today Dan says you’re—’ she struggles for the right phrase,
‘all guns blazing.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘There’s something you’re not telling me,’ she says, looking right at me. ‘I know there is.’

I push the memory of me and Leo kissing – falling back on to the hotel bed – out of my head and hope to God Almighty her psychic
mum powers don’t extend to being actually able to read my mind.

‘No, there isn’t,’ I lie defensively. I actually almost want to tell her. She’s my mum, but that’s exactly why I
can’t
. I cannot tell my mother that, so drunk I didn’t know what I was doing, I shagged Leo at a conference hotel in Windsor.

‘I simply don’t believe you. Something’s changed. I can tell it has.’

‘Yeah, me,’ I say eventually, and start to pick at the edge of the tea towel. ‘What I want has changed.’

‘OK,’ she says suddenly, ‘so tell me what it was that you were wary about before, which isn’t bothering you any more.’

My warning bells start to ring. I’m not falling for clever mum-psychology.

‘It doesn’t matter now,’ I say defensively.

Before she can say anything else, the kitchen door opens and Dad comes in carrying an empty cup. ‘Oscar knocked my tea over.
Have you got a cloth? Karen’s using the towel from the downstairs loo.’ He looks between us. ‘Everything all right?’

I suddenly find myself surprisingly near to tears. ‘Can we please not do this? Can you just tell me you’re happy for me? Whatever
it is you’re both thinking?’

Taken aback, they look worriedly at one another.

‘It’s not that we—’ Mum begins, but Dad gently says ‘Shhh,’ and shakes his head lightly. She falls quiet and Dad puts his
mug down, takes a step over towards me and wraps me in a big, comforting bear hug. He rocks me gently on the spot and kisses
the top of my head, as if I am a little girl again. Then he releases me, picks up the J-cloth and ambles off into the other
room without saying another word.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. As long as you’re happy, I’m happy,’ Mum says, then adds slowly, ‘you are happy, aren’t
you Molly?’

‘Yes,’ I insist, ‘I am.’

Which is true, because Dan is over the moon about having a baby – although I’ll be having words with him later about his announcing
it as a work in progress. But he’s very happy – and that is all that matters.

That night, Bec calls to thank me for doing her online dating profile.

‘Moll, it was really sweet! I nearly cried at all of the nice things you said. So how’s your day been?’

‘Not bad thanks. Listen, can I call you back? It’s just I’m in the bath.’

‘Oh! I’ve done it again! I’m so sorry! Multitasking eh?’

Something like that. Actually, I brought my phone into the safety of the locked bathroom so I could check my messages without
the fear of Dan looking over my
shoulder. But now I’m feeling a bit foolish for being so apparently over-cautious in keeping the phone switched off all day,
because for all of his melodramatic ‘I’m not giving up on you,’ Leo has sent me nothing at all, and neither has he called
me … I knew it. They were just words to him. Words he liked hearing himself say. Leo has always been the star in the movie
of his own making.

Except as I’m towelling myself dry in our bedroom – once I’ve been lulled into a false sense of security – and Dan has walked
in, that’s when my phone goes off on the bed with a text; like it deliberately waited for him.

‘Who’s that?’ he asks, climbing under the covers.

I peer at the screen, my heart having constricted to half its normal size, but then I relax. ‘Pearce,’ I tell him truthfully.

‘Why’s he texting you on a Sunday night?’

‘He’s read some negative stuff about MediComma in one of the Sunday papers,’ I say, absently reading the text ‘He was just
letting me know.’ I delete it.

‘Oh, right.’ Dan looks rather nonplussed. ‘How’s your tummy feeling? Still got period pains?’

‘A bit,’ I say, instinctively resting my hand on it. Which reminds me, I want to tell him that I’d rather not tell everyone
we’re trying. ‘Listen, can I talk to you about what you said before lunch about us—’ but before I can say anything else, my
phone lights up again.

‘I’m going to throw that bloody thing out of the window,’ Dan says only half-joking. ‘Is it Pearce again?’

‘No,’ I turn casually away from him so he can’t see my face. ‘It’s just Joss. I’ll turn it off now.’ I stare intently at the
screen.

I’m thinking about you right now. Xxx

‘I can’t believe you barred my number from your phone,’ Leo says incredulously. ‘Do you even know how that felt? It was painful
enough when I realised you’d blocked me on Facebook. I don’t understand … why are you doing this?’

‘I’m not doing anything!’ I have to close my eyes for a moment and swallow down my mounting frustration as I stand on the
wet street listening to him. I should have known better than to answer a call on an unknown number, but this is my work phone,
I
have
to take calls when they come in. ‘You’re doing this Leo, not me, YOU. I just want you to leave me alone. Why can’t you understand
that?’

He ignores me. ‘I’ll buy a million more pay as you go
phones to get through to you, if that’s what it takes. I’m not giving up on us.’

‘What are you talking about?’ I’m coming close to losing it. ‘There
is
no us! You’ve got to stop this!’

‘No. Not until you believe me. I can’t stop thinking about you, I’ve realised that—’

‘I don’t have time for this Leo,’ I cut across him. ‘I’m late for an appointment. I have to go. Please, don’t call me again.
I mean it, OK?’

I hang up and with a shaking hand, slip the phone back in my bag and walk into the anonymous London clinic. He’s just made
an already horrible morning even worse. I’m already terrified I’m going to see someone I know here. In a lot of ways this
is even worse than my trip to the doctor’s. Although there’s a similar sense of deep shame and embarrassment, it’s the guilt
that’s killing me by inches. Dan left for work this morning cheerily telling me to have a good day; no idea that I was actually
going to be about three trains behind him, not a clue that I would be spending my morning being tested for STD’s.

Having given my name, I sit down nervously in the waiting room and turn my phone off. Leo actually bought a pay as you go
phone because I had his number barred yesterday … I don’t even know what to think about that.

On Monday while I was at the garage collecting the car, I received a text saying:

I dreamt about you last night. Xx

Tuesday morning brought:

Please, you have to let me at least tell you what I have to say. This is important. I’ll go anywhere, anytime. Xx

Wednesday was an overused cliché that once might have made me thrill all over, but now just made me shudder:

I wish I had told you every day you were mine how beautiful you are. Xx

Then an hour after that:

This is killing me. Is that what you want? You want me to feel like this? Xx

I didn’t want him to feel
anything
in relation to me at all! That was the whole point! Each and every message only reminded me of what I was trying to forget.

Then two hours after that came:

Am so stupid … you DO want me to feel like this don’t you? You need me to prove that I mean what I say, that I do have real,
genuine feelings for you. You’re afraid of getting hurt again – that’s why you won’t meet me, why you’re doing this; well
I’ll do whatever it takes to convince you. I promise xx

He simply can’t believe that I don’t want him. But I don’t and I have too much to lose to risk ignoring him until he gets
bored and goes away. I want – need – him to stop. Which is why I had his number barred yesterday; for all the good it did
me.

I run an agitated hand over my forehead, under my fingers are the lumps and bumps of a few greasy spots that have come up
over the last few days, in spite of the very dry skin on my chin. I’ve had a much shorter than usual period and a patch of
eczema is developing on the back of my left knee. … Maybe I should talk to IT support about changing my number completely?

‘Cara Jones?’ calls a nurse.

If I did that, is there anyone else he could get the new number from? I don’t think there is.

‘Cara Jones?’ she calls again, a little louder.

Oh shit. That’s me.
I’m
Cara Jones.

I grab my coat and stand up.

‘Cara?’ she repeats pointedly as she gives me a knowing – but not unkind – look that says ‘It’s a good idea to actually remember
the false name you give.’ ‘Follow me please.’

It’s all briskly efficient – the nurse runs through a list of frankly terrifying symptoms that I am very relieved to have
none of, we briefly discuss the incident in question and then she tells me I can have an initial test for chlamydia
and gonorrhoea, which will probably reveal the likelihood of other STDs being present anyway, or the whole shebang; HIV, syphilis
and hepatitis, although it’ll take another week or so at least for my body to even start making the antibodies that are detectable
in an AIDS test.

‘Is it possible your ex-partner could be bisexual? Would he be likely to attend,’ she lowers her voice gravely, ‘sex parties?’

I almost want to ask her how she manages to say things like that with a straight face. Except none of this is a joking matter.

‘Activities like that would increase your risk.’

It isn’t funny at all in fact … and the honest truth is, I have no idea about the answers to her questions. Not when he was
with me, no, but that was, what – five years ago? And it’s then that I realise that actually I
don’t
know Leo any more, only what he was.

We decide I’ll opt for the chlamydia and gonorrhoea package, the least appealing ‘package’ I’ve ever chosen – including when
Joss, Bec and I went to Gran Canaria aged seventeen and it collectively cost us about £250. A urine test and £140 later and
I’m back out on the street clutching my mobile tightly. They will be calling through my results within forty-eight hours.

I don’t mind the £140. I don’t mind the urine test, in fact that was a comparatively pleasant surprise given I had been expecting
another internal examination. But I do mind within forty-eight hours. Given I thought
I’d be finding out straight away, I’m desperately disappointed to have to drag it home with me. I wanted to go back to Dan
having put at least some part of all this behind us.

When I step out on to the pavement, it’s raining again, so I reach hurriedly for my umbrella, before squaring my shoulders
and starting back towards Bond Street tube, head down, deep in thought.

So deep in thought that at first I don’t take any notice of someone shouting. I’m a stone’s throw from Oxford Street after
all and the wind is so blustery it’s enough of a job concentrating on keeping my umbrella from blowing inside out. But then
I hear someone call ‘MOLLY!’ and I look up to see, to my astonishment,
Leo
on the other side of the road, smiling delightedly, holding a smart black umbrella high above his head, dark grey open overcoat
billowing behind him as he weaves between a black cab and a bike to get to me.

‘What are you doing here?’ He’s clearly astonished, but seems thrilled to see me, clouds of breath forming in front of his
face.

I am completely dumbstruck. I was worried about running into Dan like this, but dismissed it because what would he be doing
out of the City and in the West End? It never occurred to me that it would be LEO I’d have to worry about.

‘I’ve just been to a launch at Claridge’s,’ he says, motioning down the road behind him. Then he turns back to me. ‘You look
frozen,’ he says, concerned, then
reaches out and takes my arm. ‘Come on, let’s go and get you a coffee, get you warmed up.’

‘Don’t!’ I shout, yanking my arm back violently at his touch, to the surprise of a random man and his girlfriend hurrying
past me. The girlfriend nudges him and they both turn to give us a curious glance. I suppose we probably do look like any
other couple having a row in the street. But we’re not.

Leo looks a bit startled by my reaction too. ‘OK,’ he says slowly. ‘Whatever you want BG, it’s no problem.’

I freeze. BG … Beautiful Girl.

‘Don’t call me that.’