*
I climbed the steps into the theatre. I could hear footsteps and turned round to see if anyone was behind me. Nothing. I shook my head and walked on. The building was impressive; pale-coloured stone with large imposing pillars. Inside it was lit with a golden chandelier and the seats arranged at the front of the orchestra were a rich red velvet. I took my own seat and flicked through the programme.
The orchestra were already seated. I watched Clarky going through the music with one of the other violinists. She wore a pink flower in her fair hair. They both looked pale-skinned in contrast to the dark lustre of their violins. Clarky looked so earnest, too, dressed in his black trousers and matching waistcoat.
I clapped loudly when the conductor took his place. There was a dramatic pause before the music began; the air static with anticipation. This was not the time to have a tickle in your throat or a coughing fit, which unfortunately had happened to me once, forcing me to make a sharp exit.
I watched the conductor with fascination; the way his shoulder blades writhed with energy; his arms dancing gracefully to the music.
It was halfway through the concert when I noticed the couple sitting directly in front of me, literally unable to keep their hands off one another. She was wearing a backless green dress and had a streak of her hair dyed to match. He was wearing a dark suit. She stroked his cheek with one hand. Honestly, get a room, I thought to myself as I adjusted the position of my seat. Soon the entire audience became aware of them. There were stifled laughs, people nudging one another. I tried to focus on Clarky but then the couple started to kiss passionately. I didn’t know where to look and now they were blocking my view! I turned to my left and then to my right, anything to avoid looking straight ahead.
And then I saw him.
I sat back abruptly in my seat as if I had been slapped hard. What was going on in my imagination? I must be crazy. I gently moved forward in my seat again and turned to glance to the left and behind me. Yes, three rows away. The programme dropped off my knee. I could feel my hand shaking as I reached down to pick it up off the floor. Then I knocked my forehead against the back of one of the kissing couple’s chairs. The girl turned round and had the cheek to give me an evil look, as if I was at fault for distracting them from their embarrassing display of affection. I looked over again, terrified that Finn’s image would have melted into nothing and the seat would be empty.
But he was still there. I laughed out loud and then had to cough abruptly to disguise it. Isn’t there a kind of fear that makes you react like that? When life throws you a different number on the dice, one you never expected to see after all this time and you’re laughing at its sheer insanity? I sat up straight and tried to steady my breathing. A door opened to the right and Alex shuffled down the row towards me, raising an eyebrow at the passionate twosome in front.
He gave me a peck on the cheek.
I knew Finn was watching us. I could feel his stare burning into my back.
*
After the performance Alex and I walked towards the door. ‘Josie,’ I heard from behind us. My heart was galloping.
‘Finn,’ I exclaimed before even turning round. ‘What a surprise.’ He was exactly how I remembered him except that his hair was now all one colour – dark brown. It was as if part of his character was missing.
Alex stood looking at me and then at Finn, cocking his head like a bird. He was waiting to be introduced.
We just stared at one another. Eventually I said, ‘Sorry, Alex. This is an old friend of mine, Finn. We haven’t seen each other for … what? Er, so long …’
‘Five years,’ Finn helped me out.
Alex put an arm around my shoulders. ‘What a small world. Shall we get a drink? I should think the two of you would like to catch up.’ We walked down the stone steps and into the bar. ‘Just nipping to the loo,’ Alex told us.
When he was out of earshot we both turned to each other and at precisely the same time said, ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’
‘I know. I was meeting a friend in the square and there you were, walking up the steps. I only caught a glimpse of your back, but I remembered you liked the colour red. And, of course, that friend of yours, the violin man. I saw there was a concert tonight.’
‘Clarky.’
‘Yes, him. What have you been up to? How are you? Where are you living?’ Finn’s voice was as quick as a fast-flowing stream. It was as if he was aware we had only minutes but wanted to cover everything that had happened in that entire five years while we had the chance.
‘It’s weird, I’ve been thinking about you lately and I had this feeling I’d see you. How are you?’ I babbled.
‘I’m good. You?’ He reached out to touch my face and I clamped my hand onto his, not wanting to let it go. It didn’t feel strange; it felt normal. ‘God, you look great,’ he told me. ‘Give me your telephone number, quick.’
I scrabbled in my handbag to try and find a pen. I wrote my home number on a business card. Alex returned and Finn gripped my hand when he wasn’t looking. I got butterflies in my stomach from one touch of his fingers.
‘It must be extraordinary to see each other after five years?’ Alex said cheerily.
‘Extraordinary,’ Finn repeated.
‘Why didn’t you two stay in touch?’
‘That’s a very good question, Alex. I ask myself the same thing every day.’ Finn was staring intently at me.
‘Right, good stuff. Well, Josie and I have been an item for … how long is it now? Over a year.’
An item? How could I be going out with anyone who said ‘an
item
’? From the look in Finn’s eye I could tell he was thinking the same. ‘Clarky!’ Alex called out then. Justin had walked into the bar with a few of his musician friends but made his way over to us. Finn was looking down, as if he wanted to surprise him. Alex thumped his hand appreciatively against Clarky’s back. ‘Congrats, mate. You were brilliant! Best concert I’ve ever been to. You’ll never guess who we’ve just bumped into?’ He nudged me like a dolly that couldn’t speak. ‘Finn, isn’t it?’
He looked up with a confident smile and held out his hand. ‘Hi, Justin, how are you?’
Clarky blinked to make sure. ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what a surprise.’
‘Josie hasn’t seen him for five years,’ Alex pattered on. ‘Now, let’s get the drinks in.’ He put an arm around my shoulders again. ‘Darling, what would you like?’
‘Double vodka,’ I said without hesitating.
‘Make that two,’ Finn added.
‘Three,’ finished Clarky.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
‘
AN EXCITING MOMENT FOR BOTH OF YOU
,’ is written in capital letters. ‘
Ultrasound scanning gives a woman and her partner the opportunity to see their developing baby for the first time
.’ I sit in the waiting room. I am bursting for the loo. I have had to drink what seemed like gallons of water before the scan in order to make the image clearer. Think of a very dry spring, or earth so dry it cracks in the heat … Sod it. I really need to go.
*
‘Congratulations,’ Natalie had said sweetly. ‘You must be delighted.’
‘You’re what?’ Ruby screeched again although it was obvious she had heard me first time. Her face was so close to mine that I could see the caked powder on her top lip.
‘Pregnant,’ I’d said. That was two weeks ago.
From the corner of my eye I could see Natalie working out in her head exactly when I’d be leaving so that she could take on some of my clients. ‘I promise you it won’t affect my work. I intend to be here right up to when the baby is born, or just a few weeks before,’ I’d added, knowing Ruby would take it literally otherwise and expect me to work while I was having contractions.
She’d spun round in her chair a few times to calm herself down. ‘And I thought you were putting on weight! Why do you want another sprog?’ she couldn’t help asking, holding the edge of the leather seat tightly. ‘Isn’t the one you have enough trouble? Why in God’s name do women have children? Career or children? It’s such an obvious choice!’
I nodded. ‘I understand it’s not the best timing, but it’s still some months ahead.’
She pressed her lips together, red lipstick smudging her teeth. ‘Well, I can’t sack you.’
‘Sack me?’ My eyes opened wide.
‘Very strict legislation about that,’ she’d said, fingers tapping the desk. ‘Besides, Gem Communications needs you. Natalie’s only half up to speed.’
‘I am fully up to speed and ready for more responsibility,’ Natalie had argued.
But Ruby wasn’t interested. ‘Spit out sprog two and back you come.’
Now I flick nervously through a magazine. ‘Are you going to have the baby today, Mum?’ George had asked me this morning.
‘No,’ I’d told him again. ‘The baby is only twenty weeks old. A pregnancy lasts nine months.’
‘Nine months? That’s like a whole lifetime. Eliot says babies come out of your bottom. Do they, Mum?’
‘Finn?’ I had turned to him with a broad smile. ‘You’re the doctor, you explain.’
Please God, please may this child be happy and healthy. If you answer this prayer, I will start going to church, I promise. I know I only pray for what I want, like running my own art gallery, which is bad, really bad, so I promise I’ll change. I’ll start to say prayers for those who aren’t as well off, like the bearded man George and I see on the street who shouts ‘JESUS IS LOVE’, and then there’s that man who moves about on a black trolley because he doesn’t have any legs. The homeless woman who’s always pushing a suitcase aimlessly in the Piccadilly Waterstone’s. I’ll even say a prayer for Ms Miles. Just please grant me this one wish: let me be a good mother.
‘Mrs Greenwood,’ calls out the nurse wearing a white and red uniform. Her hair is dark and tied back into a ponytail. I could kill Finn. He promised he wouldn’t be late.
She holds the door open for me and I walk into the room with its stark white walls and pink curtains.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ she says. ‘You’ve got a full bladder?’
‘Oh, yes.’
I lie down on the hard couch that is covered in a sheet of blue paper that looks like wide loo roll. The couch is next to all the scanning equipment and machinery. ‘How are you feeling today?’ she asks.
‘Not bad, thanks. Excited.’
‘No one with you?’ She sits down next to me.
‘Not unless they’re invisible,’ I trill. She looks at me strangely. ‘My husband’s running late. He’s a doctor,’ I explain as I roll up my grey T-shirt top and unbutton my trousers.
‘Try to relax, drop the shoulders.’ She starts to rub a cold gel on to my abdomen before picking up a microphone-like object and moving it back and forth over my stomach. ‘Do you work?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you remembering to sit with your feet elevated at the desk? It’s a good idea to turn a waste-paper bin upside-down.’
‘Keeping my feet up. Very important.’
‘Do you have other children?’
‘A boy.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Seven.’
‘A lovely age, old enough to look after himself now.’
‘Yes, absolutely, he’s very good.’ What a great fictional life I lead.
She’s looking carefully at the screen. ‘The picture is quite clear,’ she says. The baby is too big now to see it as a whole on the screen. ‘This is the baby’s elbow, there’s the foot … the toenails are beginning to grow now … and there’s the shoulder.’
‘Look at the spine, it’s so perfect,’ I say, my face turned sideways to the screen. ‘Look, it’s yawning!’
She smiles. ‘There’s the heart, it shows up as grey.’
As I look at the screen I feel overwhelmed with guilt for sometimes wishing this child weren’t there. For only thinking about how it is going to affect my life. Now that I see something so real, I realise how lucky I am. Where are you, Finn? I gather up more of the sheet and grip it tightly in my hand. Suddenly I wish my mother were with me. I should have taken her up on her offer to come and stay for a few days. ‘I’m sorry,’ I apologise when the nurse hands me a tissue.
‘Don’t worry. It’s natural to cry, Mrs Greenwood.’
‘I’m going to have the best baby, aren’t I?’
‘You are. Now, did you want to know what the sex is?’
I grip the sheet again.
All I have to do is say ‘yes’. All she has to do is tell me.
*
The door swings open. It’s Finn.
‘Sorry I’m late. I’m the father,’ he says breathlessly to the nurse.
‘I’m bursting for the loo, Finn,’ I say, pushing past him.
‘How did it go? Is everything all right?’
‘I’ll leave your wife to tell you.’
*
I stand in front of the sink and wash my hands with liquid soap. I dry my eyes and reapply my powder. Right, I’m ready. I hold out my hand and it is trembling like jelly.
He is in the waiting room, pacing up and down. When he sees me he stops abruptly by the water cooler. ‘Come on.’ He pulls at my hand and leads me outside into the car park. ‘How did it go? Did you find out the sex?’
‘Finn, I wish you’d been with me.’
‘I’m so sorry I’m late, J, but Alessia needed …’
I put up my hand. ‘You were late because of Alessia?’
‘There was an emergency. I couldn’t leave her on her own. I wanted to be here, I got here as quick as I could.’
‘It doesn’t matter, it’s fine.’
‘Is it? Nothing seems fine between us.’
We both stand looking at each other.
‘Don’t punish me for being late. Please tell me,’ he asks more softly now.
‘It’s a girl!’
‘A girl?’ His eyes widen. ‘We’re having a girl?’ We both start to jump up and down.
‘Thank you, GOD!’ I shout out to the sky, wherever He might be.
More people walk through the double doors. ‘We’re having a girl!’ Finn says to them.
I laugh. ‘Let’s go home, ring our friends and family …’
‘And I want to call her Emily!’ he shouts to their retreating backs.
‘OH, FINN! We agreed to call her Gertrude.’
‘On my death bed!’
The automatic doors open and a couple walk through. One of them turns around and looks at us, smiling. Happiness is contagious.
‘We’re really doing it?’ he says. ‘We’re having another child.’ It is as if Finn finally feels complete, the gap in his own family filled. We stand still and he holds my face in his hands and kisses me.
*
‘
Regarder la télé
,’ George scribbles in his French homework book. ‘
Boire quelque chose
.’
‘Don’t hold the pen so hard,’ I tell him again.
He throws it down in a tantrum. ‘I’m stupid! I can’t do it!’
‘You’re not stupid. Try again.’
But he’s looking at the printed scan now. ‘What do you think of your little sister?’ Finn asks.
George squints hard as he turns the paper upside-down. ‘She looks like a crocodile,’ he says.
*
The telephone rings and I pick up. I am longing to talk to Mum. It’s Clarky. ‘Ahh, so sweet of you to call.’ You see, Clarky never forgets.
‘What?’
‘You remembered I was having my twenty-week scan.’
‘How did it go?’
‘I’m having a girl.’ Oh. He didn’t remember.
‘That’s wonderful news. I’m really happy for you.’
There’s something different in his voice. ‘Are you OK?’
‘Sorry, J, I have to be honest, I’d forgotten about the scan.’
‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
Finn is listening now. ‘I was wondering … can I have Aggie’s telephone number?’
‘Sure,’ I say, an octave too high. ‘You really like her, then?’
‘I think she’s great.’
‘Right, I’ll look it up. Hang on.’ I hold the phone under my chin as I start to leaf through my address book. ‘Here we go.’
Finn asks me what that was all about when I put the phone down. ‘Clarky likes Eliot’s mother. They met at George’s party.’ I walk into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water.
‘He wants to sex her?’ George asks, flinging open the fridge. He’s so quick that I hadn’t heard him come into the kitchen. He rips open a carton of milk and the entire contents sloshes onto the wooden floor. A packet of grated Parmesan falls out of the fridge too. It stinks. ‘Oh, GEORGE!’ Finn shouts.
‘Wasn’t my fault.’ He takes out another pint of milk.
‘Well, whose fault was it? The bogey man’s?’
‘Clean it up,’ Finn demands, wringing out a J-cloth, ‘before you start on the other.’
George takes it and half-heartedly cleans the floor at a whirlwind pace. He throws the cloth in the sink, pours himself another glass so full that some of it spills onto the table. He drinks it all in one go, leaving himself with a milky-white moustache. ‘Ugh, brain freeze!’ And then he runs off again.
‘Why don’t we invite them both over for supper?’ Finn suggests. ‘Josie, sit down. I’ll do it.’
I position myself on the stool.
Finn bends down and starts to clear up the milky cheese mess on the floor. ‘It’d be fun to have a party. We haven’t had one for ages and I’d like to meet Aggie.’
I don’t know why the dinner party we had with a few of Finn’s medic friends, a couple of months ago flashes through my mind as I watch him clear up the mess.
George had come downstairs in his pyjamas. ‘Surgeons aren’t as clever as doctors, are they?’ he’d said conversationally.
‘I don’t know where you heard that,’ Finn laughed.
‘You told me.’
‘Oh, really?’ one of the surgeons asked. He turned expectantly to Finn.
‘I didn’t say that exactly.’
‘Yes, you did,’ George corrected him. ‘You said all they did was put the bits in and get all the glory.’
Finn had almost disappeared under the table with embarrassment.
‘Yes, you should meet her,’ I say to him now. ‘It’s thanks to her that George found this swimming teacher too.’
The lessons are going well. Frédéric says that George is beginning to grasp the breathing technique.
‘Let’s organise it then. Why don’t we invite Tiana and Christo? Or Ed and Zoe? Actually they’re away right now. You know what, I think Christo’s seeing someone but he won’t tell me, he’s being highly secretive about the whole thing.’ He hands me the phone. ‘Ring Clarky, or I will.’
‘Great, would love to,’ Clarky says when I ask him. ‘Saves me from ringing her up too, thanks.’
I ring Aggie next. ‘I’ll bring over a pudding. Do you like treacle tart? Thank you, Josie, quick work! I underestimated you.’ I don’t tell her it was Finn’s idea. ‘I like Justin. I mean,
really
like him. Do you think he likes me? What shall I wear?’ She starts to think out loud. ‘I don’t want to be too casual, but at the same time I don’t want to look like I’ve made this massive effort either. Better not wear my tiara, hey? Oh, listen to me. I’m nervous already just thinking about it.’
‘He does like you, Aggie,
a lot
,’ I encourage her.
‘She’s a talker,’ Finn says when I finally put the phone down. ‘Can you see Clarky with her?’
‘Possibly, who knows?’
‘Does Daddog love Aggie?’ George asks, running into the kitchen again.
‘Do you want your dad to take you out for a run,’ I ask him, ‘burn off that energy?’ Before I was this pregnant we used to run before school too, around the park.
‘Will they get married?’ George continues.
‘No,’ I say too quickly, followed by a more thoughtful, ‘They’ve only just met, poppet.’
‘It was love at first sight for us,’ Finn comments.
‘Was it?’
‘Yes. You fell for me straightaway,’ he says with that cocky arrogance.
‘OK,’ I admit, remembering how Finn made me feel dizzy with love. ‘But did you fall for me
the moment
you saw me?’
‘Yes,’ he states simply.
‘Did you?’ I must have frowned in disbelief.
‘I liked being near you, hearing that laugh, seeing you in that tight little apron. I liked your honesty, the way you didn’t say things to impress, you were just yourself. Come on, J. Why do you think I used to hang around Momo’s drinking endless tasteless cups of coffee and eating cheap pizzas? I wasn’t doing it for him.’
‘I made good coffee!’
He shrugs. ‘You were always the girl for me, J. I was the luckiest man alive to find you again after five years.’
He kisses me. Finn has just said the sweetest, loveliest thing to me so why do I feel unsteady, as if something is about to rock our ship, when now of all times we need the water to be calm?
Why am I thinking about Clarky?