Olive

by Emma Gannon

  “Everything is not okay, Bea,” Chris growls.

  He rolls up the sleeves of his shirt, wipes his forehead, and starts pacing.

  “I cannot believe you could be so stupid,” he barks, sort of to himself this time as he walks around in a circle.

  “Everything is under control now, mate,” Skull Guy cuts in.

  “And who the fuck are you?” Chris replies, looking Skull Guy up and down. It probably doesn’t help that he isn’t wearing any jeans.

  “Chris. This kind man—your neighbor—was across the street. He just saved your son. You should be thanking him, not shouting at him,” Bea says.

  “It’s no bother, honestly,” Skull Guy says.

  “Chris, please.” Cec gives Chris a sharp look, and it seems to bring him to his senses.

  “Okay, fine, sorry, mate. You can leave now, though. We’re all okay now. Thanks, everyone.” Chris looks around the garden and waves everyone off. About ten people have gathered just to have a look because it turns out most people are nosy. But now the commotion is over. “Nothing to see here, all right! You can go now!” Chris shouts, shooing everyone away.

  “I feel like the worst mum in the whole world. You’re right; I am a total failure. A crap mum,” Cec says, closing her eyes and squeezing tears out.

  This seems to sap most of the anger out of Chris. His shoulders drop, his face softens. “Oh, Cec, no you’re not.”

  “I am, Chris; you just said I was. You’re right! I fucked up!”

  “No, no. You are the rock of this family, Cec. I’m sorry, we all just freaked out.”

  “I don’t even know who I am anymore. I can’t do anything right.” She starts shaking her head, tears sliding down her face. It’s heartbreaking.

  “I’m sorry,” Chris tells her. “I need to be there for you more.”

  “I’m so sorry for what happened today. I am an idiot.”

  “No, I’m a fucking idiot. I’m sorry.” Chris puts his arm around Cec. She blows her nose on her sleeve.

  “Ugh, what a horrible day,” Cec says through a bunged-up nose.

  Bea and I suddenly realize we are earwigging and should probably head off.

  “Babe, I’m going to go now. I’m glad everything is okay,” Bea says. “Please, please don’t beat yourself up about this.” She puts a gentle hand on Cec’s shoulder.

  “Same. Message us later, okay? Are you going to be all right?” I ask.

  “I’ll be fine, girls. Thank you, for always being there.” We hug Cecily and give Chris a nod.

  I make to move away with Bea, but then slow my steps. I need to stick around and talk to Cecily. I don’t want to leave her like this.

  “Chris,” I say diplomatically, “why don’t you take Oscar inside, and I’ll take Cec for a quick coffee, just to take her mind off things and chill for a sec?”

  “Sure.” Chris lifts Oscar out of Cec’s arms. I feel quite impressed with myself for taking the reins. “See you later, Cec.” He kisses her on the lips, locks his car with his key blipper, and walks into the house, chatting nonsense to Oscar.

  Cec’s shoulders drop, and, despite her lingering tears, she looks happy with my suggestion. “Thank you,” she mouths at me.

  We pop into a coffee shop on the corner near her house. It’s falling apart a bit; the walls have paint flaking off, and there’s a funny smell coming from the kitchen, but it’s not the time to be picky. There are loads of posh cafés in this area, but Cec needs something simple. We just need a hot drink and a moment to breathe.

  I buy Cec a latte and a cup of hot tomato soup and a mint tea for me. I can tell she’s really spaced out because she’s not mentioned what a dive the place is. There’s an old guy behind her, plugging five different gadgets into the plug sockets and complaining about the tap water.

  “I’m sorry you’re going through a hard time, Cec. . . . Oh look at you, you’re shaking a bit—are you cold?” I ask, pouring her some water.

  “I’m okay,” she says, pulling her cardigan over her shoulders. “Just the world’s shittest day.”

  “Cec, this stuff happens. I bet everyone has done it, just no one really talks about it. Honestly. Don’t beat yourself up; you are doing brilliantly,” I say.

  “Ol, I just can’t stop crying. Literally on the verge of tears the minute I go to bed and the minute I wake up.”

  “Oh, babe. Have you tried taking anything?” I say, not knowing at all what the “right” thing to say is.

  “No, but you’re not the first to ask, or suggest that I could do with some help. I’m going to see the GP next week; it’s just been impossible to find the time—I never have a minute to myself.” She looks down at her chipped nails and rubs one of her tired eyes. “Things between me and Chris are bad. I think he expected me to be this Superwoman Perfect Mum who could just adapt her entire life overnight and Do It All, but . . . I can’t.”

  “Of course you can’t. It is not fair of Chris to expect that.” I could go further and really bad-mouth Chris, but I hold my tongue. They are still married, after all.

  “I can’t breastfeed either. Too sore. But Chris doesn’t really get why that’s bothering me. Everything is a fucking mess, and I can’t see a way out.”

  “Cec, it will get easier. It has to,” I say, holding both of her hands over the table.

  “It has to,” she repeats, staring into space.

  When we leave the coffee shop, I walk Cec back to her front door. I hug her goodbye and tell her to call me whenever she needs to. I look her in the eyes and make her promise to call me if she needs a babysitter or someone to come and watch Oscar while she sleeps. I book an Uber home. In the back of the car, I stare out of the window as passing trees, parks, and tall buildings whoosh past. Poor Cec—I feel so worried for her right now. Any element of self-care has gone out of the window, and she’s clearly struggling badly, only beginning to open up to her friends. I feel helpless and suddenly really, really guilty about the horrible fallout at the baby shower.

  An image of Cec kneeling on the grass and looking desperately at her front door comes back to me, tears running down her face as her baby waits on the other side. I never want to experience that level of fear for myself. . . . I remember someone at work highlighting the dangers of sleep deprivation after birth. She said she was so exhausted that she left her baby in a car once. She said the lack of sleep had turned her properly mad, and she had actually forgotten she even had a baby for a whole hour. Luckily a passing neighbor heard the baby cry and alerted her to it. She said it was absolutely horrific and gave her major anxiety attacks for years afterwards. How can your own brain betray you in such a way and make you forget such a vital detail about your life? Like, a very, very key detail.

  I don’t think I could put my heart up for risk like that. If you have children, you have no idea what might happen to them. You have no idea who they will grow up to be, you have no idea if they will survive a long life, you have no idea how your relationship will pan out. All of these things frighten me to the core. People who say, “Oh, but who will look after you when you’re old?” always assume that you’d be friends with your kids later in life and that they would live in the same country as you. But, actually, they might avoid you like the plague or badly fall out with you. It’s happened to me with my dad. He moved away, left my mum. My relationship with my dad is nonexistent, and I don’t think having a baby is a one-way ticket to having forever happiness or a new best friend. Children also move away; they might fall in love with someone on the other side of the world, reducing your relationship to an inconveniently timed Skype call. The idea of having a child frightens me for so many reasons, so many more than the horrors of childbirth itself. Perhaps I’m scared of having that much love—too much love—to potentially lose.

  27

  2018

  “Are you telling me that you’ve strung me along for a
ll these years?” Jacob was marching up and down the living room, pulling at his hair. I’d never seen him look so stressed. Not even after that time he accidentally transferred £1,000 to the wrong account for his friend’s bachelor party.

  “I haven’t strung you along, Jacob. I just . . . I didn’t really know,” I said defensively. I didn’t want to face it, I think.

  “Olive,” he said, breathing heavily now. “You must have known. You must have thought at some point, during the nine years we’ve been together, that you didn’t want a family.”

  “I didn’t think about it that much! It wasn’t front of mind! We got together when we were twenty-four; I didn’t need to think about it.”

  “You must have had an inkling that we would get to this point, and you never said anything to me. Ever.”

  “Either one of us could have changed our minds over the last few years. How was I to know that you so desperately wanted this?”

  “I think when you have an idea that you probably don’t want kids, it’s something you should tell your partner, like, at the earliest opportunity.”

  “I knew we would cross that bridge when we came to it.”

  “I hate that phrase, crossing the stupid bridge.”

  “Jacob, stop shouting.”

  “I’m not shouting,” he said, forcibly lowering his voice.

  “And please stop pinning all the blame on me.”

  “I’m not. I just don’t know what to say.” He looked increasingly strained as he spoke, his face bleached of color.

  “There’s nothing to say. We clearly want different things,” I said coldly.

  “Olive, I need a plan. Life is about having a plan.”

  “Well I don’t need a plan, J.”

  “Is there any way we can compromise on this?”

  “How? I feel like you’re putting me in a corner.”

  “And you’re putting me in a corner too,” Jacob whispered. I’d never seen him so frustrated. We were both trapped. Flies stuck in a sticky web.

  “Either one of us makes a huge sacrifice, or . . .”

  We both knew what the “or” was, but neither one of us had the guts to say it out loud. That would make it real. We didn’t want it to be real, neither of us. The “or” was a horrible, horrible thought. “Or” meant the end.

  “Olive. You’re the love of my life. For nearly ten years. Please, I can’t bear this.”

  I burst into tears.

  I hugged him close to me.

  I got mascara all over his white shirt.

  We both shook silently in each other’s arms.

  We had always compromised and negotiated, and we had always solved things. Got to the bottom of a problem, together. We knew how to sort things out. We were good at it. But this wasn’t a situation where we could meet halfway. In short: we were fucked.

  In the middle of the night, around 4:30 a.m., I got up and went into the bathroom and sat down on the bath mat next to the tub. I didn’t know what to do, so I went online and posted on an anonymous forum: “I don’t want kids. My boyfriend does. Any advice?”

  The replies came in thick and fast:

  Answer 1: Good job, you’re not married. You should tell him before you say “I do.” Otherwise that is very unfair.

  Answer 2: Set him free. Leave him.

  Answer 3: Wow, you need to separate immediately. You’re wasting his time, babe.

  Answer 4: Tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.

  Answer 5: You must let him go so he can be a father ASAP.

  Answer 6: Maybe you could adopt a puppy instead.

  I voluntarily hit my head on the side of the bath. I can still remember the hollow thudding sound it made.

  “You okay in there, Olive?” Jacob asked through the locked bathroom door.

  “No,” I replied. “I’m not.”

  Part Three

  “I don’t know how I’ll feel about it when I’m eighty and I don’t have any children and grandchildren. I don’t know if that will make me happy, or sad.”

  Donna, 49

  28

  2019

  It’s Friday evening and I spend an hour at hot yoga to calm down from the week and sweat it all out. I have to admit that I love having the time and freedom to do anything I want to, whenever I want. Doing yoga in a hot room, practically a sauna, with strangers (including an old man in his Speedos) isn’t something I thought I would enjoy—but I really do. The teacher is telling me to let go of all my pointless thoughts, to let them swim away like little fish. But I’m struggling to concentrate on “being zen” with all the drama that is going on with my friends. I leave the class early, and a few of the keenos give me a dirty look for disturbing their downward dog. Just as I’m arriving home from yoga, sweaty and pleasantly sleepy, I put my keys in the lock, and my phone beeps with a message. It’s Dorothy Gray.

  SORRY TO TEXT YOU OLIVE BIT OF AN ACCIDENT CAN YOU CALL

  Christ. Poor Dorothy! Sounds serious. I was looking forward to putting on my new silk pajamas and watching Netflix, but my heart’s hammering at the thought of Dorothy in trouble. When I call her she doesn’t pick up. Hmm. I notice her lights are still on, as usual. I ring again, but nothing. So I go and knock on her front door. I knock louder and louder. Dorothy!? I can hear someone shuffling to the door, dragging their slippers along. She eventually opens it.

  “Oh, Olive, thank god,” Dorothy says. She has a bloodstained tea towel around her hand. Something is really bleeding a lot. The tea towel is practically completely red.

  “Oh my god, what’s happened?” I feel sick at the sight of it.

  “I was cutting up an apple, and my hand slipped. . . .”

  “Can I see?” I peel back the tea towel, and all I see is a very red, bloody, and messy hand. I suddenly feel lightheaded. I am not good with blood. I’m worried she might have cut a vein or something. Her hands are so pale and thin. “Oh, Dorothy! We should take you to accident and emergency right now. I’ll book us a cab.”

  “Really? Okay, dear. I’m sorry to text. When I first did it, there really was a lot of blood. . . .”

  I am starting to feel very woozy. “Come on, do you want to put some proper shoes on while I sort the taxi? Keep the tea towel on and keep pressing down on it.”

  I hate the fact that Dorothy lives on her own. I mean, she might like it. But the fact that I’m the first person she contacted makes me wonder if she has any family or if anyone ever calls her. I shudder, as though a cold wind has suddenly blown over me. Maybe that could be me one day—living all alone? It can be fun now, but what about in fifty years’ time?

  The cab pulls up outside, and it’s a young woman driver. I wonder how that must be for her—on the nights when she picks up drunken louts from East London pubs and clubs. She seems relieved to see me and Dorothy. An odd, unintimidating pair.

  “Hi. The closest A&E please. Think the nearest one is Homerton,” I say to the driver.

  “No problem,” she replies.

  Luckily she doesn’t pick up on the likely chance we might get blood on her car.

  “Do you have any family, Dorothy?” I ask.

  “My late husband, Benjamin, and I, we have a son called Max.”

  “Oh, lovely—do you see much of him?”

  “Sadly not, dear. He lives in Australia.”

  “Does he not come back and visit?”

  “Afraid not. I haven’t seen Max in twenty years.”

  “Really?”

  “It used to keep me up at night, but now I realize he’s someone who needed to go off and do his own thing. He never felt close to us, even though we felt close to him.” Dorothy’s voice suddenly sounds hoarse and dry. “He never felt the need to keep in touch.”

  My eyes prickle with tears. Maybe I’m due my period soon.

 
; “I’m so sorry, Dorothy.”

  “It’s okay. I do miss him. But it was a long time ago, Olive. He is in my photo albums, at least. Although it does hurt to look at them,” she adds, looking out of the window of the cab.

  She pauses. “My husband and I, we had such a wonderful life together. Boy, did we travel and see things.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  “And you know: so many friends of mine, in the same state I am in, they don’t see their kids either. It’s very sad. Their children have either moved away and aren’t really close anymore, or sometimes they’re just emotionally distant. You know, people often believe that having children means unconditional love guaranteed, and someone to care for you as you get older. It’s just not the case.”

  “Well, I’m just glad you texted me,” I say, trying not to well up again.

  “We’re all human beings, aren’t we. I knew you’d help if I asked.”

  “Of course.”

  I like helping Dorothy and being available for her. I am really warming to her. I feel myself softening, slowly letting people back in.

  I think I’ll go so far as to say she is my friend.

  I have decided to try to “meet new people.” Not in a dramatic way, just so I can leave the girls to it for a little while. Give them some room to breathe. It’s clichéd, maybe, but I have signed myself up for a “class” in a couple of days’ time. I had a look on Groupon, and good deals for improv classes kept resurfacing. Sounds like something failed actors do on weekends, but learning to make things up on the spot with a bunch of new people could be fun. So much has been going on lately, but I finally feel like I’m coming out of the other side and willing to try new things. It’s time to properly move on, and maybe that means getting out of my comfort zone. I also look up “the benefits” online, and it says it’s good for mental health, relieves anxiety, boosts creativity, and encourages you to “let go.” That’s what my reflexologist told me once. She could feel a sign somewhere in my feet that I struggle to let go, insinuating that I have bowel problems: “You need to let go, you know, when you go to the toilet, and in life.” What a beautiful motivational quote that is! On paper, improv is my worst nightmare, because I often find comedians quite depressingly desperate. But I’m in need of a Cheryl Strayed in Wild moment, minus the two thousand-mile hike, obviously. Maybe this will be mine.