by Lindsey Kelk
But I was tenacious and, apparently, a miracle worker. If I could get Patrick Parker back in my life, I could get a two-way conversation out of a middle-aged man in Costco on a Sunday morning.
‘Dad?’
‘Rosalind?’
‘How did you know Mum was the one?’
He stopped in the middle of the aisle and pulled his glasses up off his nose, resting them on the top of his head.
‘Any reason in particular you’re asking this right now?’ he asked. ‘Is there something we should know about the young man who sent you those flowers?’
‘No,’ I replied, respecting his attempt to deflect my question. ‘I genuinely want to know.’
‘You’ve heard the story of how we met a thousand times,’ he said, dragging the trolley forwards, and me with it. ‘Now, booze. Do you think just wine and beer or do we need spirits as well?’
‘Spirits as well,’ I replied without hesitation. ‘And I’m not asking how you met, I know that.’ At the chip shop where they argued over the last battered sausage. A love story for the ages. ‘I’m asking how you knew she was the woman you wanted to marry.’
‘Well, it’s just what you did in those days,’ Dad wandered on, plopping his glasses back down on his face to inspect the price of a jug of gin. ‘As soon as your mum got pregnant, I had to propose.’
I looked down and saw my knuckles turning white against the bright red of the trolley’s plastic-coated bar. I opened my mouth but the words got stuck on the first attempt.
‘Can I interest either of you in a cheese puff?’
‘No!’ I yelped at a kindly-looking woman holding out a plate full of sample snacks. She shrank back into her tabard, slowly lowering the puff. ‘I mean, no thank you,’ I corrected. Clearing my throat, I turned back to Dad and tried again. ‘What do you mean, when Mum got pregnant?’
‘You know your mum was pregnant when we got engaged,’ Dad said, sliding the gin in next to the peanuts, the Bombay Mix and a giant box of Walkers crisps. ‘I’m sure we’ve talked about this before.’
‘We definitely haven’t,’ I croaked. But why hadn’t we? Mum had never, ever, ever mentioned it. Was the baby planned? Was it a boy or a girl? If they’d had that baby, would they have still had me? These were not the kind of existential thoughts I wanted to entertain in a Costco.
‘What happened?’
‘She lost the baby, obviously, but by that time, the wedding was all arranged. Besides, I was fairly sure I was going to ask her anyway so we went ahead with it,’ Dad said, clucking his tongue as he considered two different kinds of whisky. As though he hadn’t just delivered the biggest family truth bomb I’d heard in, well, a week. I grabbed my phone and opened a message to my sister while Dad kept right on talking.
Did you know mum and dad only got engaged because she was pregnant and then she had a miscarriage?
‘I got to thinking about it when we were at Simon and Sheila’s party. It wasn’t exactly the wedding of your mum’s dreams and she deserves something special. That’s why I wanted to do the whole renewal thing, not just some party. We both missed out on a lot when I was working every hour god sent and she was up to her eyeballs in you and your sister. I have to say, it’s been a nice discovery, getting to spend so much time together since Jo left home. Like getting to know each other all over again.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Even with you back.’
‘Right.’ I was very ready to change the subject before he mentioned the sushi incident. ‘So, what sort of wine were you thinking about?’
But it was too late. Dad had turned into one of the giant cans of Pringles in our trolley. He had been popped and he could not stop.
‘People think having a gifted child is a blessing,’ he went on, folding his arms and shaking his head at the ceiling. A man with a trolley chockfull of Blu-Ray players waited patiently for him to move before giving up and attempting to manoeuvre around. ‘And of course we’re proud of your sister, she really got a double dose of brains, that one, but it was a lot. All those extra classes, all those extra activities. You must remember how she was when she got kicked out of the Brownies, or had you left for university by then? That tantrum lasted a full week. Wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, screamed all day long, from sun-up to sun-down. According to your mother, that is, I was in Switzerland looking at a prototype for a tap that produced boiling hot, filtered water at the time. Ground-breaking, it was. Back then, anyway; everyone’s got it now. You can make tea, right out the tap, you know?’
‘I’ve seen them, yeah,’ I replied, still somewhat struggling to get past the bombshell.
‘It’s a lot of maintenance,’ he shook his head. ‘You’ve got to get the filter changed every couple of months, take the whole thing to pieces if it breaks. No, it’s not worth it. Not when you’ve got a fast-boil kettle. Anyway, back to your sister.’
‘You know, this all looks lovely,’ I interrupted him and nodded at everything in the trolley. ‘But given how much you want to make the renewal extra special, maybe we should get a caterer to do all the food? And drink? Maybe we just get an event planner to do the entire thing?’
Dad considered this for a moment.
‘You want me to get an event planner and a new suit?’
I nodded.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Without a word, I grabbed a two-litre bottle of vodka from the shelf and placed it in the trolley.
‘Come on, Rosalind,’ he said, immediately putting it back. ‘You know better than that. Vodka is for Russians, alcoholics and students.’
Three groups of people he held in equal contempt.
‘Everything all right with the shed?’ Dad asked, making a wide left into the baked goods aisle.
‘I think there might be a leak in the roof,’ I said, eyeing a twenty-four pack of chocolate chip muffins. ‘Every time you hilariously hit it with the hosepipe at six a.m., I get dripped on.’
He chuckled softly to himself, missing my sarcasm completely. ‘There’s no leak,’ he replied decidedly. ‘Must be condensation. We’ll get you a dehumidifier.’
My phone vibrated against my hip with a message from my sister.
So?
Oh to be eighteen and not give a fuck. A second message buzzed through before I could turn it off.
1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarriage. It’s more common than you think.
Jo hadn’t even started her first semester and she was already well into the ‘I know everything and you are deeply stupid’ phase of studenthood. I remembered it fondly. The wonderful day I sat Mum and Dad down and explained the horrors of the dairy industry all while Dad enjoyed a Mini Milk.
btw can you ask m+d if I can bring my gf to the wedding? She wants to meet u all, idk y
Jo had a girlfriend and expected me to tell our parents.
So, that’s how my day could get worse.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I hadn’t realized quite how far away Lucy had moved until it took me a bus, two trains, another bus and a fifteen-minute walk to get to her house on Sunday evening. Wandering down her road, following the little blue dot down a Google Map, I marvelled at all the restored Victorian houses. When I was younger, when we first all moved into the city together, I was obsessed with Georgian mews houses. I’d imagine what it would be like to live in a whole house, all by myself, with my husband and then maybe even our kids. There was usually a cat in the mix as well, sometimes a dog, depending on whoever filled out the man-shaped gap in my fantasy. Patrick was definitely a dog person but I already knew who would be taking it out for a walk in the rain when he was on a deadline.
Regardless of how far away it was, the house was a beauty, I thought as Lucy let me in, leading me down the narrow hallway, past the living room, through the kitchen and out into a carefully designed, dinky back garden. The lawn was perfectly mowed, the plants all pruned to perfection. Someone had spent a lot of time out there, making sure every blade of grass met its rigorously ma
intained size and colour, and I was almost certain that person was not Lucy.
‘This is very impressive domesticity,’ I told Lucy as she set a teapot down on the table between us.
‘Dave is proud of his garden,’ she confirmed, casting an approving glance over the flowerbeds. ‘Ever since I got pregnant, I haven’t been able to keep him in the house. I think he’s afraid if he accidentally bumps into my belly, the baby will fall out.’
I looked up at the painfully blue sky, dotted with little white puffballs here and there. What we really needed was a storm – the humidity had been rising for days now – but according to the weatherman, the heat would hold out for at least another week. I poured the tea, to save Lucy the effort of having to pick up the teapot.
‘It was planned, wasn’t it? The baby, I mean?’ I asked, trying not to think about Dad’s casual Costco reveal. I had a feeling it wouldn’t exactly be a dream topic for Lucy, the first-time mum-to-be.
‘Totally planned, we talked about it for literally months before we started trying,’ she confirmed. ‘He did seem surprised I got pregnant so quickly though. He actually said he thought only virgins got pregnant on the first try.’
‘I know we used to make fun of the kids that went to Catholic school when we were little but what a sweet, innocent way to live,’ I said with a sigh. ‘Does he think women are like milk? That we go off once we’ve been opened?’
Lucy snorted her tea through her nose. ‘He doesn’t think anything about that kind of stuff. He does the garden. Look at my tomatoes, aren’t they amazing? Don’t let me forget to give you some before you leave, I’m up to my tits in them. I even started pickling. Pickling! What have I become?’
I wondered what university Lucy would make of pregnant and pickling Lucy and pressed my lips together to hide a little smile.
‘Do you remember our old Sunday night ritual?’ I asked, eyeing a bottle of Shiraz on the kitchen counter.
‘Face mask, bottle of wine and two videos for a fiver from Blockbuster?’ Lucy replied. ‘How could I forget? That was the only time in my entire life I didn’t have Sunday dread. Feels like forever ago now though, hard to believe it’s not even been five years.’
I leaned forward, resting my arms on her wooden table, wedging the points of my elbows between the slats. ‘For me it feels like yesterday. You probably don’t miss it at all.’
‘I do actually,’ Lucy countered, brushing her long blonde hair out of her eyes. She had so much more hair than she had the last time I’d seen her. Pregnancy definitely suited our Lucy. ‘But I miss it in the same way I miss getting an ice cream on the way home from school or not having to worry about which TV presenters might be secret kiddy fiddlers. That’s the past, that time’s over, we’re all on to the next thing now. One day, we’ll miss this.’
‘Not all of us are on to the next thing,’ I replied with a touch of regret. ‘The only half-decent part of my present is my past. If my future is all sheds and Snazzlechuffs, I think I’ll wallow in my nostalgia a bit longer, thank you.’
Lucy dropped a sugar lump in her tea and stirred slowly, a thoughtful look on her face. ‘Come on, I can tell you’re dying to talk about it. What happened to Mr Perfect last night?’
‘He was working and turned off his phone and lost track of time,’ I said, letting it all out in one big breath. ‘But he showed up and he brought us cupcakes! Isn’t that amazing? It’s hardly his fault Sumi randomly decided to become a lightweight on her birthday. But he did show up, you can ask John, John saw him.’
‘Oh, I know,’ she said, eyebrows arching slightly as she drank her tea. ‘I heard.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing,’ she replied, a small smile on her face. ‘Just that John texted us to say he’d met Patrick.’
‘That’s it?’ I asked, very unhappy about this group text that I was clearly not a part of. ‘That’s all he said, that he’d met him?’
Lucy laughed and pushed the biscuit barrel towards me. ‘I think John might be the only person on the planet who doesn’t have your number,’ she replied. ‘Had any more weird texts lately?’
‘Yes, several, all shit,’ I replied bluntly. I snatched up a cookie but she had to be a fool if she thought she could placate me with anything less than a caramel chocolate digestive. ‘What else did John say?’
‘He said Patrick brought cupcakes,’ she said, picking up her tea and taking a long sip.
‘And?’
‘He said Patrick brought cupcakes and that he was a bit rude,’ she admitted. ‘Maybe he misunderstood something, I’m sure Patrick wasn’t openly rude.’
‘No, he wasn’t,’ I corrected. ‘He gave John the cupcakes, that’s not very rude, is it?’
‘No,’ Lucy replied with a firm shake of the head. ‘Very generous.’
It was fair to say, I thought, watching a tiny bird dart in and out of the hedge at the bottom of the garden, that Patrick wasn’t always the sort to bend himself over backwards with new people, but he wasn’t talking shit about people he’d just met in a group text either. Neither Patrick or John were about to win a Miss Congeniality award.
‘It’s a shame we didn’t get to see him, I would have liked to have said hello,’ Lucy said, ever the diplomat. ‘Things are still going well though?’
Happiness blossomed in my belly, smothering any lingering annoyance. ‘Luce, it’s so good,’ I confirmed, a blush rising in my cheeks. ‘Like picking up exactly where we left off. Maybe a few days before we left off, the same but different.’
‘Please don’t start talking about all the amazing sex you’re having or my baby will just fall out,’ she said, holding up a hand to stop me. ‘I can’t bear it.’
‘I wasn’t going to talk about the sex,’ I replied. I was absolutely going to talk about the sex. ‘Everything’s wonderful, not just the shagging. Last night, after we left Good Luck, we snuck into this little locked garden and just lay in the grass and talked and, well, did some other things you don’t want to hear about, but trust me, it was very romantic.’
‘Whatever you do,’ Lucy said with pleading eyes. ‘Do not tell Sumi that story. She will not care for it and you will get punched. I’m glad it’s all going so well though.’
‘There was one weird moment,’ I said, keeping my voice light and my biscuit close. ‘John called Patrick my boyfriend and he got a bit “ooh, let’s not have labels when we’re just starting over”. Felt a bit random.’
‘Hmm.’ She made a noise into her teacup. ‘Well, men can be funny about things like that.’
‘I think he’s trying to protect himself,’ I rationalized on Patrick’s behalf. ‘You know, because of how I left last time.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Luce, men can be victims of the patriarchy too, it’s harder for them to be vulnerable and admit things like that than it is for us,’ I said. ‘You can’t hold every little thing I tell you about our relationship against him forever or I won’t be able to talk to you about anything.’
‘I’m not, I’m really not,’ she replied, rummaging around in the bottom of the biscuit barrel to produce a chocolate Hobnob. ‘But you know I’m contractually obliged to be Team Ros until the end of time. Until we see Patrick on his knees, proclaiming his love for you, preferably in song and with jewellery, we won’t be entirely happy. You know no one will ever be good enough for you as far as we’re concerned, let alone someone who’s already had a really good go at breaking your heart.’
I rolled my eyes but smiled at the same time, reaching across the table to give her hand a squeeze. And nick the chocolate Hobnob.
‘So, apparently Jo is gay now,’ I said as I took a bite. ‘Or bi. Or fluid. I’m not sure which one.’
‘Oh, that’s fun,’ Lucy replied, hunting down another chocolate biscuit. ‘How did she break the news? Instagram announcement? TikTok? I hear the kids are all about TikTok nowadays.’
‘She asked me to ask Mum and Dad if she could bring her girlfriend to their
wedding,’ I said as I pressed a finger into a sudden throbbing in my left temple. ‘Which I’m absolutely not doing.’
‘That’ll be delightful,’ Lucy rubbed her hand around and around on her belly. ‘I very much look forward to going into fake labour that morning so I don’t have to be there when your nan hears the happy news.’
‘You’re so lucky,’ I grumbled, looking back up at the bright blue sky. ‘I wish I were pregnant.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she replied. ‘Have you ever had haemorrhoids?’
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I was still suffering from my roller skating injuries and they were quite uncomfortable enough.
‘Time for more tea,’ I said, grabbing the teapot and ignoring her wicked laugh. ‘You stay there.’
She waved me off into her kitchen, staring contentedly out at her patch of the world while I fished around in different jars and tins for teabags.
It really was a lovely house, I thought, admiring the neat paintwork, the carefully restored radiators, the stripped wooden flooring. Lucy had always been good at making things beautiful. Where were all her things? I wondered, hunting for invisible clutter. The contents of my handbag spilled out onto her butcher’s block table, receipts and lip balms and pages from notebooks and random flyers I’d accepted out of politeness. Lucy projected nothing but serenity whereas I took my own personal brand of chaos with me everywhere I went.