The Yorkshire Pudding Club (30 page)

Over the years, she had stamped down so hard on those feelings she’d had for him: how she loved being with him, how much she looked forward to seeing him, how much she wanted him, only to find that it hadn’t made the slightest bit of difference. They were all still there. As the letter was preserved in tissue, her feelings were as fresh in her heart as the day she wrote the words down on paper. If only she could have let him know how she felt before it was too late, if only she hadn’t been so warped and twisted by her past.

She didn’t want her baby to be like her and miss his chances if love came calling. She wanted him to run towards it with open arms and embrace it and feel it fill up his heart and his soul. She would bring her child up with gentleness and affection, learning to trust when it was right to do so. There would be no life of fear and confusion and ridiculously pitched independence for her child, no feeling that he wasn’t worthy enough to be loved.

There was a message waiting for Elizabeth when she got home. It was from John saying that of course he would look after Cleef and he had taken it as read anyway that he would be official catsitter. He asked if
she was okay because she sounded a bit down and could she give him a ring back and let him know. Then he said had she made any plans for her birthday on Monday because he wanted to pop in and say ‘hi’ and bring her a card up. He didn’t say anything about taking her out for it. It was too late for that to happen now. He had other stuff going on in his life. Other people to think about.

She didn’t ring back.

The baby woke Elizabeth up with a ‘Happy Birthday’ kick in the spine and he was as active as if he was holding his own celebratory party for her and had invited a few mates around. She tried to get back to sleep but Michael Flatley inside her wasn’t having any of it, so she went downstairs for a slice of heavily buttered granary toast and some olives. At least her craving was a pretty low-key affair. She didn’t have to embarrass herself with a compulsion to go into McDonald’s and ask for a haddock and gorgonzola McFlurry.

Janey and Helen’s cards arrived on the doormat; they knew Elizabeth liked getting nice post, so had sent them to her via Royal Mail even though they were meeting for her birthday lunch anyway. She had a card from Terry Lennox and the girls at work too. There was a note in the envelope from Nerys to say that Julia had run off to lose herself in London. Even Laurence had totally distanced himself from her, after pulling one last string to get her a job torturing students in a training centre. No doubt her penchant for married men would eventually kick up another scandal and another well-connected Laurence would bail her out.
It was a shallow existence but that type would always prize stolen shags from bored husbands above the simple pleasures of friendships and real love, of which they, sadly, had no concept.

There was also an offer of a cut-price hearing aid and the thrilling news that she was ‘only one of a few special people in her area to be selected for a big money prize draw’. She didn’t feel very special; the three cards looked lost on the great big wooden mantelpiece.

She still had not rung John back. It hurt so much to think that he had moved someone else into the space in his heart that she had taken for granted belonged to her. How stupid she was not to have seen it coming!
That’s
why his visits had slowed down these past weeks. Not that she blamed him, though; he was a bloke with a lot of love to give out, and she was the fool who had turned it down just once too often.

She had scrubbed away thoughts of him by mopping at the floors and cleaning down the skirting boards with the burst of mad energy that visited her. Elizabeth had always liked cleaning, but this was different; this was not down to her own compulsions, this was Mother Nature stirring up her hormones with a floor mop in preparation for the new arrival in the house. She had got on her hands and knees and cleared out drawers and cupboards; she had even managed to take down all the curtains, wash them, peg them out in the sunshine and put them back up again the same day. They had needed doing as well; there were enough cobwebs trapped in the folds at the top to tart up a haunted house.
She had taken care on the ladders but felt invincible going up them, although she realized later that it was not on her list of ‘wisest things to do whilst being thirty-six weeks’ pregnant’. She also knew that if she didn’t burn up the extra energy she would never get to sleep in a million years. If the baby didn’t keep her awake, the tormenting thoughts whirling round in her head of John Silkstone with another woman would.

She slipped on a cotton dress that had looked so enormous when she bought it that she, Helen and Janey could have got in it and danced the Bump, but now it was getting tight on the bust and the ties at the side were let out to their loosest. Not that she felt blobby fat, for her stomach was as hard as iron, the skin drum-tight across it, not at all the soft, flabby cushion she had once imagined a pregnant tum would feel like. It was an effort to get into the car these days without an enormous shoehorn as the baby protested at being pressed into the steering wheel, but if she moved her seat any further back, her legs would not reach the pedals. Elizabeth kissed her hand and pressed it onto her stomach, hoping he would feel the sentiment filter down.

‘Sorry, little one,’ she said. She would be holding her baby properly very soon. She had tried to imagine so many times what it would like look. Would it have hair? How much would it weigh? Would it be a boy or a girl? She had always thought of it as a boy; a little boy would be lovely, but a little girl would be equally as nice. She had done the needle test but it had gone
up and down and then round and round, and she’d scared herself stupid that it meant it would be a hermaphrodite like the baby on
Footballers’ Wives
. She stuck the needle back in the sewing box where it belonged and mentally slapped herself for being so silly and superstitious and for stressing herself out when there was no need.

Janey had reserved a little table so they could dine al fresco, but in the shade because the heat was cracking flags. It was another sun-flooded day and girlies everywhere were flashing flat midriffs below their cropped tops, although Janey was not looking at them enviously any more. She had been there, done that and much preferred the big baggy T-shirt she had replaced it with. She would miss not wearing maternity clothes; she felt quite formidable in her big pinafore. HMS
Pinafore
, George called her–not that he was complaining; she was just more woman to love, in his eyes.

Her friends gave Elizabeth a big kiss and as tight a hug as their portly frames would allow. It was strange cuddling Elizabeth, they both thought together, but nice. It was good she was starting to soften, especially as they had given up hope a long time ago of her ever enjoying the simple pleasure of a hug. They had made her up a hamper in a pretty basket with chocolates and tiny cherry pies and miniature jars of pickles and jams and biscuits and assorted olives, all of which Helen had found in one of her posh food shops, and they had bought her three frames for the pictures she had painted for the baby’s room.

‘I tried to get you some Gaviscon liqueur chocolates but Thornton’s had run out,’ said Janey, rubbing a niggle out of her lower back.

‘Thanks for the thought, though,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I just want to start scoffing everything you’ve brought me now.’

‘Even the frames?’

‘Especially the frames. They’ll be nice and tasty with a crushed olive or two.’

‘You poor mental bag,’ said Janey. ‘Well, thirty-nine, eh? We’re all on countdown for the big
four–ohhhhhh
now!’

‘You first,’ said Helen. ‘Three months to go.’

‘Yep,’ said Janey, watching as Helen passed them all menus then tipped some of the salt pot onto her hand and proceeded to lick it off.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Elizabeth in horror, sounding like an exasperated Billy Connolly.

‘Salt and lemons–can’t get enough at the moment,’ explained Helen. ‘You’ve got your olives, Janey has her Marmite and this is my weirdo craving.’

‘Thought “teddies” would be yours,’ said Elizabeth cheekily.

‘Go away,’ said Helen, but she was smiling.

‘So, is this where we all thought we’d be then, in the year leading up to forty?’ asked Janey.

‘What–sitting in a café with you two comparing bizarre food fantasies? Yes, of course I did,’ said Helen with a tut.

‘No really, come on. Elizabeth?’

‘Dunno,’ said Elizabeth, whose ideas had changed
on that one over the years. When she was little, all she wanted to do was grow up and be old so her dad wouldn’t get her. Then, when she did grow up, she had hoped to find someone to love her, look after her ferociously as she had always tried to look after her friends. Then again, she
had
found someone who wanted to love her and look after her, only to throw him away. Did that constitute success or failure?

‘How about…married to Liam Neeson and walking permanently like John Wayne when he let me get out of bed,’ she said.

‘Trust you, you dirty cow!’ said Janey.

‘Oh, Elizabeth, play the game,’ said Helen, with good-humoured frustration.

‘Okay, okay.’ Elizabeth held up her hands in defeat. ‘Well, failing the Boy from the Bogs keeping me as a sex slave, I just wanted a good job, with a nice house, and a decent car and a kind man–you know, the ordinary things most people take for granted.’

‘Bet you never thought a kid would be in the equation though?’ This from Janey.

‘No,’ said Elizabeth, ‘and I still can’t visualize myself as a mother, to be honest.’

‘Well, you soon will be, so you’d better start getting used to the idea,’ said Helen, with a little laugh.

‘I’m trying,’ replied Elizabeth, patting the mound of her stomach. Was not
not
wanting the baby the same thing as wanting it? She had driven herself half nuts asking herself questions like that. Her feelings about the baby were still so dreadfully confused.

‘What about you, Janey?’

‘Well, I wanted to have a super-dynamic job and a bloke I love to bits who treated me like a queen. Oh, and a Yorkshire terrier called Harvey that I could carry around in a basket, like my Auntie Cheryl used to have.’

They chuckled, and then a big jug of water arrived, with plenty of lemon slices in it for Helen to scoop out and encrust with salt.

‘And you, Hels?’

‘I wanted to be happily married to someone handsome and successful, with lots of babies and living in a nice big house like Mum and Dad’s.’

‘I’d rather have the house than…ow!’

Janey kicked Elizabeth under the table.
Let’s not bring
his
name up and spoil the atmosphere
, was her intimation. Elizabeth rubbed her leg. Janey had feet like skateboards.

‘It’s okay to talk about him,’ said Helen. ‘It doesn’t hurt at all.’

‘It does if her boot lands on you for saying it,’ said Elizabeth, pointing at Janey. ‘Jeez, are you wearing steel toe-caps?’

‘In fact, I met him yesterday,’ Helen announced.

‘Did you?’ the others said in unison.

‘Yes. He was coming from his solicitor’s office.’

‘And?’

Helen released a tinkly little laugh. ‘He was with a woman.’

Neither Elizabeth nor Janey knew what to say to that.

‘Go on, then. You’re dying to ask me: “what did she look like?’”

‘I am dying to ask, I’ve got to admit,’ said Janey.

Helen leaned over the table with a big beaming smile. ‘She looked like me. Pre-baby, obviously. Long blonde hair, skinny, blue eyes. It was weird–I saw them coming down the street and I thought, Lord, they look like Simon and me! Then I realized that the man really was Simon.’

‘It wasn’t that Julia then?’ asked Janey.

‘No, this one had positively inverse breasts,’ said Helen with glee.

‘What did he do when he saw you?’ asked Elizabeth tentatively.

‘He looked a little startled, to be honest.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘I stuck out my C-cups and walked past him.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Elizabeth, I swear to you, my heart didn’t even miss a beat. It was as if I was looking at a stranger.’

‘Funny, that,’ said Janey. ‘Him going for another Helen.’

‘A pale imitation of Helen,’ amended Elizabeth. She would bet her life savings there would be a succession of pseudo-Helens to come, whilst he was young and handsome enough to tempt them, anyway. Sweet, fragile women with no complications, whom he would control and bully to compensate for his innate weaknesses. Trophy women he could show off in public, who befitted his picture of an executive ideal, yet in private he could probably only do the business with
a bit of rough, sporting massive gazongas. He really was a tortured soul. Good.

‘I bet it made you feel bloody marvellous, didn’t it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Helen with a face-splitting grin. ‘It most certainly did.’

They ordered food and it arrived nice and quickly: lemon chicken for Helen, lasagne for Janey, and Stilton-topped pork tenderloin for Elizabeth.

‘My boobs are like two big Stiltons,’ said Janey, just as Elizabeth was about to take her first mouthful.

‘Oh, flaming hell,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It’s a good job I’m not put off my food easily.’

‘I mean, where the hell do all those veins come from?’

‘Will you give over?’

‘I’m just saying, that’s all.’

‘I don’t think I’ll ever look attractive again,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Did you ever?’

‘Bog off!’

‘Well, wait until you’re floppy and fifty and you’ve grown a beard, then you can go abroad and find a gorgeous young nineteen-year-old Turk on the make,’ said Helen.

‘Then you can get yourself an extra three hundred quid by selling your story to
Women by Women
, about how you got married and he left you three seconds after cutting your cake,’ said Janey. ‘You wouldn’t have any life savings left, but you’d have some really great memories of his seduction techniques.’

‘Eat your lasagne and belt up,’ said Elizabeth, and pinched the olive from Janey’s side salad at the same time as Helen nicked her lemon.

‘So what are you planning for your fortieth birthday bash then?’ asked Elizabeth when the bill had been paid and they were wobbling back to their cars.

‘A big sleep, if the rumours are true. Apparently we’ll be selling our souls for a few hours’ kip when the babies come,’ said Janey.

‘I can’t see what the fuss is about sleeping, I mean, surely babies sleep loads, don’t they?’ said Elizabeth. She had hardly thought about what was to happen in the months after the birth. Her head wouldn’t let her get much further than coming home from hospital and getting through her first shopping expedition with car seats and prams to negotiate. Everything after that was a big fuddled cloud.

‘Don’t think it’s quite that straightforward,’ said Helen. ‘We fit in with them, not the other way round, and sleep when they do, otherwise we might not get any!’

They kissed and went on their way.

There’s so much to know, thought Elizabeth, with a heavy heart as she followed the others out of the village. And I feel I know less every day…

When Elizabeth got home, she made straight for the big blue chair by the window and drew comfort from being rocked in it. She dropped seamlessly into a vivid dream that the baby was born with a grown man’s
face with adult teeth, and then she woke up suddenly, realizing that she must have been sobbing in her sleep because her cheeks were wet. There was a heavy knock on the door just as she had got up to find some tissues in the kitchen. She wiped away her tears quickly and opened it to find John on the doorstep.