The Push

by Claire McGowan

  I was cowed, of course. Technically he was my boss, my boss’s boss. ‘Hello. I’m Jax.’

  His eyebrows went up. ‘Goodness. What kind of name is that?’

  ‘Short for Jacqueline.’ My mother absolutely hated it, and under his gaze I felt my resolve to be Jax, not Jacqueline, crumble.

  ‘Oh, I see. How are you settling in?’

  ‘Fine. I love it.’ That was pushing it – I could already see how many inefficiencies there were in the way the charity worked, how they’d failed to integrate the internet or stop wasting vast sums on glossy brochures, which would all get thrown away. How much time was frittered away by people working at quarter speed. I was filing it all away, because I already knew I would run a fundraising department before I was thirty, and I would do it better than this. I felt that if people gave you money to help at-risk kids, and you wasted it, that should be a crime. I was gung-ho at that age. I believed that if you weren’t part of the solution, you were part of the problem.

  He leaned on my desk. I got a whiff of his aftershave, something expensive and overpowering. ‘We should schedule some induction time, Jax, so I can bring you up to speed on the board. Perhaps we could even have lunch?’

  I was new to working life at that point. It was the early 2000s, before Me Too, when boozy lunches and post-work drinks were still just about the norm. And I was twenty-three and he was my boss. How did I know what was appropriate? ‘Sure,’ I chirped. ‘That would be lovely.’

  This was the start of it. He hadn’t told me who he was. He just assumed I would know, and I envied that, I wanted it for myself. I didn’t want to bask in his power. I wanted my own power. That was what he never realised.

  On my own now in the house that I shared with my partner, who would have been in primary school when this happened, I wondered. It wouldn’t be him, of course. He hardly had access to the internet where he was, and they must check his outgoing mail. It must be her, then. The wife. Claudia.

  I pulled my laptop towards me and googled Claudia Jarvis. There was nothing about her. Of course, there was plenty about him, for all his lawyers sent out cease-and-desist letters. The internet held on to things better than any collective memory. I skipped over those articles; I already knew what they said and didn’t wish to relive it. Nothing about her, except in connection with his story. I couldn’t believe it. There were people with that name, of course, but none of them was her. I tried Claudia Jarvis husband. I tried Claudia Jarvis socialite, philanthropist, model. Nothing. Back when I’d known Mark, Claudia had been high profile, the kind of person who’d pop up on the Evening Standard social pages eating tiny canapés, or more than likely not eating them, in order to keep wearing the kind of backless dresses you couldn’t pair with a bra. Now it was as if she’d disappeared off the face of the universe.

  I clicked on my own Facebook profile, switching to ‘view as’ to get a sense of what someone who wasn’t friends with me could see. I had always been careful not to put up too much about my life, like where I lived, or even the fact that I was pregnant. But that didn’t stop other people. There it was, a picture one of Aaron’s colleagues had put up when we’d gone for drinks with them a month back, and tagged me in against my will. My ripe pregnant belly swelling for all to see. She had typed Aaron’s name in the caption, hoping to tag him too I suppose, but Aaron didn’t go on Facebook, one of the things I liked about him. In the picture I stood uncomfortable, this random girl’s arm around me for the ‘selfie’, her skin glowing, neat blonde bob. I’d suspected she fancied Aaron and was trying to neutralise me by being nice, and I wanted to tell her I was too old and pregnant and tired to care. But if someone wished me ill, if someone was trawling social media waiting for a gap to open up in my life, here it was.

  Alison

  Next to visit were the third couple who’d been at the barbecue that day. Aisha and Rahul Farooq. The door was opened by a young, pretty Asian woman in a headscarf, with a North London accent. ‘Hello. Come in, please.’ She was a physiotherapist, Alison knew, her husband a paramedic. Just like her and Tom, trying to make a life on public-sector salaries, trying to offer help to people who increasingly threw it back in your face.

  Seeing a neat line of shoes by the door, Alison grunted her way out of her ugly courts. It was hot, and her feet had swollen. Not through pregnancy, sadly. Probably they never would. A baby’s cry rose from the next room, and the woman disappeared, coming back with a wrapped bundle in her arms. She gazed at him with devotion. ‘This is Hari.’

  ‘Cute.’ They all kind of looked the same to Alison at that age. Was that a bad sign? Should she be more doting if she was going to have her own? ‘Is your husband here?’

  Aisha bit her lip. ‘He should be. His work, I don’t always know . . . If something comes up, he has to stay.’

  Alison sighed. She had enough to do without traipsing back here. ‘Well, you and I better talk now.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know if I should . . .’ Alison gazed at her steadily – why the reluctance? Did she have something to hide? ‘Alright then.’

  ‘So, talk me through the events of the barbecue.’ They were in the living room now, Alison drinking a PG Tips. She had already asked Aisha her routine questions, discovered she’d met her husband just over a year ago, married quickly, got pregnant quickly. Easy. They too had seen a flyer for the group, in the leisure centre, Aisha thought. They had chosen it because it was so much cheaper than the others.

  Still nursing the child, Aisha now screwed her eyes up. ‘We got there just after one that day, I think. We were late because Hari spit up on his Babygro, and we had to go back. Rahul was worried – he thought maybe saying one o’clock meant we had to get there at one, like a dinner party, but I thought it was more like you could arrive any time you wanted. Then we got there and Monica was a bit funny with us.’

  ‘Funny how?’

  ‘She said something about, oh isn’t it strange how different cultures work, I did hope everyone would be here at one, when we weren’t even the last ones! And Rahul got annoyed.’

  Alison leaned forward, interested. ‘What does he do when he’s annoyed?’

  ‘He . . . He goes quiet,’ said Aisha, looking down at her son. ‘He goes really quiet.’

  The day of – Aisha

  1.12 p.m.

  They drove all the way to Monica’s house without speaking a word. This was often the way between them, and Aisha didn’t know if he was happy with it, if he thought this was how a husband and wife should be together. ‘It’ll be strange,’ she said, as they turned out of their street. It was hard to think of the house, a small brick terrace, as home, instead of her parents’ place. She’d lived here for so short a time. But then it felt as if her entire life had changed in the blink of an eye. She’d been married to Rahul for a year. She’d lived in this house the same amount of time. She had known him for a year and three months. The speed of it had burned her, at the same time as it lifted her up with the romance of it, the excitement of how completely life could change in a short time. She had a baby now, with a man who was still a virtual stranger. And he was good with the baby. He did everything he was supposed to, he’d come to all the antenatal group sessions, he changed and bathed Hari and got up at night even though he was still doing shift work. It was just her that he never talked to.

  It took him a long time to answer. ‘What will?’

  ‘Seeing all the babies together. Here in the world, you know. Little people.’

  He glanced at her. She waited, having given him an opening, but he didn’t say any more, and suddenly it rose up in her, the idea of going home later, back inside their neat little house, with the scent diffusers and large TV and framed wedding photos, and it was overwhelming. The silence of it, after the noise and arguments and cooking smells of her parents’ house, she and her four siblings all falling over each other. Aisha had always wanted a home of her own, a husband and child. She’d been delighted when her parents had suggested a few introductions. When the
y’d produced Rahul, the son of her dad’s wholesaler, a paramedic – practically a doctor! – and she’d seen him standing shyly in her mum’s living room, eating dip, she’d felt so lucky. Her sister Jasmina had nudged her as she hung over the stairs. ‘He’s well fit, Ais, you lucky cow. Maybe I’ll get Dad to find me a guy too.’

  He was fit. He had a good job. He was kind, considerate. He washed his own dishes, made his own breakfast. But he didn’t talk. Every conversation between them seemed to bloom and quickly die, like some fragile short-lived flower. Aisha had hoped the antenatal group would be a rich source of conversation, speculating about the other couples, the ones whose baby was inside some other woman in America. The older woman and the handsome young man. The two women together, and she wondered what her mother would say about that. That Monica, how awful she was, how she’d bored Aisha’s ear off about a trip she’d made to Pakistan, when Aisha had never even been there. That young girl Kelly, where her boyfriend was, if he’d ever turn up to help her, poor thing. She looked permanently terrified.

  When they arrived at the barbecue, Rahul held the car door for her to get out, and she lumbered into the back, unstrapping the baby from his seat, before taking in the house. All the glass, the neat lawn around it, the driveway with a BMW and a Jaguar parked. ‘So big!’ she exclaimed. ‘What do you think it’s worth, a place like this?’

  He had his phone out, the rectangle of glass and metal that held his attention approximately a hundred times more than she did. ‘Don’t know.’

  Aisha sighed. She had a small baby. She was stuck in her life, in her neat silent house with this neat silent man, and she couldn’t go on like this forever. Something had to be done.

  Sausages, pork skewers, hot dogs. Aisha nudged Rahul. They were temporarily alone in the garden, everyone else having scattered. Monica’s husband had shown them the food table, then made some noise about getting more charcoal. It was the most she’d ever heard him say in a sentence. That was a while ago, at least ten minutes, and they were still alone out here. She said to Rahul, ‘Look. Pork pork pork.’

  ‘Does it matter?’ he said irritably. ‘I’m not hungry anyway, it’s too hot.’

  Aisha had spent the night breastfeeding a starving baby. She was very hungry. ‘Get the stuff from the car, will you?’ She’d brought a small Tupperware of leftovers from their meal the night before, anticipating this issue. Nothing seemed to be cooked, in any case, and she could tell by looking that the barbecue wasn’t anywhere near ready. Maybe there was salad, but hungry as she was, she couldn’t get excited at the idea of lettuce.

  ‘You’re not going to eat that?’ Rahul looked pained.

  ‘Well, yeah, I have to eat something.’

  He glanced around them furtively. ‘It’s sort of rude, I just think, to get our own food out.’

  Aisha counted to ten but lost her temper at three. ‘What are you going to do, be hungry all day?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Give me the car keys.’ She held out her hand. ‘I’ll go, if you won’t.’

  He sighed. ‘Alright, I’ll get it in a minute. Don’t make a fuss, OK?’ His mantra. Don’t make a fuss. Hide in plain sight. Pretend everything’s fine. But it wasn’t, was it? It wasn’t fine at all. She just didn’t know what was wrong.

  ‘Is there anything to drink at least?’ She was also extremely thirsty, given that all the liquid in her body was being sucked out by a small demon-like creature hour after hour. Funny how she loved him all the same, would lay her life down for him without a second thought. The way she had wanted to feel about Rahul, in fact. But you don’t, do you?

  Rahul scanned the drinks table. Beer, wine, Prosecco. ‘Nothing soft either.’

  ‘I brought some fizzy drinks. What happened to those?’ She’d handed them over to Monica when they arrived, seen a little pull in Monica’s face, even though it was posh lemonade, from Waitrose. Aisha found herself wondering what she’d done wrong, feeling annoyed because she knew it was nothing, not really. Monica was just one of those people who wasn’t happy unless she could judge someone.

  He shrugged. ‘She must have put them in the fridge.’

  ‘I need something to drink, Rahul.’ In his sling on her front, Hari was stirring. He would want to be fed soon, and she’d have to find somewhere quiet to do it. Luckily, she was among other new mums here. Cathy had arrived after them, and her little boy Arthur was howling somewhere in the house; Hadley was in a bouncy chair up near the patio doors. Isabella, of course, didn’t ever seem to cry. Monica would not have allowed it. She was upstairs apparently having her nap. Four babies. It should have been six, of course. Poor Kelly, she had lost hers. And Anita and Jeremy . . . well. Who knew what was going on there? There was certainly no sign of the baby from the States.

  She said, ‘I’m taking him to feed. Please get me something. Water, even.’

  Rahul hunched one shoulder, which might have been a yes. He looked worse than ever, his skin grey and sweating in the heat. What was the matter with him?

  On her way in she passed Aaron, coming out to check on Hadley perhaps. ‘Hi,’ said Aisha shyly. He was very good-looking, she couldn’t help but notice. She’d seen a man from Afghanistan once at a family wedding who had ice-blue eyes and dark skin, and Aaron reminded her of him.

  He looked exhausted too, dark circles under those striking eyes. ‘Oh, hi. How are you?’

  ‘Pretty good. Coping, anyway.’

  ‘It’s hard. We don’t get much sleep.’ He picked his little girl up, holding her against his shoulder. ‘She’s just the best though. I mean . . . this is the first time I ever had anyone I knew was my family. Blood family, like. You know what I mean? Like . . . she’s mine.’

  She nodded. She felt the same. Just then, Jax came out into the garden too. She still looked pregnant, her middle swollen up, her skin sagging and pale. Was it her age? Aisha wondered, with a pang of sympathy. She herself seemed to have ‘bounced back’, as they said in those magazines she sometimes sneaked a look at in the doctor’s waiting room.

  ‘Is she alright?’ Jax said to Aaron.

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘I keep trying to feed her,’ Jax said to Aisha, with a wobbly voice. ‘And she just doesn’t want it. Are you managing?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’ It was so simple for Aisha, so natural, she couldn’t imagine anyone struggling with it. Poor Jax. ‘I’m just going to feed him now.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ said Jax, taking her own baby, who immediately started to cry, screwing up her little red face.

  Aisha moved through the kitchen, where Monica was fussing with a salad, Hazel lecturing her on something called HIIT. She saw with surprise that Kelly had come, poor Kelly. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ she murmured, pressing her arm. Kelly looked terrible, white and green at the same time, dressed all wrong for the weather. ‘I just need to feed him then I’ll be back.’ She passed by the living room where Cathy paced with the baby in a matching sling to Aisha’s. She smiled hello; Cathy smiled back. Cathy looked harassed, her hair wild. Her phone was in her hand.

  Upstairs was quieter, cooler. Ed was coming down the staircase, the sound of a loo flushing following him. Aisha blushed. ‘Is it OK if I feed him somewhere?’

  ‘Oh! Yes, yes, of course. Any of those rooms.’ He waved a hand at a vast array of doors. Aisha thought of their little house, washing drying in the living room and all up the stairs. It was no way to live. And yet people did, they lived like this their entire lives.

  Isabella’s room door was ajar, and a teenage girl Aisha had not seen before was bent over the crib, watching the baby’s still sleeping face, one hand clenched in a fist above the tiny head. The girl jumped when she saw Aisha looking in. ‘Oh!’

  ‘Sorry. I’m looking for a place to feed?’ It was so embarrassing, having to do this intimate act in public, but it was either that or stay home all the time.

  ‘Oh. Well, there’s a spare room in there.’ The girl indicated one of the closed rooms.

 
; ‘Thanks.’ She felt rude. ‘I’m Aisha. From Monica’s antenatal group?’

  The girl made a snorting noise. ‘Sure. Her group.’

  ‘Is this your baby sister?’ There was a resemblance between Monica and the teenage girl that made Aisha sure she was her daughter.

  A strange movement went over the girl’s face, and she stared down again at the sleeping baby. ‘That’s what I’ve been told, yeah.’

  How strange. Had Monica mentioned she had another daughter? From a previous marriage, it must be. If so, Aisha couldn’t remember the girl’s name, or maybe she hadn’t been told it, and she really needed to feed now, as Hari was rooting around desperately near her chest, and her breasts were beginning to ache. But as she shut the door on the pristine spare bedroom – taut clean duvet with shiny bits, fringed lamps, wall-to-floor mirrored wardrobes – she somehow felt uneasy about leaving the teenager alone with the baby.

  Jax – nine weeks earlier

  Aaron was nervous, I could tell. He gripped the sides of the office chair he was sitting in, knuckles turning white, and his knee jiggled to a rhythm only he could hear. I placed a hand on his leg to calm him, but I was nervous too. A woman was going to come into the room any minute and maybe tell us who he was, the history of him, the secrets that lurked in his DNA. And there was nothing we could do to change it. I was worried. This, on top of the baby coming, of the pressure of me not working, it tipped the balance too far. I felt I too was holding on tight to empty air, trying to steady us. I’d told Aaron I’d decided to go on leave early, and it was a lie. I had lied to him, about something huge too. I told myself I was trying to protect him, at this difficult time. Or maybe I couldn’t bear him to find out the truth about me, all those things in my past I had never admitted to him.