Читать книгу How To Lose Weight And Alienate People - Ollie Quain - Страница 10

‘Eh? Moon-what?’

Luke is confused. I go into the lounge and stand in the nude for a few seconds staring aimlessly round the room, before grabbing his grey hooded top and putting it on. It’s long enough to reach past my mid-thigh but I still feel weirdly bare, so I find my knickers and put them on too. When I return to the kitchen Luke is aimlessly opening and shutting cupboard doors.

He stops when he sees me and smiles, tentatively. ‘I’m guessing by that reaction you would have preferred it if I was actually diseased, hitched or an ex-con. I’ve caught you unawares, haven’t I? Maybe it would have been best to wait.’

‘Wait?’

‘Yeah, wait.’

Or rather … weight. Because that’s what you actually gain, isn’t it? As well as a child, I mean, you gain weight during the storing and development of the foetus. Even if you have the dollars to pay an illegitimate Miami surgeon to perform one of those sneaky Caesareans where Junior gets whipped out six weeks early to avoid Mom piling on the last trimester of bulk, for the other six and a half months hormones will send your taste buds loony tunes. Some women are lucky. They get savoury cravings along the lines of pickled onions or gherkins. (At least over-consumption can have a laxative effect.) Some not so, and spend the entire gestational period with their head in a catering-sized pot of peanut butter. Or maybe even that special variety – based on Satan’s own recipe – which comes with swirls of milk chocolate spread woven through it. After the expulsion of the fully formed anthropoid, the only way they are going to ‘ping’ back to their pre-baby size is to surround themselves with a crack team of nutritionists and exercise specialists like the top models do. Miranda Kerr’s were fucking efficient. When she stalked down the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week for Balenciaga eight weeks after giving birth, she didn’t even look as if she’d had a bowl of porridge, let alone a son.

But obviously I don’t say any of this to Luke. He wouldn’t understand what I was saying. Nor would I want him to try. Because then he may try to understand something else. Me. I clear my throat to buy myself some time to think. I am baffled as to why he would have even thought to approach this subject. At some point, I must have started behaving in a way that has triggered him to start seeing ‘us’ in a way that was not intended. This unnerves me, because none of the other ‘Men I’ve Been With’ have misread the signals. I am angry with myself. So, obviously, I channel the anger towards him.

‘Are you completely fucking unhinged, Luke?’

He doesn’t reply to my question. He shakes his head at me and stomps into the lounge. I follow him in and watch as he puts on his boxers inside-out, yanks on his jeans and buttons them up incorrectly, then puts on his T-shirt back to front.

‘And you reckon you could handle a nappy?’ I taunt.

‘Forget I even mentioned it, Vivian. We need to clean up. I’ll turn the sofa back round and you do the cushions. You’d better get a cloth too. There’s Dr Pepper all over the carpet,’ he mutters.

‘Don’t sulk, Luke. You can’t just blurt out that you want to get me knocked up—’

‘Knocked up? Nice choice of words.’

‘Whatever you want to call it … and then go off into a strop when I don’t immediately suggest we start stocking up on sterilisation equipment.’

‘That wasn’t what I was saying. You weren’t listening properly. It was only meant to be a discussion about the subject.’ He pushes the couch back on its legs and turns round. His face is fully crumpled. ‘Jesus, Vivian. You can be such a …’

‘… witch. We’ve already established that.’ I make a concerted effort to soften my voice. ‘Okay, I’m sorry, go from the beginning. What made you start thinking about all this?’

‘I suppose it was because your birthday is coming up.’

‘My birthday? Well, it was really sweet of you to consider the gift of life as a present option but vouchers for Space NK are fine … then I can get some decent eye cream. Adele doesn’t keep hers in the bathroom any more – so selfish, how am I meant to stand defiant in the war against puffiness and dark circles on my rubbish wages?’ I force a laugh, but Luke’s face remains crumpled. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry … again. Go on, explain. I’m listening.’

He sits down on the sofa and sighs. ‘I suppose I’ve been thinking about you turning thirty-five.’ He shrugs. ‘If you wanted to have kids, then I figured now would be the time you would be starting to examine what’s involved. Clearly, you have a very thorough understanding of the initial phase …’ He manages a small smile. ‘But the rest of it can be more complicated, especially as you get older.’

‘Older?’ The word judders through me. ‘Cheers, Luke. That’s the second time today someone has brought up my advancing years. Roger was going on at me earlier for not having a pension plan. I had no idea that come Saturday I am an official shambles if I haven’t got the blue print for the rest of my time on earth signed off.’

‘I’m not saying that at all,’ he replies plainly. ‘I was thinking realistically. The fact is it does get more difficult and dangerous to have babies after thirty-five. It’s basic biology.’

‘That’s bollocks. Jennifer Lopez didn’t have hers until she was thirty-nine. Twins.’

‘They were probably IVF.’

‘Actually, they weren’t. Going down the in vitro route would have been entirely against J Lo’s strict beliefs. She’s publicly said as much. Fortunately for her, though, she didn’t have any ethical guidelines in place about accepting a whopping six-figure fee for supplying pictures of the tots to People magazine … ha!’

But this information does not throw Luke off track. He simply picks up where he left off.

‘Actually, irrespective of your current age, I sort of assumed you might have already thought about the whole parenting thing. Without getting too deep, it’s a pretty common thing for people who have difficult relationships with their own parents to want to create a more secure unit themselves.’ He pauses. ‘What with you not having that much contact with your mum, obv—’

‘I do have contact with her.’

‘I know, but not that much.’

‘She’s busy with the church and her catalogues and … stuff,’ I retort. ‘It doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about me or vice versa.’

‘Vivian, I make sure I see mine three or four times a week and she lives in another continent.’

‘That’s different, you Skype her. I’m not going to go to all the hassle of utilising visual communication technology to contact my mother when she lives the other side of Milton Keynes.’

‘And you never see your brother or sister.’

‘Because we don’t get on. Oh, and believe you me, if you’d seen any of my sister’s children when they were babies, you wouldn’t want to risk me having one. I’ve seen more attractive beasts carved into the stone of French cathedrals. I might carry the same genes.’

Luke laughs and I think he is about to drop the subject. But he doesn’t.

‘Okay, but there’s the issue of your father.’

‘What issue? There is no issue. I’ve told you he’s not around.’

‘And that’s where the discussion always ends. Why?’

I hold my hand up. My face feels hot and my neck is itching. ‘Right, the cod psychology stops here, Luke. We don’t need to talk about family stuff. It’s boring … and pointless.’

‘Not when they are the people who have shaped you.’

‘I shaped me!’ I snap. It’s definitely time to re-route this conversation. I flop down onto the sofa, put my head on Luke’s shoulder and change tack. ‘Look, I know I’m handling this chat quite badly, but you have to admit it was a bit of a curveball. Let’s face it, we’re hardly in a practical position to think about a, er …’

‘Baby,’ he says, putting his arm around me. ‘A baby. You won’t get pregnant by saying it.’

I smile, equally pleased he has been drawn away from the subject of my family and is loosening up. ‘Whatever you want to call it. How could we consider having one of those when we’ve only been seeing each other a year?’

‘I agree,’ he says simply. ‘It would be ridiculous, which was why I was only approaching the issue. It was you who went off on a tangent. Kids would obviously be some way down the road …’ Not if I’m driving! ‘… after we’ve lived together for a while.’

I feel uncomfortable again; as if I’m lying on the island unit, my joints pressed into the marble. ‘Where would we do that?’

‘Why not here?’

I burst out laughing. ‘Luke, hell would have to freeze over before Adele let you do that. In fact, hell would have to freeze over and then maybe a few years later sometime after an entire winter theme park with snowboarding facilities and an ice hotel had been built on top then maybe she would consider a trial period … as long as you didn’t bring your records, music equipment or cables.’

He tilts my head up towards him. ‘We could always get our own place – just you and me. It wouldn’t be as big as this place but—’

‘Monday would find downsizing hard,’ I interject quickly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on Warren, either.’

‘Since when have you cared about Wozza? You called him “tragic” last week.’

‘He is. But he’s a tragedy who has done you a lot of favours recently. If you moved out he’d really struggle to fill your room. I doubt he’d get too many responses from an advert on Gumtree: AVAILABLE! Tomb-like space in dark basement flat on very rough road in Shepherds Bush (usually cordoned off by police) – must be okay with dark Berlin techno and basic communication with other tenant. General knowledge of hydroponics and GCSE chemistry Grade C or above a plus …’ I lean up and kiss Luke’s cheek. ‘You can laugh now. Go on, I know you want to.’

He doesn’t. Which makes me feel odd, because that’s why I thought both of us were here – to have a laugh – and now Luke isn’t laughing. But what is even odder is that I’m sorry that I am the reason he’s not. I genuinely am. More than I thought I would be.