by Tony Parsons
‘Can’t you fucking knock?’ Jake snapped, and Cat almost laughed at that – the idea of someone knocking before they came into their own home. She tried to find something else to look at while the girl fastened her training bra and pulled down her T-shirt and Jake adjusted the rise in his Levi’s. Cat saw that the girl was wearing one of those modern, ironic T-shirts where the same slogan is repeated endlessly.
I blame the parents
I blame the parents
I blame the parents…
‘Hello, Misty,’ Rory said, ‘does your mother know you’re here?’
‘She don’t care, the old cow.’
The young folk had a snigger at that.
‘Well, please let her know if you stay over. Will you do that?’
Misty’s stoned gaze seemed directed at a point over Rory’s shoulder.
‘Would you kids like something to eat?’
‘I’m so not hungry,’ Jake said, choosing to take it as an insult, as he did everything his father said.
‘Well – good night then.’
But they were already lost in the banal materialism of their TV show. Big cars, white mansions, bikini-clad babes by the pool. At least we dreamed of freedom, Cat thought. When did the dreams of children become the same as the dreams of middle-aged men?
‘Drugs?’ Cat said. ‘I’m no prude, Rory – God knows, you get all sorts in a kitchen – but aren’t they a little on the young side for drugs?’
‘I wish that was true,’ Rory said sadly. ‘But the drugs have found them by the time they’re fifteen. And Ali and I agreed that we would rather he did the soft stuff under our roofs, than the hard stuff somewhere else.’
Ali and I, Cat thought, and it made her blood boil. They had been divorced for years, and Rory still talked as though they were some kind of partnership. Because of their overgrown, overindulged child.
‘I hate the way he talks to you,’ Cat said to Rory as they undressed. It was a listless kind of undressing. They were not going to have sex tonight, she could tell. ‘And I hate the way you talk to him.’
‘How do I talk to him?’
Keeping his voice neutral, not wanting to fight.
‘As if you’re apologising for existing.’
‘Is that what I do? I don’t mean to. I love him, that’s all. He’s my son. Maybe if you had children…’
‘Maybe. But I’m not going to have them with you, am I?’
He turned his head away, stung, and she was immediately sorry she had said it. She didn’t want to hurt him. And she didn’t want children with him, or anyone else. Did she? At the same time she didn’t want to end up going to clubs when she was forty. Oh fuck, sometimes she didn’t know what she wanted.
‘That’s true, Cat. You’re not going to have children with me.’
‘Oh, Rory, you know I don’t want kids.’
‘I worry about him, that’s all. I have always worried about him. Before he was born I worried that his mother might miscarry. Then when he was a baby I worried that he would suffocate in his cot. I couldn’t bear to leave him alone, it was physically painful to leave him sleeping there alone. Then when he was growing up I worried about drunk drivers and sexual perverts and killer diseases. These things happen to real children.’
‘I know they do,’ she said. But she felt like screaming, but what’s this got to do with us?
‘And now I worry about the divorce and what it has done to him – how much it has hurt him, what it will do to his relationships and happiness. I worry about what the world might do to him, and I worry about what I have done to him. When a baby is born – no, nine months before that – you get the fear of God in you, and it never goes away. Not when you’re a parent.’
In the living room, Cat could hear the callous laughter of the children. She didn’t want to argue with this good man.
‘Don’t listen to me,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a bad night.’
She told him about Digby turning up at the restaurant with Tamsin. He smiled that rueful smile when she told him about the lobster and her revenge.
‘Digby’s threatened by Brigitte,’ Cat said. ‘That’s why he left her for this little tart. He can’t handle a successful woman.’
‘Well…it’s not necessarily that Digby’s threatened by Brigitte,’ Rory said cautiously, not quite sure if he wanted to get into all this. ‘Sometimes men don’t want a replica of themselves. Someone who is – you know – successful, driven, work-obsessed, all of that.’
Cat began pulling off her clothes.
‘But Brigitte’s formidable. What about education, earnings, professional achievements?’
‘It’s not a job application, Cat. Sometimes a man wants a woman who can bring something new to the table.’
She threw her T-shirt at him.
‘Oh, you mean like a big pair of twenty-four-year-old tits?’
She kicked off her trousers and walked into the room’s en suite bathroom.
‘I’m just saying.’ He began folding her T-shirt. ‘It’s wrong to think that men only want a copy of themselves. Where’s the law that says men can only want women their own age?’
She came out of the bathroom in just her pants, her toothbrush in her hand. She felt his eyes run over her long limbs and saw him catch his breath.
‘And what do you want?’ she said.
‘You know what I want, Cat. I want you.’
Maybe they were going to have sex after all.
Megan was changing.
Her hair was becoming less oily, her skin was becoming smoother and her breasts, always abundant, were becoming fuller and rounder, almost an embarrassment of riches. The chronic, all-consuming sickness was easing now, yet becoming more selective. She couldn’t walk past a Starbucks or McDonald’s without wanting to throw up. Wow, she thought. It’s an anti-globalisation foetus.
The doctor in her knew that the baby was hardly there at all – so small that it almost didn’t exist, despite the tightness around her waistband. Just three centimetres long from head to bottom. Not a child. Not a baby. A problem that would be dealt with tomorrow morning. Certainly not murder.
And yet, and yet.
She knew that a scan would show minute fingers and toes. The eyes were already forming, and so were the nose, the arms, and the mouth. The internal organs were already there. It was difficult to kid herself that she was ridding herself of something other than another human life.
She stood at the window of her tiny flat looking down at the streets of Hackney, still swarming with people going about their pleasures way after midnight.
Her eyes were suddenly brimming with emotion. And Megan thought, oh, God, please let me get it over with. What else can I do?
She put on her pyjamas and opened a bottle of white wine. Then Jessica rang her doorbell.
Megan buzzed her up, amazed that her sister hadn’t been relieved of the Prada handbag she was clasping, and somehow not surprised to see her. It was almost as if Megan had been expecting her.
Jessica sat on the sofa that had been used by countless other tenants, trying not to look disapproving. Megan found another glass and poured them both a drink.
‘Should you be…’ Jessica stopped herself, and held out her hand for a glass. ‘Thank you.’
Megan wearily took a slug. ‘I think my drinking while pregnant is rather academic, don’t you? Please don’t lecture me, Jess. I’m not in the mood tonight.’
Jessica’s face was pale and beautiful, her features a chorus of perfect symmetry. Our mother, Megan thought. That’s why Jessie is so good-looking. She’s the one who looks like our mother.
‘I didn’t come here to lecture you,’ Jessica said. ‘I just wanted you to know that you’re wrong about me. You think I’m jealous of you. Paulo and I try so hard for a baby – and then you get knocked up just by looking at some guy.’
‘There was a bit more to it than that,’ Megan said gently.
‘You know what I mean. You think I’m taking my disappointment out on you.’
>
‘I wouldn’t blame you. I know it must seem unfair. And it is unfair – but that’s the random nature of the whole thing. People who want babies can’t have them, people who don’t want them get knocked up on a one-night stand. Mother Nature is a heartless old bitch.’
‘I’ll drink to that.’
The sisters clinked glasses.
‘But there’s another reason why I was so upset,’ Jessica said. ‘You think I’m some kind of innocent, don’t you? Married, having my nails done when you’re curing sick people, dreaming of nothing more than my own baby.’ Jessica raised a manicured hand, overruling her sister’s objections. ‘I know it’s different from your life. And from Cat’s life too. But I’m not as innocent as I look.’ Jessica took a drink, took a breath. ‘I had one.’
‘What?’
‘I had an abortion. Long time ago. When I was sixteen. God, I was so stupid.’
‘I never –’
‘Of course you didn’t. You were twelve years old. You were a little girl. Cat knew. She helped me. Came down from Manchester to help me. I was meant to be on a skiing trip with the school.’
‘I remember that trip. You got hurt. Your knee.’
‘There was no trip. I was somewhere else. Getting rid of my baby.’
‘Jesus, Jess.’
Jessica shook her head, and Megan could see that it was all still raw. This wasn’t a long time ago for her sister. It wasn’t some other life. It was still happening.
‘Dad – you could tell him anything. He was a good dad, he did his best, but you know what he was like.’
‘Maybe if he’d had sons,’ Megan said. ‘Maybe it would have been different. Maybe he would have been closer to sons.’
She was still in shock. Jessica – pregnant? Jessica – having an abortion, and Cat helping her, while Megan did her homework and played with her dolls and rode her bike? I never knew, Megan thought, I never knew.
She wished she could have helped her sister then, and she wished she could help her now. But back then she had been a child, the baby of the family, and now she was about to go through exactly the same thing as Jessica. She would even have Cat by her side, taking care of her.
‘I’m not sure I could have got away with it with a full set of parents,’ Jessica said. ‘Or maybe they are all that trusting, maybe nobody wants to believe these things about their little girl.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Some guy who already had a girlfriend. Some guy I thought I loved. Some guy on the football team who thought he was God’s gift. Fuck him, Megan – I hope he’s having a miserable life with a fat wife. He’s not important. The important thing is – I got pregnant, didn’t I? I proved I can do it. But now that I want to – I can’t.’
‘There’s no link between what you went through at sixteen and what you’re going through now.’
‘See, I think you’re wrong. They sell abortion like it’s –I don’t know – this pain-free, clinical procedure. And it’s not like that at all. It’s like having the best part of you torn out. We mess around with our bodies, Megan. We cut them up. We throw away babies. We do, we do. And then we’re all surprised when we can’t have another one on demand.’
Megan sat down on the sofa and put her arms around Jessica. She hugged her so hard that a bone clicked.
‘What else could you do, Jess? You couldn’t have a baby with that boy. You couldn’t become a mother while you were at school. You must know that.’
‘I know, I know. But we do it too much. We chop our bodies about because we’re not ready, because it’s the wrong time, because it’s the wrong guy. And then we act all amazed when we can’t have a baby when we really want.’
Megan wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her pyjamas. Then she wiped her sister’s eyes.
‘This is a tough time for you. And for Paulo too.’
‘I just wanted to tell you that it’s not just envy and hurt. I worry about you. I worry about this thing you’re going to do. And I love you.’
‘I love you too, Jess. Don’t worry. You’ll have your baby, and when you do you’ll be a terrific mum.’
‘You know what I really want? I just want to be myself again.’
Megan heard those words from sick people every day in the surgery. This is not really me. I want to be myself again. Where did the real me go? I want my life back.
‘Yes,’ said Megan. ‘Me too.’
Jessica stayed the night.
It was too late to go home, and anyway she said she wanted to be with Megan at her appointment. When Megan was twelve, she had been far too young to be a part of what Jessica had to go through. But now the sisters were grown. Now they could stick together. Now they could help each other.
Without even needing to discuss it, they slept together in the same bed, just as they had when they were children.
Megan tucked herself into the curves of her sister’s body, holding on to her until sleep came, almost as if the younger sister felt the need to protect the older one from all the things that were out there, moving in the darkness.
Cat was waiting at the clinic.
When Megan walked in with Jessica, it all came back. Jessica at sixteen, her world unravelling. ‘In trouble’, as they still called it back then. The boy and his friends on the corner, smirking as the sisters passed by in Cat’s rusty Beetle, on their way to Jessica’s fictitious skiing trip. The waiting room just like this one, as antiseptic and clinical as a dentist’s. And Jessica later, after the abortion, hiding in Cat’s halls of residence for a week like a wounded animal, years younger than Cat and her friends, shattered and shivering, as though it was not the tiny life inside her that had been drawn out, but her own. Too young for this experience. Much too young.
Cat thought, why should it all come back? This was different. Megan was a grown woman. A doctor – or about to become one. Megan was clear-eyed and calm when she arrived. Nobody’s victim. A woman, not a girl. A woman who knew what she had to do.
‘Can I help you?’ said the old lady at the reception desk, and the three sisters ignored her. Megan and Jessica sat down either side of Cat, their bodies so close that she could feel their warmth.
‘There was this woman at my surgery,’ Megan said. ‘Mrs Summer. From one of those estates. The Sunny View Estate – the worst one of the lot. A bunch of kids and another one on the way. It would have been hard having this baby. This new baby. But then she lost it. And the strange thing is – that was even worse.’
Yes, it was very different this time, thought Cat, suddenly understanding.
Because this time her sister was keeping the baby.
Seven
We are all miracles, thought Paulo.
What were the odds against a life? Any life? All of our lives? When you thought of all the untold billions of sperm that fell on stony ground, and the eggs beyond number that were destined to make their lonely journey unfertilised, and the virtual impossibility of any sperm and any egg ever meeting, it was a wonder that anyone ever got born at all.
Every last one of us, thought Paulo. A walking miracle.
He flipped the switches and the lights went off in the showroom. The four cars in the window gleamed in the glow of the street. Two Maserati Spyders, the Lamborghini Murcielago and the fairest of them all, the Ferrari Maranello.
Paulo paused for a moment, his heart aching at the sight of all that low-slung, metallic Italian-built beauty. Then he punched in the numbers for the alarm system.
It had always been Michael’s responsibility to lock up for the night. That changed after Chloe was born. Now Michael had taken to disappearing early, and Paulo happily shouldered the extra workload. When you had a kid, thought Paulo, work was different. Not so central to your life. Let Michael go home and enjoy some quality time with his beautiful baby girl. For the first time in his life, Paulo envied his brother.
With the alarm’s warning signal buzzing, Paulo headed for the door, the keys in his hand. Then he paused. There was a sound that shouldn’t be
there. It was coming from Michael’s office.
Paulo quickly punched in the code again and the alarm fell silent. He could hear the low murmur of voices. He glanced at the showroom. How much was this lot worth? In this neighbourhood convenience store clerks were frequently knifed for a fistful of till money, and pensioners were battered for a purse containing nothing but coins for cat food. The rent was cheap around here, and so was life.
There was a toolbox behind the reception desk. Paulo opened it as quietly as he could and pulled out a wrench. Then, conscious of his shallow breathing and hands that shook with fear, he edged towards the darkened office, holding the wrench like a club.
Shouting more from fear than rage, Paulo threw open the door to Michael’s office and turned on the lights.
And there was Ginger on top of the desk on all fours, her skirt pushed up above her breasts and her thong pulled down around her knees, and hammering away behind her when he was supposed to be home with his wife and child, there was his brother Michael.
When they were alone – and Ginger had set an Olympic record for getting on her bra and pants – Paulo slapped Michael’s face, slapped him as hard as he could, this brother who had always been able to beat him up. Paulo didn’t care tonight. He felt wild and out of control, as if something priceless had been insulted here.
‘You idiot. I don’t believe you. You’ve got a perfect life, and you’re pissing it all away.’
Michael’s face twisted into a bitter grin. There was a red mark throbbing on his stubbled cheek.
‘What do you know about my life?’
Paulo tried to slap him again but Michael easily swatted away the blow.
‘What don’t I understand, Mike? That things are not what they were at home? Get over it. You’re a father now.’
‘You don’t understand how they change. Women. When they have had a baby. You don’t understand how they change.’
Paulo felt the argument slipping away from him. Michael was making it sound complicated. And it wasn’t complicated at all.
‘Of course they change. You’re not the centre of their world any more. That’s the way it should be.’