by Adele Parks
Robbie was quite unlike any man she had ever dated in the past or, to put it more bluntly, he was quite unlike any man she had ever slept with in the past. He was entertaining, with funny stories aplenty (something Pip always admired in people) but he did not seem to consider himself a one-man show and expect her to be a silent and adoring audience. He often stopped mid-flow and asked things about her life. He listened to her answers. Really listened. He didn’t listen in that way which made it obvious that he was simply queuing up his next amusing tale (a tale selected so it might place the speaker in a more flattering and impressive light), which was usually the case. On the rare occasions Pip did force herself out and about in a contrived attempt to meet new people (usually to a dinner party at Steph’s house) Pip had noticed that people didn’t really listen to one another anymore. Not sincerely. Often, she could practically see the cogs of people’s minds whirling as they were supposed to be listening to her but in reality were impatiently waiting for the opportunity to start up again on another one of their own fascinating stories. The impatience and sense of one-upmanship always put her off her stride and invariably she’d throw away her punchline or lose the thread of her story, making her look pretty imbecilic, rather than witty and experienced. Robbie seemed to be genuinely interested in everything she had to say and therefore everything she had to say became increasingly interesting. Last night she’d always managed to make it to the punchline.
Some of the details of their conversations were coming back to her. She’d regaled him with tales of her time in Paris, she talked about the catfights between supermodels who, always hungry, were short-tempered and likely to argue over something as small and petty as a hairgrip or the right to the last carrot stick, and she’d recalled tales of glamorous parties, where champagne and caviar were considered basic necessities. Giggling, she’d admitted that she’d rarely enjoyed the lavish hospitality as, more often than not, she’d spent the evening behind the scenes hunting for a fresh bottle of purified water for an important client. The water was needed to fill and constantly refill his finger bowl which another (even more junior) assistant had to carry so that he could dunk his fingers after each canapé; his chubby but manicured digits were insured for hundreds of thousands. He’d seemed really interested in her friendship with Steph and not in a juvenile, pervie ‘any chance of a threesome?’ way (which she often encountered whenever she talked to men about her special closeness to Steph) and he’d listened to her when she tried to explain how hard she found her parents’ emigration to New Zealand which coincided horribly with becoming a single mum. He’d listened to her plans to visit them one year and suggested that maybe that would be next year, now she had the Selfridges contract.
His stories had centred round his amazing experiences at work, his antics with his mates and his chocolate Labrador’s terrible behaviour.
Yes, last night, full of champagne and bonhomie, she’d been certain that she was fascinated and fascinating, that’s why it hadn’t been too tricky for her to hop into bed with him. This morning she was suffering from post-bed-hop regrets and misgivings. She’d rushed things. Again. No good ever came out of rushing things or, put less delicately, no good ever came of shagging a man on the first date because what was his incentive to come back? Everyone knew that. It was written on the stone slabs that Moses brought down from the mountain and while those self-help slash dating guidebooks didn’t agree on much, they emphatically agreed on that. The problem was Pip wasn’t a hold-back sort of girl, she was more of a heart-on-her-sleeve sort of girl. She knew that her grasp on reality was tremulous. Her family and Steph often accused her of being permanently suspended in fairy-tale land, which she thought was probably a just appraisal. Steph was always telling her the problem with fairy tales was that they were full of doomed princesses. Poor Steph, she must believe that now, more than ever. Pip’s mind briefly ran to Steph’s calamity. She must call her friend soon. But not now. By refusing to answer Pip’s calls last night Steph had made it clear that she wanted to be alone and sort through her mess by herself. She was formidable in her independent ways.
Pip knew she should probably try to be a bit more like Steph. She had to be a bit more realistic this time. There wasn’t just her to consider, there was Chloe too. She shouldn’t expect too much. She shouldn’t charge ahead and risk confusing Chloe or terrifying Robbie. She ought to be a bit more sensible and measured about how things were likely to turn out between them. She’d been carried away on countless occasions. It was time for her to grow up. It was time to be more responsible. To look before she leapt. To pause before she plunged.
He was lovely, though. Look at the way the hairs on his forearms caught the light.
Was it just because he flattered her with his interest that she found him so compelling? she wondered. Or could it be his accent? She was a sucker for a Scottish accent, she always had been, ever since she watched Braveheart as a teenager (she also liked kilts). The thought of kilts ruined Pip’s resolution to sensibly manage her expectations. She took a moment out from chewing sausage to project forward to her wedding to Robbie, she imagined him wearing a kilt and Chloe wearing a sweet little cream dress with a tartan sash. However, once she acknowledged that she didn’t know what any of the guests would look like on his side, she forced herself to settle back down to the present conversation and tried to focus on the here and now. Getting carried away was her worst failing and she had a few to pick from.
‘That was delicious.’ Pip smiled as she mopped up the last smudge of fried egg with a slice of white toast. ‘I can’t think when I last had a cooked breakfast. I think you must be trying to impress me,’ she asserted with a flirty grin.
She was pleased with the tone she’d hit. She thought she sounded quite cool and in control, it was probably a good thing that she was unaware that she had a glob of ketchup on her white vest top which had happened to fall, like a target, on her proud and pointy nipple.
Robbie grinned back (he was aware of the ketchup blob and the erect nipple). Besides, he was pleased that the cooked breakfast had so obviously impressed her.
‘And we’ve already had sex. Normally guys don’t hang around for breakfast, let alone make it after they’ve got lucky,’ Pip added. Robbie couldn’t help but look a little shocked and a little concerned. Noticing his reaction, Pip reran, in her head, what she’d just said aloud. Ah, she’d just said she was a slut. ‘Oh. I don’t mean my men rarely stay for breakfast. I meant men generally,’ she rushed to explain. ‘I mean, there haven’t been my men for, oh, ages. Well, since before Chloe was born. Just the one.’ Oh God, now she sounded desperate. ‘Dylan. I told you about him,’ she added helplessly.
‘Yes, you told me all about him,’ said Robbie. He’d stopped smiling.
Pip paused. Had she gone on and on and on and on about Dylan last night? She couldn’t remember exactly. She did have a tendency to reminisce about him when she’d had a few. In fact, Steph said that it wasn’t so much reminiscing as obsessing. Truthfully, although Pip would never admit as much to anyone, one of the reasons she liked to get drunk was it practically gave her permission to talk about Dylan. When she was sober, it was acknowledged that a couple of years after the split she shouldn’t really still be mentioning her ex, let alone obsessing about him. But when she was drunk, people tended to cut more slack, they’d assume she was being irrational and emotional. This would be true. They’d assume that it was ‘just the drink talking’. This would not be true. She couldn’t help herself. She really couldn’t.
He’d locked her out. Simply told her that that was it, game over. He’d tossed her away and he’d thrown his baby away. He never even called or wrote to see how Chloe was getting on. Occasionally, he bunged a few hundred quid into their old bank account but not with any sort of regularity, Pip couldn’t count on it. He usually remembered to send a birthday or Christmas card to Chloe, but not always. No one really believed her but her fury, her heartache, her mammoth disappointment wasn’t for herself alone or
even for herself primarily – it was for Chloe. It hurt. It hurt so much to know that she’d created a baby, actually brought a little being into the world, with the wrong man. With a man that was incapable (or unwilling) to take his responsibilities seriously. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have made such a gigantic mistake? Could she ever forgive herself? Pip knew that it was possible, not feasible, not probable, but possible that one day she might fall in love again, she might even remarry. She’d have another husband, but how many shots did Chloe get at having another father? That was a once in a lifetime thing, wasn’t it?
Shyly, Pip looked up at Robbie and wondered. Last night there had been a couple of moments when it seemed as though he knew exactly what she was thinking. She’d lunge for the bread knife and hack off her head if she thought he knew what she was thinking right now. It appeared so pathetic, so misguided and desperate to be weighing up her lay in terms of whether he was father material. That said, would Robbie make a good dad? Could Robbie be Chloe’s second father? Her first father?
Was she rushing things?
Yes, yes she was. And she knew it. Such thoughts were pathetic, misguided and desperate – there was no appear about it.
They were also understandable.
As it happened, Robbie was squeezing out a tea bag, concentrating on making a fresh brew, he didn’t seem too interested in what was going on in Pip’s head that moment. She did find that other people seemed to switch from the sublime to the mundane with much more ease than she could manage. As Robbie handed her a refilled mug, she tried to decipher his slightly dazed expression. Was it the result of discovering the pile of used tea bags in the sink (similar size to most people’s pile of grass cuttings), or the effects of the fabulous sex last night (a comforting thought but unlikely). No doubt he was thinking she was a total slut and he was probably regretting the effort he’d put into making the breakfast now that she’d practically told him breakfast wasn’t expected (therefore required) and that he could have slunk away at dawn. Or was he thinking she was as desperate as a woman shipwrecked on a desert island where the only sign of life was a well-run convent? Which was worse? Domestic disaster, local slut or totally desperate? None of these was the impression she wanted to give. What a pity.
She had a decision to make. She could say nothing more, allow him to shower and slip away, out of her life for ever, or she could try and explain herself. Properly explain herself and her life.
Pip thought about the night before, how it had been full of laughter and warm, deep kisses. And she thought about many, many nights before that one. Lonely ones, heartbreaking, humiliating and tedious ones. Last night had been neither lonely nor tedious. It had, in fact, been lovely.
‘I think I’m a bad mother,’ she blurted.
‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s not the ordinary stuff I worry about. Not the question of money, or using iron-on name tags rather than taking the time to sew them on or even the matter of tidiness and cleanliness.’ She took a brief glance around the messy kitchen and casually shrugged off the disarray. ‘That stuff I can handle. I might not be perfect but seriously, none of us are.’ She paused and considered. ‘Well, perhaps none other than my friend Stephanie. You know she organises her kids’ wardrobes not only by season but by colour and they’re boys!’ Pip glanced at Robbie and thought she was in danger of confusing him or losing him, so she made an effort to stay on track. She took a deep breath and told him her deepest fear, the one thing she’d never said to anyone, even Steph. ‘I think I created Chloe with the wrong man. With a disappointing man. And I’m worried that from day one all I’ve ever taught my little girl is that men stink.’
Pip was a crier. She cried at school Nativity plays (even when her child wasn’t performing), she sometimes cried when she listened to beautiful pieces of music, whether it was a full orchestra performing on the radio or a busker pumping out a simple tune on his fiddle in the town centre. She cried at happy endings and sad ones in books and films. She cried when she watched the Queen place a wreath at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday. She cried when she read poetry, when her hands got too cold, when the radiator leaked, when she got a bill, and she cried if she was late or lost.
Suddenly Pip realised she was not crying; usually, talking about Dylan or her daughter guaranteed tears. The combination of the two caused the sort of weeping that was not just a pretty, dainty tear meandering down her cheek but great big, ugly gulps, as though she was fighting for breath. But today, talking to Robbie, Pip was struck by an unfamiliar and delightful sense of calm.
‘I love her so much and I’m terrified, utterly terrified, that I’ve made such a great big rotten mess,’ she stated.
Was she benefiting from the famed comfort of strangers? Was it easier to admit this, her deepest, most vicious secret to him because he wasn’t her best friend or her mother or even a school-gate mum? Robbie was a stranger, OK a stranger who was more than acquainted with her bikini line, but not someone who was likely to judge her (he had not even noticed that her legs were as hairy as a Highland cow’s, let alone judged). As a stranger he was unlikely to offer inadequate words of comfort or worse still a cheery optimistic plan for her future. He probably didn’t care enough to do either. That was probably why Pip felt able to share with him her most intimate thoughts. It was probably nothing to do with the fact he had a soothing, patient manner, the most generous smile and such exceptionally merry eyes. Pip had never really understood what it meant to have twinkling eyes until she met Robbie Donaldson but now she got it.
She must not get carried away.
She blamed the lack of sleep. That might at least explain her behaviour. She was tired and not thinking clearly. Yet, she had to admit that saying the words out loud was a distinct relief. She felt notably better. Her worst fear was less threatening once articulated. Some of the menace and shame had dissolved as though she’d broken the spell by simply finding her voice. What was the worst that could happen now? Well, besides Robbie agreeing with her, confirming that she was a dismal excuse for a mother and walking out of their lives before he’d helped with the washing-up. Pip stared at him and waited to hear what he had to say.
‘I don’t want to pick a fight on such a short acquaintance,’ he said, in his oh-so-sexy Scottish accent, ‘but I can’t help but think that you’re wrong.’
‘What?’
‘You’re doing your best and no one can do more than that. It’s not like you conceived Chloe with Hitler, is it? So Dylan’s a crap dad. Crap dads are ten a penny. It’s not your fault.’
‘It’s not?’
‘No, it’s not. It’s your problem, but not your fault. It’s a problem you have to deal with and I think you’re dealing very well.’
‘You do?’
‘Oh yes. And you can trust me, I’m a doctor.’ Robbie smiled encouragingly.
‘You said you were a nurse,’ Pip pointed out.
‘Well, near enough.’
‘I guess.’ She almost allowed herself to smile.
‘Do I need to remind you about my fantastic bedside manner?’ he asked.
Pip paused for a moment. Just long enough to notice the spring sunshine flooding through the kitchen window. The bright, warm rays landed like fairy dust on her cutlery, her sewing machine and Robbie’s watch, causing everything to twinkle and glisten. Pip watched, mesmerised, as these normal household objects were suddenly and undoubtedly transformed into something much more beautiful and spectacular. Pip knew that all her friends and family despaired of her romantic nature, her willingness to interpret the most everyday occurrence as some sort of sign with a deeper meaning. They warned against her gullible nature, her overactive imagination, her sustained belief that she would be rescued, metaphorically kissed and brought back to life. She knew that if Stephanie were here now, she’d warn her to proceed with caution. Her mother would sigh with impatience and tell her that longevity in a relationship was rarely achieved if the lady was too easy with her favours. The
mums at the school gates might tell her to hold out for a genuine doctor, who would earn considerably more than a nurse.
Pip thought they were all wrong.
‘Yes, I think you may have to remind me of your fantastic bedside manner,’ she said with a shy but inviting smile. She held out her hand and allowed him to lead her back to her bedroom.
29
Stephanie lost all sense of time. She was too shaken and stunned to feel tired or hungry so she had no idea that she’d skipped lunch and she’d forgotten that she’d hardly slept for two days straight. Operating on automatic pilot, she’d managed to briefly speak to her parents and Julian’s father and she’d left three messages on Pip’s answering machine this morning. She was depending on Mrs Hodgson’s indiscretion to spread the news around her other friends and neighbours. The course of a tragedy would play out as it always did. Steph knew the ritual. Friends and neighbours would rally, they’d bake casseroles, draw up a schedule for childcare and offer to help in any way they could. Family would dash to their cars, pulling front doors closed behind them but not taking the time to double lock or set alarms, they’d be speeding along motorways now, hurrying to her side, praying to God they weren’t too late, unsure what too late might be.