Not What They Were Expecting

by Neal Doran

  James came back from telling the grandparents with a big grin on his face. He kissed his wife and son.

  ‘Are you O—’ James started before catching himself. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Everything is perfect,’ said Rebecca with a grin.

  ‘What do you think we’ll tell Arthur about this when he’s older?’ James asked. ‘The week before you were born we broke up. You almost ruined our marriage…’

  ‘He’ll still have time to do that.’

  James gave Arthur a wary look.

  ‘This doesn’t mean everything’s better you know,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘I know. I’m going to go to a counsellor.’

  ‘Isn’t that something we should be doing as a couple? I’d’ve thought we could try ourselves at first, rather than go to couples therapy.’

  ‘Not a marriage one. A careers one.’

  ‘You’re not going to stick with the mannying?’

  ‘There must be something safer I could do.’

  ‘And what about that tart from your office?’ Rebecca asked, wiping crumbs from her front.

  ‘That was one drink, and I should have told you. But if you’d seen her, you’d have known you had nothing to worry about.’

  Rebecca looked at him sceptically.

  ‘There’s no one that could look as beautiful as you do now.’

  Rebecca thought of her hair, which if not stuck flat to her head with sweat was frizzing away. She thought that, despite her mum’s best efforts, she had no make-up on, and that she was in the type of nightgown only a grandma could love. He’d have to be mad to think she was beautiful. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the epidural, or maybe he’d been on the gas and air while she’d not been looking, but she looked in his eyes and believed him.

  ‘One person can,’ she said, looking at the bundle wrapped up in the plastic hospital cot.

  For minutes, they stared at their baby together, stunned and happy.

  ‘Shall we try for another?’ he asked.

  ‘I think there’s a few things we might need to let settle down before we start talking like that again, chum. You’re on probation. Which shouldn’t feel too new to you.’

  James held up his hands.

  ‘And also, if you think I want to go through the last fourteen hours again any time soon you’re deranged,’ she added.

  ‘Fair enough. We’ll get to know this wee fellow first. And it’s not like we had any trouble getting pregnant last time.’

  James made a gun with his index finger and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Ol’ one shot Winfield…’

  ‘Yes, well, about that…’ Rebecca sat up. ‘Perhaps I’d been a bit careless with remembering the pill for a few months before we got a lucky shot.’

  ‘What’s that now?’

  ‘We’d started talking about babies again,’ said Rebecca, squirming a little, and not just because of her stitches, ‘it hadn’t seemed quite so pressing to be…completely up to date…’

  ‘Before we agreed, you mean? You were doing that behind my back?’

  ‘It was mainly being neglectful.’

  ‘But that’s…that’s outrageous.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said, adjusting herself gingerly to sit a little more upright. ‘It’s partly because I can see how easy it can be to let things slide that I’ve started coming around to your point of view these last few days. So I don’t think you want to get too high and mighty.’

  ‘I really thought I’d hit the target first time out.’

  ‘My hormones would still have been all over the place when I wasn’t off it completely. It was the first clear shot…’

  ‘Well, that’s me conflicted… Really? You were trying without me? I mean that kind of thing – it’s just…’

  ‘We’ve time to talk about it. Full disclosure from now on, right?’

  ‘I really thought…’

  ‘Don’t worry, stud. I’m sure there’ll be a rematch.’

  James snorted. Another time hearing about this he would’ve been furious, he expected. But it had always been what they both wanted, and frankly at the minute he needed the leverage. Plus who could quibble about the outcome? But his wife was right, from now on things were going to have to be different.

  ‘OK,’ he said, ‘total honesty policy from now on.’

  ‘The truth and nothing but the truth…’

  ‘There’s going to be a lot of those jokes from now on isn’t there?’

  ‘Maybe for a little while.’

  ‘I say, darling…’

  Rebecca smiled at the return of a long-missed routine.

  ‘Yes, darling?’ she answered.

  ‘Awfully well done with the little blighter.’

  ‘He’s simply darling, darling.’

  They watched their swaddled son, his eyelashes fluttering as he slept.

  ‘Your mater and pater are still outside,’ James said, still in character. ‘Mama’s there too now. Shall I ask them to sod orf?’

  ‘Send them in!’

  ‘What, really?’ said James, surprised back into his normal voice, ‘All of ’em?’

  ‘Yep!’

  Rebecca, for the first time in she didn’t know how long, couldn’t wait to see her parents. She wanted to say to them, so this is what it’s like! You had this feeling! This is how you felt about me! It felt like a secret had been revealed to her. This time a good one.

  But with all the recent rows and troubles that weren’t yet resolved, and the frustrations that went back to her childhood, there were still worries. She had a moment of doubt as her husband got up to get them. She was going to have to deal with her dad at some point. Find out who he really was. And she worried for the future of her parents’ marriage, and what it meant for her mum. She needed to work out what it meant about her own childhood too, how it cast everything in a different light, or felt like it did.

  ‘It’s not going to be the same for Arthur is it?’ she asked. ‘As it was for us?’

  ‘No,’ said James from the door, looking back at their sleeping son with a determined smile.

  Outside Rebecca could hear a scooter rolling along the vinyl corridor floors. A big sister and dad going home after visiting mum and the new baby. The rumble of the scooter wheels and happy chatter brought her back to one of her earliest memories, wrapped up warm and racing her trike around the garden in the low winter light. Her mum and dad cheering her on and blowing glistening soap bubbles that she was catching as she went round and round in circles. She’d never felt so loved and secure.

  ‘But hopefully it won’t be too different,’ she said.

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ said James, smiling back. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Then here we go.’

  He opened the door and in a flood of hushed cheers, smiles, and tears, all eyes focused on Arthur, the family descended.

  Loved Not What They Were Expecting?

  Then turn the page for an extract from Neal Doran’s first novel:

  Dan Taylor is Giving Up on Women

  Out now!

  1

  ‘OK, so let’s review,’ said Hannah as we sat over brunch amid the pseudo-smoke-stained gloom of a chain French bistro. ‘You don’t think there’s a chance you’ll be able to get Angus to put in a word? Explain things so you can see her again?’

  ‘I’ve been texting him this morning,’ I explained as I gingerly nibbled dry pellets of muffin from my Eggs Benedict. ‘She’s apparently never felt so angry and lied to. And is pretty pissed off at him, as well, for getting the two of us together in the first place.’

  Hannah pushed her hair behind her ears as she concentrated on developments. It was long-ish blonde-ish, not quite curly but not exactly straight. I’d once made the mistake of saying it was messy, which hadn’t gone down too well, although I’d meant it in a good way.

  ‘She’s probably sublimating what she feels. What she’s really angry about is that she and Angus aren’t toget
her,’ said Rob.

  ‘Not everyone has as big a crush on Angus as you do, hun,’ Hannah told her husband, before turning back to me. ‘Couldn’t he fill her in on what really happened?’

  ‘She probably does want Angus to fil—’

  ‘Bup!’ Hannah’s hand went up to stop Rob’s gag so I could continue.

  ‘She only partly calmed down when he told her that the marketing bloke with the fashionably challenging spectacles had asked if he could have her number. So I don’t think the signs are that good.’

  ‘And don’t forget the text she sent you at three a.m. saying, “Don’t ever contact me again, you bastard”,’ Rob chipped in helpfully, dancing a sachet of sugar across the back of his knuckles.

  ‘Yeah, there was that,’ I conceded. ‘And written with proper words and punctuation instead of text speak, which these days is legally binding or something.’

  ‘Well, I suppose if a bloke had run off looking sick after I took my top off, I don’t think I’d be too keen on a second date,’ Hannah conceded. ‘But it’s so unfair she’s not even listening to your side of the story. I mean, you were trying to be nice.’

  ‘I’m not sure she sees it like that,’ I said.

  This is probably a good time for introductions. Together, Rob and Hannah are my best ‘couple’ friends, the Harrisons. And I’m Dan, their perpetually single friend. Their reminder, when married life can start losing its sheen, that the alternatives are really no better.

  Their Project.

  You know the kind of thing — you may be in a couple and have a Project yourselves. Somebody you look out for, and worry about. Somebody you want to see happy but who isn’t doing such a great job on that front on their own. You want them to have what you’ve got, but also — if we’re being honest here — you enjoy this window into the world of the unattached, which is off-limits to you these days. Or at least it should be. If it’s not I suggest you stop reading this now and go and find yourself a good marriage counsellor, or shit-hot divorce lawyer.

  Or maybe you’re on your own, but have couple friends. The type who always have a sympathetic ear for your problems, who are always coming up with ideas for how your life could be improved immeasurably by salsa classes or the latest trend in speed dating: ‘You’ve got two minutes in a sensory deprivation tank and, if neither of you scream in claustrophobic terror because you’ve mistaken the other person’s foot for a giant rat, they set you up on a spa day. It was in The Guardian!’

  If that sounds like you then, I hate to break it to you, but you’re their Project.

  But anyway. It was New Year’s Day and I’m reporting back with news from the frontline of singledom. The night before, I’d been involved in the latest of a series of painful skirmishes with the opposite sex, at a party thrown by our mutual friend, the lovely, and irritatingly handsome, Angus. As When Harry Met Sally always reminded us, New Year’s Eve was one of the toughest times of all to have no one. As I stood making desperate small talk with hipsters in the kitchen of a Bethnal Green studio flat — more than two years after my last big break-up, and about six months after I finally got over it — I could vouch for that.

  But then, despite my general distrust of the whole concept of house parties, my night had got a lot better. I’d been banging my head off the back of the fridge in boredom while talking to some guy, an ‘old school guerrilla advertising man’ apparently, who was explaining why it was cool not to have a television. Then Gabrielle had burst in dressed, as far as I could tell, like a fifties bobby-soxer but somehow making it look stylish. I could be getting the era wrong, I’m not really up on fashion, but I do remember thinking her two-tone black and white heeled brogues were cool.

  ‘Come out and dance!’ she’d shouted, ‘They’re playing my favourite song!’

  I’d looked myself up and down in my crumpled cords, and white shirt that was perfect for showcasing the red wine someone had spilt on it earlier, and run a hand through my so-unfashionable-it-almost-counted-as-a-personal-look hair. I’d figured she couldn’t mean me. But as I’d gestured to the guy standing next to me, who was dressed as if he were in the next big indie folk boyband, she’d grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the living-room dance-floor.

  The next couple of hours had been brilliant. OK, she’d thought all my best moves were me doing some ironic dad dancing, and I’d panicked slightly when I discovered she was a student — it was OK, she was a post-grad and safely into her twenties — but aside from that we’d talked and danced and laughed and I’d thought I felt a definite spark.

  And then there’d been a bit of a mix-up…

  ‘It was a simple misunderstanding,’ I moaned to Rob and Hannah. ‘We were talking about birthdays, and I said how being born on twenty-eighth December is the worst possible day because when you’re a kid everyone bundles it in with Christmas for presents. Then later in life people almost resent you for having a cause for celebration when it’s the last thing they want to think about.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Dan, that reminds me—I thought Rob was bringing your present today, but he left it behind,’ said Hannah.

  ‘Yes. Left it behind. In the shop. Along with the card. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it just adds more weight to my argument. But anyway, then Gabrielle says she can top that seeing as she was born on September eleventh. Apparently in 2001 it made for the worst ninth birthday party ever, and every year since it’s not really been a time for party hats and balloons.’

  ‘Yep, she trumped you there all right, sport,’ said Rob.

  ‘I know. But then I mentioned how for me that date will, above everything else, be the day I lost my fiancée. So there may have been a misunderstanding about the circumstances. And the year. But just because my 9/11 was in 2010 doesn’t change the fact it’s the same anniversary. And who’s to say Gabrielle wouldn’t have invited me back to hers later anyway? I didn’t do anything wrong deliberately.’

  ‘You lost your fiancée?’ snorted Rob. ‘You were dumped by your girlfriend and then casually linked it to one of the twenty-first century’s worst terrorist atrocities but don’t think you did anything slightly shady, morality-wise?’

  ‘But I didn’t make the link, she did! I…I was just talking as if it was another day, and to do anything different would mean that They Win.’

  We sat in silence for a while. Rob weighing up the attraction of pushing on with a guilt trip, but also swayed by the appeal of the crass logic that could make the exploitation of others’ tragedy a tool in the War on Terror. Hannah looked as if she was beginning to realise that my story probably wasn’t going to be workable as an anecdote for my and Gabrielle’s ruby wedding anniversary.

  I sat there thinking that Kate could have been my fiancée if she’d said yes when I proposed that September morning in 2010. Instead she cried and said it was all over, and that it had been for several years, really. So on a date most remember as one where the whole world became a scarier place, I remember being left down on one knee with an improvised engagement ring crafted from a one-carat Sugar Puff in a wholegrain Cheerios setting, while the woman I lived for went to pack up a few things. From that moment, the bigger picture hadn’t meant so much.

  What can I say? Honestly, I’m over it now and I’d only mentioned it to Gabrielle as I thought it was a way of bringing up the subject of whether or not she herself was single or attached. And to make it clear that I myself was very much available. But when I saw she had genuine tears in her eyes, I realised she’d mixed up the date and the day itself. I’d wanted to explain right then — not least because how old did she think I was if I had a fiancée in 2001? But then the countdown to midnight had started and all I could think was that it could be time for the big kiss, and I hoped she’d been eating the garlicky dips too.

  ‘And by the way,’ I said to Rob, rising as close to my full height as I could while sitting down, ‘the reason I’m sitting here with you two and not planning a life together with Gabrielle over a casual post-coital brun
ch is because I wouldn’t let a mix-up like that stand.’

  ‘And you timed that beautifully,’ said Rob.

  Not long after midnight, Gabrielle had asked me to walk her home to Bow. Without much hope of getting a cab we walked briskly through the East London night, and at some point we kissed again, properly. It must have been at one of the few points I wasn’t convinced we were going to be mugged around the next corner. We walked on with anticipation building, giggling and holding each other closer the nearer we got to the house she shared with three friends. Then we were through the door and, with only a couple of pauses for snogs, we were upstairs.

  ‘I wanted to do this as soon as I saw you looking at me while we were dancing,’ Gabrielle said as we fell together onto her bed, my hands getting lost in her skirt.

  ‘Me too. You looked so sexy. I couldn’t believe you wanted to dance with me.’

  ‘Those sad eyes… I knew there was something.’

  Fiddling with the back of her bra, I froze. Was I really here because Gabrielle thought I was some kind of War on Terror widower? A gorgeous twenty-one-year-old, with a sensationally springy body and, my God, a real way with her hands, was going to have sex with me, but under the impression that I was someone deep down that I wasn’t. Wasn’t there a name for doing something like that? But this wasn’t my idea, and it was her flat, and my God just look at her…

  ‘Here, you’d be for ever back around there. This one opens at the front.’

  Her bra burst open and she stretched back on the bed, sexy and vulnerable hazel eyes looking at me as she lay there in nothing but a vintage skirt.

  I felt physically sick.

  ‘You look…smashing,’ I said as I buttoned up my shirt all wrong, stabbed my feet back into my shoes and tried to get my flies closed without doing any permanent damage, ‘but you’ve…I’m…I’ve got to go.’

  Gabrielle looked confused at first as I headed for the bedroom door, but by the time I glanced back on my way out her hurt and embarrassment had quickly resolved themselves as anger.