“I, er, I don’t think I can go through with this,” I said to him.
“Go through with what?” He stopped lacing up his walking boots and looked at me cautiously. He could tell from the tone of my voice that I wasn’t talking about this hike up the hills in the Lake District.
“The baby. I don’t think I can go through with it. I didn’t realize how hard it’d be to see someone else doing for you what I can’t. I don’t think I can go through with it.”
“She’s not doing it for me, she’s doing it for us.”
“I don’t think there can be an us anymore, Mal,” I said. “Not with this baby. I think you should go and be with her. And your baby.”
He straightened up, his shoelaces still untied. He was frowning. “It’s our baby. She’s having it for us. And I want to be with you.”
I shook my head, surprised at how calm I was, considering what I was doing. “You don’t. You love her. You want a family life with her. Not me.”
He stared at me, poleaxed, as though someone had struck him squarely between the eyes with something large, hard and solid, rendering him immobile. “I love you. You. I want a baby with you.”
“That’s just it, you can’t have one with me. You can with her.”
“Stop this nonsense, Stephanie. OK? Just stop it.” He bent down to finish with his shoelaces, but I could see his hands trembling. It was working, I was getting through to him.
“What if I do something to the baby?” I asked.
“You’re not going to do anything to the baby.”
“But what if I do? It’s not mine. Women harm their own babies every day—how do you know I won’t harm one I’ve got no genetic connection to? It’ll be your baby with another woman. What if … What if I go a little … What if I hurt it?”
“That’s not going to happen,” he said sternly. He’d finished tying up the laces on his left walking boot, but was still fiddling with it so he wouldn’t have to deal with me face-to-face.
“You don’t know that. You don’t know what I’m capable of. You’ve never known what I’m capable of.”
He straightened up again, this time his eyes like laser beams aimed at me. “What’s this really about?” he asked.
“Really?”
He nodded. “I know it’s not because you’re scared you’ll hurt the baby. You would never do that. What’s this really about?”
“I don’t want to bring up another woman’s baby. Correction, I don’t want to bring up her baby.” There, I said it.
“It’d be our baby. She’s having it for us. She is only pregnant because of us. It’d be our little boy or girl. Your little boy or girl.”
“But I can’t even pretend it’s mine. Everyone would know. And they’d think you’d fucked someone else and I was so spineless I let you get away with it. Or I’d have to lie and say it was something genetic in our family. But everyone would be looking at me, knowing it’s not really my baby.”
“Why do you care what other people think?” he asked in frustration.
“I don’t know. I just do. I don’t know why, but what other people think matters. All the looks in the street, especially if the three of us are together. And I can imagine what my family’s going to be like. I don’t want to go through all that.”
“That’s a stupid reason to not want the baby.”
“I knew you’d think I was stupid, that’s why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“I don’t think you’re stupid and I didn’t say you were stupid. It’s a stupid reason not to want our child. I can’t see the problem.”
“Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s your child. You can have children. I can’t.” I felt the tears well up and I started blinking to get rid of them.
“Steph, I don’t understand this. We talked about this before. Even before we asked her—”
“And you talked me round. Said it would be all right. But I don’t think it is going to be, Mal. I didn’t think I’d feel like this. On the one hand, I can’t help but feel attached to him or her, but mostly, I feel empty. That you could walk away at any time with her. I’d always be living on the edge, wondering at what point she might want her baby back.”
“BUT IT’S OUR BABY!” he shouted, his words ringing out across the hills, “baby, baby, baby” echoing back to us seconds later.
“NO, IT’S NOT!” I shouted back, waiting for “not, not, not” to echo before I lowered my voice to speak again. “It’s yours. It’s hers. It’s not ours.”
He stared down at the earth in front of me, his eyes seeking something. Just like I had seen him doing in our dark kitchen the night I realized what had been going on under my nose.
“Legally, I have no real standing. Despite that contract we all signed, if she changes her mind, she could get rid of me like that!” I clicked my fingers. “I have no real connection to the baby. And emotionally … Emotionally, I can’t get over the fact it’ll never be mine. Always yours, never completely and wholly mine.”
“Have you been taking your pills?” he asked. A low blow. Unexpected, too. Mal never did that, never used that against me.
“Whether I take them or not, that’s not going to change the fact that I won’t ever be able to love this child like it’s my own.”
“I can’t believe that.”
“It’s the truth, Mal,” I said. “It’s what I feel. So, that’s why I think it’d be better for everyone if you went to her and your baby. I know a baby’s what you truly want. I don’t want you to miss out on your chance now, so go be with her.”
“I always said that it didn’t matter about children.”
“It’s OK, I know you didn’t mean it.”
“I did mean it. Just like you’ve meant it all these weeks when you’ve been going round to Nova’s to visit the baby. Telling it you love it. You’ve bought all those books. And I know you’ve been buying clothes, and hiding them. I know how excited you’ve been about this. That’s why I don’t believe you. That’s why I think you’re just having momentary doubts and that you’ll change your mind back.” He nodded, as though convincing himself as he spoke. “We’re both feeling the pressure of it now, and I’m sure all parents feel like this before their baby is born. Worry and anxiety about how they’ll feel. If they’ll be able to cope. We’ve got the additional pressure of having to tell our families about the situation in a few weeks. It’s all of that. Once that’s all over with, you’ll look back and feel really silly about feeling like this. We both will. Because I have my doubts and I’ll feel even more stupid for believing you and shouting at you.”
I fixed him with a look. The one I used to give solicitors and partners in the law firm who, for a few misguided seconds, thought my role as office manager meant I was somehow a lesser human being and therefore didn’t require them to be polite. “You misunderstand me,” I said evenly. “I am not having that baby in my life, let alone in my house. If you want to carry on with it, that’s fine. That is your choice. And it’ll mean I won’t have you either.”
“You’re making me choose between my baby and you?”
“No, Mal, the choice has been made. I don’t want the baby and I don’t want you.”
“You don’t want me anymore?” he asked, horrified. He became a little boy inside, scared and alone. Terrified about what he had just heard. Scared of the monster who was standing in front of him, ending his marriage.
“Not as long as there’s a baby out there that’s yours, no,” I stated.
He tried to pull himself together. Scrabbling around for shelter and comfort. “I love you,” I said, deciding to offer him a refuge. “More than life itself. I don’t want you to miss out on this. I’ve decided to accept that I’m not meant to have children, but you clearly are meant to have children. You are having one. And that’s something I can never be a part of. Not completely. And you’ll always be torn between us. So if I end things with you now, then you won’t be torn. You won’t have to make this choice in a few years.” Oh, God, I?
??m going to start crying, I realized. This was harder than I thought. I’d rehearsed this speech a million times in my head in the last week but this was the first time it had made me cry.
It wasn’t hearing “I love you” that had bonded me to Mal when we first met. It wasn’t fabulous sex, and holidays and talking late into the night; it wasn’t lying next to him and listening to him breathe as he slept, knowing he’d still be there in the morning. It was when he told me about his mother. About her illness. It was the intimacy that allowed me to give myself to him. As completely as I could. As wholly as I had ever done with another human being.
“I promised I’d never leave you,” he said.
“It’s OK, I won’t break without you. I’ll be fine.”
Mal closed his eyes. He seemed to have stopped, like a battery-powered toy soldier, marching along merrily and then halting because the batteries were flat. There was no more energy driving it, all it could do was stand still. Silent. Flat.
“I’ll tell Nova we don’t want the baby anymore,” he said after ten minutes had passed in silence. With him standing as still and silent as one of the mountains we were about to climb.
“But—”
“When we get home, I’ll tell her,” he said, talking over me. “I’ll say that we changed our minds, that we can’t take on this responsibility right now. I’ll tell her.”
“You don’t have to do this, Mal. I’m telling you that you’re free to go to her. To have your baby. To have her.”
“I said I’d never leave you. Nova will understand.”
She wouldn’t. Of course she wouldn’t. How could anyone understand that? Not even Nova, the most understanding woman I’d ever met, would understand this.
“But what will she do?” I asked. “You know her better than anyone on earth. What do you think she’ll do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think she might have an abortion?”
I saw the knife twist in his guts at the thought of it. That was why it had taken me a week since I found the text to say this. I needed time to assimilate the thought myself. To accept that possibility and that responsibility. “Mal, don’t do this. Not for me. Go to her, have your baby.”
“She might,” he said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “Or she might keep him.”
“If she does keep it, then …” I paused, suddenly afraid of voicing this condition. “Then we’re back to that thing of you having to choose. Which is why I don’t want you to do this, Mal.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, tiredly.
“If … If she does keep it … then …” I paused again. “If we’re going to stay together, then you can’t see her. And if she decides to keep the baby, then you can’t have contact with either of them.” I paused, watched him, trying to see him without my eyes. Trying to read his energy, his aura, anything. And I couldn’t. I was suddenly blind to him in all respects but using my eyes, like I had done before I met Nova.
“She’s a part of my family,” he stated.
“This is why I don’t want you to stay with me. Because that’s a terrible choice to have to make. If she keeps the baby and it’s out there, you’ll know he or she is out there but you won’t be able to make contact. I’m not sure you’ll be able to do that, Mal. I’m not sure I want you to be able to do it because that’s not who you are. I don’t want you to change, not because of me.”
“You can stop laying it on so thick, Steph,” he said, quietly. “We both know I’m going to agree to that condition. I’ve made my choice. I choose you. OK? I choose you.” He reached into the open back door of the car, pulled out his rucksack and hoisted it on. He locked the car, then started striding down the path that led toward the hiking trail.
I said to him before that he didn’t know what I was capable of. Maybe I was wrong, maybe he did know. Maybe he’d always known that when I started this conversation, I knew exactly what to say and when to say it to make sure that this would be the outcome.
Maybe my husband did know that when it came to keeping him, to eliminating all rivals, I would use every weapon at my disposal—I was capable of anything.
CHAPTER 28
F our things that I love:
The beach.
The sky ablaze with red, gold and orange as the sun dips out of sight.
Putting on music and pretending to be an interpretive dancer.
The smell of freshly made coffee.
Unfortunately for me, in the past four months, the smell of coffee, cigarettes, bleach and petrol made me feel sick.
I loved coffee, and having to limit it in my life was upsetting. And not ideal in my work. I would look longingly, jealously, at the customers sipping it, imagining the rich, smoky taste, tempered sometimes by milk, other times by sugar, slipping down their throats. Working its way through their bodies. On the tube, the way I salivated at the people clutching their white paper cups of coffee was bordering on obscene—I was surprised I hadn’t been reported for lascivious staring.
I loved coffee; the baby didn’t. This also meant that I had to sit outside in cafés; thankfully the weather was pleasant enough to do that at the moment. Mal had asked me to meet him at our favorite café in West London. He and Stephanie had been on a walking holiday—that was one of the best things about him meeting her, he had someone else to drag along to those activities—and he’d rung me, it seemed, the second they got back.
This had been our favorite place for years. I think we wandered in from the street one wet day and kept finding our way back here. It wasn’t large, more like cozy, and strikingly beautiful in its simplicity. It had oak wood floors, clean white walls, and chrome fittings. They’d squeezed a tan leather sofa in the back and small, round pedestal tables with stools in the rest of the space. The staff were always smiling and made wonderful small talk whilst they frothed up your cappuccino. I always wanted to kick off my shoes and curl my feet up under me whenever Mal and I sat here. This really was our place—since before he met her. We met her, I suppose. But we spent hours in here, even after he met her—she’d never been here—just talking and laughing and drinking coffee.
Outside, in front of the huge picture window of the café, they had placed small circular wood-topped pedestal tables with chrome chairs, and that’s where I sat whilst I waited. Sipping at peppermint tea and trying not to mind that I couldn’t sit inside on the sofa, nor sip a cappuccino.
Taking a sip of the tea, I replayed his voice on the phone. Involuntarily, my heart skipped a little. He sounded so serious. Maybe he was going to explain what was going on with Stephanie. She had been weird on every level recently. She looked tense and wary every time she crossed my threshold; cornered. That was it: cornered. As though her back was against a wall and she was waiting to pounce on me at any moment to free herself. Being around her had become exhausting. I had learned about so-called psychic vampires during my many studies of all things esoteric: people who would—usually unintentionally—drain your energy as those undead creatures drained the blood of the living, leaving you wrung out or in a bad mood. Usually I didn’t allow people to do that to me, but for some reason my usual defenses and tricks for distancing myself from people weren’t working with Stephanie. She had become like Dracula, zapping my energy, and whenever she left I felt a great cloud lift from me and I would only be fit to lie down. All the excitement and happiness that had infected her in the previous weeks, had caused her to call me her “best friend,” had evaporated. What was left was a black hole into which anything positive was sucked and destroyed.
Hopefully, Mal would explain it and things would get back on track. I closed my eyes, enjoying the feel of the warm and comforting sun on my face. There was little traffic on the street, and few people walked by. I could hear the sound of the air rushing past. This time next year, when I got to Australia, it would be the middle of winter—sun like this would be unlikely.
“Hi,” he said.
A slow grin moved across my face, and I t
ook my time opening my eyes. “Hi,” I said. The happiness I had felt withered in the deepest cove of my heart as I saw him.
I knew his expression well. It was the one he wore when he was about to tell me Aunt Mer had relapsed: agony dressed up in a thin, watery smile and sleep-deprived eyes.
“Have you ordered a drink?” I asked.
He shook his head. Slowly, gently, he cleared his throat. “I’m not staying long.”
“What’s the matter?” I asked, sitting up straight in my seat.
He ran a hand through his hair, curled his lips into his mouth to moisten them. “You know I love you,” he began. “You’re my best friend and no one is closer to me on earth than you.”
If we were going out together, I’d know without a shadow of a doubt he was about to chuck me. But people didn’t chuck friends, did they? If you wanted to end a friendship, you allowed it to die, you stopped calling, you stopped seeing each other, you distanced yourself so much that the next time you saw them it was like you had been apart for decades and you had nothing real or meaningful to say to each other. You didn’t ask a friend out to a public place to tell them it was all over. Did you?
“I … You’ve been so amazing to me all these years. Even when I truly didn’t deserve it. We’ve had a lifetime together. But I need to make a lifetime with Stephanie now. That’s what I committed to when we got married. It’s only recently that I realized that I can’t do that if you’re still in my life.”
Apparently, you did ask a friend out to a public place to chuck them.
“We’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching these past few weeks and even more so the past few days, and we realized that we’re not ready to have a child. We haven’t had any real time together. Just me and Stephanie. I’ve been torn a little, only a little, about my feelings for you, but it’s been enough to mean I’m not a hundred percent committed to her. It’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to our marriage. Bringing a child into this would be unfair on everyone. The pair of us just aren’t ready for that kind of responsibility. We don’t want the baby anymore.”