Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  Rebecca looked at James. He shrugged it was the first time he’d heard of it.

  But how could she be sure that that was the truth any more? And why had he not seemed more surprised about her dad? Did he realise what she’d admitted? She was getting more confused, and frustrated, and on the verge of anger again. She didn’t know what to do. She was certain she couldn’t carry on though, with this voice in her head, questioning every expression on James’s face, and every utterance he made. Even on a day like today. Again she wondered why she was letting this happen to herself.

  ‘James…’

  ‘Yes, dah-ling?’

  He looked at her expectantly as he gathered up a handful of plates and glasses left sitting on various ledges. She tried to work out what she needed to say to him.

  But now was not the time. She’d taken one step to stand up for the new family she was creating today. That’d be enough. Now he needed some time to be with the family he had come from.

  ‘I’ll probably be asleep when you get in, so try not to knock anything over.’

  Chapter 37

  James scanned the shelves of the chemist, not sure where he needed to be to find the cocoa butter cream he wanted to pick up for Becs. He wasn’t even sure exactly what it was, and it was only after reviewing the context of the conversation in which she mentioned it that he’d realised that it was something you smeared on yourself, rather than on a piece of toast. He was quite glad that, when Rebecca had been slouching in his lap on the couch saying it was probably already past the time she should have got some cocoa butter, that he hadn’t said that he thought there was some Nutella in the back of the larder she could probably have.

  But he wanted to buy her something. It had been ages since he got her something just spontaneously. Having a bank balance that was like a gas meter dial spinning backwards towards zero didn’t help, but it was more about the time. There didn’t seem to be time for him to just be out and about, doing his stuff. It was occasions like that, when he was doing his own thing, when he’d think of Rebecca and want to do something for her for when he got home. Now every minute of his day seemed occupied with little jobs: being sent to get something, checking on his mother, going to an antenatal class, back to the job centre, at his temp job, looking at which nappy bin is best, finding out what a nappy bin is… The baby wasn’t born and they didn’t seem to have any time for themselves, or each other. Their parents weren’t even that old and they were having to look after them more and more already. Even though there were only three of them now.

  And it was only a few weeks ago that he’d turned down the opportunity for a fuck with Gemma. What he thought about that was still jumping all over the place. There was the guilt that he’d even let it get as far as it had, but also a bit of pride that he’d had the opportunity. She really was very hot. He could only imagine what she would have been like in the sack. And to be honest he did still imagine it from time to time.

  Then it all crashed around him at the thought that when it happened Ben had been dying.

  But he’d done the right thing, and he was relieved that he had. He’d finished his drink and ran from the pub, basically. He’d been too wound up to go straight home though, after it happened, and since he had said he’d be out with Kam, he decided to take the chance to go to the movies and eat crap cinema snacks and watch a bit of 3D violent horror. He’d actually been in a fantastic mood when he came in the door, just before he heard about his dad. From then on he hadn’t given a thought to what had happened earlier until he checked his phone in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep and got the voice messages from Rebecca, and a ‘heads-up’ text from Kam.

  Sitting on the toilet, James had done a quick bit of texting to his friend, explaining his version of events. Kam, up late himself with one of the kids, filled him in on what he’d said to Rebecca. Guiltily, James got his story straight. Then he’d let his friend know about Ben. It had been weird to put it down in black and white. Or rather, to put it in a light green speech bubble on his phone’s screen. Kam had texted back straight away with an offer to call, but James couldn’t speak right then, and not just because he was hiding in the loo. Talking about Ben was just too much. He didn’t know how to react, his brain would rebel against the truth, and something stupid would come out.

  Now the initial shock had passed, he could manage talking about Ben in a bit more of a rational way. He could accept the condolences appropriately, and nod at the tributes, and gracefully glide over the enquiries into how he was bearing up. But everything he thought about seemed to pass through a filter tinted by how he felt about his dad, and what it meant for James’s life now. How he should be as a man.

  He’d dodged a bullet with Gemma, and he wouldn’t forget what he’d risked in a hurry. It had got him thinking though, it was time to come clean on his past. Especially since he now had a plan. He’d been thinking endlessly about what he wanted to do with however long it might be that he himself had left, and he had it cracked. It was time for a reboot.

  Now he just needed to find this butter. He thought he’d try the pregnancy aisles first, then skincare, and if it got desperate he’d ask. Turning a corner he stared mindlessly at the Family Planning display. There was a cruel juxtaposition of condoms and pregnancy tests. How many people came down here looking for a test thinking: if only they’d thought to come here a bit earlier? But then there’d be the people trying to get up the duff and having no luck at all, and there’d be guys being reminded maybe they’d spent a fortune on contraceptives they evidently hadn’t needed. He and Becs had been lucky on that front, he knew. The stress of not being able to get pregnant would not have been something to add to what was going on around them now. Yes, he worried about how they were going to provide for Bomp, but Bomp was the one thing to really look forward to right now.

  As he moved on, after a quick sneaky glance through the lubes and little sex toys it now seemed to be acceptable to sell in chemists, he remembered another thing from his childhood – going through his parents’ bedside drawers and finding a big box of Durex. He must have been near enough a teenager, and he remembered being both grossed out that Ben and Maggie would have a use for them, but also offended that they found the idea of having another child so repugnant they had to take such dramatic steps to stop it happening again. To his weird logic of the time, it seemed like a criticism of his performance as a child. He wondered if it was around that time that he started to feel there was other stuff going on in his parents’ lives that was more important than him. He was sure there probably always had been, but it was about that age that he started figuring it out. That wasn’t going to happen with Bomp though. Not if his plan came together.

  He turned the corner and there it was: cocoa butter. But it wasn’t just one thing, there were rows and rows of stuff. Lotions, creams, crèmes, extracts, gels, pots, tubes… It was looking more complicated than he thought.

  ***

  Rebecca swore to herself she’d never lift anything heavy again if this is what back pain could be like. The shooting pains she was feeling up her back from her bum weren’t because she’d been doing anything more than carrying the huge lump that Bompalomp had turned into, but the sciatica was driving her slightly demented. She’d never had much sympathy for the guys in her office who would complain about slipped discs and spend days at home lying flat on their backs and whimpering, but now she was beginning to see the point.

  She was pushing her back against the doorframe trying to get some sort of relief, but only really managing to temporarily distract herself with a different type of ache and discomfort. She hoped this level of pain was actually pretty bad, in a strange way. The idea that this could be considered a mild irritation compared to childbirth actually scared her. But at the minute, everything scared her. Looking at the stairs in the hall scared her, because the nursery wasn’t ready yet and they just weren’t ready to have this baby. Not knowing exactly where James was at the moment scared her.

&nbs
p; This is ridiculous, she thought to herself, as another spasm of pain shot across her back. I’m going to have to speak to him. I can’t go on in the dark. And if it has to be just me and Bomp, I’ve got to get used to that now. But even as she pictured the confrontation, she knew she couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t know where to begin… She jumped then, as the front door opened and James came in, wafting a Boots bag and grinning in a weird way. She thought he’d been drinking, but when he kissed her there was no sign of booze.

  ‘I got you this!’ he said, handing her the bag. A huge tub of Palmer’s Cocoa Butter. ‘You said you needed some, and I stored that thought away.’

  ‘Thanks, darling,’ she said, not mentioning that she’d had an industrial-sized vat of it by her bed for the last two weeks.

  ‘Now,’ he said, guiding her to the sofa, ‘there is something I haven’t told you.’

  This’d be it. The butter’s a parting gift. He was going to leave her. He’d been having an affair.

  ‘I’m not going to be an accountant any more.’

  She looked at her husband standing in front of her, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘What are you talking about? You sound like someone from an advert.’

  ‘I’m not going to do it. I’m not looking for jobs in the financial sector. I’ve had no luck so I’m stopping.’

  Rebecca stared, and he carried on quickly.

  ‘But it’s all right you see, because I have this new plan. I’m going to be a childminder. I’m going to look after Kam’s kids when their au pair leaves after the summer, and I’ll bring Bomp along. It means I’ll be around them all the time, and can be the dad I want to be. I’ve been thinking since Ben died – putting the time in now is so important. And I don’t want to be an accountant any more. I could have less than thirty years left, I can’t waste it.’

  In a breather from his speech Rebecca butted in.

  ‘But your training…and you don’t know anything about kids.’

  ‘I can learn. And I can’t get a job anyway, with my record.’

  ‘With your what?’

  James told Rebecca about the accidental glassing, and what it meant for his job prospects. He admitted he hadn’t really been trying for the past few months because he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know how to tell her.

  ‘I was trying to protect you,’ said James, ‘and Bomp too. I didn’t want to be a worry with all you had going on.’

  ‘Hold on. Just hold on. This is too much. You’re trying to make out that you’re doing the decent thing?’

  ‘I want the best for all of us.’

  ‘I’d have to work because you’ve done something so stupid you can’t get another job? And that poor woman! You’ve ruined lives. And how could you not tell me about this for all these years? You’ve lied. You’ve always lied.’

  ‘It wasn’t to you, it was everybody. Even my parents didn’t know.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well. Ben did, the university made me. But now…if I hadn’t told you no other living soul would know.’

  ‘You’ve lied to me for the whole course of our marriage! Am I just supposed to say fair enough, there’s things we all forget now and then? You could have killed her!’

  ‘I told you everything else about me. You know, the name…’

  Rebecca snorted. The ridiculous sensitivity he had about his birth name.

  ‘Wow, you changed your name because the one Ben and Maggie gave you was embarrassing.’

  ‘It was a big decision for me when I was younger. It’s not an easy process.’

  ‘You’re right. That’s completely more significant than a history of violence.’

  ‘Ah come on, it’s not a hist—’

  ‘Christ, it wasn’t even like it was some kind of weird hippy thing like Harvest or Fennel, it was only Keith.’

  ‘That was a very embarrassing name to have for an adolescent boy at that time.’

  ‘But it’s about you! It’s always about you! Like this ridiculous plan to work for Kam. I’m going to have to support you too is that it? You get to be at home playing new-age dad, bringing our child up as part of someone else’s family, and I have to go out to work for the privilege.’

  ‘It’s not going to be like that.’

  ‘And Kam’s all right with this? And Kate? Leaving a violent criminal in charge of their children?’

  ‘I’m not a… Kam thought it was a good idea. He was going to tell Kate about it. But she knows us well.’

  ‘She might be in for a surprise.’

  James snorted, and shook his head.

  ‘Very high and mighty these days, since you bottled your own little brush with the law,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, considering we spent the last six months pretending you’d been advising your dad on urinary tract problems before he got nicked,’ he snapped, before continuing in a mocking voice, ‘“I indicated to Dad he might need to see a specialist before this blew up.” “Of course you did, Rebecca, of course you did.”’

  ‘I didn’t go through with anything. If you were so sure it never happened how come you were so happy to let me go through with it?’

  ‘Hang on, so that’s my fault now too? For supporting your decisions regardless of how stupid they were?’

  ‘I can’t believe that it didn’t seem like a big deal to you. Although that’s making sense now. Hiding the truth’s second nature.’

  James sighed and they both stood there for a moment, quietly.

  ‘I know you weren’t with Kam the night your dad died. I spoke to him. He’s not a good liar, you should give him lessons.’

  ‘What are you talking about now?’

  ‘You know. The drink with him and “the old colleagues” you bumped into.’

  ‘I needed some time to myself,’ James said quietly. ‘I went to the cinema.’

  The look on Rebecca’s face was the closest to hatred he’d ever seen there.

  ‘And I had a drink with a girl from the office before I went. But that was it! I didn’t tell you at the time because, believe it or not, I had some slightly bigger things on my mind if you remember.’

  ‘Who’s this girl?’

  ‘Just someone I work with. She’d asked if anyone wanted a quick pint, and my movie didn’t start till later and…’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned her before.’

  ‘There’s lots of people I haven’t mentioned before. You’ve not heard about Dave, or Phil or Stuart have you?’

  ‘And she’s pretty and slim and not pregnant?’

  ‘Ah come on.’

  ‘Swear on Bomp that nothing happened.’

  That snapped something in him.

  ‘Are you crazy? No! Don’t you ever do that again. How could you even think like that? Bringing the life of our child into this? I… I… fucking hell.’

  ‘But what am I to believe? About anything. You’ve systematically fucking lied to me since we met about a criminal record, you’ve lied to me about what you were up to with fucking Dad, keeping stuff from me. I’ve been worried about how your job hunt’s going, and it turns out you’ve been spending all your time surfing the fucking internet and chatting up sluts.’

  ‘Well, tell me this. When would have been a good time to tell you?’

  ‘About the sluts? I think it would have been best if you didn’t put yourself in a position where you have to at all.’

  ‘I meant about the conviction. When we first started going out? When I proposed? Will you marry me even though, by the way, I nearly went to prison for GBH?’

  ‘Yes! Actually, yes. That would have been a good time. At any point in the last five years would have been fine. What kind of person do you think I am that I wouldn’t understand an accident? I mean, I’m assuming it was an accident, but of course I’ve only got your word for that, and we know what that’s worth.’

  ‘It was supposed to be my thing. My burden to deal with.’

  ‘Your burden. But inst
ead you decided to drop it in when I’m about to give birth and you’re planning a new life as Mary Poppins. Good of you.’

  ‘But things have changed so much. I never thought I’d lose a job like that. At a time like this. It hit me hard, y’know? And then my dad…’

  For a second, Rebecca wavered. He’d been having a tough time, she should be there for him. It was understandable. This was just some kind of passing crisis. But this time that wasn’t going to happen. He might be having a hard time, but this stuff went way beyond that. She wasn’t going to put up with the shit her mother had put up with. Not for her and not for Bomp. She’d been understanding, looked at the other side, trusted, for years, and it had put her on the point of perjury, and with a husband who knew she’d follow the path of least resistance. Not this time.

  ‘You lying, cheating bastard.’

  ‘Now that’s not entirely fair.’

  ‘I think you should leave.’

  In surprise, James laughed.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to… But, Becs, come on. Let’s talk about this.’

  ‘Why go over it again? Unless there’s anything else you’ve not been telling me? Any other offences to be taken into consideration? Fuck, the men in my life.’

  ‘This isn’t something to do anything drastic over.

  ‘If you don’t leave, I will. Fancy chucking your eight and a half-month pregnant wife out of the house do you?’

  ‘Becs…’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘Where would I…? Ah fuck it.’

  Now furious, James stomped up the stairs, grabbed the dust-covered gym bag from the top of the wardrobe, bringing down a half roll of wrapping paper, and a cobweb-covered T-shirt with it. He emptied the neat and ordered contents of his underwear drawer into the bag, stuffed a change of jeans and several carefully folded T-shirts in too, and zipped the bag. He stopped and looked around the room. There was no sound from downstairs. Maybe she’d be waiting for him to come down. Ready to talk again. He stared at his holdall, and decided he’d best put a couple of jumpers in there too. He swung it up on his shoulder and headed out of the room. As he left, he turned to look into the nursery and felt a film of stinging tears across his eyes as he took in the half-opened cardboard boxes, and still half-finished furniture.