The Family Way

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Now look what you’ve done,’ Jessica snapped.

  She can’t be brave any more, Cat thought. It’s too much, it’s too hard. My sister has had to be brave for so long. And now all the dark stuff is overwhelming Jessica’s brave, kind heart.

  ‘Why do you think I came to you before anyone, Jess? Because I know it must hurt. But I need you. I need you to keep being my sister. I need you to be a wonderful aunt to this baby. Just as you are with Poppy.’

  ‘That’s me,’ Jessica said, almost drowned out by the baby’s screams. ‘Auntie Jessica.’

  ‘I have to go,’ Cat said wearily. She thought, what am I meant to do? Apologise? I can’t do that.

  ‘You should have taken better care of me, Cat.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I was just a kid. Sixteen years old. And a young sixteen. You were twenty. At university. A grown-up woman.’ She shook her head. ‘You should have taken better care of me.’

  Cat was genuinely shocked.

  ‘Are you still thinking about all that old stuff? You’ve got to get over this thing, Jess. What else could we have done? What were you going to be – a mum at sixteen? It’s got nothing to do with anything else.’

  ‘You think an abortion is good for you?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

  ‘Ask your sister. Ask Megan. You career women really make me laugh. You think it’s another form of contraception. They tear the baby out of you. With a vacuum cleaner. A fucking vacuum cleaner. What does that do to you? I’ll tell you. It ruins you for life.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. None of it was your fault. There was nothing else you could do.’

  ‘It ruins you for life.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Jess.’

  By now Poppy was apoplectic with rage. Jessica rocked her furiously. Cat had never seen a baby turn that colour. She was howling as though she would never stop.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Cat said.

  Jessica turned her full attention to the baby, making soothing noises, sssh-sssh, sssh-sssh, that sounded like waves or the wind. The baby stifled a snotty sob, and was silent.

  ‘Megan can’t do that,’ Jessica grinned. ‘She just cries and cries all night.’ She smoothed the baby’s newly minted skin. ‘You’re driving your mummy mad, aren’t you, darling?’

  At least we’ve got each other.

  That’s what Rory was planning to say to her when IVF failed them, as it surely would.

  What were the odds against it? He didn’t need a doctor or a bookie to tell him that it was a long shot.

  People thought that IVF was something that only the woman went through. And of course it was true that it was Cat who was pumped full of hormones, who had her body turned into an egg factory. But he was there too—watching her stick those needles into her beautiful flat stomach, he was there seeing her mood change from cautious optimism to bleak despair, holding his breath for all that time, waiting for something to go wrong.

  At least we’ve got each other.

  He felt they had to try. And he tried because he loved her. But in his heart he had steeled himself for failure.

  They had tried, he told himself, during the longest fortnight of his life, the big countdown, when all they could do was wait to see if both of the fertilised eggs placed inside her had melted away. At least we gave it a go, we did our best, and it would have been great, of course it would, but at least we have got each other. It’s not the end of the world and it’s not the end of us.

  But that’s the thing about long shots.

  Sometimes they come in.

  They stood in the middle of the deserted dojo, smelling the sweat and effort of all those departed bodies.

  ‘You’re happy, aren’t you?’ Cat asked him. ‘It’s what you want too, isn’t it?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ he laughed. ‘It’s the best thing in the world.’

  And as she smothered him in kisses, he forgot all the doubts. The best thing in the world! A little boy – or maybe a girl! – who was half of him and half of her. Another human life created from the love between them. It was the most natural thing on the planet, and yet it felt like something magical. The birth of a child, this everyday wonder.

  The bitterness of his divorce from Ali hadn’t obliterated his memory of what it was like when Jake was born – the pride they had both felt, the surge of overwhelming happiness, and the love that gets unlocked inside you, all the love that you never knew existed.

  He kissed Cat’s face, her head in his hands, his feelings for her and their unborn child all one, inseparable.

  ‘You did it,’ he said. ‘You really did it.’

  ‘I did, didn’t I?’ she chuckled. ‘And you want it as much as me – you’re sure about that?’

  ‘It’s the best thing in the world.’

  And he meant it. He only remembered the nagging uncertainties when Cat had gone off to Mamma-san and he called his son to tell him the good news. ‘That’s great, Dad,’ Jake said, sounding as though someone had changed his world without asking him if it was okay. ‘But what does this mean for me? Am I this baby’s sort of grown-up half-brother, or a kind of uncle, or nothing at all? Is this my family or some other family you’re starting?’

  Rory had no answers for his teenage son.

  And there was something else. This baby – this magical, unborn child – measured out the boundaries of Rory’s life. When Jake had been born, Rory had not thought about how long he would live. It hadn’t occurred to him. He had taken it for granted that he would at the very least last as long as it took Jake to grow up – and so it had proved.

  But Rory was no longer a young man. Before Cat came to the dojo tonight, he had felt it in his lesson. The aches and protests of joints and muscles that had spent half a century on the planet. He could still do a mawashi-geri, a roundhouse kick, that would knock your hat off, but afterwards the burning soreness in his knee told him that time was running out.

  By the time the baby came, he would be over fifty. He remembered his father at the same age. An old man, his race almost run, only ten years or so from dying of a massive heart attack.

  Rory could tell himself that it was different now, another age. Unlike his father, he had never smoked. Unlike many others of his generation, he had never taken drugs. His job kept him fit – fitter than any man in his middle years had any right to be.

  But only an idiot would deny the march of time. And when this baby was in its teens, Rory would be indisputably old. If he made it. If he didn’t die at the same age as his father. If he avoided cancer, heart attacks and strokes. If he didn’t get hit by a bus.

  And what if the things that had happened in the past happened all over again? What if his private history repeated itself? What if he didn’t stay with Cat, just as he hadn’t stayed with Jake’s mother? What if they couldn’t hold their relationship together for far longer than any relationship he had ever had?

  His generation had grown accustomed to their relationships, their marriages, revolving around the three Fs – fucking around, fucking up and fucking off. The three Fs were considered the norm.

  And as a moral philosophy, or amoral philosophy, the three Fs certainly had their advantages.

  He would never have known Cat if his ex-wife hadn’t fallen in love with someone else. Escaping from the wreckage of his first marriage had left him free to find the love of his life. This new baby would never have existed without his visit to the divorce court.

  But what had hurt most about the break-up of his marriage – what had bust his heart wide open, and clawed at it even now – was watching their son change from a bright, sunny-natured child to a withdrawn, frightened boy who trusted no one.

  Ali blithely attributed the change in Jake to the miserable transformations of adolescence. But in his bones, and with a guilt that he would feel until his dying day, Rory knew it was because of the divorce.

  Ali liked to pretend that the three of them were happier than
they had been when they were together. Perhaps lying to herself about their son was her way of coping. Because how could any parent live with the knowledge that they had inflicted wounds on their child that would last a lifetime?

  It all came back to him, the fathomless anger and sadness of their divorce, the feeling of having his child torn away from him. He remembered when Ali and Jake had first moved in with the man who was going to restore Ali’s happiness. Rory wasn’t allowed to call to tell Jake good night – ‘An invasion of our space,’ Ali said – so Rory would drive to their house, and park outside until he saw the light go off in his son’s bedroom.

  Good night, good night.

  Would he one day park outside some other stranger’s home and watch the light go off in this new baby’s bedroom?

  ‘This is the best thing in the world,’ he had told Cat, gently placing one of his scarred hands on her belly, and he truly felt it.

  But he didn’t have the words to tell her that the baby also measured out the distance of his life, that little he or little she was a reminder of his own mortality, and nature’s way of telling him that everything in this world comes to an end.

  Twenty-one

  ‘Hilarious,’ Brigitte told Cat. ‘You’re squeezing one out before you hit forty! You’re really doing it! Dropping one at the very last minute! I think it’s…hilarious.’

  Cat smiled uncertainly. ‘Well, I’m not quite ready for the change, you know.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Brigitte said. ‘Don’t get me wrong. Congratulations to you – and Rory, of course. Who would have thought he had it in him? I just think it’s, well, hilarious. Wait a minute.’

  Brigitte disappeared into the kitchen. It was early evening in Mamma-san and the restaurant was empty, the only sounds the murmur of the kitchen staff preparing for the night ahead, and the rain lashing against the windows. Cat touched her stomach again. It was good to be inside on a night like this. Brigitte came back holding two glasses and a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Let’s drink to you. My clever Cat.’

  Cat hesitated.

  ‘I’d love to, but I guess I shouldn’t.’ She patted her belly. ‘You know.’

  Brigitte groaned. ‘Oh, come on. It’s a special night. Just one. That’s not going to hurt you.’

  Brigitte expertly tore off the foil, peeled back the wire and began unscrewing the cork. It came away with a discreet pop. She poured two glasses and held one out to Cat.

  ‘I really don’t want to. But thanks.’

  Cat reached out to stroke Brigitte’s arm. She owed so much to this woman, she didn’t want to hurt her. But at the same time – she had to give her baby every chance.

  ‘You’re not going to get all prissy on me, are you, Cat?’

  Brigitte held a glass in each hand. She took a sip from one of them.

  ‘It’s nothing like that. I just – well, it doesn’t seem right. But thank you for the thought. Really. Later, okay? After the birth.’

  Brigitte swiftly drained her glass, and lifted the other in a salute that was almost mocking.

  ‘After the birth,’ she said. ‘Of course. Just promise me you’re not going to turn into one of those smug, born-again mums who renounces her wild past.’

  ‘I’m not sure I ever really had a wild past,’ Cat said. ‘But I think I know what you mean. I certainly lived the single life for long enough. The free life. But it gets old, doesn’t it?’

  Brigitte’s face was impassive. She sipped her drink and said nothing. Cat took the empty glass from her hand and filled it with water. There were not many people in this world she would share a glass with – only her sisters and Brigitte.

  ‘I can’t say I’ll miss it,’ Cat said. ‘All those men who have either just broken up with the greatest girl in the world or the biggest bitch in the universe.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Brigitte said, non-committal.

  ‘It’s funny. When I was growing up, looking after my two sisters, all I wanted was to be free. Nobody holding me down. But being free didn’t really work out that way for me. I always felt it should have made me happier than it did. To tell the truth, I was starting to feel desperate. And I hated feeling desperate.’

  Brigitte was smiling at her.

  ‘Oh, come on, Cat. You don’t think what you’re doing is a little bit desperate?’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘Having a baby at the last moment with the man who happens to be handy.’

  ‘It’s not the last moment!’

  ‘Well – it’s getting there. Come on. It’s far more desperate than anything you did as a single woman. And it’s hilarious.’

  Cat could feel the ice inside. She didn’t want it to be this way. She wanted Brigitte to be happy for her.

  ‘Could you please stop saying that?’ Hearing her voice trembling with emotion, and hating it. ‘Whatever my baby is, I promise you she is not hilarious. There’s nothing funny about her.’

  ‘Ah, but it is amusing. Women like you make me laugh, Cat. You really do. All your talk about independence and freedom, and then you grab the first chance you get to play hausfrau.’

  ‘I intend to keep working. I can’t afford to do anything else. Rory loves his work, but it doesn’t pay much.’

  ‘So how’s it going to work? Have you thought about it at all?’

  Of course she had thought about it. Not as much as she had thought about the doubt she saw in Rory’s eyes, and not as much as she had thought about whether the baby would be all right or not. But she had thought about her life as a working mother, even though it all seemed impossibly distant.

  ‘I’ll come back to work after twelve weeks. If that’s okay with you. My sisters will help. Rory doesn’t have classes beyond eight. It will be fine.’

  Brigitte finished her champagne. She wasn’t smiling now.

  ‘But you’ll have to slip off earlier, won’t you? Because your baby will be teething, or have the running squirts, or miss its mummy. Or when it gets a bit bigger it will be dressed up as a donkey’s arse in the school play at Christmas. And Mummy will have to be there, won’t she?’

  Cat shook her head, her eyes brimming with hurt. She would never have believed this conversation was possible. Beyond her sisters, and Rory, and her father, there was no one she cared about more than Brigitte. She had taught Cat how to be a grown woman, independent and strong. And now she was withdrawing her love, just as everyone took away their love in the end.

  ‘You act as though my pregnancy is some kind of betrayal.’

  Brigitte laughed.

  ‘You don’t betray me, Cat. You betray yourself. In two years you’ll be pushing a pram down some suburban high street, and you’ll wonder whatever happened to your life.’

  Cat drained her glass and set it down carefully.

  ‘You know what the real problem is, Brigitte? It’s not the smug mums. It’s the sour old bags like you.’

  ‘Sour old bags like me?’

  ‘It’s all you old firebrands who were afraid that a baby would cramp your style. You should have had a baby, Brigitte. It would have made you a nicer person.’

  ‘Come on, Cat. Let’s not fight. I’m not sacking you or anything. You know how much I need you.’

  Cat put down her empty champagne glass and picked up her coat.

  ‘I know you’re not sacking me, Brigitte. Because I quit.’

  Cat didn’t turn around when Brigitte called her name, and she walked out of Mamma-san thinking, oh, very smart.

  She had heard of women who had lost their jobs during maternity leave, plenty of them. But she couldn’t recall anyone else who had become unemployed simply by getting a bun in the oven. She stroked her stomach, down-up-down, and wondered what they were going to do. The three of them. Her little family.

  Outside the restaurant, Jessica was standing in the rain, waiting for her.

  ‘I don’t want to be this way, Cat,’ she told her sister.

  Cat wasn’t sure what Jessica meant. She didn’t want to be s
oaked to the bone? She didn’t want to be so full of hurt and anger? She didn’t want to be without a child in a family that was suddenly full of mothers?

  Cat didn’t know exactly what Jessica meant, but she knew exactly how she felt.

  So Cat took her sister in her arms, smelling Calvin Klein and coffee, and she held her tight, loving her very much, her own flesh and blood, part of her little family too, and for those moments in the rain outside the deserted restaurant, they were both temporarily unaware of the baby who was already growing between them.

  When Poppy wasn’t crying she lay there between her parents, and they watched her as if she were an unexploded bomb, capable of going off in their faces at any moment.

  The baby slept, but the grown-ups couldn’t sleep. They could barely risk breathing, in case it woke up the baby.

  There was still something truly stunning about her crying. Who would ever have believed that such a tiny body could produce that ear-splitting white noise, so full of grief and outrage and fury? The baby’s parents – exhausted and frightened, incapable of exchanging a word that didn’t relate to the baby and her bewildering sleeping pattern – were very impressed.

  This was surely the loudest baby in the history of the world.

  The first bone-white buds of Poppy’s milk teeth were poking through her glistening pink gums, making her tiny, tiny, almost non-existent nose run with transparent baby snot, and it was enough to throw their little home into total chaos.

  Megan had eventually slid into an uneasy sleep just after dawn, and soon enough been rattled awake by the alarm.

  Now she wearily climbed the stairs of the Sunny View Estate, thinking about the baby, this mysterious squatter who had somehow planted herself at the centre of their world, their lives, so unimaginably changed.

  When Jessica had arrived to take care of Poppy, the baby’s perfect, freshly made face – the face that made Megan ache with love in a way that no man’s face ever had – lit up with delight.

  Poppy was happy to see Jessica. The baby recognised her auntie. And as Megan walked down the rubbish-strewn concrete corridors of the Sunny View Estate, she wondered if the baby liked Jessica more than she liked her own mother? Did Poppy even love Jessica? But then who could really blame her?