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‘I can go part-time,’ he said. ‘You can have a career if that’s what you want.’
‘We won’t have enough money!’
‘We don’t need much. Kids go to school soon enough.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No way.’
She would know, know without any doubt whatsoever, that even if they were no longer together, he would want to be a big part of their child’s life.
So why didn’t she tell him?
His breath comes quick and shallow. How typical of her, to keep the one thing he always wanted from him, as a kind of revenge. As awful as it is to think it, she is capable of such a thing.
He pushes his feet against the side of the bath, making the water swish up and down the length until the soapy residue clears. Remembers himself, the night he left, reaching Joyce’s house, the brass lion’s-head knocker in his hand, banging on the great red door. There he stood in the fat rain: hair sticking slicker and slicker to his head, drops running off his oilskin, jeans dark, saturated. When the door opened, he saw immediately that she had aged. He had not seen her as recently as he should’ve done. And this, too, was Naomi’s doing.You’re not going there again, are you? Didn’t you see her last week? We’re supposed to be booking a holiday/looking for furniture/going to the supermarket.It was never a good time.
Joyce peered into the dark as if trying to recognise him. ‘Love? Sam, love, whatever’s the matter?’
In the warm kitchen, the savoury smell of meat and vegetables, the soft click and woof of the boiler. Joyce made him sit on the old chesterfield sofa while she fetched the Remy Martin she only usually got out at Christmas.
‘It’s over,’ he said. ‘I suggested we move in with you for the lockdown and she said no. She was so… I just couldn’t believe she could be so… so hard. Mean. Five years of my life… all gone.’
‘Oh no, love. Not gone – spent! You’ll have learnt a thing or two, honestly you will. No one gains wisdom by never getting into a pickle. It’s the getting out of it that makes you stronger, and get out of it you will. You just need a bit of time and some peace and quiet, that’s all, and I think peace and quiet is what we’re getting for the foreseeable if this bloody virus does what they say it’s going to do. And when it’s gone, you can come out fighting, OK? Plenty more fish in the sea. Any clichés I’ve missed? Here’s another: you’re not old yet.’
No, he is not old. He is thirty-two. And if he’s right about the baby, as he is beginning to dare to hope, a family is not impossible after all.
The bitterness clears. Himself, a father to a son. A little guy to take walking, to teach stuff to, to take to the pub one day. Today Naomi’s smile echoed all her smiles from before, when they were happy. Her smile is a mark he has not been able to scrub away after all. She seemed changed.
No one changes, Joyce would say. Leopards, spots.
But what if something dramatic happened? Like serious illness. An accident. A death. People change then, don’t they?
A global pandemic.
A pregnancy.
A birth.
He sits up quickly, sending water sploshing over the edge of the bath.
‘Motherhood,’ he whispers. Motherhood changes a woman. He’s pretty sure Joyce said that too, once.
He will call Naomi. There is no choice now. He has to know, if only to stop this… this obsession. It’s possible that seeing him, she regretted a choice made in anger, stuck to out of stubbornness. Why not? When she found herself pregnant, she would have been apoplectic, would have vowed to keep his child from him, to punish him. Her sister, Jo, would have egged her on, that’s for sure. Jo could pick a fight in a yoga retreat. But then the baby arrived. Motherhood humbled her, softened her. And today, confronted with therealityof her ex rather than theideaof him warped by the spiralling fury of absence, she was not as sure of her hate as she had been.
Or was she simply looking after her friend’s child?
‘Argh.’ He dries himself and returns to his room. Picks up his phone and opens WhatsApp.
CHAPTER 6
Her last message makes him flinch.
You said you’d be home by six? You’d better bring a takeaway with you cos I’ll be fucked if I’m cooking after the day I’ve had.
Ignoring this, he writes:Can we meet?
No. Too obvious. She’ll know what he’s after. If the baby is his, it’s clear she doesn’t want him to know. He has to play this carefully. He has to look right into her eyes when he asks her, study her every micro-movement. Years spent living with her, he’s pretty sure he can read her up close.
But he needs a pretext.
