It hadn’t come as a shock to me that Mum and Dad had paid off their mortgage: I had had power of attorney over their ‘estate’, such as it was, since Dad died. But what had surprised me more, following Mum’s demise, was just how many pots of money they had squirrelled away in various accounts. They had a funeral plan, life insurance, all sorts of ISAs. Basically everything was covered. It was money they had been saving for a rainy day and possibly to help towards the cost of their care if they ever needed to go into a home. Not that either of them wanted to. The funeral had cost a total of four and a half grand. Don’t ask me how – it was hardly a lavish affair. We hadn’t exactly hired Elton John to sing ‘Candle In the Wind’ and parade the coffin down Whitehall with a marching band. She didn’t exactly have a pauper’s burial, mind you, but even so. Over four grand for what we got seemed pretty excessive. Still, it wasn’t my money, and it was what she wanted. To the letter. (Something she had planned before the dementia kicked in.) The house wasn’t in a brilliant state, but nor was it falling apart at the seams. Just yet. But you could have knocked me over with a feather when the estate agent who came over yesterday told me he would put it on the market for £175,000.
Because if it ever sold for £175,000, that would be sitting in my bank account.
And with such a ginormous amount of money in my bank account, and the ISAs, I would no longer need to work for Sylvie.
I could break her Cake! mug.
I could chuck her wig out of the window.
I wouldn’t have to go to Canada!
I felt excitement whirling up inside me again. This happened every time I thought about leaving. I’d fantasized about it for years, but now – with the prospect of being rich, rich, rich beyond my wildest dreams! – it was suddenly a possibility.
‘Excuse me?’
I looked up to locate the voice. Lost in my reverie of kerching-style greed, I’d not noticed that the carriage had filled up. A woman was standing before me, tapping her left breast. How odd. She was younger than me, bit tubby, and wearing dungarees and the sort of haircut a nun might have on leaving a convent.
‘I need your seat!’ she gasped, as if she was about to collapse. I immediately jumped up. And as I did, I saw that she was wearing a badge, on her left breast, that said, ‘Baby On Board.’ She flung herself in my seat, took out a packet of Wotsits and starting munching away. Didn’t even say thank you.
Baby on board. What was she, a Renault Espace?
Just then I saw her staring at my top. Her mouth froze mid-chew and she looked up at me guiltily.
‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry,’ she said, orange spongy bits spitting out of her mouth. ‘I didn’t realize. You should get a badge.’
And she stood up and offered me back my seat.
I was too embarrassed to say I wasn’t pregnant, that it was just this top. I just couldn’t say it. So I eased myself back into the seat and murmured my gratitude like I was in severe pain. A gallant gentleman stood up for Wotsit Face (surely they wouldn’t be that good for the baby?) and she took his seat. We were both winners. Except I was a fat one.
‘Hello, Sylvie? It’s me.’
‘Yes, I am able to read caller ID.’
‘Well, I’m at Budgens. Belsize Park?’
‘Still? Have you seen the time?’
‘No, I’ve only just got here. I told you, it’s a bit of a schlep.’
‘For God’s sake. Holly!’
‘Only there aren’t any organic chicken breasts left.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve asked and they’ve sold out. There are some normal ones.’
‘No, it’s probably horsemeat. Or they’re pumped full of antibiotics. I know – I used to keep chickens.’
‘So what would you like me to do?’
‘Forget it. I’ll do pasta.’ And she hung up.
I kept the phone to my ear, frozen. For some reason, this time her rudeness hurt more than usual. I could feel hot tears geysering up under my eyes, but I was determined not to let them fall. The man behind the counter was eyeing me suspiciously. Suddenly I realized how bizarre my one-sided conversation must have sounded to him and in that moment saw his look turn to pity. No doubt he thought I was a downtrodden wife in a controlling relationship, unable to buy anything without the say-so of my tyrant of a husband. Even if I had called him Sylvie. To regain his respect and evaporate all sense of pity, I smiled and shook my head.
‘I don’t know, men! It’s his birthday and I promised him a treat. Oh well, why don’t I take one of your lovely lasagnes?’
He visibly relaxed.
Oh well. Lasagne for supper tonight. For me. Just then I felt the phone pulse and checked my texts.
When’s my banquette coming?
I tapped the screen like I was punching her.
Thursday, you forgetful horse.
And then thought better of it, deleted it and sent:
Thursday.
I always got home before Gracie. She had the sort of hotshot job in the City I was envying earlier. Something legal, something important. I didn’t fully understand what she did, but I knew it involved something called underwriting. Truth be told, I hardly ever saw her. We’d not known each other before sharing the flat. She’d been there first and her flatmate had done a runner without paying a load of rent, so I’d answered an ad in Time Out and she’d snapped me up because I said I didn’t smoke.
Which I don’t. Often.
But never in the flat.
When I worked late, she seemed to be home early, and when I had an unexpected evening off, she would invariably roll in at 2 a.m. and collapse in a heap in the hall just outside her bedroom. Our flat was in Kentish Town. Again, I didn’t get to see much of the area, as Sylvie was so demanding of my time, but it seemed nice from what I glimpsed as I ran home from the Tube each night, and like most places in London, we knew none of our neighbours. The flat was on the ground floor of an old Edwardian terrace. It had a small garden, which was communal and reached by the other flats in the building by an external spiral staircase. And sometimes the person below us in the basement practised scales on a piano. Loudly.
When I saw someone sat on the steps to the house as I turned into the path, I got a shock. At first I thought it was Gracie, home early and forgotten her key. But then a twitch of Mohican showed me it was Jude. He was sitting on the top step in a donkey jacket, baggy jeans and battered old pumps. I’d customized the elbow pads on that jacket with material from an old sofa. He stood up. He was wearing glasses. He hardly ever wore his glasses, preferring the vanity of contact lenses. I’d always said I liked him in his glasses.
‘Jude, what are you doing?’
‘I think you’re being really unfair, Holly. Four years. Down the pan. Because I proposed to you?’
‘Jude, I’m knackered. I’ve had a pig of a day.’
‘All you had to do was say no.’
‘And I did. Just . . . in a bit more of a final way than—’
‘I didn’t realize you were a heartless bitch.’
‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
I pushed past him and stuck my key in the door. I heard him behind me.
‘Daisy says this is grief.’
Daisy was his mum. He didn’t call his mum and dad Mum and Dad; he called them Daisy and Clint. They were greying hippies. They were sweet, actually.
‘Daisy says I’ve got to give you time.’
I turned and looked at him. ‘That Mohican looks ridiculous.’
‘Daisy said it’s not a hairdo; it’s a cry for help.’
I smiled. ‘Give Daisy my love.’
And in I went. As I fumbled through the post that had been left on a cabinet in the communal hall, I heard the letterbox go up.
‘Now I know why you never wanted me to move in.’
I didn’t answer.
‘Coz you were planning on ditching me anyway.’
I was looking for a letter from my social worker. Nothing.
‘Da
isy says I’ve got to bide my time.’
I ignored him and headed to the door to my flat. I got a further shock when I heard voices in the lounge. Peering in, I saw Gracie huddled over on the couch, like she was texting or something, her mane of jet-black curls obliterating exactly what she was doing. The voices I’d heard were coming from the telly. Someone was shouting in EastEnders.
‘Hey!’ I called.
She looked up. It was then I saw that she didn’t have her phone in her hand, so she wasn’t texting. And when I saw the streams of mascara down her face, I realized what she was actually doing was crying.
‘My God, Gracie, what is it? What’s the matter?’
Suddenly she started sobbing very loudly. I rushed and sat beside her on the settee and put my arm around her. Had her mum died? Her dad? Had she lost her job?
‘I’m pregnant!’ she bellowed. I gasped. ‘I know, it’s horrendous!’
‘Oh, darling.’ And I hugged her and let her stain the shoulder of my faux maternity smock with her mascara. ‘You know, it’s funny, but a woman on the Tube today thought I was pregnant.’
And then another thought occurred to me.
‘Whose is it?’
‘Joshua’s.’
OK, I had no idea who Joshua was.
‘Who’s Joshua?’
‘My boyfriend!’ she said in a very reprimanding kind of way.
‘Sorry, it’s just we . . . never see each other these days and . . . How long have you been seeing him?’
‘Three weeks.’
‘Shit. I’m so sorry.’
‘I know.’
‘Hey, I’ve got loads of friends who’ve had terminations and . . . you’ll be OK. You don’t even have to tell Joshua.’
And with that I got up and pulled out my iPad. It had a bit of cold lasagne on the screen from where the packet had leaked, but I was proud of how businesslike I was being, like I knew what to do. I actually only knew two people who’d had abortions, but still, neither of them was particularly traumatized about it. I opened the internet browser on my iPad and tapped in ‘Abortion clinic London’ . . . which is when I heard her say, ‘I’m keeping it.’
I looked at her.
‘Joshua’s asked me to marry him.’
The horror on my face must have been evident. ‘And what did you say?’
‘I said I’d move in with him. Next month.’
THREE
You know when someone says, ‘Who would you like to play you in the movie of your life?’ and everyone gets excited and starts reeling off lists of people who are far better-looking than them? I don’t, because I want to say, ‘Why would they bother?’ I knew full well that life stories on the big screen are usually about people who’ve actually done something with said lives: fostered eighty-nine children, saved a country from invasion by terrorists, that kind of thing. But my life was the most boring life in the history of . . . lives. I lived in a tiny, uncomfortable flat; I worked long hours for relatively little pay; I now didn’t even have a boyfriend. I just existed, or that’s how it felt. So why would anyone want to make a movie of that, unless it was a propaganda piece to encourage young people to get off their backsides and actually do something other than exist? And my movie for the time being was storylined so that I would stay in this grotty little flat, be bossed about by Sylvie till . . . Till when? Till what? Till I had the balls to walk out? Till I had my parents’ money and I went on a world cruise?
So at times like this, when the script suddenly got rewritten without my consent or involvement, what was I meant to do? Was this latest development meant to give me the kick I needed to be proactive? To do something for myself? This much was clear: I had to do something. Unless I sold Mum’s house quickly and chose to stay on in this flat on my own, using my imminent wealth to cover two people’s rent. But did I really want to?
This could not be happening, surely. In 2013 women did not meet a guy, get pregnant instantly and then walk them down the aisle plumping for the marriage in the ceremony book marked, ‘Shotgun.’ Did they?
Gracie clearly did. I couldn’t quite believe it. As I lay on my bed a few hours later, the just-eaten lasagne sitting heavy in my stomach, I thought back to when we’d watched the film Knocked Up together with Jude on DVD. In it, the main woman found herself pregnant after a one-night stand, and oh, how we’d laughed when she decided to keep the baby and start dating the father, even though they were poles apart. We’d shouted, ‘As if!’ at the screen and, ‘Yeah, right!’, patronizing the character for not even considering any other options. We’d done a lot of ‘Only in America!’s that even in a film as funny and edgy as this, with lots of swear words in it and drug-taking, it felt like the Right to Life lobby had won out. But then we’d reasoned that without her – in our books – naive decision to have the baby, there would have been no story. So eventually we’d overlooked that minor detail and had enjoyed the rest of the movie, all the while considering her a silly moo for not having been to the termination clinic. And yet here we were, maybe a year, eighteen months later, and Gracie was doing the exact same thing. Not that I knew that Joshua was her polar opposite; I just knew that she hardly knew him.
Or maybe she did. Maybe she had learned so much in the past three weeks that she was confident of their future together. Maybe it was me who didn’t know Gracie at all. This would certainly indicate that. We had been ships that passed in the night. We’d rarely had nights out together. We just behaved like an old married couple on our rare TV-dinner evenings together, or the odd Sunday brunch together, and maybe we’d never dug deep enough for me to really get to know her.
She was a bit older than me – thirty-three, I thought – so it’s not like she was over the hill and her body clock was ticking particularly loudly, so why the rush? Loads of women had babies in their forties now, despite what I’d thought growing up about my parents being ancient. It was much more the done thing these days. So why had she got it into her head that she needed not only to have the baby but to marry the father? And what sort of a man was he that he proposed to the first woman he got pregnant? That is, if she was the first woman he’d got pregnant. Maybe he had super sperm and he’d got a string of kiddies up and down the country, all the way from Plymouth to . . . somewhere in Scotland beginning with P. Perth, maybe. If Perth was indeed in Scotland. Geography was never my strong point.
I was well aware that this sort of behaviour would have been deemed chivalrous in the war years, maybe later, but now? In the twenty-first century? How times change. Maybe I was being too hard on him, but this old-fashioned behaviour seemed rather desperate in this day and age. But then I supposed at least he wasn’t running at the first sign of trouble, like so many men might do. But still. Wasn’t he suspicious? Wouldn’t a lot of men assume, rightly or wrongly, that a woman who claimed to be pregnant so early into the relationship was trying to trap him?
Or maybe Gracie had become bored with the way the movie of her life was panning out. Fearful of the critics walking out because they thought it was just plain dull, she was seizing this opportunity to give herself a better second act. Who knew?
Life sometimes didn’t make sense.
As always happened when I thought or heard of anything to do with babies and pregnancy, I thought back to my birth mother. This woman I didn’t know. This stranger who I could have quite easily walked past on the street and not recognized as the person who gave birth to me. Nor would she have recognized the baby she gave away. I wondered if her circumstances were like Gracie’s. I very much doubted they were. I had given the circumstances much thought over the years and come up with two scenarios into which I was born.
OK. So I knew her name was Francesca. And she was from Liverpool. But beyond that I knew little else. But my two scenarios were as follows:
Scenario One: the Hollywood version
Hotshot up-and-coming lawyer Francesca Boyle doesn’t believe in glass ceilings. In her quest for the top she will let nothing and no one stand in her wa
y at the leading London law firm Harbottle & Deloitte & Judgey. That is till new head honcho Dirk Soliz is brought in to troubleshoot the photocopiers during a long, hot summer. (OK, it was obvious I didn’t know much about law firms, but suffice to say Dirk Soliz was hot.) Oh yes, and in this version Francesca gets rid of her pent-up anger at the injustice she sees in the world each evening by playing the cello. She’ll play anything on it: Elgar’s Cello Concerto, the bass line from ‘Pachelbel’s Canon’, ‘La Cucaracha’.
She and Dirk have a combative, screwball relationship of one-upmanship, which concludes with Dirk taking her over a photocopier one night and making love to her till dawn. It’s the best sex they’ve ever had. But the next day he drops down dead with an allergic reaction to the ink in the printer. Devastated, Francesca discovers she is with child. She soldiers on trying to take over the company with her ballsy but likeable ways, constantly covering up her pregnancy with a succession of increasingly large handbags.
One day she feels the first twinges of labour. She gets on her motorbike and drives to her family in Liverpool. She gives birth in the vestibule and insists her mother give the baby up for adoption, before returning to London for a three-o’clock board meeting. Francesca wins control of the company. She becomes a mover and shaker in the world of high finance and big business. But it has all been at a cost. One night she commits suicide. But then miraculously recovers, realizes she has got her priorities all wrong and becomes a nun and does good in the community. One day she is sent to be a missionary in Liverpool. There she meets her daughter and builds up a close bond with her before telling her the truth. Daughter Holly, now an orphan, is over the moon.
The Girl Who Just Appeared Page 5