by Ruth Jones
Kate and Callum had been there since ten a.m. They’d had almost three hours of delicious, undisturbed sex: focused, determined and exhausting. Her parents were away on holiday and this room had become their haven.
He’d taken the kids to his mother’s that morning, left Belinda lying in bed. Sleep eluded her these days and she had to grab it when she could. He’d kissed her forehead and asked her if she needed anything before he left.
She’d half opened her eyes and smiled at him. ‘I suppose a shag’s out of the question?’ And then she’d gone back to sleep, entertaining herself with the ridiculousness of such an idea. It’d be a long time before she was up to any shenanigans. She’d frequently joke she was the size of a cross-Channel ferry right now. Not remotely feminine, her ankles swollen beyond recognition – ‘They could literally be someone else’s, Callum, probably my Aunt Betty’s’ – and her breasts were so heavy they hurt every time she yawned.
Callum had watched her gently snoring, her mouth slightly open, and felt relieved that she was finally getting some rest.
He wasn’t consumed with remorse any more. Because what you’re doing is so abhorrent, he thought, it’s beyond repentance and certainly beyond forgiveness. And the devil inside his head said, So you may as well enjoy it while it lasts, Cally boy, ’cos believe me, when she finds out, which she WILL, the whole shooting match is gonna come crashing down around you. He knew all this, and still he couldn’t give it up.
It’s just sex though, isn’t it? Isn’t it? That’s what he kept telling himself, but he didn’t know any more. He was lost, defeated. He only knew he was addicted to her, to the smell of her, the taste of her – oh God, the taste of her! – the feel of her skin next to his, and Jesus, what it was to be inside her. If he thought about it too much, he knew he’d go insane.
When he’d arrived at Kate’s house that morning, she’d opened the front door wearing nothing but a pair of knee-high boots made of tan suede and a black silk shirt that was too big for her. She looked amazing and she pulled him inside without saying a word. First she’d kissed him, then cupped his face in her hands, looking him straight in the eye before a broad smile spread across her face. ‘You are SO gonna get it, MacGregor,’ she promised. Then, holding his gaze, she undid his belt and dropped slowly to her knees. There she began consuming him, delighting in his every surrendering groan as he stared at her parents’ cuckoo clock on the opposite wall.
Now, three hours later, they lay in a post-sex tangle of tired limbs and sated smiles, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, the phone ringing some distance away in the hall.
They would have just ignored it, of course. Even when the answer machine clicked into play and the voice of Kate’s mother could be vaguely heard, politely inviting the caller to please speak clearly after the beep.
And they would’ve ignored it still, even when they heard Fergus begin his message. ‘Hello, it’s Fergus here from the pub.’
‘He’ll be wanting to change my shifts …’ Kate sleepily mumbled and kissed Callum’s chest, inhaling the familiar smell of his skin, her eyes still shut.
‘Kate, can you give me a call when you get this?’
He ran his fingers along the small of her back.
‘The thing is, I’m trying to get hold of Callum.’
And that’s when they both stopped. What?
‘I just wondered if you’d seen him, by any chance?’
They sat up.
‘Y’see, it’s his wife, she’s gone into labour …’
And they didn’t hear the rest of the message as Fergus carried on in the background, fruitlessly explaining how everyone had been looking for Callum everywhere and now they were running out of ideas, otherwise he wouldn’t have rung.
Kate sat on the edge of her bed, still naked, calmly watching as Callum frantically picked up his scattered clothes from the floor.
‘Fuck! Fuck!’ The panic was making him shake and he stumbled as he tried to climb into his jeans. ‘I’ve got to get to the hospital.’
‘No.’
This didn’t register, his mind on other things. Other pretty fucking life-changing things.
‘Callum, listen to me.’ She made him look at her. ‘You mustn’t go straight to the hospital.’
‘What you on about? Of course I’m going straight there!’
‘If you do, the game’s up. Fergus will know you found out from me because you were with me.’
‘And you think I care?’
‘CALLUM!’ There was a cold edge to her voice he’d not heard before and it caught his attention. ‘It may feel like that now – like you don’t give a shit about people finding out – but later on you’ll regret it, I promise you. Now do what I tell you and it’ll all be OK.’
The blood drained from his head and he had to sit down, the reality of the situation kicking in, the awful enormity of what he’d done finally overwhelming him: his wife was giving birth less than two miles away, and here he was in a strange house with a woman he barely knew, seventeen years younger than him, fulfilling some middle-aged man’s fantasy, flying high on a selfish, destructive ego trip that could make him lose everything he had.
He looked up at Kate, and felt useless. ‘What have I done?’
She looked back, determination on her face, totally in control.
‘OK, what you need to do is go back to the house. To your house. Just like you would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.’ She spoke clearly, authoritatively. ‘Where did you say you were going today?’
‘I don’t know …’
She could barely hear him.
‘Callum! Pull yourself together, this is really important!’
He thought for a moment. ‘DIY place over at Craigleith. The kids are with my mum.’
‘Right. The only way you’re gonna get through this is by lying, and I mean big lying.’
She went across the room to her stylishly messy dressing table, a jumble of scarves and little painted boxes, lipsticks and nail polish vying for space with half-burnt candles and incense sticks. Sitting on one of the shelves was a scuffed leather jewellery case, its contents lazily spilling out of the sides, silver chains and pearls tangled together with little Spanish beads and cheap bangles. She opened a tiny drawer at the base and took out a small antique box. She opened it to check inside, snapped it shut and then handed it to Callum. He stared at it, confused.
‘Now listen to everything I say and you’ll be alright,’ she said. ‘This is your story, OK?’
23
Although she wouldn’t admit it to Matt, Hetty had spent most of her first week hunting for Adam Latimer. Under the pretext of ‘exploring my environs’, she’d scoured the campus for him – pretty much all the halls of residence, the Union, the Arts Centre – desperate for just a glimpse. On the eighth day, when she still hadn’t seen him, she started to think she might have made a terrible mistake and that Adam hadn’t come to Warwick after all!
It was in the launderette she’d finally stumbled upon him. Quite literally. He’d emptied his clean wet clothes into a white plastic basket and gone to get change for the tumble dryer. Hetty, carrying her own load of dirty laundry towards a washer, didn’t see Adam’s basket, tripped and went flying. A collection of her underwear and bedding, as well as an embarrassing orthopaedic sock, shot out before her and landed in an undignified heap on the floor. Hetty followed.
‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ Adam said as he came back in, jangling a handful of twenty-pence pieces. He looked annoyed.
Hetty hadn’t turned round; she was on her knees, her back to the door, scrabbling around for any stray items and shoving them into the basket before someone saw. ‘Sorry!’ She laughed nervously. ‘Don’t know why I’m apologizing!’
And it was then that she looked up and discovered it was Adam standing there. She was holding a pair of tired panties in her right hand and a seen-better-days bra in her left. Mortified to see the boy she loved in front of her, she managed a stifled, ‘Adam!�
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He picked up his basket and took it over to the dryer. ‘How d’you know my name?’ He opened the vast circular door and started piling his wet clothes into the drum.
Hetty clambered to her feet and followed him. ‘I’m Hetty. Strong. We were in sixth-form college together?’
He stopped to look at her now, half smiling and inquisitive. ‘Were we? Hated that place, didn’t you?’ And he slammed the door and put five twenty pences into the slot. The machine rumbled slowly into tumbling action. ‘Fancy a pint while this lot is drying?’ He was already halfway to the door.
‘Er, yes, I’ve just got to …’ and she indicated her laundry.
‘I’ll see you in there,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Mandela Bar. What you drinking?’
Hetty thought she would explode with excitement and couldn’t think straight. She tried to sound cool and failed miserably. ‘Oh anything, I’ll have whatever you have.’
And he was gone.
She found him ten minutes later in the Union, laughing by the bar with a couple of drama students. A Eurythmics song was playing in the background. At first she was too shy to join them and stood watching from a distance, catching her breath as she took in the glorious sight of Adam Latimer in his donkey jacket and turned-up jeans and Doc Martens. ‘No one on earth could feel like this …’ He was undeniably handsome, his ear pierced twice and his hair shaved at the sides, long and spiky at the top and bleached à la Depeche Mode. ‘I’m thrown and overblown with bliss …’ Taking a large gulp of his purple pint, he turned and caught Hetty looking at him. ‘There you are! Come on, your pint’s getting warm.’
She walked over to the bar and Adam lazily introduced them all. ‘Kev, Rick – Betty.’
‘It’s Hetty actually,’ she timidly corrected him.
‘Hetty, Betty – same thing. Here y’go.’ And he handed her a pint the same colour as his. ‘Snakebite and black.’ It smelt revolting. But Adam had bought it for her, so she had to drink it. She took a mouthful and tried to hide her disgust. ‘It was 68p, by the way.’
‘Oh.’ Embarrassed at the misunderstanding, she reached into her pocket and counted out some change.
Adam seemed to know Kev and Rick really well. They were talking about the forthcoming Drama Society auditions for Twelfth Night. He handed her a flyer. ‘Come along if you like. We’re casting the bit parts. I’m playing Orlando. And directing.’ Then he turned back to Kev and Rick and carried on a conversation Hetty couldn’t follow. But she didn’t care …
She clutched the flyer for the audition, stood silently sipping her horrible purple pint and thinking how desperately she wanted to be in this play with him. Inside she felt warm and fuzzy – she didn’t know whether it was the effect of the snakebite or the fact that she was standing just inches away from the Most Beautiful Boy on Earth. Adam, unaware of the silent adulation pouring forth from her, continued talking and joking with his friends, and for all the world, Hetty may as well have not been there. But for all the world, she was over the moon that she was.
24
‘Absolutely stunnin’.’
Belinda was cradling her nine-pound-five-ounce newborn and the latest addition to the MacGregor clan, Ailsa Cerys Louise: Ailsa after Callum’s godmother, Cerys after Belinda’s best friend in school, and Louise because – well, because she and Callum both just liked the name. A shock of matted raven hair atop her shiny warm head, her face alternating between a pout and a gurn. Ailsa Cerys Louise was still affronted at being out and about in this clanky, bright world, when all she’d known hitherto had been warmth, peace, and the comforting continuity of her mother’s loving heartbeat.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
Belinda was tearful. But she wasn’t referring to the baby: she was looking at the antique emerald-studded eternity ring on her left hand, nestling in nicely next to her modest gold wedding band. ‘I still can’t believe you went and bought it.’
‘Aw, stop goin’ on, will you?’ Callum smiled at her as he confidently extricated his daughter from her mother’s embrace and settled her into a cuddle of his own, his arms, vast and protective, enveloping their tiny, delicate cargo.
‘But it’s so unlike you, Callum. You hardly remembered to get me a sodding engagement ring!’ She beamed at him, relaxed now, despite the battle cries of childbirth still echoing round her exhausted body.
‘Yeah well, I’m just glad it fits. Now stop embarrassin’ me.’ He was desperate to change the subject and he kissed baby Ailsa gently on her confused and crumpled forehead. ‘Colostrum OK now, is it?’ They’d been through the routine before.
‘Yep, all good. She’s gonna have an appetite on her, I reckon.’ At which point Ailsa opened her perfect little mouth and started yelling, screeching, protesting, as if it had finally dawned on her that she was now actually BORN! And expected to get on with the indecorous job of being a baby.
‘And a healthy pair of lungs!’ Callum laughed. And he marvelled at how instantaneous and all-consuming was the love for a child; how it simply manifested itself in a parent’s life, gate-crashing it without warning.
When Ben was born, he’d thought his heart would burst its walls with love. The advent of this alien force had completely hijacked him – he was busted. Lambasted. Transformed into a shaking, gibbering wreck. He’d heard boys at the rugby club go on about being a dad and he thought they were being big jessies who’d read too many ‘New Man’ articles in their girlfriends’ magazines, that this fatherhood lark couldn’t possibly be as debilitating as they were making it out to be. But then he held his firstborn in his arms, felt all the helplessness and dependency of that miniature mass of limbs and lungs and those grasping wee fingers, all that unconditional affiliation, an overwhelming sense of ‘I’ve-got-your-back-son-and-that-will-never-change’, and he wept like a fool. Couldn’t stop.
So the thought of having a second child was unbearable. How could he ever love another child the same? In fact, when Belinda was pregnant with Cory, he had to sit her down and tell her in no uncertain terms, ‘I’m sorry, Lindy, I just don’t think I’ve got any love left over for another one.’
And she’d smiled at him – slightly patronizingly, he’d subsequently pointed out – and said there would always be enough love. More than enough, in fact.
And now here he was, holding his baby girl, inhaling the sweet, moist fragrance of her brand-new skin. She was yelling: obstinate, determined and utterly furious with him. He rocked her gently, and wiped away an escaping and unexpected tear. He wished he was only crying out of fatherly love. But he knew, deep down, he was crying with shame. With the behemoth-sized guilt that overshadowed him. With the awful truth of what he was, and how he’d behaved, and the lies he’d told and would have to keep on telling. And he looked down at this tiny, angry face and he thought, No. No, this is going to stop. I’m not going to be that person any more. Simple as that. Holding a nine-pound-five-ounce bundle of love in his arms, he made the decision. Him and Kate. It was over.
That lunchtime, he’d gone back to the house, just as Kate had advised. He was in too much of a mess to think for himself and just went along with her instructions, unable to question, to change course. All he could do was stick to the plan. Inside, his guts were churning, his heart heaving, his brain and his synapses fizzing with overload, losing the ability to function. What the fuck had he become?
He parked the car and took out two tins of unopened paint that Kate had thankfully found in her father’s shed. They looked brand new. Not forgetting the ring – small enough to keep safe in his pocket – he made his way to the front door. Shaking, he tried to put his key in the lock, but his mother was there in seconds. ‘Callum! Oh, Callum!’
‘What you doing here? Where are the boys?’ It wasn’t difficult for him to look shocked and railroaded, this was exactly how he was feeling.
‘It’s Belinda! She’s in labour, son!’
And there it was. The licence he’d been waiting for since leaving Kate’s house
twenty minutes earlier. Now he could legitimately react.
‘Right.’ He put down the paint and turned on his heel, heading back to the car, his mother calling behind him, ‘We’ve been looking all over for you!’
‘I was at the DIY place in Craigleith.’ He was into his automatic script now, rehearsed over and over out loud as he’d driven home from Kate’s house. He felt like a murderer covering his tracks.
‘But we tried there! We called them!’
He was ready for this. ‘Yeah, well then I went over to Glasgow …’
‘Glasgow!’
‘Yeah, to this antique place … I’ve got to go, I’ll call you when I get there.’
And he slammed his car door and started the engine. By now, Ben and Cory had come out of the house and were waving their daddy goodbye, confusion reigned, and he waved back. Challenge number one overcome.
He could hear Belinda’s screams a hundred yards down the corridor. Even amidst the cacophony of other women’s child-birthing cries, he’d recognize hers anywhere. Other-worldly, primitive and, dare he say it, bovine. Octaves lower and utterly terrifying. She was seconds away from delivery.
He walked through the door and there she was, his beautiful wife, on all fours, his brother stood next to her at a complete loss, surplus to requirements but feeling it would be too rude to leave.
When Fergus saw Callum he yelped, ‘Jesus! Where the fuck have you been?’
‘Calluuuuum!’ Belinda didn’t turn around. She had other things on her mind.
‘It’s OK, sweetheart, I’m here now. I’m so sorry …’
‘Calluuuuum!’ And she launched into an impressive tranche of deep and even outward breaths.
The midwife managed a smile at Callum as she prepared to grab the emerging baby. ‘OK, here we go – one more push, Belinda, and we’re there.’