Читать книгу One Thing Led to Another - Katy Regan - Страница 9

‘When I said my vows, “In sickness and in health”, little did I know how far that would be tested. But when I saw Howard in hospital bandaged and bloodied, his face unrecognisable from the burns, there was no doubt in my mind that he was still my Howard. Freddie was born three weeks after the bomb and it’s been so hard. But even now, I look at both my boys and all I see is that they are the spitting image of each other.’

Dee, 32, London

I stride into the atrium of Giant Publishing with, miraculously, fourteen minutes to spare. 9.16 and already the place looks like Piccadilly Circus only shinier.

I get into a lift with two people: one is Justine Lamb, the Editorial Director, head to toe in cream cashmere. The other is Brian Worsnop, owner of the lowest hairline in trichological history, currently devouring a Ginster’s Scotch Egg, very noisily.

He beams at me, revealing bits of sausage meat between his dentures.

‘Super night last Friday wasn’t it? You looked a little merry, to say the least, I particularly liked your…’

‘Yes, OK, Brian.’ I smile, tight-lipped. Justine Lamb does not need to know about my drunken impressions of Blanche Jewell, our MD, complete with a pair of enormous false teeth.

I landed my job as writer on Believe It! magazine in 2003, as soon as I got back from what turned out to be a pretty traumatic year travelling. It was the least glamorous title in Giant Publishing’s portfolio and was edited by Judith Hogg, a pigeon-chested tumour of a woman who couldn’t feel empathy if her life depended on it. However, it was a proper job in journalism and with stories like ‘I lost my nose but still sniffed out love’ it was hard not to see the funny side. The relentless interviewing of people with such shit lives meant you couldn’t help but think your own was maybe not that bad. It was the perfect distraction from a broken heart, too. A heart broken by Laurence Cane.

Bing! The lift door opens and I stride out, into a pool of morning sun which drenches the office in an orange-pink glow.

‘Morning Tess.’

‘Morning Jocelyn.’

Jocelyn, our receptionist, is from Perth in Australia. She has a shocking-red bob that swings around her face when she walks or even moves (mainly due to a sort of wave effect brought on by her sheer size) and a bottom as wide as her homeland.

I feel I can say this and not sound fattist because Jocelyn is far from embarrassed about her body. In fact she accentuates her ‘womanly curves’ with sleeveless, bingo-wing-revealing tops in lurid prints and tight, white, cellulite-enhancing trousers.

‘May I say Tessa, you look fintistic today,’ she trills, biting into a ham and cheese croissant. ‘Off on a date tonight by any chance, met someone nice on the Internet again?’

Ever since I made the grave mistake of telling Jocelyn I had a date with a guy from Match.com, she has asked me this question on average twice a week.

‘No, not tonight, Jocelyn,’ I say, hanging up my coat. ‘I’ve gone off men from the Internet anyway, all they ever seem to be into is skydiving and bungee jumping if their photos are anything to go by.’

‘Quite right too,’ says Jocelyn. ‘I’ve never been one for adrenaline sports myself.’

Back at my desk, I hear Anne-Marie busily relaying the latest in the saga of Vegan Boyfriend to someone on the phone. ‘He won’t even kiss me if I’ve eaten a bacon sandwich, you know,’ she’s saying proudly, pop-sock-clad feet up on the desk. ‘That’s how committed he is.’

I give her a little wave, she gives me one back. I turn on my computer and see the little red light is flashing on my phone.

‘You have two new messages,’ says the automated voice.

Beep.

‘Hiya…is that Tess? This is Keeley. You came to our house last week to interview me and Dean. Fing is, yeah, we woz a bit pissed when we did the interview. Dean had just bought me that bottle of Asti to help with the nerves and now we’re worried everyone’s gonna find out…’

Oh dear. Another second thoughts casualty. You’d think what with the tape running and the photographer turning up, people might realize the larger ramifications before they start blabbing about their boyfriend’s penis enlargement to the national press.

Next!

I try to concentrate but thoughts of Laurence are like a swarm of butterflies in my brain.

Next is a message from a woman from Dudley. Her husband is forty-three stone and bed-ridden, can we do a campaign to save his life?

‘Before I ballsed it up,’ he said. I can’t stop those words from circulating in my mind. Admittedly, there had been a brief moment when I felt like punching the air – it is only right he should have suffered a bit after what he did to me. But that was years ago now and anyway, let’s face it, I ballsed it up too. If I hadn’t been so flighty, if I hadn’t done a Tess special and buggered off around the world, assuming everything would be hunky dory when I got back, maybe we would be together now, in love, married, maybe even a baby on the way.

I’ve got seventeen things to do on my desktop To Do list but I all I can do is day-dream. The fact is, when I look back to my two and a half years with Laurence the entire era reverberates with a huge WHAT IF. What if I had engaged my head as well as my heart, what if I had not been so naïve, what if I had been thinner, more demure, more exotic. What if, for example, I had not got caught having sex with Laurence Cane the very first time I met him, by Mrs Cane herself? At her garden party. Maybe it was jinxed from the start.

I blame the sun. That and his liberal parents who plied us with an endless flow of Beaujolais. (My parents would have provided two boxes of Asda’s best, announcing, ‘and when that’s finished, it’s finished, Tessa.’) By three a.m. everyone who was going home had gone and Gina had passed out on the sofa-bed in the spare room. So, it was just the two of us, talking and drinking at the kitchen table.

‘Your mum’s so cool,’ I slurred, nursing about my eightieth glass of wine, my teeth black as a peasant’s. ‘So exotic and bohemian.’

Laurence laughed. ‘Everyone says that,’ he said. ‘And yeah, I suppose she is.’ Then he paused, hesitated, then said, ‘But she’s not as cool as you.’

That’s when he turned to me, took my face in his hands and started kissing me, passionately and urgently. ‘You’re funny,’ he said.

‘Funny?’

‘Yeah, and kinda sexy, you make me laugh.’

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. But what did it matter anyway? I was snogging a Thierry Henry look-alike.

He reached inside my top and placed his hand on my breast. ‘Come here,’ he whispered, fixing me with eyes that told me how much he wanted me. Then his hand was suddenly in my bra and he drew me close and we were kissing, harder this time, our tongues exploring each other’s mouths hungrily, hot, quick breath moist on my skin. He gestured for me to hold my arms up, he removed my top. He removed my bra. And not with a teenage fumble, but in one, smooth, masterful stroke, as if he undressed women for a living.

Then, pulling me upwards, never taking his lips from mine, he put his hands around my waist and picked me up, sitting me on the table in front of him. His hands were big and warm and as they explored me: my shoulders, my neck, my stomach, the nerves in my groin suddenly sparked into action.

‘Should we be doing this?’ I looked at him, eyes shining under the table lamp.

‘Don’t you want to?’

‘Yes, yes, of course I bloody want to!’ I said, which came out far more eager than I had anticipated.

‘Well that’s good then,’ he said, looking at me from under canopy-sized eyelashes.

He swept my hair back from my face, then gently pushed me back onto the table, never diverting from my gaze.

‘Stop it!’ I giggled. ‘Your parents might come down, your brothers might hear!’

‘So what,’ he said, ‘I don’t give a shit.’

He undid my jeans and I undid his, my hands trembling, and we were kissing all over each other’s faces and necks and he ran his hands through my hair, pushing it back from my face and kissing me again. Then he was flicking his tongue all over my nipples and I was moaning and half laughing at the same time and pulling him into me and we were going at it hammer and tongs over this huge oak table and I’d already decided it was true what they said about French men. And the lamp above us was creaking slightly with the motion of us, and I felt like Vanessa Paradis in one of those late-night saucy films. Then:

‘Putain de merde Maman! Qu’est ce que tu fou?!’

Doing a course in French, I knew this loosely translated as ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

Then Laurence leapt off me, his erection waving about like a rather awkward third person and pulled up his jeans.

‘Oooh la la.’ I noted the distinct lack of humour in his mother’s voice. Then in her face. She was standing right in front of us. ‘It’s three a.m. And you have a bedroom to go to, Jesus Laurence, have some respect.’

And then I said the weirdest thing, to this day I don’t know what possessed me.

‘Merci beaucoup!’ I shouted after her. Just like that. No joke. I nearly died.

‘What did you say?’ Laurence said incredulously. Eyeing me up like he’d just spent the last half an hour getting off with a mutant.

But I couldn’t say anything. I covered my face with my hands.

My stomach churns at the memory. I turn back to my inbox and there it is.

From: _LCane@blackberry.co.uk

To: tess_jarvis@giant.co.uk

I was wondering, now we have our glad rags back, you free tomorrow night?

I am now!

I am on my way back from lunch, after reciting the email word for word and relaying the whole dry cleaners scenario to Anne-Marie and Jocelyn and basically the entire office, when I feel the growling vibration of a text message in my pocket.

It’s Jim.

Warren. House party tomorrow. Keep it free.

Presumptuous or what! Now I get my own back. I text:

Sorry, no can do, have hot date with sexy ex. Ha! Kiss that! One all. I do have a social life of my own, you know.

My phone rings immediately. ‘Jim’ flashes up.

‘Oh, now that is lame,’ he says.

‘Come again?’

‘Resurrecting an old boyfriend. I don’t think that counts.’

‘Sorry, I didn’t realize this was a competition!’ I laugh.

‘You started it. You’re the one who said “one all”.’

Jim is always like this when he is on school holidays. Too much time on his hands, gets very childish.

‘It’s a date isn’t it?’ I say. ‘He’s a bloke isn’t he? He fancies me, I fancy him, what’s not to like?’

‘Fine, it’s just, you know, take your good friend Jim for example. Not one to resort to dredging up old flames when in need of a bit of excitement, I travelled far and wide for romance and found an Italian corker who can offer me first class stays at exquisite hotels with no strings attached.’

‘Annalisa found you, remember? White as a sheet, having just barfed in a bin in Rimini town centre you were so hungover, I seem to remember.’

‘She didn’t know I’d just barfed in a bin.’

‘Bet she did, bet she could smell it on you.’ (I always sink to Jim’s level eventually.)

‘No, I was gentlemanly and paid for her coffee actually and anyway she fell for my northern charm and quick wit.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Yeah, whatever. The point is, I thought you hated Laurence?’

‘What makes you think it’s Laurence?! I know it’s hard to believe but I have had other boyfriends, you know.’

‘Not ones you’d call your “sexy” ex, you haven’t.’

I protest but Jim’s right. I would not call any of my other exes my sexy ex. Not because they weren’t sexy at all (I like to think I have upheld some standards in my life) but because Laurence was THE sexy ex. The One. Or as near as damned as I’ve ever been to it.

‘Anyway,’ I continue, feeling ever so slightly triumphant, that Jim has even thought about my past relationships enough to even make this observation, ‘I never said I hated him.’ Did I? He broke my heart; I was gutted for a while. OK, maybe I hated his guts for a while but I never actually hated him. ‘We were young, I expected too much. That was like, seven thousand years ago now anyway. Give the guy a break.’

‘I’ve got nothing against Laurence,’ protests Jim. ‘It was you that he upset, or have you forgotten the night you got back from travelling and demanded I come round, having drunk a bottle of wine in about half an hour feeling practically suicidal? What makes you think he’s changed is all I’m saying.’

‘Jesus Jim, it’s just a date, he didn’t ask me to marry him.’

‘OK. Well that’s OK then,’ says Jim, cheerily now. ‘Have a good time and make sure you give old Cane a damn good seeing to.’

I hang up, walk back to work smiling to myself. Jim really is weird sometimes.

I text Gina ‘how’s the evil hangover?’ And look at my watch: 1.53 p.m. There’s seven minutes till lunch officially ends. Still, a lot can happen in seven whole minutes. I go to the Ladies and then, I don’t know why, perhaps it’s women’s instinct that draws my attention just then, to something in my bag. Shimmering among the bus tickets and leaflets about cultural events I know I will never get round to attending, the blue wrapper containing the other pregnancy test from the pack of two I bought glints at me from the bottom of my bag. I’m not pregnant, I can’t be, I had a negative test. (Shelley Newcombe told me back in Year 9 that you can never have a positive after a negative.) But it cost me fifteen pounds and I really don’t like waste. And so I go into a cubicle and I get it out. It’s less of a conscious decision, more of a cleaning-up exercise, just as you might eat the one leftover stick of Kit-Kat that was making your desk look untidy. I wee on the little stick and balance it on top of the toilet roll holder, not thinking, just doing. Then I set the timer on my watch for two minutes.

1.50

This is ridiculous, I’ve even got PMT: sore boobs, knackered, short fuse, the Works

1.30

No period though and that’s a fact, I’m a week late; I’m never a week late

1.00

I am stressed though, that’s also a fact and I bet two seconds after doing this negative test, I’ll come on (ruining my best knickers it’s always the way)

0.45

I glance at the test, yep, just as I thought

0.30

Two lines emerging, God, I hate wasting money, especially due to paranoia

0.25

Misplaced, neurotic, paranoia

0.14

I pick up the test and tear off some toilet roll – I’m wrapping it up now, to throw in the bin

0.10

But then the light catches it – the breath catches in my throat

0.08

It can’t be, can it? can it? oh my God! tell me it can’t!

0.06

I feel like I might throw up, I swallow, take a deep breath, exhale slowly, then look at it again

0.04

But it’s still there

it’s still there…

a cross, a bright blue fuck-off cross! I’M PREGNANT! I’M FUCKING PREGNANT!! and I can hardly breathe, I can’t get my breath – help me! – my lungs won’t expand, and all I’m aware of, apart from this sensation, is a great surging, flooding of blood to my head…

If it wasn’t suddenly rush hour in the toilets, I might be making much more noise by now. But I can hear someone in the cubicle next to me, blowing their nose, and I know – she even does that in her own special way – that it’s Anne-Marie, so I don’t, I don’t make a sound. I just stay where I am, hand clasped over my mouth, my world having just shifted on its axis, and me hanging off the side by one fingernail.

My first concern (which points towards promising maternal impulses at least) is that I must have pickled whatever is there, if it really is there, by the alcohol consumed last night, the sambucas at Greg’s birthday drinks, the drugs. Shit, the drugs! I had a spliff with Gina last night and I am overcome with a murderous guilt, a guilt I am wholly and completely unprepared for. And then comes the shock, it hits me like a wall. Shock, guilt, shock, what the hell do I feel? The emotions seem to thrash over me, like merciless ice cold waves, pinning me to the back of the toilet door and stealing my breath.

There’s the sound of flushing next door, the taps running, the pad-pad of Anne-Marie’s hemp boots and the creak of the door as it shuts behind her. I’m feeling a whole kaleidoscope of emotions now but what are they? Am I happy? Is this elation I’m feeling? Or is it horror? I don’t know. I can’t think.

I hold the test in my hand, my breathing shaky, my palms moist, and suddenly I’m very angry. Angry that the other test lied to me, even angrier for doing this – getting pregnant in the first place, and now I’m angry at myself for handling this so badly.

Then it occurs to me. This cannot be right. No, it must be the alcohol from the weekend, turning the test positive. Like litmus paper. But I’m clutching at straws of course; I don’t really believe that. Plus, something instinctive tells me I am pregnant. I feel different. In that moment, the whole toilet cubicle in which I am standing seems to spin and to distort, as if everything I have ever known, ever experienced as my life, the feeling of just being me, is annihilated and I feel utterly disoriented.

I have to speak to Jim. Now. But I can’t face seeing someone I know, so I don’t take the lift down I take the stairs, two at a time.

Outside, everything looks different, as if I’m looking at it for the first time. It’s raining, pelting it down, and so I run, clutching my phone, to the doorway of a recruitment company at the end of the road. My hands are shaking as I find Jim’s number. I’m pregnant, I’m fucking pregnant!

It rings and rings and then he finally picks up.

‘Hello.’

His voice sounds muffled, sleepy almost.

‘Jim it’s me again.’

‘I know. Listen, can I ring you back?’ he whispers. I hear a woman cough.

Oh brilliant, Annalisa’s there. I am phoning him to tell him I’m carrying his child, and his Italian F.B. is in his bed on one of her impromptu visits to London, almost definitely naked. I met her once, his gnocchi nookie, on one of her ‘romantic’ breaks to East Dulwich.

‘You should get togezzer with Tess, she is adorable!’ she apparently said to Jim afterwards. ‘You’re an English lost boy,’ she always says to him. (She means loser, but she never quite gets it right, and ‘lost boy’ sums him up so much better I always think.) I have nothing against her. I really couldn’t care less if she was in his bed four times a year, but now? ‘Christ Jim!!’ I want to say, but I can’t, because it’s not his fault. I mean I know it takes two to tango and all that, and that if I am pregnant (I am still hanging onto the fact this might all be a very large mistake), it’s his doing as much as mine, but I can’t start going all jealous wannabe girlfriend on him now. It’s just…stood here, his DNA fusing with mine, it’s in slightly bad taste, that’s all.

And so I say, ‘It’s really pretty important. I do need to speak to you. Now.’

‘OK, hang on,’ he says, and there’s a few seconds where he obviously puts his hand over the receiver and explains he has to take the call.

I can picture him now. He is getting out of bed, hair sticking up, skinny legs making for the door, holding his privates. He is slipping on his dressing gown, going into the kitchen and picking up the other phone.

‘So what’s wrong, hey?’

The concern in his voice makes me well up, my voice starts to wobble.

‘I am pregnant after all.’

Silence. He swallows.

‘What do you mean? You did a test, it was negative.’

‘I did another, it was positive.’

‘How do you know?’

‘There’s a cross.’

‘What sort of cross?’

‘A blue one.’

A pause. Just the sound of his breathing.

‘Are you sure you’ve read the instructions properly?’

‘Yes. I’m sure, I’m not that stupid.’

There’s another silence and then when he speaks again, there’s a tone in his voice I’ve never heard before.

‘Is it mine?’ he says softly. And as the tears finally fall, and I say, ‘Yes, yes, of course it’s bloody yours,’ I realize that the tone in his voice, was hope.

We arrange to meet outside the Tate Modern after work; I’ll bring the test so he can see it for himself. I put the phone down and walk back to the office, under a cloud, through a city sheathed in rain. I imagine that everyone I pass: a group of smokers huddled outside their office, a queue outside the post office, can see inside my womb, red and illuminated. And I have never felt so extraordinary in my entire life.

When I get in the lift for the third time today, who should step in behind me but Julia, my ridiculously glamorous friend from Journalism College, who is eight months pregnant herself. She’s features editor of Luxe now, having actually worked her way up rather than got to the first place that would have her and never moved again, so we often bump into each other like this and have some awkward conversation about how I should send her some features ideas, which of course I never get round to.

‘Hi,’ she says, but I’m not really listening, I’m too fixated on the words that bubble threateningly in my throat. ‘I’m pregnant too!’ I want to say. ‘Help! What do I do!?’ But I don’t obviously, that would be ludicrous. So instead I say, ‘Had a good week?’

‘Yeah, chilled out,’ she says, stroking her bump. ‘It’s all I can do to haul myself off the sofa these days. Fraser’s started calling me The Rock, because I’m so hard and big and immovable,’ she laughs. Then she says, ‘Oh God, don’t. My pelvic floor isn’t quite what it was.’ Then she laughs again and I do too on some very obvious delayed reaction.

I imagine she can sense it, smell the fact I’m pregnant. They say pregnant women have heightened senses. I know any minute now she’s going to say it and it’s making me nauseous with anticipation. I run through what I’m going to say in my head, how I’m going to explain.

‘Tess?’ she says eventually.

‘Yes?’ I gasp. Oh shit, here it comes.

‘I said have you?’

‘Have I what?’

‘Have you got anything planned for the weekend?’

‘Oh right! I say, letting out an almighty sigh of relief. She’s frowning at me now.

‘Yeah, quiet.’

I can sense her looking at me, but I stare at the floor. She giggles.

‘You’ve met someone haven’t you?’ she whispers in my ear. ‘Go on, I can tell by that face.’

I don’t stop staring at the floor.

‘Oh no! I know! You’ve finally got it together with Jim – that’s it isn’t?’

‘No!’ I snap, making her start back ever so slightly.

‘Oh right. It’s just, you were looking kind of shifty that’s all.’

Thankfully it’s then that we get to the eighth floor and Julia waddles out as I mumble something about having a hangover.

I rush to my desk, the email’s there. I didn’t send it. Thank fuck I didn’t send it!

To: LCane@blackberry.co.uk

Yes I’m free, if I haven’t been taken in by a polyamorous cult by then.

(Or if I haven’t been impregnated.)

I press delete.

By some miracle, I make it through the rest of the day, the sun sinking behind St Paul’s by the time I meet Jim outside the Tate.

He’s sitting on one of the black rubber benches when I get there. His gangly legs are stretched out in front of him and he’s carrying a bunch of freesias with foil wrapped around the stems.

He looks up when I say hello and squints into the light.

‘These are for you,’ he says holding out the flowers. They smell amazing. ‘I’m sorry about before.’

‘About what?’

‘Er, for being in bed with Annalisa when you rang to tell me you’re pregnant? I feel awful.’

‘Don’t worry, honestly I’ve forgotten already.’ A picture of her, nude, black hair flowing all over the pillow pops into my head. ‘Was she naked?’ I ask.

‘I thought you’d forgotten,’ says Jim. ‘Sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I have, I have.’

I sit down beside him. The evening sun flickers like embers on the river in front of us. ‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Look at this.’

I undo the front pocket of my bag, take out the test and hand it to him. He unwraps it, looks at me, squeezes my thigh, then holds up the test to the light.

‘Mmm. There’s definitely a cross there isn’t there?’

‘Really? Oh God, I was hoping…Do you think?’

The reality hits me, there’s no getting away from this now. I burst into tears, tears of pure shock.

‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I just don’t know what to do. I cannot believe this is happening, what are we going to do?’

Jim rubs his face with his hands then puts an arm around me and we don’t say anything for a while, just stare blankly at the water. Then Jim says, ‘I don’t know. But whatever happens it will be alright, OK? I promise. Whatever happens, I’m here for you.’

In reality there never really was any question of whether I was going to keep the baby.

‘It’s your decision,’ Jim said, as we walked across Millennium Bridge. ‘I’ll stand by you whatever you decide.’

It felt like I was alone at that moment. As if the glittering towers at either side, the Gherkin glowing orange like a burning rocket and the river below us were holding their breath, awaiting my decision.

But the truth was, I had already made my decision. The decision was made the moment the blue cross emerged. If I was eighteen, I wouldn’t think twice, I’d have an abortion. But I am twenty-eight, a grown woman and besides, the way things are going lately – Laurence showing up out of the blue and now this, the second earth-shattering event of the year and it’s only April – half of me wonders whether life is trying to tell me something and I should sit up and listen.

‘I want to keep it,’ I say. And even though I mean it, I still want to gobble all the words back again as soon as they’ve left my mouth.

‘You do?’ Jim stops, turns and looks at me. He looks…what is that look?…delighted?! And for a fleeting second, I think what a brilliant dad he’ll make and maybe, just maybe this isn’t so terrible after all.

‘Yes,’ I say looking at him. ‘It’s scary as hell but I do. I mean, it’s not sunk in yet, and this isn’t conventional. Actually it’s utterly mental! But…’

But what? I think.

‘But to have an abortion would feel like the coward’s way out,’ I say, and for that moment I really believe what I’m saying. ‘It would feel like not choosing life. Not just literally in terms of the baby, but for me, for us.’

Jim gets hold of my hand. We’re right on top of the bridge now and the wind is blowing our hair sideways, making our eyes sting.

‘I agree, Tess, it’s alright, I agree…’ He says beaming at me now.

‘And the main reason,’ I add.

‘What’s the main reason?’ Jim asks.

‘In the future, the years to come, I couldn’t deal with what could have happened, you know?’

‘I know, I know.’

‘I couldn’t deal with what might have been.’